Dancing with Change

If you are feeling irritable, tired or depressed without obvious reasons take a moment to reflect. Sit down and make a list of all the changes you have been through in the last eighteen months. There might be a connection. That is what I recently discovered.

I was feeling down in the dumps and no matter how many times I told myself to ‘choose my attitude’, ‘be grateful’, none of the old tricks were working. So I went back to the basics of self-help: spending time with friends and family, exercising, taking vitamins. I even started taking my hormones again. Nothing changed. Was I burnt out?

Only when I started to list the recent changes in my life, I got it. WOW, some eighteen months it had been with some significant changes. No wonder my emotions were all over the place.

We, human beings, process all change emotionally as a loss, even if that change is self-imposed. We want it to go away (denial). We wonder why in heavens name it happens to us (anger). We hope that if we do this or that it will get better (bargaining). We feel so sorry for ourselves (depression). Or we pick ourselves up and move on with a courageous smile.

That is what I had done. It proved to be wrong. I expected so much of myself that I had not given myself the time to experience the changes as losses. Needless to say, once I realised this, I finally slept peacefully for the first time in months.