Coping Through Crisis: Surrender

When you’re coping through a crisis, whether personal or national or even global, the fight or flight response inevitably kicks in. It’s hard to process everything going on when your body has this automatic response and you don’t know how to cope.

Recognize What is Out of Your Control

The first thing to address is what is in your control and what is out of your control. When we don’t have the control or certainty that we’re accustomed to feeling, our minds may resist accepting reality. We become frustrated because we feel the need to maintain a sense of control and yet we can’t. If we continue to fight our reality, we become stuck in a cycle.

This is why the first step is so important. You need to surrender to reality and focus your energy on the things you can control.

Grasping for control only creates a cycle that wastes precious energy. A way to break the cycle is to recognize that the majority of our worries are truly out of our control. When we surrender to our circumstances, it allows us to let go of the urgency to control things that we have no power over (like a global pandemic and the need to quarantine). When we accept what is, we begin to face our new reality with openness and adaptability.

Once we release what we can’t control, we can focus all of our energy on what we can control. Redirecting our energy into productive actions reestablishes our sense of control and can help bring down anxiety and depression.

Become Aware of Mental Resistance

Mental resistance is something that we will constantly come up against as we grow and change. It is a part of being human to be resistant to change. We think that staying with what we know and remaining in our comfort will be better—safer—than trying something different. Because change takes effort and hard work.

But if you’re ready for something different, that means you’re ready to admit that your comfort zone is no longer serving you. One of the first steps in change is to hone your awareness to your mental resistance. 

It’s not as easy as you’d think. Your brain is wired to choose the most familiar route and before you’re even aware of it, it narrows down the information to support the same choice over and over and that’s when we get unknowingly stuck. So we must build our awareness so that we can recognize when resistance is happening.

Signs of resistance include: anger, frustration, anxiety, tension in your jaw, irritability, the need to be perfect or right, escapism (i.e. through tv), drugs, alcohol, social withdrawal, and more. It can look different depending on the person, so it’s important to recognize what those symptoms look like for you.

Honing My Own Awareness

I have honed my own awareness over many years, and still I find myself surprised when I finally become fully aware of something I’ve been resisting and not working with. For example, I mentioned in the previous blog that the music I usually listen to while I work has been grating on my nerves for the past few months, and yet it’s taken until now for me to realize that all I need to do is change my music and create a playlist that has a calming effect for me. It’s that simple, and yet I was clinging onto the want for my old music. It’s something I didn’t want to let go of and I don’t have to forever. Just for now. And that realization is what has allowed me to surrender and move forward from being stuck.

Disempowering Signals

Part of the reason we get stuck so often is because we are bombarded with signals that disempower us. These signals tell us that change is scary. That change isn’t possible. That we don’t have the power to change. That we are small and insignificant. That we don’t have control over our circumstances. That tell us to stay in line and not rock the boat.

Our culture and society tell us to think that logic and masculine energy are the only way to success and happiness, but when we break through that thinking we can be free to shift and try new things. And that is when we can start to see changes happen. Rigidity will never lead to change. We must learn to be flexible and think differently. So much of the world wants us to remain living in fear so that we never change. 

Mental resistance will always be there because fear will always be there. It’s up to us to learn that change brings newness which is always better than remaining stuck in old patterns. We have to learn to trust that change and growth is better. We must learn to lean into the unknown and embrace it.

Ready to Start Healing?

Now that I have started coaching, I’m so excited to help you heal and cope through the crises in your life. With all the tools, resources, support, and guidance I have gained during the decade of my own healing, I’m here to support you and catalyze your journey!

I’m offering a special highly discounted offer to anyone who is ready to make this change. If that sounds like you, email me with the subject line “I’m Ready!” for a discount on your first three months of coaching with me. Let’s co-create a life that you love and feel inspired by!