“Character — the ability to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.” — Joan Didion, UC Berkeley ’56.
With inspiration from the acclaimed author Joan Didion, (a fellow Cal English major!) who passed away last month, this blog post is calling all adults who have been holding everything together the past two years. It is time to start living again.
Therapy rewards those best who are willing participants in their own change. Those who accept responsibility for their thoughts and feelings are able to unlock keys to their own well-being. Self-respect allows us to make better choices; we can no longer pretend that our self-neglect is actually self-care. And these actions have a ripple effect on our friends, children, and partners.
We at Loyal Blue would love to see the adults in our lives receive support and guidance needed to feel like themselves again. We are inviting more parents into sessions, and encouraging our many adult clients to share their learnings from session with others. We predict that the very adults who have been guiding families and workplaces through this pandemic maze are ready for a new chapter. We are a practice for all ages and are ready to help.
We are optimistic for 2022! Some thoughts for the year:
Prediction #1: You will feel like yourself again at some point. It may be a return to a new baseline, or it may be fleeting, or you may have been fine all along but this is the year of the new normal. We must live with covid, we will try to make responsible decisions given our personal situations and protection of others, and we will go back to some of our usuals.
Prediction #2: You will be disappointed at some point this year. Something will get canceled, someone will let you down, or some relationship will not be what it used to be in this new normal. You’ve been living with uncertainty for a long time now but it will not make the disappointment go away.
Prediction #3: You will need some help to feel like yourself and get through your disappointments. Back to the Didion quote: this is a good year to accept responsibility for your own life and its choices. This is not your year yet where changes from the pandemic magically stop happening and you finally stop bracing yourself when you make plans or look at the news…but this is a good year to take responsibility for where the past two years have brought you.
It’s adults and leaders who need support and shoring up after two years
We at Loyal Blue noticed this past fall, a good 18 months into the pandemic life, that parents were needing support just as much as their kids. In fact, many kids who are struggling are partly due to the fact that their parents are exhausted and overwhelmed and have not been able to hold the boundaries on screen time, or the patience required to attend to their kids in a way that would help alleviate problems. This is no parent’s “fault” — the requirements of being a parent the past two years have been immense — but it is now their responsibility to fix these situations that have caused struggles in families.
This may start with adults figuring out what it will take to bring more patience and bandwidth to their family, or their workplace, or wherever has been under stress. We are calling on all adults to clarify and take next steps so that they too may feel optimistic about 2022. This may include counseling, family meetings, or solo time to reflect.
Some ideas from our therapists:
Set up boundaries again. Have you been working too much, drinking too much, or letting your kids play with screens too much? Is your self-neglect actually cloaked as self-care? As I discuss in my talk, The Psychology of Returning, we sometimes need to do the hard thing without feeling motivated. In behavioral health, this is called “action before feeling.” Put the cart before the horse. Do the thing before you feel like it. In order to get going, you just have to get going.
Setting boundaries and getting going is supposed to feel hard. The good that comes from reigning in a bad habit, or at the very least pressing pause on the hole you have been digging gathers its own momentum. Kids will push back when you set some limits. So will your own behavioral status quo (who hasn’t tried to implement something without having that inner voice say “let’s just start tomorrow!”?) But if you can withstand this initial adaptation, you will be more aligned with the path towards the kids you want to raise, the person you want to be, or the relationship with work or a person you want to have.
Schedule Rest. The old “oxygen mask” analogy strikes again: taking care of yourself allows you to take care of other work and other people. A good definition of self-care is “doing whatever happily makes you feel like yourself.” Our clients are noticing how much it helps to work on themselves first instead of worrying about changing others. Parents would do well to stick to their own promises and agendas instead of over-managing their kids schedules. Start with an hour, or a day where you engage in an activity that represents who you are. Start small.
Take Risks Worth Taking: The continuing path of the pandemic points to everyone figuring out a new normal. More people are acknowledging the limits of their control, even as they make efforts to take rapid tests, buy KN95s etc.
People are getting pregnant again, interviewing for new jobs, and making plans. Know yourself, take care of those around you, and stop trying just to survive — start living again. As Didion says, taking responsibility for your life means making choices that you can not only just live with, but also live by. Our clients have been happy to take a leap and adopt animals, buy guitars and road bikes, start a family, and go abroad. We’d be glad to support you in your goals for 2022.
Wishing you all a good year ahead!
By: Lindsey Antin
