I’ve been hoping for a good year, but I am coming to realise there’s actually no such thing. Every year has good or bad parts to it, and it’s up to us to find the good in it. To grab the small moments of joy and be thankful for the people around us.
This last month has felt apocalyptic. My city, Auckland, had unprecedented flooding after a massive rainfall over one evening. Then, two weeks later the city and the North Island were hit by a massive tropical cyclone. I’m very lucky, my house didn’t flood and we didn’t have any damage, but the stress of it, the anxiety of ‘what will happen?’ is hard to describe adequately, because we didn’t know that the house would be all right until it had all blown over. Every downfall I was wondering ‘is this the one where we flood?’, every gust of wind my mind asked ‘will the windows withstand that one?’
Natural disasters aside, we also had a medical issue in the house and I spent 14 hours in two ERs on Monday, with my spouse in horrible pain. The medical system is so slammed, with constant covid cases, people hurt from the recent storms and everything else going on. We understood why we had to wait so long, but it still sucked. It was a whole day spent on hard plastic chairs, watching people come in with all sorts of awful maladies, and I was so tense I didn’t feel hungry all day.
So. This is my post to acknowledge that circumstances can absolutely suck, and a couple of ways I’ve found to cope when you’re in survival mode.
Survival mode kicks in when you’re in it.
Maybe there’s a storm outside the window or someone you care for needs to be driven to the hospital. You are in an objectively stressful situation and there’s nothing you can do but get through it. We’re very good at surviving, as a species. We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t, obviously. But survival mode is stressful on the body and can take a phsyical toll.
Tension can wreck havoc on our digestive systems. I mentioned that I didn’t feel hungry, but as the hours ticked by I knew I couldn’t just not eat. I had to eat. So I got the easiest food possible - cheese and crackers out of a vending machine. Relatively bland, but filling. The same machine also had packets of tuna and crackers, so I grabbed those too. Eating fish seemed like a terrible idea, but once I started in on it, my body responded with enthusiasm. Protein was needed! So, make sure you’re eating regularly, even if it’s just little bits at a time. Your body needs food to operate, and to keep your head clear after all.
Hydrating! This one feels like a no-brainer, but when things are hard it’s hard to prioritize. At Auckland Hospital A&E you had to be let through to the emergency room to refill a water bottle, which felt like an added barrier that made it easy to just not do. However, it was worth doing every time, because fresh water keeps your body running, and keeps your head clear, just like food. When medical decisions are happening, and the professionals need information from us, it’s super important to be as onto it as possible.
The other one is distraction. When the stressful situation is ongoing distraction can be very important. On Monday we knew we’d have hours to wait before we saw a doctor, so we both took books and power banks for our phones. Reading is a fantastic distraction for me because you can just kind of let the world around you drop away and immerse yourself in another reality. Plus it’s easy to respond if someone calls for you, you don’t have to remove your headphones. Gaming on my phone was a nice respite as well. While the storm was howling outside our walls, reading reduced my stress and looking at social media streams massively increased my stress.
Amplifying stress in a stressful situation is an anxious brain’s go-to move, but it’s the worst way to approach things. If you’re a tense stressed-out mess, you’re not going to be able to handle decisions or look after yourself and your loved ones.
On Monday I couldn’t even manage my medium-case scenario exercise, because I was too deep in it, but eating, drinking, and distracting myself made the day easier to get through.
It’s really hard to find moments of joy when you’re in it. But maybe just going on a little walk outside of the A&E, or watching funny YouTube videos in the middle of a storm is good enough. Anything that reminds you that there’s a big world out there, and although you might be having a terrible day, this too shall pass.
Note: Some sections of New Zealand were severely impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle, if you can spare any cash please consider donating to the relief effort. Here are links for the Red Cross and KidsCan