We choose to quit jobs, get married, move to a new home, adopt a pet, but, of course, there are many life events we don’t choose—being laid off at a job, flooding, disease, an accidental pregnancy, or the death of a loved one. Yet we can still choose how we deal with and react to these occurrences in our lives.

During very tough times, our emotions run the gamut: denial, anger, rage, despair, numbness, isolation, desperation. In order to heal, we must feel. But we have a say in what we do with our feelings. There are no right or wrong reactions, only what serves us and what doesn’t.

It may feel helpful for you to be angry and express your rage; it may feel helpful to be alone for some time. What is crucial when moving through a crisis is maintaining your self-awareness.

Check in with yourself daily, possibly through meditation or journaling, and ask yourself:

“Where am I today? Is this helping me?” This act alone can bring about anxiety as it causes use to sit with emotions that we do our best to avoid, because they cause discomfort, but again, growth comes from moving through discomfort.

I think one of the best examples of how discomfort allows for growth and strength comes from an experiment run in the early 1990’s that was called Biosphere 2 (not to be confused with the Pauly Shore movie “Bio-Dome”!!) in which there was an attempt to determine if a closed ecological system could support and maintain human life in outer space. Researchers couldn’t determine why the trees that were growing in the system were limp and laying over on their sides… eventually, they figured out that, because there was no wind in the sphere, the trees remained limber and limp, because they did not have to resist pressure and adversity, which leads to them growing strong in our environment. Adversity leads to strength.

Whether we like the situation or not doesn’t really matter—life-altering events will change us, in one way or another. Instead of tuning out to avoid the pain, dealing with and even embracing misfortune and its consequences gives us an active role in guiding our own change and growth.

Transitions from misfortune to growth can be alternately exhilarating and difficult, but it will bring beautiful changes into our lives.

What change are you dealing with now, and how are you responding to it?

Post a comment (click on the blog title to enter a comment): How have you grown from a difficult experience? What was your biggest lesson?

Your challenge: Consider a difficult period in your life. List the ways you grew as a person or how people came together to help you. Can you feel some gratitude for that difficult experience for making you a stronger person today?

Navigating through change can be daunting and sometimes seem impossible. If you’re struggling to move through the anxiety of change, consider talking to someone.

For anxiety counseling, please contact me at (717) 288-5064 / gregghammond@restoringbalancelancaster.com and take the opportunity to make change a lot more comfortable!!