Are you struggling? Overwhelmed? You’re not alone. It’s been a weird, demanding, and terribly sad six months. Some of us feel completely helpless, others full of rage, still others too depressed to keep caring. Actually, a lot of us feel all of those emotions, serially or even all at once. It is ok to feel these things. But it doesn’t feel good.
If you are grasping for ways to feel good, here are two things that don’t work: drinking too much and yelling at your family. After you do those things, you feel worse, not better. (Do not ask me how I know this.)
Here’s something that does work, sometimes: thinking of one thing you have accomplished that day. It can be taking a shower and getting dressed, it can be one time you responded kindly to the constant constant constant demands of your kids, it can be completing one work task. Ask only that of yourself – the one thing you did today. Ordinarily it would seem a little pitiful to be proud of putting on pants, but these are not ordinary times. Any one thing you can do is an accomplishment.
If you can do this, you will probably be ok. Eventually. Please, though, if you cannot do one thing every day, seek help. You won’t be the only one.