When Too Much Bad Stuff Happens All At Once

Author's Note:   Not long ago I ran into someone online who was looking for suggestions or advice about dealing with a stretch of time in her life when one bad thing after another seemed to keep happening.  This individual was far from alone in being someone who was going through one of these stretches in life.   One of the most common discussions that arises (online or in offline life) is often related to the challenges of dealing with having more bad things happen in someone's life than he feels capable of coping with.  This subject seemed worth writing about.

When you've had a lot of bad stuff keep happening you get so stressed out and anxious your brain chemicals (and whole endocrine system) change, and that makes everything seem even harder to deal with. It turns into a cycle that makes everything seem "all blended" into almost "one, big, bad, situation" - rather than seeming like the separate incidents/situations it all really is. It can all feel overwhelming, and if the things are serious enough (like losing someone who raised you) it's not just overwhelming - it's grief. It doesn't help that when you're under stress your cortisol level and blood pressure tends to rise, and those physiological things can actually making thinking clearly a challenge. Not being able to think clearly, in turn, makes you start to feel even more frazzled and out-of-control of your own life (and self).

One suggestion would be that you take advantage of this alone time to take a kind of "mental vacation" each day, or even for a day or two: Decide not to think about the bad stuff you can't do anything about anyway, and set aside a little time not to think about the stuff you need a short break from. Do things like find some meaningless activity that doesn't require "brain energy", make sure you get some fresh air, make sure you find a couple of good sitcoms on tv, listen to the kind of music that makes you feel relaxed and/or happy, buy a couple cheerful little things for your home (fresh flowers, a couple of colorful pot-holders, simple stuff) - anything that makes you feel a little cheered up. Give yourself permission not to stew over the bad stuff for "x amount of time" each day; but make it a point to find those small joys. The reason they're important is that it is those small joys that can help break up that "anxiety-hormone cycle" that gets going and gets worse and worse as long as it isn't broken up.

Every minute you spend feeling at least a little happy or rested is a minute when you have "good brain chemicals" starting to have an edge. The more of those minutes you make you for yourself, the fewer of those anxious minutes you'll have. Doing these small things won't make your troubles go away, but the small joys you get from them will help start to replenish your "mental energy", keep that "anxiety-chemical cycle" from picking up steam, and make you feel just that much more ready to deal with the problems in a less out-of-control-feeling way.

It can seem as if advice like "find some small joys in your day" is the kind of thing a mother or grandmother would tell you, but what many people don't realize is the role that those small joys can play in breaking up that "anxiety-chemical-cycle" (even if it's just a little at a time). Without having something to break up that cycle, it tends to just picking up steam and creating yet further anxiety and a sense of being out-of-control. When that cycle picks up steam there can be a snowballing effect, because stressful thoughts get the stress "chemicals" going; but then the "stress chemicals", themselves, can actually affect the way you think (or view things).

What many people don't realize, too, is that when too many bad things have happened at all once it's no longer a matter of "having the right attitude"; because those "stress chemicals" can affect a person in a way that would be similar to taking some drug that reduced the person's ability to think clearly and calmly.

We can't always control what bad things go on (obviously), and if enough of those bad things happen to close together we can't always even control our own response to them. What we can do is take those seemingly insignificant steps toward finding some simple, small, joys in our days; because even if we can manage to break up that "anxiety cycle" for a minute or two, that's better than not breaking it up at all. If nothing else, we can sometimes prevent it from getting worse. If we find enough of those small joys and "breaks" they can add up, even if that means only keeping that cycle within some more manageable bounds.

The first step in feeling a little more able and ready to deal with the big challenges in life is in getting ourselves to where we feel at least somewhat in control, and that begins with finding some way to regain some sense of control over our own anxiety levels. Often (usually, perhaps), we can't completely eliminate the anxiety, but keeping it at some manageable level makes dealing with things a lot easier than letting that "anxiety cycle" take everything, including our own thoughts and ability to think clearly, out of our hands