When Life Gets Messy – Panthea Counseling NYC

March 23, 2020

Backhanded Reassurance for COVID-19: This is Not a Staycation

If you’re enjoying virtual tours of national parks on your TV, browsing world renowned museums from your couch, taking a free Ivy League college course on your laptop, or dancing along with a DJ dist-Dance party, that’s awesome! You do you! And, this post doesn’t apply to you.

This post is for those of you who are having a very different experience. You may be feeling scared, worried, and drained, while also feeling pressure from productivity pushers—or maybe from your own internal productivity pusher.

This may sound weird but I’m not big on reassurance. Of course we all need reassurance sometimes, even when we’re not facing a pandemic! Reassurance often comes from a place of care, so what’s the big deal?

Well, reassurance can have unintended consequences. Sometimes reassurance can send an unintentional message: “Your feelings are too big/scary/heavy for me to handle right now.” You might be nodding your head in agreement if you’ve ever experienced a loss and had someone say to you, “At least they didn’t suffer.” or “They’re in a better place now.” Ouch!

In the age of the coronavirus crisis, attempts at reassurance might take the form of “Here’s a silver lining…”, “Enjoy this free time while you can!”, or “Everything’s going to be okay.” Statements like these can be so helpful when you genuinely feel them to be true for you, but they can also feel minimizing and dismissive coming from other people, and they may leave you feeling painfully alone with big feelings.

If you’re still with me, here’s what I want to say to you. It’s a form of what I like to call backhanded reassurance (really, validation):

This is not a staycation. This feels hard because it is hard.

If you’re a college or university student, you’re facing a radical departure from your usual structure of classes and internships. You may have abruptly been told to move out of your dorm. For some of you that doesn’t come with a protective sense of “going home” but of being uprooted and forced to go back into a difficult situation that school gave you a break from.

If you’re employed and have transitioned to working from home, the fabric of your daily life has been upended and the routines you rely on are hard to come by. If you’re newly unemployed or underemployed, you may be facing a whole host of fears about your financial security.

If you’re working on the front lines (doctors, nurses, and other health care workers, delivery people, transportation workers, grocery store employees, and others who serve an essential role and don’t have the option of working from home) this is anything but business as usual, and you’re tasked with taking care of others while trying to meet your own needs as well.

(If you’re a parent you’re probably not reading this because you’re busy wrangling your kids, scrambling to find childcare, trying to play teacher, and maybe even attempting some iteration of working from home.)

No wonder why you don’t feel like virtually visiting a national park or picking up a new hobby!

You didn’t choose this. This is not in your control and it’s understandable if you’re feeling powerless, sad, afraid, numb, emotionally exhausted, anxious, angry, or if you’re finding it more difficult to concentrate. It’s okay to let yourself feel those things, and it’s okay to let go of any expectations of being productive that don’t make sense for you right now.

So, what can you do to have a sense of impact when that’s becoming increasingly difficult? I’m not an advice-y therapist, but I have some ideas. Please know that these aren’t suggestions. Instead, think of them as invitations and take whatever feels accessible to you and leave behind whatever doesn’t. There’s no rulebook for how to feel.

Invitations (Not Suggestions)

•Can you check in with your news consumption? Do you feel better or worse after reading or watching it? Is it helping you or hurting you? How much is helpful and how do you know when it’s crossing the line? If you want to stay informed, be sure to use reliable, factual sources like NYC.gov, CDC.gov, and WHO.int.

•Similarly, can you do a self check-in with social media? Is it helping you feel more connected to others or is it increasing your anxiety?

•Can you check in with your mind and body? See if you can observe any thoughts, feelings, or physical sensations you find without trying to make them go away. We often hold tension in our chest, jaw, or back, or we may shift into shallow breathing without even realizing it. What do you notice? Can you be curious about your experience? If that’s not accessible to you right now, that’s okay too.

•Can you come up with any way that you can find even a small sense of agency right now? For one person this might look like writing to your elected officials about whatever issues feel most pressing to you. (An easy way to do this is by texting Resist to 50409.) For another person this might mean reminding yourself that you’re actively helping to #flattenthecurve by staying home. This might even look like [gasp!] being “productive” by organizing a drawer.

•Can you give yourself permission to focus on what feels most soothing and familiar to you? You may already know what your old comforting standbys are so you don’t need to reinvent the wheel here.

•It’s being called social distancing (ugh!) but can you reframe it as physical distancing? We’re wired for connection, so how can you stay connected socially while practicing physical distancing?

Finally, talk to your therapist (remotely) about anything and everything that’s coming up for you right now. If you’re wanting the protective, reflective space of therapy but you don’t have a therapist yet, feel free to schedule a phone consult with me. If for some reason I’m not the right fit for you, I’ll be happy to help you find a therapist who is.

Take care,

P.S. This was inspired in part by Ithaca psychoanalyst Vanessa Bright’s blog post, “You Are Doing Enough.”

Photo credit: Dr. Sue Sherman and @heavenlyrestnyc

June 12, 2017

Panic Attacks: All the Feels or Not Enough?

If you’ve ever had a panic attack, you know how intense it is.

Your ribcage is suddenly two sizes too small for your lungs. You can’t take a full breath.

Your heart is threatening to leap out of your mouth or tear through your chest. You can feel your pulse where you didn’t even know you had blood vessels.

It’s like you’re looking through unfocused binoculars. Everything around you is a moving blur.

You’re instantly drenched with sweat. The air is sweltering and giving you chills all at the same time.

Your mind is racing. What’s happening to me? I just need fresh air. I need to get out of here. Something is going terribly wrong.

You might even worry that you’re having a heart attack or dying.

Panic attacks are brutal!

I’ve heard a panic attack described as “all the feels.” And that makes sense, right? It’s a dumpster fire of sensations—physical and emotional—all at once and seemingly out of nowhere.

Paradoxically, in therapy I think of panic attacks as not enough feels, or more accurately, not being aware of enough of your feelings.

Panic attacks pop up when our inner conflicts lurk outside of our awareness and we’re not tuned in to the anxiety that’s stirring up. All of this can only bubble under the surface for so long before it finds a way to burst through—in the form of a panic attack (or other physical issues, but more about that in a future blog entry).

Think of a whistling tea kettle. As the heat inside increases, the water creeps from still, to a simmer, to a boil. The pressure builds until it can’t stay contained. It escapes screaming through the spout. It doesn’t get your attention until it reaches a fever pitch.

Emotions are like this too when they’re kept tightly under wraps. Taking the lid off relieves the pressure and lets us see what needs attention inside.

The more tuned in you are to yourself, the less your emotions need to scream in order for you to hear them.

If you’d like help taking the lid off, drop me a line.

Take care,

May 12, 2017

You need immediate help, but don’t stop with a quick fix

Imagine one day you walk into your bathroom to discover that it’s flooded and part of your ceiling is now hanging out on your floor. You call the super who comes over quickly and patches it up. You’re relieved! That was an easy fix! Everything looks good as new.

Until…your upstairs neighbor has the audacity to take another shower. Suddenly you have another unwanted water feature in your bathroom. You can call the super to patch up the plaster again, or you can ask for a plumber this time to figure out why the pipes have turned into a sprinkler.

Sometimes plaster cracks over time for no reason. It just gets old and it needs to be redone. Other times there’s a problem underneath it that needs to be looked at. If the issue keeps coming back, you still have to mop up, but you also need to look behind the surface to figure out why it keeps raining inside. (I’ve reached the limit of my knowledge about plaster.)

When life becomes a soggy mess, of course your first thought isn’t to wade knee deep into it, plop down in the middle of it, and contemplate what’s causing it. You want to dry it up quickly! There’s just one problem. Mopping the bottom of a waterfall doesn’t work so well.

You need immediate help, but don’t stop with a quick fix.

Any skilled, emotionally attuned therapist will help you get relief from the pressing issue that brought you to therapy in the first place. Sometimes that’s exactly what you need. But if you find yourself getting stuck in the same upsetting loop over and over again, it may be time to take a closer look.

I often see proactive, ambitious clients who’ve done good work in past short term solution-focused therapy, like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). They’ve learned all the skills and they know how to practice them, but pesky problems keep finding new ways to crop up in their life, often in frustratingly familiar patterns. Life is out-skilling them and as hard as they’re trying, they can’t think their way out of it.

In-depth, longer term therapy, like psychodynamic or psychoanalytic psychotherapy, looks behind the surface to help you unravel the tangled up roots that are causing you pain so that you get deeper, long-lasting relief.

If this feels like the right time for you to look deeper, I invite you to contact me.

Take care,

April 28, 2017

We don’t like to see the icky parts of other people because they remind us of the icky parts of ourselves.

Last week I read a Facebook post by an old high school classmate. She wrote about having one of the hardest days she could recall. I felt for her. I knew she wasn’t alone. “I know what that’s like,” I thought to myself. “I’ve had those days too. I’ll have them again. I’m here if you need me.”

But I scrolled right on through my newsfeed without commenting. I couldn’t even summon up a sad emoji for her.

A few seconds later I stopped scrolling and started thinking.

Earlier that day I was on a radio show where I talked about how millennials on social media often portray a pretty image consisting only of the parts of themselves that they aren’t ashamed of. Think of those pictures with your pedicured toes and the crystal clear Caribbean sea as a backdrop, you and a friend smiling beautifully on the fifth take, selfies with the my-life-is-perfect filter.

I know that underneath these updates is often a deep indescribable loneliness, a fear of being incapable of being truly known and loved anyway. The antidote to this shame, I suggested on the show, is knowing that you aren’t alone in feeling these messy feelings.

So why did I empathize in my mind instead of in a way that could actually reach her?

We don’t like to see the icky parts of other people because they remind us of the icky parts of ourselves.

Acknowledging the scary, confused, disoriented feelings other people have means acknowledging our own deep vulnerabilities. That takes courage. It takes a certain strength to admit the shortcomings we all share.

The good news is that building compassion for other people’s messiness helps us extend compassion to our own imperfect selves.

Take care,

March 30, 2017

Life Is Messy and Some Messes Are Too Heavy to Carry Alone

Imagine you have a huge pile of mess in your room.

It’s been in a jumbled heap for so long that you don’t even know what’s in it. Judging by the outer layer, you’re sure it’s all just useless junk that doesn’t belong there.

You’ve casually mentioned this problem to a couple friends. But you left out the part about how your chest tightens up when you turn the knob to your room at the end of the day. You didn’t tell them that your eyes seem to have a watering problem. You didn’t say that sometimes you wake up in a cold panic and have to catch your breath. Because none of that random stuff has anything to do with the mess, right?

This mess is sneaky. You shoved it down the garbage chute but somehow it crept back into your room. It’s even started hitching a ride with you on the subway, at work, on dates. You’ve tried so hard but you can’t get rid of it. You figure if you have to lug it around, you might as well make it easier for other people (and yourself) to look at. So you stuff it in a box and seal it up.

This works okay for a while. Then…you notice you’re moving more slowly. Everything takes more effort. You’re exhausted. The boxed up mess has gotten heavier.

Think of your anxiety, your depression, your fear that you’re one slip away from shattering into pieces. You’re working hard to manage all of this on your own, but you feel like a hopeless mess.

Life is messy. Sometimes messes are too heavy to carry by yourself. Some thoughts and feelings are too scary to think and feel alone.

Therapy is a safe place to start unpacking this. You set the pace. You decide when you’re ready to pull the tape off. You choose when to pull something out. Each time you do, we’ll take a closer look. We’ll get curious. We’ll wonder together how each piece got here, who put it there, what allowed it to grow, and what kept it hidden. We’ll learn that all of these parts were necessary at one time, that they affect you even when you can’t see them, and that some of them are still useful today.

The more you understand the story of who you are and how you came to be, the lighter your load will feel, and the more flexibility you’ll have in your life going forward.

If any of this sounds familiar, I invite you to reach out.

Take care,

March 16, 2017

Are You Suffering but Calling it Adulting?

You made it! You’ve arrived! You’re a grown-up!

You graduated from college and started your career. Now you have little rectangular cards that say your name, maybe with a few new letters written after it, and the title of that adult thing you do. You can stay up as late as you want watching Netflix, order cookie delivery to your apartment, and drink right out of the carton!

Then…you wake up. You go to your job where you have a boss who tells you what to do. You do that because you have bills to pay: rent, food (those cookies), those student loans that helped you land this job where your boss tells you what to do. Your work doesn’t make you feel like the competent adult you imagined when you earned that degree. Sometimes you feel like a fraud, like you’re just a kid playing dress up…except it’s not fun. You thought you wanted this career but now you’re not so sure. You want something different, but what?

Then there’s your personal life. You have a solid group of friends that you see in the margins surrounding your work day, but you can’t shake the feeling that something’s missing. You live in New York City with 8 million other people, but you feel lonelier than ever.

If you’re single, you may be trying to figure out if you want to be. You might be straddling the hazy line between hookups and dating. Maybe you’re torn between wanting to be in a relationship and wanting to remain fiercely independent, or you want a partner but the idea of dating makes you want to run for the hills. If you’re going on dates, it can feel like a hopeless revolving door. “What if,” you worry, “I’m alone forever?” Maybe you checked off that relationship goal from your to-do list, but now you’re left with the day-to-day of what that’s supposed to look and feel like. It doesn’t fill the emptiness you’re carrying.

After graduating, your life opened up into a wide field full of potential. So why do you feel so stuck? With so many possibilities come overwhelming unknowns. This uncertainty can lead to intense anxiety and despair that something is terribly wrong. You’re desperate to escape this trapped feeling.

You want help with all of these swirling thoughts but it’s so messy and tangled up that you can’t come up with any concise questions to ask. Even if you could find the words to describe this dread, you doubt anyone would get it. Or worse, they’d confirm your fear that you’re the only one going through this, that everyone except you feels as confident inside as they look on the outside.

You might be surprised to know that other bright, successful, young professionals also feel lost and alone in their struggles. In a survey, 86% of millennials reported going through a quarter-life crisis, a period of intensely questioning one’s identity and purpose. That’s hard enough. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about one-third of people in their 20s and 30s have an anxiety disorder, and nearly one-quarter suffer from depression or bipolar disorder.

Adding to the weight of all of this is heavy self-blame:

“Everyone else seems to have it together.”

“Why do I feel this way?”

“I should be happy.”

“What’s wrong with me?”

Here’s what you need to know: Your pain is real. You’re entitled to feel it. You’re not alone.

Shame keeps this suffering in the dark, in silence, where it has free rein to keep growing. Exposing these conflicts to light by sharing them with safe, empathic people who can relate is the first step to easing the burden.

Asking for help is the scariest and most courageous step. If this sounds like something you’d like more help with, I invite you to give me a call.

Take care,