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Episode 187: Dealing With Adversity (What To Do When Hard Times Hit)
Listen to discover a proven 5-step process for dealing with adversity.
Life hardships happen. You cannot escape them. But that doesn’t mean you’re destined to stay stuck within them (and you have a choice as to whether or not you do).
Recommended Supplemental Episodes
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(even in the most trying of times).
Episode Transcript
[00:01:05] Hey there, everybody. This is Heather Moulder, your host of the Life & Law Podcast. Today we’re talking about dealing with adversity and hardship. Life has a way of getting chaotic at times. It has a way of hitting us where it really hurts. It is a natural part of living.
Over the last couple of months, we’ve had some of those things happen. My mom lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina. She was in the middle of the thick of all of the mess that happened in western North Carolina. And I have got to tell you, it’s still having major repercussions. Many people lost their homes. Thankfully, she did not. But many people have nothing.
[00:01:59] Some of the businesses are gone and whole areas of towns are just obliterated. We’ve all seen what’s happened in California and the LA area thanks to those horrible fires. The life that was lost, whole neighborhoods gone.
[00:02:18] What do you do when this kind of thing happens? Hopefully, most of you listening won’t ever have to deal with something quite that bad. But life has a way of hitting you where it hurts most. It could happen. Even if that doesn’t happen, we all lose people along the way. We lose relationships that we don’t expect to lose. We are diagnosed with illnesses that change everything. That was certainly the case for me back when I was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer.
A Note About Going Back to Normal
Something to note that I learned through that experience is it is pretty normal to sit there and think through. I wish I could just go back. I wish I could go back to how it was. I can’t wait until I get through this. I can’t wait until I get over this so that things can go back to normal.
[00:03:18] During my breast cancer battle, I clung to the belief that things would go back to how they once were and that what needed to happen was for my treatment to end.
[00:03:30] Then magically, everything would go back to the way it would. This was a necessary belief for me to get through it all at that time period. But unfortunately, what I learned after the fact is normal never came. At least not the normal that I had hoped for, not the past normal, because things had changed. I had changed.
What would have been nice was if I had learned that lesson during that process, because I have since learned that there are things you can do as you are going through these difficult times. These adverse experiences, circumstances, and situations when everything hits the fan. There are things that you can do to help you better process what’s going on, to help you better deal with what’s going on so that you can start to create your new normal.
Because that’s what I learned – you can’t go back to the way things were. You can’t go back to who you were. These experiences change you. And what you have to do is accept that and learn how to process all the things that you’re going through. The feelings, the thoughts, the difficulties. You’re dealing with adversity. You have got to learn how to deal with the adversity that’s there. Then you have got to learn how to process through all of the emotional stuff that comes with it so that you can get to a place where you’re able to create a new normal.
That’s what we’re getting into today because of what’s been going on in LA, because of what’s been going on in western North Carolina, because of the memories that it brought back for me through that experience that I had going through aggressive breast cancer treatment and not knowing what was going to happen to my life. Because I started to experience those things again, those same feelings when Covid hit and everything got shut down, and things massively changed for us for a while. And I learned how to apply these principles in that time to help me get through that in a more healthy manner.
Now, let me just note before I go through my five steps that this is about how to deal with uncertainty, how to deal with adversity. This does not mean ignoring this, does not mean pushing it away. This does not mean magically making it better.
[00:06:07] It’s about dealing. And that is different than those things. And I think it’ll be more apparent as we go through each step. So…
Step #1 for dealing with adversity: Recognize.
[00:06:22] You need to be fully aware not just of what’s going on. You know what’s going on.
[00:06:30] What I’m talking about is how you feel – the thoughts relating to those feelings. Shame, frustration, anger, abandonment. There’s all these feelings that are going on. So you want to take some time to sit there and say, how am I feeling? And I actually think it’s important to do this almost on a daily basis when we’re in this place, when life has just been thrown at us and everything feels like it’s in upheaval.
Because what we do is get into action. Especially as lawyers and high achievers, we get into action and try to fix things. No, that’s the worst thing you can do without having first recognized. How am I actually feeling? What am I actually thinking? What thoughts and beliefs are behind all of this?
What’s going on inside of my head? Let’s become more self aware.
[00:07:29] How is it that you feel, recognize it, give words to those feelings. This is an important step to being able to move past it at some point. And let me just say, it doesn’t mean you’re going to let go of these feelings anytime soon. This is not about processing through it in the next hour or two and moving on. Because it doesn’t work that way.
So that’s step one. Recognize. Become more self aware. Put words down, put sentences down. I love journaling. I would highly recommend doing this on a regular basis when you are going through times of serious adversity.
Step #2: Grieve.
[00:08:14] It is okay to grieve. It is okay to not need to move quickly through this. Your life has been thrown upside down. Things have massively changed. You can’t just move past that overnight.
And it’s important for you to allow yourself, give yourself permission to sit with those feelings, to sit with those thoughts, to allow them to be. That is part of grieving. Not pushing them away, not thinking, I felt like this for the last week, it’s time for me to get past it. If you feel it, you feel it. I say this to my kids all the time. You have a right to your feelings. You have a right to what you’re feeling and thinking.
Now, that doesn’t mean you have a right to take it out on everybody else around you.
[00:09:06] But you’re more likely to take it out on them if you’re not honest with yourself, if you don’t fully recognize how you’re feeling, what’s going on inside of your head. And then you do not allow yourself time to sit with that, to be and to grieve. And the grieving process is all that you’ve lost because things have changed, and change means loss.
We’re talking about dealing with adversity here. We’re talking about dealing with hardship. We’re talking about the floods that have taken out your entire existence, the house that you’ve lived in forever, the house that your grandparents built. We’re talking about where the fire that took hold of everything, and every little thing that you had is gone. And it’s not the big things. It’s those little things, the pictures of your family, the things you can never get back, the heirlooms handed down.
You must grieve, allow yourself time and space for this. You do not have to change how you feel in this moment. You do not have to change how you feel immediately. You do not have to change how you feel within the next week, few weeks, month or two.
[00:10:24] And I will just tell you, when you allow yourself this space, you’ll actually start to feel a little better and learn how to live with it a lot better, much more quickly.
So that was step number two.
Step #3: Be in community with others.
There’s two parts to this part – community.
Receive from others
First off, when you’re dealing with adversity, you need to receive. People are going to be out there trying to help you – accept it. This is hard because it showcases your vulnerability. But let me just say you’re already showcasing your vulnerability by recognizing and giving yourself permission to grieve.
Go that extra step to allow yourself to be in full community with others by accepting help from other people. There is something magical that happens with that. And I’ve talked about this before in respect of my cancer journey. When you allow yourself to open up to others, you allow them to share their strengths, their gifts, their abilities with you.
And that really is magical. It creates a deeper connection between people, even people that you never see again. It provides meaning on both sides. It showcases that you have a strength you didn’t even know you had. Because when you’re willing to go there and be vulnerable like that, that’s actually a strength – that’s courageous.
Be with others, accept help from others.
And then figure out how you can give to others.
If and when applicable. Especially when you’re dealing with an adversity that is communal, like the LA fires, like the western North Carolina flooding, if it’s a communal thing, there’s an opportunity for you to share with others, to help others too, in very small ways, probably, but that’s enough. And that can be huge. There’s a ripple effect to that kind of thing for others. So nothing is too small.
[00:12:38] You don’t have a lot to give, but you have something to give. You have a little time, you have a little energy. You have words of courage, you have words of wisdom to share with others, to help others.
This will help lift you up as well. Be in community, accept help, give help.
Step four, this is related, but it is a little bit different…
Step #4: Ask for help and guidance.
[00:13:06] This allows you to fully be vulnerable and human, and it’s what allows you to accept what is truth. When you don’t just accept help, but you actually proactively ask for help and guidance from others, for support in any way that you need it.
It opens you up to full acceptance of what’s really happened, which is a necessary piece to moving forward. It opens you up to start taking control, which will be the next step. That’s when you finally get to be more proactive. It opens you up to lessons so that you can start taking proactive steps to changing things for the better and creating that new normal that I talked about.
Step #5 is where you start to take action.
So it’s about focusing on the things that you can control.
[00:14:03] This is what allows you to be more proactive. This is what allows you to move forward. This is also what gives you small glimmers of hope in the midst of difficulty when dealing with adverse situations. It’s what enables you to feel like you have some control over something and showcase, I can do this. I can take this small step, I can do another one tomorrow, and I can keep doing this and make things better and get to the other side, whatever that may be, and start creating my new normal, whatever that may be.
So there’s a couple of things that you can do here. What I’m about to give you are some strategies and tools that will help you with this proactive move forward piece and also with some of the other steps that we’ve just talked about as well, on the awareness and recognition on the grieving process, on the willingness to start accepting and then asking for help.
Number one, try using gratitude as much as humanly possible.
Focus on the simple, small, little tiniest things.
When I had cancer, I would be grateful for the dinner that somebody dropped off to us, even if I could not eat it, even if I was too sick for it, because it was very helpful for my family and I knew they appreciated the help. There were moments when I had trouble getting out of bed. So on those days when I had enough energy to take a shower, and that’s all the energy I had for that day, I was incredibly grateful for that because it felt good. And then I would be grateful for the feeling of the warm water and how much that energized me and how good it felt. There are little things that we take for granted in our day-to-day lives. This is the time when you are dealing with adversity and hardship.
This is the time to hone in on those things. You would be shocked at how much it can help. It gives you hope.
[00:16:09] The next thing that I recommend is reframing.
Now, we’ve talked about reframing before. Reframing is where you look at a difficult situation and you say, what am I learning?
[00:16:21] What good could come out of this? You look at the positive of it. The other side of the coin. Couple of notes about this though. When dealing with adversity, when things are really hard, you do not want to force a reframe. You only reframe those things that feel real that are authentic to you in that moment. I did learn this. This is something I want to take note of for future reference. It doesn’t mean you act on it though. It doesn’t mean you force yourself into it. You just take note.
Oftentimes there are things that you will notice that you want to take note of, but you may not act on it yet. And that is okay. That is enough of a reframe when in that place. But what I would say is continue the reframing, continue to go back, continue the gratitude and find ways over time to take those reframes and be able to make them part of the gratitude. They’ve got to be real, they’ve got to be heartfelt. Never force this.
[00:17:25] Over time, it will open you up to creating that new normal and letting go of that grieving process little by little. Final tip for how to do this is you want to find a way to feel more grounded or anchored. So pre whatever happened, you had a routine, you probably had mini routines, you had habits, and that’s just been thrown out of the window based on all that’s happened.
So part of what’s so jarring is that everything feels so uncertain, that everything feels so different and there is no normalcy. So you want to try to bring some of that back. You want to look at your rituals and routines and habits before whatever happened, happened, and think through, how could I introduce that into my life now? And you want to be a little flexible here. It doesn’t have to be the same exact thing, but how could you implement some of that back into your day to day existence? That will help ground you, it will help anchor you into feeling a little more certain, into feeling a little more normal.
It will help you to move forward over time and create the new normal that you’re wanting.
[00:18:50] You also want to think about other ways of creating that consistency. Because things may have changed quite a bit. You may need to introduce new habits, routines or rituals. So think through bedtime awakening. What kind of routines and rituals would I like to have now? What did I have before? How can I piggyback on those things? What do I want to introduce? Maybe you have a specific routine or ritual around lunchtime or around the timing of things.
You need to figure that out. And just note that when things are really different and there’s often changes. So when I was undergoing chemotherapy and then I would go from one schedule to another and things would get into a rhythm, but then they would change, new appointments would come in and everything would get out of whack. So I would sometimes have to revisit them and make sure, today I can’t do everything, but I can do these two things. And then after being on a certain treatment for a while and getting into a very particular rhythm, everything changed and I had to change it up again. That’s okay too.
So just note, you have got to be flexible, but you want to create some type of consistency, some type of ritual, routine and habit that helps anchor you and help you not to feel so unmoored. All right, quick recap. When dealing with adversity, the most healthy way that I have found is a five step process.
- Recognize how you feel, what’s behind those feelings. Don’t hide from that.
- Accept and sit with those feelings, and allow yourself to grieve.
- Be in community with others. Accept help, give to others as you can as well.
- Ask for help and guidance.
- Focus on the things you can control. Anchor yourself through rituals, routines, and habits. Practice some gratitude by focusing on the small and simple things and reframe as you can.
[00:21:04] That is it for this week. Bye for now.
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