Things are a lot right now

Scott Seres of Rise Therapy

You may have noticed something lately when interacting with the people in our community. If you take a moment to look beyond the nods, smiles, and other pleasantries of Minnesota nice, you can see the strain people are under right now, and understandably so. The unprecedented actions of ICE and CBP in our state, the ever-rising cost of housing, groceries, gasoline, and healthcare, the divisive and uncertain state of national politics, the overall geopolitical landscape, and a whole host of other concerns have left many people feeling like the ground beneath them isn’t as solid as they thought it was.

This ever-growing pile of stressors doesn’t just impact us as individuals. It shows up in our relationships, too. When we're feeling financially squeezed, politically exhausted, and profoundly anxious about the future, we have less to give the people closest to us as we become emotionally exhausted and stretched beyond our limits. A disagreement that would have been easily repaired in better circumstances becomes a rupture. Silence gets misread as indifference, distraction as disrespect. With everything going on, maintaining connection with the people we love can begin to feel like one more thing we no longer have the energy to do.

Two concepts from clinical therapy can help us find our footing as we navigate this new normal, and neither requires that the hard times end first. The first, drawn from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, is learning to stop fighting against what we're experiencing. For example, if you’re like me, you may have found yourself lying awake at three in the morning, running through a rapid and seemingly endless succession of thoughts about everything that could go wrong in the future and what to do about it. Maybe you’ve also discovered that the harder we try to push these thoughts away, the more insistent they become.

To explain this, I sometimes use the metaphor of playing tug of war with a monster that grows stronger with every pull. Our instinct is to keep pulling, to think our way out, to somehow solve the unsolvable. But we have another option: we can simply drop the rope. The monster is still there, of course, just as our anxieties haven’t gone away. But when we let go, we regain the ability to choose where our energy goes. We can get hooked by our thoughts and feelings, or we can let them be and direct our energy toward focusing on and moving toward what matters most to us. This might include connecting more with loved ones, helping others, or simply getting some more rest so we can be at our best for the coming day.

Compassion-Focused Therapy, or CFT, offers another powerful tool. Much of our suffering in hard times is amplified by harsh self-criticism, which often manifests as that inner voice insisting we should be holding it together better, worrying less, managing life’s ups and downs more gracefully, and so on. CFT asks us to meet that voice with the same warmth we'd offer a good friend who’s struggling in the same way we are. Not to dismiss or discredit the reality that things are difficult, but to stop making it worse by tearing ourselves down. When we extend this same intention outward, that compassionate attention can also inform how we understand and respond to others.

Which brings us back to where we started. We're all part of this community, and the self-awareness and compassion we can offer ourselves apply equally to those around us. We can slow down and tune in to what family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors might need right now, even if what they need most is simply to feel seen, heard, and understood. We can resist the urge to try to fix or solve what, for them, too, might be unsolvable, and offer compassion instead. And we can take some comfort in the reminder that we are not alone in this genuinely difficult time, and that we can all get through this together.