The changes that come with major life events can be complicated to cope with. When you experience something like giving birth, losing a loved one, a natural disaster, moving to a new house, getting a new job, losing a job, getting married, finding birth family members, and more, you may find yourself experiencing a whole array of emotions, positive and negative.
When you haven’t been taught how to cope with major changes in a healthy way, you may find yourself struggling with impulsive behaviors, out-of-control emotions, or even feeling frozen in place. Change is constant in life, and having healthy mechanisms for coping with change can help you thrive, regardless of what’s happening in your life.
Ask for help
When change is hitting you hard, call in your friends and family to support you. Do you need someone to hear you out? Would help with chores or errands make the change you’re going through easier? Do you need company to distract you from what you’re going through?
When you’re having a hard time, you might worry about being a burden on your loved ones. Here’s a helpful reframe; you can give the people in your life an opportunity to show how much they care for you. You’d enjoy that kind of opportunity if a friend brought it to you, so asking for help is a way for you to offer them the same chance to be a positive part of your life.
Practice radical acceptance and gratitude
Radical acceptance is about recognizing the reality of what’s happening to you, in its entirety. When faced with a change, instead of attempting to ignore what’s happening, or to “just stay happy”, or to catastrophize and ruminate, you acknowledge both what is happening, and what you’re feeling about it. It means sitting with tough emotions as they happen and facing them fully.
You may be reading this thinking, why would I do that? It sounds painful and difficult! It can be, in the moment, but when you’ve accepted what’s happening, and have felt your feelings, those emotions can ease out of your mind and body, and you can more easily start to make decisions and move forward.
Try to stay in the moment
When stress from change is hitting you hard, one of the most effective ways of coping with change can be staying in the moment. This sounds easy enough, but we are so used to directing our attention to the past, to the future, to what other people are doing and thinking, that we often don’t have a lot of practice in staying present.
Try this exercise out: sit down, settle in, and listen to your breathing. Feel the air fill your lungs, and feel your muscles push the air out when you breathe out. You’ll probably notice your attention wandering; when you do, gently bring it back to your breathing. Sit with this experience, and see how it feels to be present, just breathing, instead of worrying about the “what ifs” of life.
Give yourself time to grieve
With change comes loss; even if the change is happy, you lose your old world and your old self. Whether you want to reverse the changes you’re experiencing or not, the loss that comes with change is often accompanied by grief. You might feel sad, numb, angry, scared, or even happy or relieved all at the same time in your grief.
These feelings can take weeks, even months, to work themselves out, especially if the change takes a long time or is particularly difficult. Give yourself time to work on acceptance and to grieve what you’ve lost.
Find replacements to help you avoid destructive behavior
When times get tough, we may lean on behaviors and substances that aren’t the best for us. If you know that stress from life changes will trigger you to want to do things like drink, use substances, or engage in risky behaviors or impulsive activities like overspending or gambling, try to create a plan for yourself. How will you avoid your triggers? What will you do to replace the behaviors you’d like to avoid?
If you slip up and indulge in things you hoped to avoid, don’t berate yourself. Practice that radical acceptance, let yourself know that there’s always another chance to try again, and move forward with renewed energy to learn healthier ways of coping with change.
Create moments of comfort
Self-soothing can be a highly useful way to cope with change, and there are many healthy ways you can create comfort for yourself. Throw on a comfort show or sit out in one of your favorite outdoor spaces, put on your comfiest clothes, eat nourishing, delicious foods or sip warm drinks, burn a candle or wear a fragrance you enjoy, listen to your favorite music or podcast; whatever comforts you, seek it out and engage your senses in familiar, enjoyable experiences. Your body and mind will find safety in familiar and soothing sensory experiences, helping you ease your way out of stress while you tackle change.
Work with a life coach to manage change
Life coaching in Texas, Minnesota, and Iowa can be a highly effective space for you to deal with life changes. Your life coach is on your side, ready to help you hash out your struggles and hard feelings, and reconnect with your sense of self-worth to increase your resilience in stressful times.
Your life coach will show up to your sessions with compassion and acceptance, ready to hear you out as you grapple with change. They will help you process your setbacks and plan and practice your next steps, standing by your side as a supportive, positive force in your life. Getting unstuck when change is hitting you hard is easier with a life coach by your side.
Consider connecting with the life coaches at Patterns Psychiatry today to see how life coaching to manage change can help you!
