The Good Stuff

What are some of the good things in your life?  Laughing with friends.  Enjoying a really good meal.  Snuggling your baby.  Marveling at the wonder of your baby growing up into a big kid.  Coffee.  Fresh-baked bread.  A mild day in the heat of July.  Life is full of wonders and opportunities for joy, but sometimes it’s hard to see.  When we’re under stress, our nervous systems limit our ability to see the good things in life.  Our field of vision narrows, and we may find ourselves able to see little more than our to-do lists, our resentments and frustrations, and our worries.

This is actually a good thing, from an evolutionary standpoint.  Humans evolved to survive by being really aware of possible danger, and not getting distracted by the flowers or the beauty of a sunset.  Our nervous systems are wired for one primary goal: keeping us alive.

And we should be glad that our bodies do this, because sometimes we really need it.  A sad reality of our world is that not all places and relationships are safe.  We don’t always have energy to spare to attend to the miracle of tomatoes growing in the garden or the way a good story can move you.  Sometimes we need to put all of our energy and attention into survival—we don’t have the resources and support we need to live any other way.

But sometimes we do have what we need and we really are safe, we just get stuck with blinders on.  We end up unable to connect with the good stuff that would actually make us feel better and help us get out of survival mode.  If you’ve ever stepped back for a second and looked at your life and thought, “this doesn’t make sense… I have enough money, I have enough support, I’m not in actual danger, why am I stuck in crippling anxiety?” Then you may be stuck in a cycle like this.

This is often related to trauma, and good trauma therapy can really help.  Even recognizing it as trauma can help.  If the anxiety or shame or sadness that you feel seems familiar to you, and it doesn’t seem to match your current life circumstances, it may be a way in which your nervous system is responding to the past.  Finding a therapist who can help you work through that can be an important part of healing.

But there’s another part of healing that doesn’t require a copay or an advanced degree: Letting yourself see and engage with the good, beautiful, meaningful, and adaptive possibilities in your life.  I don’t mean distracting yourself or denying the pain that you feel, but rather allowing yourself to see the good things, too.  Expand your field of vision to see not just your anxiety, but also the ways you’ve coped with and gotten through anxiety.  Let yourself feel the reality not just of your feelings of shame, but of the moments you’ve felt proud of yourself, too.

Here are a few practical ideas of some things you can do to try this out for yourself:

• Begin a gratitude practice: Try keeping a journal of what you’re grateful for, or having an intentional conversation with someone about what’s good in life, or even just practicing naming the good things when you see them.
• Do small things: Identify small things that you can do to bring more joy or purpose to your life, and do them.
• Watch for glimmers of the good: Sometimes life is hard, and we don’t need to strong-arm ourselves into believing that it’s not. But often, if we look closely, there are moments in which gratitude, joy, hope, pride, or other desirable emotions show up, even briefly.  Watch for them.