83) How the fuck can you manage stress when the whole world is going to shit?

Are you having difficulty managing the stress of COVID-19?  Staying at home with your kids, your family, unable to leave the house, unable to socialize in person, maybe unable to work, maybe you’ve lost your job, your stress is mounting, the bills are mounting, the feelings of powerlessness and worry are nagging away at you.  Yeah dude, that’s some stressful shit.  Tru dat!

Not too much earlier in my life, I was terrible at this.  In fact, I did this whole “managing stress” thing so poorly that I ended up in the hospital, then in a 3-week program in the hospital for people who were so unable to function in everyday life that they were basically going to lose everything.  That was me — so far in debt, with so many unpaid bills, so few functional behaviour patterns, such poor mental focus, such depleted health, such overwhelmed emotional states and such low energy that “managing stress” was not even remotely possible, or so it seemed.  Hell, I couldn’t even remember to eat on a regular basis.  There was no distinction between day or night.  Most of my weeks, and then months, passed in a fog, isolated from the entire world most of the time, unable to keep up even minimal correspondences with friends.  I stopped sleeping except whenever I’d randomly pass out on the couch.  I stopped changing my clothes even for days at a time.  I stopped seeing friends — all friends.  I stopped answering the phone, checking email.  Everything.  I didn’t even watch TV.  Everything became “too much”.    Most of my waking time was spent laying in the bathtub or on the floor under a blanket, ‘being’ a corpse, except for the inconvenient necessity of breathing.  

I became a ghost, moving invisibly through the world, shaggy as a homeless person, dirty, smelly.  I couldn’t think straight.  And I was terrified, literally terrified, of everyone in the world.  I only bought groceries in the middle of the night, at a 24-hour Sobeys, so I could be as sure as possible I wouldn’t encounter any other humans except the cashier and the dude who cleans the floors at night.  I became nothing.  Nobody.  And if ANYTHING arose, such as the need to pay my hydro, I didn’t do it until it actually got cut off and I’d have to phone them to get it reconnected.  This happened many times.  I did as close to nothing as I think it is possible for a person to do without actually sitting down in a corner and starving to death.  

The upside of hitting bottom is that, if you’re lucky, if someone helps you, or if you have that one iota of willpower to get yourself to the hospital and check yourself into the psych ward and say “I’m fucked. Help”, then you start to learn.  I was going to say “heal”, but I don’t think that happens first in any significant way.  It didn’t for me anyway.  Healing came later.  But learning to manage stress, enough stress to function in everyday life, is the necessary foundation for any form of true, lasting healing.  

So let’s not talk about healing right now.  Let’s not worry about you being insecure, or having a difficult childhood, or having addictions, or having anger problems, or having trauma, or whatever your shitty stuff is, let’s not talk about THAT right now.  We’re going to talk about that in future posts, when we talk about healing from trauma.  But for now, let’s talk about laying the foundation — which is “basic functionality.”  Laying THAT foundation is EXACTLY the same as trying to cope during a crisis.

Here’s some of what I learned when I started recovering from hitting bottom:

• “Mental health” is not different from physical health.  So, start with the basics.

• Give yourself a break for being a bit fucked and not being able to do everything perfectly.  Come on man, this is hard.  Life is stressful right now.  You’re unlikely to be at your best all the time.  So, whatevs dude, it’s okay.  You’re human.  Chillax a bit and go easy on yourself.  

• Create a routine.  Keep it simple, like, go to sleep and wake up at the same time (more or less) every day.  Get at least 7 hours sleep.  (Note: I still suck at this.  Another Note:  You won’t be able to do everything; see previous point.)

• Eat stuff.  Regularly.  Especially healthy things!  Take some time to cook.  Why the fuck not?  You’re going to die someday; you might as well stop eating shitty food and enjoy yourself while you can.  Besides, cooking is sexy!

• Get some exercise.  And really, it doesn’t matter if you’re monitoring your heart rate and getting in some “zone” or whatever.  Do anything! Dance to some rockin’ tunes. Skip rope in your livingroom. Run up and down the stairs for a while. Check out Adriene’s 30-day yoga challenge – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBu-pQG6sTY.  She rocks!  Or wrestle with your kids!  Or, if you don’t have kids, wrestle with your dogs!  If you have cats, yeah, well, you’re fucked as far as that goes…..  Check out Adriene instead.  Or body-weight home routines.  Or just have tons and tons and tons of sex, if you’re lucky enough to be quarantined with a willing person. 

• Laugh and play.  Life is absurd and hilarious and beautiful.  Play games with your family or whoever you’re holed up with.  Sing your heart out, even if you feel you suck at it.  Who the fuck cares??  Have fun, man!  Show people your courage and don’t-give-a-fuck attitude!  Fuck around and be silly!  Imagine you’re gonna die (cuz you are, you know….sooner or later), and LIVE!!!!! Live like a free spirit of the universe, instead of cowering behind your insecurities like a mere monkey on a rock in an eternal vacuum.  And laugh about shit.  Seriously, I mean shit, as in excrement.  I’ve laughed about my shit AT LEAST a hundred times in my life.  That shit never gets old!  If potty-humour isn’t your thing….ummm….I’m not sure I can help you much.  Are you human?  Are you sure?  

• Indulge a wee bit in your hobbies.  Play some video games and finally slay that Boss or complete that Quest or….whatever the fuck you’re supposed to accomplish in Candy Crush, I dunno.  Or read those books you always figure you’ll read “someday”.  Or build that ship in a bottle.  (Do people ever actually do that?  I think it’s a conspiracy…).  Grow some plants.  Learn to juggle.  Walk on your hands.  Learn sign language or Swahili.  Masturbate with the other hand and pretend you are in a new relationship.  There are all kinds of potential hobbies out there, and my serious guess is that you’ve been wishing for many years you could engage in some of them but you’re “too busy”.

• Have social contact with people.  Not PHYSICAL contact, dumb-ass!!  (Except, see the sex comment above under “Get some exercise”).  But SOCIAL contact.   Play D&D over Zoom or HouseParty or whatever other cool app-thingy you use.  If you won’t play D&D, I’m not sure I can help you much.  Are you human?  Are you sure?  If nothing else, start telling people you love, that you love them and think they’re the shit and you’re grateful to have them in your life.  That ain’t so hard.

• And finally, spend some time plugging yourself into your own spirituality.  Whatever that means to you.  Pray.  Meditate.  Chant.  Practice mindfulness.  Have tantric sex (three birds, one stone with this idea!). Or if all that shit seems flaky to you, then by God at least journal or do some seriously deep reflecting on life, the universe, and everything.  Get to know yourself better.  Stop running away from your triggers and wounds and ‘hot button issues’ or whatever else you run away from most of the time, and start facing yourself.  

• When the above idea brings up some really difficult shit, reach out to someone you can talk to….NOT IN PERSON, dumb-ass!!  We went over a similar point just a second ago….sheesh!  This is why God (or whoever) invented the internet!  Skype that fucker, and do some good emotional processing with them.  It’ll involve tears.  Maybe screaming eventually.  But you can heal your shit, and then step forward into a future of authenticity and freedom.  It’s so worth it.  ……..Oh shit, I said I wasn’t going to talk about healing.  Okay fine.  But the point is, when you “face yourself”, when you have enough time on your hands to finally turn towards the deep shit you’ve been distracting yourself from for your whole life, then shit can get weird and you can go a little crazy.  Or a lot crazy.  It’s tough facing yourself deeply authentically.  Especially if you’ve got some traumatic shit locked up in that body-mind of yours.  So, IF the nasties come up when you’re isolated and trying to get by, just START by reaching out to ONE PERSON who you feel close to.  That’s the first, and most important step, and everything else follows AFTER you’ve been willing to reach out, even a little.  So, start there.

If this is all TLDR or whatever, then here’s the gist:

Accept.  Sleep.  Eat.  Move.  Enjoy.  Share.  Love.  Go deep.  

Do these often, ideally every day.

You’ll be okay.  We’re gonna get through this together.  And for the hopefully-as-few-as-possible-of-us who don’t, the rest of us will never forget you, our loved ones who were taken from us.  And we will do our damnedest to make sure the world changes because of this pandemic, and in your memory, we’ll turn this planet into the paradise that it could be.  But first, we’ve gotta get through the upcoming hard times.  Then, it’s time to tear down the fucked up shit that is killing the world, and replant goodness in its place. 

Love to you all.