How are you coping?
In the autumn of 2015, I went to a leadership conference in Coventry. There were some excellent speakers from many different walks of life; international CEOs, senior government officials and entrepreneurs, as well as church leaders.
After one of the speakers, we were invited to spend some time in discussion and, out of nowhere, my eyes suddenly started to fill with tears. I had the overwhelming feeling that I couldn't face the people I was with, and instead of getting into a group conversation, I headed straight for the toilets and stayed there for 15 minutes until the next session started and I could come and take my seat without having to talk with anyone.
I couldn't understand what had come over me. Things were going well for me personally, I was happy, I was enjoying my work and the church was growing. So, why did I suddenly feel like I couldn’t cope?
Looking back, I think it was probably due to a particularly stressful time in the first four months of that year. Whilst I had come through that particularly intense period, some of the stress from that time suddenly surfaced months later and I went from a position of feeling good and in control, to feeling overwhelmed.
Recently I’ve had a number of conversations with people who are experiencing similar situations… feeling unhappy and insecure in jobs they have done for years; struggling with relationships at work or at home that have been good in the past; feeling overwhelmed by emotions that rise up from nowhere as they take steps to re-enter the community after months of being careful and avoiding people. Many of them feel as though they have successfully managed the stresses of this last year, but just when it seems like we may be finally coming out of this difficult time, they suddenly find themselves feeling vulnerable and struggling to cope.
The Living Well model identifies 5 dimensions of wellbeing that together impact our resilience; our capacity to deal with stress. These are: physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual (not necessarily Christian, or even religious) wellbeing. The model shows the first four dimensions as sides of a quadrilateral, with the area of the quadrilateral being representative of our capacity to deal with stress. The spiritual wellbeing dimension amplifies all the others, so it turns the quadrilateral into a cuboid and the volume of that shape is representative of our capacity to deal with stress.
Each of these dimensions is always changing, they can grow, and they can shrink. We all recognise that if we want to maintain or improve our physical fitness we need to eat healthily, exercise, get the right amount of sleep, etc. The fact that I did a 100-metre run 10 years ago does not mean that I am physically fit today and if I overeat, drink too much, struggle with sleep, don’t do any exercise, then my physical wellbeing will suffer. The same goes for my mental, emotional, relational and spiritual wellbeing; if I want to maintain or improve my wellbeing in these areas, then I need to pursue habits and practices that will foster each of those dimensions.
Over the last 12 months, many of us have struggled to maintain our wellbeing in each of these dimensions; we’ve been isolated from many of our supportive relationships, we’ve eaten and drunk more than we did before, we’ve struggled with the mental pressure to stay on top of an ever-changing situation, we’ve not been able to emotionally process the losses we’ve experienced, and we’ve not done some of the things that help care for our souls*
As a result, for many of us our wellbeing in one or more of these dimensions has shrunk, and we have lost some of our capacity to deal with stress. That’s why some of us are feeling overwhelmed by things that never used to be a problem. If we’re to regain/improve our resilience, then we need to build up our wellbeing in each dimension.
The good news is that just as we can adopt habits and practices that improve our physical wellbeing, we can also adopt habits and practices that improve our wellbeing in all of the other dimensions. I’ve mentioned some of these practices in recent articles (gratitude, blessing others, being listened to, prayer, etc) but there are loads more. So, throughout the month of May, I’ll be sharing ideas that I’ve found helpful for improving wellbeing in each of these dimensions on a new Living Well Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/managing.stress.building.resilience).
As we negotiate this latest stage of the pandemic and slowly return to some of the things we used to do, I pray that we help one another rebuild and improve our wellbeing in each of these dimensions. In that way, we will emerge from this last year stronger individually, and as a community.
*The soul is NOT the ‘floaty’ thing you see in cartoons. ‘Soul’ is an ancient term that refers to that which integrates the parts of a person into a whole being.