This year has exacerbated all the tiny details in people’s lives. We’re surrounded by our problems, foibles, and personal issues with very little in the way of distractions. It’s no wonder that the more we stay locked up in our own dungeons, the more depression and anxiety increase. It also shouldn’t surprise us that addictions, divorce, and abuse rates are higher, too.
The United States thrives on distractions. We overwork ourselves to satiate our need to be busy. We self-help ourselves until it doesn’t make any sense. We focus on social media as if it benefits society.
We do all of these things to ignore the problems in life that plague us. So much that self-help advice centers around avoiding paying attention to the little things. Without examining the minutiae, sorting out the big picture in your life is impossible.
Increasing divorce rates point to the fact that when we are stuck with our problems and cannot find space from our loved ones, it’s impossible to let the little things go. Most families encountered nearly every stressor there could be in their lives: job loss, grief, financial difficulty, possible eviction, illness, environmental disasters, civil unrest, plague, relationship difficulties, and open insurrection.
Brief glimmers of hope dart around, only to be taken away, over and over.
It’s not easy to have a family life when you have to take on more responsibility to function. It’s even harder when we lose the ability to advocate for ourselves. At any moment, life comes crashing down on our heads to smother us. We can’t breathe or get a moment of peace.
Our problems surround us daily.
How do we tackle all of the little things to ensure we have a better big picture? Sometimes, the pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps approach can’t work — especially if you’re picking up everyone else’s bootstraps, too. Our time, energy, money, and ability to care are all finite resources. Everything in life is a trade-off for something else.
The simple (but not easy) answer is to ask for help. First, we need to sit down with our loved ones and talk out both sides of stressors. Since humans aren’t mind readers, we cannot know how the chaos affects the people around us. Some people are very good at pretending everything is fine. Others get so overloaded that they react to everything new with drama and chaos. Of course, everything is a spectrum for people to land between.
Keep blaming to a minimum. Use “I feel” statements and be present and listen to your loved one’s concerns. It’s surprising how often both people are worried about the same issue, and both feel helpless to change the situation.
Once your concerns are heard, it’s time to come up with an actionable plan. Decide out how to meet each other’s needs and work together. The goal is to go from “always stressed and unable to deal with one new thing” to “if something new comes up, we can figure this out together.”
Keep in mind that our basic human needs are food, water, and shelter. Love and support are very close behind. When we don’t feel supported, the human tendency is to lash out because it feels like our space is unsafe and that we’re being attacked. It perpetuates the cycle that we feed into when we don’t make a safe place to talk about the important little things.
After coming up with a plan to work together, schedule a regular “meeting” to discuss how your plan to tackle life is going. What isn’t working? What do you need more of that you didn’t realize? What did you think was important, but you should push aside for other needs? What are you grateful for that your loved one did? And what did you see the other person struggling with that you can help out better next time?
The plan should live and adapt in ways that suit how your lives move forward together.
If you feel helpless to figure out a plan together, seek counseling. And remember — it’s not a failure to admit that your values and lives have changed so that you’re better off apart. It’s better to find ways to separate as friends than to remain together in an untenable situation. It’s all about the small stuff.
References:
McLeod, Saul. “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.” Simple Psychology, 29 Dec 2020, https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
Rosner, Elizabeth. “US divorce rates skyrocket amid COVID-19 pandemic.” New York Post, 1 Sept 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/09/01/divorce-rates-skyrocket-in-u-s-amid-covid-19/
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Previously published on medium
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Photo credit: by The Creative Exchange on Unsplash
