Feels Like I’ve Been Here Before

Posted on by stilllearning2b

I keep getting the strange sense of deja vu.

Feeling like I’ve been here before.

Which is crazy on the surface of things. After all, this is a global pandemic, the likes of which have not been seen for 100 years.

None of us have been here before.

Yet, for those of us who have been through one or more of those life-altering moments – the discovery of infidelity, abandonment, sudden and profound loss – this may feel strangely familiar. After all, we know what it’s like to wake one morning to discover that the world we knew, the world which we trusted to ground us, no longer exists.

We are familiar with the grief that sneaks up and tugs at our guts when we’re not paying attention. And we are no longer surprised when we grieve the small things as much as the big ones.

We’ve experienced that strange sense of disbelief, of thinking that somehow this is all just a tragic mistake and that the reality we knew simply needs to be recovered.

We know the fear that comes with the uncertainty and the deep craving to return to a sense of safety. And we know that over time the belief things will return to normal is replaced with an acceptance that a sense of peace only comes once we’ve adapted to the new situation.

We’ve lived through that life turned upside-down, where the normally innocuous things have become threats hidden around every corner.

We’ve endured those long nights wishing things could be different before we dry our tears and pledge to focus on what we can control. And we learn both how small our influence is and also how powerful it can be.

We’ve tried to run away from our pain in the hope that we can distract our way out of it only to find that it cannot be outrun.

We’ve been through those moments of utter defeat when we feel like we’re not strong enough to get through this, only somehow we manage to make it through that day. And then the next.

This may be new. You haven’t been through this challenge yet.

But you’ve made it through others.

You know what to do.

 

The Increased Urge to Check Up on Your Ex During Times of Crisis

Posted on by stilllearning2b

I’ve had several people reach out to me recently stating that they’re struggling to stay away from contacting or virtually checking up on their ex.

It makes sense.

After all, when are we most tempted to reach out to the person that once was a source of comfort and stability? When we’re lonely, anxious or bored. And right now, I think everybody is feeling some combination of those things.

Sometimes it starts with an innocent-sounding thought. “I just need to check up on them,” you say to yourself. “I need to make sure they’re okay.”

Yet, as with so many thoughts when it comes to our exes, this one isn’t rational when examined further. After all, you ex isn’t alone. They have family, friends, maybe even a new significant other to look after their well-being. That’s a job you either quit or were fired from. So why are you still trying to carry out its responsibilities? Furthermore, you’ve gone for some time now without knowing how they are doing. And until the crisis, you managed this state of not-knowing just fine. Why do you need information now? Besides, they’re probably stuck at home just like the rest of us.

Maybe you’re curious if they’re thinking about you, wondering if this increase in thoughts of mortality and the importance of loved ones has made them miss you. After all, it seems like the plot of some 2022 romantic comedy – exes meet up again through Zoom while in quarantine and rekindle their relationship from a distance. And then once the country receives the “all-clear,” they reunite and its happily ever after. Except that’s Hollywood, not real life. In the real world, you broke up for a reason and even though some distance flirting seems harmless, it may be disastrous for your expectations.

Perhaps you’re in a situation like I was in post-divorce, where there was no contact and I looked him up online hoping to find evidence that he wasn’t happy with his other wife. After all, if you’re going to signs of discord in their current relationship, the stress of a pandemic seems like a good time. Yet, at least as far as my social media feeds are concerned, the accepted rules of curating and filtering your life into perfection before sharing still seem to hold true. In other words, don’t expect to see much truth there.

Many of you are feeling lonely right now. Isolated. And so you reach out hoping for a connection with somebody that has a shared history with you. Yet all so often, reaching out to an ex only leaves you feeling more alone as you sense the growing distance between you as your lives continue to diverge. Remember there’s a difference between missing them and missing the memory of them. No matter how many times you reach out, you won’t be able to connect with the past.

You may have been keeping it together before the pandemic, but now with so many of your normal coping strategies banned, you may be finding it harder to cope.

It makes sense.

Every emotion is amplified right now. Everybody has less bandwidth to cope. It’s normal that your willpower is reduced and you’re trying to keep your impulses restrained.

However, that doesn’t mean that it makes sense to check up on your ex. Unless you want to feel worse, that is.

I don’t have any magical advice for those of you struggling to maintain your distance. Nobody does. But I can tell you that you’ll do better if you mitigate your loneliness by staying in routine contact with friends and family. Anything you can do to interrupt the steps between the urge and the initiation of contact will be beneficial (ex. If you tend to look at their Instagram at night before you go to sleep, lock your phone in your car overnight.). Write down reminders why you don’t want to make contact or search them up (How does it make you feel afterwards?). Exercise within the current allowed parameters to work off some of the excess anxiety. And finally, find something that you can dive into that will occupy your brain space and fight off boredom.

In each moment, you have the choice to reach out or to resist the urge. Be honest with yourself which one will make you better, not just for the moment, but the long run. You may scratch the itch, but at what cost?

Breathe.

This too shall pass.

 

 

When You Can No Longer Rely on Distractions

Posted on by stilllearning2b

It’s my first day of spring break.

And I’m struggling.

For the other 18 years of my teaching career, I reached spring break both exhausted and relieved, ready for a break from the relentless and overly-structured schedule of teaching.

But this year?

I’m panicky, only now realizing how much I’ve relied on the need to be online and responsive to my students all day to keep me focused and how much the process of reinventing lessons for the digital realm has kept me occupied.

So now, with the next 9 days stretching out before me with no real purpose and no defined structure, I’m feeling a little crazy. A little unmoored. And a lot anxious.

We all have our preferred form of distraction, that thing we turn to in an excuse to avoid facing that which scares us. Many of us tell ourselves stories about our distractions, convincing ourselves and others that it needs attention, while fervently denying that we’re also trying to escape facing down that which scares us.

Like many of you I’m sure, being busy is my favored distraction. I find a strange comfort in my to-do lists that dictate my days. When I’m on the move, I don’t have too much to pause and just be with my thoughts and my feelings. And when I schedule in those times for mindfulness and reflection, I like knowing that there is a limited amount of time for stillness. I only have to “be” for so long.

Even with the current constraints, I could still manufacture busyness. I could create a rigid and demanding schedule to practice coding or work on writing. I could find some all-consuming household project to eat up all my daytime hours. I could escape for hours on end into books, barely taking the time to look from the page.

Yet even though those things call to me, they don’t quite feel right.

I’m panicky.

Reality is setting in.

And I think I just need to learn to be okay with it.

 

Trying to Think in a Time of Stress

Posted on by stilllearning2b

I wrote a blog post over the weekend. Then, after it was published, I went back and reread it. And I noticed something startling. In half a dozen cases, I left out whole words. Not typos. Not the wrong word. Or even a missing letter. Simply no word at all.

And that’s not the all of it.

I’ve spent the last three months teaching myself to code. I’m at the point where I have a reasonable grasp on the basics and now need to put the isolated skills together in longer – and more difficult – projects.

And I just can’t do it.

The languages, which were starting to feel familiar, are now just swirling letters and punctuation on the screen.

I’ve had to take a step back and work on more bite-sized challenges, which luckily my brain seems able to digest. It’s pretty much the equivalent of baby rice cereal for the brain.

It’s been awhile since my brain has felt like this. Ten years to be exact.

My ex left in July 2009. We started school a couple weeks later.

It had been years since I had felt the need to work out problems ahead of time before giving them to the class. So it caught me off guard when I was trying to explain how to decode a word problem at the board and I got stuck.

My brain simply couldn’t handle a multi-step problem. There was limited retention. No attention span. Instead of problem-solving, my brain was simply returning the cognitive equivalent of the “spinning wheel of death.”

For the better part of a year, I had to make accommodations. I made notes to take to the board with me during lessons. Answer keys were prepared well in advance. I went back and re-taught myself things that I had known but was struggling to apply. Instead of reading my normal books, I gravitated towards young adult fiction with its easier-to-understand writing.

I was worried, afraid that this cognitive decline would be permanent.

But it wasn’t. In time, it returned to its original level.

And so I’m currently holding onto hope that the world – and my brain – will return to sanity again.

 

All over Twitter this week, I’ve seen people timidly admit that they’re struggling to focus. To think. To problem-solve.

They’re worried. That their reaction is abnormal. That they may never be able to think again. That something is wrong with them.

There’s nothing wrong with struggling to think while your brain is busy attending to other (and often scary) things.

Here’s a way to think about it. For the sake of argument, pretend that you’re a skilled knitter. In fact, you can normally knit a scarf automatically and you don’t struggle to follow a complex new pattern.

But now is not a normal time.

Because now, at least as far as your brain is concerned, you’re treading water in an attempt to stay afloat. And knitting has suddenly become a whole lot more difficult.

So if you’re struggling to think right now, know that you are having a perfectly normal response to an abnormal situation.

 

While you’re waiting for your stress to decline and your cognitive to ramp back up, here are a few tips:

 

  • Adjust your expectations. Don’t base them on what you can “normally” do. Remember, your brain is treading water right now.
  • Your attention span is shorter. Schedule breaks.
  • Chunk information into smaller pieces.
  • Provide support for your lack of retention. Get used to writing more things down than you had to before.
  • Give yourself opportunities to feel successful. Otherwise, frustration can easily get the best of you.
  • Intentionally reteach yourself things. It may feel silly to go back to 101 when you’re a professor in it, but that sequential feeding of information will help your brain learn how to function again.
  • Pay attention to the basics – sleeping, nutrition, exercise. They’re important.
  • And finally, be patient. You can’t force this.

 

You’re not broken.

You’re human.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Note to My Readers

Posted on by stilllearning2b

It’s been a surreal day, as I’m sure it’s been for many of you.

Instead of the planned professional development I was supposed to present, I spent the morning packing up my classroom, preparing online lessons and messaging students about classes for the upcoming week. It felt like preparing for summer break but without the excitement.

I stopped at the grocery store on my way home. I’ve been doing my normal Saturday trips, so the pantry was pretty empty.

Of course, so were the store shelves.

It was busy, but not chaotic. A young mom stopped me in the parking lot as I was returning my cart.

“Excuse me. How is it in there?” she asked, looking concerned. “Am I safe bringing in my kids?”

My heart broke. How sad that she worried for her kids’ safety in her own neighborhood.

But I get it.

It’s a surreal day.

My heart broke once again when I glanced at my blog stats and saw, that even while the world goes into a virus-enforced hibernation, people were still turning to Google with their pleas about unwanted divorce, narcissistic exes and experiencing loneliness after divorce.

But of course they are.

Because that’s the most surreal thing about crises – whether they be personal or global – life doesn’t wait.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be posting over the next couple weeks. I should have more time, but I’m not sure I’ll have the right headspace.

Meanwhile, please know I’m thinking of those of you navigating a divorce and this at the same time. I’m with those of you who are alone and missing your former partner now more than ever. My heart goes out to those of you forced to be in the same space with a partner that has been recently discovered to be unfaithful or is being cruel or distant.

It’s hard when crises overlap. You often don’t have bandwidth for both and right now, you may find that others are too overwhelmed with their own stuff to make space for you.

But you’re not alone.

There are wonderful and supportive and welcoming online communities that build each other up every day. Now more than ever is a great time to find your online tribe.

 

I hope that your family stays safe, your children don’t drive you too crazy and your toilet-paper holders remain full.

 

 

It’s a surreal day.

But it’s only a day.

Tomorrow is a new one.