Coping With Change

How can you adapt to a change in your life, whether you want it to happen or not?

Transcript

00:00 Hi, this is Katie and thank you for joining me on the My Senses, My Space podcast and this is a podcast about feeling the world intensely, creating time to support your needs, and planning your space and life to fit you. And I wanted to thank you first for a little pause And all of the podcasts that have
00:22 been coming out. I have been healing up from hysterectomy surgery and I'm I could I am so happy right now but it just took a lot longer than I thought so thank you for You know sticking with me for those who stuck around and yeah, I was quite surprised to see people were still enjoying my
00:48 podcast even though I uploaded nothing for the month of July and that's just how it is in this year of 2023.
00:57 So today I wanted to talk about dealing with changes and how to cope with change in your life. So there can be so many different kinds of changes that happen, right?
01:11 There's changes to your environment where you're living how everything's laid out, you know, furniture and things like that. But your relationships can change.
01:24 Your routines can change. Your jobs can change. There's just so many factors. I know there's probably 10 million more to mention, but I want to try to stick to like the core big changes in life.
01:41 And how our minds can adapt and how they take a while to adapt. Sometimes there are like really exciting changes that you have.
01:59 And so you're looking forward to them. And so you can start thinking about the future and what may come. And it, it can be a lot easier to accept that those are coming.
02:11 So a new job that you're starting and you're like, oh my goodness, this is the job that I've been wanting to do.
02:17 You could be like going out and getting some new clothes. For it or getting supplies for it or just thinking like, okay, I'm getting myself ready to go to that first day, figuring out how to park, how to drive there, all the new things expecting to meet new people there.
02:37 If it's via, you know, zoom calls. You're still, you know, dialing in and meeting new people and you can be really excited about that and your brain can, you know, still be nervous, still have, you know, a lot of thoughts running around.
02:54 But when you're picturing this future, when you're picturing like what the first day and all the following days may be like, that's your brain like adapting already.
03:08 It's like taking these steps of going, okay, when I actually go through them, it's going to be very similar to the thoughts that I have in my head.
03:15 And, and I'm going to have surprises along the way, right? We can never tell exactly. How things are going to be.
03:24 It's going to be surprises at some point, right? Even when I try myself, try to think through something, there's always a surprise that pops up that I just never thought of.
03:38 And maybe that's the fun of a life thing, spicy. But when we're thinking about like, okay, so I'm going to drive into this parking garage or I'm going to have my room set up this way.
03:52 So when I hit go on that zoom call, it's going to probably look like this. Of course that comes with like some practice things that you're putting into place, right?
04:02 You're probably setting up your room before you hit that zoom call. You're preparing for things. But what about those things that kind of are hard to adapt to?
04:15 Like, maybe you have to move and this wasn't quite your choice. And it's just, there's a lot of heavy feelings around it.
04:27 And it can't be really avoided, right? We can't really avoid our feelings. So there needs to be something in this process of really feeling those feelings.
04:38 Like this is way out of my control. This is way out of control. Out of my circle of what I can control.
04:45 It's outside of that, right? It is really disappointing. It is very frustrating. It could be, there could be anger involved, a lot of sadness.
04:56 There can be like reasons that kind of compounded into this. Like, well, I am being forced to. Change. And that's hard.
05:05 That's hard. I'm not going to say any of this is easy. It's just hard. And so in that circumstance, it's very hard to think of head and go, okay, well, this is going to be how my new life is.
05:18 It's very hard to envision until you start going, okay, well, I've still elected a new place to live or I'm this is where I'm going to live.
05:27 This is my default. I have no other choice. This is where I'm going to be. What does that look like?
05:34 What does that every day look like? Maybe it's moving in with family. Maybe it's, you know, I'm just doing a specific circumstance.
05:44 But just thinking like, well, okay, it's not how I used to be. This is not the place where I used to be waking up.
05:54 But this is a different place. What does that look like? So I can kind of start preparing my brain for how that will feel.
06:03 Hopefully, you know, you have some similar bedding type things, similar clothes, you're bringing some stuff with you. So there is some familiarity between your previous place and the next one.
06:18 But it can still be a lot of like, well, how is this going to work? Are there new noises in my environment that I'm not used to?
06:27 Is there a new roommate or family member or pets or things that I didn't normally live with before? What is that going to be like?
06:41 It's hard. Well, first of all, just kind of envisioning it sometimes journaling about it, sometimes creating art around it, the art itself maybe even just sketching out where you're going to place things in the new space can kind of give you some hope of like, okay, well, this wasn't my decision
07:04 , but, and this can apply to other things too, like changing a job. But it wasn't your decision to shift even positions.
07:13 Maybe you are, your department is recalibrating reassigning the tasks and it's like, okay, well, I have to do this. Now, if you are like sketching out what that looks like, if you're writing down a task list, that's new, whatever that is, you're kind of starting to invite those ideas in to what
07:37 your body and your mind will have to acclimate to. If you're still struggling through all of that, please, please, please ask for help.
07:49 So there are so many people on this earth who have gone through what you have gone through and putting out some kind of message somewhere, whether it's to online friends or asking family or asking questions.
08:03 Your friends or someone to connect to and say, Hey, I haven't been through this before. Do you have any advice?
08:11 Can you kind of like help support me a bit? Do you need to talk to a therapist? Is there a therapist service that you have access to that you can connect to and just say, I'm going through this temporary time.
08:23 Temporary can be a year, right? It's doesn't have to be just two weeks. I'm going through this transition. How can I support myself?
08:36 How can you support me as well to get through this time? And many people during whether it's friends or therapists or something can come up with a way that either is going to be gradual and at a pace that your mind and body can slowly adapt to.
08:56 Even if you have to move quickly, there are certain things that you can do slowly, more slowly. You don't have to do that.
09:04 You don't have to set up your room right away. You don't have to like right when you start a new position, be good at absolutely everything, right?
09:16 There is going to be a learning period throughout whatever transition you're going through. And you step through that. Maybe today you're putting all your dishes away.
09:29 Maybe the next day you're just organizing some books. Maybe the next day you're actually getting like kind of stations set up around your house so you can actually perform certain things.
09:44 And maybe the next day you just take off and you just reflect on things. And that kind of brings me to kind of the last part of this, which is so interesting, so important to me is really kind of checking in after a certain interval of time, a certain period of time to go, how is this going?
10:06 Do I need to course correct a little bit? Am I expecting too much of myself? So taking that time to reflect and say, I, and this may be when you discover, okay, I need more help than I need need more help than I'm currently getting.
10:23 Maybe I need more help than I need. I need to reach out to my friends more. Maybe I need more supplies.
10:30 Maybe I need to have a mentor who can help me form the leadership that I want to in this new job.
10:40 Maybe I need to step this out long enough. Maybe I need to just cut off, have a cutoff point and transition quicker.
10:52 And in those instances, maybe it's like you're holding on too hard to the past. There's a reason why. There's feelings there to be felt.
11:02 There's things to maybe be journal about, to talk to a therapist about and see how letting go of things that you just are out of your control.
11:13 Like there's just no way you can do anything about it. How do you let that go? Or just be okay with the decision that you made to go to the next step.
11:24 You could be super thrilled about the new place or the new job or the new relationship that you're having and still be anchored too much and wondering how you can let go.
11:39 So is there a process that you can go, okay, well, I can process this part. Of the feelings that I'm having and then the next part.
11:48 Sometimes we can sometimes we can kind of go, oh, there's a really hard tug I'm feeling right now to the past.
11:55 Let's see what that is. And then the next part can be, well, I kind of see why that's so important that it's tugging me.
12:04 Well, it's, you know, the core things connecting to my grandparents or my parents or siblings or friends that I've had.
12:12 And then realizing, okay, now that I've seen those things and I see why I'm having those deep connections, how can I tie those into the future?
12:23 How can I go? Okay. I love you. You're in the past. You're, you're not disappearing. That part of me is still there and I'm carrying it into the future.
12:34 So yeah, there's so many possibilities yet transitions are hard. Changes are hard. We can still be super excited or we still can have a lot of emotions around it, but we can get through it.
12:53 So I hope that helps and thank you again for joining me and being patient with me and you may be listening to these podcasts back to back and go, what do you mean?
13:05 What gap? And to you, I say thank you for going through my archive. But I really much look forward to getting back to these now that I'm feeling a lot better and I will see you next time on the My Senses, My Space podcast.