Taking Care Amid the Chaos: We’re in This Together… Or Are We?

Have you ever been so anxious or so frustrated that suggestions to “just breathe” seem laughable, if not mildly insulting? Have you ever, in an effort to honor your emotions, gotten stuck in them? Or run yourself into the ground trying to avoid them? Have you ever gone down the rabbit hole of “what ifs” or gotten lost in your own list of worst-case scenarios, and stayed there just a little too long? Have you ever gotten so wrapped up in work that you forget to take time for yourself?

Have you ever had a friend/colleague/spouse/partner/boss ask you if you needed help? Were you able to say yes when you needed to?

Self-care is not a solo journey. Sure, some of this work is self-work, but sometimes we don’t have all the answers, all the energy, or all the support we need to figure it out alone. We don’t live our lives in bubbles of one, so our self-care can’t exist within one either. We have to be able to ask for help, but even more than that, we have to be able to build communities of accountability and love for ourselves in this journey.

As with most things, easier said than done, right?

Or maybe it’s not. Some of us already have some pretty strong communities, whether at work, at church, in our neighborhoods, within various groups of friends, or in our families. Most of us have our people—those two or three people in our lives who we know we can go to and who we know we can trust to show up for us.

However, I have two challenges for you: (1) Are you honest with yourself, your communities, and your people when you need support and accountability, and (2) are you remaining open to building community in new places with new people?

We may have inconsistent answers to these questions – sometimes yes, sometimes no – and that’s okay, but it may be important to explore the reasons why the answer is sometimes “no”. What keeps us from being honest about the things we need? What keeps us from building new communities of people in which we could provide one another with these things? Perhaps it’s the desire to be perceived as competent and independent. Perhaps it’s the fear of failure. Perhaps we just didn’t know we could ask for help or that we could benefit from new people in our lives.

Perhaps it’s the mistaken assumption that we are alone, and that people would not understand.

In this social media driven world, research is telling us that perhaps the tools we use to “connect” are making us feel even more alone. While that is certainly not true across the board (Twitter communities are real, y’all), it does make sense that practices like “social snacking”, by which we just observe and consume social interactions and experiences rather than engaging in them, and self-comparison would run rampant on social media platforms and create situations in which we feel more alone, have less of a desire to be honest, and less open to but more in need of in-person connections.

Even professionally, we need to be wary of building transactional relationships in place of mutually beneficial, trusting relationships. For authenticity’s sake and ultimately for our bottom lines, we need to be community builders—not just networkers.

The reality is, we are not alone, and we are all looking for ways to authentically connect with one another and build supportive communities. It’s human nature, particularly in a polarizing world. It’s just a matter of how.

If the world of constant news cycles and various social movements whose goal it is lift up the voices of those who have experienced oppression and exclusion (think #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, the Dreamers, etc.) has taught us anything, it is that we are not alone in our pain. However, we should remember that we’re not alone in the other areas of our lives either.

We’re not alone in the daily efforts to re-center, breathe, build resilience, and walk in purpose – but we can choose to be. We can choose to not allow other people to walk these journeys with us because it seems too vulnerable, or we can decide that we actually do need one another. If you’re a person who, like me, is perhaps more introverted or for whatever reason is less likely to let people in, lean in a bit. It’s not always comfortable, but it’s often worth it. If you’re a person for whom it comes more naturally to put yourself out there and connect, be mindful that those connections are authentic and allow you to be your whole self.

We may know how to take care of ourselves, but we will always need support in making that happen. Let’s be open to whatever that support looks like and non-judgmental of ourselves when we need it. We’re all in this together, and that’s one of the most challenging and most hopeful things I know to be true.

Below are some elements of trust that may be helpful as you continue to grow in the relationships you already have and build new ones and new communities that keep you accountable to caring for yourself, especially in times of chaos:

• Frequent, honest communication; trust is built one interaction at a time
• Be impeccable with your word; do what you say you are going to do (Don Miguel Ruiz – Four Agreements)
• Show people you care about them and their interests, as much as your own
• Be consistent; follow through on your word, many times over
• Speak from the heart; identify something good about the student, parent, etc. and emphasize this in your communication
• Offer your willingness to listen; seek first to understand then be understood (7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
• Express your feelings with compassion and understanding
• Own your mistakes; honesty and integrity are crucial to building trusted relationships