Cheery, upbeat post incoming!
Seriously, I’ve been going on and on about the rough space weather this month (and what you might do about it) so you probably aware that things are challenging. That said, what you do about it is going to depend on how you — personally — are dealing with it.
First of all, maybe it’s just fine. Maybe your particular chart loves the current space weather. Or maybe your coping mechanisms are exactly right for the times at hand. Great for you (and also, I kind of hate you).
But if not, and you find yourself struggling with (waves hands at all the things), it’s incredibly useful to think about your particular engagement with suck… both this specific suck and when things go wrong in general. Now, good news, if you are being organized and proactive and doing your magic and avoiding risk and drama, maybe things are are generally fine. I find that magic and planning tend to make my life overall better (hence my ongoing obsession with sharing those skills with all of you). Things in my life are typically more smooth and less rocky, more calm and less storm, more blow and less suck (that sounded better in my head). But I’d be such a lying liar if I said that was always the case and it’s certainly not the case right now.
So I’m going to leverage my general sense of anxious, foreboding, malaise into a helpful blog post (with the expectation that, as usual, it will help me too). The way that you deal with a rough time is going to depend on the rough time at hand, obviously. But it’s also going to depend on your own particular response to rough times and your own adaptive and maladaptive coping mechanisms.
For example, let’s say you are exhausted and stressed and behind. All the shit’s been hitting all the fans and you’ve been struggling to keep up. So how are you coping?
Adaptatively?
- Deprioritizing and eliminating obligations that aren’t critical right now
- Delegating and asking your posse (corporeal and spiritual) for help
- Keeping the end in mind, so you have the fortitude to push through
- Making time to nourish yourself
- Getting healthy rest for your mind, body, and spirit
Or… maladaptively?
- Feeling shitty and guilty for what you aren’t getting done
- Never asking for help
- Giving up because you think things will never change
- Avoiding self-care because you don’t have time, thereby making the situation worse
- Getting unhealthy rest by obsessing over distractions to avoid dealing with the situation without really resting
Or let’s say you are down and sad and lonely. How do you react?
Helpfully?
- Reaching out to your trusted friends and pushing engagement
- Making sure you eat right and get enough exercise and sleep
- Being in nature and connecting to the enchanted world
- Opening your heart
Or… Unhelpfully?
- Isolating yourself
- Neglecting your needs
- Holing up
- Closing off
No judgement by the way! The bolded items in the lists above are the coping skills (bad and good) that I tend to default to. There are things I do well and things that I’m just terrible about… your list will naturally be different.
The key is that knowing how you tend to react will help you do things to counteract those tendencies or lean into them. For example, this month we’re hosting a magical movie film festival at our house, two movies every Sunday in October. Why? Because I’ve been holing up and obsessively distracting myself and this is a way I know will help. My husband knows this too and I find him saying things like “why aren’t we getting together with…” when he knows I need some social engagement. Or since I have a hard time asking for help, I’m leaning into that with my magic, working on ancestral and spiritual engagement (which is completely appropriate for the time of year as well). Because any positive coping technique can be leveraged for magical and mundane action. And any negative one can be mitigated in the same way.
Shit, sometimes just knowing you are doing something unhelpful can help you stop doing it! So it’s worth thinking about how things suck for you when they suck, which allows you to better deal with it now and avoid more of it later.
