As a Canadian who lives in a border city, I jokingly consider myself to be a ‘pseudo-Canadian’. Having spent a lot of my childhood traveling to the United States, watching U.S news, and even choosing to spend 4 years in Wisconsin, Wisconsin for my undergraduate degree and another 2 for graduate school, I feel very connected to things going on in the United States.
Without getting too deep into the minute details of it all, I do want to talk about what happens when decisions are being made around you that you don’t understand, or don’t agree with, that you ultimately can’t control. This type of situation happens all the time, in many different environments. Whether it’s happening at work, at home, on the grander scale of your government…it happens.
So, how do you deal with that? I’ve witnessed a lot of anxiety, anguish, and frustration among my friends who ultimately know they’ve lost something they didn’t know they could lose. But, still, you have to find a way to move forward. Compartmentalizing often seems like the first go-to but I’d like to caution that in favour of first sitting with, understand, and talking about your emotions. Often, when we compartmentalize, we push down the emotions that we ultimately need to experience in order to process what’s going on around us. When we suppress those emotions for too long, they come up to the surface often more violently than you’d ever expect.
Although it seems intimidating at first to deal with some of the feelings associated with these big things or even easier to get caught up in the immediate overwhelm of the situation, being able to take a step back and understand what you’re feeling is essential. If you can’t control the situation you’re in, you can at least control the way you experience your emotions. And for the meantime, that may be enough to get you through to the next day.
– Coach Lauren
