The Next Good Moment

Some days I wake up and already know based on how I feel that today is going to be a hard day. My body is tired, I don’t feel well-rested, and I have a lot to do. Those days feel like the weight of the world is on me. Some of those days I wake up depressed before my feet hit the ground. Everything feels harder than it should. Those are the days I’m just trying to “get through.”

When I worked as a group therapist in an intensive outpatient program clients often talked about “getting through.” Sometimes despite our best efforts – exercise, eating healthier, engaging in hobbies, connecting with others, taking medication, etc. Hard days still come and knock us down. It can feel like we’ve made no progress at all or like nothing will work.

Those are the days we need special copings skills to just “get through” to the next good or neutral moment. There are so many skills to talk about but I’m going to focus on creating a mantra.

My mantra is, “stay here with me, okay?” I say this to myself when I have been dissociating or when I’m having depressive thoughts. It came from Andrea Gibson’s poem, “The Nutritionist.”

You can also read it here if you’d prefer to read it:

https://ohandreagibson.tumblr.com/nutritionist

I used it today, I was feeling depressed and thinking about all the things that are making life hard right now. When I do that it doesn’t take long for depression to spiral into self-defeated thoughts of escaping life and before I know it I’m tearing up in the grocery store.

Then I hear, “stay here with me, okay?” And I’m back in the condiments isle at the grocery store, aware again of myself. It’s so simple and so powerful because it’s a grounding reminder that I can choose to stay present. I can choose to focus on the grocery isle I’m standing in and start naming the condiments I’m seeing, I can choose to pay attention to my son’s smile while he plays with the ketchup bottle and talk to him about his fascination. In that moment that’s my reality. That is my pause in the in-between.

Having a mantra or a grounding saying, object, sound, etc. can make you aware of when you are living in the pause and that you have a choice in how you use it. Even if there are hard moments throughout the day there are always pauses and we have power over what we do with our pauses. Our pauses can be the next good moment, if we let them.