The Antidote to Discombobulation is Compassion

I have been feeling discombobulated lately.

I have been reading that this feeling of lack of focus and confusion and disorientation may actually be a “thing” in COVID time.

I have discovered something through my experience that may help you also, if you haven’t already discovered it for yourself: the antidote to discombobulation is compassion, specifically self-compassion.

A lot of “stuff” has been happening in the realm of our cars and house in the last couple of months:

• The heating system, refurbished over the winter, has been behaving badly again
• The light in the kitchen is being a trickster
• The automatic garage door stopped working
• Three major appliances died
• Our new linoleum began to buckle
• One of the tires on our car got slashed
• Our car battery died, and I couldn’t recharge it, with a new battery charger

None of this is big stuff. It’s ordinary stuff. We have to deal with this kind of stuff, being adults and all. 🙂

I must have been running low on my bandwidth for handling this kind of stuff because I started to lose it. It all began to feel relentless and overwhelming.

But none of that was the real problem. The real problem was that I started to judge myself about it: that I am not handling it well enough or fast enough or with enough equanimity.

Then, perhaps by sheer accident, I began to be nicer to myself about all of it.

I paid attention to, and respected, my energy levels.

I cut myself some slack. I made a list, worked only on one thing at a time, and let the rest go, temporarily.

I changed the self-talk to focus on even minor progress, like making a phone call, or identifying a resource.

In short, I loved myself in all of it, and who knew (!): it all started to feel better, and I started to feel more hopeful and resourceful.

So, if you begin to feel discombobulated, try some plain-old-ordinary self-compassion.