Hazel,

It sounds like you have stress fatigue, bordering on burnout. What are your self nurturing habits like? If you’re breathing in a bunch of negative energy at work, are you ever breathing it out? Finding home? Sometimes, when we are stressed, we try to avoid ourselves, diving into distractions, such as TV, novels, FB, alcohol, sex. This is like taking aspirin for a dehydration headache. The pain may subside, but its drinking water that’s really needed. Distractions ease the stress a little, but we really need time and space to unwind, rather than jump to a new story.

Consider trying a metta meditation practice. Sometimes when we work in stressful environments, such as customer service, the overburden leaves us thinking a lot about ourselves. How we feel, how our pain feels, how other make us feel. This leaves us vulnerable to a lot of extra pain. If we can turn this focus around, from the inside to a balance of inside and outside, it becomes much simpler, smoother. Said differently, sometimes when we experience mental pain, our brain grabs onto stuff, “work” “that last caller” “household” and cycles around it. This uses up our precious concentration, mental energy. Metta, or the feeling of loving kindness, helps open the mind back up, helps it become peaceful and smooth. That’s when we can see the path in front of us, and if we don’t like what we see, dream a better dream. Otherwise we are often too pinbally brained to see two feet in front of us. Consider “Sharon Salzburg guided metta meditation” on YouTube, if interested. Or, have more tub time, recruit your partner to give you lots of tender attention, take walks in nature… things that help remind you how beautiful life really is, how precious.

When we’re buoyant, building our dream is much simpler. If we overlook this critical piece, tending our gentle bodies, getting a new job doesn’t help us. It ends up looking the same… inner fire burning low turns even the prettiest gardens into shadow and fear. Stress fatigue turns even our dream job into a grind.

Finally, sometimes our pain feels eternal, such as “I’m stuck now, in pain now, so therefore this is how I’ll be forever.” Pain is really good at drawing our attention like that. With physical pain, it stops as the body heals. With emotional pain, it stops when the body heals. We just have to do the work, breathe and find peace with what is. That’s when the pain fades, the “eternal suffering” seen for its genuine, impermanent quality. Call Center, plus Unemployed partner, plus poor self nurturing patterns, plus the “eternally stuck” fear… equals hopelessness. Remove, change, or shift any of the pieces, and the whole of your point of view can change. If you let it. Let it!

With warmth,
Matt