As I listen to my wife talking to her sister over the phone and helping her with her depression, I noticed the stress and strain it started to take on me, too. The final straw was opening up a credit card bill and seeing an item that I paid still on the bill and service that I canceled put through even though they said they would not do so.
I’m sure you have your version of trying to cope during this time.
When we’re in an immediate crisis, we tend to feel overwhelmed. It’s one thing too many that takes us over the edge and gets her heart racing, our body tightening up in her blood pressure go off the charts.
What can you do?
Nothing is easy and it takes time but try doing what I’m doing now take a deeper and exhale slowly.
However long you breathe in deeply, double the amount of time you breathe out slowly.
Get your emotions under control and your head in the game again.
The trigger for me that makes me strained and stressed is a time earlier in life where he eventually went bankrupt in the memory of my wife at that time and I being financially out-of-control. We spent far more than I earned that took us to the brink and eventually across it.
Thus I see a credit card bill where I’ve made a payment, my bank recognizes the funds were taken out of the account and sent to the other bank and that has not posted, my fear takes me to the ceiling. My mind knows I paid the bill but I hate seeing interest charges let alone having to pay them.
I feel the strain around my heart and need to relax myself so I can deal with the immediate situation.
Depression brings it to a whole another level. My wife is going to travel and do an intervention to help her sister. She has made some progress but her circumstances go far beyond “strain.”
For me, a strain is like a low-grade fever that brings damage to a situation and a person. Although almost everyone has learned to admirably handle our current Covid times, handling something is an indication that we are doing something out of our comfort zone. We have been doing that for close to a year.
Hopefully, we are at the tail end of this.
Hopefully, it will not be long before we returned to the way things were before which will carry a different form of strain.
A strain is an indication that we are doing something uncomfortable or are being forced to deal with something uncomfortable for us. Like a muscle that has been made to exert itself more than I was prepared to, we are emotionally strained by the new situation.
The world is feeling strained.
Politicians think they are helping but they are not dealing with the emotional characteristics of the strain. They are ignoring the pressure people feel by being strained during the circumstances.
People in your workplace or experiencing the same thing.
Help them.
Ⓒ The Big Game Hunter, Inc., Asheville, NC 2020
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a career and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for more than 40 years. He is the 
host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with more than 2000 episodes, and is a member of The Forbes Coaches Council.
If you have a quick question for me, you can get it answered with a 3–5 minute video. Want to do it live?
Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Please click here to see my schedule to book a free discovery call or schedule time for coaching.
