What to do with your big feels right now
What a time to be alive and hooked up to an endless stream of by-the-minute updates.
Has there ever been a more potent combination of real world events and live reporting?
These are super-charged times friends. If you feel like you’re on your tenth coffee already today, it ain’t just you. . .
Heads up. This is a no-news space. We’ll take a break here from the million practical concerns I'm sure you are grappling with as much as we are.
Instead I want to talk about the bit we may actually be able to help with, a least a little. The feelings.
For most of our readers, spiralling dread and anxiety is kind of the norm, even when the world isn't losing its shit.
So what do we do with our big feelings at a time like this?
Checking in
I took my home-made coffee for a little walk this morning, up the forest trail by my house. There were smatterings of other humans, observing a wide berth around each other.
The default etiquette here seems to be eyes down, no interaction as you shuffle past.
To be clear, this is my default too. For years I have agonised over whether my unwillingness to say hello to passing strangers is a fundamental character flaw. But in a world that’s gone suddenly introverted, I am apparently free to test out other approaches.
Sitting on a bench overlooking the creek, the fourth or fifth person to pass was a man whose wee pooch broke the distance between us by sniffing in my direction. I asked him, ‘how are you?’
He stopped, appeared to genuinely think about it, and answered, ‘I’m okay. You?’
‘I’m okay too,’ I said, realising as I said it that I really meant it (at least in that moment).
And something in that simple exchange brought tears to my eyes. The unexpected sincerity. The simple acknowledgement: now is a time to ask strangers how they are and to look for an honest answer.
“How are you really?”
I suspect you’ve asked that question a lot this last week - ‘how are you?’ Of your friends and family. Of colleagues you didn’t realise you felt so tenderly about until faced with such rising shared uncertainty.
I suspect you’ve been asked it too - and not known quite what to say.
We’re used to fudging our answer to that question.
When you’re someone who is sad or scared at the best of times, you learn to dodge ‘how are you’. You deflect.
It’s an art form really.
The bits you’re not sure how to be honest about…
There are many parts of this experience I find it easy to be honest about.
That for instance, right now I can’t really focus on work. That I’m scared - particularly for my parents, my family scattered around the world, my family with lowered immunity, my friends who work in healthcare. That I’m worried about money.
That I’m tense, and anxious, and sad.
These are the easy feelings to name when I’m asked that question (‘how are you?’) outside a brief moment of peace on the forest trail.
But there are less noble feelings too. Because this situation is pushing my own buttons in some fairly spectacular ways.
My well-honed health anxieties, that have found a whole new gear.
My need for structure, and the fear of losing my finely-crafted routine, curated over years to have just the right amount of social interaction each week to stop me tipping over into Doom Town.
These concerns are harder to share with other people because they feel so much more selfish.
There’s the fear we feel right now, that ultimately brings us closer. Our shared concern. And then there’s the more personal stuff - the foibles and unique challenges of being you, that don’t go away just because there’s bigger stuff going on.
So, we’re making a space for sensitive cats to explore the stuff that’s harder to name
We want to make a space where you can work through that harder-to-be-honest-about stuff, in the company of other people that get it.
What are the unique challenges of being a sensitive cat at a time like this?
What lessons can we collectively draw on from years of dealing with our own catastrophic thinking, to help us in a time of real world catastrophe?
We’ll do this here in the newsletter, and we’re also ramping up the podcast.
I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t look away from this stuff. That’s probably a useful trait - it means I stay informed - but it’s also overwhelming.
The podcast is somewhere you can go to hear us talk about the emotional reality of what’s happening right now, without adding any further scary news into the mix. No news, just feelings!
The first of these special episodes is up now: 'Being (and Dating) a Germaphobe in a Pandemic'
Honor and I talk through what happens when you and your partner have different ideas about how to practice social distancing... from one another... when you share a bedroom.
What do you do when one of you has major health phobias, convinced every possible surface in the house needs disinfecting by the minute, and the other is a (relatively) more chill bean?
Click that pink button to listen now . Or search ‘big feels club’ in your podcast player and hit subscribe. You want episode #004, the latest one - 'Being (and Dating) a Germaphobe in a Pandemic'.
Tell us what you’re wrestling with right now
How does what's happening push your particular buttons in ways you can’t quite explain? How are you dealing with that?
Send your thoughts or questions through to us (hit reply to this email), and we’ll do our best to explore them in future newsletters and podcasts.
And thanks to those of you who kicked things off by sharing in the Patreon post from last week! Appreciate ya.
p.s. Bonus reading for those of y’all who are glued to your screens
If you’re having trouble putting your phone down right now to take a break from the news, here’s a little piece I wrote for ABC recently, before the pandemic took over the news.
Full disclosure: I’m hardly practicing what I preached in that article now that the world has changed. But I am still trying to at least be more mindful of how those Twitter deep-dives are affecting me.
My latest trick: no Twitter or news until after midday each day. You can bet I’m diving right in as soon as my clock strikes 12, but if I make it all morning without cheating, it’s a big win.
Stay safe people. You'll hear from us again soon.
