A while back, I had a session with a woman–I’ll call her Susan–who was dealing with some extremely hard challenges. To begin with, she’d had arthritis her whole adult life, and had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia (a painful and often debilitating chronic illness) six years earlier. On top of that, her marriage was rocky, money was tight, and her relationship with the owner of the small company she worked for was very strained. She said she was depressed and exhausted.
When Susan told me her story, it sounded to me like she was fighting a war. I didn’t try to minimize the difficulties she faced. I told her that I completely understood why she felt depressed and exhausted.
You might think that telling her how bad her life was would make her even more depressed. It didn’t. Instead it did the opposite. When she fully let in the circumstances of her life, she stopped feeling bad about feeling bad – and a space opened up to look at steps she could start taking to make her life better. By the end of our call, Susan told me she couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so hopeful. Susan wasn’t able to afford my coaching. But she did take steps to improve her life. Acknowledging that things suck really can be a good thing.
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