How to Stay Calm in the Midst of External Overwhelm
by Cindy Kludt

The financial crisis is on every news channel, every radio station, every newspaper. How is all of this affecting you?


I listen and think I'm not reacting, but then when I'm alone, or when I'm writing checks to pay bills, or when a client cancels for some reason, I get caught up in the fear.


All the "what ifs" start coming into my mind. What if there's another Great Depression? What if we can't pay our bills? What if our kids can't finish college? What if we have a big medical bill we can't pay?


"Okay," I say to myself, "Get a grip."


I relax and allow myself to connect with what's really happening with me and around me. What's really going on is that in a very short period of time, we have lost our feeling of basic security. We feel that we might not be able to provide food, clothing and housing for ourselves and our families. We see the evidence in the news--people losing their homes, seniors sleeping in their cars.


This is a tremendous national loss, and most everyone in our country (and this is global also) is reacting with some kind of grief reaction. Fear, anxiety, physical symptoms, not being able to sleep, over eating, low energy, and sadness are just a few of these symptoms.


When you add this loss on top of other loses from your distant or recent past, you could feel overwhelmed with it.


Do I get upset? Yes. Do I start worrying and telling my self how bad it is? Yes. Do I get any of the symptoms I listed above? Yes.


Then why am I trying to tell you how to stay calm in the midst of all of this?


The key here is to allow yourself to be where you are. This is the first step. DO NOT resist. When we resist, we hurt ourselves (I know I'm beginning to sound like a broken record). But, the truth is that it's not what's happening to us, it's our resistance to what's happening to us that causes us the most suffering.


Think about it. I sit down to pay my bills, as most of you do. I see that I've spent more money on groceries this month, and in fact, have exceeded my budget for food. I then see that my stocks have gone way down and when I watch or listen to the news, it looks like there is no end in sight. I hear talk of depression, Wall Street crashing!


WOW, no wonder I start to feel fear, I may even panic a bit. As I continue to go about my day, I turn on the radio to find out how much my stocks are really going down, and I ask if I should sell everything too, or try and get a little cash out in case I can't buy food tomorrow.


Do you see where this is going? My heart rate speeds up, I can't fall asleep at night, I wake up in the middle of the night worrying.


What am I doing? I'm resisting. I'm taking the reality of what's happening and I'm fighting it. I keep listening to the news, I ponder and worry about selling my stocks, I get paralyzed with so much worry that I feel sick to my stomach and my sleep is interrupted, etc.

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