This past month we’ve been inundated with images of hurricane damage that’s left so many people with demolished homes and the loss of all their belongings.  We can feel the overwhelm, even while sitting safely in our homes miles and miles from the devastation.  Our hearts are so moved as we watch, because even if we’ve never even experienced a hurricane before, we all know what it’s like to face a loss or a crisis that knocks us off our feet and leaves us feeling like we’ll never be able to get up again.  Sometimes the situation hits quickly, like the forceful winds, and sometimes it’s like the flooding, a slow build up over time, layering its impact little by little.  But what is common is the feeling of paralysis, that our life as we knew it has been so lost, we have no idea how to find a way back.

This situation is what brings a lot of people into the clinic where I work.  But even then, in telling their stories, people have little hope that anything can be of help.  It’s usually a friend or a loved one who sends them to us, because they’re worried about the person’s depression or have been worn down by helplessly watching a person they care about suffer.  I must admit, in the face of some tragedies, I, too, feel an initial panic of how to help someone in what seems like an impossible situation.  I can so empathize with the lack of control they experience, that it seems hard to imagine any way out.  

But then I remind myself we don’t have to deal with everything at once.  And just because we FEEL a complete loss of control, there are still things we can indeed control.  (I remind myself of the wise writer and neurologist Victor Frankl, and how he kept his sense of personal freedom while a prisoner in a concentration camp).  Starting with the simplest of things, as tiny or as insignificant as it may seem, we can always find one thing we can do.  “But that is so very little,” people say, and I encourage them not worry about it, and just do the little thing they can.  For the point I know from my training and experience is, it’s not the thing you do that matters.  It’s the fact that you did something.  And this small thing will give you the confidence to do one more small thing and then maybe another, until the momentum picks up and you feel a little more in control again.

With some people it helps to actually make lists.  I have two columns, one with “Things I CAN”T Control” and one with “Things I CAN Control.”  I ask them to start thinking of what goes in each category.  At first the “Can’t” list fills up quickly, with items big and daunting.  But then they think of a few very little things that go on the “CAN” control list, such as what they eat or who they talk to.  As this list develops, the next step is to make it concrete.  What exactly will you you eat, or who in particular will you call to talk with.  I ask them to just pick one thing and go ahead and do it.  Even with the simplest of activities, such as taking a shower, borrowing someone’s car, or going to the library, a path is created that moves someone forward and life begins to be lived again.

It really rings true that every journey begins with a small step.  And after a while of doing a very small thing after a very small thing, you can start to see a difference between where you have been and where you are now.  Of course there are setbacks and bad days, and life will never be the same as it was before the loss, but the sense of agency can return and with it a vision for a new way of being in the world.  As one person I worked with told me, when she felt her life was crashing around her, “my “I CAN” list is my escape route.”

Victor Frankl quotes:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”