authentic, marriage problems, sexual intimacy struggles, sexual struggles, Uncategorized
I Get Why People Isolate When They’re Struggling
May
I was thinking this morning about the two huge crises going on in my life right now.
My closest friends have been such kind and compassionate sounding boards.
But these two crises are stagnant—the struggle is overwhelming with both, but there is nothing changing about either one. Same story, different day. I wake up exhausted and wanting to go back to bed—before I even get out of bed.
Of course, the repercussions of a pandemic, like social isolating and more time at home, have only made my current life feel more bleak.
I wish I could tell you more about the crises, but I seriously don’t know if I could do it authentically without slighting the main culprits. So I’m going to err on the side of respect. But I will give the below analogies to paint a picture.
One crisis feels like a friend dragged me to a concert, where we have front row seats and I am forced to have music blaring at me that I don’t like. I want to leave, but I can’t. Not only would it be mean to my friend who wants to stay for the entire concert, but my friend is my ride and I can’t realistically find a way out. I love my friend. I can’t stand this concert, though.
The other crisis feels like being stuck on an elevator with annoying elevator music. It’s in the background, but it’s always there. I can’t get away from this low volume, yet ever present, bed of music that is repetitive and tedious and distracting. I hear this music when I wake up and it’s still playing when I go to bed. Trying to ignore it seems to just make it more persistent.
So back to my headline. I get why people isolate when they’re struggling, especially with ongoing challenges that aren’t improving. I’m in no way championing isolation, mind you. We all need safe sounding boards, and I have a few friends who would win gold medals if being a sounding board was an Olympic sport.
I’m simply acknowledging that I understand how isolation happens.
I find myself sick of hearing myself speak about these two situations in my life. Sometimes I simply lose track of which details I have shared. One crisis in particular sounds like it could have only come out of Hollywood—it has that many twists and turns and difficult-to-follow story lines.
I know my closest friends are faithful, though. I know they want to be supportive. Fortunately, they take me where I’m at—whether I want to talk or don’t want to talk. I seriously don’t know what I would do without them.
If you are someone who has been in the midst of a long-suffering struggle for what feels like forever, hear my heart. I get why you isolate at times. My hope is, though, that any isolation you go into doesn’t become your permanent way of coping.
It’s vital that we have a couple of safe confidantes who help make our difficult journeys more bearable. Though my circumstances don’t necessarily change after talking to a safe friend, I do feel heard. And there is something to be said for feeling heard.
For more reading on having a safe confidante, check out this post.
For more reading, you can cruise through my list of past posts, as well as my page with a bunch of posts on orgasm.
Copyright 2020, Julie Sibert. Intimacy in Marriage Blog. Links may be monetized. Never want to miss one of my posts? Subscribe via email on this page. And be sure to join my more than 10,000 followers on my Facebook page and 11,000 followers on Twitter.
Praying for you Julie 🙏🙏❤️❤️
I’m so sorry you’re dealing with so much on top of this pandemic. I pray you have some peace. Sadly, I can relate to both of your analogies.
Oh wow, the needling sound of elevator music, can’t imagine what it would be like being a 1960’s elevator doorman listening to that music 8 hours a day, for 365 days.
I’m praying for both of you Sibert’s to navigate through this or any tunnel of crisis you or he endure.
Any of us that have endured long lasting crisis’s knows their is an emotional toll that is only unique to an individual and if we address it in a way that helps us “make sense” and to avoid over-thinking it, which lessens the stress, we can get a good night sleep. (or at least 4 hours of rem sleep)
Anytime my mind takes me to that former “place” that lead me to sleepless nights, I have to put the mental brakes on, like we do when the light turns yellow so we don’t run a red light.
This mental methodology of putting the brakes on, has worked especially with my spouse, as we are foreseeing and avoiding potential lengthy disagreements which prevents discussions from becoming toxic, but instead we end up emotionally stimulating one another’s mind. It has worked with my wife, kids and in my high stress profession. For my wife (even our adult kids) we have found enough trust with each other’s instincts to say “we agreed not to do this” before voices are elevated or mean things are said, after all we aren’t adversaries.
Outside of health issues, I pray that you can maintain a normal routine, which means getting up when you mentally know you should, but also not feeling bad if you want to sleep in on a Friday or Saturday morning, when that opportunity arises.
(try having a fresh squeezed lemon (down it in shot glass sized cup, with a glass of medium sized glass of water, when you first wake up, it is a possible holistic and very healthy way of finding energy, filled with alkaline to offset the acidity in our diet)
During my time of on-going emotional pain and repetitive crisis (20 years of it) that myself and the one’s I love were going through, I was unable to sleep for sometimes a week at a time, In my early 50’s I began to really focus on God’s loving guidance and it felt as if I could feel the “hole” I was in was being filled one shovel full at a time. It felt like I was tapping each scoop with my feet, when finally the hole was filled to the surface and I was able to walk out and breath fresh air.
What I also am praying for the Sibert’s is for you to have confidence that you and your husband doesn’t have to feel like you have to carry the weight of your burdens or the burdens of other solely on your shoulder’s, that you have a comforter named the Holy Sprit to help carry those burdens.
The one thing that God does give us the ability to do, is to give a soothing love to everyone special in our life, which can comforts them when they too are enduring their own crisis.
Thank you for sharing, because believe it or not this post, is an important reminder for me to continue on focusing on things that really matter the most, one of which is now when I’m at the footsteps of a crisis I endure has actually strengthen the love toward others, but also understanding of the way I think and the way I shouldn’t think. (Before, I tended to magnify a crisis or fabricate one out of thin air, a trait my own mom did nearly everyday)
I hope you are your husband continue to hold each other at night and fall asleep in one another’s arms. With God’s help these crisis will be a little easier to endure.
Don’t forget to buy a bunch of lemons.
Thank you all of you who have been so encouraging. I love the comments shared above and feel uplifted just reading them. Thank you so much!
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