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Holly Hoffman is using Brazen Careerist to share ideas. Join now to become a member and start networking with Holly Hoffman and other professionals just like you. Learn more.
It seems to be the nature of life that every now and then we are handed more than we think we can handle. Whether it’s one big thing or several small ones stacking up, everybody reaches their breaking point at some time or another. In those moments, we often just don’t know what to do with ourselves. We’re overwhelmed with emotion, with the weight of so much to deal with at once.
We know that eventually this will all pass, that the emotions will subside given time, but what is to be done right now? Isn’t there anything that can be done immediately?
The past few weeks have been difficult for me. I’m going through a break-up, my company laid off 10 percent of our workforce, and I’m oh-so impatiently awaiting medical test results. It seems like when it rains, it pours.
I’m doing everything there is to do – I keep myself busy, surround myself with friends and loved ones, try to extract what I’ve learned about myself, journal, pour myself into work and imagine a bright future. But I have too many moments when I just can’t do anything but burst into tears. The heartbreak is too great; the weight of everything is too much.
I went through very similar emotions when I first got sober. It was all so overwhelming, and when the loneliness became too much to bear I turned to a story a mentor told me. (Everything good I know I learned from someone much wiser than me!)
When she was having a particularly difficult time, she called her mentor and asked her what she ought to do. She was hysterical and went on and on about what she ought to do.
The woman on the other end of the line asked her calmly, “Are your dishes done?”
“What?” the distraught woman asked.
“Are your dishes clean?” the other woman repeated.
“No.”
“Go do your dishes and call me when you’ve finished.” She hung up the phone.
The woman did her dishes and called her mentor back.
“Do you feel better?” the woman asked.
“No,” the distraught woman replied.
“Is your laundry done?” the woman asked.
“No.”
“Go do your laundry and call me when you’ve finished.” She hung up the phone.
This went on for half the day. She did her dishes and laundry, swept and mopped, and dusted. At the end of it, the distraught woman looked around her clean house, finally calm.
The point? Sometimes there’s nothing that can be, or even should be done about the pain in our lives. Someone recently told me, “Holly, the only way is through.” Another wise person once told me that sometimes you just have to stand. There’s nothing to be done about the pain in our lives but to endure it until it passes.
None of us want to experience pain; it’s part of our biological make-up. We avoid pain because it is unpleasant. It is sometimes necessary, however, in order to grow. It’s been my experience that periods of pain directly precede periods of growth. There’s a correlation there. When we avoid it, when we try to cover it up, we often go too far. We’ll develop hardened hearts, character disorders, neuroses, or addictions.
When we can’t do anything to make the pain in our lives dissipate or even pass more quickly, the best thing we can do is to focus on what we can control – our physical environment. I sat in my ridiculously messy car yesterday and decided it was time to clean it. You see, I can’t do anything to fix my emotional messes right now. I have to go through them. But I need to do something, and what I can do is make my environment clean, calm and put-together, even if the rest of me isn’t.
“Doing the spiritual dishes,” as my friend calls it, is a way to distract us temporarily from discomfort and pain, as well as to improve our physical environment. A clean home or apartment will lend some much needed calm to a disquieted mind, whereas a disheveled physical environment will feed negatively into an already chaotic mental environment.
How do you get through the tough periods in life? What are your “spiritual dishes?”
Holly, I appreciate how heartfelt this post is, but it also made me smile. It was my husband who first pointed out to me that this is exactly my coping strategy. He says he can gauge the degree of my "upset" based on how much I've cleaned/straightened. Just the linen closet? It might have already passed. Linen closet and medicine cabinet? Hmmm. Might be more serious. But, he says, when he sees me attacking the attic, he's knows it's a big one.
Doesn't say much for my own ability to announce my own feelings, but it is a testament that controlling the things we can is a great strategy for serenity if it helps us accept the things we cannot control. Thanks for the post. Reinforces my attitude of gratitude when I read posts like this.
Yup, "heartfelt" seems to be your currency of choice. Here is a challenge: write a post wherein you in no way, whether directly or by allusion, refer to being a former alcoholic, getting sober, living as a recovering alcoholic.
Everyone gets it. You drank too much. You got over it. Both at a young age. Stop trying to make this interesting. It is not.
@Kathleen: Yes, I've heard about you folks, the ones who come by this cleaning coping mechanism naturally. ;) That's not me, unfortunately. I'm a naturally messy person, so it always surprises me how much it helps me to reverse my "natural" state of messiness for a more ordered one. Maybe that's another reason it works so well for me - it's like rearranging the furniture and reclaiming my space. Thanks for the comment!
@Cameron: Feel free to not read my blog.
Wow! What a mature and measured response! Not.
There I was thinking your blog was about self-improvement (or some similarly fashionable buzzword), when really it is about eliciting responses only from people who agree with you and are daily astonished at your whimsy and sagacity.
I hope as a drunk you were at least more fun.
Clean, scrub, sweep, mop, and sometimes I bake....which creates another mess to be cleaned again as well a treat to share.
I've been doing these things since I was a kid and coping with an alcoholic household. Now when my husband sees me coming with the broom mid-week, he knows to stay out of the way and I'll talk about it later.
Only downside- it tends to get a little messy around here when we are both happy, content and all seems right with the world. But that, like the New England weather, is sure to change, too.
@Cameron: Was your direct attack on her ongoing struggle with a serious problem any more mature? Why should she leave out something that so obviously colors much of her experiences and actions?
@Cameron: Yes, your "not" was very mature as well. Look, I'm not trying to be rude, but why do you read a blog you don't like and take time to leave rude comments? Why don't you just not read it, not comment, and do something else with that time? I have 4,000 readers every month who enjoy my content. I never considered "heartfelt" a negative, so I disagree with you. Please go write your own "interesting" blog instead of leaving comments on ones you don't like. Btw, nice attacking someone's sobriety. A sure sign of your superior intellect.
@Melissa: I like the baking, then cleaning idea! I'll steal that one. And that's the kind of messiness I can welcome - a happy one. ;)
@Cameron something tells me you don't have any direct experience with being an alcoholic. Given that, you'd have no idea how alcoholism affects every facets of one's life, both before and after getting sober. As such, Holly's inference to her alcoholism is extremely relevant, esp. when discussing interpersonal relationships with family, friends, and romantic partners. Frankly, I'm not sure how she'd be able to write about certain topics WITHOUT at least subtly mentioning it.
Now, I could go through and list numerous links from her blog that make to reference to alcohol whatsoever, but I don't believe that's the point here. You made no attempt to comment on her writing, only to criticize a component of her life. So what, pray tell, are you looking for in Holly's writing?
A little off the subject of the post, but let's all read about comment trolls, shall we? http://thebloggess.com/?p=634
@Holly - I am not a comment troll, I was just trying to express a different view in a sea of homogenous views and everyone always agreeing. For the record, I do not read your blog, but came across your article on BC, which I had (perhaps incorrectly) thought was a forum for people expressing different ideas on a topic.
Having reread what I said, I can see it was expressed in an overly harsh manner, and if it was hurtful or rude, that was not my intention, and I apologise. As I said, I was trying to express (I now see unsuccessfully) an alternate view, basically trying to ask why everything in your writing (at least in my limited experience of it, which includes quite a few articles on the frontpage of BC) has to relate back to alcoholism? Having dealt with addiction myself (who hasn't in some or other form), I had always been led to believe that one should not be defined by one's past problems/addictions, and your writing seems to reinforce this vision of yourself, and in essence, you often seem to define yourself by this trait/experience, where the rest of your writing often implies you are much more than this (a recovering alcoholic).
Anyway, I will stop now, because I'm sure this will get me further attacks.
As you were.
@Cameron:
"Stop trying to make this interesting. It is not."
"I hope as a drunk you were at least more fun."
These are not the words of "trying to express an alternate view."
An alternate view would be something along the lines of, "I think busying ourselves with work is just a way to avoid pain and while it might get your house cleaner, the problem still remains until you really learn to deal with it." That is an alternate view.
I am conscious of the fact that I bring up my sobriety often. I have 19 months sober. That's not very long, and so yes, it does permeate pretty much every facet of my life, as Norcross said above. I'm aware that it could turn off certain readers. If me living my life in the open as honestly and candidly as possible as a 20-something in recovery helps just one person, I'm OK with losing thousands of readers.
That said, this post had one sentence about my recovery in it. ONE. And it was to let the reader know how I came across the advice I was about to pass along.
In short, I always enjoy a good point-counterpoint. That's not what you offered, though.
Holly, give Cameron a break. He apologized. We are all quick to thought, quicker to comment sometimes. Often, it's just better to let it go than to push the conflict further.
Also, it's impossible to stay angry when you're smiling - :)
@Rebecca - Ehh... she has right to call him out. When people try to back out of what they originally say with comments like, "I was just trying to have a different view..." that's bull. He offered no apology, he just tried to get out of the hole he dug himself with mean spirited, character attacking comments. And just to point out myself, no one has actually "attacked" Cameron like he stated as we have no clue who he is and nothing was directed at him except for saying the comment he made was nothing more than rude and thoughtless flame bait.
Can spiritual dishes involve relationships, too? Sometimes I feel like getting closure on a high tension relation is almost as gratifying as seeing an empty sink.
I recently got facebook scammed, and the spammer was able to use my profile to post a spam link on my friends' walls. Of course, one of the victims had to be a slightly bitter ex of mine. It felt like the Internet was trying to tell me something. Haven't acted on it yet, but we'll see how many cosmic kicks in the butt I can take.
And to hop in the melee, Holly, I thought your initial response was a great one-liner and perfect response.
Holly, great post! Although, my comment is off point from the main topic of this post, it saddens me that someone would spend their precious time leaving comments knowing very well they aren't adding to the conversation whatsoever.
Ironically, you commented on this post but just in case, here it is: (Not that you need it!) http://gurugilbert.com/2008/11/05/i-bet-you-think-this-post-is-about-you/
Nice post, Holly! There really is some sort of self-therapy involved in these types of "cleansing" rituals when you're trying to get your mind off something particularly depressing. Besides forcing us to focus on something completely unrelated to whatever is bothering us, I think the process of straightening things up and cleaning things off gives us a sense of literally "wiping the plate clean" - we can rub off the mess and start with a clean blank state! That is particularly encouraging when we're not feeling so great about ourselves.
P.S - Love the title of the post. Spiritual dishes definitely need cleaning too!
I actually agree with Cameron 100%. I have read Brazeen off and on for the past 9 months now, and have felt the BEST blogs are ones with a career focus. Consistently bringing up Alcoholism, and blaming a "choice" of to deal with stress as a "disease" turns this webpage into a "child" like blog.
Yes, readers want to connect with bloggers on some sort of personal level. A blogger does not have to redundantly bring up a sole source of pain over and over again. Considered a "Gen Y", I would prefer to have the forum more generalized. Save the "personal" heartaches for your personal blog...not a quasi-professional blog. Your writing is a direct representation of the professionalism and maturity of the Gen Y community. I suggest kindly to reflect deep and long on how well you represent the professional side of your peers on this blog.
You can represent yourself in whatever means you wish on the personal one. Here, readers are looking for professional insight...not a diary.
We are the sum of our experiences and how we process them.
Holly is, and always will be, someone who grappled/grapples with alcohol. It is a part of the sum of who she is, and always will be. Get over it.
None of us sees life through an identical lens. Nor do we see our careers, our businesses, or our professional selves through an identical lens. Our individual experiences lend subtle differences to the way we conduct our individual businesses, and our individual selves.
This means everyone has a unique perspective to share - and a unique perspective for others to learn from.
We also have choices: If you don't like the perspective of another - if it is not valuable to you or is offensive to you - you are free to go elsewhere. You are free to seek advice, opinions, and perspectives that mirror yours.
But to DEMAND that someone separate her life experiences in a way that YOU decide is more appropriate for YOU - while you're sucking up her free wisdom?
That takes some nerve. And an astonishing level of self-absorption.
Newsflash: It's NOT all about YOU.
If you don't like how Holly expresses herself - quit bitching and go elsewhere. And leave the rest of us to enjoy her writing in peace.
@Sophie, @Cameron, @ all the haters:
WorkLoveLife *is* Holly's personal site. Brazen Careerist simply republishes our personal content from our *personal* sites. What we write is *our* business and it's our property. Holly owns it and can write about whatever the hell she wants! ;)
Keep up the good work Holly!
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