When you’re surrounded by people minimizing your experience - regardless of how well-meaning, unintentional, or indirect it may be - you start to internalize it, question your own feelings, and wonder if you’re wrong, broken, or over-dramatic for feeling that way. This adds a thick layer of shame to an already complicated and challenging mix of emotions. 

What we’re going through is heartbreaking, shocking, overwhelming, and traumatic. I wish I could tell you there was some sort of quick fix to help you feel better, but having lived through job loss and been surrounded by others going through it as well, it’s clear that this is a uniquely complex and painful experience… If nothing else, I hope this helps you to name your feelings a bit more clearly.

It may seem unbelievable that anything of value could come from our hard, awful feelings, but they can carry vital information. Our emotions are signposts and trail markers, giving us crucial data about who we are, and what we need, opening up an opportunity to map a better and more authentic course for our lives.

During the day, you have endless distractions — emails, conversations, tasks, deadlines, commutes. Even if you’re stressed, you’re doing. You’re engaged. You’re in motion.

At night? Everything stops — except your thoughts.

Clients will often feel depressed, and then feel guilty for feeling that way. There’s a touch of this in Haim's tweet. When you're releasing critically acclaimed music, touring the world, and on the guest list for Taylor Swift's Fourth of July parties, depression can feel incongruous, or unearned. In other words, if life looks this good, why should I feel this bad?

So much of grief work is about helping clients deconstruct unhelpful cultural ideas about how we are supposed to grieve. The idea that grief is a process you eventually get through and overcome after x number of predictable, linear steps does little but add shame to the pain grievers are already feeling.

Choosing not to define yourself by the problem but seeing it instead as a thing, person or creature that you struggle or wrestle with can be a powerful paradigm shift. Simply put, the less you see the problem as being part of you, the easier it is to resist.

It might sound simplistic. “Don’t jump to conclusions” has become so cliché that it’s easy to dismiss such advice and believe we aren’t susceptible to it. But the reality is we’re all prone to this thought pattern. When we don’t have all the information we need, our minds use past experiences, beliefs, biases and more to fill in the blanks.