THE LANDING

As I do most days when I am out walking, I was listening to a podcast. Yesterday, I listened to an episode of We Can Do Hard Things, Glennon Doyle’s podcast. She was discussing her challenges with mental health and described where she was in her life and with her recovery, as being on a landing. And she indicated that she has been on the landing for months. It got me thinking about “the landing” metaphorically and literally and what that means when we think about change. The landing is a pause, a place to be still before beginning the climb up - or the stumble down. The landing part of change - or lack thereof - is one of the most pivotal parts of change. If we stay there long enough to listen to the stillness within ourselves, we will hear the quieting of thinking and maybe a calming of feelings. It lets us see and feel the fear of the unknown as well the fear of staying the same. Stay here, and keep doing the same and being the same, “same as it ever was” as the Talking Heads sing, or start taking the climb upward, even if staring at the first step for a while is all that we are capable of at the moment. Making the decision to give in to the fear and not change when we know that our current state of being is painful and frustrating can be a push off of the landing on a downward spiral. Relapses with addiction happen this way, as does anger at ourselves or others that blind us to the possibility of hope, keeping us moving away, off of our landing, a distance from where we would really like to be.

My clients often hear me tell them to “practice the pause” That moment we stop and take note of our feelings and how they are being inflamed by our ruminating thoughts. The pause allows us to observe and feel, and then to use reframed and refocused thoughts to take the inflammation down a notch- not deny the feelings - but to look at them with a rational and gentle perspective while continuing to feel. And this pause can also be a mini landing. That place to reset and to begin the climb toward feeling better. The landing can be the moment when we observe and gather strength or we observe and give in to the pain.

The landing is often what brings clients to therapy. The pain of staying stuck is greater than the fear of changing. Once that decision is made, they learn, as do I in being with them, that a mini landing on some of the steps is necessary to let things stick, to pause and observe, and to find grounding in the healing power of that landing spot before taking the next step toward a goal.

What does your landing mean to you? Is it a place of respite and reset? Or is it noisy and uncomfortable that keeps you stuck or moving downward? Maybe you haven’t thought about having one. I recommend taking a pause to see what your landing feels like. Are you looking upward at the steps toward growth or are you content in the "same as it ever was"…….