Unvarnished Vulnerability

What do you do when you’re feeling down? When you can’t get yourself going? When you’re feeling out of sorts? When you want to say something funny or clever — like I do here — but you can’t come up with anything worthy of those adjectives?

I’m embarrassed to use this terminology, but I’ve got a case of the Mondays.

It started with an unsettling dream, followed by a dispiriting meditation, in which all my shortcomings bubbled to the surface.

I thought meditation was supposed to help you better manage your troubles, not drown you in them.

By the time I began my commute, my stress headache was — and still is —at the forefront of my mind.

Fortunately, writing every day has forced me to be more introspective, which has helped me develop a repertoire of coping mechanisms to (try to) counteract this type of dejection.

I can get into gratitude, and appreciate the little things, and embrace my struggles, knowing that this morning’s challenges are just a sliver of a much bigger story.

But most importantly, I can show up here, discuss my problems and admit I’m not sure how I’m going to solve them.

Unvarnished vulnerability — what could be more therapeutic than that?

*****

This originally appeared on 100 Naked Words.