When Adulting is Hard

Today, I couldn’t remember my phone number.  I spent the morning doing errands from home, and was contacting customer service of one company to arrange for a return.  I was asked all sorts of identifying questions.  I went blank on my own phone number. 

This reminded me of a woman I knew, who I will call Jane, who confided, when she was applying for legal aid, her mind went blank, and she struggled to remember basic identifying information, like her phone number.  Shame hit Jane hard – it was hard enough to accept that she needed Legal Aid to protect herself from her narcissistic ex, but for her to struggle with the application so badly was too much*.

So many of the things we consider basic adulting force us to face our wounds, triggering our physiological stress reactions.  The voices that tell us that we don’t work hard enough, we aren’t worth enough, we need much more money to fix all of our issues, but we need to be more before we can earn more…ugh, it hurts just writing about it.  I’ve checked social media three times and taken twenty pictures of my cats since starting this paragraph.  In these applications we can feel the echoes of the authoritarians of our youth who demanded that they had more power, that we needed their permission and their approval and that we only saw and felt what they saw and felt. 

What would make these situations healthful or even healing is to be met with a gentle, accepting other who witnesses and supports, who sees their role as making the process as easy as possible.  Can you imagine a medical receptionist who took a second to acknowledge how scared you must feel to be calling and asking for a same day appointment and guided you on your options when she didn’t have one to offer?  Could you imagine a customer service representative that was apologetic that their product didn’t live up to your needs and acknowledged that now you’re obliged to give time to a product you’ll never use.  Could you imagine – well, I can’t imagine what it would take for my bank app to feel like it saw just how stressful making ends meet could be after having ex’s steal from me and bosses not pay. 

And so many times, we face the opposite – we have to navigate digital systems often not tested for their user-friendliness and designed for a clean minimalist feel.  If we are “fortunate” enough to reach a human voice, it is likely someone underpaid, working in a crowded call center, who doesn’t have any support for how much pain they hear every single day.  They are rewarded for efficiency, meaning they are not free to listen and rather need to make the interaction as brief as possible. 

Of course, we’re going to procrastinate, get lost in our social media and leave things until completely unavoidable.  Of course, when we finally get started, we get overwhelmed with stress responses. 

It isn’t just you.  Adulting is hard.

But, there’s two things you can do to make it a little less hard and get that thing done. 

First, acknowledge how hard this is and that you can do hard things. Acknowledge how these physiological reactions aren’t very helpful right now, but at one point in time, they kept you safe enough to be here.  With time and support, you can teach your body new reactions, but right now, we kind of have to just push through.  Acknowledge that it may not go as it would if you were properly supported in the ways you deserve, but it will not always be like this either.  And finally, acknowledge that every moment has infinite potential.  Our wildest imagination cannot predict all the possibilities.  It may not go well, but you may be met with a miracle. 

Another very helpful thing is to have an accountability friend who can compassionately check in and see,  “did you get that hard thing done?” through a text or phone call.  Or have a kind loving presence (a friend, a pet, a teddy bear, or me – this is a service I offer my clients) sit with you, either in person, online or in your heart, while you do that hard thing.  These types of connections can help soften the hard wiring of those physiological stress reactions. 

If adulting is always hard, do know that support is available.  To learn about my work, please have a look at my “working with me” page. 

*To protect people’s privacy, when I tell stories of people other than me, I will always use the name Jane.  I also change the details of the stories such that I share the essence without giving away any identifying information of the real people involved.