Merging Into Life: Building Emotional Resilience When Life Gets Tough

[00:05:26] Sabrina Pierotti: Why do you think there is so much shame around therapy?

[00:05:33] Vassia Sarantopoulou: So for my from my perspective, I think the projections and biases we carry from the previous generation. I mean, even now my mom doesn’t know what I’m doing. Every time she’s asking me, are you okay with money? Do you want me to send you some money? Because you’re a psychologist. Okay, mom. The value that we put on therapy is different between the generations and that’s one reason of this shame that we carry.

[00:05:57] Sabrina Pierotti: So what would you say to somebody who’s listening that has been considering therapy for a while and they are just for all the concerns and fears and narratives that you just said, that’s the reason that’s holding them back from signing up for therapy. What would you say to that person?

[00:06:17] Vassia Sarantopoulou: Find a format and the person that suits you. You know, because when you’re 40, 50, 60, you don’t want to go to a therapist who is 25. You know, you feel like even life experience is different. So find somebody who is at your own age. Who they know your own struggles. And connection is more important than mental health per se for you. So choose whatever format or person that chooses that you feel more aligned and suits your style. I think that’s the first tip that I would give to them. But also it takes a little bit of discomfort in the beginning because it’s very new. All these self-perceptions, I’m not strong enough, I’m not strong enough, or I’m taking somebody else’s place. Because I’ve heard that also, you know, you have other people who struggle more. I don’t want to take their slot. All this self-abandonment and sacrifice is very much this pattern of this generation.

[00:07:17] Sabrina Pierotti: So I actually had a therapist for the, she was my very first therapist for the first like six months. And we were just not clicking. Like I knew right away I was not really looking forward to going to therapy to see her. Like there were just signs along the way. And then a therapist like literally like popped into my life that was so exactly what I needed.

[00:07:43] Vassia Sarantopoulou: Just because you had one negative experience or not an aligned experience with a therapist, it doesn’t mean that everybody’s like that or every experience that you will have is like that. There’s so many different styles, different therapeutic approaches, modalities, personalities. Every therapist has their own personality.

[00:08:00] Sabrina Pierotti: Now, say somebody finds that perfect therapist and they’re super happy. When it comes to actually healing, it can take a while. So what does it actually look like when you’re in a therapy session?

[00:08:15] Vassia Sarantopoulou: What we do before we get into therapy is automatically we learn or we tend to escape the discomfort. You’re feeling sad, but you don’t want to feel sad, so immediately you call your friends, you go out and party. We think that these are negative feelings. We name them negative feelings, as if they are the bad and we should have the good. But in reality, they’re not negative or positive, they’re just uncomfortable feelings. And what we don’t know is how to sit with them because we feel scared. What if I sit with my sadness? And then I’m going to feel even more sad. However, the price we pay is that this escaping and pushing out of these feelings comes with loss of energy. Like when you push yourself to be happy while you’re really, really sad, that’s double the energy you need in order to go through your day. How can you be happy when you’re grieving, when you just broke up, when you lost a friend? You’re not happy, but you pretend to be happy. Your whole body is putting a performance, and that performance is costing energy. So how to stay with that discomfort? It means, first of all, taking the negative connotation out of this feeling. It’s not bad. It’s not going to make you worse. So first take out the fear of the feelings. And stop pushing and spending the energy that I can change that feeling. What I also explain to my clients is that your feeling comes from inside you. It’s a part of you. So when you say, I don’t want that feeling, actually, it’s like saying you don’t want a part of you. And we don’t do that. We love every part of you. Every single part of you is loved, worthy of love, worthy of attention, worthy of care. You shout at your partner or whatever you’re doing, well, that’s what we need to change, but not your anger. The anger is fantastic. We love it. What we need to do at that moment is to make sure that we’re not stepping into negative assumptions, self-criticism. Oh, I’m lonely. Maybe because I am a terrible friend. Yeah, I mean, if I was a good friend, maybe I would have friends by now, and probably my loneliness says that I am a very unimportant, boring or terrible person. So then that’s a different thing than the loneliness per se. Loneliness is the feeling that says, hey, we need connection. Thank God we have loneliness that send us this message.

[00:11:12] Sabrina Pierotti: And you’ve referred to a loneliness before as the pandemic of our era. What do you think people often misunderstand about loneliness and why do people feel lonely even when they’re physically surrounded by people?

[00:11:27] Vassia Sarantopoulou: So we have feeling lonely and being alone. One is a feeling, the other one is being. And we sometimes misunderstand these two. So the reality though is that you can be surrounded by people and feel lonely. You can be all by yourself and feel very much connected and not lonely at all. That’s the paradox. So it’s about feeling unseen, feeling disconnected. You can be sitting with your partner on the couch, watching a movie, and normally somebody would say, Oh, they’re so connected. But you might feel very, very deeply disconnected and lonely in there, because there’s something in that connection that doesn’t work or hasn’t been working for a long time. So that’s the main misunderstanding about loneliness.

[00:12:22] Sabrina Pierotti: Why is social connection imperative for personal healing? And how can we push through that reluctance to connect when we’re going through a really dark time?

[00:12:32] Vassia Sarantopoulou: I think when we’re going through a dark time, we both need me time and connection time. We do need to stay by ourselves. We need to figure out who we are. Because actually, the first step of recovering or healing from loneliness is not again connection with others, is connection with ourselves first. First, I have to get to know myself, because there are many people who live for decades without knowing who they are. So, first, I have to get to know myself, introduce to myself again, become my best friend, and then I can go out and water all these relationships that I have in my life, start new, or go back, revisit some of the old relationships. We are social beings. We’re wired for connection. We cannot live without connection. It doesn’t mean that we always need a partner. That’s far away from that, but we need to be seen. So we definitely need to be seen to belong in order to have this healthy perspective of life. But especially in, as you said, the dark places of our life, we need both. We need to go and be by ourselves and then go out, meet our friends and then come back. Kind of do do this dual process of in and out, both.

[00:14:04] Sabrina Pierotti: How can we best prepare ourselves for these big life changes without getting swept away by the emotions of everything?

[00:14:13] Vassia Sarantopoulou: We talked about acceptance. So accepting that it’s not going to be glamorous. It’s not going to be smooth. Maybe we will learn new parts of ourselves in there. We’re going to be challenged. That’s part of the game. That’s not a malicious plan, you know, of the universe against us. It’s not. It’s just the human experience. And we just roll with it. So having this reminder, this acceptance, what we said before that maybe there’s a lesson for me to learn there and keep in mind also to be connected with yourself. It can be very overwhelming. So come back to yourself, have a me time, a review time once a week, once a month, or both, where you can say, how was that week? How did I feel? What did I want it to do, but then I didn’t want? I didn’t do it, for example. Keep in touch with your own desires and needs, your own hobbies, your own values. You want to be a better father, for example? Have this review meeting with yourself and be like, oh, what kind of father was I? Why was I not present? Yeah, maybe because too much work, or maybe I’m a perfectionist. I want to do everything perfect. So have this review meeting with with yourself. Journaling helps. Asking for help. And when we get really overwhelmed, our brain goes into fight or flight mode. And in that mode, it convinces us that we don’t have energy for self-care. Your therapist, for example, said, you have to go and walk every day, yeah? That’s important. But then your brain, because you are in a survival mode, will say, Oh, I’m so tired today. Even though you didn’t do anything, you were just sitting the whole day and behind a computer. No, no physical strain, nothing. But it’s the brain because it thinks that we need energy in case things go worse, because we are in the fight or flight. It protects your energy. So don’t listen to your brain and continue with these habits of self-care. That’s your sleep, that’s your diet, your exercise, breath work.

[00:16:32] Sabrina Pierotti: thank you so, so much for sitting with me and chatting with me. I am so glad and grateful for this conversation. Like, I love the society that we’re in where like mental health is a lot more open. However, we still have a lot of work to do in terms of really just normalizing it even more. So, and I have a feeling this episode and this chat together really did wonders in accelerating that. So thank you so much. You are such a joy to talk to.

[00:17:04] Vassia Sarantopoulou: Thank you so much for the invitation. And I have a special gift for your listeners because I know how overthinking can take over. Sometimes and we are just in a loop, ruminating, ruminating, and we cannot stop. So I have just a one pager that they can print and they can have next to them with seven ways to stop overthinking.

[00:17:23] Sabrina Pierotti: Thank you. Oh my gosh. I will definitely be using that, printing it out, putting it on the side of my desk.

[00:17:30] Vassia Sarantopoulou: We all need it. We all need it.

[00:17:32] Sabrina Pierotti: We sure do. Thank you so much, Vassia.

[00:17:34] Vassia Sarantopoulou: Thank you.

[00:17:37] Sabrina Pierotti: We covered a lot today, from identifying what crises look like to learning how to sit with it and sit with those painful emotions. And most importantly, how to move forward with resilience. These are topics that don’t always get space in everyday conversations, but they’re at the core of how we build emotional resilience and move forward when life doesn’t go as planned. If you’re enjoying the show, do us a quick favor. Hit that like button, leave a review, and share it with a friend who’d love it too. It helps more than you know and keeps the good stuff coming your way. Thanks for being part of the ride. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are not necessarily the views of AAA Northeast, AAA, and or its affiliates.