As your insurance agent, I get to know you.  Today, I’m using this blog post to allow you to get to know me. 

I recently attended an online event as part of the United Way of Southwestern PA Bridges Society.  The event included breakout sessions focused on mental health & wellness, financial planning, and professional development. 

In one session, this article was mentioned: 

Your ‘Surge Capacity’ Is Depleted - It’s Why You Feel Awful

It was the end of the world as we knew it, and I felt fine. That’s almost exactly what I told my psychiatrist at my March 16 appointment, a few days after our children’s school district extended spring break because of the coronavirus.

I later read it, and it really resonated with me.

Surge capacity is a collection of adaptive systems — mental and physical — that humans draw on for short-term survival in acutely stressful situations, such as natural disasters.

Many of us have faced overwhelming difficulties this calendar year, from health to finances to society concerns – all things that are so vitally important to all of us, but that we have so little direct control over.

In the article Pauline Boss, PhD, states, “Our culture is very solution-oriented, which is a good way of thinking for many things,” she says. “It’s partly responsible for getting a man on the moon and a rover on Mars and all the things we’ve done in this country that are wonderful. But it’s a very destructive way of thinking when you’re faced with a problem that has no solution, at least for a while.”

I’m admittedly “Type A”.  What I’m working on now is acceptance.  Accepting that I need more sleep.  Accepting that I cannot function at full capacity, much as I wish that I could.

Overall, I think Haelle’s article is incredible, and I encourage you to read it.