And Don’t Forget a Good Chair!

Scenic shot of the beach with waves hitting the rocks.

Effective Strategies, Part 2 - Working from Home.

Last month I wrote about how to do teletherapy successfully.  The timing of that post was so weird, because guess what happened about 10 days after I posted it?  I injured my back.  For two days I couldn’t move at all, the spasms were so bad.  And it took another several days before I could walk around, let alone sit for long periods. It’s not that I did a sudden, physical task or had an accident. It was more gradual. I had a sore spot that gradually worsened until I was bedbound. 

When I finally got to the doctor, he determined that it was probably a herniated disk.  “It’s in the lower lumbar area, and it’s one of the most common areas where we see back issues”, he told me.  He ordered physical therapy to start immediately.  I was only too happy to oblige. I remember feeling so helpless and frustrated.  But I took it slow, day by day, and started to “relearn” how to use my muscles so that I was strengthening my core and not doing more harm. Those days gave me a newfound compassion for people with mobility issues and chronic pain.  I know sometimes it’s all you can do to just be present hour by hour. And this was only for a few days; some people live with this for years.

Looking back, I think it was a combination of factors.  Years of underused core muscles, and then as of March and COVID, working from home and being more sedentary. I really thought at the time that this pandemic was only going to last around 2 or 3 months, tops.  I wasn’t sure what to imagine down the road.  So like many people, I set up a makeshift office at home.  I used two foldout side tables for my desk and a dining room chair to sit on.  It worked, so I didn’t think much more about it. Until it didn’t.  A long drive had me sitting for hours behind the wheel, thereby straining the back muscles even more.  And then, boom, pain.

After starting to recover from the spasms, that chair was excruciating to sit on.  And the tiny tables were getting harder to maneuver. I’d put a book on one, and everything would fall off.  I realized that it did me no good to be vaguely irritated and wish I could be back at the office. I had to make some changes where I was.  So I went out and bought an office chair with good lumbar support, along with a lumbar cushion.  And the difference is night and day. For me, it was an insight into how we might ignore our needs when they seem small. We get busy and we tell ourselves this is good enough for now. 

“If you ignore the signs you get from the universe, it will not just knock on your door, but it will come pounding”, said a life coach to me once, years ago. She wasn’t talking about my back, but a difficult job situation. But I still think the point applies.

I could make this about judgment, telling myself, “stupid me, I should have known”. But that kind of beating myself up doesn’t help. Or, in the parlance of the therapy method I use right now, it’s a wrong indication. It’s not accurate, and it’s not helpful.  I’ll have compassion for the self I was back in March, trying to make the best of an unprecedented situation with this pandemic.  I did the best I knew how to do at the time.  Now, with a different experience and perspective, I opened myself up for a change that I felt I needed.

So I ask you to do the same. What areas of your life have been affected, and are still being affected, if you are working from home during COVID?  Or at least, spending most of your time at home with other family members.  This can make the hard things harder, for sure.  But I try to remember that out of every crisis comes an opportunity.  Crisis makes us open to change. And we might see possibilities, even small ones, that we did not before. What can you change, right now?  What DON’T you have to change?  What do you need to change?

By the way, these are prompts that I sometimes use in my therapy sessions.  I don’t know the answers, and I’m not leading clients to any particular answer or solution.  But the process of thinking about the questions gets people to look at different aspects of an issue, so they can “unlayer” the different parts and come to some sort of resolution.  Trust me, it works.

I could change my chair, first off.  I got a really good one, because I sit in it for so many hours of a day. My body should be well-supported in it.

I could change out those two tiny fold-out tables for a longer, lightweight, foldout table.  I did that. It doesn’t take up so much more space, and the now I have a good table top.

I didn’t need to change the entire room. I didn’t need to change my other work equipment, or go back to the office during COVID.   

I needed to change how I was sitting and what I was sitting on, because that dining room chair was painful.  And pain is our body telling us that something is wrong and needs attention.

If you had asked me back in March – heck, just last month, before I put my back out – if this was all needed, I would have scoffed and said no, I’ll make do.  But I’m not in that place anymore.  Maybe there are some things in your own environment you can tweak for your own self-care. What might it be? 

Is it needing a good office chair?  You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars.  There are ones that are more affordable. Even a cushion with good lumbar support can be found online.  Just ask yourself if you really need to sit on a hard chair with NO support at all. 

If you have severe mobility issues, this is still worth asking yourself. What small thing can you change in your physical and emotional sphere?  And what awareness do you have, while there?  My back injury, as short-lived as it has been, has given me a newfound compassion for people with mobility issues and chronic pain.  Sometimes it’s all you can do to just be present hour by hour.  Did you ever read the book or see the movie, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? I didn’t.  My husband did, though, and he said the book was amazing, so now I’m going to. Along with the movie about the cartoonist, John Callahan, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot.  All about people experiences life with paralysis. And even then, they had acute awareness of their moments, and dare I say, of the effects of the smallest change within their environments, whether imposed by others or themselves.

Whatever it is, once you make that tweak, no matter how small, acknowledge that you did it. Even if you just thought about it.  It’s no small thing!*  And with that, may you have a mindful, self-caring, and compassionate November!

*Note:  Just as I finished writing this, my computer mouse died.  I uttered a few bad words, tried clicking a thousand times, then finally went and got new batteries.  It’s all about the tweaks.