Louise O'Neill: Where is the patience when it comes to our emotional resilience?
Louise O'Neill, author. Photograph Moya Nolan
I’m often asked if I believed in writer’s block. Obviously, I believe in it as a concept — I’m currently trying to come up with an idea for a new book and my mind resembles a Black Hole — but I try not to give it too much credence. Writer’s block, like anything else, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I think of the wonderful Maeve Binchy, and how she said she couldn’t have writer’s block because she had to file a column every week for the Irish Times. If she didn’t write it, there would be a blank space in the paper.
I have been writing this column for almost six years now. I’ve written 300 articles — that’s 300,000 words, approximately three books worth of words. Some weeks, I’m completely at a loss for what I should write about but I push through anyway because there is an editor waiting for me to file my copy.
What I started doing early on in my time as a columnist was keeping a list in my Notes app of possible ideas that interested me, and which might work for a piece.
I was looking through this list recently and saw one I had titled 'What I am learning at the gym', the key point of which was I shouldn’t expect the same standard for myself every day. In the same week, I might have a class where I felt I performed to the best of my ability, followed by another where I struggled to keep up with the person beside me.
This could be due to any number of factors — I was tired, maybe I had my period.
It could be due to what I had eaten that day, or if my legs were still aching from a previous workout.
I was reminded of that idea this week during a kettlebells class. We had been paired off in groups of two, and as we shivered in the cutting wind, I asked my partner which bell she wanted. She opted for the 28kg, I took the 24kg.
“I was using that one before lockdown,” I told her, nodding at the 28kg kettlebell in her hands. “But I’m still lifting around 2-4kg lighter than I was back then.”
She was the same, she said with a shrug. “But we’ll get there.”
I thought about that afterwards, how accepting we both were that we had lost a certain amount of strength because of the disruption to our routine over the past two years. That it seemed almost natural; of course, there would be physical signs left behind, tiny slivers of scars that would take time to heal. We would need time to build that strength back up but if we were patient, it would come.
I wonder why, as a culture, we find it more difficult to think the same way about our mental health? I don’t judge myself for reaching for lighter kettlebells after lockdown, yet I am impatient with my lingering discomfort in social settings, how I back away if someone comes too close to me in the supermarket. I do not feel ready for gigs or festivals or pubs, any event where a large number of people will be congregating.
This isn’t to judge people who are comfortable in those spaces — if you’re fully vaccinated and complying with the regulations, you do you — but to acknowledge that many of us still do not.
Where is the patience when it comes to our emotional resilience?
The understanding that the collective trauma of the last two years — the fear and anxiety, the loneliness and boredom — might have worn away at our usual defences, leaving us feeling vulnerable, weakened, fragile? Our nervous systems have been under attack on a daily basis, it’s only natural that our ability to tolerate certain situations will have decreased. We do not have the bandwidth we might have had two years ago. That is okay.
I wish that we approached our mental health the same way we do our physical health. If you said you wanted to get fit and I recommended you exercise three times a week to achieve that goal, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid.
But if someone says they want to feel happier and I suggest seeing a therapist once a week, they recoil. Why would they need a therapist? they ask, indignantly. They’re not ‘that bad’ and after all, they have their friend/partner/parent to talk to if needs be. Why pay someone for the privilege?
My usual response is that in the same way you can exercise at home for free, many people see better results when they work with a professional. We need the same qualities to enjoy good health, mental or physical — commitment, consistency, and patience. Why will we not allow ourselves that?
What would our lives look like if we reframed the act of taking care of ourselves? That rather than seeing it as a duty or a chore, we do it because it makes us feel good. We are worthy of that.
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