Setbacks & Comebacks
If you look up the definition of a setback, you’ll notice the synonyms are listed as: problem, difficulty, upset, disappointment, misfortune, and reversal. No wonder we struggle with setbacks!
So, right there, not a single positive association with the word “setback,” which would explain the despair many of us feel when we encounter them. Additionally, notice the synonym, “reversal.” Webster’s Dictionary may define it this way, but this is incredibly misleading.
Listen, setbacks can be physically and emotionally uncomfortable, no doubt about that. But I am convinced it is our negative perception of setbacks that allows them to drag us in the opposite direction of where we want to go.
A setback is NOT a "reversal" of progress. Rather, it is merely a temporary slowing down, a reset. To suggest that a setback reverses progress and hard work is terribly critical, disheartening, and feeds the false idea that a setback is bad. News flash: There is no such thing as a continual stream of perfect progress. The road to success is filled with detours, stalls, and setbacks.
Yet so many of us fall into pits of hopelessness when we experience a setback.
“I thought I was doing so well. I haven’t had a flare-up/nightmare/migraine/panic attack in (insert amount of time here), but then last night I had one, and now I’m worried they’re gonna come back again.”
The, “I was doing so well” reeks of self-doubt, as if the person must not have been doing as well as they thought they were.
Wrong! They were doing well. The are doing well. But I get it. I have felt it myself thousands of times.
Setbacks can easily become their own trigger for more setbacks if we let them. It’s all in how we view them. When we start to see them, not as threats or destroyers of our progress, but instead, expected bumps in the road, we can slow down and approach the bumps as they come, and get over them more smoothly. This puts us back on the road in no time.
It’s about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, looking at the bigger picture, and keeping your mindset positive, focused on not only where you want to be, but how far you’ve come!
Andrea Beaman, a holistic health coach and chef, used to suffer with “incurable thyroid disease.” Long story short, she cured it naturally, with diet and lifestyle changes. But she has always emphasized that she did not wake up one day with thyroid disease; it took years to develop. Likewise, she did not heal herself overnight. In her case, it took two years to heal. We have to remember that our healing is a journey, and patience is a most necessary virtue.
It’s taken a lot of practice and “notes to self” to drill the importance of patience into my own head. I used to have diarrhea several times a week. Over time, I was able to lengthen the time span between flare-ups and began to make progress. But if I woke up with diarrhea one day after not having it for a while, I would get so distraught and hard on myself. I would automatically assume that my stomach’s good days were up, or at least numbered. I’d assume that I'd soon return to my old, regular bouts of stomach discomfort. The same was true if I had an anxiety flare-up, a bad breakup, or anything else I was trying to recover from.
Furthermore, when a setback arose, I would be frustrated to have to reach into my “toolkit” and start deep breathing again, or bring meditation back into my daily routine, or make sure I was stretching and working out regularly. In other words, I was annoyed to have to work to feel healthy when it “seemed to come so naturally to everyone else.” I know many of you can relate—we think everyone around us has it all figured out and we must have been out sick the day they taught “Life Skills” in school.
Over time I trained myself to see a setback as inevitable, and not something to fear or let pull me down. A setback may be unavoidable, but how far it set me back was up to me. Instead of fretting over it and the work I had to do to recover from it, I focused on where to go from here. Oh, and gratitude. As in:
I am so lucky to have gone four weeks without a flare-up.
I’m so lucky to have great tools in my toolkit to help me combat this flare-up.
Okay so I had one bad day, but in the big picture, I’m doing great!
In fact, when I first started on my road to recovery, if I was doing really well, I used to worry that I would be “out of practice” should a flare-up or panic attack arise. I almost wanted more struggle so that I could keep my coping skills fresh. The point is, I was wasting my time and focus. I could have been focusing more on how well I was doing, instead of constantly waiting for the ax to drop.
We learn our fear, our pain, our sickness, and we can unlearn them. We have to trust that these tools will not magically evade us when we need them. It’s important to create healthy daily habits (such as exercising, breathing, maintaining a healthy diet) because daily practice creates less setbacks in general, and when we do need these tools, they will be easy to access.
Another reason not to fear a setback is because we’d be in constant fear. Setbacks are easily triggered. Dating again after a divorce, a stressful time at work, a change in weather, or a burrito with a little too much cheese. We won’t always know exactly what caused it either, so the unknown can also trigger anxiety. And since life is constantly changing, it’s certain setbacks will be flying at us left and right.
That’s why it’s helpful not to fixate on the “why” while a setback is happening. Instead, put your energy into letting it pass, don’t look back or try to “figure it out.” Whether you know the cause of the setback at the time or not, it’ll become clearer with time. The important thing is to embrace it as part of the process. You can always reflect later to gain more clarity. But in the meantime, let the setback happen, for whatever reason it’s happening.
All this being said, it’s okay to not get right back on the horse the next day. It is entirely expected that we would need a moment to pause and let ourselves feel bad. We can’t always be strong and forge through without a second to rest. So let yourself slow down. Turn your phone off, say no to people, disconnect, cry. During a setback, we need to acknowledge that this sucks right now. The important thing is not to wallow in that feeling for too long. So take a break, pull over and curse the high heavens, get the frustration out, and as soon as you can, get right back on the road!
It’s important to keep our expectations about setbacks realistic. I, too, sometimes have to remind myself of how far I have come when I encounter a setback. Just like so many of us, when a setback arises, my inclination is to panic, worry that I have “undone” all my hard work, that the pain and anxiety will come back, maybe worse than the first time, and that I’ll fall so far back I won’t know how to get myself healthy again.
At least that’s where my mind wants to go, because that’s where it’s been used to going for twenty years. Now, I evoke my acquired knowledge and new mindset to keep me on track, and remind myself that I'm not at the base of the mountain by any means. I’m not starting from scratch. And neither are you! If you’re currently on the road to recovery, you have already made huge accomplishments in your attitude and health. So keep going!