What Surfing Taught Me About Grief and Guilt

MENTAL HEALTH — ACTION

Three strategies for dealing with waves of emotion

For the last month or so, most mornings have begun with a cup of tea in bed while I log on to local webcams. There are four permanently monitoring the beaches near my apartment. If the surf looks good I slip into my wetsuit, jump on my bike and in ten minutes I am in the surf. If the surf is not looking good, I slump back into bed and slowly shake off waves of grief and depression that have become a regular part of my life.

As I fought the Atlantic breakers this morning, I considered the three ways I was dealing with the physical waves in the ocean and began relating them to dealing with the waves of emotion in my own life.

How do you deal with your emotions? Do you engage with them? Are you afraid of them? Do you feel you have to conquer or manage them? Do you desensitise yourself and avoid them?

I recognised that often I am unaware of emotional waves approaching and I ignore them until they overwhelm me and I can do nothing but collapse in a heap with Netflix and chocolates.

I related this to my encounter with a wave in Hawaii. It was my first experience of a wave there. I froze. It was too big to go over, but I did not fancy being under that breaker when half a tonne of water pummeled itself down to the sand. In a millisecond of indecision, it hit me full-on, scrambled me up like morning eggs and deposited me back on the beach. I was convinced it had dislocated my shoulder, but only my dignity was damaged.

This is inaction. You feel that if you do nothing, the uncomfortable feelings will somehow stop of their own accord. They won’t. There are many different kinds of inaction. Many different ways we try to avoid feeling any problematic emotion.

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