Recovering from bad news (not that bad really)

Sometimes I am stunned by my reaction to bad news. It doesn’t have to be that bad for my ‘bad news’ reaction to kick in but it always seems to go down a very similar route.

I get the bad news and then I enter into this state of numbness where I can’t think or move forward for a while; quite often the time taken to recover is completely disproportionate to the news.

Take today for example. Next week is a school holiday for my kids and I was hoping to take two days off during the week. As it’s getting towards the end of the year I thought I had better check how many days holiday I have left. unfortunately I only have enough days to take one day off. Argghhh.

For what seems to be a very long time I have sat here going ‘argh’ and little else.

I’m actually writing this blog as a kind of therapy to help me get the news into perspective. It’s not really that big a deal, it just feels that way. And as I write I feel the numbness lifting.

Recognising a reaction is often a big part of resolving it. I think what I need to do now is to try to understand the process that gets me back going again.