Don't throw away your umbrella
Imagine if every time a rainstorm ended, you threw away your umbrella.
The next time it rained, you’d scramble to borrow an umbrella or buy a cheap one from a corner store. Then the cycle would repeat.
A little crazy, right?
Glennon Doyle used this metaphor to describe stopping anti-depressants as soon as you feel better after a low period, rather than taking them consistently to prevent depression.
We all do something like this without realizing it.
The rain could be a bad day at work—receiving difficult feedback or making a mistake. We scramble for the equivalent of a plastic bag over our heads: Netflix, or comfort food, or avoidance in general. As soon as the bad feelings pass, as they always do, we’re relieved and try to forget the whole thing ever happened.
A smarter strategy would be to invest in the best umbrella there is, because we live in a rainy world. It would be our favorite color, perfectly shaped to our proportions. When we feel raindrops, we wouldn’t panic: we’d just pop it open, knowing it was going to keep us dry.
Everyone’s umbrella is a bit different, but the purpose is the same: getting us through an emotional storm without being overwhelmed by it. It might be meditation, talking to a friend or journaling. The point is, it’s important to deliberately try to understand what happens to you in these storms and to build resilience to weather them.