The next two occasions were different. Stress was the culprit based on situations where I felt people had been doing things to me in the workplace that weren't right, and it was my inability to manage the stress of being overworked, undervalued, and unappreciated that impacted my body.
This last time, in a way, I did it to myself. Being a consultant, it was much less about what I felt people were doing to me and much more about my inability to handle stress that comes with the responsibilities of entrepreneurship as well as I thought I was handling it. Whether you are an employee or self-employed, work-related stress happens to all of us. And sometimes the outcomes are more severe than at other times.
Here's the thing: even though those last two situations where I lost my hair were brought on by medical conditions due to stress, it took a while for me to reframe that notion of something being DONE to me into situations that I could do something about.
Over the years, after many tears, denial, and much reflection, I noticed that with each occasion where I had to suffer a hair setback-- a follicle failure, if you will – it was a little less traumatic every time. And, it was a little bit easier to reframe the change that I felt had been DONE to me and turn it into something that I could do for myself by embracing the opportunity to show up differently.
Showing up in different ways is something that we all have to manage in life. It's called adaptation. Adaptation to the new stages we each face. And with each stage of life are new opportunities to embrace change as something we pursue for ourselves instead of seeing change as something being done to us. And the ability to change our frame, so that we can change our focus, and ultimately change our future, is a FREEING process, when we TRUST the process. So, why am I sharing these seemingly trivial traumatic experiences of my hair journey with you?
Well, we're about to celebrate Independence Day on July 4th, and while that date is historically linked to independence from Great Britain and its perceived tyrannies, I want to encourage us to think about more internal tyrannies (attitudes, beliefs, etc.) that we need to grow independent from. And, as I’ll get to in a bit, I believe we can also grow from such fervent independence to a stronger sense of inter-depednence, which is really the way that we need to be in order to get through the challenges we are facing! So, stick with me on this!