It seems nearly everyone I know, and I’m including myself in that group, feels stuck in a state of ennui that stretches far beyond your basic rough day or even seasonal depression. The daily grind of 2021 has ground us down to dust. The new year doesn’t feel much like a time of rebirth at all. Multiple people I love are having full blown existential crises. Even those who aren’t falling all the way apart come to me often with their own struggles. The slog threatens to overtake us, and what’s worse, we feel exhausted enough to let it.

This is where context becomes so crucial. Given only the scant detail I’ve shared so far, it might be easy to wonder what in the world is wrong with myself and my loved ones. Are we all suffering from some shared depressive psychosis? Are we just a bunch of Debbie Downers who found each other? If we don’t take the context into account, it is far too easy to completely blame ourselves or others close to us for 100% of our unhappiness and dissatisfaction with the state of our lives. This can lead to all manner of problematic issues: anxiety, depression, isolation, and deterioration of relationships, to name just a few. Without context, we can never hope to have the whole picture. We miss important information and key facts. Until we examine all our context, we cannot see our entire situation clearly and accurately.

What do we mean when we say context?

For us to dive deep into the subject of context, however, we must first come up with a functionally specific definition of the term. A blanket dictionary definition will not do. So, I enlisted the woman who taught me all about context, Founder of Rowan Coaching, Brain Coach for Unconventional Humans, and my personal life coach, Colleen Star Koch.

“I founded Rowan Coaching with the goal of supporting and empowering people without– or with less–cultural and institutional power,” Colleen told me when I contacted her for this interview. “As a bisexual woman with ADHD and depression, I’m intimately familiar with the ways in which we “Others” are clotheslined, marginalized, stigmatized, and misunderstood in ways that have significant, real-life impacts. I’m passionate about helping people learn how brains work – so we can turn our brains into assets instead of obstacles.”

Colleen will be the first person to tell you her work is not meant to replace licensed medical professional mental health support and/or medication. “I’m a brain-based coach, not a clinical therapist – and that’s a distinction that matters. Brain-based coaching is coaching informed by neuroscience. That means that my methodology, approach, and tools are based on how your brain works, but I do not have a medical degree, so I am also very careful to not offer medical, diagnostic, or prescriptive advice.” I contacted Colleen for this interview because I’ve worked closely with her on my own mental health journey, and I consider her an integral member of my mental health team. I believe her own mental health journey has given her invaluable insight as a coach.

Reducing your guilt and shame makes it much more likely that you’ll allow yourself some time to process how you’re feeling, do the real self-care things your brain and body need to thrive, and actually get stuff done.

“My therapist describes both medication and therapy as a bridge,” she told me, in an illustration that could easily be applied directly to my own experience as well. “Therapy and medication supported me to get to a point where I was able to use brain-coaching tools and make helpful lifestyle changes, so that I am now much less likely to have a major depressive episode. But I couldn’t have started there. I needed the clinical “bridge” that therapy and medication provided me.”

At this point, Colleen pivots to context. “Context is a critically-important consideration – not just in coaching or personal/professional growth work, but in life. Context is important because it helps us understand the broader circumstances that may be impacting how we feel or our inner dialogue, which naturally affects our ability to take effective action.” All of this comes back to two fundamental truths about how the brain operates.

• First—our actions are directly informed by our feelings. How we feel determines how we act.
• Second—our feelings are determined largely by two factors: defined by Colleen as “how well the body is operating,” and “the nature of your inner dialogue/thoughts,” respectively.

“Once you start to look at the broader context you start to realize all the different things your brain and body are struggling to navigate simultaneously. This knowledge helps reduce the guilt and shame you might be feeling about how “productive” you are or aren’t in a particular day or week. Reducing your guilt and shame makes it much more likely that you’ll allow yourself some time to process how you’re feeling, do the real self-care things your brain and body need to thrive, and actually get stuff done.”

I cannot begin to tell you how amazing it has been to realize that 99% of my bad moods can be solved by eating an apple and taking a power nap, or by simply reminding myself I am living in the middle of a global pandemic.

Some of Colleen’s suggested questions for looking at the broader context include:

• When do you usually feel this way?
• When/How often do you normally eat during the day?
• Is anything different with your mental health?
• What has the weather been like recently – especially on the days you felt worse?
• Is there anything happening in your city, country, the world that has been on your mind/that you’ve been struggling with?

Colleen describes brain-based coaching as helping people develop their personal superpowers, and I have found this tool of context to be just that. I have found context so helpful in breaking me out of self-defeating thought patterns, something Colleen has noticed in her clients as well. “In order to successfully solve a problem, you first have to know exactly what the problem is. If you don’t take your broader context into consideration, you are much more likely to take on all the shame/guilt/ownership for how you are feeling, and you’re much less likely to be able to accurately identify the nature of the problem.” I cannot begin to tell you how amazing it has been to realize that 99% of my bad moods can be solved by eating an apple and taking a power nap, or by simply reminding myself I am living in the middle of a global pandemic.

Your brain can either be your best friend or your worst enemy, and context gives us a lot of clues about how to take care of our brain friend, so it stops fighting us at every turn. You’re in the driver’s seat.

Defining context and understanding theoretically how the concept can be helpful are a great foundation. But, to really get the full impact, we need a bit more. We could use a little more context, perhaps? “I think the top insight that you can glean from the exercise of considering your broader context comes down to this: your brain works better when it feels better. Context provides us with tons of opportunities to notice and improve our circumstances and our body maintenance in ways that elevate our emotions and better position us for success on our own terms.”

To illustrate the point, I will use myself as an example. The back half of 2021 was not the best time of my life and considering that in the first five months of 2021, I married my best friend and soulmate, the June-December letdown was jarring and precipitous. As I mentioned, by the time I limped into the holidays, I didn’t have enough left in me to fully enjoy family holidays. Without taking the context into account, I could take myself to a dark place in a hurry. If I only said, “Wow the year I got married turned into one of the worst years of my life,” that would be super depressing!

With the aid of context, however, I can see that we invited and then endured multiple stresses in those months. Moving stress, financial stress, job change stress, new marriage stress – we took on all of these things within the same 30-day span, and that was just the stress we knew we needed to plan for. That doesn’t take into account the stress of having a pet go to the ER, or all the other unexpected stressors we have dealt with in the latter half of 2021. I haven’t even mentioned the unexpected surgery I needed for an injury that has been causing me intense pain ever since we moved, and all the costs associated with something like that. I’ve yet to bring up the fact that all of this has occurred over the backdrop of a seemingly infinite global pandemic. When I take all that context into account, I beam with pride over the things my wife and I have managed to accomplish in the face of such adversity. We have weathered and overcome so much together. Instead of feeling depressed and defeated, I’m astounded by our resilience and buoyed by our love. That contextual shift has entirely altered my perception and my experience of these circumstances.

My favorite thing, personally, about context, is how empowering I find it. “Your brain can either be your best friend or your worst enemy, and context gives us a lot of clues about how to take care of our brain friend, so it stops fighting us at every turn. You’re in the driver’s seat.” As we enter year three of the pandemic, understanding context becomes more and more important to our mental health and wellness every day.

If you or someone you know is currently struggling, please don’t hesitate to contact Sanctuary Centers.

For more information on Colleen’s brain-based life coaching offerings, check out RowanCoaching.com.