From My Survival Playbook – Introducing My Mental Parking Lot

What to do with all those emotions or feelings, thoughts, concerns or worries that tend to hit us at the worst possible time? We are super busy with work or with daily life stuff, minding our own business and suddenly there they are. Popping into our lives out of the blue and demanding mental space. A lot of space, usually. Unwanted feelings or unsolicited worries, concerns and annoyances that we have to deal with somehow. Or do we?

By the way, did you know there is difference between emotions and feelings? I didn’t, but thought it was interesting enough to share. Always good to learn more about mental health. You can find this a bit off-topic info here.

So, what can we do when we really don’t have any more headspace, time or energy to deal with these feelings? I can tell you, what this girl did in the past – ignore and suppress. My childhood had enough drama for a couple of lives and talking about my experience was not exactly an option. Sure, I had my grandma who was always there for me, but in our family you didn’t talk about feelings or the things that are causing them. I was still lucky to have her, but I needed a survival strategy.

From a young age I witnessed and experienced things, that aren’t easy to understand or digest. Things that can make you confused, sad and worried. I could not deal with them and so I did what was common in our family. Pretend it all didn’t exist. If you would like to get a glimpse at what I am talking about, check-out my post about the “girl behind the curtain“.

In my teenage years, which started at the age of 10 and far too early, I was bullied which added insult to injury. There was no way of hiding from those other kids or what they were saying and no hiding from the feelings and emotions it caused, either. And so I continued doing what worked in my childhood. I kept ignoring them and pushing the pain deeper and deeper inside, thinking when I couldn’t feel it anymore, it was actually gone. Of course, it wasn’t. Mental health is definitely something else.

Shortly before my nineteenth birthday, I got a glimpse at all those suppressed feelings and it wasn’t pretty. I still kept going down that path, as it was all I knew to do, to survive. Until in my early twenties, the pressure cooker exploded. All those feelings crawled to the surface at once and I was struggling to not drown in them. I almost did. So this was obviously not working.

To be able to move on, I had to let go of those feelings, experiences and worries. Forgive myself for what I had let happen to me and accept everything as part of who I was. And I did. And it helped with my mental well being at the time, but it wasn’t exactly a strategy for the future.

But I found one. One that works well with me, but isn’t for everyone. Introducing: My mental parking lot.

I am a very visual person, so for something to work for me, it’s best if I can literally picture it. No problem picturing a parking lot. But isn’t it a stretch to think of one in this context? Bear with me just a little longer here, it will make sense soon.

Early in my career, I worked as a trainer in customer service. I taught classes around communication psychology, sales and inbound servicing skills and techniques. During those trainings, someone is always asking questions, which can’t be addressed right away. Either they aren’t quite fitting to the current topic or they are interrupting an important point we are about to make. For those situations you have something in your trainer toolkit. A symbolic parking lot.

Just to be clear, unless you are me and are having an almost photographical memory, pausing them doesn’t mean to only say “I will get back to that later.” Chances are high, you are not. Simply because you will have likely forgotten about them. And you should never underestimate the impact of that. You have now dismissed someone’s question as not a good fit in the moment and not important enough to be addressed in the end either. A great way of turning an entire training class against you.

What you do instead is, pull up your flip chart and draw a parking lot. Depending on how creative you are, you can draw a real parking lot but it’s sufficient to just put a “P” with a triangle around it on the top center of the page. Voila, your parking lot. This is, where you will now put all the questions that come up and cannot be answered immediately or will resolve themselves when the class progresses. And it is really super important to never end a trainings day, without resolving all open questions in the parking lot first.

Does it now start to make a little bit more sense? The main difference between just saying “I will get back to this later” and actually writing it into the trainings parking lot, is acknowledgement. You are making an effort to acknowledge the question, even though you aren’t resolving it right away. That’s exactly what I am doing, with my mental parking lot as well.

I am briefly but clearly acknowledging a thought, a feeling, a concern or a worry. Then I am making a conscious decision, that I cannot deal with it right away. And that conscious effort moves it to my mental parking lot. It will reside there, until I get back to it to resolve it. This approach allows me to experience feelings of sadness, i.e. when something sad is happening to a colleague or friend and still have a joyful afternoon playtime with the pooch. I am detaching from the sadness and will address it, when I can.

Recently our puppy needed surgery. I knew it would be happening and had time to prepare. I was super anxious and scared about it. At the same time, I had some work that needed to be done and I needed to show up at my best for work. I made the conscious decision, that me feeling all the sadness and anxiety and sit with it, wouldn’t help Sam, our pooch. I parked them in the mental parking lot and detached from those feelings, until Sam was back home. Then I was able to let them go entirely.

As I said before, this approach isn’t for everyone. And it also comes with some risks, that I need to highlight.

Sometimes I am busy for such a long period of time and am not taking the vacation time I need. This usually leads to my parking lot being overcrowded to a point, that I am met with a “lot closed” sign, when attempting to park further topics. When that happens, those parked problems, feelings and concerns are honking at me loudly. I then need to urgently address them and take time to rest and recreate, or I will lose control over my attitude.

My husband doesn’t have a mental parking lot. If he is anxious or sad, annoyed or stressed. That’s what he is. He doesn’t always admit it, what man does? But he is clearly showing it on his face and in his attitude. This can easily collide with my attempts to park a topic in my mental parking lot. Because I am not constantly thinking about those feelings, when they are parked. However my husband might be, and thus making it hard for me to keep that thought parked and out of sight.

People are sometimes having the feeling of me brushing them off, when they are asking how I am doing. When the surgery of our pooch happened, a few friends at work checked in with me. But since my feelings were parked away, I reacted as if nothing happened and I was almost surprised that they would ask me at all. I was fine. I really was, but if you don’t know this concept of detachment, you will have a hard time getting it.

For me, this mental parking lot is a huge progress to how I dealt with my mental health in the past. Maybe this can work for you as well, give it a try. But if you are feeling better going through emotions right away and would rather take the time to do so immediately, there is nothing wrong with that!

As always – One Size Does Not Fit All!

Take care,

Nannette