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The Snow Globe Effect: How stress and anxiety traps traps you, and how to escape it.

If you know you me, you know I LOVE Christmas. The music, the lights, the Bath and Body Works scents; everything about the season just gets me. In fact, I started listening to Christmas music in JULY- even to the very verbal dismay of many, including my boss Chad and my friend Tristan. Like most people, I have an obnoxious amount of random Christmas sh*t to decorate my house with. Oh yes, from the wooden sled wall hanging to the red bow for the front door, I have it all.


Something else that myself and a large majority of the population also has for the season is a snow globe (or 10…). I have a set of 5 that look like train cars with different animals in them and hook together. I’ve got one that I won at Storytime at the Exira library when I was four years old that has a hobo snowman in it. I have one where the globe is the snowman’s head with a face painted on and it’s wearing a black hat on top. I even have a little tree ornament snow globe that my grandma gave me. So now that you understand my love of snow globes, I want to explain how they work.

Seriously, let’s explain the basics of snow globe engineering. First, there’s a person, place, or thing. Then, said thing is put into a clear glass ball with water and other ‘stuff’- like glitter or those little “snow” pellets. Then, the whole collection is sealed and placed on a base of some sort. When you pick up it up and turn it over or shake it, all the stuff swirls around and slowly settles the bottom. And does this the same way forever and ever (unless you’re clumsy like me and break them, which I’ve also done before…).


From time to time I have this feeling that I’m in a snow globe. Figuratively, of course. For example, I was at a coffee shop last weekend. I got my cute little infuser kettle with loose leaf green tea, found a cozy booth, and laid all my things out with aspirations of conquering my to-do list. But then, I started diving into the tasks at hand and I had a big-time loss of focus- I was incredibly confused about one of the assignments for my leadership class and I didn’t have all the parts I needed to even begin my presentation for my agronomy class. This didn’t stress me out. What did stress me out was when I started remembering all the other things I needed to be working on or thinking about:


Now, I’m not a runner (that’s Katie), but you’d never know it if you asked my brain. When I start thinking, my mind just freaking takes off. I start thinking about how I need to get into very specific sections of classes when I register next week or I won’t be able to work at my job. Or about the stress and pressure that has been coming with my house hunt. Or about how I’m only a semester from graduating Summa Cum Laude (a goal I set my senior year of high school) but just one B in a class could take that dream away. Or about how I’m upset that certain friends don’t prioritize me- and then, about feeling guilty for thinking that way. And then I start thinking about how everything I’m doing is not good enough- or just plain not enough. And folks, that opens up a whole other can of worms.


So how exactly did we get from not understanding some homework to questioning our self worth? That, my friends, is what I call the Snow Globe Effect. All of these thoughts you have- small, large, and everything in between- they don’t go anywhere. Unless you actually deal with them or solve the problem at hand, they just settle temporarily like snow in a snow globe. All it takes is one little shake up and all of those thoughts come falling down on you again. Even though it takes just one moment to push the first domino down, it can take hours, days, weeks, or even years to set them up again. And we always take ownership over these issues, saying things like “these are my problems” or “I am struggling with a lot right now”, but we don’t always do anything about them. It’s like responding to your waiter “You too!” when they tell you to enjoy your meal and then feeling awkward about it, but on a larger scale.


Do you see why I call it the Snow Globe Effect? There you are, trapped with yourself and your pellets of problems, seeming as if everyone else is just looking in from the outside in another dimension. How do we escape? How do we stop inflicting ourselves with wounds from our own tainted thoughts?


Give your thoughts a voice. Make them something tangible, something that you can see, feel. Write them down. Cry about them. Yell into your pillow, or in your car (though I don’t recommend doing this in a crowded Walmart parking lot). Tell a friend. Sing a song. Pull a Troy Bolton ‘Bet on It’ moment (If you know, you know). Or, you can do something about it. To help alleviate some of my house hunting anxiety I wrote out a timeline, reminding myself that I have a comfortable 6 months to find a place to live. Often, we convince ourselves that we need to be stressed or worried about certain things, even when they are mundane or not relevant yet (like my homebuyer fears).


We are much like politicians when we have internal dialogue with ourselves: instead of proving things are as they seem with facts (‘I know I have 6 months to find a house because I don’t start my job until June’), we try to sway our thoughts with opinions that appeal to our emotions (‘I’m never going to find a house because I’ve already looked for two months and haven’t found anything’).

Whatever Snopes.com-fact checking you can do for yourself will help you realize things usually aren’t as bad as you tell yourself they are.


The other thing that helps me break out of the mother-effing globe is remembering that I am not “trapped” in this globe by myself. And, I’m not the only one with problems and stressors. Sure, I have #SnowGlobeProbs, but so do you and probably all of the 7-point-whatever billion other people on this planet. When you start thinking your world is crumbling down, it’s not because there is no ‘your world’. Your world, my world, your sister’s world… they’re all the same world. No one of our own little stressors will send everyone’s world tumbling down (and if it does we have much more to worry about than the stressor itself).


Reach out and touch something in front of you and you’ll find there is no bubble, no glass that traps you. You’re not stuck in the dome from The Truman Show. You don’t have to let your thoughts and fears swirl around, fall down, settle, and cycle through without end. Sure, our minds are powerful things but you are stronger. Snow globes are just glass- break your cycle of thinking and you’ll break out of that toxic microenvironment. It’s easier said than done and that’s speaking from experience but friend, I know you can do it. I believe in you.

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