Sometimes, no matter how much you plan or how hard you try, you get caught in a downpour of feelings. You feel like a pinwheel in a hurricane.

What do we do when life hands us more than we feel we can hold?

How can we handle overwhelming stress?

Here are a few ideas.

Before the storm

As with any storm, we are best prepared to meet it if we have a plan in place. So, before things get bad, it helps to check some stuff.

Secure your base. What’s your support system look like? Do you have a couple of people you can call for help if you needed? It helps to have some people who will help center and ground you by offering practical support or kindness when things get tough.

These aren’t relationships you can cultivate overnight, so if you don’t have any right now, you might think about investing some time and energy to develop them. Consider if you are investing your energies in relationships that support and sustain you.

Practice wellness. I’ve written elsewhere about the beauty of prevention and wellness. Good self-care so often takes the backseat in our lives, if it’s not just tossed out of the car altogether!

So, let’s go over it again. Self-care is so important. You deserve to have some—probably more often than you’re thinking. And it doesn’t have to look a certain way—everyone’s self-care diet looks different. If you practice good self-care, your storms will be fewer and smaller.

Skeletons. Part of taking an honest inventory is taking a look at all the ways you cope with stress. Sometimes the worst part isn’t the storm itself, but how we respond to it. So, if you’ve got any coping methods that hurt as much as the storm does, you might want some help with that.

Remember: taking an inventory doesn’t mean you necessarily have to change things. But it will let you know where you stand. You deserve your own honesty.

Inside the tempest

So, it’s arrived and there’s no stopping it. Maybe we saw it coming, or perhaps we’re caught totally off guard. What can we do?

Ask for help. This might seem like a no-brainer. Still, so many of us have a hard time asking for help when we most need it. So reach out to those trusted friends. Seek the help of a professional if you need it. Also: it’s not just asking for help—but asking the right people.

After all, there’s nothing worse than asking for help from people who can’t or won’t give it.

Roll with it. The lovely thing about pinwheels is that they are designed to move with the wind’s current. Health doesn’t mean being numb or unflappable—it doesn’t mean stuffing feelings or getting stuck in them. It’s about being flexible and being able to recover from unexpected setbacks and upsets.

So, how do people roll with it without spinning off into the storm? They are mindful. What does that look like? Slow breaths, a heart full of compassion, and knowing that all storms end. Take comfort in what’s solid, even if the only thing that feels stable right now is the view from your window.

PS: Stop judging yourself and your reactions.

Avoid sinkholes. Remember what I said about our coping methods being worse than the storm sometimes? That’s absolutely true. You may be deeply tempted by those negative coping methods in a time of crisis.

Do your best to resist the sinkholes—see #1 if you can’t do it alone.

Healing in the aftermath

Lessons learned. We can learn a lot from our struggles and hardships. So, if you’re inclined to try, sift through the experience after things have settled and see what you can learn about yourself. In some cases, you may be able to shape future storms with what you’ve learned.

This one is optional. I know everyone’s gung-ho about lessons, but maybe you’re just glad to have made it through. That’s okay, too. There doesn’t have to be a lesson in everything.

Forgive yourself. Maybe you got stuck in a sinkhole. Or maybe you thought you should have handled things with more grace. Whatever the perceived offenses are, it is important that you forgive yourself for them.

You may not be able to do this right away. You might even want some help with it. Just don’t leave yourself out in the cold for too long. You need yourself as an ally in order to bounce back.

Move forward. It may be tempting to dwell on what happened. Maybe you’re stuck on trying to get that lesson learned. Let yourself have some time to recover first. And then give yourself permission to move forward.

You may have some regrets or lingering pain about how things played out. Let it be.

Sometimes it will still feel like the hurricane wins. The biggest breakthrough is not weathering a storm flawlessly, but forgiving yourself when you are soaked and struggling.

But, if you practice these strategies routinely, you may find that you feel less like a pinwheel in a storm and more like a windmill instead.