The Feeling of Relief

Notes on the opposite of distress.

What is relief? It’s the opposite of distress. Distress hurts. Relief is when the hurting stops, or at least lets up.

It’s when—

You expect something terrible to happen, and then it doesn’t. You’ve been rehearsing the worst-case scenario, and something much better shows up instead.

You’re worried, and then you don’t have to be. (Well, you can still be worried about some things, but the worry is mitigated somehow, and then you notice how much better you feel compared to how you used to feel.)

Relief is what an antidote is for. You’ve been hiking in the woods and come home with a nasty set of insect bites. They itch and hurt, you try not to scratch, and holding back is its own kind of pain. Relief is the ointment, the cream, the aloe: the magic ingredient that soothes your skin and makes everything better in an instant.

You realize how anxious you’ve been about something you’d thought of as a minor difficulty—but when the relief sets in, you experience a disproportionate sense of joy. That worry was bigger than you let yourself admit! But it’s okay now, because now it’s not an issue.

Relief is when something you loved almost came to an end, and then it didn’t. Relief is also when it did come to an end and you were fine—better than fine, in fact. You’d been holding on to something from the past, not something that serves you now.

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Relief is the deep exhale. The unclenching of teeth and stomach muscles. The sudden awareness that the sky is blue and the grass is green. Whoa, sky! You didn’t have much in you to appreciate that before, but now it’s pretty awesome.

Relief comes after the storm. New bugs are flying around—not the biting ones from the woods, but the kind you don’t mind. (Butterflies? Fireflies?) The plants are greener, the air is fresher, your burden is lighter.

It comes after a time that was hard, and you thought it would never get better—but then, just when you weren’t thinking about it, something did get better. Relief is when you notice this fact for the first time. Whoa, something is better.

Relief is the train that stayed on the tracks. The conversation you dreaded that turned out to be easy. The test result that came back normal. The moment you braced for embarrassment and felt proud instead.

Relief! It’s a wonderful feeling, and a nice one to appreciate when it comes along.

One last thing: relief won’t always announce itself. Sometimes you have to notice it on purpose.