When you’re expecting, sometimes the ordinary problems seem overwhelming. This is because each stage of the process brings its own physical discomforts — from early pregnancy morning sickness or fatigue to mid-pregnancy heartburn or leg cramps to late-pregnancy urinary frequency or backaches. And there are emotional ups and downs as well. If you’re managing a career and a home — or a career, home and other children — the stresses of pregnancy can sometimes seem “too much.” And that’s without the bolt-from-the-blue problems that always come at the worst time. For instance, the downturn in the economy or learning that one of your children has diabetes or that a loved one has gotten sick.

Then along comes Thanksgiving, when you’re supposed to feel thankful, but instead you feel angry or sad and wondering what all the festivities and gratitude are about. This is called the “human condition” and the great challenge is how to develop the ability to weather the storms of life with equanimity and perspective. Not easy — but definitely possible.

Here are a few suggestions, all of which involve the ability to hover — some call it perspective:

• Hovering is the ability to pretend that you’re somehow looking down from a great distance at what’s happening to you. You say to yourself: “The economy affects every facet of my family’s life, but we’re both still young and healthy and motivated to keep our family protected, so we’ll do what we have to do, employing the coping mechanisms that have brought us this far in life.” And suddenly, your pessimism turns to optimism and, inevitably, gratitude.
• As you hover, you’re devastated that one of your children has been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. But from your heightened perspective, you see that there are dozens of babies and children throughout the world with cancer and any number of devastating diseases, and all of a sudden, you feel grateful.
• Your friend has been diagnosed with breast cancer or your father with emphysema and you’re devastated. Keep hovering. Also keep consulting medical Internet sites that provide increasingly hopeful news about treatments that hold great promise for even the most intractable conditions, and you’ll feel both hopeful and grateful.
• Keep in mind what Ernest Hemingway once said: “Life breaks everyone. But some are strong in the broken places.”    

And then stop hovering and come back to the here and now. The turkey, the festivities, the love that surrounds you, and most of all, the thrill of bringing a new life into the world.

Books to Read

• Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier by Robert Emmons (Houghton Mifflin, $16.50)
• Words of Gratitude for Mind, Body and Soul by Robert Emmons and Joanna Hill (Templeton Foundation Press, $10)
• Thank You Power: Making the Science of Gratitude Work for You by Deborah Norville (Thomas Nelson, $5)    

Joan Swirsky is a psychotherapist, former OB nurse and Lamaze teacher, and author of Gift of Life: A Spiritual Companion for the Mother-to-Be.