Mastering the Art of Handling Myself
My closest ones or even those who are not-too-close but follows me on social media might be aware that I have gone through some drastic mental state transformation in the last one year -that’s because I was so proud of it and just won’t stop talking about it haha.
It’s an indescribable feeling actually, to finally get out of that bottomless pit of constant mourning and intense breakdowns for 4-fucking-years. Nothing grand happened during that whole 2019 a.k.a my full year of healing, I just decided that it was the limit and I can’t go any deeper into that dark abyss and realize that whatever it was my way of coping is just not working. In fact, I can’t just cope, I should heal. What I did was just focusing on myself, re-iterate until I finally find what works best for me.
And I thought that was it. I thought I have recovered 100%, and there’s no way I would go backwards. I didn’t realize that my iteration was missing something: hardships. Nothing marvelous happened that year, but at the same time, there were also nothing that went terribly wrong — there was nothing particularly good or bad in 2019. So it wasn’t that I have fully recovered, it just that I was able to experience homeostatis, and that my claim of being transformed actually haven’t put to a test.
Until last week.
For the first time in almost two years, I experienced it again. This big chunk of every unpleasant emotions hit me hard in a split of second over some bad news that I have no control of. Suddenly everything was so overwhelming, it felt like my chest was about to explode and I just couldn’t stop crying. It went from being overwhelmed because I could not process and made sense of what I was feeling into being overwhelmed by the thought of going back to square one. Imagine having what you thought was a foolproof mechanism, that you work so hard on for a year, scattered in a blink of an eye. All of the bad memories from those years came right in, and I knew right at that moment that I wouldn’t let myself to go through that again.
Trying to got out from that horror, I tried to overcome it with things I learned from my past iterations, that actually work!
Talk It Out
I realized that the main problem of being overwhelmed by my feelings is that most of the time it’s hard for me to process my feelings. Hard because when it hits, I could feel so many emotions at once. And rather than to understand what are the feelings first, I tend to just stressed on why do I feel that way. Back in my dark days, my first option was to shut people out and try to deal with it on my own (in which I failed almost all the time). I thought that since I couldn’t even understand it myself, I believed that nobody would ever understand it either. Which is probably right, but what was actually wrong from that approach is expecting someone to understand -when what I actually need is someone who listens. Trying to explain my emotions to other people turns out pretty effective in helping me sorting my scattered mind and feelings, and as I talk it out -I begin to understand what I actually feel and why I feel what I feel. We have to identify the main problem before start fixing things, right? One thing to note is that you don’t always have to tell people about the details of what you’re going through, the objective here is more to understand your emotions rather than finding the solution to the problem.
The downside of this method is that, if you only have a few friends like me, you can’t always find anyone who is available or have the capacity to listen to you. Which is fine because we have to be as self-reliant as we could. So what also helps is to write it down, use your phone’s note app, a journal, a paper, anything. If you are feeling skeptical about this, believe me and just try it. Understanding your own emotions before deciding how to act upon it is underrated!
Give It Time
Okay so after I am able to identify what are the emotions that I feel and why I feel that way, the feelings -of course- are still there. My coping mechanism changed from time to time; emotional eating, complete dismissal of what I’m feeling and watch modern family non-stop, working out, etc. And there’s nothing wrong with coping with it, especially when you have to keep functioning (ugh responsibilities!). Resolve the emotions within yourself, within your own pace. Don’t beat yourself up because you cried all of the sudden in the middle of creating a deck at work that has nothing to do with your emotions. Every emotions are valid, focus on the emotions itself and don’t stressed over how long it took for you to recover from it.
Go Easy on Yourself
I know that great determination is the key towards success yadda yadda yadda. But what’s the use of achieving so many things in life while sacrificing your wellbeing in doing so? It’s a different thing of course if you are the kind of person that could only ever feel fulfilled through your achievements, in which an underachiever like me definitely don’t have a say in this.
I have learned the hard way that almost nothing is in our control. Life is a series of hardships and struggles, and sometimes no matter how shitty and hard it can be, some things are just not in your control. When shits like that happens, sadly, there is nothing you can do but to face it. Over the years I was so invested in dwelling in my own sadness and self-pity on facing something that I cannot control, it was a domino effect and soon after, every other part of my life also fell apart. What I’d do differently is identifying as soon as I could if I could control this certain shitty situation and actually make things better or not. If the answer is no, what’s left to do is just getting through it. Accept that this part of your life is fucked, and let’s work on things that we have control of -and ace it.
Practice Gratitude
As someone who was very resentful towards life for years, I can tell you that being grateful and appreciate every simplest smallest thing in life feels reaaally great. I may not remember this all the time too, but when I do, it’s a very nice feeling. Life is shit, and will always be shit, so be appreciative and grateful for anything that went well; that fluffy milk foam on my almond latte this morning after weeks of my frothing wand not working properly, that perfect crunchy pb&j toast after days of refusing to have breakfast, fresh dasters from laundry, nice weather, having supportive friends -anything!
Don’t be ashamed of being grateful for something so simple, so meaningless for some people. If anything, it’s a blessing!
I realized that healing is an iterative process, and although it’s still a long way to go, I’m still glad that I am in a much better place right now. I know that there will come a time when this playbook won’t work on me anymore, and it will be fine because I can always adjust (kaizen!).
Always keeping what Vania said in mind: be kind to yourself, meaning that no matter tough life gets -never punish yourself, never let yourself be broken for too long.
I promise myself that I will always get better, and it will only gets better.
Writing this mainly to remind my future self that I can actually handle myself, or in case anyone need it. You are not too much. You are okay.
