I’ve taken a break from writing, although I’m trying to make a comeback.
Can we talk about how fucking crazy life has been for a second?
I’m not sure what everyone else is up to, but I’m busy AF!
Work, kids, home life, and to be quite honest, reading has been consuming my writing time.
I’m super deep in a book and once I finish it, I’ll review it for you all.
As for now, here’s a check in.
Mentally, I feel the stress and the chaos, anxiety and depression trying to win, however it won’t.
At least not yet anyway.
There’s a ton of positive and negative things in my life but I think we all have positive and negative situations and it really just depends on how you view the situation and if you are going to dwell on the negative situations, find solutions for them, or completely ignore them.
Whatever you choose to do, I hope it’s the choice that makes you happy and feeling more positive.
Take out the sage.
Light some candles.
Go to church and pray.
Read that book you keep putting off.
Whatever it is that makes you feel peaceful, do it.
Be happy but realistically happy. Don’t be the sprinkles that overdo the fucking cake happy.
Just be the amount of sprinkles that makes you and others around you happy to be in your company!
Happy writing and happy reading or happy doing whatever the hell makes you happy!
A few months back, my brother said these words in response to me tearing up very briefly, I would say seconds, before acting like those tears never existed.
I’ve never in my life thought about it this way.
I hate feeling weak.
Even a little bit.
In any way, emotionally, mentally, and physically, I despise feeling weak and unable.
Now, I realize this is unhealthy, so please spare the comments. I’m very aware of myself and all of the unhealthiness that is wrapped up inside of me.
However, the phrase, “Temporary Weakness”, has stuck with me since I heard him say the words.
Today, perfect example, I cried over some shit that’s going on, like a normal person.
Today, I also cried in front of people I haven’t cried in front of in years.
Over shit that I would never want to discuss with them because it’s my business.
I cried because it is something that I hate talking about.
Something I know is an issue but I’ve been working on it.
Issues that are complex and they take a lot of work to perfect.
Perfection doesn’t exist so I can say we’re working on happiness as a family and that’s a lot of work.
Anyway, I feel fine now.
I sent some text messages thanking the people who saw me weak and vulnerable. I think it’s important that we show appreciation to the people that are there for us!
I told them it was temporary weakness and I’m fine now.
The truth is, I am fine and it was just temporary.
It’s sooo fucking important to know that temporary sadness, weakness, vulnerability, all that’s fine. It sucks and I fucking hate it when it happens, but it needs to happen sometimes.
We can’t be strong 24/7. Trust me, I’ve tried!
There’s not one person on this earth that can say they’ve never cried (unless some medical or mental issue that causes that). I’ve been looking for natural human instinct and showing emotion is one of them. Why? They don’t know yet, peep the article, The Science of Crying.
So cry it out, be temporarily weak, then wipe your tears and figure out how to feel better and fix whatever it is that made you feel that way.
I may hate having these emotions and feelings but I’m slowly learning to accept them and to stop trying to be strong all of the time.
We all have a breaking point. Try to identify yours before you hit it, because if something is triggered, there’s no controlling yourself sometimes
I did the opposite thing today and decided to make a video first before writing.
Check it out!
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That doesn’t mean I’m not going to write a post about it too! This is for my readers, also because my videos are shitty quality right now and honestly, they probably always will be because I’m not trying to produce quality videos.
Anyway, I’m stressed as hell today and it has nothing to do with anything I can control. There are a lot of things in our life that we can’t do shit about and sometimes it’s best that we fully release those high intense emotions that we feel when a situation is out of our control!
If you’re anything like me, I love to control shit. I love to be in control of the way the house is set up and the way it’s cleaned, the way I raise my kids, the way I run a clinic, everything. I want to control it all because when I was growing up, there wasn’t anyone really telling me what to do. I learned most of the things I know on my own and because I couldn’t control the world around me, I made sure to control my own world. Therefore, I’ve had some slaps to the face throughout my lifetime, learning to relinquish those things that are beyond my control even within my own bubble.
It’s taken plenty of time and I’m still not fully there but I try my best to recognize when I can’t do a damn thing about something. The more I sit and dwell on the stressful times and things that I literally cannot change, the less happy I am.
So yes, I take the energy that stresses me out and I make it positive. At least I try to do this as often as I can. I can control my feelings regardless of the situation. I can control how I respond. I choose to be happy and positive and try to maintain that even when dark clouds hover above me or around me, they will not consume my little light that keeps me happy inside. It may be dimming, but it’s still there for now!
So find your little light and be a fucking ray of sunshine. For yourself. For others. For the shit you can’t control. In the end, life goes on and you have to go on with it. Troubled times pass, grieving times are hard and feel endless, anger arises and seems to fill up our inner being, sometimes all of these situations are things we can’t control. However, we can control how we choose to respond to the situation. I choose to try to stay positive. What do you choose to do with your response?
Let’s start this one off by being completely and one hundred percent honest, I barely do any of the recommended positive coping skills. I have never been officially evaluated, I was given anxiety medication when I was pregnant with my last child because of the symptoms I described. Based on my research and my family’s mental health history , chances are that this generalized anxiety disorder thing has my name written all over it and that’s okay.
I’ve learned more about anxiety than I need to know because I experience it so much. Every single day actually and I’m trying to do better. It’s actually progressed into full-blown panic attacks recently and I have to adapt to now learn how to cope through them.
So I’m not here to tell you to go get in therapy and get yourself fixed. I’m here to tell you some positive things that I have found work for me.
One of the biggest tips I can give you is to identify what triggers you. Even if it sounds dumb to say, “Yeah my kid touched me and that triggered me” whatever, as long as you know what set you off. One time, I got mad because my kid accidentally spilt the cereal everywhere, and there I went off on my little angry tangent and I couldn’t breathe. However, was it really because my kid spilt the cereal or was it underlying issues that were triggered because of that minor mishap? So before you do anything, try to identify what set that panic off? Anxiety for me is non-stop, everything is a trigger. However, I have to identify when it goes wrong and I explode, why did that happen?
Writing
If you haven’t checked out theEXPRESSIONS page, I highly recommend you head over there ASAP. Writing for me has to be the healthiest thing I do. I release everything that is bottled up in my head, no filter, and I feel so much better afterwards. If you’ve never done it, just try it, especially if you don’t want to go to therapy. If you’re like me, I personally do not want to sit and talk to someone about the issues I know I have, especially when I know what I should be doing, I just don’t want to take the time to do it.
Crying
Don’t knock this until you truly experience a cry that makes you feel so much better when you’re done. I had to research this because it became a pattern that crying is the FASTEST way to release the overload. I know it sounds crazy and crying is seen as such a weak thing to do, which is why I try not to cry in front of people, but a quick five minute session in the bathroom does just fine! MedicaNewsToday published an article about the benefits of crying and there are some resources within the article to point you to literature on the benefits of it. However, there is also an article on crying that dissects what crying could really mean for humans, which is really interesting. Check it out!
Taking a Break
So this contradicts something I said in my “Negative Coping Skills” post, but when I refer to taking a break, it doesn’t mean go take five minutes to breathe in and out and hope you calm down. Taking a break for me means DISCONNECTING from the world. Social media drains me. Helping others drains me. Work can be draining, social interactions, all of it. So escaping to a new place, with water preferably, and nature surrounding me, is my escape. I take a break and disconnect and that clears my mind. I spend time with my children and I pretend nothing else matters for that day! Don’t make any excuses, just go and do it! Find that place where you feel the happiest at and stay there a while!
This is a type of therapy that I am still learning more about. Essentially, it’s a self-paced thing, something you can learn to do, but it is supposed to help you get through some of those triggers that happen in your life. The biggest thing with this therapy is that it aims to help you stop suppressing some of the traumas. There are therapists out there who can help you learn this but you can also teach yourself.
“Clients learn to stop avoiding, denying, and struggling with their inner emotions and, instead, accept that these deeper feelings are appropriate responses to certain situations that should not prevent them from moving forward in their lives.”
This type of therapy focuses on making changes within yourself by refocusing your thoughts to in turn change the way you feel. It is similar to the above treatment in the sense that you still have to deal with your shit. However, there are strategies to make it easier along the way.
“CBT works by changing people’s attitudes and their behavior by focusing on the thoughts, images, beliefs and attitudes that are held (a person’s cognitive processes) and how these processes relate to the way a person behaves, as a way of dealing with emotional problems.”
-Ben Martin, Psy.D
Medication
Of course, there is medication that you can use to treat anxiety. Medication can help alleviate some of the panic you feel and help you slow down a little to live life. Talk to your doctor more about your symptoms of anxiety or other disorders to ensure you are being proactive to get better. If you are against medication, no worries, there are obviously plenty of ways to cope. You just have to find out what works for you!
