Geeks Vs Loneliness: getting the balance right

“It’s over, what am I going to do, I’ve failed, I might as well give up”.

These are the things that I used to tell myself in the immediate aftermath of when something traumatic or disconcerting would happen. For years I’d find it would take me so long to get over something, more so than seemed normal for other people. Bad day at work, car accident, relationship problems, you name it – I’d never know what to do next and seemed to easily let things get to me that lasted for so long.

I wondered how people that I admired in my life, like my mother, managed to stay in a positive frame of mind and achieve things regardless of what had happened in their own life. I came to understand it was probably because my mother better processed the emotions she was feeling in the moment, and having done that moved onto what steps she could take to improve things.

I realised ultimately she was able to not let the things that brought her down keep her down, or at least not after a period of time. It is something I used to be able to do in my younger days, but as time has gone on I found it much more difficult to really feel the emotions I was feeling and allow myself some slack in those moments so I could move on to the actions I’d need to take to improve my situation.

About a year ago I started looking up various things like breathing and relaxation techniques to improve my situation at the time but it didn’t really help. The horrible mix of depression and anxiety I was feeling was still there, so in the end I just allowed myself some time to process what I was going through and tell myself that it was okay and perfectly normal human emotions I was feeling. From there I noticed that I became a much calmer person, making better choices and taking more efficient actions to improve things.

If you are going through a difficult time just remember that it’s perfectly healthy to experience pain, fear, anger, loss, sadness, depression, anxiety. It is essential in order to move on to really feel them so that these feelings can dissolve in time. Everyone at some point is knocked down in life and humbled but you don’t want to live in those states for too long. Try to do what you need to do to get yourself in a relaxed and balanced state of mind.

When you’re in a fearful state and worried about what may or may not happen, the actions you take next tend to bring about more stress and disharmony in your life. You have to get focused on what you need to do going forward. Immediate actions can be something small like making a cup of tea and breaking out the biscuits, or something more time consuming such as filling in a job application form.

There are things I experience in my life now that still knock me down, but the difference between a while ago and now is that the time I take to get back up and improve things has drastically reduced. I largely put this down to being much kinder to myself and allowing myself to properly feel what Im going through. Now in a bad moment, instead of “Its over, what am I going to do, Ive failed, I might as well give up”, I ask myself “What’s next, what’s my goal and how can I move on from what I’m feeling now?”.

What you resist will persist but what you look at and experience will eventually disappear and dissolve.