Hi @MB95 ,
I think it’s absolutely fine to have this thread, if everyone is safe and letting us know that they are safe. If it’s okay with you I’ve just added a TW in the title and moved it into a different section which is more suitable for the heavy feelings that may come out in this thread.
I like your approach of wanting to keep it light and focusing on the positive. But I agree that we often have to look at the realistic side of things sometimes.
I know when I was younger and had much more difficulty coping with existence, I would find myself questioning things around, are things going to change, have I just ruined everything, why do I feel so different to others?
As I got older the three major revelations which helped me contextualise things:
One, our brains are constantly trying to create a narrative for things. So when I was feeling awful, embarrassed or sad, my brain would be working overdrive to try and think of why this was happening, and often it would try to say that I am reason for this, as to me, it looked like no one else was struggling like I was.
Two, as I was able to open up more to my friends and family, I began to realise that everyone in their own way struggles, it may not be in the same way as me, but if you listen and watch people carefully, you can see where they get hung up or stuck with things. Understanding this allowed me to feel like I wasn’t alone in this.
Three, as I experienced more as I got older, I began to realise that a lot of the pain I was experiencing was based on expectation. I feel I was taught to expect one thing of life but always experienced things differently. So I began to change my expectation of things. For example, I always used to get anxious in group situations, so I would beat myself up inside thinking I shouldn’t be anxious. Now, I accept that I will be anxious, allow myself to experience it, then the anxiety actually begins to lessen.
So I guess getting to the point of your thread (sorry I am a bit long winded today), is that I stick around as I know often when I feel totally awful, it’s a side effect of having a human brain, everyone else is also experiencing this in their own way, and if I accept my feelings as normal, I can move through it. Often I will be better for having suffered a little now and learned from it. Often my good days will be better as they have something to contrast against. My brightest days are equal to my worst as they are both equally experiential to me and that’s what keeps me around.
I hope this helps and is what you are looking for. ❤️
