I've been going through a lot of changes personally this last year or so and I think I'm finally getting back to myself, the person I naturally am. My depression and anxiety issues had really taken over my identity for a while without me even being cognizant of it...
But getting off the medications I had been taking for almost 10 years has literally changed my brain. It's like im experiencing every part of life for the very first time, and this time I dont have much guidance/influence on where I should go or what I should think/believe. I dont know what is "normal" or what is "weird." I was protecting myself (my fragile identity) from the entire world for so long, that became my entire focus in life subconsciously.
I keep saying it's like my anxiety and depression/all my environmental issues were filters i was just wearing over my eyes without knowing I had them on. They colored every single thing I saw/perceived, and affected everything I thought I "knew." In reality, I only "knew" things that I wanted to know, anything that would reaffirm what I was scared of losing.
I guess fear was the ultimate filter of my reality.
But now that I seem to be seeing everything so much more clearly now, I have to reassess every single thought I've ever had, any type of memory that somehow finds its way back to my conscious mind. I have to evaluate every thought i had then against what I know about life now, and so often they do not match up. It can get really confusing and maddening, if im really being honest.
I realized that whatever feeling you feel when you experience anything in life is really important. The feelings we have add another little piece of nuance to every situation we face, and is stored away as part of that memory when we file it away in our long-term memory. As we go about our day-to-day lives, we naturally remind ourselves of anything similar we have experienced in the past to make sense of it in the current moment.
Let's say you are craving some ice cream.
When you were 6 years old, there was a moment when you had just gotten an ice cream cone you had been asking for all day. It looks even better in front of you than it did behind the glass it is stored under, or in your imagination while you were picturing how good it would be before you got it. The color, the texture, the smell --- all pieces of your memory. But, you dropped your ice cream. It just wasn't balancing right on the cone when it was presented to you, and right when you went to take that first much-anticipated lick, it fell to the ground right next to your shoe.
That memory now holds that feeling of surprised sadness. The anticipation coupled with the disappointment when it fell. The loss of just having had what you wanted, to seeing it on the floor in front of you, unavailable now.
Back to this moment: you're an adult now and you're just craving ice cream again. How might you order it, in a bowl, on a cone? Oh, remember when you were 6 and you finally got that ice cream cone you wanted so bad and it fell before you could even taste it? That was so sad, you felt so disappointed.
Now you are feeling that same feeling that was tucked away with the memory, attached and opened automatically.
Most people can probably remember that experience and feel that emotion again, and then move on and order the ice cream, chances being that it's not going to fall this time. And so they get it and eat it and they're happy/satisfied, that's that!
Someone struggling with their emotional health, though, might not be able to change their feeling so quickly. It might take them longer to recover from the feeling of loss stored in that memory made fresh, or maybe they'll just consciously ignore that feeling as it slowly makes its way back to the end of the line of sad feelings just waiting their turn to be seen and felt and healed.
When that happens enough times, every moment is just another old feeling refreshed and put back in line again. And after so long, that line gets so long, it takes up all the available space in your brain, seeping into the front where your conscious mind is trying to go about daily life. Your conscious mind slowly loses more and more space to bad feelings, and eventually, there's just no more space to work from. Your conscious mind is trapped in the line of memories you keep putting back there, and never returning to.
At some point, you've got to start listening and paying attention to all the memories and feelings you kept putting in the back of the line of your brain. You manage to clear out a little space for your conscious brain again, and that part of your brain just listens; lets each memory come up and speak its peace, and release that pent up emotion stored with it.
It is very scary and overwhelming at first. Every emotion feels so big and important. Your conscious brain doesn't know how to handle these situations or what to do about it, that's exactly why you let it get so backed up in the first place.
But with practice, everything becomes less scary and less overwhelming. You start to see patterns and get a feel for what makes you feel better in each specific circumstance. And slowly but surely, you start to get the hang of handling your emotions. Soon enough, you realize the line of memories and feelings is getting shorter and shorter, the space for your conscious mind to work getting bigger and bigger. It's much less cluttered up there, and you feel so much more free to do things and be yourself again.
Eventually, without even realizing it, you are healing. You didn't even realize you were doing it, because it was still super uncomfortable to face every single memory and feeling that was waiting for your attention for so long. But you realize you're starting to feel better, and you actually accomplished a lot in the time it took you to do it all. That line had been filling up your entire brain before, and now your consciousness has all the room it needs to operate.
Once you get to this place in your journey, you have a choice. Do you let yourself continue to not face each feeling as it comes up, or do you learn how to transmute your feelings from negative to positive as they arise?
That is where I am right now. I recognize that I do not want to ever face that long of a line of memories again, and the emotions that accompany them. Therefore, it is my hope and intention to learn how to acclimate myself to my emotions. I need to learn to feel sad in the moment, and let myself feel sad until the sad runs out and fades back into content. Memories being formed right now in this moment will not need to wait in line ever again if I just let them run their course back to neutral.
Neutral memories lead to a healthy mind. They don't even need to be "happy" or "joyful," just neutral will keep you with enough space for your conscious mind to function.
And when I cant just do it by myself, as will likely be the case for any fallible human, I can ask for help in getting myself back to feeling okay, back to forming neutral memories. And the more space I give my conscious mind to work with, maybe I'll become more and more capable of forming memories filled with happiness, leading to an overall feeling of happiness with my life.
It seems pretty far-fetched now. But I was sick for a very long time, and never thought I would even be capable of making it here, into the "Neutral Zone."
Change takes a long time. To really transform how you let your conscious mind process things takes a lot of self awareness and courage and intention. But if I have come this far already, I have to believe it is possible to go even further.
So watch out world! Once I learn how to let myself face and feel my genuine emotions in every single moment, i'll be unstoppable. If there's one thing I know, it's that I can always surprise myself...and now I am patiently waiting (but also expecting) that surprise to happen. And I have a feeling it will be a good memory accompanied by a great feeling once it does.
So anyway, welcome to my blog, again. It's been years since I created this and I've been incredibly inconsistent, but I just feel like writing again. It helps me so much to figure out what im going through, almost like therapy! Just to get my thoughts out into the external world where I can study them the way I would with anything else to understand it.
There are so many topics I've found so much value in learning about over the years, and im hoping this can be a spot where I can just talk about them, along with what I continue to discover during my healing journey. I know there's probably no one reading this, but a sense of community would feel pretty awesome, I think. So feel free to interact with me. But also cut me some slack, im working on myself, I promise 😅❤👍
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