Tunnel Vision.
Narrative.
“It feels cold, lonely and hollow.
The way you would expect Antarctica to feel at midnight.
Vacuous and ruthless.
It’s like walking with no destination…not being able to feel the ground.
Constantly falling into nothingness with no one to catch you and nothing to keep you up.
Empty.”
“I think sometimes life just gets to you and you tend to lose sight of all the great things you’ve achieved, all the people that love you and how far you’ve come.
Suddenly all the negativity floods your heart and your mind…
You start to focus on every little thing that has gone wrong…nothing seems to go right.
It starts to eat you up on the inside and…
I hate it, I have to find a way to numb the feeling…”
“Well what can I say?
Sometimes I’m full of regrets and other times, I’m just so disapproving of myself.
A wise woman once told me that the most intelligent people are the most critical of themselves because we strive for perfection.
I can’t deny; I am a perfectionist…to a fault I guess.”
“I shouldn’t have said that”
“I should have done this”
“If only I was a certain way”
“If only I was more interesting...”
A downward spiral.
“And the most annoying thing is that once you get into this vicious cycle of negative thinking, nothing positive that happens to you feels good, I’m becoming almost…
…insatiable.”
When we dwell on the negative things, the things that are outside our realm of control, we attract more negativity to ourselves.
It is extremely difficult to stop ourselves from delving into a cascade of negative emotions.
The mind does what it wants.
Most times, the frustration of not being able to stop or escape this dark space could dig us deeper into this unbearably discomforting nest of unwarranted thoughts.
Don’t fight it.
The one thing we can do is listen to ourselves.
Listen to our thoughts and challenge them.
Understand why you are feeling this way.
What is so wrong in making mistakes when we’re only human?
We must give ourselves permission to be flawed.
…to learn from our mishaps.
In order to do that we need to keep talking about our worries until we find a solution for ourselves…even if it’s to a mirror.
Respond to your negative self-criticism with positive affirmations.
You are worth so much more than you believe.
Be patient with yourself.
Be gentle with your heart.
Be loving of your “crazy”, complex and inherently unique mind.
Why beat yourself up when there is so much to experience and more life ahead of you?
Take care of yourself.