Episode Summary
In this episode I share my experiences of the last 24 hours and the impact they’ve had on me. It feels like I’ve had a relapse.
Episode Transcript (Edited)
Welcome to today’s episode of Hope, Help, Happiness.
Today I want to talk about whether I’ve had a relapse or not because today’s not been a good day. I hit a level of low I’ve not felt for four weeks or five weeks.
Yesterday I had, or I at least I perceived rejection from two women who I’m interested in trying to date. I’m vague about it because I’m not sure whether I’m ready for a relationship yet. However I am making tentative steps to see whether I can get back into the dating game.
I’ve realised part of my challenge has resulted from not being too good at those [relationships] in the past. I felt this perceived rejection quite powerfully because it’s a big issue for me.
Last night, shortly after it had happened, I started reflecting on the fact that maybe I’m just not good at relationships. That maybe I should just carry on being alone and being single.
I was out last night. I got home late. I was tired and I noticed I’d lost some of the fire that’s been burning in my belly just recently about the progress I’ve been made making.
This morning, my alarm went off as usual at six o’clock. For the last month I’ve been getting up at that time and doing my morning routine including meditation, stretching and breathing exercises. But today I just hit the snooze button and went back to sleep.
I woke up half an hour or so later.
Then I ruminated for a couple of hours.
I started feeling overwhelmed again about the scale of the task I’ve got ahead of me. Not only to recover from these feelings and the impact of them, but also on the effort I need to put in place to start earning again.
I felt I’d lost my flow and because of that I felt, in fact I feel deficient. I’ll talk about that in the present tense because that’s still how I feel now.
I don’t feel good enough.
I’m thinking “What’s the point?”
And there are echoes of the emotions related to feelings of suicide. I’m not suicidal, but one of the things about struggling to cope with your very existence means it’s an obvious and perhaps convenient way out.
I had these thoughts return too:
What’s the point?
Why should I bother, because it’s not working.
But I think that’s just an element of me being emotionally weak and I recognise that.
I also got into the thought process of “Am I deluding myself about making a future for myself?”
It’s like all the progress I’ve been making over the last four or five weeks has been written up on a whiteboard. And now it’s just been wiped off as though it never existed in the first place.
I did get up today and I recovered my activity.
So I managed to get work done today, but I’m still feeling extremely low. I’ve lost my spark and I think the only good thing about today, other than the fact I’ve done something, was that I got out of bed.
I knew it wasn’t going to be a journey of successive highs and achievements. But when you do find yourself back where you wanted to escape from, it’s a bit unnerving.
It’s a bit unsettling.
It’s a bit worrying.
I thought I’d fixed it.
Maybe that’s the problem. I have these expectations it’s all going to go away. But I know it’s part of the journey and I’m sure have other days like this.
An interesting thing is I mentioned a couple of days ago a technique called the five second rule. When I discovered it I was in a very positive frame of mind and could see how it would work.
It’s about counting back from 5 to 1 to shift your brain’s energy and focus from where your habit loops reside to the part of your brain that can make conscious choices about what to think.
The problem with techniques like this is they don’t work if you don’t use them.
And you don’t use them if you don’t feel like using them because you feel low.
I think one of my challenges is I hang on to this low feeling and almost want to stay there, like I’m addicted to it.
I wallow in it.
Although I don’t like it, I stay there.
And that’s another one of the challenges I’ve got to overcome.
So until tomorrow.
