I am not able to post very often these days – and it will likely stay that way until this damn deadline on the first week of March. Today, I thought I’d share a self-developed technique to manage negative emotions. I am finding this to be very handy right now, and hope this can benefit anyone.
As March is rapidly approaching, the pressure is is immensely building up, and the potential adrenaline high keeping low moods at bay.. well, I might have to take it back. I’ve been in some shitty mood in the past few days, which I really can’t afford to wallow in crappy mood. I am trying to accept emotion as something that comes and goes, and with a life of its own – it’s not a static thing; it’s constantly changing and evolving, for the better or worse. But, also at the same time, there are times when it really gets in the way.
I tended to be quite withdrawn – and with a rather blithely personality I’ve adopted to play, my external appearance does not exactly reflect the bottomless hollowness that echoes depression. Being in therapy – it’s been a little over a year now – I am more ever so slightly more in touch with my emotions in general, but it is also like opening a can of disgusting insects crawling around (sorry insect lovers) and I don’t have a pesticide handy (Sorry PETA).
My point is, this cascade of shitty emotions hit me damn hard and I must stay afloat and stay productive. I want to ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist, but I am trying to learn to live with it. So.. I set a timer for any length of time I wish, and tell myself that I will come back to the shittiness in few minutes. My timer segments are 15 min, 20 min, or 45 minutes. In a way, the end of each block of time becomes an achievable, manageable goal, and it is much less daunting to take few minutes at a time, than taking a whole day at a time. This way, I have a block of time, however long or short, that I am dedicating myself to stay as focused as possible, and somehow rewarding myself to explore the crappiness not long after.
Of course, this doesn’t work very well if I can’t catch myself before I fall too deep into the dump. But at that point, I find that no socially acceptable coping strategy really helps, and unfortunately, I find self sabotaging activities to be the most grounding.
Anyway, I thought I’d share the timer trick. as for the Prefemin update, I won’t be going back on it until Mid March, which will be around my next cycle. I do plan on going back on it, just after things calm down a bit.