One-Size-Fits-None

Posted on May 31, 2023 by admin

Imagine three people seek medical attention. The first has a broken arm, the second is having a heart attack, and the third has a malignant tumor. Without knowing anything else about their situations, it’s easy to see that it’d be a bad idea to give them all the same treatment. If they were all treated for one of those problems, that would help the person who has that problem while leaving the other two high and dry. Worse still would be if all three of them were treated for an issue that none of them had. The proper thing to do is customize the care to fit the needs of each patient. That gives each person the best chance of surviving, recovering, and living a good life thereafter.

The same goes for mental and emotional health. Even if two siblings close in age were traumatized from the same incident (or series of incidents), they may still both respond quite differently. For example, one may retreat inward and become extremely avoidant to any type of conflict while the other may expand outward and become extremely aggressive even in calm situations. The way each responded to the same traumatic experience will necessitate different approaches to helping them both heal and learn healthy ways of living.

Some things are standard for anyone who is struggling. Asking someone what they’re wanting and needing is an excellent starting point. Working through painful emotions is always beneficial. However, each person is still a unique individual who will get more out of a custom-tailored approach than a one-size-fits-all approach.

Unfortunately, this is often lost on those wanting to help. It seems that most folks start by offering what would help them feel better instead of checking in to see what the struggling person needs/wants. A remedy that’s perfect for the person providing help may be wholly inappropriate for the person needing help. This can result in strained relationships, delayed healing, increased health problems from unhealed pain, and other major issues.

When I lost my dog Sawyer last year, I got all kinds of opinions on what I should or shouldn’t do, how I should or shouldn’t feel, and how that experience will or won’t affect the rest of my life. I also heard several painful stories of loss, whether human or animal, from those close to me. I didn’t ask for any of that and I didn’t want it in most cases. Being told more sad stories of loss when I was deep in the worst pain I’d ever felt only made me feel worse. Wanting to avoid all of that unsolicited input is one of the reasons I kept to myself as much as I did over the past year. Fortunately, that solitude allowed me to release huge amounts of pain in ways that I never could have had I listened to what those around me were saying about grief, death, loss, etc. Despite that, I often wonder how my healing journey would have been different if others had asked me how I felt instead of assuming they already knew, inquired as to how they could help me instead of giving advice, and sought to understand my experiences instead of telling me about their own.

Mental/emotional health seems to be much less valued and much less understood than physical health. With how much pain there still is in the world despite countless advances in medicine, technology, poverty reduction, food availability, and so on, I have to think that mental/emotional well-being is the missing piece of the puzzle. For everyone’s sake, I hope that changes soon. That’s entirely possible as there are plenty of resources out there on why trauma develops, how to cure it, and how to prevent it. Even small changes in this area from one generation to the next can yield massive benefits for both current and future generations. I hope to see some major improvements before my time on Earth is through.

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It’s Simple

Posted on May 24, 2023 by admin

I’m a simple man

I strive for consistency and am full of contradictions

I want to live simply in a small town, travel around the US in a camper van, get a home in the country, and live in the city of my birth

I want to be free and independent, and also get married and raise my kids alongside some animal friends

I want to keep things as they were during my dog Sawyer’s life and find new adventures to fill my remaining years on Earth

I keep things simple while also overcomplicating them

I want to save humanity and also give up on it

I want to interact in meaningful ways with others and be by myself as often as possible

I value silence but almost never stop talking when I’m alone or around animals

I’m a good speaker and often struggle to get my words out

I’m pretty easygoing but it takes a lot to keep me feeling good

I feel more at peace than in most other times of my life and still wonder if my deepest agonies will ever end

It’s just that simple

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Grief

Posted on May 17, 2023 by admin

Grief is such a bizarre feeling.

Aside from the sheer pain, it leaves you confused more often than not.

You wonder how seemingly everyone you know can feel so good while you feel so bad.

Eventually it dawns on you that time has stopped for you but keeps moving for everyone else and that your world ended while theirs kept going.

You don’t want to be a burden, but you do want somebody to notice you feel bad.

Sometimes you want someone to make it all better.

Other times you want to be left alone.

You walk around in a daze, as if you’re halfway between asleep and awake, alive and dead.

Everything seems lackluster compared to how it was before, even your favorite things.

You end up trying everything that you think will take away even a small amount of the pain.

It seems like you’ll never feel good for more than a few seconds ever again.

You may even want to feel bad, as if feeling good would be a betrayal to the one you lost.

You might not want to die but sometimes you hope you don’t wake up in the morning.

Sleep becomes an oasis in which the pain is manageable, and perhaps even absent for a little while.

Sometimes you get to see your loved one in a dream, although that never happens as often as you want.

Then, against all odds, you find something that helps, and you cling to it with all you’ve got left.

Things gradually begin getting lighter.

One day, you realize how far you’ve come and how much better you feel.

Looking back on old memories from when the grief was still fresh, you’re amazed at the difference between then and now.

That gives you hope, and hope can work wonders in even the darkest times.

–For my dog Sawyer
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4 More Ideas to Avoid

Posted on May 10, 2023 by admin

This is a follow up to a post I wrote back in January. Given how many harmful ideas there are in the world of self-improvement, I have a feeling there will be more follow ups to come. Without further ado, here are more ideas to avoid.

  1. “You can’t become more sensitive to pleasure without also becoming more sensitive to pain.” My experience has been the exact opposite. The further I’ve gone on my personal growth journey, the less sensitive to pain I’ve gotten. By that I mean I’ve become less affected by personal attacks, manipulations, threats, and other abuses. Simultaneously, it’s become easier for me to have fun, laugh freely at things I find enjoyable, get into a good mood and stay there, recover more quickly when I get into a bad mood, etc. Having less emotional baggage has made the good feelings stronger and the bad feelings weaker. As such, I completely disagree with the notion that increased growth leads to increased sensitivity to pain. Further, the primary person who said a version of this around me has undergone little to no personal growth, and, accordingly, has no experience from which to speak on this. That is why I don’t trust her perspective on this, and my own experience is why I don’t believe others who repeat this idea.
  2. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Going through a painful experience doesn’t give you strength, fully recovering from it does. I’ve written before about this, so I won’t go into too much detail about it here. I will say that the pain and stress from my dog Sawyer’s death last year weakened me severely for most of 2022 and I’m certain that’s why I got sicker last summer than I had been in over a decade. All the healing work I did to get through that pain is what strengthened me, not the pain itself. Additionally, because not everyone succeeds in fully healing after a traumatic experience, anyone who doesn’t heal will experience a lower quality of life after the trauma than they had before the trauma.
  3. “Fight for those you love.” My perspective on this one has undoubtedly been shaped by being around argumentative people almost all my life. That said, I don’t see why anyone wants to fight for their relationships when they could cooperate instead. Yelling, interrupting each other, lobbing insults, and other examples of dysfunction neither solve problems nor move anybody forward. Progress and healing happen when emotions settle down and each person can communicate effectively about what’s bothering them. That doesn’t happen when tempers flare, emotions go through the roof, and nobody can hear what anybody else is saying. By the time all of the dust from a fight finally settles, so much time and energy have been wasted and huge amounts of ill will have been created. All of that makes it less likely that problems will be solved, which makes the relationship much more likely to fail. It’s much better to skip over all of that negativity by recognizing when emotions are too hot for effective communication, waiting for them to settle, having a heart-to-heart, and then quickly arriving at the problem-solving part. My life has become much more peaceful as I’ve steadily removed those who are determined to take everything personally, fight, and escalate a calm discussion into a full-blown altercation. Those who are worth sticking by are those who communicate in a civil manner and work effectively through whatever problems arise.
  4. “Match energy.” Some live by this philosophy that demands they treat others exactly how others treat them. Similarly to the previous idea, I prefer to do one better. With those who treat me well, I find it extremely easy to treat them well in return. Earlier in my life, I would treat badly those who also treated me badly. That has changed. At this point, I still treat well those who treat me well, and I interact as little as possible with those who treat me badly. I totally avoid them whenever possible; when that’s impossible, I minimize our interactions. This way, I can still feel good by refusing to stoop to their level without risking getting hurt by them yet again. Plus it leaves me with more time and energy to spend with those who treat me well.
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A Better Approach to Healing

Posted on May 3, 2023 by admin

The more I learn about trauma, the more I realize how limiting labels are. My recent increased interest in this subject came from The Body Keeps the Score. In that book, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk covers what he has learned throughout his career of studying and treating traumatized people.

Van der Kolk believes that the increasing reliance on an endlessly growing list of different diagnoses based on symptoms has done more harm than good. He makes the point that, when starting by looking at the symptoms, any of a huge number of diagnoses can be made. The diagnoses may be complementary, opposing, or a mix of the two. Which diagnosis receives the most attention will determine what treatment(s) are pursued. That approach ignores what is going on underneath all the symptoms, including whether there might be a common cause for a variety of seemingly unrelated issues. By overlooking that, the possibility of eliminating all of the symptoms by solving the underlying problem is kept off the table.

He compares this to the state of medicine prior to the twentieth century. Due to the limited amount of information at that time, doctors both named diseases and based their treatments of those diseases around the physical symptoms that arose. As medicine advanced, such practices fell by the wayside. Unfortunately, van der Kolk sees modern psychiatry as having taken a similar path once the focus shifted to symptoms above all else.

Is someone an “introvert”, or is that person still being held back by early-life trauma? Do they still feel afraid that someone they don’t know may attack them physically or verbally, act like a friend before betraying them, or otherwise create a situation in which they feel unsafe? If so, they may be always on edge and hypervigilant to even the smallest potential threat. Similarly, is someone an “extrovert”, or does that person feel afraid to be alone with their thoughts and feelings? Are they still dealing with unhealed trauma and so look to be constantly distracted (especially by interacting with others) to avoid having to face that deep-seated pain? In that case, they may always struggle to focus on the present moment and talk at length to escape the inner agony. Either way, labels derived from looking at symptoms seem to do more harm than good by obscuring important information that isn’t immediately visible.

Looking only at symptoms while ignoring the root cause is nothing new, and it applies to much more than mental/emotional health. I’m convinced that many of the problems that have plagued humanity for centuries and even millennia are still around because the source of those problems has never been addressed. If it were, then I believe that so much of what has long been considered to be part of “the human condition” would evaporate within a generation or two. Although I have no idea if that will happen and I’m not holding my breath that it will, I’d love to see it put to the test. If I’m right, then the world could forever change for the better. If I’m wrong, then I’d start looking for another possible solution.

As you can guess, the importance of solving the underlying problem rather than merely treating the symptoms was my biggest takeaway from the book, although I was already thinking along those lines long before I read it or knew much about it. Above all else, the primary reason I am so interested in this because getting to the root of the problem has done more good for my health and well-being than any amount of focusing solely on symptoms. I’ve only been doing this since late 2020 and already it’s completely overhauled my life. I’m convinced that it was *the* thing that allowed me to make it through the pain of losing my dog Sawyer. Even without looking at everything it’s done for me before and since then, that alone makes it worthwhile. I hope that this becomes more common so that more people can experience true healing and lasting relief from issues that have long been tormenting them and their loved ones.

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My Thoughts on Coping Mechanisms

Posted on April 26, 2023 by admin

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about coping mechanisms. It seems that almost everyone has multiple coping mechanisms that help them get through the hard times. Anything from cell phones to talking for hours with those around them to playing games to excessive exercise can be used to cope. In this post, I’ll share some of my thoughts on all this based on the current point in my healing journey.

I’ll start by saying that I think coping mechanisms are only used when pain is present. After all, why does anyone turn to coping mechanisms? From what I’ve seen, it’s to avoid dwelling on, or becoming overtaken by, anxiety, depression, anger, and other negative emotions. I’ve not heard of someone needing to cope with feeling happiness, joy, peace, or any other positive emotions. If coping mechanisms are only used to avoid pain, then they are unnecessary when there’s no pain.

There have been plenty of coping mechanisms I stopped using once the pain they were helping me avoid went away. Halfway through 2020, I experienced the worst emotional pain I’d ever felt up to that point in my life. For weeks, I felt anxious, nauseous, and depressed almost all the time. Distractions were the only thing that temporarily dulled the pain, and I used a generic version of Pepto Bismol almost every day to settle my stomach. Once I finally worked through all that pain toward the end of the year, I no longer needed anything to help me cope with it. Even before all of that particular pain was gone, I still gradually wound down the use of coping mechanisms as I released bits and pieces of pain over the course of several months. Once that pain was totally healed, there was no longer any need to do anything to manage it or avoid it.

I can see a temporary role for coping mechanisms right after someone has experienced a monumentally painful event. Although I started working through the pain right after my dog Sawyer’s death, I also used lots of coping mechanisms and distractions when the pain was the worst. I rarely use them anymore since the pain is only a fraction of what it once was. Once the worst of the pain is gone, continued use of coping mechanisms at that point seems more likely to prevent healing and keep one stuck at that level of pain.

Similarly to the 2020 pain, the pain of losing Sawyer has gone down tremendously as I’ve worked through it. That said, this pain is taking longer to fully release since it is much greater than the other pain, but the difference between how I felt the day Sawyer died and how I feel one year later is night and day. I have no doubt that continued inner work will one day result in the total release of all pain around Sawyer’s death; at this rate, it seems like that’ll happen before next April.

Whenever someone tells me “The pain never goes away,” I now understand that they are simply speaking from their own experience. Not everyone knows how to release deep pain. Among those who do know how, not all of them put that knowledge to use. Even after I learned how to let go, there were still times when I did little to none of it or ignored some major issues for anywhere from a few months to several years. All of that has changed recently. However, even before those recent changes, I still didn’t let anyone else limit my ability to heal, and I won’t limit anyone else’s ability to heal.

Since I have learned how to heal my emotional pain, I no longer take to heart what anyone else tells me about the healing process. However, I still feel frustrated when I see negative messages about healing being passed around. So many folks are hurting and many die from copious amounts of grief or take their own lives due to overwhelming pain. I can’t help but think that at least some of them bought into the messages of hopelessness that they heard from others who also hadn’t healed their pain. Nobody knows how many out there are just hanging by a thread and how easily that thread can be cut, such as by hearing that their crushing, devastating pain will never end. That’s why I want to see more messages of hope alongside useful information about different ways to heal, which include but are not limited to the following: the letting go technique from Letting Go by David Hawkins, inner child work as described in Homecoming by John Bradshaw, EMDR therapy, various breathing techniques (especially Wim Hof breathing), animal therapy, and MDMA or psychedelic therapy.

MDMA therapy is particularly incredible since it has been shown to heal PTSD. Not manage PTSD or treat its symptoms, heal it and get rid of it completely. No more PTSD means there are no more painful PTSD symptoms, no more drugs to manage PTSD symptoms, and no more additional drugs to manage the side effects of the initial drugs. By healing the PTSD at it source, the healed person is left feeling much lighter, freer, and more joyful. That is such a huge game changer in mental health and it’s a shame that hardly anybody seems to know or talk about it.

I have no idea where I’d be if I hadn’t found the letting go technique when I did and used it to release so much pain over the past several years. Others have made similar progress using one or more of the above methods, as well as options not mentioned here. The more people heal their trauma, the more at peace they’ll be with themselves and the more at peace they’ll be with those around them. Imagine how things would be if even half of all people who were traumatized found complete healing from that trauma. Imagine how much less angry, fearful, and violent the world would be due to the sheer amount of joy, contentment, and love. There are many to get there, and I hope more people learn about and avail themselves of those ways.

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One Year Without Sawyer

Posted on April 19, 2023 by admin

One year. That’s how long it’s been since my dog Sawyer died. One year since I last pet him, held him, played with him, gave him hugs and kisses, and went on a car ride with him. Since I last saw him hanging out in different places around the house, whether napping, waiting for food, watching the world go by, or looking for some company. Since I last told him I loved him. Since I last gave him some comfort even while I was breaking down in his final few moments.

It’s hard to believe that much time has already passed. Sometimes it seems like yesterday and other times it seems like lifetimes ago. Just as it seemed like Sawyer had always been here after he came home, it now occasionally seems like he was never here. It’s so strange how time and memories work.

Thus far, the pain was definitely the worst right after Sawyer’s death. It took months of spending lots of time alone and whole days crying on the couch before I started feeling like myself again. Holidays and my first birthday without Sawyer in over a decade were extra painful, whether they happened after his death last year or this year. He was here last year for several holidays I love (such as Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day, and Easter), meaning that I didn’t have to face those holidays without him until this year. As expected, they were all painful to some degree.

I had extra emotional and physical pain in the days leading up to the one-year mark since Sawyer’s death. The worst physical pain was a headache that lasted most of this past Sunday. It persisted for much of the afternoon and a bit of the evening despite several things I did physically and emotionally in the hope of getting rid of it. I’m glad that I took good enough care of myself that I could enjoy going out and having nice interactions with folks I know that night. The headache did eventually go away shortly before bed, and I slept well that night before waking up feeling refreshed on Monday morning.

By far the worst emotional pain occurred today. On my long drive back home from what turned out to be a long and tiring day, I cried hard while singing some sad songs and missing Sawyer. Those tears were long overdue and made me feel much better after they ran their course. It’s interesting how some days I cry effortlessly and other days I can’t cry at all, no matter how much I attempt to do so. I feel thankful for today’s tears.

One huge advantage I had today that I didn’t have the day Sawyer died was a year’s worth of working through the pain of losing him. Last week, I wrote about the extra letting go I’d been doing this month to prepare. Given how difficult today was even with all that preparation, I shudder to think about how much more difficult it would have been without it. Some big emotions did knock me down during that time. Just like last year, I always managed to get up, dust myself off, and carry on. This time around, that process took way less time than it did in 2022. Even my most difficult days this month were incredibly easy compared to last April.

I let go of a ton of pain years before Sawyer’s death, during our final months together, and in the year since our final goodbye. All the letting go I did allowed me to survive losing Sawyer. If I was still holding onto a lot of pain from 2020 and earlier, I doubt I’d have made it through last year. Knowing that overwhelming grief can lead to death, I can safely say that I have healed enough to no longer be at risk of dying from a broken heart. That said, I’m still letting go of pain around Sawyer’s death, especially from those first few hours after our final goodbye. It’s much easier to face and release that pain now than it was a year ago. Additionally, in contrast to what several people have told me, although the pain was still great today, it was nowhere near as big or intense as it was on this day last year. If that’s true after a year, then imagine how it’ll be after several years of consistently working through it.

I don’t believe that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” That said, I do believe that working through so much pain, both around Sawyer’s death and around other issues, has given me extra strength and ability. Losing Sawyer forced me to confront a lot of old pain that was exacerbating the pain of his death. Working through as much as I have over the past year has done wonders for me. I’m better able to set and maintain appropriate boundaries in a kind way, especially when I’m doing a lot of consistent letting go. My interactions with others go much more smoothly and often feel effortless. Anxiety and anger are essentially absent when I’m around other humans. I look forward to seeing how much more things will improve as I continue healing from all kinds of pain.

This concludes the hardest year of my life. I feel so thankful that, for the most part, the rest of 2022 was gentle on me; the same is true thus far for 2023. Some other incredibly painful years kept knocking me down, kicking me while I was down, and preventing me from getting fully settled on my feet before knocking me down once again. In contrast, the pain I experienced in 2022 was mostly the monumental pain of Sawyer’s death. Even the painful moments later in the year paled in comparison to losing Sawyer. Having found an incredible way to heal and keep going despite overwhelming pain, I hope I keep using it to overcome whatever I encounter over the rest of my days.

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Preparing for Pain

Posted on April 12, 2023 by admin

For at least the past three years, spring has been a difficult season for me. Although I love the extra sunlight, cool weather alongside sunny days, and sense of freshness in spring, major changes, whether in the general world or in my own small corner of it, have given me a great deal of pain each time it’s rolled around in recent memory. This year is no exception. As such, I’ve spent much of this month prioritizing self-care.

Since last Wednesday, I’ve spent a lot more time letting go of emotional pain than I normally do. I managed to do this every day except for Saturday due to a great deal of busyness that day, including almost 6 hours of driving. Despite that gap, I still felt great for all of Saturday as well as the several days before and since. The more letting go I do and the more intentional I am with releasing old pain, the better I feel.

All of that extra letting go has got me feeling better than I have at any other time this year and close to how I felt shortly before my dog Sawyer’s death last April. Some issues I’ve written about in recent blog posts no longer bother me, it’s incredibly easy to ignore pointless drama, my actions are nearly effortless, and I’m better able to focus on the good I can do for myself and others. When I interacted with a lot of folks close to me on Saturday, I didn’t have the usual social anxiety or trouble thinking of what to do or say. Everything felt automatic, easy, and enjoyable. My voice has also been smoother, clearer, and more relaxed over the past week. Those are all the usual signs that I’m doing well emotionally. It’s good to have them back.

Some of my emotional pain may be gone for good, and the pain that remains is much easier to handle now. For the foreseeable future, I’m going to at least maintain the level of letting go and self-care I’ve recently reached. I may even increase it as the one-year anniversary of Sawyer’s death is a week away and I want to be in as good a position as possible to effectively handle whatever emotions come up at that time. If the past week is any indicator of how next week will go, then I’m in good shape.

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Good Books for Grief

Posted on April 5, 2023 by admin

I worked through more grief in 2022 than in any other year of my life. That’s nearly all I could do on most days for months after my dog Sawyer’s death. Although I still have some grief and other types of emotional pain, most of it has gone thanks to all the inner work I did last year. With that in mind, here are several good books for grief that have gotten me through the most painful experience I’ve ever had.

Letting Go by David Hawkins: still my number one resource for healthy emotional processing. I’m certain that all the work I did based on this book from late 2020 onward prepared me to be able to handle Sawyer’s death and life without him. That didn’t make it easy but it did allow me to make it through the pain. I spent most of 2022 using everything I learned from this book, especially the parts around handling grief, sadness, and depression. It’s been incredibly valuable this year in helping me through the more recent emotions of anger, frustration, and bitterness. As if that weren’t enough, it’s also reminded me to welcome the positive emotions, whether they’re from my memories with Sawyer or from other enjoyable aspects of my life. Thanks to all of that, I feel better now than I did for most of last year, and I continue feeling a little better almost every month as I continue working through the remaining pain. I don’t think I could have made it this far without what I learned in Letting Go and I’m so thankful I found it.

Homecoming by John Bradshaw: the beauty of Homecoming is its focus on original pain, meaning the pain and trauma that almost everyone experiences early in life. So much of my own pain in adulthood can be traced back to that original pain that is still crying out to be healed. The more I work through that pain, the more relief I feel. This book helped me a lot when I worked through the exercises in 2021. Rereading it earlier this year (without actually working through it a second time) reminded me of a lot of useful things, such as the importance of being kind and gentle with myself. Whenever I feel overwhelmed, I do my best to see the scared little kid who needs love, comfort, and understanding. Recognizing and soothing that part of me always brings tremendous relief and allows me to get through anything with greater ease.

When a Pet Dies by Mister Rogers: the only entry on this list focused specifically on the pain of losing a beloved animal friend, this book was so helpful. Even though I first read it about eight months after Sawyer’s death, I still found it incredibly comforting. I imagined Mister Rogers reading it to me in the same calm, comforting voice he used in the episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood about death. The book also helped me identify what emotions I was feeling, including ones that I was unintentionally neglecting. When a Pet Dies is a wonderful gift from an incredible human who has touched generations of kids and families, and it made the most painful experience of my life a little easier to bear.

A Grief Observed by CS Lewis: it was incredible to read about how Lewis, known for his strong Christian apologetics work, struggled with faith, doubt, and anger at God after his wife’s death. Since my own faith journey has wound through and around some interesting, unexpected, and confusing paths over the past six years, knowing that Lewis faced similar challenges gave me some comfort. Although overwhelming for a long time, his pain eventually subsided and some semblance of peace returned; the same has occurred with me. Sometimes (though not all the time), knowing that I’m not alone can help, especially if someone I admire has made it through an incredibly painful loss. That’s some of what I got out of A Grief Observed.

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Struggles and Recent Shifts

Posted on March 29, 2023 by admin

This has been a weird year for me. Since February, I’ve dealt with more frustration and anger than I have in a long time. It has come and gone in waves, and there is seemingly no rhyme or reason to it. That makes it more difficult to predict and manage as I never know what will set it off; some days, almost nothing will, and other days, almost everything does.

All this emotional uncertainty has made me much prefer quieter folks who spend more time in the present moment. They’re much more comfortable with silence, less likely to interrupt, more likely to ask clarifying questions instead of making assumptions, less likely to perceive intentions that aren’t there, and generally more likely to treat me as I like to be treated. Unfortunately, they are also incredibly rare, so I’ve spent a lot of time by myself these past few months.

My solitude has been a blessing rather than a curse. I’m so sick of being around folks who seemingly have no emotional intelligence. I hate automatically being given advice, especially when I didn’t ask for it. Most of those who give advice have nothing useful to offer; the less they know about a situation, the more advice they have to give and the worse is the quality of their advice. I’d much prefer someone who knows that I feel upset ask what kind of support I’d like and then, if they can, give it to me. Most of the time, though, I prefer being alone so I can work through emotions on my own terms, but I do sometimes find value in describing what’s happening to someone who listens with the intent to understand. Since almost nobody I know does that, I almost never tell anyone when I feel upset. When I do, they usually attempt to downplay my emotions, get me to “look on the bright side”, or otherwise try to make me do what they think I *should* do. Whether intentionally or not, they are attempting to draw me away from feeling through my emotions, which is the only thing that has made me feel better after a painful experience. I’ve dealt with all of that negative interference most of my life, it’s always made me feel worse, and I’m done with it.

I’m also tired of being around those who are quick to take offense or who act offended even if they’re not. I can’t tell the difference between genuine and imaginary offense, and either scenario is deeply unpleasant for myriad reasons. Further, they, along with those who compulsively give advice, also tend to dump all their gossip, rude opinions, and bad experiences on me without first getting my permission to use me as a human garbage can. No more of that.

For much of this year, my mindset was similar to that of George Carlin’s. I even got some enjoyment out of seeing things more along those lines. Recently, my perspective shifted after I watched this video on Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau’s approach seems a lot better suited to my demeanor and goals, plus his outlook appears to be much more positive than Carlin’s. I think I can get a similar experience to Thoreau’s without building and living in a cabin in the woods as he did.

This perspective shift has been crucial. I don’t think I could have entertained the negative outlook for much longer without getting into a bad place. Way too many humans push their pain onto others, especially when they’re in exceptionally bad moods. While I’ve done plenty of that in my life, over the last year, I’ve mostly succeeded at keeping my pain to myself rather than dragging anyone else down to the level of my worst moods. Sometimes that means I stay home and other times it means I hardly socialize even when I do go out. I’d rather act aloof than snap at someone I care about.

I’m certain that two major things have influenced my approach to all of this. The first is how, regardless of when I go to bed and how much sleep I get, I’ve woken up feeling exhausted almost every morning for almost a month now (although my sleep has been much better the past few days, which has also greatly improved my mood). The second is that the one-year anniversary of my dog Sawyer’s death is quickly approaching. I spent most of last year crying and feeling sad after Sawyer died. While I still feel sad much of the time, I only cry on occasion at this point, and I feel frustrated and angry more often than I feel depression or deep sorrow. I chalk all of that up to honoring my emotions as much as I have and having successfully worked through the most painful emotions. I hope that getting better at welcoming anger, frustration, and the like will allow me to pass through this stage and onto greater peace.

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