Thoughts on progressing with extreme emotions and dealing with the outcome.

Sadness & helplessness:

When things don’t happen according to how you wished it to be, you are sad.

When people don’t listen to you and it hurts you, you feel helpless.

Anger:

When you are saturated with helplessness, and actions of others not listening to you, it hurts you; you become angry inside. Anger first always first manifests inside.

Violence & then indifference:

When things don’t change even after giving warnings, one expresses their anger. This then often takes the form of shouting, naming — shaming — labeling — making exaggerated comments.

Suppressing — Depression:

Even after all this, when things don’t change and people — events don’t seem to change, it forces you to express your anger often. This forceful expression of anger makes one feel guilty, sad at some point of time. Sometimes out of feeling sad, one suppresses their expression, and in continuity become indifferent to people causing pain.

The more you stay indifferent in close proximity of the same thing that causes you pain, the more your mind is occupied.

When your mind is occupied you cannot enjoy the things that usually pleases you — music, art, movies etc. and so you are left for the majority of the time with your own angry helpless indifferent mind.

Even social interactions take a hit as you cannot relate to people’s normal take on life, joy and routine life.

Thus one gradually withdraws from everything that keeps the mind sane, making one feel lonely. Lonely thoughts lead to a feeling of uselessness. Worldly things look meaningless. There is no motivation to get up and do anything. Stuck in this loop one feels things have come to an end.

But..Things are never ending….

How to shift from such a meaningless life to a meaningful one?

You have to work on yourself. While things that cause you pain may not change. Remember that it is possible, to continue to live without letting yourself get hurt.

First things first is not to expect people will change. Things may not change and that is the only truth you need to know.

Once you are through this, you can now start emptying all thoughts in your mind.

Maybe nobody is listening or understanding you. But that should not stop you from expressing what’s happening inside. Write down your thoughts, if you are not comfortable with paper write online somewhere safe, in your mails, in your cloud drives somewhere where you feel it is safe.

Once you have expressed your mind in all possible ways: the anger, helplessness, your efforts to help yourself, the doubts, confusion and all; just observe your mind.

Mostly when you have expressed your mind, there is a certain kind of stillness that envelopes you.

Do this process for sometime to empty your thoughts.

Once the thought’s uniqueness subside, you begin to see your life beyond your misery.

It is like digging through a tunnel and suddenly getting a ray of light.

This ray of light is a big boost. That experience somewhere brings some faith. This is exactly how one should move forward. Take the help of a ray of light and keep digging till you come out of the tunnel of isolation.

When you have expressed your bottled feelings, your mind is free for everything else.

Now look at how you have been, how you were and what plans you had before life became worse for you.

Write down and remember it all, tiniest details.

Now ask yourself, what do you want to do with your life. Are you good at doing something? Did people appreciate you for that? Did you ever feel proud or happy doing something? Build up on something that has or most probably will make you happy.

Don’t have a lot of expectations. It’s okay for that to not work out, but try it. If it fails try another thing. Do this process to understand where you mind sticks for long.

Then work more on things that are doable and don’t irritate you. At this stage, avoid getting into things that challenge your patience and make you feel it’s hard. Start to do and let the process of doing tell you if it’s doable or difficult.

Do this for a few weeks. Gain the confidence of building something, of creating something, of seeing something work out.

And let that faith build up in you. When faith builds, a reason is established, social interactions happen naturally.

Take it slow and be careful of people on how they interact. Slowly let people in your life.

As you build faith, start finding meaning, restart social interactions, you see yourself a reason to live.

Let this reason guide you to a more meaningful life. In this new life, have simple mantras -

Just do.

It’s okay to fail.

People can be mean.

I need to respect my likes and dislikes but understand people’s choices may be different.

That I am human & vulnerable & it’s okay.

That sometimes things don’t work out & it’s okay.

That I should focus more on what I can do to keep myself healthy, happy.

My choices need not be something that everyone will agree with and their dislike or disagreement is not hate. If there is something to improve from their negation, I can listen to it.

If I cannot make changes in life by my usual lifestyle, I can ask for how to move forward.

Most importantly, there is always a possibility for a change. What I need is a willingness to move forward and shed my past habits, thought process and how I perceive everything!

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Hope the article sheds some light and helps someone.

You may reach out to me via twitter on twitter.com/swapnilbawane , would love to read your comments, thoughts on this article.