Hello! It’s been a few weeks since I shared some writings, and many months since I have made a blog post on here. I’ve been having a lot of stress in my life, it’s been increasing, I feel like I need to let it out, and this is my space. So here it goes.

I find that I have a mentality of ignoring my emotions, and ignoring myself in general. I am not sure if this is me thinking if I ignore it, it’s not a big deal, or if I think acknowledging that I’m not okay is a weakness. Whatever it stems from, I need to break that habit. I am a human, I have feelings, I should be allowed to have those feelings. Sometimes it can be a lot to support the emotions of those close to me, I don’t feel like I can have emotions myself because they need me to be strong. I have this strange thing, where I accept other people’s feelings and mental struggles, but I feel like I can’t have those myself. You know what, it’s exhausting. By trying not to have emotions, putting extra energy into ignoring how I feel, or pretending I’m okay, I am actually causing my mind and body more stress. I have been trying to retrain myself to find outlets to release those emotions in a healthier way. Instead of pushing myself to emotional outbursts, I am trying to put that frustrating energy into activities that calm my mind. For me, that can be writing, reading, putting on a familiar show and occupying my hands via embroidery or coloring- something visually artistic. This works well for me when I actually do it. Unfortunately, I have a habit of overthinking what I am doing, and then becoming overwhelmed and giving up before I even start.

I wanted to do embroidery because I did activities like that growing up, I found that using my hands to create something made me happy and feel a healthy satisfaction with myself. When I had everything I needed to begin that, I psyched myself out. I couldn’t trace the pattern nicely, I couldn’t get the stitch right, it didn’t look like the example, etc etc. Until I just stopped and it all sat there for months. I ended up speaking with a friend and my failed foray into embroidery came up. She gave me some great advice. She told me just to do it for fun, don’t worry about doing the right stitch, don’t worry about doing the pattern perfectly, just do it for fun. So I tried that. I’m so glad I did, because it was a relief to let those things go, and the action calmed my mind.

There are a lot of things I can’t control in my life, and that can be really hard for me to accept and manage. I like to think that I’m not alone in this, and other people out there understand how I feel. I’m trying to remind myself that out of all of the things I can’t control, there are parts of my life, or moments of time in my life, that I decide what to do with. I can lay in bed with that time and give in to being overwhelmed (and let’s be honest, sometimes I just need to let that happen), or I can put on a comforting show/playlist/podcast/book, and release some of the energy that has built up inside me. I am trying to push myself to do the latter more often than the former, and let myself be human but release those feelings in more productive ways. I am not great at it, I am constantly failing, but I keep reminding myself to try.