I have had many emotional breakdowns in my life, I am starting to get good at handling them. Being in my emotions is a state that I appreciate. Even though my emotions of shame, sadness, fear, anger, and anxiety are creating a sensation of deep discomfort –pain even– I prefer that, from the time when I was on pills and felt nothing. That has never happened to me before. I have always been a person always feeling a lot. To feel nothing was my hell on earth. I was a dead walker. Walking and breathing without feeling. And I looked like a dead walker too.
Up until that point, I always saw my emotions as something bad. They always seemed to get me into trouble. That was because I wasn't good at handling them, but that can be trained and developed, and that's what I have done and will keep doing.
And what I've realized is this: I can medicate my way away from fear, anger, sadness, and anxiety but that means that I will also lose my, curiosity, excitement, joy, inspiration, and fascination. Without curiosity, excitement, joy, inspiration, and fascination there is no energy in motion for motivation and creativity. Without inspiration, motivation, and creativity there will never be enough bravery to create long-lasting sustainable changes for the better in my life, and without worthy goals, there is no possibility for true satisfaction and a sense of fulfillment. This process goes for all of us, there is science to back it up. We can't have one, without the other. It starts with you appreciating all your emotions if you want to come back to life.
My inner world is deeply connected with everything that is going on in my outer world and I need to live in the present moment fully, become aware of my emotions, handle them and convert them into making something that I am proud of in the world I live in. Otherwise, tell me, what is the fucking point of all this?
I am already feeling better as I am writing this because emotions must be expressed if they will ever have a chance to find their own closure.
As I am opening my eyes to the state of which our country is in it is overwhelming. A lot of you have chosen deep denial. You are lying to yourself about the state we are in. And how can I blame you? When the truth of our reality is this disturbing, it is overwhelming and heartbreaking, and where to start when it is all connected, and we all participated? When Lars Vilks died last week, it broke my heart.
I don't believe that the emotional breakdowns are the problem, on the contrary, I think it is an important part of any expansion of understanding complex matters such as the inner emotional state or the state of our nation. However, lacking the tools and the knowledge of handling emotional breakdowns well is a problem. As a nation we are super smart but this nation lack emotional intelligence which makes us less aware. That is a bad combination. Smartness lacking awareness is ignorance and ignorance is evil.
If you are about to have an emotional breakdown for whatever reason –the reasons are so many these days– this could be a good start for you as well. I give you my tools and my process from last week. I started here:
1. I realized that an emotional breakdown was coming, I embraced it and shared it
2. I tried to estimate the severity of it, and made time and space for it (I canceled everything)
3. I went for a long walk
4. I wrote down all my thought spontaneous and without structure in my phone as I was walking
5. I draw pictures in my diary of what my emotional inner state could look like
6. I listen to music from artists that can speak the words I seek in a combination of the vibration I need for more harmony and balance in my inner world and since these artists represent the world I live in (regardless of time) they bring me back into the present moment, and they make me feel less alone, and less anxious
All of these steps cost me a smartphone, an internet connection, Spotify, a pen, and a paper, and time. It means ... If you have that, you are off with a good start for handling an emotional breakdown just like me. And from this "healing process" I realized one thing:
Maybe it is pitch black in Sweden right now, if so ... This too shall pass. And if it is about to get worse, we should be still in the darkness, and enjoy the present moment before it gets even darker unless you are 100% sure of what direction to take.
With all the love and the strong sense of hope I have for the Swedish people, my people...