Over the summer I’ve learnt some things about myself. Suddenly out of nowhere I got struck by this fear of the future, being alone and never finding out what to do with my life. It completely drained me of energy, scaring me even more.
This has been quite a terrifying experience for me, and I wanted to write about what my experience felt like, because it seems like everyone goes through this differently. I read tons of articles online about what you could do to get your feet back on the ground, and some of them were helpful, but some just stressed me out even more. The words “take control before it is too late” scared me, and I wish that I had found an article that focused on reassuring you that nothing is dangerous and there’s nothing you can do to make it worse. I couldn’t find one, so I decided to write the post I really could have needed myself because it might help some of you. This is based purely on my own experiences, and remember that everyone is different and even though you don’t relate to everything I’m saying, you are still alright.
I think the first step to get your feet back on the ground is understanding why you are feeling like this. Find the root of the problem. Sit down with a note pad and a pencil and start with thinking: “What is the main problem here?” In my case, it was that over the summer I had spent way too much alone time, and it was driving me crazy. I was bored out of my mind. This made me feel completely numb because I thought that I had lost all hope of what I want to do with my life, which obviously isn’t the case, it’s just the boredom and my own head twisting and turning on irrational thoughts.
When you have found the root of the problem, try thinking of what could be the solution to the problem. This isn’t easy, and there’s often not just one answer that’s going to fix everything, but list all things that you think might be able to help. Sometimes it fixes itself just because time passes. For me, I was just waiting for school to start again so that I would have something to do so I wasn’t so bored. That’s a thing that I couldn’t do anything with until school started. But in the meantime, I did things like going outside and faking myself into thinking I was okay. These are things that have been proven to work for me every time.
“But what if they won’t work for me?” you might be thinking. That leads me to talking about “what ifs”. During these phases where I feel like everything is uncertain (anxiety is a stigmatized word, so I prefer to call it a feeling of uncertainty.) I get lots and lots of what ifs. The biggest one is always: “What if I don’t ever get better?” which of course is completely and utterly irrational, because you will always find some way to get better. Maybe not today, or tomorrow or in a week, but it always finds a way to fix itself. If you’re like me, you’re worried that if you think about it, you’re gonna make it worse. But the truth is that your head does whatever it wants at times, and sometimes you just gotta let it blow over without actually doing anything.
Remember that feeling like this is totally okay, and you’re not in any real danger. A lot of people have it this way, but everyone experiences this differently. If you can’t relate to everything that I’ve written, remember that you’re just experiencing this differently, and you will still be okay.
