Watch as Mike Lousada talks about Sensations, Feelings and Emotions.He talks more about:
1. These 3 different experiences – sensations, feelings and emotions
2. Simple analogy of differentiation between feelings and emotional – digestion
3. How to use this analogy
I’ve been guilty of hating on other people’s Instagram selfies. I’ve unfollowed other women in the past, because their photos made me feel insecure about myself. Sometimes, I look in the mirror and wish that I could wear a filter in real life. How dare I feel beautiful? Self-acceptance feels unreachable…forbidden, even.
But on other days, when I’m feeling lucky, I look in the mirror and think: “Damn, I look good today.” But before long, shame drags me down. The cycle of self-loathing begins all over again.
Why did so much of my confidence come to hinge on passing feelings, or validation from others online? Since when did comparison start ruling my life? And why can’t I just freakin’ love myself consistently?
It’s because of a little word called ‘vanity.’
The dictionary defines Vanity as “excessive pride in or admiration of one’s own appearance or achievements.”
I realize I’m being vain. Then the shame kicks in.
I grew up in an environment where self-love was a sin. Taking any pleasure in my appearance was wrong. I was instructed that Vanity was a woman’s downfall. The guilt still creeps in when I least expect it, sucking me dry of self-esteem. And the hatred I’ve developed towards my appearance comes out as insecurity, jealousy, and social anxiety.
Vanity. I’d be committing a sin for liking myself at all, so I just choose not to. It’s a virtue to be humble, right? Maybe someone, somewhere will notice how pious I am in my self-deprecation. They’ll say I’m pretty, but I won’t believe it. Somehow, that will make me worthy of their love.
After all, poor little Cinderella didn’t get to be a princess until a handsome prince fell in love with her. In a chick-flick, the geeky girl doesn’t get to know she’s hot until someone takes her glasses off.
“Hot Girl Who Doesn’t Know She’s Pretty” is one of the most popular female archetypes in TV and film. On the other hand, confident women who flaunt their beauty are almost always painted as “the bitch.”
Somewhere, right now, in a high school bathroom: a group of girls are standing around the mirror, competing for lowest self-esteem:
“I’m so fat.”
“No, you’re not! You’re so skinny. I’m the one with a tummy.”
“Well, at least you have boobs. I’m so flat.”
“But all the guys like you. None of them notice me.”
…Chances are, the youngest girl might not have thought to hate herself until this very moment. If all of her older, prettier, more popular friends hate their bodies, then who does she think she is?
Vanity. We have all been conditioned to fear it, in some way or another. I realize now that this kind of shaming was designed to keep women from realizing their worth. I’ve come to believe that someone, somewhere invented “vanity” to keep his wife at home.
Shame is a cage we build to keep the heart in check. If I feel inferior to my partner, he’ll always have the upper hand. Even if he’s abusive. Even if I’m unhappy.
This might be why so many beautiful, intelligent women find themselves in unhealthy, codependent relationships. Our self-worth relies on the validation of others.
It’s not our fault. After all, we’re conditioned to be this way. Our society demands that women compete with one another for attention – romantically, professionally and physically. Most of us are expected to spend considerable amounts of time on our appearance each day, changing how we look in order to fit in.
Blaming someone for their low self-esteem is like blaming the body for feeling pain. It’s not the symptom that needs attention. We have to find the source, and change it.
Here’s one way to start:
There’s a difference between confidence and narcissism. We should stop labeling women as “attention seekers” for celebrating their beauty. We should congratulate girls who score well on tests, speak up for what they believe in, and say ‘no.’
There’s nothing wrong with being smart, looking good, and knowing both are true. Let’s eradicate the shame that muddies your daughter’s reflection, before it’s too late.
I try to remember this when I put on my makeup every day. My concealer wasn’t made to diminish me. My lipstick is not applied to steal attention. My eyeliner is not for anybody else. And so what if my cat-eye isn’t perfect – I’m having fun.
Now, I wear makeup because it makes me feel powerful. I post photos of myself when I’m feeling brave. My online selfie is not a cry for validation – not anymore. Photos have become my way of expressing of self-love, without needing permission. Publishing my words online is how I celebrate my voice and invite others to do the same.
As you embrace your own confidence, it’s important to encourage it in others. I think we should stop judging other women for being hot/self-centered/sexual/oversharers, period. Everyone is entitled to free speech. And yes, this includes gratuitous selfies.
Often, individuals who seem the most self-involved are actually the most self-critical. It took me a long time to realize this. Judging other women for their “narcissism” is ultimately a reflection of my own insecurity. By the same token, encouraging others makes me feel good, too. How we treat others is a reflection of the way we see ourselves.
So here’s what I wish for you to know, if you’re still reading. You’re allowed to know you’re attractive. You’re encouraged to recognize your own brilliance. You are also allowed to acknowledge the beauty in others, with no risk of diminishing your own.
It’s gratitude. It’s expression. Own it. Live it. Celebrate it. Share it.
This is not about makeup or selfies or #goals. It’s about you, beneath the filter.
If someone were to call me “vain” nowadays, I’d smile and say “thank you.” I don’t feel like I’ve committed a sin by calling what I see. The gods have not come down to smite me for admiring their creation. I haven’t hurt anyone by loving myself. In fact, I feel that embracing ‘vanity’ has made me a better person.
Lucille Ball once said, “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”
The future is a girl. She stands in front of the mirror and loves what she sees. She wears red lipstick if she feels like it; she wears nothing when she wants to. And she is not ashamed.
It was in the classroom of my childhood that I received my first love lesson. I was raised with the belief that love was something to earn in the form of praise, approval, and permission, in return for being well behaved, smiley, charming, and “good”. Neediness was considered weak. Opinions were not welcomed. Mistakes were greeted with disappointment and retraction. And as a result, I entered adulthood, believing that love was a reward to be earned by pleasing, and serving the needs of others, but not myself. Self-Love was a memo I simply never received.
When it comes to love relationships, we attract the kind of partner we think we deserve. If the relationship we have with our self feels flawed, dishonored, or unworthy in some way, we project that self-belief out into the world, and we receive our mirror relationships. If we consider ourselves as a half, we attract another half. Always looking for someone else to complete us, and in return, we complete them. This particular type of relationship is founded in lack and neediness, and has a tendency to leave you depleted, resentful, disappointed, disempowered, and woefully unfulfilled.
I intuitively knew that my childhood teachers were only doing the best that they knew how. My knowing better would arrive in the fallout of my failing marriage, and the heart breaking truth that once more, I had made my choices from a place of lack and fear, for the happiness of others, but not for myself. The suffering in living with the belief that love existed in another person, in a place, a situation, or a thing, felt anything but loving. It felt painful. Ultimately, the emotional price of not taking care of my own needs led to the ending of my marriage. But it would also mark the end of living in fear; and the beginning of waking up to the bliss of the love lesson I’d been missing all along.
I was your average twenty-something millennial—I went out (a lot), I drank (a lot), I partied (way too much…way too much). It seemed like every week there was a new guy flavor in my life and that was just part of being a “fabulous single gal in the city” (barf). As a person who lists “actor” under “career title” on her tax returns, I made my own schedule and adhered to no real boss ever. In turn I had no health insurance because caution is for chumps. I was constantly hungover and almost prided myself on being a classic Gen-Y fuckup. “Poor me! But this is my journey, fam! Yolo!”
I turned 30 in October, and my siblings threw me the surprise party to end all surprise parties (I still have one huge helium balloon wandering aimlessly around my apartment ceiling…still). I did what felt like the appropriate amount of drinking and drugs. Woohoo. Fun all around. Honestly, I still think the party was a great time and the hangover seemed worth it.
Underneath all that I was dealing with some inner turmoil—four months earlier I went back into therapy to try to begin the process of curbing my self-sabotaging tendencies. As charming as that looks on “Girls,” it was really starting to take a toll on me. Especially in my love life, which seemed like an endless string of short-lived, drunken, reckless, infatuated trysts with emotionally unavailable men. It was all slowly eating at me, edging me toward certain destruction. My therapist started to subtly point out how the common theme in all of these problems was my drinking habit, to which I said: I’ll never stop drinking. You can’t make me.
I had been making half-assed attempts at cutting back on alcohol since the end of summer, which only resulted in heavier binge drinking on the weekends. At that point my alcohol tolerance was so high that I’d drink to the point of browning out or blacking out, because I didn’t feel that drunk even after four or five drinks. It was normal for me to drink a lot, and drinking was how I connected to people, romantically or otherwise.
Texting. At the dawn of its existence, it was called Short Messaging Service (SMS for short), and the first one ever sent was in 1992, from a 22-year-old engineer named Neil Papworth in the UK. It simply and benignly said, “Merry Christmas.” People wrote it off at first as another eccentric tech development that would never fly.
Oh how far we’ve come from Christmas 1992. Not only is texting a commonplace form of communication, it is an integral part of our daily connectivity. It has even become the bane of most people’s existence.
For me it’s hard to understand what is so difficult about texting etiquette; you receive a message, usually one or two sentences, you open it, and you reply. Done. So why is it a source of excessive stress for so many people I know?
Well nowadays, not only do people wish each other happy holidays through text, they’ll also express love, divulge gossip, break up, or send birth or death notifications. You can ruin lives with texts! Technology is amazing!
(For the purpose of this article, let’s agree that the term “texting” is synonymous with any kind of direct message via any social media platform, such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.)
I for one have a pretty strong philosophy about this. I like to be very organized about my communication. If I receive a text, I try to answer it immediately. If I receive a text warranting a more thoughtful response than usual, I leave that message unread so I know to get back to it later. Sure, some slip through the cracks on busy days, but it happens to the best of us and it’s never intentional. However, once in a while, there comes a text that I don’t leave unread, but I don’t reply instantly. It’s no coincidence that these texts usually come from former, current, or future romantic interests.
It began innocently enough.
“Are you really going to eat all of that?” I’d ask playfully, as if monitoring his eating would negate my own cravings.
“You did what in high school?” I’d gasp, appalled at whatever crazy anecdote came up. As if I were Mother Theresa.
I was looking at his past under the same negative microscope with which I judged my own. This served to confirm my belief that my mistakes made me a bad person.
Shame was deeply rooted in my relationship history, but I covered it with false bravado, impulsiveness and deflection. Subconsciously, I kept focus away from my own negative qualities by looking for them in others. Even in those I loved.
At the time, I saw this as a positive behavior. I would point to something I saw as a fault in my lover, then actively assert myself in “helping” him fix it. I thought that this made me a good partner. But in truth, I was anything but.
I didn’t know how to love someone without trying to improve him or her somehow – even if my words said otherwise, and even if I didn’t really want to change them. I couldn’t help myself. Judgment, blame and shame were all that I knew, even when life was good.
“Blame is [a] defensive cover-up for shame. Blame maintains the balance in a dysfunctional system when control has broken down.” – John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You
I could say that I developed these habits because of my religious upbringing, where love came with conditions. Or I could blame my actions on past relationships, because they all seemed to have been dysfunctional in this way. But to actually solve the problem, I would have to look at the common denominator in these factors: me.
I didn’t know how to love myself without pretense or perfectionism. And because I didn’t take the time to admit this before I entered the relationship, it took a big toll on my partner. I was ruining my life, without even realizing it.
At the time, I was convinced that I was in the right. I believed that caring for people in spite of their shortcomings was the same as unconditional love. The very foundation of my relationships had been poisoned by shame. I acted defensively by default, manifesting of my own deepest fears. I truly loved my partner, but I was doing it wrong.
It took a great deal of therapy, self-reflection and rock bottom moments for me to finally have the guts to look in the mirror and acknowledge the fearful person staring back at me.
A few months ago I looked in the mirror and hated what I saw.
I tugged and pulled at my skin. I found new stretch marks emerging in new places. I cried a lot and more than anything because I started hating myself. I started hating my body, hating who I became, hating everything in my life. I became miserable and I let it completely consume and destroy me.
I had gained 14 pounds in under a year. In that year I stopped exercising and I stopped caring about what I was eating, and that lead me to stop caring about most things in general.
I became the unhappiest I’ve ever been and I knew I couldn’t keep living like this. I decided it was time to drastically change my life.
I signed up for an eight-week challenge and I started spending an hour and a half to two hours in the gym each day. I started turning down foods and going to eat with my friends.
I started getting excited every time I saw the number on the scale drop and I started standing on that scale several times each day. It became an obsession. In eight weeks I lost all the weight I gained and was back down to where I usually was.
Then I quit.
I quit because I still wasn’t happy. I was saying no to things I wanted to say yes to. I was cranky and miserable. I didn’t go out with my friends, I’d turn down going to eat because I didn’t want to be faced with temptations.
I started weighing my chicken and drinking protein shakes religiously. I started counting calories like it was no one’s business.
I wasn’t me.
I wasn’t happy, even when those 14 pounds were gone.
I went from one extreme to the other. I went from eating everything to eating restrictively. I went from miserable to a new form of miserable.
And that’s when it hit me. I spent all that time hating myself and for what?
Losing those 14 pounds didn’t make me happier.
Sure, I felt good every time I stepped on the scale, but I felt bad every time I mentally fought with myself over what to eat for dinner because nothing sounded good.
It felt good when I saw my rolls shrink, but it didn’t feel good when all my friends went out and I stayed home because I didn’t want to risk consuming extra calories.
At the end of those eight weeks plus or minus those 14 pounds the same people still loved me.
No one loved me any more or less because the weight I gained or lost. They loved me and enjoyed me no matter how much the number on the scale reads.
They love me for who I am beneath my skin, my fat and my muscle.
It was important for me to realize that the only love I could change with my habits was my love for my own body.
I couldn’t hate myself into someone I loved – it doesn’t work that way.
I am still the same person I always have been. I am still me, and weight gain and loss doesn’t change that.
But finding a happy medium changes that. I stopped counting calories and started living. I stay active but not restrictive and now I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.
Life is all about balance and that balance is key to help you live your best life, whatever that means for you.
A while ago, I ended an unhealthy relationship and decided to give dating a wide berth for the foreseeable future. That turned out to be 18 months. I made the decision not out of bitterness or because I didn’t want to love again, and not even because my heart had received a sucker punch. It definitely had (multiple times).
But I realized that after my last relationship, I didn’t recognize myself. I felt so far removed from the person I wanted to be. I knew I needed to get to know myself, not a man.
Women spend so much time learning who we’re supposed to be that we forget to pay attention to who we actually are. The fear of being alone drives us towards men with whom we are ultimately (and sometimes glaringly) incompatible.
And one day it occurred to me that I was unfit to be anyone’s partner until I could stand to be myself.
I took some time to feel what I hadn’t let myself feel: all of the pain, abandonment, insecurity, etc. that had accumulated throughout my adult life. It socked me in the jaw. But I faced it down and began dealing with it. At first, I was terrified. I felt the suffocating loneliness of dating withdrawals. I panicked when, with no one else around, I stood face to face with my own demons.
But here’s the incredible thing: it didn’t last forever. After a few months, I learned new, healthier ways to deal with loneliness. The negative voices gradually softened. Like exercising a new muscle, my confidence and sense of self-worth strengthened.
It started with simply learning to be with myself. I took long walks and I thought. I took time to do exactly what I wanted to do. I wrote a novel. I read my favorite authors and watched my favorite films. I realized that while I love company, I don’t necessarily need it to be happy. Everything I need is already contained within me. Self-soothing is a wonderful skill we somehow acquire as babies and promptly forget once we reach adulthood. I’m proud to say I rediscovered it.
Then I focused on my platonic relationships. I received so much more love than I could ever have anticipated. My friend recently told me I’m much easier to be around now than I was a year and a half ago. Taking this time to clear my own head opened up myriad possibilities — I cultivated friendships and relationships with family that I had neglected, began a new career path that I had dreamed of but never had the courage to pursue, and above all, in committing my love to those dear to me, I learned how to love myself.
Affirming my choice not to date was liberating. I know now that if and when I do enter into a new relationship, I will do so as a more capable and compassionate partner. I also learned that I’m fine being alone. I faced my demons and came out alive.
There were times when I miss being kissed. I miss holding a man’s hand or the back-and-forth repartee that accompanies a first date. But I also recognize that it’s worth waiting for. I refuse to accept anything less than exactly what I want.
If it’s not out there, so be it. I’ll be ok. I have friends and family who love and support me. I have a new career that constantly challenges and rewards me. I’m enough.
Loved this? Discover more stories about finding yourself while single on Love TV.
I’m Sierra. My husband Andre and I were the first couple to win “The Knot Dream Wedding.”
Follow me as I share how I attracted true love into my life. In my new “True Love Lessons” video series, I’ll share tips and stories that help open your heart to all love’s possibilities.
This is probably the most important “Love Lesson” of them all because if we don’t love ourselves how can we love anyone else?
Loving yourself is an ongoing lifelong lesson that requires continued work. There are levels and layers to self love. Recognizing my value was one of the layers in my own self love journey.
There are many layers to this ever evolving lesson but it’s never too late to start finding out ways in which to show yourself love. It may come in the form of a spiritual practice, healthy eating, exercising, or even something as simple as hugging yourself everyday and saying, “I love you [your name here].”
Like I mentioned earlier, this is a lifelong lesson but one that holds the key to the door of infinite love!
We’re going to share lots of love stories.
But in the meantime, read up on some strategies to love yourself through journaling or this emotional piece on how to stop “shrinking” yourself in a relationship.
Ever since I was little, I’ve always been bigger than my peers. Now that I’m in my 30s, it’s something I’ve gotten used to over time and have fully embraced now that the body positive movement is so prevalent.
My journey toward self-love in a bathing suit was a long, but ultimately fulfilling one.
Growing up, boutiques like Charlotte Russe and Wet Seal were out of the question. In middle school I was well off the charts for both height and weight, which ultimately gave my mom the only choice but to try taking me to Macy’s. Back then, the only plus-size options were in the women’s department. The options were slim. I remember standing in a dressing room at about 11 years old, trying on a leopard print tank suit. I noticed the label on the suit said it had a “bust minimizer.” I was 11 and barely had a bust, why did I need a bust minimizer? It was frustrating and made me sad. You know that scene from This is Us where Kate wore a t-shirt at the pool around the same age? It definitely made me emotional because I identified with it so much.
My mom later ended up cutting out the minimizer so I could feel like the small hills I did have for breasts meant something. At 11, that meant a lot to me. I still remember feeling like I didn’t love my bathing suit. Compared to my peers, I was in a leopard-print suit while they donned bright colors and Lisa Frank bikinis. Since I didn’t love my suit, my confidence was definitely not the best.
Despite not being comfortable in a bathing suit, I still chose to have my 16th birthday party as a pool party. My parents had built a backyard pool four years prior, and I longed to have a Sweet 16 just like I saw in the movies. I convinced them to hire a DJ and let me invite 30 friends. N’SYNC, Britney, Christina and the Backstreet Boys blared from speakers on our patio and the pool was hopping. I wanted to wear a chic blue halter-style tankini and felt just the teensiest bit confident in it.
Once my friends came and cover-ups started coming off I was immediately self-conscious. The truth is, we were all different body shapes and types but to my 16-year-old self, I was the nearly six-foot-tall, 280 lb. giant.
During the party, we played Truth or Dare and Seven Minutes in Heaven (okay more like three) in this gigantic inflatable rocket float that you could climb inside. My friends tried to no avail to get my crush to go into the rocket with me but he refused. I wanted desperately to have my first kiss and wondered if maybe I’d have to continue waiting impatiently. There was just something so special about getting my first kiss on my 16th birthday though.
After cake and ice cream (where most of my photos have me crossing my arms over my stomach), a male friend of mine at the party approached me and said he’d heard I didn’t get my first kiss. He asked to give it to me instead. I briefly considered saying no, as it wasn’t someone I was romantically attracted to, but I let my teenage hormones take the lead. I said yes and that kiss, that pizza and Surge soda tasting kiss, helped me become slightly less self conscious about my body.
It’s been 22 summers since that day I spent in a dressing room with my leopard print tank suit. I bought my first bikini a couple years ago from Forever 21’s plus-size department. I was so scared to wear it to my apartment complex’s pool. The thin stripe of my stomach that hadn’t seen the light of day for decades made me so nervous. I realized though that what was important was that the two piece suit made me happy. For once, I actually felt confident in a bathing suit.
In recent years, the body positive movement has taken off. I admire women like Hunter McGrady and Tess Holliday and have personally had the opportunity to interview Chrissy Metz and speak with Ashley Graham at a party. I even nerded out and asked her for a picture that day—see below.
I am so grateful I can sign onto social media and see girls who look like me celebrated. Even more importantly, I am glad middle and high school girls have access to much better fashion than I did and gorgeous, smart, talented and kind women like these ladies to look up to. I’ve learned that everybody and every body deserves to be in a swimsuit.
Not to sound cliché, but life’s too short to care about what other people think of you as you’re sipping a margarita poolside with your best friends. Don’t miss out on making memories because you’re embarrassed about thighs that touch, a flat chest or a full belly. It took me some time, but I know now most people embrace others no matter what they look like. Summer is meant for fun so don’t stop having it because of a body hang up. You know what the kids say these days…YOLO.
Sometimes, it’s hard to put on that bathing suit. Girls are so hard on themselves, author Kate Oczypok included.
Kate takes us on her journey learning to love her body in a swimsuit.
Want to read more on the body positive movement? Check out this piece on how big girls should be able to wear bikinis.
Time for a confession…
I haven’t always been lucky in love. I mean, let’s be honest, few of us are. Love is a quest that requires training, it requires patience, and usually it involves devastating heartbreak. But it’s how we bounce back, it’s what we do with our circumstances that determines victory or defeat.
#METOO
When I was younger, I didn’t recognize my value, and this caused me to be vulnerable to situations where my value was taken advantage of. I was physically and sexually abused by a peer of the opposite sex, and I was sexually abused and assaulted by someone I trusted, someone in a position of authority, someone I looked up to.
Though the road to healing from these wounds has been long and windy, it’s my outlook, and choice to turn poison into medicine that’s enabled me to really work on loving myself, recognizing my value, and thus attracting the type of love that I truly deserve.
Girls, women, sisters… please hear me! Each and every one of you is a Goddess. Feel into that power, fuel that power with self love, self respect, and then share that love with the world. I promise you that if you do this, you will attract the most loving, healthy, happy relationships.
I’ve always struggled with anxiety my entire life. In grade school, I hid a birthday invitation in the back of my desk because it was a roller-skating party and I didn’t know how to roller-skate. In high school, I skipped a choir concert one year because I was on a top riser and kept getting nervous about falling off while singing in front of people. I struggled with IBS my entire life. I didn’t learn to drive until I was 27 because I was too scared—I still prefer not to today. All the while, I was still a happy and optimistic person. I never let on how in knots I was at times.
How I ended up in the hospital last January
My boyfriend ended up contracting a nasty cold while traveling to my parents’ house to be with me for New Year’s Eve 2017. Of course, I ended up getting the cold when we got back to our apartment. Afterwards, when things cleared up just a bit, I went for a massage to loosen my post-holiday tight muscles. The massage was the last in a series at an old massage therapist’s office that wasn’t my usual one.
Needless to say, between the massage and post-cold stuffiness, I ended up getting a terrible case of vertigo. For those who’ve had it before, it doesn’t come often but when it does it is debilitating. I woke up at five in the morning and the room was spinning, reminiscent of my early 20s post-drinking nights. I staggered to the bathroom and instantly had to go back to bed.
I later called my parents, since my dad had suffered from a bout or two of vertigo growing up. He told me what type of medicine to get from the doctor’s and my mom said it should clear up within three days.
In my typical fashion, I couldn’t sit still by the third day. I was getting extremely anxious about losing piano lesson money and freelance money, since I am essentially an hourly employee. Not to mention, my boyfriend was leaving on a business trip and I’d be caring for our dog alone while still not feeling 100 percent.
My boyfriend left for his trip that Saturday and I asked my piano lessons to come to my apartment to avoid me having to take the (nausea inducing on a good day) Metro. All seemed well on the surface but I was still not feeling all that great. I was not only anxious about me not feeling well, I was worried as it was a new year—taxes were looming, I was still in debt and I’d have to endure more questions about why my boyfriend and I weren’t engaged yet.
That evening, I went to get the mail down at our mailboxes then had plans to get ready to walk to church. Before I knew it, I ended up waking up on my apartment floor with my dog looking down at me, quite concerned. After phone calls to some friends and my apartment, I called my parents. They told me to go to the hospital, no questions asked. That frightened me even more, especially since I was still too dizzy to actually stand up.
I was beyond embarrassed having to call an ambulance. When I was finally on the stretcher after leaving my poor worried and barking dog, I instantly felt a lot better in the cold January air. I began to wonder if a lot of it was anxiety.
Diagnosing and getting past the stigma
After every test under the sun, I (thankfully) didn’t have anything wrong with me. It was most likely fainting caused by vertigo exacerbated by a panic attack/severe anxiety. My parents picked me up from the hospital the next morning after my two best friends stayed with me until 10 the previous night. They whisked me home to Pittsburgh for the entire week afterwards.
It was there I had a “come to Jesus” moment with my parents. They asked me flat out about my anxiety—how bad it was, what made it worse, etc. They reminded me I’m always welcome home if I wanted to start over. They were happy to help me no matter what. The truth is, I am happy with my current situation freelancing and teaching piano and living with my boyfriend of nearly seven years. Would things be easier if I worked at a full-time job with a salary and benefits provided? Sure. Would things be easier if my boyfriend and I were married? Of course. I joked that I always like to take the hard way with things.
My parents recommended I see my primary care doctor and start a low dose antidepressant for my anxiety and possibly start therapy. I had adamantly denied antidepressants in the past when I was having anxiety at my full-time job—I was happy and not depressed, why would I need them?
My parents helped me realize that taking antidepressants doesn’t always necessarily mean you’re depressed. People with anxiety take them all the time. I reluctantly agreed and got on a low dose of an antidepressant specifically designed to help with anxiety. I was deathly afraid of any side effects, particularly weight gain, as I have always been bigger my whole life.
After almost a year on the medication, I have rarely had panic attacks or bouts of anxiety. I have gained a few pounds but the way I see it is, if my anxiety is under control, it doesn’t matter. I’ve begun realizing how much the U.S. makes mental health such a stigma. Among the people of my generation though, we have definitely been working hard to make it less shameful. Wellness is so important.
Working toward self-love
Part of my journey with my anxiety is to learn self-love. I have gotten so much more comfortable with just saying no, especially if I don’t have time for something. My IBS has gotten better through lots of meditation/breathing sessions, praying, massages (thanks boyfriend for the Valentine’s Day series!) and stopping work for breaks to just get outside and get some air.
I often work through weekends and I know now if I do have a busy weekend, it’s essential to spend a morning or afternoon during the week with a couple of hours to myself. I’m slowly learning to love all my quirks, no matter how big or small (anxiety included!).
As they say, the world would be a pretty boring place if we were all the same, right?
It took a trip to the hospital for author Kate Oczypok to realize she needed to address her anxiety head on—and learn a little bit about self-love in the process.
Cozy up. Did you know fall is the best time to find someone? Click here for more.
