The Emotional Stutter

What I am about to write is true. This is not an easy subject by any means, but yet, the truth of the matter is nothing is ever easy.
We are very simple creatures. Life itself is really simple.

You live. You wake up in the morning. You wash your face and brush your teeth. You eat a little and drink a little and work, sleep, and maneuver through life. You meet the daylight until nightfall comes. This in itself is simple. Rules are simple in a black and white sense. Yet we confuse them with the gray area, which is created by the emotional mind.

Plans are simple because they act like directions to building a model. There is a strategy which comes with a starting point, a mid-way, and then this comes to a sense of completion.

There is no emotion when it comes to logic. There is only plan and strategy. There is no emotion in the mind that controls basic life function. There is only emotion in one part of the mind, which is where we store all of our emotional data. This is where we keep the maps of our personal buried treasures and likewise, this is where we store our little secrets that we hope will never be discovered or unearthed.

This is where insecurity intercepts the message of simple plans and complicates them with useless messages that stem from old recollections, which is an assumption that suggests, “Be careful. Danger is on the way.”

The struggle that we have when it comes to insecurity and fear is this comes from an inner source. This is not visible to the world, but yet, there is an idea that suggests otherwise. There is the opinion that suggests if we see a problem then we assume everyone sees the same thing.
If we “Feel” something then we naturally assume this is real. This is where complication enters to destroy the benefits of simple plans and procedure.

I was taught about a self-help program that comes with 12 basic steps. The program is said to be simple, which in fairness, the steps read very simply. I was told this is really a simple program, which it is.
It’s a simple program for complicated people. This is what I was told. And it is these same complications that create pitfalls and downfalls and relapse and pain.

This too comes from an inner source that confuses assumptions and opinion for facts and reality. Here at the epicenter of it all is truthfully an inner person which is afraid to be shamed or unwanted, unacceptable, and of no value whatsoever.

There are fears of failure and fears of humiliation. There are fears of being painfully exposed in the spotlight of your life and thus leading to an ultimate and allout shame that will never be outlived or forgotten.

There was the idea that I was somehow an imposter. No one else saw this. No one else knew but yet, in my thoughts, there was this strange deception that people thought and believed an idea about me that was false. I swore this was about to be revealed at some point and eventually, I would be exposed and humiliated, and inevitably, everyone would see me as the fraud I believed myself to be. 

There is no logic here. Intellectually speaking, this would seem irrational. However, emotionally, this was all too real to me and somehow, shame and fear and pain and the humiliation of exposure was on the way.

They call this imposterism. This is when we believe we are a fraud and eventually, someone is going to unmask our trick.
Eventually, we will be uncovered as useless, which leads to the vulnerability of believing that we are nothing more than undesirable. 

This is not paranoia, by the way. This is fear.
This is depression.
This is insecurity.
This is what lives in the mind. This body shaming.
This is the inaccuracy we see when we lose sight of who we truly are.
This is a compilation and an accumulation of data that dates back as long as the mind remembers. This is where fear interferes with goals and assumptions degrade opportunities before they begin.

This is where self-fulfilled prophecy comes along to validate our predictions because subconsciously, we paint ourselves into a corner with nowhere to go. We talk ourselves into failure. We forced our own hand by listening to messages that we keep in the vault of our subconscious mind.
The thing is it is very hard to prove something is or isn’t real when we wholeheartedly believe, “This is the way life is.”

I stood in front of an audience of people to tell my story of where I was, what I went through, and who I am now. I was placed here to expose the darkness of my past and enlighten them about the brightness of overcoming the casualties of the mind.
My fears and anxiety were incredible. I never believed I was like anyone or everyone else. I only believed that I was painfully lonely.

I was not like anybody else. I was only me, which I believed was subpar or substandard, or better yet, I saw myself as lacking the potential to be anything other than beaten. I believed there was something “Diseased” about me. There had to be. No one else could possibly relate or understand. How could they understand if I never understood this myself?

The complication is in my mind. This is the emotional stutter that thinks before I can speak and reacts before my better senses take hold. So I stuttered. I stuttered emotionally, always overthinking, and quite painfully, I believed in the inaccurate and unnecessary demons which dredged in my head.

I believed it all. I believed everything. I believed in the messages I received from abusive people. I believed in the models I chose to shape my life around because this was part of me and how I viewed the world.

These are the implications of the mind. These are thoughts that act like connective tissue that hold us back from ever stepping forward and learning to feel free.

How does one overcome something like this?
How can someone “Feel” better when the simply don’t believe they can ever feel any differently?

There comes a point where life makes such little sense. Nothing seems to connect except the connecting ideas that lead us down the dark hole inside ourselves, which, sadly enough, is the only place we understand because emotionally speaking, this is us.

But this is not true.

How does one separate themselves from ideas that weigh them down?
How can we stop the thought machine from spinning out of control?
How do you get rid of the impending doom.
Put simply, how do we save our own life because quite honestly, when it comes to depression, it seems as though you have to save your own life on a daily basis.

Where does one find hope when the soul is exhausted and the body is susceptible to give up? Remember, physical health is impacted by mental health and without mental stability, it seems almost impossible to feel anything but sad or weak or tired.
(Or broken)

I have one word that I would like to share with you.
Grow.

Allow yourself to move.
Allow yourself to increase by development.
As hard as this sounds, move.
Go get out there and give yourself permission to grow.
Increase your substance.
Replace your thoughts with an opposite or alternative action.
And grow.

Give yourself the freedom to disconnect from old ideas and old memories,
Forgive yourself for holding them as long as you have.
Allow yourself to move away from the connections which hold you back and drown you out.
Speak. Say something.
Do something.
Move. Build. Create.
Draw, write, yell, scream, or shout but by any means, grow.

There came a time when I fell to my knees because I could not take life on its terms any longer. I was at my bottom. There was nowhere to turn and no one to turn to.
There were only two choices for me.
Either I grow or wilt away and disperse into nothingness.

I decided to grow.
I learned about mindfulness. I learned about the snares and the traps of the mind and the hooks that come with emotional thinking, which sink into the meat of my dreams and literally ripped me apart.

None of which are real.
This was only real to me

I was told to practice mindfulness.
But what is this?
Is this even possible?
I thought I was mindful. I thought I was aware.
Mindfulness is a technique that focuses one’s attention on the moment.
At that moment, however, I was beaten.

But wait . . .
Was I?

No. Had I been beaten then I would have been dead. Had I been beaten then I would not even consider the crossroads where I found myself and I would simply drown in my sad submission. 

No, the fact remained meant that I had at least a semblance of a spark left in me.
I had to choose to fan this flame and focus on this small little spark. I had to nurture this because once the spark saw attention, the flame in me began to grow.

Yes, the truth is depression is what causes us to drown in ourselves. This is the emotional quicksand in which, the harder we try, the deeper we sink. This is the emotional stutter that keeps us from living our life fluently and free-flowing

There is only one way to defy this.

Grow!

Get up. Get moving.
Get out there and endure because the one thing proven is if nothing else, depression has taught me that I have the ability to endure. I can withstand even when it seemed that I couldn’t.

Practice words that exist as the polar opposite and grow. 

Do . . . Be . . . Live . . . Love . . . Laugh . . . and Learn
And whenever possible dance as hard as you can and celebrate everything possible from this day onward until death do us part.