Lately, I’ve been narrowing in on my bad traits. Not the apparent traits that can be easily pointed out, but the negative traits that I never knew that I had. I’ve always been an honest person, who would admit to my faults, but now I’m discovering things about myself that I wasn’t aware of until the last two years. In a post that I uploaded back in February I briefly spoke on how too much alone time started to make a negative impact on me (Spending too much Time Alone is affecting my Mental/Emotional Health. (I need a change!) As an introverted person who suffered from high anxiety it was disappointing to see how much the little things intensified. In the last few years, I’ve become more introverted and when I’m out my anxiety has skyrocketed. As soon as I step outside of the house I just can’t wait to be back home. I’m overly anxious and I would worry about events or outings that I have to be at weeks from now, and when one outing is done I feel like I need days to refuel. It’s exhausting. That’s when I realized that too much alone time is not ideal. Nothing is good in excess (no matter how introverted you are). I realized that it’s a problem and I need to find a way to become more social. That realization wasn’t too much of a shock (because it’s something I’ve always dealt with, but now it’s just on a bigger scale), but now I’m discovering other things about myself.
Alone time will have you discovering so many things about yourself. I spend so much time reflecting and thinking about life in my quiet time to the point that I’m always coming across new realizations (or putting certain pieces together). I realized how much I looked at myself differently. Meaning, I used to be able to picture great things for me and to see amazing thing happening and now it’s like I couldn’t. I couldn’t picture it because I started to doubt that I deserved it. I always felt that I was a nice human being because I was kindhearted, compassionate, empathetic, and tried my best to be an ear for people without judgement. Now, I’m second guessing myself. I feel guilty for being so withdrawn. I’ve always known that I could be stubborn, but I hate doing things that are uncomfortable. I let my depression and anxiety take over my life and the guilt I felt for mentally checking out started to feel heavier and heavier. It made me dig deeper and I wanted to know if I had more faults in my past (more so in past romantic relationships, not friendships). I think I let my emotional scars close me off from emotionally jumping in with both feet when it comes to certain people. The last thing I ever want to come across as, is Maris from Frasier (If you’re a fan of the show Frasier than you know what I mean). Maybe not as bad as Maris, but I don’t want to be known as the girl who just didn’t show up and stayed in her comfort zone. I mean I’ve always loved hard, but sometimes I wondered if it showed.
One thing about me is that I truly value the people who were/are there for me. I will jump all in for family, but I realized that if I’ve been hurt by someone that I will hesitate. For example, if something huge happened and it left an emotional scar it’s hard for me to forget and give you the type of energy that you’re looking for (even if it’s years later). I now realize that feeling emotionally safe with someone is particularly important to me. When I feel emotionally safe with someone, I feel like I am able to drop my guard and they get that warm and fuzzy side of me, and if I don’t then there’s going to be some type of wall up. Maybe internally I haven’t let go of past pain, or maybe I feel like that I always have to be on guard because if someone hurts you once they can do it again.
Other things that I’ve realized is what I want in life and why I might want them. I thought I knew the reason, but there were other reasons that were hidden. I’ve also realized the voids that I was trying to fill which led me to realize what was important to me. Some things that I thought that weren’t needed was actually more important to me than I thought. I can’t go into details about everything because this post would be as long as the DaVinci Code, but all of my discoveries actually made me want to change. I don’t want to run away from my truths. I want to continue to explore them and fix them so I can become better. I realized how much I mentally compare myself to others, because I felt like everyone was more capable of doing something. I could see that I was doing it more often because I hated where I am (in life) right now, and I don’t believe in me like I believe in others. I’m finally making changes in my life. I’m keeping myself busy and I’m focusing on my self-esteem and doing what I need to do so I can become more present. I’m trying to get to the root of everything and fix the problem. When it seems like everything is going wrong and you can’t name one thing that’s going right that’s when you push yourself. I might not have the power to change EVERYTHING, but I’m going to work on the things that I can change.
JustGottaMakeIt 