Jump!★

My mental health hasn't been all that good recently if I am to be honest. I consider myself to be quite expressive and thoughtful, yet I still get caught up in my own emotions every now and then. Such is human nature, isn't it? No amount of writing or drawing or reading is going to prepare me for life's curve balls, they can only help me cope.

A few things happening in my corporate life has been putting stress on me for the past 2 months. It isn't about crazy workload but rather something P&C that I don't want to talk about, which has slowly been chipping away at my sanity for some time and the stress crashed on me when MCO started. Anxiety started to consume me to the point that my chest feels constricted and I was breathing shallowly. The sense of irrational dread was always at the forefront of my mind. I did some research and learnt of a phenomenon called the Let-Down Effect, which is described as

According to this website. Every time I experience stress, I try to read books and articles to try to understand what I am going through, and every time I emerge a little bit stronger. Just enough to pull me through.

During my university days, I took a class about stress in which I learned to distinguish situations where I am just under pressure versus situations where I am actually under stress. It is very important to be able to tell these 2 feelings apart as they are usually very similar. A lot of people tend to categorize themselves under stress when they are in fact just under pressure. You can find out more here, it might be helpful for you. =)

It didn't help that during this difficult and confusing time that one of my closest granduncle passed away. He was there for us since I was a child and even generously supported my university education. It hurts me to know that he passed alone and we couldn't make it to attend his wake. After this event, my anxiety got worst and I started having trouble sleeping at night and my head spun.

I have toyed with the idea of seeking a therapist after the stress I experienced last year which made me unable to sleep for 2 weeks. It was a horrible, miserable time of my life and I didn't feel like myself. I didn't know what to do, I just know how to cry and feel helpless. How I got out of it eventually was by exploring and running around Tamarind Square, just to get the restless and negative energy out. But we can't go out now.

The first time my life was this dark was 9 years ago, when I experienced immense loss and personal security issues which led to stress. It was so bad that I couldn't close my eyes when I bathe and I needed someone to sleep with me. After that, my immune system crashed and I was medicated for close to 3 years to heal my body. I am still experiencing PTSD symptoms now that I am trying to work through.

Many times I wanted to talk about this but thinking about how long the story is going to be just demotivates me. What I do know is that I am more accepting of my feelings and I'm always working on minding my responses to situations or other people's behaviour. It's not so easy, but I don't want to be trapped in this shit hole forever. Somehow I gotta find a way to navigate stressful situations better so that my self esteem doesn't venture down the rabbit hole again.