Episode XII: You Are Not Broken.
Pain. Loneliness. Emptiness. Anger. Sorrow. Embarrassment.
Hatred. Envy. Lust. Powerlessness.
These are the umbrella of emotions many endure on a daily basis.
Now, only look at the first letter of each word above.
PLEASE HELP.
My point?
In the midst of a dark spectrum of emotions is a person crying out for help. Why can’t people be there to see it?
If you caught the puzzle immediately, you were able to crack through the surface. Congratulations! But not everyone can do that.
The only way we can break through to the core of our dark emotions is by calling out for help.
All of us. Collectively.
If you really can crack through the surface, you really can discern the cries for help by the look in a person’s eye. Even an autist like me can see through the smoke.
The pain in a person’s eyes tells a story far greater than their actions and words can ever say. Sometimes, you just know.
One of my best friends told me he was a broken person. I’m showing you today why he and we are not.
There are three key things to note about humanity.
Humans are creatures of habit.
There is a massive difference between emotion and thought.
Time always moves forward.
I’ll break down why each one is true and how to use it to your advantage.
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Humans are creatures of habit.
This is especially accurate when it comes to the way we experience things. As we go on in life, we see many new things, and the way that we go about them derives from patterns that are cultivated by our previous experiences.
Let me provide an example of habits that differs for everyone: upbringing.
There are five types of parenting, each having a massive impact on your behavioral habits (links at the end):
Authoritarian parents are those that require obedience no matter what the child thought or felt. By enforcing rules with no consideration, children can feel a lack of independence and have a hard time making decisions. Also, since there is no form of validation, two gut instincts many children will have are to rebel or hold themselves to a lower self-esteem.
Authoritative parents are those that lead by example, consider their children’s thoughts and feelings, set guidelines that enforce successful habits, and emphasize communication. If this was the way you were raised, your parents have placed you in a position to communicate well, be confident, know what is or isn’t right, and be emotionally balanced.
Permissive parents are those who treat their child like an equal, but do not place boundaries or punish children for their mistakes. Since permissive parents emotionally support children, many children will be very confident in themselves and have great social skills. However, one common trait for permissive parents is bribery, which leads to necessary external validation for their children. Also, with relaxed parenting comes a lack of discipline for most children, which can lead to bad habits. For example, a common behavioral habit is impulsive decision-making. Who’s going to stop them from doing it and considering all the options?
Overprotective parents are those who prevent harm, emotional distress, failure, disappointment, and sadness through strict rules and a reward/punishment system. While overprotection does keep the child safe and their academic expectations are typically high, a lack of preparation for the child follows because compliance prevails over communication. Bad habits that children can develop are lying to not break rules, being timid because their parents were timid, manipulating situations to get the biggest reward, and not doing the right thing because of the rewards/punishment system.
Uninvolved parents are those who provide no sort of structure for children and leave children to their own devices. One thing to note is that there is a difference between a busy parent and an uninvolved one; just because one doesn’t have the time to physically provide doesn’t mean they don’t care. Intent makes a massive difference. While children of uninvolved parents are independent in many regards, the lack of guidance can lead to a lack of social cues, which means trouble in school or with the law in many contexts.
If you want more info about different parenting styles, here are a few links.
https://www.verywellfamily.com/types-of-parenting-styles-1095045
https://www.parentingforbrain.com/overprotective-parents/
As you can tell, there are many subconscious patterns that develop as a byproduct of your upbringing. This isn’t to say that those traits always apply to you, though. Each person builds their own patterns of existence throughout time regardless of parenting style.
To be clear, my point isn’t about upbringing. It’s about habits. Since we are creatures of habit, the first step to changing them is recognizing their origin.
When you change your habits, you obtain a new perspective and can alleviate yourself from the darkness. People will help you break those habits if you’re honest and transparent about them.
It’s a tricky path to break old habits, though. It takes time and a conscious effort. A high school basketball coach told me it takes 17 days to make a new habit, and I’ve lived by it since I was fourteen years old.
Making a change in your daily existence is difficult, especially when there are emotions involved. I wouldn’t know what you or anyone else is going through. However, what I do know is that making one small change at a time goes a long, LONG way.
Here’s a personal example.
In my junior spring of college, I wrangled with anxiety, depression, and manic episodes when the things going on in my internal and external world were both horrible. My friends, professors, teammates, and coaches knew it, and I did, too.
To keep it brief, those things led to a sense of helplessness I never experienced before and will never experience again. My habits did not allow for mental clarity at that time, and both my grades and play on the field suffered. While my mental standards didn’t lower, my physical and intellectual capability to perform did.
When I played football, I used to watch all-time greats go to war on the field. Deion Sanders is my favorite corner of all time, and his most famous quote is, “If you look good, you feel good. If you feel good, you play good. If you play good, they pay good.” In the midst of a mental health battle I thought I’d never win, I realized that feeling good started with a shower in the morning.
I’m not kidding. Something as small as taking showers in the morning got me out of the hole. I consciously felt better, so I played better and my grades went up.
I also wear the golden-colored hair as my war stripes for surviving that mental place. There’s a reason why I won’t get rid of it. Start with the small things, and big changes will happen.
2. There is a massive difference between emotion and thought.
This second bullet will allow you to understand the depths of your emotions and move past points of inflection.
I’m unsure of if you are aware of the difference, but it’s BIG.
A thought is an idea that suddenly occurs in the mind. All humans have thoughts; they’re necessary to understand who you are and how to handle situations.
Emotions are a feeling your body generates based on a thought. The longer you’re in a singular thought, the more chemicals your brain and body will build up; they can also intensify if you either stay on that thought or further cultivate your thought to match the chemical buildup.
Recognizing the difference between an idea and the feeling behind an idea is necessary to grow. If you allow external factors or internal conflicts to interfere with your thought pattern, then you won’t be able to do your best thinking.
If your mind constantly moves through each thought and focuses on where the thought goes, then feelings cannot interfere. It takes practice, but if you can focus, you can do it.
This applies to who you are as a person.
It’s very easy to distract yourself with your emotions. If a thought is too unbearable, then your feelings will block your ability to arrive at your end goal.
If life seems too painful, you can surely distract yourself. You can lose sobriety in an effort to escape your demons, but when you wake up in the morning, the thoughts will still be there.
Thoughts don’t leave your mind until you figure them out. Face those demons head-on independent of emotion and wrangle with the thoughts to grow. If you can’t separate the two, and a thought is an inflection point that you can never move past, you are inducing yourself into a state of trauma.
I studied trauma at school as part of my degree and have been traumatized in many ways, even by my own doing. If you’ve made mistakes, know that it’s never too late to be the person you want to be.
This leads me to my third point:
3. Time always moves forward.
If you look at a timeline of your existence, you will always be in the present and the future will always be the same distance away from your present moment. The present becomes the past, and the future becomes your present moment.
If you have relegated thoughts from the past and haven’t healed from those things, you’re pulling yourself farther and farther away from your own present moment. The past will always stay stagnant, and relative to your life now, it’ll only move further and further away from you.
Time is something you can never get back, but when you realize that there are lessons to be learned from the things in your past, you can bounce back from anything to return to the present moment.
I needed to spend an extensive amount of time healing from the things that have happened in my past to be in the present moment. If I didn’t heal, I wouldn’t be writing this today.
I thought I was a broken person many times in my college career and life. Part of what allowed me to recognize the finite amount of time we have on this planet was processing uncontrollable outcomes in my past so I could live in the present and build my own future.
I processed everything in my past by writing a play.
I know many people saw the podcast I tried to make in the spring, The Spicy Stand Podcast. It was a flop; the quality didn’t match my intent for mental health change. Guess where the idea for the podcast came from?
The play that I wrote. I wrote what I consider to be my Magnum Opus in a play called The Spicy Stand as part of my theater minor. I was set to act it out on February 20th at a show called the New Works Festival to obtain the certificate, but ended up falling one class short and was yanked from the show.
It sucked. The classes were full that I wanted to take, but so be it.
My teammates knew how important it was for me once I retained consciousness to get it done, but I didn’t tell them why. The real reason why I wrote it out the way that I did was to heal from my past and understand the depths of who I am as a person.
It was a culmination of everything I learned up until I decided to walk away from football. I wrote, quite simply, with intense thought, analyzed every angle, and healed from the past by doing so. From being bullied as a kid to the struggles I endured in college, it all came together in one piece.
Writing about my past allowed me to live in the present moment. I had no questions because I went soul searching to heal and figured it out.
Now, I live fully in the present and am actively helping people at Newchip and with nonprofit work to build my future. Life feels tangible, and I am in the driver’s seat. The past is SO hard to process. I know it and so do you. But time always moves forward, and if you can’t learn from the past, you can’t be in the present to build your future.
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Peace. Love. Excitement. Appreciation. Success. Empowerment.
Happiness. Enlightenment. Leadership. Pride.
Again, what does it spell? PLEASE HELP.
These are the emotions at the end of the tunnel if you change your habits, flow between emotion and thought, and are in the present moment.
You are not broken. Please help yourself be the person you want to be, go after what’s yours in this world, and NEVER look back.
