Emotional States | nyxii's Blog

My emotional state swings around all the time, but I don't take it personally because I know that's just what happens. I've learned that when I'm feeling rather miserable emotionally, I can somewhat detach myself from that and look at it objectively: "I feel like nothing is worth it and I'll never amount to anything and my life is just a waste..... But I felt like this yesterday too and a few days ago before that, and it only lasted an hour. So it's not the complete truth. I know from experience I'll be feeling alright again, I just have to wait it out." And then the opposite happens: I'll be feeling giddy and excited for something so very simple as just buying a bag of chips because I'll get to munch on them in a moment.

I recognize that my emotions are like the sunlight or the moonlight, or any kind of natural lighting, to my reality. Sometimes my reality is lit up with the sunlight, and sometimes it's dark but with the seductive mysterious playful quality of the moonlight on a friendly familiar clear night. Sometimes the lighting is dim and cloudy and frighteningly black. But I can't take it personally, because it's only temporary and it will change so very drastically and certainly in just a matter of time. I simply have to wait it out.

It's very difficult to make decisions when I know that a human being's emotions and perspective of reality influences their major decisions. You think it's "objective", but that's if Who You Are is relatively stable. It's difficult to feel so very, very certain about sometime one day, and then a couple hours or a few days later feel quite differently. Especially if it's with equal certainty. It's hard to trust my own decisions, even the ones I make with certainty, when I look at how I've changed my mind about this or that depending on who I feel I am, and how that changes.

I'm not complaining here, btw, just wandering through my thoughts. In a way I'm grateful to recognize the extent I change, because the severity of it forces me to understand I can't take personally how I feel about things.

How do you know what to do when your vision of reality changes? Well, you can simply do nothing and freeze where you are; ignoring it until your life makes the decision for you. (Inaction is still a choice, with time.) Another option is to behave the way you would if you admired yourself, even if it takes a stretch of the imagination. Sometimes you have to wait it out and accept tha you're not in a place to do anything useful right now. And when you do get in the mental place to do useful things, you have to take advantage of it and make decisions and do the productive things and make commitments because at this moment you know you're your "best self". It's best to make decisions when you know you're your "best self" at the moment, and even when you feel you disagree with it later, you stick to it because you know you can't trust your present view of reality.

Having a moral code helps too, because then you know what you're supposed to do even if you can't remember why you decided that should be your moral code. Sometimes it takes some imagination. Thinking, if someone admired you, who you behave like?

Today I feel strong. I feel like nothing is really a big deal, and I'm pretty chill. Complaining about things won't help, and neither will indulging in negative emotions -- about anything, even the repetition of Christmas music on the radio all shift long. So I'm deciding to be happy about the Christmas music, instead, for example. And to do what I'd do if I were a person I admired and respected, because my past is the past and that's not who I am. I'm choosing to be who I feel like being, and not take anything personally.

Maybe in a few hours that will change again, but it will change back. Climate is the weather pattern over time.