I just finished reading “Option B” by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant. Its blurb “a book about facing adversity, building resilience, and finding joy” resonated with me, the themes being especially topical. It helps that I had also read “Lean In” earlier this year. (2020 was a good year for reading – I read many more books during lockdown than I had for years… but more on that another time)

One of the tips in the book to learn self-compassion, and to process and overcome adversity, is to write – turning feelings into words. And so here I am, writing again.

I’ve always liked writing. I kept a physical diary as a kid, as early as 12, possibly earlier. And then I’ve had a series of online journals / blogs. Journalling helps me remember things, because I can be forgetful. And in any case, memory can be tricky. I read somewhere that your memory of an event is actually a copy of the last time you recalled the event. Which means that the fidelity of the actual event is likely to degrade with time, if each time you access that memory, your mind changes slight details about it. And if I don’t recall anything, I might as well have not lived.

I also know that writing helps me process emotions better. I used to write a lot more when I was really down and depressed, in early 2000s, partly because it was a particularly dark and difficult time in my life, partly because I was a student with loads of time 🙂

But back in early 2000s, when I flew across the pond to meet HP, a “stranger” who had been reading my online journal during that period, and with whom I had spent many late nights chatting to on MSN Messenger, he commented to me one day that I seem a lot darker and more depressive in my blog than I do in real life. In person I was bubbly, lively and chatty. But in my blog I was much more doom and gloom I guess. I suppose it’s because I dump my emotions on the internet to deal. I read somewhere that introverts process better by writing than talking. And someone has expressed his surprise at how super super introverted I am.

I haven’t written much for a long time, for a mix of reasons: busy with work, life… lack of personal and mental space to write… feeling like life is sometimes too mundane to write about, or there are so many things of equal “importance” / significance to write about, that if I can’t pick and choose, so if I don’t have time to write about all of them, I might as well not write about any of them. And then, over the past 12-18 months, when I have been feeling progressively worse and more confused about life, and my feelings…. not wanting to write about it because I didn’t know how to disentangle and interpret the mess (and mass!) of big feelings inside me.

But I was in enough angst that I eventually wrote an entry in June this year. I think maybe because I might have hit rock bottom of my misery and confusion. Maybe not misery, but possibly confusion.

In May this year, I came across this term, cognitive dissonance, which helped clarify things. I realised that this was why I’ve been upset and mentally stressed from February. I hadn’t realised there was a term for it,.. On one hand, learning the term didn’t make a difference to my state, because I was still experiencing cognitive dissonance. On the other hand, part of me was like: “I can name it now. I can box it and categorise it”. It felt like a bit of a relief – it was no longer this big awful nameless thing, that was alive inside of me that I didn’t know how to deal with.

Although I wouldn’t usually like to contradict Shakespeare, in this case, I completely disagree. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that being able to name my mental conditions would make a difference, and yet it does. Knowing that this state of mental stress has a name, is common enough that it has been identified by researchers. That I am not alone – I am not going crazy all on my own. Other people have experienced it – there are studies and whole theories on this! And there is method and process, and a series of steps to deal with it! I think the existence of a name, a body of research, methodology and steps, made it feel more controllable and manageable somehow.

I also came across another Wikipedia article on emotional self-regulation, in July, that I found really interesting. Some of the strategies and coping mechanisms have also been covered in “Option B”.

It’s funny… that I had to resort to reading academic articles about emotions to identify and regulate my emotions. I guess I felt out of depth, that I wanted to read some scientific research-backed analysis and recommendations.

More another day.