Being with my therapist for 7 hours in a row for several days, we get a lot of topics covered and discussed.
We once talked about difficult moments and experiences.
Then I told her a story that I haven't told many people yet. It was December, at the very beginning after my stroke, when I had just been taken from Tallinn to Haapsalu, the right side of my body was not working at all yet and I needed to go to the toilet at night.
I got myself out of bed to a wheelchair nicely. However, something went wrong when going from the wheelchair back to bed, so I fell and could not stand up. I tried and I tried, but with no luck.
I burst into tears. I didn't reach for the emergency cord to call the nurses for help and neither I wanted to shout. So I cried there. For about 5 minutes at least.
Then my inner voice began to shout, “Karmel, get up! You can do it!!!! You are not weak!! NOW!! ”
Through tears of self-pity and angry at the situation, I began to get up again. After a long time trying, I finally managed.
Layed down on bed, I began to laugh whilst in tears and my thoughts were something like, “Go ahead, put me to test! I can handle everything! God damn it, where do I end up like that. No, Karmel, you are strong and you will be running in no time again! ”
And then my therapist asked me, "Have you been so strong all along?"
I think I have been, yeah. I have always managed by myself in difficult times and have been very independent since I was a little kiddo. My mother even whined at one point that I never complain to her about anything. That whenever she saw me calling, she already knew that everything is amazing, because otherwise I wouldn't call.
Why am I talking about this? Because my therapist asked me for an opinion on how to help a teenage girl who is very negative.
It is very difficult to make it clear to young people that everyone is having difficult times in their lives. That what they often see on Instagram is one of the hundreds of thousands of moments in their life or fake. Plus these successful athletes are not born that way but have gone through a hard work and effort, sweat and tears, etc.
People only see the top of the iceberg in other people’s lives, but what is below the waterline is much much deeper and wider.
Same for me at the moment. I look like a hugely positive and strong person to everyone. Yes, most of the time I keep my nose high and move towards 100% recovery. But there are also moments, and even not just moments, but several days where I break down and my faith disappears into the fog and being positive is forgotten.
In other words. I often have a conversation with myself in my head where I’ll feel sorry for myself and then hype myself up. And for some reason it's “Karmel, you're strong. You can do it. Everything will be fine." wins! And such situations are what make us, the people, stronger internally - our own experiences.
In my eyes, I know it's hard, no one has said it's it will be easy, it has to be made clear to those young people and sometimes even older people that no one's life is better than yours. You don't know what they're going through, you just see the top of their iceberg, remember? For example, I happened to see one Cardi B interview recently, where she was asked if she was happier now when being rich than when she didn't have that much money and guess what?! She is happy that she is able to to support her family now, but materialism is not the happiness. Even when rich, life is ‘hard’! Your inner joy counts the most! If you consantly compare your life to others you’ll never reach inner peace and happiness. No one's life difficulties are more important than your life difficulties. Everyone of us have to deal with our own problems at the right time for us.
My friend told me that the problems in her life seemed so insignificant the moment she heard about my stroke. Which is not really the case. I have also been lovesick and guess what?! I was in exactly the same situation as she now was! Because this problem was the one in my life at that time.
I kind of like the expression life is about making the best of bad choices. Sometimes that's the way it is. You just have to stay positive and believe in yourself in those moments.
In conclusion, ALL people have better and worse times. Both emotionally and physically. We are all perfectly imperfect and no one can be compared.
Why don't you see so many difficult moments in people's social media accounts?
Firstly, because people don't want to look weak (which is again a misconception, because expressing our emotions doesn't make us weak, but you can read more about that in my previous post.) Although, these are the times where we have to work on ourselves and don’t have time for social media! If we ignore and suppress any of these negative emotions, this problem will remain within us and will probably no longer be addressed anymore and that’s when it’ll start eating us from within.
Again. It is VERY okay to be emotional, ALSO FOR MEN, but it is your choice whether you stay there crying and pitying yourself, or after crying, you stand up again and prove to yourself what you are made of! 😎
Live for yourself, not for others! ♥
I will also make a few book recommendations if you need a reminder of the importance of positive thinking and self-belief:
📖 Lynne McTaggart – Intention Experiment
📖 Vadim Zealand – Reality Transurfing - Steps I-V
PS! I am very sorry if the text is confusing, I had so many thoughts in my head and I couldn't write them down any better.