Stay With The Pain, Don't Shut This Out

In the last month, i found myself trying to escape the pain and discomfort while being at home. At lunch, i reached the phone to open Youtube and tell myself a really stupid reason "It's lunch, i will stop after finishing lunch", turns out lunch takes more than 40 minutes.

I usually work out at around 1PM, lately i keep telling myself that i would work out for 1 hour but i only worked out for 15 minutes because i was on the phone since lunch. Then i rushed everything and regretted everything i had done since lunch.

I tell myself that i would go to bed at 11PM but keep scrolling till 12:30 AM. Even when i go to bed at 11:30 PM, i grab the phone and choose a song so that i could escape the pain of the lonely feeling.

There are more but i would rather keep it short, eventually i realized that if that habit keeps going i will be miserable.

Today, i found a video of Dr K on "Why you never break the cycle" or something like that and found that it's literally me in the video. The video explains that we have some problem, then we do something to cope, then we realize that the coping mechanism doesn't resolve the problem, then we keep trying harder with the coping mechanism because somehow we believe it works, but in reality it doesn't. I reflect this idea and found it's true for my case, i tried creating something such as business, building something for myself but then ends up trying to learn something else instead. Realizing that there's nothing built, i harder but the effort is not put into the building process but rather the reading, researching and repeat the cycle.

Here's another example, i want to have more friend but my belief says "You have to be more physical attractive in order to have more friend" so i started working out everyday. I ended up having 0 new friend because i didn't interact with anyone, the thing doesn't stop there because i believe that i haven't worked out enough so i put more effort and try harder, but the result is still the same. 0 new friend achievement.

All of these thing happen for a reason. I acted upon a feeling instead of feeling. Whenever i feel sad, i don't sit with it but try doing something with it and gain some pleasure. For example, when I'm bored i reach out to the phone and find something to research. Eventually, i will find something interesting and want to do it, but the next time I feel bored again i will reach out to the phone and find something new instead of just sticking with whatever I'm working on right now and never get anywhere.

The scenario i feel familiar the most is that whenever i feel like don't want to go to the party, there's a part of my mind tell me to make up some excuses so that i could stay at home. If i choose to act on it, i will regret later but will definitely do that again because in that particular moment, the pleasure of taking the weight of my shoulder is very strong (in this case, it's making excuse and stay home instead of facing social anxiety). But if i choose to stick with my decision, eventually everything will be fine and i will adapt to the situation.

Recently, the company trip was something crazy but i stick with my decision and still get there, no problem at all.

Tyler Durden once said "Stay with the pain, don't shut this out".