“I been watchin’ you, workin’ day and night, slavin’ so hard you barely have time to catch your breath. People do that for three reasons. Either they crazy, or stupid, or tryin’ to forget. And with you, I knew you was tryin’ to forget. I just didn’t know what.” -Nicholas Sparks
We all go through periods in our lives when we are suffering internally. Maybe it’s over a breakup, or work stress, or the loss of a loved one. Maybe it’s just depression and anxiety in general. Whatever the cause may be, mental anguish can rule your entire life. It can make you feel like you can’t even get out of bed to go to the bathroom, let alone to work, school or wherever else you’d be expected to turn up.
1) You constantly keep yourself busy with chores or other tasks
Keeping yourself busy is the quickest way to get through the day. All you can think about is getting back to your comfort zone. So whether it’s work, school, chores or even just a hobby on the side, you throw yourself into it as much as you can, just to keep your mind busy and your day moving forward.
2) You always try to fix other people’s problems
When we’re depressed, anxious or overwhelmed, it’s very easy to get sucked into other people’s problems. After all, it’s a good distraction from our own problems.
3) You just can’t say NO to people
Being a people pleaser is a common thing for hurting people. Even if we don’t want to do something, we will probably do it anyway. We feel we don’t have the mental strength to argue.
4) Music is life
Music is everything to a person in pain. No matter what kind of pain and suffering you’re going through, there is bound to be at least 1 good song somewhere that relates to it, and somehow expresses exactly what you’re feeling.
5) You avoid the people who know you best
When we’re in pain, we tend to hide that fact as best we can. For that reason, we don’t really want to be around other people. We ESPECIALLY don’t want to be around people who can see through our facade. It’s a lot of energy to put on an act and pretend everything is A-OK, and it’s all a big waste if they can see through the act anyway.
6) You lie when people ask what you’re doing
When your friends message you and ask what you’re up to, are you always honest with them? If not, that’s okay. Sometimes it’s difficult for us to admit that we are sitting home alone, getting lost in our depressing thoughts. If we told our friends the truth, they’d probably try to come around and try to change that fact, and deep down we don’t actually want that. We just want to be left alone.
7) You have your fake smile/ happy act down to an artform
We wear a fake smile like a badge of honor. “Sometimes the brightest smiles hide the deepest secrets, the most beautiful eyes have cried the most tears, and the kindest hearts have felt the most pain.”
8) Overthinking is what you do most
This is a big one for those of us who constantly suffer with mental anguish. When you’re in pain, you’re constantly overthinking every little detail. Not just the little things, like when that nagging little voice in the back of your mind that asks you if you actually remembered to lock your car door this time… But serious next level overthinking, like about stuff from 20 years ago. When we’re depressed we’re constantly second guessing ourselves, wondering what we’re going to screw up next, or what we could have done differently in any given scenario.
9) We lash out
Depression can take many forms in someone’s life. Most of the time when we humans are depressed, we find coping mechanisms to help us deal with the pent up emotions and frustrations. Sometimes people turn to alcohol or drugs. Sometimes they run away, or take it out on the people around them. Sometimes they even go to more extremes and self harm.
10) We make light of the situation and laugh it off.
Hard to say why we laugh about pain sometimes. Maybe that’s because if you’re making people laugh or making a joke out of your pain then it might ‘soften the blow’. Sometimes the people who are hurt the most shed light and positivity to others because they know what it’s like to feel the opposite.
And everyone tells you, you’ll get over it in due time. But for some reason, it feels like time has frozen and this heartbreak is the place in which you’re trapped. You know it’ll fade. You know you’ll wake up and not think of them one day. But that one day seems so far off.
So muddle through all of it just trying to be okay until you can look back at this with a smile that’s real.
By [email protected]
Inspired by an article on ThoughtCatalog