Do you think I’m emotionally volatile?

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If I texted you the title of this blog without context would you be worried? That’s what happened on Friday night when Steph and I were drinking prosecco and listening to Lana del Rey at my apartment. When we hang out, it’s usually playing tennis or working out or drinking. But this week was different. We just sat in my living room and talked and laughed for hours. We were talking about literally anything and everything, catching up regarding our week and we got on the topic of our worst traits. Steph said hers was how impatient she is lol which is also one of mine.

I don’t even remember what exactly led to her being like I think you are emotionally volatile and that’s why you’re tired all the time. She said she thinks that I feel emotions sooooo deeply that they drain me physically. We both wear this fitness tracker called Whoop, that our friend Alex got us hooked on, and we share our data on the app. So everyday we can see our sleep and recovery metrics (it’s pretty cool actually). If you know me well, you know I absolutely LOVE to sleep. Anywhere, any time, any place. Steph on the other hand, struggled with sleep (pre Whoop). So she said she thinks my sleep numbers are so high because on any given day, I go through a rollercoaster of emotions that I feel so deeply and that she couldn’t imagine how tired she would be if she felt them like I do.

This got us talking about our reactions to certain things and she said that regardless of what the event was, her emotion would fluctuate up and down accordingly but only slightly, whereas mine would hit the extremes. And honestly, that’s so true for me in anything I do. I’m an all-or-nothing kind of person and that applies to my emotions too. Honestly, I just assumed everyone felt emotions the same way. That happiness felt the same for everyone and sadness too, but that every person’s emotions were generated by different things. This conversation with Steph made me realize that that’s probably not true. While we both may feel happiness, it feels completely different for different people. Maybe that’s obvious to everyone but I never really took time to think about it until this weekend.

That night, I texted a handful of people “Do you think I’m emotionally volatile?” and then fell asleep. I texted that with absolutely no context and got a lot of worried responses such as “are you okay?” “can I call you?” and “is everything okay?” To the people that received that text, sorry for alarming you but thank you so much for being concerned. After explaining why I was asking that question, they all pretty much agreed. My best friend, Alex, in particular asked me if I thought emotions felt the same for everyone. And I really did?!

Ok so emotionally volatile sounds harsh but we did talk about the benefits as well. On the bright side, feeling emotions so deeply allows you to feel “higher highs” when you’re happy, excited, in love, etc. On the flip side, you feel the lowest of lows when things don’t workout how you wanted them to.

So this whole weekend I’ve been thinking about if it’s good or bad to be “emotionally volatile” and I don’t know that it’s good or bad. Am I super dramatic in every day situations? Yessssss. But that’s because that’s honestly how I feel. If something goes wrong at work or god forbid I make a mistake on one of my dashboards, you can guarantee that I’m freaking the fuck out! But when I nail a presentation or do something well, it feels like I’m on top of the world. Sure, making mistakes stresses me out but I genuinely think that is one of my strengths. I hate that feeling SO much that I do anything to avoid it.

Earlier this year I signed up for online therapy and started taking antidepressants. I’ve talked about this a lot and I’m pretty open about it. On Friday, I actually had a zoom call where I was supposed to talk about my journey with online therapy and what I have learned about dealing with anxiety and depression and some of the main topics were avoidance and perfectionism. It’s really no surprise to me that these two topics were my biggest pain points - I think they go hand in hand, or in my case at least. Being a perfectionist, you obviously hate making mistakes and try to make everything perfect, duh! But why? Like what’s the point? Well, I don’t have a fucking clue. I always thought that if I was the best that I could be or the best at something, that I would be *successful* (???) What the fuck does that I even mean?

Just like emotions, success means something different to everyone. So I’m sitting here asking myself to define what success means to me and I don’t even know how to answer that. To be perfect? To be rich? To be married? To be promoted at work? To live in a penthouse apartment? Own a house? Travel the world? Be happy? I don’t know what success means or what it looks like for me and when I try to think about it, I try to differentiate between my ideas of success and what society has manipulated us to believe that success is. What does success look like to you? Food for thought.

Ok, back to perfectionism and avoidance. How are they related? Well, with a perfectionist mindset, you are extremely hard on yourself. So when you’re not perfect, you make a mistake, you fuck up, whatever, you feel like shit. At least I do. And it’s not even because someone is asking me to be perfect. My parents don’t expect me to be perfect. My boss and his peers don’t expect me to be perfect. Shit, on Friday I logged in like 2 hours later that I usually do and I had a missed chat from one of my boss’ peers and I was mortified. I told him I had slept in and I was truly embarrassed and worried because I had no idea what he was going to say or think. He was probably going to think that I’m so unprofessional and that I can’t be trusted to work from home. Nope. He said “no worries, you’re allowed to oversleep.” Like, I’m sorry what? This idea of being perfect comes from myself. The expectations come from myself. Why are we so hard on ourselves? Is it bad to be so hard on ourselves or does that push us to be better? I don’t know. Listen, it’s 2020 and we’re all just doing the best we can. You never know who is struggling with perfectionism or with keeping their emotions “under control” so be kind to people. Remind your friends, coworkers, family members that you see them and that you’re proud of and thankful for them. It goes a long way. Have the best week <3

xx hangrymarn