#Also lifehack: listen to music with banjo in it

[peachymess]

Any advice on how to deal with bad news or an undesirable outcome? Or just anticipating the worst? I've always sucked at handling that and I'm not dealing with the last chapter of SNK well. Any general tips for the future? 😔

Hi, anon. I’ll do my very best to give some advice, although it is not lost on me that it’s a bit of an ironic act, as I can be very slow to let go myself. But then again quick, it just depends.

And what it depends on, is emotion dependency.

If I have used something as a comping mechanism, connected something directly to my happiness or health, or otherwise feel like I need something in order to be ok, then... it’s hard to accept losing it. For instance, I can not stand change in my childhood home or mom and dad’s mountain cabin - and least of all grandma and grandpa’s country side cabin. Why? Because due to my depression, I feel like happy moments is hard to obtain. I know I’ve had many good moments in these places, and so I’m terrified of them altering so that they will no longer be able to produce the same happiness-inducing environment as in the past. (But guess what, there will always be happy moments; I am not dependent on having any given building/place accessible to me in order to obtain it).

What I’m trying to say is, the most important advice is this: don’t trick yourself into thinking your life or happiness makes or breaks depending on this or that thing. Bar the things you actually need, like meds and doctors and all that (I trust you to tell essential and non essential dependencies apart). I’ve made this very mistake. I put an ‘=‘ between “my ability to be happy/live” and “Armin surviving the story”. And at one point: “snk in general”. Try not to to give into that urge. This is a coping mechanism. When you need a solid thing to turn to, because happiness feels otherwise too elusive. In the future, try not to take the easy way out and bind yourself to something so concrete. Because when you do - when happiness begins to actually depend on something concrete never changing - you will at some point lose. Because everything solid eventually changes. Ends. Sours.

So begin to build trust in yourself. The goal is to know that even if everything around you crumbles, you will be ok in yourself. I’ve come to learn that this also applies to people. All friendships change over time. Some last a lifetime, others drift apart. Others might hurt you. And it’s natural to hurt from drifting or betrayal... But so long as you don’t lean your full weight on someone else, you will maintain your balance once a pillar crumbles. Just like older family will one day leave you and you’ll need to be secure enough in yourself to stand not having parents to run to forever.

... ok, that got bleak, I’ll shift gears. Anon, for the future, my advice would be to approach situations with the knowledge that very few things will actually break you. And even more: that no situation has a fixed way of being read. Take arriving too late at the bus stop, for instance. The bus is pulling back into traffic and you barrel after if, but it’s too late. In the dust, you stand there panting and cursing. It’s easy to get mad, say “day ruined” or worse “damn it, this is the third time I’ll be late for work, I’m getting fired”. But... the bus is lost, man. It’s done. It is something you can’t change now. So you have two options: either spend your good time pulling yourself down into the negative by cursing how much you hate what is. OR, you can acknowledge that this turn of events leaves you off somewhere, and utilize it the best you can. It’s the “when life gives you lemons” - only with dogshit. Yeah, it smells bad and I guess you could like... make it into compost or something. Or, anon, you can just walk away from it. Who said you had to take the shit?

Now that you have to wait for the bus anyways, might as well take the time waiting to listen to some more of a podcast you like, or reply to the emails you didn’t get to answer before running out the door. And what about the job? Well, firstly, it’s not a given yet that you lost it. But if you did - listen. This is where the “many ways to read a situation” comes in. Who decided this job was your only possible path? You. And falsely. “No, it’s the only job I could get, I can’t just sell the house and live in an RV for a year selling my art on Etsy”. Why not? That’s you deciding certain options to be a non-option. But the option is there. Do things come with work and sacrifice? Yes. Just like the job you had meant you had to live within physical reach of it. Every path takes you shaping to their requirements. And some things might seem daunting because it asks you to bend into a new shape than you’re used to. But look at all the different kinds of people and paths taken by people. Losing that bus today, was not a make or break of you having any path at all. It didn’t end your path. If it did anything at all (because who knows, maybe work didn’t even notice you came late or turns out there was a flood so they were closed anyways), and at most it just altered the path.

This is my stilted way of saying: when you realize just how non-essential most things are to your life - how you’ll always be ok as long as you keep going and looking for solutions - you’ll stop feeling doomed every time seemingly bad stuff happens.

“So you want me to be apathetic and care about nothing?” No. Not at all. I want you to love and enjoy the life around you. But I want you to be ok with it not lasting forever. Because when something ends, you don’t end. For you, their end, only alters your surrounding.

I don’t know if I’m making sense. And if I am, I’m still aware that “that’s just the way it is” is a hard pull to swallow. I know some situations are much, much harder to be ok with... and to that I say: yeah. I’m sorry about that. Some paths are harder than others. And some paths are only available to some and not all. But mindset is - simply is - your most important tool. You have the power to make any situation awful to you, or even good.

When bad shit happens to me, I have that essential steam blow of going through all the negatives, then I breath and look around for where to head next. I move on, because I realize no amount of moping will undo or alter the situation. It’s up to me to make something of the lemons/dogshit - or leavening it to find something else. Otherwise, I’m just standing still on the trail, crying next to a foul smelling shit for eternity. No thanks.

Another good trick I’ve found for when unlucky things alter the path, is this: I ask myself “what lesson can I take from this?” I even go as far as think “I guess this was meant to be a lesson for me”. I try to always find a way to grow from a situation, good or bad.

I don’t know... it’s taken a long while for me to live by this as well, anon, but I think the most important thing is just attitude. If you tell yourself: “I am able to grow from bad experiences and move on”, you will be more prone to do so, than if you say “this has ruined my life”. The event was the same, but the mindset shaped it.

So I ask you... even though it’s bitter, will you be able to heal from snk with time? Will you be able to move on and grow?