Hello readers and welcome to the first of a new series I am creating titled, The Day Off Post, where on my day off from work once a week (I know pretty lucky right) I will be posting about any topic that has been on my mind for the past week, day, hour, or just come up with something to talk about on the spot. These posts will serve as a slice of my ongoing thoughts, a real time, unadulterated look into what I am currently thinking. If you feel the need to comment, go for it. If you disagree with my viewpoint, let me know. I am all ears, but leave the attacks and hate out of this arena, this a place of love and growth (cheesy as hell, but seriously don’t bring the bullshit I will delete any comments that instigate hateful thoughts, actions, etc.) Alright! With all that being said, I hope you like this first post and that you subscribe to this blog to keep up with The Day Off Post!
My First Step to Self-Compassion and Self-Love
Okay, let’s get this out of the way right off the bat. I “go to” therapy (“go to” is in quotes because it’s not at my therapist’s office, but rather through Facetime). I started going on November 30th, 2020, and I have been seeing him weekly since (with a three week hiatus over the holidays). I want to get this out of the way at the beginning because I still believe the act of going to therapy is stigmatized in our society. This stigma remains in place because we are still not outwardly talking about therapy as an incredible resource for helping with people’s mental health. Going to therapy should not be seen as a weakness, it should be viewed as a person’s choice to help their mental, emotional, and physical well-being. If you are in therapy, let your friends and family know. If you have been thinking about going, but think that you will be looked down upon for doing so, go. I guarantee it will help you in the long run. All in all, let’s try and peel back the stigma of this healthy practice that many people do, and many others probably should.
The reason I started going to therapy was because I was depressed and I didn’t know why. 2020 wasn’t the greatest year for a lot of people, but I didn’t have much to complain about. I still had a job. I had moved to beautiful Marina Del Rey. I had just married my lovely wife on September 20th, 2020, and had a nice little Honeymoon in Ojai (safely of course) after that. I had continued pumping out screenplays when creativity arose (2 feature scripts over the nine month period), and continued with any and all creative exploits. With all that being said, November hit, and I fell into a rut. I lacked motivation. No amount of sleep seemed to be enough. I constantly felt like I was just going through the motions. Days didn’t have any meaning and started melting together. Yeah, I felt incredibly sad that this would be the first year that I wouldn’t be able to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with family, but it was more than that. I felt worthless. I was in a cycle of self-hate, constantly judging and beating myself up for not doing anything. For not being good enough (whatever that means). The more and more these thoughts came into my head, the deeper I would push myself down, making it harder for me to get out of this mindset. Emily (my wife, for those of you that don’t know) tried her best to pull me out, but to no avail. I truly was not in a space where my wife let alone any family member could make me feel better, I would just attribute their great outlook on my life as a biased view. They didn’t really see the picture that I was painting myself. Thankfully, one night over dinner, Emily told me I should talk to somebody. I was resistant at first, thinking I could get over it myself as I have done before, but then again where did that get me? Alright, I thought. I’ll give it a shot. Sidenote: I did go to therapy when I transferred to USC in order to deal with some past issues, and it really helped, so “giving it a shot” was much easier for me to accept then if I was going to be trying this for the first time.
I spent the whole next day doing research into what therapists were in my healthcare network (I didn’t want to pay an insane amount of money for no reason). I found someone to try, Dr. Quin Crosbie (he’s great for me, but therapists aren’t all one in the same, so don’t be discouraged if you have to go to multiple to figure out the best one for you), and we scheduled our first call. I won’t go over each session (don’t worry, I like to keep some semblance of privacy), but Quin likes to focus on how your body reacts when you are talking about or feeling certain things (as an actor this really clicked with me, and I thought it was something that could really help in sorting out what feelings I felt, how my body reacted, and then using that in order to understand myself better moving forward). If I stepped back and looked at my life from another’s perspective, personally, career-wise, artistically, I would think I was doing pretty freaking good. But when I was within myself, I continually thought I was lacking. This was the main objective I wanted to tackle in therapy.
What I started to figure out through our various sessions was that my mind LOVED attacking itself. Even if I hit the goals I set out for the day, I would continually think I wasn’t doing enough. A constant thought was I need to do better. In my mind I wasn’t only wasting my time, but everyone else’s that believed in me as well. I was constantly putting unrealistic expectations on myself for not being where I want to be in my life (what the hell does that even mean?!). These vague expectations that were constantly not being met were the reason for my self-hate cycle that was in constant motion. That’s when I started focusing on self-compassion and self-love.
To start off, I want to let you know, I still have not 100% connected with self-compassion and self-love. This post is not about how I found these ways of living and it saved me. No, this is about my disconnect with self-compassion and self-love. I have done many mindfulness exercises on this, and while the first parts focus on loved ones and showing compassion, love, and empathy to them (which I can easily do, and actually gain more empathy for these people during these exercises), when the focus turns back to me a wall is dropped and the compassion and love seem to run dry. It’s much easier for me to give love and compassion to those around me that I feel deserve it, but it seems that I don’t feel that I deserve the same. This is something that I have now cognizantly set out to figure out and deal with. It just so happens, I think I found my first step in doing so.
As a kid, my mom and I were constantly moving. My mom, a single parent at the time, was doing everything and anything in her power to give me the best life possible, and she succeeded. We moved about six times and I went to five different schools during the span of 2nd to 6th grade, but my mom made these transitions seem effortless. She did everything to make sure I was comfortable and happy with anything going on. Moving school to school didn’t seem that hard, and I was able to make friends quickly (most of the time through playing sports during recess). I was able to get people to like me quickly, and I never wanted anyone to dislike me. This seems like a broad and easy sentiment most people think, but this is key to my first step toward self-love and self-compassion. While I never would go out of my way to make sure people liked me, I knew how to change in order to be the likeable guy in any circumstance. I never came upon people that I couldn’t hang out with in school, college, or in the “real world” (unless I didn’t like them of course). This became a fabric of who I was, the likeable guy that anybody could get along with. I know it seems like I’m trying to toot my own horn, but I’m not, I swear. What I’m getting at really, is that my recent realization for self-compassion and self-love, is that I have to break that mindset.
It seems funny to say, but the first step in my self-compassion and self-love journey is just this: no more Mr. Nice Guy. Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean I’m going to turn from Sean the Nice Guy to Sean the Douchebag. No, no, no. This just means I need to let go of what other people think about me. It would truly upset me if I knew that somebody didn’t like me. I would ask myself, why? What did I do to make them feel this way? I made it about me, when feelings like this are due to a multitude of factors. I put so much pressure on myself to not be disliked, that I was taking away who I was from myself. Some may say I was disconnecting from who I was. I now believe (and I emphasize the word believe, because this is a continual journey that may change course many times) that I need to accept myself for who I am whole-heartedly, and if someone doesn’t like me for that, well, that’s their problem.
This culminated as I continually thought on how relationships, friendships, and anything in between might have ended poorly in my life. I continually thought, those people probably don’t like me, I wonder if there is a way I could change that. Once again, I put it on me. But with this new step forward I can put those thoughts behind me, and hopefully start walking down the road to self-compassion and self-love. Knowing this, I feel better already.
I will end with this. To those that I may have hurt in the past, I sincerely apologize for anything I may have done to cause that pain. I wish you all nothing but happiness, but I will no longer be shouldering the burden for things that should be left in the past.
I hope this one step brings me closer in connecting myself to this self-compassion and self-love journey. Just remember that this one step I am now taking wouldn’t have been possible without Emily recommending I talk to someone, my open mindedness to going to therapy, nine therapy sessions, and the willingness to figure out my disconnect and try to figure out ways to handle it. This is not an easy process, but it was one I believe everyone has the capability of doing. Thanks for reading, and I’ll try to write about something a little less heavy next week.
-Sean
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