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Focusing on yourself doesn’t mean you close yourself off from your family and friends. It’s being honest about where you are and how you feel. What you need and what you don’t like. Admitting when something is to much for you and asking for help.
I use to think focusing on yourself was being selfish with your time and staying in your room and doing laundry and planning finances and doing the things you like but I just found myself isolated from my friends, unmotivated, lazy, and unproductive.
I ended up wondering why nobody hits me up, conversations I had fizzled fast, everything felt surface level and nothing really changes. Now I’m questioning where I stand in my relationships and sabotaging them because “they couldn’t give me the space I needed.”
And then after all that energy and anxiety, I’m drained and need to recharge. So I isolate myself again and become lazy, unmotivated, unfocused etc. the cycle repeated itself. Im not changing. I deflect. I procrastinate. I become complacent.
I realized that this was happening and I didn’t know how to break the cycle so I figured I would do the opposite of what I’ve been doing and start being more social. Engage in conversations, allow myself to have empathy, and help talk through people’s stress. That didn’t go well
I did my absolute best to give everyone what they needed from me that I had nothing left for myself. I couldn’t think clearly because I was worried about other people’s relationships. I was up super late because someone needed to talk. I couldn’t even focus on work.
Basically it wasn’t long until the panic attack came. It had been a very long time so my last one and I knew before it happened, it was gunna happen. I tried my coping techniques, didn’t work. Tried to control my breathing. HA. It was happening.
It took a whole ass panic attack for me to realize that this whole time I thought I had been managing my anxiety so well but in fact I had been burying it. And now I don’t have a choice but to face it.
I have never been more grateful for a panic attack in my life. Its like gears started turning again. Once I realized I was burying my feelings instead of being disconnected from them, I have been able to deal with my shit piece by piece.
The floodgate is open and I’m calling myself out for the self-sabotage, the insecurity, the complacency, the unexpected expectations, choosing to be angry, trouble with intimacy, struggle with compassion, trust etc.
I’ve sent apology texts and reached out to people I haven’t spoken to in awhile. Asked for forgiveness from people who deserved it and admitting to myself that there is hard work to do that I don’t have the tools for yet. And that’s okay.
The next time you want to focus on yourself figure out what that looks like for you. Isolation probably isn’t the answer. Neither will be fixing everyone else’s problems. The only way you become a priority to yourself is buy breaking yourself down and building it back up.
