That unrelenting guilt.

Bismillah. 

The past month had been about me struggling to fight my inner demons. 

My inner thoughts. 

The constant thought chatter, that's what my therapist called it. 

I called it spiraling into overthinking. 

Overthinking ain't the same as critical thinking. 

Critical thinking provides you a wider point of view and options. 

On the other hand, overthinking leads to you into a blackhole, constant thoughts over things out of your control - be it something in the past, or something yet to happen in the future that results in unnecessary worry. 

I am not sure how many of you suffered from this but it ain't something fun. 

It is very dreadful. 

Thinking about the past leads me to self-blame and guilt - and that drives me to depression. 

Thinking about the uncertain future leads me to never ending anxiety - also disturbs my peace of mind, and sometimes, even my sleep (those who are close to me knows how precious my sleep is). 

And I am writing it down here. 

So as to embrace it and fight it with all my might. 

So I acknowledge it and find ways to outdo it and prevent it from happening again. 

So at the end of the day, I have better mental health. 

And why does the title unrelenting guilt?

Because that's what started all of these. 

I had this guilt of blaming myself for: 

-not diagnosing my parents illnesses earlier. This thing is scarily haunting me over and over again for the past couple of years. 

-not arranging the surgery for my beloved earlier - I told myself I had many opportunities to do so, just that I had not been persistent enough to pursue it. Hence, the guilt kept creeping back.  

-and because of the above reasons, the treatment of his condition is now has to be put on hold until a certain criterion is met, which means the disease might progress in the meantime (and this is the uncertainty of the future that brings anxiety). And yup, so it goes back to no. 1 and becomes a vicious cycle. 

My mind went crazy. At one moment the guilt and self-blame overwhelms me. And the other moment is the sane me telling me to stop blaming myself and do what I can at the present moment. 

It's like having a civil war inside your mind. 
Funny but not funny. Miahahaha. 

Anyway, I am happy that I vent this out to my therapist. I was reminded of the following (which helped me to put things in context better): 

-I can imagine that it left you frustrated, your only mistake is blaming yourself. Of course you are very concerned about your parent, but, like I said before, you are only human. There are (a lot of) things outside your control. It can be useful to look back to your personal choices and behaviour from time to time and learn from mistakes but it is something else to get frustrated out of unreasonable self-blame.

-You didn't make a mistake in this situation. And when you do make a mistake, thinking in an "if only" kind of way isn't helpful. People make mistakes. All people. A lot of mistakes. Everyday. It is part of being human. In hindsight things look different. I will say again that in my eyes you didn't make a mistake in this situation. But you will make mistakes in the future. You are only human.

-The problem is in the self-blame, the overthinking, the lack of acceptance that (a lot of) things are outside your control, also very important things that mean everything to you, like your parents' health and well-being.

-I think if there is anything that you can learn here and address, it is that looking back and blaming yourself in hindsight, even for things that you cannot reasonably be blamed for, doesn't help and even makes things worse. It undermines your self confidence and happiness and general wellbeing and that might even lead to mistakes instead of preventing them, thus causing exactly what you so desperately try to avoid.

ig @bigpandaandtinydragon

Dear self, please be more forgiving to yourself, for you too deserve love and forgiveness <3 

Learn to love oneself and that will allow your love for others to bloom. 

And, live up to the power of now. Like Mek always said: "treat each day as a gift". 

I believe that you will continue to improve yourself. And that there are so many people around you that will help you to do better :) Because they all love you for who you are <3

Posted in: mental health