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by SageBriar11

Letter from a Friendship Breakup

February 2, 2021 in Educate Yourself

This is a letter I wrote while journaling my feelings about a friendship breakup:

Dear Friend,

I hope the end of your semester went ok.  I wanted to address how we left things.  I know that I have cut you off almost completely, and I’ve been on the other side of that, so I know how much it can hurt, and I wanted to explain to you how, for me, taking some space between us is necessary.

a picture of a group of people and all you can see is there silhouettesThings haven’t been working for me, which is something I have needed to address for awhile, but I felt like I just couldn’t have that conversation.  I value loyalty very highly and often feel like I must fix something that’s not working, so in the past, I have held onto relationships that didn’t feel good, simply on principle.

I’m going to try to explain how our relationship has been making me feel now that I’ve had the benefit of time and space away to think.  Obviously, this was not a conflict that sprung up suddenly.  To summarize it, my need for distance has stemmed from the combination of my habit of not establishing boundaries and the amount that I have changed since you and I first met.

I tried to explain to you exactly what processes I’ve recently gone through, but I don’t think I explained it in full.  After I went through a breakup and I struggled through the rest of my already very difficult semester, I knew I needed a total restart.  Luckily, it was time for the study abroad trip I had been planning for a year.  I’m not sure if you’ve experienced this when you’ve traveled, or if it’s unique to a longer study abroad experience, but I got that complete reset.  To say I discovered something about myself is cliched and not quite the right way to put it.  A better way to say it might be that I discovered something about positive solitude.  Through all my long solo walks I took around the city, and the feeling of having been dropped somewhere I didn’t belong to, I really felt like an outsider, but in a way more exploratory than negative.

I think that, before going abroad, I generally considered being alone negative, and tried to run away from it.  Since middle school, I’ve valued myself largely on a scale of how much I can help others or stand up for them when no one else will.  Middle school me was heartbroken at being pushed out of the social group she’d never had to fight for membership in before, and in response she developed a strict moral code that pulled me down for years, even through college.

I think my time in Spain shook me free.  By being able to embrace aloneness, as it truly is, neither positive nor negative, just a fact that everyone must experience at some point, I can actually rebuild my relationships with other people.  I can finally do what’s best for my own happiness, without feeling the need to fight for relationships that aren’t working when that act of fighting is hurting me.

But of course, my semester abroad was cut short, turning into a pandemic spring. My evacuation out of the capital was terrifying, and because, according to my therapist, I may have experienced shock during the evacuation, I struggled with nightmares, increased anxiety, and lack of focus for a month.  I came home with the realization that everything was changing, for an indefinite amount of time, so I felt very afraid.  I put on a brave face, feeling like I had to, which made everything worse, because I was scared to acknowledge how anxious I was.  I let myself lose touch with people I normally love to hang out with every time I’m home. I was not ready to return to college for the first half of the semester, because I was scared of the uncertainty, of getting sent home all over again.  This wasn’t something that I’ve been able to easily explain to anyone.

I honestly don’t know how I managed to overcome this, I guess I just realized I couldn’t stay at home forever, and that I really didn’t want to.  So I came back to school much more grateful for the things I had, and with my schedule and priorities necessarily simplified. That’s why I didn’t really care about people complaining about situations on the team.  It’s part of why I’m putting a lot of effort into spending time with some of my other friends who I want to be closer with.  You have told me that you get jealous, but this is not something I’ll apologize for, sacrifice, or put aside any longer.  If I can’t have multiple best friends, things between us just aren’t going to work.  I’ve never been best friends with just one person, and it’s not something I ever intend to start doing.

To try to summarize and wrap up my letter: I’m sorry for how things ended up with us this semester.  I wish I had been patient enough to talk it out and tell you I needed you to rely on me less for emotional burdens and needs, for you to be more independent, and that I needed to be able to spend time with other friends if I wanted.  I have grown in incredible ways since we first met, and I know now that the role I was serving for you all this time was not healthy for either of us.  I love being your friend, and I hope we can be friends again.  But I can’t be anything else—not your therapist, your emotional rock, or your roommate.  I hope this letter at least helps you have an explanation of what happened between us.

Best wishes,

SageBriar11

Have you ever ended a friendship, or have experienced a friendship breakup? What happened, and how did it affect you? What would you have done differently? If you want to talk about your experiences in more detail, you can do so on our forum about friendships here!

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by SageBriar11

Radical Acceptance

October 21, 2020 in Educate Yourself

One mental health technique that I have been thinking a lot about recently is radical acceptance.  According to Psychology Today, radical acceptance is the process of accepting life the way it is, even if it makes you uncomfortable.

When something feels unfair, “it’s almost as if we think refusing to accept the truth will keep it from being true, or that accepting means agreeing.”  But refusing to accept what’s really happening only strengthens our negative emotions, since we’re hanging on to them in the attempt to deny the truth.  When we’re more in control of our emotions, we often react better to the next part of the situation, since we’re thinking more with our brain and less with our feelings.  This is where radical acceptance, a formidable mental health tool, comes in.

I first learned about the concept of radical acceptance when I was having my worst semester of college.  I had overloaded myself with classes and activities, my team was experiencing lots of negativity and interpersonal conflict, and many of my friends were struggling with problems of their own.  To top it all off, my boyfriend broke up with me near the end of the semester.  At this point, I started to feel hopeless, angry, and exhausted.  I went to talk to my therapist at school, and she explained how I could use radical acceptance to deal with my breakup instead of shutting down after it all added up.  I still had a lot of emotions during that time, but using radical acceptance allowed me to get back up and survive the semester.

I believe that radical acceptance isn’t just for those situations where we feel like life is unfair.  We can also use it when a situation is making us scared or anxious.  I did this while I was studying abroad in Spain—I was excited and happy, but often, very nervous.  Often, “the only way out was through”, and I had to accept my discomfort during the moment in order to achieve what I wanted or get through it to laugh about it later.  For example, in learning Spanish, I had to get used to accepting making mistakes, so that I could push past the embarrassment to learn more.

Lastly, radical acceptance is an important concept for everyone to know during the time of COVID-19.  I have read several articles saying it’s normal for us to feel like we’re grieving during this time—we have lost a lot, whether it’s our sense of normalcy or a plan for our summer or fall that we had looked forward to.  While we should be able to grieve anything we have lost to the pandemic, it’s also important to be able to keep living our life.  In this case, radical acceptance could help us reclaim our time, so that we’re not spending every moment obsessively remembering what things were like before the pandemic, and we can make the best of the moments we have now.

Have you ever heard of radical acceptance? Is this something you’ve wanted to, or have ever practiced in the past? Why do you think it can be difficult to accept things for the way that they are?

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by SageBriar11

My Experiences with Travel Anxiety

September 9, 2020 in Educate Yourself

According to Calm Clinic, a mental health information site, travel anxiety varies greatly in causes and its impacts on people. In an article on travel anxiety, the website states that, “Many people have travel anxiety their entire lives. Others may develop the anxiety because of past experiences relating to travel which were anxiety provoking; and some seem to have travel anxiety for no apparent reason at all.” During high school, my travel anxiety was pretty severe. By now, the summer after my third year of college, I’ve largely been able to overcome my travel anxiety. While I did visit a therapist during high school, and some of college, we spent more time talking about other facets of my mental health journey, like bullying and grief, so I have not analyzed my travel-related anxiety with a therapist.

However, I have noticed that my travel anxiety flared up when I would drive to colleges to tour them with one of my parents.  It got so bad that I would vividly imagine graphic “what ifs,” mostly related to the idea of danger or accidents.  This was exhausting and would leave me tense, jumpy and cranky anytime I went on a trip (which was frequent because I toured wayyyy too many colleges).  My anxiety surrounding cars and driving also affected my day-to-day life; I made excuses and procrastinated learning to drive because it made me so nervous.  Because my travel anxiety was so difficult during high school, and has largely gone away during college, I believe that it was connected to a minor car accident that I got into in high school.  Even though the no one was hurt, I was not driving, and the accident was little more than a bump at low speed, it was enough to cause me some mental trauma that was elevated by other facets of my anxiety.

In fact, Calm Clinic says that travel anxiety is “very common,” and that it can be driven by things that people are already anxious about but that you might not immediately pinpoint as a source of anxiety related particularly to travel.  For example, “some people are influenced by the ‘worst case scenario’ stories they hear on the news…when you access news stories about kidnappings, injuries, and other accidents, it’s easy to subconsciously associate travel with tragedy”.  Like many people, I tend to focus on negative stories like these.  Also, I experience the most feelings of anxiety during periods when I am transitioning from one place or activity to another.  This means that I have the most worries and negative thoughts while packing, moving from place to place, or getting used to something new.  Needless to say, these experiences most often occur when I am traveling somewhere or returning from my travels. 

Despite my past difficulty with traveling, I decided that spending a semester abroad was something I really wanted to do, so I made the preparations throughout my first years of college to study in Spain during my junior year.  By the time I was almost about to leave, I was more excited than nervous.  I did feel some tension, but I successfully breathed through it and managed my solo flight from home to New York City without a hitch.  I was put even more at ease when I met all the other students in my program and started making friends.  Spending time with these friends really helped me enjoy my time in Spain and make the transition in a balanced, happy way.  My Spanish host mom was also incredibly supportive and helped me learn about the new culture I was experiencing, as was the program director, who made sure we were comfortable.  I also learned strategies to help myself manage other facets of my anxiety in Spain, where I was able to live more slowly without all the extracurricular activities that I had pressured myself into at my own university.               

Sadly, we had to evacuate when the coronavirus pandemic started to spread from Italy to Spain.  The week in which our program was ordered to evacuate was full of changes and would have been scary to anyone, even those who don’t usually experience much anxiety.  Even though my plans were changing by the minute, I knew I had to stay calm in order to make it home.  Prior to having to leave, I had done all of my traveling around Spain and Europe with my friends from the program, because traveling with others helps me feel safer and less anxious. 

However, everyone was on their own traveling home because tickets were hard to find.  I rushed to Spain’s capital via train (which was eerily empty), then caught a flight to Portugal, where I spent a night of layover before finally catching my plane back to New Jersey.  Then I had to take another short train ride to Philadelphia.  Most of this, I did completely alone.  I was nervous and exhausted, but I was lucky to be in constant contact with my program director, host mom, a few of my friends, and of course my parents.  Although I had some of the highest anxiety of my life during that scary 48 hours of travel, I know that I behaved well and smartly, and now, I feel prepared to handle almost any travel situation.

Are there specific instances that trigger your anxiety? Do you have travel anxiety?

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by SageBriar11

Making a Tough Decision

August 11, 2020 in COVID-19, Educate Yourself

Everyone has faced tough, personal decisions since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes schools and universities, like the small, private university I attend. Many schools, like mine, are under financial strain, and have decided to risk reopening so that they don’t have to close their doors for good.

Before I read my school’s official fall plan, I was constantly flip-flopping back and forth about whether I should choose to return to school or stay home.  I tend to take a long time making decisions, because I struggle with perfectionism and get scared that not making the “right” decision the first time will lead to disaster. This in turn can lead me to use others as a crutch, relying more heavily on advice from family and friends than on my own instincts. However, I knew that this decision was an extremely important one, so I resisted the temptation to seek advice from my friends, and just asked my parents what they thought.

This way, I could concentrate on how I really felt about the idea of going back to school during this pandemic. I used a pros and cons list to outline some of the logistical parts of the decision, but I knew my gut was telling me to stay home. Because I have mild asthma, I know that I might be at-risk of experiencing a worse reaction to COVID-19 than others my age.  While making my decision, I thought about how I would feel if I were to go back to school, and I came up with one word: scared. Although I can’t predict the future, I can guess that going back to school would easily trigger my (or anyone’s) anxiety. With my asthma, that scared feeling would likely be constant and not well-managed, since I would be constantly putting myself in a scary situation just by being at school, where I’d be around more people than I am at home. With these factors in mind, the right choice became clear to me, and I decided to stay home and take classes online this semester.

While I will miss my friends, I know that this decision is the best one for my mental (and physical) health. Not having to worry like I would at school that everything I do could lead me to contract the coronavirus will allow me to focus on my schoolwork and maintaining connections with friends, even from a distance. I usually worry that others will question my decisions, but telling some of my friends and neighbors about my decision turned out to be a positive experience. Many of them have expressed their support, and this reinforced my decision, because I know that I have a support network around me that will help check in on me as we all get through this challenging time.

Have you had to make any tough decisions as a result of the pandemic? What are your plans for school if you’re attending? Have you had to make any decisions about school for yourself?

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