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Something I wish I had known earlier: When you're stressed and you sit with your emotions, simply allowing them and resisting the urge to push them aside by drinking alcohol, doomscrolling, stress-eating, and the like, your brain eventually gets tired of running the usual doom-and-gloom scripts. You let go, reach some sort of flow state, and then you just know what to do about the situation, or at least know what the best next step to take would be.
If you're only beginning to practice this, it feels counterintuitive. You will feel restless. Your mind will be screaming, "Why the fuck are you just sitting there doing nothing when we have something urgent?!" The unpleasant emotions will be magnified and it will be hella painful. But if you just stay with it and resist the urge to numb the pain, clarity will eventually wash over you. Insights will come flooding in that will make you think, "Oh my god, why didn't this occur to me before?"
This gets easier with time and repetition. Eventually, it gets less painful and more automatic. You become more comfortable with the process. And then it becomes a habit. And then you notice your life getting better overall. If I had known this when I was younger, I would have saved myself from decades of mental health wreckage.
Imagine how much creativity would be available to us if we were taught how to regulate our emotions as children instead of using painful emotions to motivate us to work hard, with the promise of being able to drown said emotions in distractions and intoxicants when the weekend comes.
About the author: Violette B. is your average everyday sane psycho super goddess (many thanks to Liz Phair). If you enjoyed reading this, more can be found on https://IWishLifeCameWithAnInstructionManual.blogspot.com/