"This isn't me"

What to do when you dislike the person you've become

“Humbling” is a word I’d use to describe the past 4 months.

My day-to-day life has felt anything but glamourous. Truthfully, this era feels reminiscent of an earlier time - one filled with anxiety, indecision, and low-self esteem. It’s not a “fun” era. It’s a “cleaning-of-the-spiritual-gutters” era.

This gutter crap cleaning has taken the form of pessimism, self-consciousness and apathy. This is ironic (and doubly challenging) because I teach manifestation. This is the reason why I constantly twitter on about how “you don’t need to be positive to manifest”. I’ve manifested a lot being a big ‘ole hater.

But, for the moment: the negative, sticky, apathetic, goop emotions remain.

In the past four months, I’ve done plenty of grumbling about how people around me are incompetent (and many other irrelevant and untrue things). I’ve eaten LOTS of sugar! Gained LOTS of weight! Stopped dressing well, brushing my hair, or even sometimes - gasp - my teeth! Felt bad in my body most of the time! Stopped exercising (and going outside at all, really, for that matter). I’ve sat down to work at my laptop, only to find no meaning or fulfillment in it! Stopped responding to texts from my family and friends.

So it’s safe to say that there is obviously something wrong with me.

Like anything else, the first step towards change is acknowledging the gravity of the situation. Frankly, it looks pretty grave. Those are high risk behaviors on paper, especially from someone with a multi-family-suicide genetic background.

But I’m not going to go off prancing to a psychiatrist about it just yet - at least not before doing anything about it myself. As a former hypochondriac, I actually have a rule about this, as follows:

If you feel like shit and think it’s medical - (genuinely) try: exercising 3x, drinking 1 liter of water everyday, and set one solid boundary.

If you don’t feel better after a week, it’s probably medical.

(And it usually isn’t medical).

Anyhoo - modern healthcare would label me as depressed real quick and toss a couple of pills my way so I stop overloading their system with more visits.

But it’s not clinical - no, I’ve seen this before. This is “the burnout of the codependent”.

Codependency burnout happens when you overextend yourself for a prolonged period of time to adhere to the unaligned values of a person or ideology. This results in massive self-sacrifice. A year or so of that and, well, you’ve lost yourself entirely.

In my case, these unaligned values were predominately societal - “post x amount of times per day”, “scale your business to the moon”, “sales, sales sales”, “be a good, feminine girlfriend by saying ____, dressing ____, doing _____; no, not like that”.

(none of which anyone asked for me to do or be).

So in November, I took a month off to travel, partially alone, and partially with my boyfriend (which is only a titular embarrassment if you have a shitty one, by the way).

I’ll save you an entire self-reflective trip to Europe and just post what I’ve learned.

Here’s what to do when you don’t like the person you’ve become:

• Chop all your hair off. I am dead serious. It holds energetic weight. When your hair starts frustrating you (getting tangled in little pantegana knots), cut it off. There’s a reason why people feel intuitively drawn to changing their hair post-breakup.

• You wanna be negative? Let’s go, queen: Focus on what you hate. Write it all out… And then, when you’re ready, notice what’s on the other side of that. Spoiler: it’s what you desire. “How” those desires might happen doesn’t matter (especially not now). Just notice what you’re wanting out of life - It will probably surprise you.

• Stop buying things! Clutter is confusion. Necessities are fine, but the constant influx of things you “absolutely MUST have!” to feel beautiful, more stylish, more organic, more creative is doing nothing but faking abundance in a natural cycle of lack, rest, and despair. You are in your own personal winter. Anything you try to grow now will eventually end up dying.

• Test your faith in God by caring less about money. “I need to do _____ because of money”, “I can’t do ____ because of money”. Really? Test it out. Do what you can with what you have. Codependency often wears a green Ben Franklin mask, but if you’re living a life you dislike, that’s on you - not a piece of paper.

• Cut the extra weight - set 2 boundaries (and follow through).

• Declutter.

• Whatever you’ve been meaning to do, but it scares you? Do it. You know, that thing you keep complaining about over and over again. Well news flash cutie - you’re the one settling for it; and you don’t have to! This could also be something you’re excited about, but never get around to because “it’s not the right time”. A few years of it “not being the right time” will erode your identity faster than a TikTok trend. It will continue to do so until you put “Time” (Fear’s alias) in its place.

• Allow Pluto to make love to you.

• Travel alone. It doesn’t have to cost much.

• Simplify, simplify, simplify! Think the hermit, narrow path, condensation, one track mind, one foot in front of the other, simplicity, quiet. Reflect on what is overly and unnecessarily complex in your life - loud, noisy, chaotic, confusing. How might you simplify that?

• Be kind to yourself. Now just simply isn’t the time to be self-improving or critical. There’s a million reasons to dislike yourself, but consider: why might you be lovable? Very lovable? Very charming, very good, very skilled, very precious?

• Understand that you are being given a priceless chance to reinvent yourself into anyone you want to be. If you’re metaphorically beating your breast and wailing, lamenting at the sky, "oh God in heaven, who have I become?!?!?!” - count yourself lucky. If you know not who you are, you can create someone new.

• Return to simple things bring you joy (in an enjoyment way, not a clingy way). Avoid anything too charged or complicated. For example: chitty chitty bang bang and popcorn (or something) for me. At another time, it’d be art, but right now art is too charged (“should I quit my job and be an artist?”), and thus, provides no shelter from the storm.

• Drink sooooo much water

• Oh, and of course, remember - this time is happening for a reason and you will not get “stuck” here. It is a necessary season. Oftentimes, the most beautiful, prosperous harvests follow very bleak and desolate days.

Anyways, I’ll post a picture of 8” of my fine Ukranian hair lopped off soon. I keep saying “the co-creation clubhouse (online manifestation educational platform and community where you can learn to manifest your wildest dreams) will open ‘next week’” (it’s been weeks) - but it is Winter. And Spring is coming.

xx Jackie (@hood.winkler)