Please read this if you feel depressed, sad, hopeless, and don’t have any friends to talk to.

I experienced extreme burnout so I am taking a break on life, not in life —I kind of just stopped living life for almost two years now. In late 2021, I felt like everything in my life was trying to get me and conquer me in every way. It got even worse the next year. I felt trapped and breathless. I felt like I needed a door, a way out from all of this. I needed a breath of fresh air. I needed to breathe. Little did I know that it was not the beginning, it was actually the peak. I couldn’t take it anymore so that was it —I imploded. I got emotionally detached and shut down. It went even worse when I got triggered, hence I isolated myself even more. I became distant towards family and friends, I didn’t have any energy to maintain friendship with many of my friends so I ghosted them. I have deactivated my Instagram account for a while now. Most of the time, I just stayed in my room all day, bed-rotting or binge-watching TV shows. That's what I got for repressing pain and hurt for years on end, without ever addressing them or expressing them outwards.

“If it hurts, it hurts, no matter how small it seems.”

People might experience far more terrible things, but it doesn’t mean that you must pretend that your pain is not valid and therefore you think that there is no need to address them. The thing is, when you have that mindset, your pain will eventually build up over the years and it never ends well. You could hurt yourself or your loved ones. Would you want to do that? I certainly wouldn’t want you to, so please hear me out.

If you feel hurt, pained, sad, hopeless, even worse you have been feeling depressed for a while now but you’re also not ready yet to seek professional help or even worse, you have been feeling suicidal, have been hurting yourself, or have been unintentionally hurting other people again and again BUT you have no one to talk to about these things, I got you buddy.

I am not a psychologist. I don’t have any background in psychology, mental health, or emotional wellness whatsoever. But these are the 3 things that have helped me a lot through my non-diagnosed depressive state and extreme isolation stage. I hope these could help you too.

1. Shadow Work

Trust me, you do not need to wait for other people to save you from feeling shit. You can certainly save yourself and this is the very first step on how you can do it. 'Shadow work' is a term in psychology where you basically bring up the hidden parts of yourself to the surface level. Yes, hidden. These are parts of yourself that you buried deep inside because you don’t want people to know. Sometimes you might even not realize them, so it can take quite a while to figure it out. Your shadow self can be in the form of anything —sadness, guilt, chronic shame, anger, rage, unrealized self-sabotaging, literally anything.

You can do shadow work in two different ways —brain dumping and/or prompting. Try both and see what works for you better. In my case, brain dumping works better so I prefer that. Brain dumping is when you express your thoughts and feelings freely. You just kind of ramble on about various things without any certain topics, whereas prompting is when you express your thoughts and feelings by answering questions about certain topics. You can speak it aloud and record them or you can do journaling and write it down —whatever works for you.

I must say that, ‘Shadow Work’ is not easy at all because it takes so much courage and humility to finally admit that you have a not-so-good side of yourself. Gen Z calls it being toxic. Other than that, it can also trigger lots of painful feelings as you keep opening yourself up layer by layer. You will recall various excruciating experiences from your past that you badly want to run from. It might also be hard for you because you still feel judged somehow, although there is no one there except yourself. Hence, when doing ‘Shadow Work’, you have to create a safe space for your being and your soul. You have to tell yourself clearly that it is safe to express yourself and be yourself wholeheartedly without pretending or putting a mask on. After doing lots of ‘Shadow Work’, then you will level up to the next step, which is ‘Emotional Purging’.

2. Emotional Purging

This is the result of ‘Shadow Work’ —this is the peak. This step is horribly painful and draining as every negative feeling buried deep inside you has now started to come up to the surface. At some point, you might feel lethargic that all you want to do is lay in bed all day and not feel up to doing things you need to do or usually like to do. You will cry a lot to the point where you might sob all night until your eyes are red and puffy. You might ruin your sleep schedules —either you sleep too little or too much. You might disrupt your appetite —either you eat too little or too much. This might be going on for days or even weeks.

This step can be tricky since you might feel stuck in this state even for months or years, for some people. It could become so bad that you might feel like you want to hurt yourself in some way and/or think of dying a lot. You might question yourself why you want to keep on living. You might not be able to picture where you stand in the future. You might feel like it’s the end of the world for you.

Whatever happens, please feel your feelings no matter how painful and intense they can get. Do not run from them, even worse bury them again deep inside you. You have to stand tall and face them straight ahead. Imagine them as a person standing in front of you, look them straight in the eye, smile, and say, “Hello there, long time no see. I see that you want to take charge. I am sorry but I am the owner here. So, I take charge. Stay as long as you need though. Love you, sweetie.”

There you go. You just take the stage.

3. Energy Channeling

You have just passed to the next step, congratulations!

Now this, lads and gents, is the most fun step of all because not only you have purged all of your negative feelings, this is also the right time for you to channel them through your favorite form of creativity and art, whatever they are. It can be painting, drawing, writing song lyrics, creating song rhythms, creating YouTube or TikTok videos, recording a podcast by yourself, or journaling about how you're feeling just like what I did.

Some days, when you’re channeling out these energies, these feelings might seep out a tad bit, again. It is normal and you don’t have to panic and feel like you are stepping backwards because the healing journey is never linear, babes, trust me. You just got to keep going and push through.

What you’re actually doing in this step is not only channeling out your negative feelings and energies, but also gradually transferring them to another tangible form. This can help to create more room within your system, as they have been transferred to other things that are not you. This step will make you feel relieved a whole lot. This will make you feel so good afterwards.

And, that is it. These are the 3 things that have helped and saved me during one of my lowest point in life. I genuinely hope these can help you too, even if only a little. You can tweak and adjust them however you like, to your best interest.

You are worthy.

You are loved.

You are strong.

You are a beautiful soul.

You are just… incredibly you, and that is what’s most amazing about all of this.

—Later, love!