How To Be Emotionally Stable Without Getting Bored

Jan. 20, 2012

By Nick Cox info

Nick Cox is a writer living in Cambridge, MA.

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NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team

Start as someone who loves with above-average intensity. Fall so in love with people and with things that you forget to eat and sleep. Stay up all night reading a certain book or listening to a certain song or gazing into a certain person’s eyes or just pacing back and forth thinking about whatever it is you can’t stop thinking. Know what it’s like to lose all control over the operation of your mind. See abyssal profundity where others see only surface. Experience moments in which the whole universe seems to close in around you and your head feels like an astrolabe and you feel the entire concentric cosmos click together into one unified image of perfect beauty and harmony and all you want to do is hold it in your mind forever and fall down on your knees and worship it.

Start to see this image more and more frequently, often at inopportune moments. Feel its beauty morph slowly but inexorably into terror. Start looking for ways to drown it out; settle on booze and drugs and deafening music. Go to bed every night drunk enough to pass out immediately, but then wake at 5am, feel it bearing down upon you once again, press your face into your pillow, and weep with fear.

Slide into the dark period you knew was coming. Go for months feeling okay only when you’re asleep. Open your eyes every morning just in time to feel the okay-ness seep out of you like blood from a stab-wound. Stop checking your email because you know it will just be your friends asking you if you’re okay, and you don’t want to admit that you really aren’t but know they won’t believe you if you lie and say you are. Stop showering because it seems like too much effort to undress. Step outside on the first beautiful day of spring and think absently about how it does nothing for you. Feel like everything is impossible; feel like doing anything at all would require a greater suspension of disbelief than you are capable of. Feel burning itches in places like the lining of your stomach and the backsides of your retinas.

Hit rock bottom. Lose your job; flunk out of school; drive your car into a tree. Wake up in a hospital bed and see your parents staring at you, weeping. Move back into the room you grew up in and spend weeks in your pajamas eating canned soup and staring at the ceiling. Feel as though you are lying on the ocean floor with seven miles of water pressing down on you. Let your mouth hang open because it seems like too much effort to raise your jaw. Feel nothing. Forget that you exist; forget that anything exists. Feel like you have passed into death.

See a psychiatrist; get on meds. Start feeling a bit better. Watch a sitcom with your parents and laugh a little. Go for a walk expecting it to do nothing for you and find that it does a little. Pull fresh air through your nostrils and feel something. Feel, after a few weeks, a vague sense of coming out of something; feel a certain presence, which you had taken for granted since before you can remember, start to pass out of you. See a bird flapping its wings on a telephone wire and laugh for no reason. Wonder if this is what people mean when they talk about happiness.

Start seeing a therapist. For the first time ever, see your entire life laid out in front of you all at once, like a dollhouse. Realize with a shock of recognition that you were depressed the whole time. Realize that, the whole time, you just assumed that life was this difficult for everyone, and that everyone else just had better self-discipline or better self-control or a better attitude than you did. Realize it wasn’t your fault and feel something inside you burst and dissipate. Talk about your life — family, friends, relationships, traumas — and realize that everything is connected to everything else, that every feeling you carry inside you has a history and a reason for existing. Start to figure out which of the feelings are yours and which are not; start to let go of the ones that aren’t.

Start to understand that feelings are much more than just the amorphous clouds of pain or pleasure that they feel like when you’re in them; start to see those clouds as mere surfaces, concealing complex and highly specific configurations of memories and obsolete assumptions and vestigial unfulfilled desires and lingering residues of people and things that you used to love, all hooked into one another and pulled taut like a cat’s cradle whose total shape sometimes flashes in your mind for a moment all at once. Notice that the experience of these moments of Gestalt illumination reminds you a little of what it used to feel like to fall in love, before love turned into terror and finally burnt itself out, except that now it’s not scary or overwhelming so much as gently rewarding, something like the feeling of solving a challenging but still low-key riddle.

Keep feeling out, little by little, the inner structures of the emotions that once ruled you. As you explore, start to feel them coalesce into something solid and unmoving. Start to understand that the solid and unmoving thing was there all along, waiting patiently for you to notice it. Realize you have already begun to think of it as home. Wonder if this is what people mean when they talk about emotional stability.

Realize one day in the shower that the unmoving thing you’ve arrived at and the cosmic image that once drove you mad are one and the same. Realize that it’s just you, that all along it was just you and nothing more. Laugh at how stupidly obvious that seems now. Feel the unmoving thing settle into you, and you into it, and notice, almost casually, that for the first time in your life you are completely without fear. Look at your reflection in the bathroom mirror and feel like you are seeing an old friend you haven’t seen in ages. Realize that after years of false hopes, you have finally arrived at something real, something that no one can ever take away from you.

Realize that this arrival, which is what people mean when they talk about “finding yourself,” is not an end but a beginning. You have nailed down the vital center; now for a lifetime of filling out the periphery. In living through, then recollecting, your own story, you have learned implicitly that there is a story coiled up inside of everyone and everything. Maybe you knew this all along. Maybe this was why you were so quick to fall in love with everything in sight; maybe you sensed instinctively the overflowing fullness of all things too soon, before you were ready to grasp their interior complexity. Maybe when you were in love with things, what you were really in love with was not the things themselves but rather something inside them that you could never quite get at, which was why you loved them with such annihilating desperation, as if throwing yourself over and over against a locked door. But now that you have found yourself, now that you have fought for and won your emotional stability, you will find that you have been granted a master key. As that unmoving thing was waiting all along for you to notice it, so too does the whole world now stretch out in all directions, patiently awaiting your discovering gaze; and so too does every thing hold its story trapped inside it like a spirit, waiting for you to utter the incantation that will release it. Don’t be overwhelmed by the abundance: your life has only just begun, and you have all the time in the world. TC mark

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  • ashley

    yes.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1046190275 Teresa Wang

    beautiful

  • SBG

    It took me far too long to read this through my tears. Thank you. thank you thank you thank you.

  • Admirer

     . . Wow. I’m breathless.

  • Sophia

    Does this really happen to everyone (or most people) who love/feel with above-average intensity? Or is this story more specific/niche to the author and people who develop depression? I identify with the beginning of this article, but I really hope this kind of depression is not in my future. This was so sad.

  • Theresa Kim

    truth

  • Gugiforever

    Absolutely beautiful and true to its core. Bravo.

  • http://twitter.com/jessicapippin Jessica Pippin

    Lovely, especially the last paragraph. 

  • LazyReader

    Fabulous.

  • Guest

    miss I have an opinion on everything

  • Jo

    This is the realest thing I ever read n the Internet.

  • Guest2

    miss I have a (not so great or original) opinion on everything

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=612928768 Samie Rose

    This almost made me cry like a little baby in my cubicle.

  • K.

    Thank you. 

  • http://twitter.com/katiereedII Katie Reed

    This and your other article, “One Sentence Love Story”, are pretty amazing. I love your writing style. Keep the articles coming!

  • http://twitter.com/Amphx AnnaMariaPhilippeaux

    Undoubtedly one of my favorite TC articles ever. I relate to it in so many ways, and it makes me realize how much I probably belong back in therapy.

  • Sophia

    It was a legitimate question. Isn’t that what the comment section is for? Geez.

  • http://twitter.com/iamsubmerged Jordana Bevan

    Beauty is truth, truth beauty. Thank you

  • http://www.facebook.com/alexysmyzpha Alexys Myzpha

    This is beautiful.
    Very insightful.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=30502597 Melissa Osorio

    This is beautiful. So profound. 

  • Sarah

    wait…so people still ask each other how they’re feeling through email. waaaat.

  • Lemonzezt

    Great Nebula in Orion, M40-something I think… It’s my favourite nebula, I have a print of it framed on the wall of my old room, and I’m really upset, trying to figure out why I left it there…

    But everything makes sense, and I’m close to tears of gladness, and truly in love with the universe. My head hurts. Goddammit.

  • Fa

    First time posting a comment here.
    But this was worth it.
    Beautiful! Congratulations!

  • vince

    I’m currently going through a similar “journey” and have not found such an accurate depiction of it anywhere ( I seek these people/subjects out on reddit/etc).  I’d like to read more about people who have gone through these types of lows and come out the other side feeling better and more complete. I want to read about people who have shunned their past, dived into introspection, and found happiness.

  • retrospectacle

    been there done that

  • autumnghosts

    M42 :) it’s beautiful

  • http://twitter.com/brooklyknight David Trahan

    Holy. Shit. 
    Wow. That was so spot on it’s like you’ve been living my life with me. I guess you have. Thank you for this. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever read in my life. Whoever you are, I love you. 

  • beatrice

    Have you taken the mbti test? What i’ve noticed is that INFPs or feelers generally feel with above-average intensity, easily swayed by moods. No, I don’t think that necessarily means that you have depression. Just like being moody doesn’t mean you have bipolar. I would like to see another opinion on this question tho..

  • beatrice

    I could easily identify with this :(

  • Alyssa

    This was so beautiful and the first half is so real that I cried. Thank you for writing it.

  • sweetsue09

    I nearly didn’t read this but I’m so glad I did. It really was beautiful and resonated with me a lot at times. I’m not as lost but do hope to “find myself”, and thus life, like this.

  • http://profiles.google.com/alexia.kannas Alexia Kannas

    This is it. This is exactly it. Thank you. 

  • 123

    u know didnt cry or anything cus im not a goddamn freak, but still pretty good and interesting

  • T P

    Totally right! This is amazing. All these things started happening to me already, it used to be confusing but this is sorting it all out.

  • AR

    This was beautifully written, I especially enjoyes the second half- and the comparison to our love/life/relationships/wants/needs/desires/interactions/reactions are all connected much like a cat’s cradle….Thanks for this.

  • Bri

    Oh this was amazing. Beautiful, beautiful, writing. 

  • Lara

    Holy wow. I, also, almost didn’t read this, but I’m so glad I did. After I read the first two paragraphs I couldn’t stop reading… I’ve never heard someone so perfectly describe the thoughts in my head before, it’s unbelievable. I want to thank you because I am only at the beginning of the second half of my journey, and you give me hope that it will continue to get better. Absolutely wonderful piece.

  • gloria

    Exactly. Precisely. It’s so safe and warm and wonderful to be stable.

  • http://www.facebook.com/sepenukn Norma Sepenuk

    amazing

  • http://imlikecocaine.wordpress.com/ Ana

    story of my life. beautiful. thank you.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=613500227 Lamees Maaita

    I would like to thank you Nick Cox for writing this; this means a lot more, more than anyone would know, and I bet the same for everyone.
    It’s so personal and that what makes it so universal !!Thank you again for having the courage and the strength to be able to write so personal like this !!

  • http://www.twitter.com/mexifrida Frida

    feels enlightening in some ways, but i think we all knew it all along as well.
    amazing piece.

  • http://theholylance.com Nick Cox

    I’m an INFP

  • http://theholylance.com Nick Cox

    I have no idea about most people. I just sort of wrote a story.

  • Camille

    Honestly, I was thinking about getting help for sometime now and this kind of just hit it for me.  Thank you :)

  • Raunaq Salat

    This is one of the best articles on TC. Well done. And, I’d love it if you told your story. I mean this IS your story, but you know.

  • Guest

    …staying up all night pacing around thinking about this article.

  • http://kumquatparadise.tumblr.com aaron nicholas

    cool

  • Jaimeawright

    Thank you so much for writing this, Nick.  I have been dealing with depression for most of my life.  It is so comforting for me to read about not just the disaffected and distant parts of depression, but also about the other terrifying part- the feeling too much, the waking up at 5 am filled with wonder and anxiety wrapped into one, I relate to this on a terrifying level.  Though my depression has never led me to a true rock bottom, I have come to the verge of it a few times, and I have managed to pull myself out before self destruction.  I’m not sure if that’s a testament to how strong I am, or simply how far gone.  But, I’ve recently started to put a lot of my same emotions into perspective.  Why do I get hung up on the same thought for days, weeks, months, years?  Why can’t I stop thinking about them?  How do I combat these feelings?  The answer is always so easy, but so hard to put into practice.  I’m getting ready to FINALLY start talking to someone about this, and I hope I am able to find that same emotional stability.  It literally sounds like heaven.

  • Hry

    Oh you Americans and your chemical solutions to psychological problems that everyone has to deal with.

    This is a less-funny, more poetic version of the most recent Hyperbole And A Half, which dealt with depression.

  • LateNightTale

    Right on. Thank you for sharing so honestly. Keep writing!!

  • Rebecca

    Best I’ve read on TC in awhile. Thanks for sharing this.

  • Frankie

    beautiful.

  • Benjy

    Waaaaah, I’m from another country and understand things better than you and I support this by referencing a webcomic.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1236870841 Mariah Lancaster

    Nick, you described the return to joy so perfectly. I definitely experienced this path, and the ability to feel whole again is ABSOLUTELY achievable! I love the way you detailed the emotional journey so vividly, and I couldn’t have put it better. Thank you for helping turn my emotions into words that will help others.

  • pajamas

    this is a glimpse of what it feels like to be borderline (emotional regulation disorder)

  • Jax

    A friend of mine sent me this link.  I feel now, he knows me, more than I know myself!
    I have just started my journey.  Scared and hopeful, at the same time.
    Thanks My Friend and Nick! 

  • Guest

    Maybe he’s smug but there is something truly strange about our dependence on compounds… Adderall doesn’t exist in France. Is it really necessary? A whole country goes without it…

  • http://adamcalica.me Adam Calica

    Incredible.

  • Johnny

    Whoa

  • Claire

    Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for writing this. I’m saving this forever. This is so much of EXACTLY what I’ve experienced. That moment of clarity, that moment when there is suddenly no fear…I thought of it as indescribable to you’ve nailed it perfectly. That moment set me free.

  • Jiyoon Koo

    Reading this made me cry. It’s as if you were there when I felt all these things, and then went numb, and then came alive again, and I’ve never felt so fucking alive as I do today. You’ve put into words what I never could, and I can’t thank you enough for that.

    Thank you so much. 

  • Shiva

    Wow!!

  • Anonymous

    I wept. That’s all I can say.

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