293. It's me, Hi... I'm the problem, it's me

Lover her or hate her, Taylor Swift has a real talent for creating songs that people connect with very strongly. I love her music, very often I run to it, so it inspires me very much. One of her latest songs that is a viral hit has the chorus that says “It’s me, Hi, Im the problem, it’s me. I hope this does what I think she intended and that is wake a lot of people up to the fact that we create so many of our own problems for ourselves. Sometimes we realize it while we are doing it and are able to pivot but sometimes we realize it way after we have created more trouble for ourselves. There’s this saying “It’s the fog of war”. This saying is basically the uncertainty you deal with in the midst of full on war, it’s hard to see and understand everything going on because you’re in the midst of turmoil. And once the fog of war lifts, you can look back and see where you made mistakes and which decisions were good or bad and so forth. I noticed something about myself in the last couple of weeks going through the tragedy of suddenly losing a family member. I noticed that sometimes when things get hard I want to run. I want to hide from it, to distract myself. I also create problems in my head that aren’t there and thoughts that aren’t true. But, when I am thinking those thoughts of wanting to run or hide, or Im having thoughts that don’t serve me, Im making it about me. Im focusing on me. Instead of focusing on what I can do to help, Im creating this loop in my head likes this is too hard, I can’t handle this, I can’t handle seeing and feeling all this sadness, I want to go home. These are all fog of war thoughts and what I realized was these thoughts weren’t helping anyone, most importantly me. So I literally stopped and I thought “What’s true?” What’s true is yes, this is hard, but it’s not too hard because it’s feelings and emotions and feelings and emotions are not going to kill me. Im not dealing with something trying to kill me, Im dealing with emotions and while they are extremely uncomfortable they are not going to kill me. They can’t. And as long as I acknowledge that this is difficult and I’m gonna be ok, I am letting my brain know it’s ok to feel the feeling because ultimately we are going to get on the other side of it and we are going to be ok. What else is true? I can handle this, and so can my sister and my parents. By design we are capable of handling much worse than we even know. When we constantly tell ourselves, this is too much, it’s too hard, I can’t handle this, Im losing my mind, we are actually weakening ourselves without realizing it.