Welcome to the Love to Think Newsletter ♥️🧠.
Every week, I’m going to do my best to provide you with a piece of my mind, my heart or both in order to help you in some small way through this journey of life.
Today’s instalment is going to be based around me going into my overdraft. Something that would make sense during a global pandemic and a government enforced lockdown for the better part of 4 months. However, it’s not a financial overdraft that I’m referring to, it’s an emotional one.
Overdraft is defined as “A deficit in a bank account caused by drawing more money out than the account holds”. During the lockdown, I’ve slowly realised over the past 14/15 weeks that I’ve been drawing out an emotional resilience that I don’t particularly have to spare at this time and as the world begins to open up again, it’s time to start paying that debt off.
Our government will be highlighting the financial impacts of the Coronavirus from this moment going forward, understandably so with the unemployment rates being as high as they are with people losing their jobs and businesses being lost. I also wonder whether there will be any discussions on repairing the psyche of a nation after imposing such strict measures. Talking about the ways that we will fix the people who’ll bear the responsibility of fixing our economy.
I understand both the necessity of those measures for health reasons as well as the unique impact they’ve had on people’s emotional well-being. This is before you take into account the judgement of people during a highly-sensitive time as we all figure out how to preserve our inner peace & sanity. I’ll leave well enough alone when it comes to the topic of judgement.
I’ve noticed I’ve been drinking more since the lockdown (With a bottle of Jack Daniels and Southern Comfort by my desk as I write this) which is one of the many self-medication tools I’ve adopted during the lockdown. Tools I’ll need to break free from as the world reopens. I have no idea how I’ll react when I get on my first packed train after months of social distancing or how I’m going to feel when I finally get to hug someone I love who I haven’t hugged or seen since early March. There’s a phenomenal amount of uncertainty as we start July 2020.
That’s why we need to be selfish, non-judgemental and self-aware at this time. Selfish in the way that we focus on investing into our own emotional bank to pay off that overdraft, non-judgmental in the way that we perceive how someone goes about paying their overdraft off, and to be self-aware enough to know what does or doesn’t serve us post-lockdown. So, what do you say? Do we have a deal?
I think it’s going to be common for people to experience low-levels of PTSD symptoms as a result of what we’ve experienced over the past several months. Whether it’s issues with alcohol, heightened levels of social anxiety or other issues I haven’t considered, I don’t see how this lockdown will not impact the mental well-being of the vast majority of people. With that being said, we may learn soon that therapists are also going to be key-workers during this pandemic which doesn’t end with the lockdown being lifted.
I will always be pro-therapy. There could be a greater demand for it as we begin the second half of 2020 and I hope that those who feel they need it, find what they’re looking for. There’s no shame in seeking that professional help.
Therapy may be seen as self-indulgent by some, but it also may become a necessity during an emotionally charged time like transitioning out of a 3/4 month lockdown.
I encourage anybody reading this to respect a person’s journey through this time. There’s going to be people who need more time to socially distance both physically and emotionally. There’s also going to be people who want to make up for the time the time they feel they’ve lost. With no perfect way to bounce back from what our world has experienced, if we’re conscious of that, we can rebuild a world that serves us all. A world that allows us to pay off those emotional overdrafts and start building up some savings.
One love, Luca :) x.
Today’s Song of Inspiration
This week’s newsletter edition was brought to you by: Lauryn Hill - Doo Wop (That Thing)
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