Why the need for a recovery framework?
When playing a high stakes game, a small setback easily overwhelms my resolve, making me freeze from doing anything at all. Reaching an emotional high either makes me incapable of making decisions or pushes me to take decisions that I regret later on.
The emotional high is justified, seeing that what I am attempting seems insurmountable and each small win worthy of celebration. It take tremondous effort to keep things moving, let alone to make progress(grow) at a consistent pace.
If I get affected by each and every setback, it would take years for me to make any progress at all. If I am to reach my goals, then — I need a recovery framework to resume my halted operations that were set into motion.
Emotional Turbulences
From my experience, I experience two types of “emotional turbulences”
- A quick burst of uncontrollable emotions
- A slow creep of sadness leading to depression
Quick Burst
This happens quite often at home. When my family does things that leads to either irritation or frustration. An apparent small insult or continous nagging over a seemingly irrelevant issue compounds leading to a burst oif emotions.
Handling Mechanism
The current emotional handling mechanism for quick bursts after some iterations has taken the form of — a deep breath.
A Deep Breath
A flurry of short deep breaths can be used to help pacify anything. It is the metaphysical bandaid for any uncontrollable emotion.
But, it is still just a band aid. The deep breath has evolved all these years:-
punching walls + mental smackdown simulation + whimpering crying + mental curses —> Deep breaths + mental curses + Astagfirullah + audhu billahi minash shaitaan nir rajeem —> Deep breaths + Walking up and down + A Reminder of the irrelevancy of the issue.
A deep breath sometimes is enough to pacify this uncontrollable fit of rage or sadness - funnily enough I don’t think I have ever experienced uncontrollable happiness or did anyone else for that matter.
At last I have settled on: Deep breath + Pacing/walking up and down + A reminder of the irrelevancy of the issue.
There is still room for improvement.
Slow Creep
The slow creep is undetectable at first. This is more dangerous especially because of its undetectability.
It leads into a habitual defense mechanism to protect my peace of mind, usually takes about anywhere from a day to a week to get over.
Handling mechanism
The problem lies with my habitual defense mechanism - A series of self destructive habits that yearn for a continous dopamine spike:
- Unhealthy craving for sodas
- A very long gaming session (might go upto even 12 hours without eating)
- it that makes me go into a trance making me forget all responsilities constantly fending off parents who intend to disrupt the session to get me out of it leading to a delayed misery(?) if one could call it that. it goes into a loop whenever I lose in game.
- One other habit thats harmful to health
Rework habits
With the daily 5 prayers as the foundation, I think I can substitute these habitual dopamine spikes with that of peace attained through prayers. It kinda cools me off whenever I do wudhu and do sujood. Along with,
Walking around Taking a shower Having a change of pace To just be aware / take a break from devices for some time