I just finished reading this terrible book.
By terrible I mean completely insightful and wonderful, but made me bawl like a big ole' baby.
I had seen the movie prior to reading the book, but reading words on a page always seems to invoke more emotion for me.
Y'all, I lost it. I cried and I cried.
The ironic part is I read to cope. If I am stressed or sad or angry, I will pick up a book and dive in. Losing myself in someone else's life, like Claire in Outlander or a different world entirely like Middle Earth, is the most cathartic thing.
I realized as I was crying, that I started reading because I needed a break from my emotions.
Yet, here I was, all up in my emotions.
I just wanted to numb out, and my go to coping skill wasn't working.
I started to think about how often my coping skills fail (I'm a counselor so of course I would).
Reading nearly always helps.
In that moment though, my coping skills weren't working and I may or may not have cried over that too.
Finding coping skills that actually work isn't easy, and I never really thought about the one's I have not working.
I was trying to think of what else I could do to get out of my feelings when it hit me.
In that moment, I really didn't need to cope.
In that moment, I needed to cry. I needed to feel stressed and sad and upset.
Just like I learned from Sadness in Inside Out, feeling your emotions isn't the end of the world. It's healing!
So just remember, when your coping skills seem to be failing maybe it just means you need to cry it out or scream into a pillow.
Maybe it just means you need to call your best friend and rage and rage and rage.
*Cough* or go see a counselor *Cough*
I've got $10 bucks that says you'll feel better.
Sidenote: I started the sequel... so far, so good!
