Do You Feel Defeated? I do.

Photo by Elijah O'Donnell on Unsplash

I have an actual dilemma on my hands, and I have a feeling I’m not the only one dealing with it right now.

I dread waking up every morning. Or rather, every morning I think of dread.

Within the last few weeks, I have woken up every day with a pit in my stomach, completely overwhelmed with the negative thoughts spiraling toward me from every direction.

And for some reason, I allow this to happen. I have given my thoughts a proverbial microphone every morning to scream at me in their high-pitched ridicule.

I sit in bed and wait for the banter to stop. But it doesn’t. The messages become amplified and I cannot summon the energy to fight them any longer.

My once useful coping mechanisms for this negative self-talk have ceased to have any real power over these nagging beasts in my brain.

Chalk it up to too many quarantined months or emotional overload, whatever the cause, I feel defeated.

I remember when I was an expert at zoning out this type of senseless mind chatter. They were the days I felt completely unstoppable. Days I felt doubt but ran headfirst anyway.

No matter what challenges faced me, I was confident in my ability to coerce these thoughts out of my brain. But recently, I’ve lost all ability to even slightly reason with them.

I’ve already begun to believe the arguments that my negative thoughts have infiltrated my brain with.

You’ll never make enough money to get out of the hole you’re in.

You’ll never be a successful writer. No one reads your work.

You’re already too far behind to make it in this world.

You’re nothing compared to her. She already beat you.

You look like such a loser in that picture.

Stop trying so hard. You’re not going to make it anyway.

You’ll never have a great body.

People think you’re a weird loner.

This is just a taste of what encompasses my brain these days. It has often gotten much, much darker than this.

I feel utterly defeated by the casualties caused by these beliefs in my head lately…