This may come as a surprise but, I used to be a huge fucking Negative Nelly.

My life was hitting new lows. Like some seriously fucked up stuff was going on. I decided that instead of deluding myself with concepts like Hope, Faith, Love, or Perseverance it would be way hotter to instead toss myself head first into a pit of despair.

Hilariously, my time dwelling in the darkness can be pretty perfectly timed with The Weeknd’s discography. He dropped House of Balloons around the time I started falling apart and it wasn’t until Dawn FM when I had just begun to believe that maybe, just maybe everything in life wasn’t completely hopeless.

Without having the tools, knowledge, or bandwidth to see beyond my current circumstances it was very easy for my mind to accept that how things are in one moment is how they will always be. In it’s effort to protect me from “life threatening” things like disappointment or heartbreak, my brain worked hard to ensure that I kept my eyes solely on all the pain around me.

I have to admit it felt good for while to lean into my sadness. I wore super cute all black outfits, I chain smoked cigarettes while brooding and gulping down black coffee that I pretended tasted delicious. Bitter, just like my soul.

I wrote some of my most gut-wrenching poetry around this time, poems that got me published. As I made my way into my final years of college and then law school, more pain arrived that I could fixate on. I had gotten bored of being super sad all the time, so I decided to mix in some rage and righteousness to keep things spicy.

This worked very much in my favor as I created a home for myself in public interest with other people who were somehow simultaneously pissed off and apathetic. Emotional disconnection pairs very well with volumes of work that are humanly impossible to keep up with.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when it happened…but at some point I began to feel like I was an imposter in my brooding, bitching, and moaning. Numbing and distracting myself with partying, people, overworking, and overachieving started to feel…boring. I was tired of feeling tired. I was tired of pretending I didn’t care for long stretches of time only to find myself crying in the middle of my living room floor. I was tired of dropping into a freeze state eating hamburger helper on my couch with cat knee-deep in a depressive episode.

My friendships and familial relationships were all shifting, I started going to talk therapy and really unraveling the story I had been telling myself. Mainly, a quiet but insistent voice in my mind kept telling me “enough.”

I now know this voice very well and it was my intuition. The calm, all-knowing sense of truth in my body that will only ever steer me exactly where I truly desire to go.

As we enter, yet again unprecedented times, I have reflected a lot on cynicism and how it functions as a defensive mechanism against our own humanity. At this point in my life, I have evolved into someone who loves, accepts, and permits my whole range of emotions. I don’t fixate on the bad anymore and I am learning to transmute my anger and sadness into powerful fuel for change and transformation. In this new headspace I frequently find myself offended by and taken aback by people who choose to be cynical. To have no hope or creativity to dream of something more. However, I reflected back on my relationship with cynicism. How I hid from my emotions behind a shield dark humor and sarcasm. How I clung to the false sense of security in our systems and bought into the story that I didn’t need to dream big, I just needed to play my role on my (right) side of history and that was enough.

No one benefits when we do that. It was not as sexy or edgy or liberating as I thought it would be to be utterly detached from my feelings - the core of my being. Cynicism didn’t make me a better advocate, partner, mother, friend, or member of the world.

Cynicism kept me in relationships that were centered around pain and doubt. It kept me broke, and unsatisfied, and isolated. It stoked the flames of my depression, anxiety and paranoia. It prevented me from seeing how much greatness, and beauty and love was actually available to me. It also prevented me from connecting with the parts of myself that did actually make me better to be around for myself and others.

We are human BEINGS, not human doings. When we disconnect ourselves form the experience of feeling and vulnerable and honest relationship we deny our core function. While cynicism may have helped us to protect ourselves at earlier times in life, it isn’t a sustainable form of self care. It’s like that ex you know you need to let go of, and every time you give in and be with them it feels good but immediately after you have that icky, guilty feeling liek you can’t trust yourself and you are weak.

Cynicism robs us of our power and our truth. Two things that are essential ingredients to be tapped into for living an expansive and joyful life.

I invite you to examine your relationship with cynicism, doubt, and settling:

1. How has this protected you in past situations?

2. How does it protect you now?

3. How does this now impact your ability to think creatively, to tell the truth, and to form meaningful relationships?

4. What are some good things that could enter your life if you freed up the space taken up by cynicism?

Suggested reading: Existential Kink by Dr. Carolyn Elliot, Mental Filtering, Emma McAdam, LMFT

If you want to get to the reason why you really think everything is fucked and hopeless, and flip it around to use it to empower yourself and your wildest dreams, let’s work together in one-on-one coaching! Send me an email to explore how we can create a plan designed uniquely for you to meet yourself again, discover your truest dreams, and pave a pathway to making them reality.