You know what I hate?
Only two bags of Milano cookies, Mary?
You don't know me at all!
Exactly. Feelings.
Especially when they're irrational, which for me
is all the freaking time.
I get angry over nothing.
What where you're going, fool!
I get sad way too easily.
Why do I have so many butter knives?
I don't even eat butter.
And really often, I just have unapologetically
contradictory feelings.
I just feel at peace with everything right now, you know?
I just have, like, such respect for every living thing.
And just, I feel like I'm one with the universe.
My feelings have a tendency to be very illogical,
intense, and overwhelming.
And it's really hard for me not to get consumed by them.
Before therapy and going on anti-depressants,
I had no idea that this was abnormal.
I thought everybody just felt so strongly about
everything and anything all the time.
And it wasn't until I was diagnosed that I realized
my feelings are fake news.
Mm..
Whenever I feel myself being overwhelmed with emotion,
the best thing that I've learned to do from my therapist,
is this breathing technique where you inhale through
your nose for four seconds, you hold it for four seconds,
and then you exhale out of your mouth for four seconds.
It really helps whenever you're just feeling all the feelings
and you need to calm your tits.
But the worst part about my feelings is
even though they're extreme, it takes me a long ass time
to really process them.
And figure out what is going on.
Because more often then not, by the time I have
a burst of emotion, it's just being triggered by something
really insignificant and the real problem is
something else that happened ages ago or
a bunch of different things that happened that
I never actually addressed.
And once I can actually know why I'm feeling
a certain way, it's so much easier to resolve it.
Actually, I'm sorry. I uhm...
I have a lot of back pain and posture problems right now.
And I'm not taking care of myself so...
It's totally my bad.
The best advice I have for anybody who is experiencing
mood swings or who just has really intense emotions overall
is to be very forgiving with yourself
while you're trying to figure it out.
Because you can breathe all you want but sometimes
you just feel so much that it gets the best of you.
Like, the other day I was on the phone with my friend
and we got into this screaming match about
something really innocuous that he said
and we both kind of realized we'd had
shitty days and we just let our emotions pent up
and we kind of just took it out on each other.
So you just got to be forgiving with yourself
as you try to figure it out.
And you live and you learn
and hopefully you do better 50% or more of the time.
I'm Anna Akana.
Stay Awesome Gotham.