Out of the Spiral #1: On a downward spiral (Introduction)
Bilge Sen
Hey there, and welcome to Out of the Spiral — the column that holds your hand through tough times and reminds you that it’s all going to be okay.
This column will be a recurring, warm reminder for our readers that healing yourself is not fast or easy, and that you might never really be motivated for it until you start.
When you do feel motivated for it, it’s usually something unsustainable. You suddenly want to reorganize your entire room at 3AM and decide you’re also going to turn your whole life around, starting tomorrow. And then you wake up at 3PM, have breakfast at 6PM, and at most make your way to the coffeeshop instead of the grocery store. You spend the rest of the day marinating in that sweet misery, blaming yourself for everything you’ve ever done or thought of in your life, telling yourself you actually kind of deserve that chest pain and that shitty feeling in your stomach. You think you’ll never be able to change because you're just a broken person, and nobody really gets it.
Accepting and starting to heal sucks: it's much easier to stay in the hope of one day waking up as a new person who suddenly has the drive to live a different life instead of actively taking concrete steps towards change. “Self care” can be both physically and mentally exhausting, but there is still a point to it.
Sometimes this column is going to be messy, sometimes straight-to-the-point, but most of all it is going to be transparent. No sugar coating, no bullshit; real people with our daily struggles, experiences, and advice. The aim of this column is to help lift up that heavy, never-washed curtain covering up our lives, especially the parts that we hide from others or pretend not to experience.
And that’s Out of the Spiral: sharing our knowledge on small, incremental changes you can make to improve various aspects of your life that can play a huge part in the quality of our overall day-to-day experience. Each time we fall we learn how to get up faster and stronger.
As this column develops, we would like to invite you, the reader, to share your own experience or advice on how you get Out Of The Spiral. We would love to see how different people from all walks of life deal with the common troubles many of us face. Topics central to this column are mental health, emotions, mindfulness, sleep, food and nutrition, physical health, relationships, and anything in between. Feel welcome to submit your thoughts and stories.
With love,
SPIRAL
Visual selection: Egle Duobaite