Using cheesy quotes for therapy
I am sure that almost everyone wants to be smart or at the very least seem that way to others. I think a lot of people thus begin to do things that they think smart people do. It could be making sure you only read the classics or serious nonfiction literature. It could be that you shun “stupid” tv programs like Love Island. Maybe you start wearing a different type of clothes or go to “sophisticated” events or cafes. It can manifest in the type of people you hang out with. You’ll know what it is if you have the guts to admit it, at least to yourself. I have recently realized that lying to yourself this way can be more detrimental than beneficial. I am all for the idea of “fake it till you become it” but sometimes it’s better to admit to who you are and work from there.
I had a revelation that I am living with this erroneous idea that I have to be a certain way or do things a certain way to be worthy of love and friendship. In other words I should be nothing less than perfect. And since perfect is not a realistic goal I suffer greatly from this setup. Since I have no idea how to eradicate that mindset I decided that maybe I should create a list of mantras that I will say to myself in hope that one day they will be ingrained in my head and I will finally believe them. I thought about it for like three minutes. Here is what I came up with:
I don’t owe anyone anything;
It is better to be alone than in bad company;
Nobody’s perfect.
If the list doesn’t make sense, that’s fine. It’s only supposed to make sense to me anyway. What is important and I assume you noticed it too, is that this looks like a collection of cheesy quotes that people add to their Facebook statuses. Now cheesy quotes are among the things I shun because I try to seem smart. And for a moment I thought to myself, maybe I should think of a different solution. After all, my perfectionism demands that I only use the credible methods of self therapy that will not compromise the persona I am trying to build.
Then I realized that doing something that is counterproductive to my perfect image is a great way to start fighting the need-for-perfection-mindset. And so I decided to own it. Yes, I will be a person who does cheesy quotes. Better yet I will be the person who uses cheesy quotes for self-therapy.
Writing this post I realized I don’t really know what self-therapy really means. I didn’t want to use the word therapy because this is something I just made up and not at all the advice of my psychoanalytic. I have yet to find out what she thinks about this. So I used self therapy instead. But if I were to describe this process in the way I see it, I would call it paddling. It’s like I am drowning and doing my best to keep my head above the water. It may be chaotic and inefficient but it’s what I need to do to keep myself from whirling down into a deep state of depression.
What point was I trying to make? Not sure. I guess it’s that if you are making an effort, that alone is a victory you should celebrate. My workout app gives me a round of applause after a 10 minute workout which is ridiculous because I haven’t achieved anything great. But maybe the whole idea is to stop thinking that I am getting undeserved applause and just enjoy it. After all with Quarantine still on, a 10 minute workout for me really is an achievement. And the other point I was trying to make is that you really shouldn’t deprive yourself of doing certain things just because they are deemed silly by others. You doing silly things is just that, it doesn’t mean that you are silly, it just means you sometimes do silly things.
