I got this advice before my LSAT from one of my best friends, and it was very validating. If I thought the test was hard, it’s likely someone else does too. He felt like his test was hard as well, and he told himself everyone else probably felt the same way about the test.
He prepared well and trusted the preparation, and in one section, in particular, he had to guess through multiple questions and had no idea what he was doing. Fortunately, a lot of people felt the same way. He ended up testing in the 98th percentile, and the validation of having other people feel the same way as him helped him do better than he even did on practice tests.
Trusting himself and realizing that if he felt the way he did, someone else did too eventually led him down the path to success. And it’s not a universal, bland formula for success. It’s more of an emotional validation for whatever we are feeling or going through.
If you feel this way, someone else probably does too (unless you have an extremely rare disease only one person in the world has). And I hope you get to talk to them. I hope you get to bond with them. The community of teachers also undergoing their first years of teaching told me I was not alone in my pain and suffering in my first year of teaching.
It is with wisdom I now know other people are out there that feel exactly as I do.
You are not a freak for feeling the way you feel
The first time depression got a hold of me, I felt like a freak. I felt like no one else felt the way I did. I first suffered from social anxiety when I was in middle school when I used to be very obsessive about my breathing. I dreaded quiet classrooms whenever the teacher wasn’t talking. I thought everyone could hear how loud I was breathing, and then thinking about my breathing ended up making me breathe even louder in a vicious cycle where the anxiety just got worse and worse.
Even worse, people around me started to seem to think about their breathing. I was in a very awkward phase of my life where I judged people for how loud they breathed. I wondered how people saw breathing as second nature, how most people breathed through their nose, through their mouth, through whatever.
I forgot how to breathe, and then the more I thought about it, the more unnatural it got. Breathing is supposed to come second nature to most of us. But it was not second nature for me at the time.
If this sounds strange to you, it certainly was very strange to me. Who thinks that much about breathing? I also got anxious over smaller things, like the sounds my stomach would make when I was hungry, or even the sounds my stomach made when I wasn’t hungry.
But I wasn’t a freak. I wasn’t an anomaly. Other people were as insecure about many of the same things, even if the exact source of distress wasn’t the same. The feeling usually was the same. This was easier to know than to internalize. I thought I was the only one, but I was not.
This isn’t something I just learned with myself. My brother is in a tough place right now. He feels very alone, and he feels like no one feels like he does. Of course, the situation is very complex, as are his feelings, but I have been depressed and anxious. I no longer feel alone in those emotions. And it’s so hard to feel alone — that’s why it’s so important to prioritize our communities and relationships.
If only I knew if I felt pain, other runners did too would I have toned down how hard I tried as a runner. Most people would say working hard is a good thing. And it is — to an extent. But I overexerted myself and thought I just had to keep pushing and pushing and could get better than others by pushing my body to the limit, all the time. And running doesn’t work that way. Sometimes, it’s the person who knows when to conserve and hold back who succeeds best.
If you think it’s hard, someone else probably thinks it’s hard too. If you’re tired, something else probably is tired too. If you’re overwhelmed, someone else is probably tired too. Most of the time, it’s likely someone in similar circumstances, because reacting the way you do to hardship is normal.
I guess the message I want to impart at the end of the day is there’s nothing wrong with you, or nothing wrong with any of us. We’re all human beings who go through the vicissitudes of life, so validating the fact that we’re not alone goes a long way in helping us move forward.
Photo by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash
Originally published on June 18, 2021 on The Partnered Pen.
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