Lesson 4. Coping

Before I found peace, I picked the wrong battles. Before I healed, I hid. Before I grew, I coped- just to survive. 

In this episode, I open up about the ways I tried to handle life before I truly understood what coping meant. Not every method was right. Some methods confused me. But buried beneath the wrong ones, I discovered the right ones- and they didnt just help me cope... they help me transform. 

This is for anyone who's ever wrestled with quiet pain masked struggles or misunderstood strength. You're- not alone- and there is a better way forward. 

Transcript

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ever been lost in your thoughts? Randomness? A thought pops into your head and you don't know where it came from. Many times it's your past. Things that have happened that have not let you go. Why have they hung on? Let's talk about that. Hi, I'm the Timesmith. Do you know what a healthy mind looks like? It's hard to know. Outward appearances don't show what's going on inside. Maybe you wear a smile to distract everyone from what's happening inside. Or maybe you're a grumpy man or a mean woman. but inside you're just someone who wants to be loved. Isn't that what this is? We don't always get an opportunity to look inside someone. This level of transparency has taken me a very long time to come to terms with that this is what I must do. Some of it is purpose, some of it is intent, and some of it is just longing to let someone hear how my mind functions after everything that's happened in my life. I'm not a victim, nor do I feel sorry for myself over anything that's ever happened. I've gained the strength to want to fight and to want to push forward. It has placed me in a position knowing that certain things would become extremely difficult for me. As a young teenager being surrounded by siblings and being the youngest of the siblings, Most of the time I wasn't called by my name, which I won't share. But if you've had siblings, you know that you might have been called by other names like, hey stupid, or hey dummy, or hey mama's boy. Something other than what your parents probably called you. That's not to say that some parents don't call us by those names. But it could be because of decisions that I made that I was called those things. I'm not justifying that it's okay to call people any derogatory name or to put anyone down. But people judge and they will act on what they see. And I do have to say that in my young teenage years, I did make dumb decisions. Again, I'm not condoning the things that I did except explaining why i did them i didn't always understand and i wasn't able to process all the information that was given to me not at school not at home not at church and not in a public setting and because of that i would come across as i was dumb or careless or even reckless and the reason for that was that i was suffering when i would look in the mirror even as a young boy After, you know, the situation, I would look at myself and ask, what is wrong with you? Why are you like that? And I would stare at myself. What does that look like? I would close the door to the bathroom and I would look at myself in the mirror and I would just stare. And I would try to make sense of who that person was. I never recognized who that person was. that was the beginning of the suffering that's what came with the evil that was given to me now what that brought to me was that i wanted to cope i wanted to be okay but okay so if you're ready we can venture down so remember in the center there's a counter and to the right there's a staircase To the left is the elevator and we're standing in the forge. There is a couch in here that occasionally I sit down and think before I go down and that's if I want to go down. But you're more than welcome to sit down and converse and talk about it. You know, before we go down, there's something that came to me the other day and, you know, there's King David and he was going through a really bad time. And he said something. And he said, why so downcast, oh my soul? Put your hope in God. He was talking to himself. He was encouraging himself. He knew where he wanted to put his hope in. I don't know, was he coping? Was he trying to understand? And yes, I know that there's people who would say that they're scholars and that they know exactly what he was going through. Well, all I'm getting at is that Sometimes we have no one that understands ourselves better than us. There's times that there's no one that understands me better than me. And I know how to encourage myself. In the same respect, I know how to destroy myself. And I know how to cope with the things that are ailing me. Well, I guess I thought at times that the choices I made would help out. but you know as we walk over to the staircase i just invite you to uh just follow me down again let's just take it slow and you know as we go down and we pass that first floor and we kind of see that room that we talked about in our first lesson let's continue down to the second floor and on this floor we find coping the amount of responses we've given to coping But this coping here brought something to me that was hard to shake. In one moment, it brought something that I would fight years to break, and that was addiction. So let's walk up to the room. Yes, we've walked by plenty of rooms, and in every one of these rooms, there's coping, there's pain, there's wrong responses. But here, here we see addiction. Let's step in. It was a summer morning and a friend of mine invited me to go to his house. BMXing was a part of my life. Everywhere we went, we would ride as fast and as hard as possible. My parents wouldn't let me go more than a block over because they didn't want nothing bad to happen to me, not knowing that something bad already had happened to me. But if we were fast enough, we'd be able to sneak away. go down a couple blocks and in this case that's what i did and i ended up at my friend's house and his room was set up kind of like a halloween store smoke machine mass not dark in the sense still a kid's room but mass everywhere i noticed he liked the halloween theme and his mom was actually very nice and In her accent, she said, would you like something to eat? And respectfully, I said, no, but my friend ended up saying, yes, yes, we do. And as we sat there and we played with this Super Nintendo, he pulls out a joint and he says, you want to try? And I was so shocked because his mom had just walked in the room and I said, your mom's going to walk in. And he says, no, it's okay. She don't mind. She'd rather I smoke in the room than to go smoke outside because it's less dangerous. Struck me kind of odd. But it seemed to be the response that most kids give that smoke in their home with their parents. For half a second, I thought that was the coolest thing ever. And so he lit it up in his room and he turned on his smoke machine and kind of closed the curtain a little bit and we began to smoke. I can't say I felt anything. I don't know anybody who's ever gotten high off the first time they've smoked. I think that's part of why we always go back. Something that entices a person to say, well, the first time wasn't right. And they try again. But I didn't think that that first hit, though it didn't get me high, that it would actually change my perspective on something. I actually felt good. Maybe I didn't feel high, but I felt okay. I felt light. I felt unbothered. And for the first time since I was a young boy, I felt calm. Let's step out of this room. I don't know how many drugs you've tried. Not sure if you've done uppers or downers. And you know, I don't really care to use the specific name. We all understand what this is. But in that moment, I realized that it wasn't about getting high. It was about not feeling anymore. Not feeling pain. And most of all, in my case, it was not feeling shame. Shame. Humiliation. Have you ever felt it? Shame and humiliation walk next to a person as if they're actually there, constantly antagonizing. And if you've been there, you want it to go away. I didn't understand how to make it go away, but I needed to find something to make it go away. To this point, I still hadn't told anybody about what had happened. And I don't think I was going to tell anybody that I found a new way to cope. This addiction didn't go zero to 100. It was just the start. It was the start of me testing consequences. It was the start of me seeing if the world ends. If I do something wrong, do I immediately get caught? And I realized that no, none of that happened. But it also made me think about the situation. It made me think about the sexual abuse I had experienced in my life. It brought me back to that point. But even my own words were coming back to bite me. I remember having a group of friends that when they would look at me, they would always ask me, what's wrong with you? Why are you like that? Why are you so funny? Why are you so silly? Why are you so reckless? Why don't you care? Well, I never had told anybody about what had happened. But one thing I was very adamant about that I would tell everyone is that I would never do drugs. And here I found myself changing. Changing my stance for survival. Well, I didn't realize that this was killing me even worse. And that when addiction came into my life, I didn't realize the monumental task I would have to take to break that habit. I don't know if we need to step back in the room, but maybe we could peek. So let me ask you, do you remember the last time you were sober? Do you remember when your addiction started? Did it look like this? Who gave you your first hit? Who encouraged you? Who made it feel like it was okay? Did you understand that you were doing it because you were coping? I understand that sometimes We just do things because we do them. But if we continue it, there's a reason. And I continued that habit that we see in this room. I didn't want to stop because I wanted to stop feeling. You know, young boys have this way of wanting to be mysterious and not let anyone know what they're thinking to make everyone think that they don't feel nothing, that we're tough, that we're solid, that we're unmovable. But yet, when I was alone, I would still go back and look in the mirror and ask myself, who are you? What happened to you? There was such a huge disconnection between myself and my very thoughts. With the desires of my heart, nothing was in sync. Everything was out of alignment. I had a desire to want to live a life that was calm and peaceful. My mind would tell me, do whatever you need to do. My body was reckless, destructive, careless, hateful, unstable, insecure, out of alignment. I actually felt that I had plenty of reason to cope the way I was coping. And things had to come back into alignment. The road is long. That's kind of why I show you these memories. Because I do remember I do remember where my life began to shift and went out of alignment. Coping doesn't just come with drugs. Coping can come with the way you deal with the opposite sex. It could deal with the way you treat people. It could deal with the way that you eat. I could go on with many examples. But if I continue, it's just for the sake of allowing you to associate this conversation with your coping. So maybe I don't call out exactly how you're coping, but if you're coping, you know how. I could tell you that that experience was coping for me. That experience took me to a place that I had never been to. And you know what that was? It was a place that gave me a false sense of peace. Real peace will not end in destruction. Not the first step and not a hundred steps from that choice. But there are certain roads that lead to destruction. And there are certain roads that lead to emptiness that cause chaos between you and maybe those around you. Cause chaos within yourself. The turmoil within. And that's what this was. It looked peaceful. And it looked calm. And it sounded like just because an adult made it okay that it was okay. Immaturity comes in every age. Well, it might be young. It might be old. But we have to make choices. Choices that create a path to a great finish. Sometimes it takes maneuvering. This memory I've never gone in to try to change anything. It actually just pauses with my friend on the floor of his room on his knees with the remote between his legs and me sitting Indian style in front of him, just passing the joint back and forth. But as an adult, I look at that. In fact, when I overcame addiction, I was still fairly young. And even then I would look at this memory. And sometimes we go into these memories. Well, sometimes I go into these memories wishing that everything could stop. And knowing that I can't make it stop, I just step away. That's where the suffering comes in. It's a vicious cycle. But I let it be, and I realized that I had a problem. Eventually, I had to deal with that problem. So how are you coping today? How do you remedy it? Some people go for a jog and incorporate something new in their life. Some people, they end up in programs. Some people go to church, seek counsel, seek friendship. Seek fellowship. Seeking something genuine. Coping is one of those things. Many times I wish I could have just placed it into someone's hands. But I had to take a hold of it. And I had to accept that I was masking something. That the reason when I looked in the mirror I didn't recognize that person is because I was masking it. With fake smiles. With self medication. Anyway. Let's close that door. Let's walk out. Let's take the stairs back up. What do you think? When you look at that door and you look at that room, how does that make you feel? Does it make you feel sad about your own life? Don't feel sad. Just accept it. You've made mistakes. We've masked it with saying it's recreational. It's been masked with us saying it's helped us. Because I'll tell you that it's not just weed. It grows. When the pain is intense, it grows. And if you're in a place of recreation and you have it under control, then fine. But I'm talking to those who are deeper, who understand that you don't have it. It has you. All of this, that's what this is. When we look down into those rooms, there's rooms in there of violence, rooms in there of addiction, of being cruel, all for the purpose of making myself feel better. Anyway, so how do we overcome that? We'll put it down. You might ask God for forgiveness. You might talk to a friend. You might change a habit. But do you realize that it's time? It is time to change that habit. It is time to accept that it could just be coping. That that lack of peace that could be within, as I had it, caused me to do that. Again, no excuse. Just remember, this doesn't have to be profound. It just has to be shared. And I know why I was coping. And I had to accept that something bad happened in my life. There was no changing it. And masking the suffering was not the way to go. So, remember, if you feel lost, you can be found. If you feel unloved, you are loved. And I know I don't know you, but I do pray that you find peace. And that your suffering May go away. Till next time. Have a great day. I am the Timesmith.