Affecting one’s mood

 There’s always one big problem with emotions – we never quite know what to do with them. It’s a difficult situation given how complex these feelings are in our brain and how they often are there to help us rather than derail us. But still, we often complain, whine and wish that our emotions could take a bad seat, just so that we can avoid that pain, that suffering. But we also know what that makes us when it actually happens – robots of the conventional sense. Or psychopaths. And which one is scarier can determine which generation you belong to. Psychologists often get confused when dealing with these topics themselves, often needing basic work on their definitions on their concepts, with them mixing up terms of affect, mood and emotions as if they were sugar, saccharine and corn syrup. It is to this that I try to understand how emotions have played a very important part in my transformation to a person I believe (and I hope those who know me would attest to) was stronger and more capable of the softer things in life.

My middle childhood was when I first realized that my emotional growth and maturity was almost non-existent. Not in the sense that I acted like a 6-year-old (although looking back, we all tend to judge our younger selves that harshly) but more like I never needed to deal with the emotional baggage that all my friends and classmates dealt with. It was the same time I fell in love with psychology as well, and I believe the two have a very strong positive correlation together. My love for the discipline grew as my attempts to understand people relied less on empathy than on hard cold reason – fuelled by an endless desire and appetite for anything in a fictional form from books to poetry to television to movies and more. The result was that I often ended up judging, categorizing and labeling people to help me navigate my social surroundings better. And because I was a social recluse who escaped from every commitment and group bonding session that involved interaction and instead ran home, I developed a fear of people finding out this fake part of me. Of peering through the façade and realizing the hollowness inside. For the first time, I didn’t like the feeling of being a vampire, cold, bloodless and dead on the inside.

Fast forwarding to 4 years and I was now in 10^th, more fat than ever and even better at hiding myself compared to my weight. People often saw different parts of me and I kept it that way. The biggest obstacle now was the fact that I switched schools in a new city in a new country where girls and boys sat together and there seemed to be nothing as bad as what I had heard. Here, I found new friends quickly and although the word friends is more relevant now than before, at that point it was more of a matter of convenience as no one wanted to be the sad kid sitting all alone. The person I sat next to was there because like me, he had just shifted and the teacher thought it would be a perfect opportunity for bonding. Thus there we were, with him trying to not lose his mind since he hated Bengaluru while I tried to make more friends. We slowly but surely became friends which was a shock to many as we were different and often there were intense fights between us, as I would verbally bully him and he would physically bully me. The day that changed everything was when I was in the washroom, hiding from my class as I had embarrassed myself after I couldn’t remember my speech and I felt panic, fear and, anxiety for the first time. I was talking to myself and cooling myself down when he walked in, took the cabin right next to me and told me to stop being an idiot and get back to class (but only after I finished “whatever I was doing”)

It changed me when I realised that he didn’t show a single emotion while doing it but I knew there was care and concern coming from those words. I realised that I should do the same. That I cannot let this need to be cold and heartless stop me. I can still care and still give back. But I can do it in ways that seem cold and heartless, because that is still what I do best. The only difference is that on the inside, I’m as warm as the sun.