Timeless: Drowning in Sorrow (Chapter. 1)

Written by Andi Bazaar, Co-wrote by Mark J. Levstein, Henrie Louis Friedrich, Gryffen Seth and Tydalé-Oliver Schofield

When you asking me how I went trough this I want to say that this is the most difficult and destructive period in my life. It’s very scary and painful for me to see the war with my own eyes, my mental health is broken and I’m feeling empty.

Mental health "already extremely stigmatised a people don't talk about it enough." — there is no stigma, there is no shame in seeking help when you're broken or in mental or emotional pain.

This is going to be a bit of an unusual topic, we are going to talk about the harmful impact of having a lot of empathy and how we can mitigate them. Many of us may have gone through emotional burnouts from being there for others at the expense of ourselves.

Empathy is seriously the best attribute in a human being, it connects us with others and transcends our differences in ways that nothing else can. However when we are so attuned to other peoples moods and problems, we leave a wide open door to being hurt.

This is especially true for empathy that develops alongside mental health issues. For example, I may have gone through depression and when I started to recover, I made my life mission to not let others who are going through depression be isolated.

By doing so, I am pushing myself and my emotions to a point of emotional burnout (aka compassion fatigue) and I feel like I can no longer experience empathy. We may get detached or no longer be able to connect with other people, this turns into a worse spiral.

We may feel like horrible human beings because we no longer “care” we punish ourselves verbally or through our thoughts leading to a further degradation of mental health and before we know it, we are going through another cycle of depression.

This also happens a lot for individuals who are constantly taking care of others, be it as part of their job or caregivers to loved ones who require constant care. When we reach that level of compassion fatigue, we may get frustrated or even accidentally those we want to care for.

This isn’t because the caregiver has turned into a bad human being but the compassion fatigue simply isn’t allowing them to connect with others the same way and without that empathy, it is difficult to truly care. So the big question is, what can we do?

There are two options and they fall into two lines, prevention or treatment. If we haven’t fallen into that emotional burnout yet, prevention is the tool we need to use. The first important aspect of prevention is boundaries, our empathy is a finite resource.

Not only is it limited but it is also highly dependent on how we feel meaning that the better we can take care of ourselves, the more we can sustain our empathy. It means putting ourselves first, by prioritizing ourselves and establishing boundaries, we can sustain a level of empathy that can last a long time without too big a risk of emotional burnout. It means not feeling guilty because we can’t help at the moment or because we need to put our self-care first, it can take therapy to solve guilt, but it is crucial.

If we are already in the stage of compassion fatigue, then we need treatment and a break (if possible) from the situations that caused the burnout to begin with. It can be taking an extended leave from work or passing the care to another person temporarily.

While doing that we are also going to treat our compassion fatigue, especially if it went all the way to the full development of anxiety/depression/secondary trauma. Once we feel that we are starting to heal, we will adopt the prevention method listed earlier.

Honestly, even after being a therapist for 5 years I still flirt with the line of compassion fatigue from time to time. It is a matter of trial and error to find that balance, sustaining empathy in the long term is the hardest skill that I am still learning.

• Don’t be hard on yourself if it takes a while to get the right recipe for this, empathy is truly wonderful but can hurt us so much as well. If you are reading this and going through an emotional burnout, please remember that you are an amazing person.
• Just because you are going through this burnout doesn’t make you less of a good person, it doesn’t mean that you lost your empathy forever. It just means that this is the signal to put yourself first and to use your support system so you can recover.

I hope that this opening chapter was helpful in explaining the harmful side of empathy and how we can mitigate it or treat it.

Let's talk about resilience, it is very fitting to talk about it right now because I see displays of resilience everyday here and offline for people going through very difficult situations right now.

We will define resilience as being able to cope with a psychological and emotional crisis, all of us have resiliency. It is an evolutionary capacity to deal with danger in order for us to be able to act despite threats to our life, the whole world is going through a crisis right now and is calling for resilience from us.

So how to we typically resilience? Well in order for it to come out, we need self-awareness, this comes in realizing what we are going through and knowing the threat it poses to ourselves.

Let's say someone witnesses a tragic event, resilience starts to show once we are aware that what we just witnessed poses a threat to our wellbeing. The second important trait for resilience is flexibility, we are all showing a lot of flexibility right now.

Most of us can't go to work, can't even leave our houses. We have to deal with reduced supplies in supermarkets not seeing our loved ones, being able to socialize in pubs, cafes, etc..

We show flexibility by being online more, using other forms of communication, buying foods that we may not usually eat and isolating when our instincts tell us to go out. These are all displays of flexibility that allow us to keep our quality of life despite not having the tools that we usually have, another aspect is coping.

Isolation, lack of work and activities and spatial restrictions can be detrimental to our mental health. Therefore, we need more than ever to use our coping mechanisms and to find new ones that can help us through this crisis.

A lot of people have shared that they are watching movies they have not thought they would have liked, that they are learning new forms of art, music even a new language online.

Those all show coping by trying new activities because the previous ones were not enough to help out in this more serious situation, turning to comedy or comedic relief is also a coping mechanism that allows us to escape from this situation temporarily. Those are all examples of how resilience plays a role in helping us deal with this unprecedented situation.

Please remember that resilience can’t be enough for some people who trauma, depression and mental health can have a hard time coping with this added stress.

I realize that emotional labour is low within ourselves, but if you know someone who is not doing well please check up on them make sure that they are okay so that we can all get through this.

I just want to say that I admire you all for the displays of resiliency that you are showing and it inspires me to get through this stressful situation myself.

Given that the start of recovery in our mental health is not linear and can happen slowly, let’s talk about the early signs of recovery and getting better. Knowing those signs can help us give ourselves the credit and validation for all the work we did to get better.

One of the signs will be the ability to cope, we will start to feel as though our symptoms are not as debilitating as we thought. Instead of feeling hopeless/helpless, we will start to feel as though there is a way out. It may be just a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel.

It may not happen all the time or even often but just starting to experience it is amazing, the main characteristic of most mental health issues is that they make us feel trapped and unable to get out of that cycle. Starting to feel as though we can get better is amazing.

Another sign is going to be the ability to do more tasks during our day. Whereas before, we struggled to get out of bed and even eat or take a shower when we get better we realize that we can slowly do more things during our day even if it is not a lot more and not all days.

The future doesn’t seem as bleak with anxiety, all possible scenarios and roads we imagine are bad. When we start to feel that there are good things or even neutral situations awaiting us in the future, we start to have that balance that reduces our experience of anxiety.

We are able to talk with people around us more. With depression, we tend to socially withdraw. Lack of energy, fear of being judged and low self-esteem can make us withdraw fast, when we feel the need to connect to people around us and loved ones it is an amazing sign!

Another sign is establishing boundaries. When our self-esteem is low, we feel as though no one should love us. We can’t be in a position to have boundaries. But when we establish boundaries and don’t let people go over them, it is a great start.

We start taking of ourselves more, self-care is an awesome indicator of the fact that we value ourselves and put some of that energy towards showing love to ourselves. The more we feel that need to relax and pamper ourselves the better it is.

Another amazing sign is we have a good insight on people who are toxic and contribute to our mental health issues, the ability to recognize it and eliminate them from our life is a crucial step because it tells us that we deserve better people around us.

Another one we tend to disregard is being connected to our environment, when we are more connected to our environment and less zoned out it is a sign that our thoughts/emotions are not as strong as they used to be making us zone out all the time.

Finally our memories, concentration, attention span slowly start to return. This is by far one of the slowest changes that happen, if you haven’t noticed this one yet don’t worry, it can take a while after recovery to reappear but when it does it is such a wonderful feeling.

I hope that this chapter has been helpful in helping you recognize some signs of recovery and or show us all what we can look forward to when we start to get better.

I always open if you need to reach out or even want to talk because you are feeling lonely, I have more time to answer my DMs on social media. So, take good care of yourselves and hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

A SPECIAL THANKS TO:

• Andi Bazaar (Writer)
• Yevhn Gertz (Director Photography)
• Dr Oliver Schofield, MD (Consulting)
• Dr Seth Gryffen, MD (Consulting)
• Timothée Freimann schofield (Photographed)
• Clayton Euridicé Schofield (Editor/Journalist)
• Scott Wynné Schofield (Publisher)
• Henrie Louis Friedrich (Analyst)
• Jwan Höffler Conwall (Art Interior Design)
• Hugo-licharré Freimann (Ass Director)
• Shot at GQ’s Studios by José Schenkkan and Benjamin Schenkkan Joseph
• In appearance by "E. Pierro-luccá Schofield" (Model) / Emmanuel Piero-luccá Schofield
• MHMTID in collaboration with The Me: You Can’t See