John Knopick: So I was having a good day today, and then this afternoon the clouds came back. Not to the not to the extent that they've been going through or coming in, but enough to bring me down for the afternoon. So much I had to, you know, put down how I was feeling, let my let my wife know and stuff. So things like this. S situations like this are why I'm still afraid to trust a good day. Because it makes you immediately think to yourself, was the progress from the last few days actually real? Was it just, you know, a pseudo-progression? Could it be could things be rolling back to the way they were? And then the more I thought about it, over this last month since the trauma happened. The days initially after it happened, those were horrific. Those were catastrophic. Those were anxiety to a level I'd never been in in my entire life. Where no matter what I thought about happy good thoughts, things happening in the future, whatever the case was, they were all vaporized by the anxiety and the crippling, catastrophic, doom and gloom thoughts, where it was like, No, you know, w what if something catastrophic happens tonight? You're not even gonna c I mean, I'm not even gonna let you close your eyes tonight because something could happen. And I've noticed now over this last month, a little over a month now, with the new medication. And with the new psychiatrist and behavioral health team and piece my PCP helping me out and things like that, I've come to see that these kinds of cloud scenarios and things that have happened with you know clouds rolling in and the doom and gloom thoughts absolutely have not been to the level that they were at when things first happened, which I'm very happy about. But again, they're still trying to rear their ugly heads every now and again. And I know even though it could be months or years from now, it will always be that way. There will always be times. And you'll never be able to know. You'll never be able to know when it's coming. The moods and our feelings and things like that don't operate on a a written schedule. You don't get a five minute warning. You don't get a tornado siren letting you know that something's coming in the Brace for Impact. It just comes when it wants to and you have to deal with it. And I've used the surfing analogy before, and I use it again. When you first try surfing, and you get into the water and you get that first wave hits you, it knocks you off your board and it tries to pull you under, and you're struggling and you're wondering, will I ever be able to do this again? Will I ever be able to handle these waves? But the more you go through it, the more you're able to game plan and strategize how you overcame it before, and then utilize the Those previous accomplishments to help you ride the waves easier. So that way the waves are less crippling to you. And next thing you know, you're you're standing up to those waves. You're saying, no, you ain't, you're not knocking me down this time. You're not gonna get the best of me. You're not going to ruin all of this progress that I've made over these weeks, months, years, however long it takes. You're going to, you're going to eventually, with hard work and perseverance and and having a good support system and never letting the waves win, you will find a way to overcome those waves. We are strong enough as human beings to overcome adversity, regardless of the size of it. It's just a matter of knowing what to do, when to do, how to do, with whom to help you. It's it's a it's a hodgepodge of various things all baked together to help you overcome these things. And it's another thing where I look at and I go, even though I've been making this progress, when I have these blips, it makes me like briefly think Should I believe that the progress is legitimately going good? Or is this an indication that something else bad's gonna happen? This is just the first drop of a massive monsoon that's gonna hit me again soon. I've come to realize that you can't have that kind of a mindset. If when you have that first blip, Your brain is immediately trying to find the other ones that are going to be coming and trying to, you know, sense danger on the horizon. All that's going to do is continue to make you hyper-aware of things and continue to make things that may have been minuscule at best when you were in a good spot become the sky is falling chicken little in the current and mental environment that you're in. So just because you have that blip. doesn't mean the rest of the day is going to be that way. And you should not consider your day to be a failure. Because we're 24 there are 24 hours in a day, minus the eight hours or however many hours of sleep you get you n you get per night. Of that time, if a half an hour, 45 minutes, however long the the blip lasts, if that's all there is, compare that to the size of the day. You've if you've had an an exceptional day outside of that one blip, don't let that blip Be the thing that takes you down. If you've been walking two miles and you suddenly have that little pebble in your shoe, don't let that pebble be the reason why you stop walking, why you it's why you stop making that progress. You know, take it out of your shoe and keep motoring forward. Keep having that good day. And realize, yeah, these are going to happen. I know I can overcome them. I've overcome them before. I've dealt with worse. I can handle this. And again, it also helps to have, you know, a strong support system. And that's why I want to mention that I really appreciate you guys not only viewing these clips and these episodes and things as I've been putting them up, but I've been getting comments from you guys too, talking to me talking to me about how you've created your own communities of people that you've you've surrounded yourself with to help you get through the darkest times. And I want to hear more of those stories too. I love hearing those stories because I know that a mental our mental health crisis on this Planet is massive. When when things happen in the in the world of a nefarious or a horrific nature, everybody, a lot of people nowadays immediately go to trying to take things away: guns, knives, etc. But you gotta look at the root of the problem. The root of the problem is mental health. Mental health is the source, people crying out for help. People who have been through traumatic things that need guidance and support and an ear or a shoulder of someone, anyone that'll listen, that'll say, I've been there or I've got you. Tell me what's going on. How can I help? We need to help each other. And that's what I want this podcast and this community that we're growing to be a support system for everybody. I don't want you to have to live in the shadows with your with your anxiety and your trauma and the things that you've been through. I want you to have a voice. Even again, if you want to do it and post comments anonymously, feel free. No problem at all. You don't you don't have to tell me who you are. Just get your stories out. Get that energy out because even even just getting this information out, at least in my in my experience, is therapeutic. Therapists are good at listening to you, but writing things down, getting them out on podcasts, speaking them, you know, even if you like buy like a digital, you know, recorder or or use a digital recorder on your phone and record your emotions and save them. Those that that's getting all of that energy out of your physical system and allowing your body to reset itself and recharge. And that's what we need to do. And we also need to learn always let a good day be good. There are gonna be days that you know things aren't always going to be the way you want them to be. But as long as the majority of that day you can look back on and say, was a good day, then it was a good day. And even if you have a rough stretch, you know a a handful of days, whatever the case is, where you have you ha you have multiple blips or something, don't let that stretch be the thing, be the catalyst that's going to make your brain think, well, all of the progress I made before was obviously not worth it, because look at me now. Cause that that's not the case. You can't you can't look at the here and now and say, well, this automatically means everything that I've done and everything that I've I've progressed on and everything that I've accomplished is for nothing. Because you you made that progress. You made those steps. You got your voice out. You you were able to overcome those those demons or whatever you were dealing with. And that's big. That's huge. And you shouldn't be afraid to believe it. You should never be afraid to trust a good day. Because we all need good days. More so than than anything else. Just to have days where we can say we smiled more than we frowned, or we smiled more than we cried. And I can honestly say, honest, you know, since it's only been a little over a month since what happened to me, I'm absolutely not at I trust this completely. Will I ever get to that point? Who's to say? the world, our lives are always constantly evolving. They're always constantly changing. So, you know, at this point, I can say for certain that I don't trust it completely, but I am getting closer to I trust myself more than I did a few weeks ago. And I don't know at this point if even after this month and a half I completely fully trust the good days yet. But I'm starting to trust that one bad day doesn't get to take all the rest of them away. And that to me is something worth hanging your hat on and staying hopeful for. I'm John Kanopic. This is the honest middle. We'll keep figuring it out together. See you next time.