Nature’s Highlights:

We often tend to forget to enjoy the beauties of our world,

Just like I almost didn’t even mind looking at the beautiful scenery that created the next photo.

Remember guys, life’s meant to be seen, felt and loved:

Ok but what the hell do I actually mean when I say “fuck helping others”? After all, didn’t I say it was my whole life’s purpose to spend it helping others?

And yeah, of course, my plan hasn’t changed, trust me.

But I’m only able to say those words with 100% certainty because my dumber, younger self learned a really important lesson that I’ll tell you about in just a bit.

First, let me tell you how we got here.

I’ve always enjoyed helping others, ever since I was a child, it was something that was very much ingrained into my way of being.

I loved doing nice things for others, in the limit you can when you’re 6 or 7 years old, like holding the door, picking stuff up and all this stuff.

I remember I was going home from school one time, after I walked one of my friends home, and while walking and thinking about how trash school was,

I see a poor girl about 5 years older than me trying to pick up her books from the ground. I immediately rushed to help her, and she was really happy to receive my help.

I walked home with the biggest smile I could ever have, and after I don’t even know how many years, I still remember this experience.

Helping others was clearly not just a part of my personality, but something that would probably become my life.

This whole desire though, whilst incredibly fulfilling, was slowly starting to chip away at me.

That’s because, after my father’s death, I was the only man in the house,

And I assumed that role, with a lot of its responsibilities, pretty damn fast.

Not only was I not disclosing to mom anything that bothers, hurts, or pains me in life,

But I was actively just trying to look out just for her needs and problems, thinking that’s the right way to do it.

I knew I could bear being sad, but her sadness would just rip my heart away, so I tried solving that.

Throughout the years, this habit of mine only kept growing stronger.

I always used to hear in church to “love others as you love thyself”, and my response always was: “But why? I love others more than I love myself.”

I started listening to other people’s problems, and, in a way, covering mine with theirs.

I still remember how one of my girl friends (the person I had a crush on at the time) was telling me about one of her problems in life,

And I literally started crying because I would try absorbing all that pain from her, in the end achieving nothing other than increasing my pain, and alleviating nothing from hers.

Helping others, what had once been the thing that drove me to live life to its fullest, was now the thing that rapidly started taking more and more away from it.

I knew I had to stop implicating myself so much in other people’s issues and suffering,

But I thought that if I did that, I would become “less empathic”, which would’ve been like killing a part of me, because I had absorbed empathy as part of my identity.

I feared that by trying to focus more on myself, on my problems and my own mental issues, I would become a bad person.

I confused sacrificing myself with kindness,

And I didn’t understand that I wasn’t truly helping anyone.

Because, in the end, no one needs a person to cry with, but a shoulder to cry on.

And currently, I was a sea full of pain and emotion just waiting to be stirred and riled by the waves of the world.

I firmly believe that, to be true men, we need to be similar to a mountain, we need to stand tall even amidst all the waves of the ocean.

And most people think that means repressing your feelings, but trust me, I had my faaair share of that, and I don’t want to go back.

Because, the truth is, you can only repress your feelings for so long, and then you’re either gonna have your body fight against you (like I do),

Or you’re gonna frequently snap in bursts of rage (like the alcoholic father who beats his children and wife).

But if the old tale of repressing your feelings till you want to kill yourself doesn’t work, then how do we “help ourselves first”?

This is where the fun part comes in (at least for me).

You’ve got to do the exact opposite of repressing your feelings,

You’ve gotta become a FEELING MACHINE (ok, sorry for that joke 😄).

Seriously though, you have to learn how to feel your emotions, how to understand your psyche.

Because in life it rarely is a simple problem with a simple solution that fucks our lives up.

Usually, there are a lot of unresolved issues, or problems that we repress automatically, that clump up into a big channel of pain.

I’ve done a separate article on this (which you can check out right here: https://victors-self-psychology.beehiiv.com/p/see-isnt-always-get)

About how every single past experience we had comes back to haunt us in a reimagination of some sort.

The present is rarely filled with problems that overwhelm us, but it’s the ones that come racing from the past that we have to be the most careful of.

That’s why the first step to helping yourself is awareness.

Understand how your mind works, and be present enough to see when it tries to pull tricks on you.

Trust me, after a while of doing this, it becomes fun as fuck.

Nonetheless guys, I appreciate you staying with me till the end.

If you have any suggestions on how I can make these articles better, then please just send a reply to this one,

And until next time guys, have an amazing week, and keep growing. Love ya <3.