Mental Crutches: A currency depreciation
While in elementary school, I remember asking one of my classmates what has happened to his leg. Although, I honestly don’t recall all the specifics surrounding his injury, I clearly remember asking to “borrow” his crutches.
From a young age, I have always wanted to “protect”, “defend”, “help”, and I would even say “save” people. Early on, I saw how some people were not as joyful and happy as I was and wondered why. Even then, I could easily identify people who did not smile much or who were just not as outgoing as other people. For reasons I ignored at the time, I felt compelled to be by these people’s side. I wanted to hear their stories and attempt to provide solutions to what often seemed as “complicated puzzles”. Little did I know that this desire of mine was rooted from my mental crutches, well-hidden within myself.
Mental crutches are like currency depreciation, they make things lose value. If a country’s currency starts to go down fast, people don’t want to invest in it, they are scared and want out. Well, mental crutches work similarly to the currency depreciation concept because it can potentially devalue an entire person.
You and I have different portfolios that all work together. There are not necessarily working simultaneously, but they are still helping and cheering for one another.
Each portfolio carries its own value and depending of where you are in your personal life ladder, you’ll see some portfolios being more valuable than others.
The most popular portfolios are physical, emotional, and psychological in essence. There are based on what you value most at a specific time in your life. However, when unchecked, mental crutches can find themselves in the middle of these portfolios and start its depreciation process.
How does the depreciation process work?
It feeds itself with negative self-talk, blame, doubts, and potential fears. It looks at what has been making your portfolio increase in value and then reverse engineered everything so it can start its destruction. To put it simply, it devalues everything you’ve been working on.
One: Physical depreciation
You’ve been feeling good about yourself as you’ve been having a few days in arrow (and maybe more) of good eating habits, exercises, and overall better decision-making regarding your health and fitness, but then you hit a wall. For whatever reasons, you start choosing differently. You start to not care as much about the impact of your choices. You may even start mentioning things like “I just want to have fun”, “We only live once, so I can make some exceptions”, or a classic pertaining to health and fitness “I’m only going to eat one …”
And before you know it, your mental crutches comes sweeping you off your feet and making your physical portfolio lose value.
Two: Emotional depreciation
This depreciation is more subtle and not easily identifiable as it is not as visible as the physical depreciation. It all happens within you and hidden from the rest of the world.
You’ve been someone whose emotional compass has been fairly stable or at least, so you think. However, once in awhile you get caught up with your own circumstances and don’t seem able to get yourself back on track. In those moments, you’re experiencing emotional depreciation, your emotional value for yourself and your situation is going down.
And before you know it, your mental crutches comes in a whirled wind and completely destabilizes your emotional portfolio.
Three: Psychological depreciation
Similar to the emotional depreciation, the psychological depreciation works from within and is quite a magician in itself. It often organizes an entire theatrical event in your mind.
The event, which you’re its only star, often revolves around things you consciously magnify their significance. From your point of view, you imagine the worst results or outcomes yet fail to give benefit of the doubt to whomever is thinking oppositely to you. In this event, you’re right while everyone else is wrong.
And before you know it, your mental crutches sold out the show to your emotional portfolio and left you with a confused and undervalued psychological portfolio.
My borrowed crutches
Even as a child, I felt as I could always do more for people. With time, I started to understand my mental crutches and how they could devalue what I wanted to accomplish on a bigger stage.
As an adopted child, I often pondered what my biological parents looked like, did, or even thought about. Even if I never had my answers, I spent time talking to them in my mind. Those conversations however, always one way, found themselves starting and ending with “not so kind” words. At the time, ball of rage would form itself and would later be dispersed on whomever would cross my way. Still not able to pinpoint the WHY of the outbursts, I felt confused and upset. And because I chose to not verbalize my emotional and psychological states, my emotional and psychological portfolios started to lose their value.
I, however, eventually realized, I NEVER wanted others to be afflicted by my emotional and psychological moments nor did I wanted them to experience, in their own lives, similar rollercoasters. I also knew because I was genuinely a happy, joyful, and smilee child; if I continued to channel these positive and genuine emotions, it would help me bring new perspectives to my situations, but also provide better help to those I would eventually cross path with.
I am sharing this more personal side of me because I want you to know your portfolios will lose value from time to time yet it does not mean you are not able to work on them and make them great again.
I will end this piece by letting you know, you have the opportunity to be the ONE overseeing your physical, emotional, and psychological portfolios. You can choose to ignore your mental crutches or on the contrary, face them, one at the time.
You may not find all of your answers in one day, but you can start, one day at the time, to work on making those crutches less dependable and less harmful on your life. You can, just like I did, see them for what they are, part of a beautiful journey I call LIFE.
