Existential Crisis - Week 3 of New Internship

Week 3 of my new internship and not working a part time job. It feels weird.

And I think it just hit me now. Today. I miss my part time job. I miss the relationships I've developed and the people I would see every other day.

I honestly think I am having an existential crisis right now. I love psychology and I love working with the kids, but I also love the freedom I had only working 4 days a week every other day for 6 -8 hours. Now, I'm working 5 days a week, 12 hours a day. They are VERY long days.

I guess I should probably mention what my internship is....

Well, my internship is working as a counselor in a summer treatment program for kids with ADHD and similar disorders. These kids are amazing and so sweet but this is my first time being out in the field actually doing something psychology related with actual children. Up until this point, all my knowledge has been theoretical and now I am seeing the things I learned about for 4 years in reality.

So, making the switch from part time retail job to full time clinical counselor for kids was a huge leap and very disorienting. I was out of my shell at my job (I am an extremely shy person) and I felt comfortable in the environment. At my internship, I feel stepped on and have no confidence whatsoever. I don't know if this is just because it is still very new to me or if it's because I feel stupid and pretty much like the weak link there. I am the oldest and went from part time job to this internship, while everyone else is younger than me and is still in college.

I have very mixed feelings and have no idea what I'm doing in my future, but this is only the first week with the kids (the first 2 weeks were training) and so far I love working with the kids. It is by far the most rewarding experience in my life so far, aside from babysitting. And I love babysitting.

This is what makes me think that I am meant to do this, but the long hours and amount of knowledge I need to retain but can't because my brain hates me is not something I am fond of. I wouldn't say I am a lazy person... I just worked 3 weeks straight 12 hours a day - not lazy. But I am VERY unmotivated and lose confidence very fast. I cannot tell you how many times I debated quitting during the first week alone.

The first 2 weeks of this program - the training portion - was the hardest thing I have ever had to do, without a doubt. It was intensive training. On the other hand, though, knowing that I got through the training alone, makes me think that I can get through this stuff. (Can you tell yet how confused I am and how wishy washy I am about all this?)

Since I haven't quit yet, I obviously won't. I think I'm past the "This is hard, I want to quit" stage, and I'm onto the "Well now what?" stage and the "Do I want to do this for my whole life" stage. I was never fond of working long hours - that is always something I wanted to avoid. I just don't think working that much is good for my well being, mentally and emotionally. There are others things I want to do with my life than devote it to making money. I want to do art, I want to travel, I want to explore and enjoy nature and life in general. I can't do that, I don't think, when I'm working 12 hours a day.

I will continue to track my feelings on this matter throughout the 10 week treatment program. I doubt my feelings toward my coworkers, or fellow counselors will change, and I already know I love the kids in my group... it's just a matter of my energy level and level of motivation that will help me decide whether this is something I ultimately want to pursue as opposed to a more calm and unstructured lifestyle that I was previously accustomed to.

So far, I am extremely out of my comfort zone, but as of tomorrow, I will have survived the first 3 weeks of this. Yay.

Be strong and don't let anything get in your way. Try new things, and leave your comfort zone, you never know what you'll learn. (:

Toxicity of Facebook (Bullying)

I don't think I need to keep starting these posts about how I don't post anymore, haha, but I guess I just did. At this point, I think I will write about things as they come to my head and I feel like writing out my thoughts.

Well, recently I got involved in a very ugly situation involving Facebook and bullying. Yes, I am 23 and I still get bullied. It happens at every age, for example, the Dancing Man - an older man who just wanted to dance, but was publicly shamed in front of hundreds and then viewed thousands of times on the internet. Except, this wonderful man got a happy ending and so much attention towards bullying. Those who made fun of this man should be ashamed.

But anyway, my story is bizarre and I don't want to disclose too many details other than the bullying I was a victim to was verbal and emotional cyberbullying by a person I had never met or seen in my life. This person decided to target a complete stranger and try to ruin her life. For no reason. If anyone could explain to me why, I still wouldn't be ok with that. I can't for the life of me understand why ruining someone else's life and beating them down makes others feel good about themselves. 

Yes, I study psychology but no, I still can't figure out what creates and perpetuates this type of behavior. In a way, it's not that big of a deal.. everyone gets bullied and it's over.. so I should be ok with it and get over it, right? No. It did impact me. Every word. All the lies, the mean words, and the fact that I was targeted on purpose. Why me? Why did this person choose to mess with me? Am I an easy target? More than one person was impacted in this situation, in fact, four people were. One started it by being oblivious to the ulterior motive of the bully and inviting the bully into our lives, once the bully was in, the bully could manipulate whoever and however the bully wanted.

I don't blame this person, who I hold very dear to my heart, or at least... I'm trying not to. But at the same time, I'm trying not to blame myself either... which is harder than it sounds. This one person, this stranger... ruined something that they had no business in ruining. In the process of ruining that something, the bully ruined my trust in someone very special to me, knowing fully well what they were doing. But why? 

Well... does the why really matter? If you find out the why... it won't get rid of what happened. When we come across devastating or game-changing situations that break us down and ruin aspects of our lives, we need to learn to accept that this terrible thing happened and it was out of your control. Not easy, huh? I've been struggling for a week now. I don't want one person to come between me and the person I built something special with. I am not a toy, a doll, or a TV show that someone can play with and manipulate to do what they want. The universe always wins. Karma will bite back and she will bite back hard.

A person who does things like this needs help. Maybe they weren't shown love as much or maybe they were jealous of me or maybe they have been hurt in the past. NONE of these are valid excuses, however, for the actions of this person.

This situation happened to come at the worst time of my life. I was dealing with a stomach infection and was on several antibiotics, completely shutting down and not eating as well as preparing for a very intensive summer internship (the first week of which didn't go so well because of my anxiety from this very avoidable situation).

Now this brings me to why I named this post "Toxicity of Facebook." Well, the reason is that this happened on Facebook. It started on Facebook and it ended on Facebook. It's easy to say Facebook was the culprit, right? Well no, it wasn't... but it was the enabler. Facebook can be used for wonderful things like businesses and finding lost friends/family and keeping in touch. But, it can also breed very deviant behavior. People feel anonymous on Facebook and anonymity leads to heightened self-confidence displayed in negative ways - like bullying anyone just because you can.

Not only is social media a breeding ground for bullying, but Facebook in particular is specially toxic because some (hopefully most) of the people you are friends with on Facebook, you know in real life and getting a little glimpse of someone elses better life, as assessed by you, can be damaging. If you're having a bad day and you feel like nothing is going right and work is tearing you apart, for example, and you go on Facebook and see the person you don't like going on vacation and taking pictures on the beach, you will without a doubt feel worse than when you initially got on the website. 

It can also instill panic for no reason. For anxious people like me, it gave me unnecessary reasons to worry, like seeing with my own eyes a terrible thing unfold that spilled onto me. I tried to stop it, I tried to tell the person close to me that this was a bad person and that we should stay far away from them, but because the person close to me felt like they needed to prove a point to me, they didn't heed my warning. I saw it all unfold and I knew the outcome before it happened. 

If anyone hasn't felt this feeling before... it's awful. Knowing something terrible is coming but not being able to do anything about it. What I didn't know, was that I would be sucked into a hate battle directed towards me.

I wish so much that this had never happened. I wish it with all my heart. The knowledge I know now, the lesson I learned, the lesson the person close to me learned... all of it, wasn't worth the pain.

Guys, don't bully others. You have NO idea what it does to other people and it will always come back to you. Don't use Facebook or any other social media to manipulate others for fun and mess with other people's lives. If two people are in a relationship, leave them be. There are many fish in the sea, don't latch onto the one I caught and torture it and myself for fun.

Don't mess with other people's lives. Not only will you look like a terrible person, you will never get your way and you will feel the backlash eventually.

 

Sorry for my rant - this event has really impacted my life negatively and I felt like writing it down would help me heal and maybe help someone else in the process. Please be kind to each other.