I recently found myself in a rough patch.
Okay? I've been going through it a little bit.
The last month has been a real challenge.
Now, this is not unusual for me, right?
I'm in my twenties.
I'm a sensitive person.
Honestly, I'm going through a rough patch more often than I'm not.
And that's okay. That's just who I am in the phase of life that I'm in.
It's all good. This is nothing out of the ordinary, right?
Wrong. My most recent rough patch has looked very different to my rough patches of the past.
This most recent struggle has been sort of unusual.
Instead of falling into a state of depression or anxiety or panic or burnout, I'm just grumpy.
And I know what you're thinking, Emma, being grumpy is not that big of a deal.
Like, we all get grumpy sometimes.
No. Okay? What's so upsetting about it is that it's so out of character.
I'm normally an incredibly patient person, but recently I have a dangerously short fuse.
I'm normally a disciplined person.
You know, I get my shit done and I don't complain about it.
But recently I have almost no willpower to do anything in any category of my life.
I'm normally a really gentle person, but recently I've been uncharacteristically harsh.
Like, and okay, not with like random strangers.
I have maintained a sense of humanity when it comes to people I don't really know.
But when it comes to people I'm close to, I have no patience.
I'm harsh. I keep catching myself being harsh and I have to walk myself back and be like, oh my God, I'm so sorry.
I don't know what that was.
Like, for the last few years since I've become an adult, I've been a pretty even tempered sort of person.
Like, I definitely have my moments, right?
But I don't know. Like, I just have made it sort of a priority to be pleasant and patient with everyone.
And recently all of that has gone out the window and I have no patience.
I have no willpower.
I have no softness.
Like, I don't know, something weird happened.
I'm so fucking grumpy.
Now, this didn't just happen out of nowhere.
This isn't like a completely random personality shift.
It's not like I just woke up one day randomly and for no reason at all, I turned grumpy.
There is a real reason for this grumpiness.
And it took me a minute to figure out what it was.
But once I did, everything made sense, okay?
I'm grumpy because recently I've eliminated almost all of my emotional crutches in life.
What I used to use to soothe me, distract me, and satisfy me is now gone.
Now, some of these emotional crutches have been removed from my life consciously.
Like, I've made a active decision to remove these emotional crutches from my life.
And some of these emotional crutches have been removed subconsciously.
Like, I didn't even really realize certain things in my life were emotional crutches, but just subconsciously I knew that I needed to remove them from my life.
And then once I did, I could then see in hindsight, like, oh shit, those were total emotional crutches.
And it just happens to be that at this point right now, in the last month, or maybe two, at this point, I'm at a point now where I don't have any left.
For whatever reason, it all kinda happened at once.
So today, we're gonna be talking about emotional crutches.
To start, let's discuss what an emotional crutch is, okay?
According to Google, an emotional crutch is a coping mechanism that can cause people to ignore reality and prevent them from thinking logically.
Crutches can be things, activities, people, or relationships, that people rely on too much, okay?
Keyword too much to relieve stress, okay?
I think that's a key term because it's okay to lean on friends and family and therapy and hobbies and exercise and whatever to help relieve stress.
Like, that's normal, right?
It's when we rely on things too much that there's a problem.
These things can remove us from reality to a point where we don't even need to address our stress anymore.
I think that's when it gets to an unhealthy point.
While these things may not be harmful on their own, they can become problematic when used exclusively and excessively.
Some examples include alcohol, weed, nicotine, religious faith that is not based on sound evidence, television, video games, internet, shopping, junk food, the list goes on.
Weirdly enough, I never really thought about my own personal emotional crutches up until recently.
I actually thought of myself as being somebody who didn't really have any, to be honest.
And I think that's what's so sneaky about emotional crutches is that oftentimes we don't even realize that we have them or we're in denial of them because to address the fact that we have an unhealthy relationship with these things is to then force oneself to make a choice about how we move forward.
Whereas if you don't address it, then you never have to make a choice about if you continue using this thing as an emotional crutch or not.
To just continue and autopilot and use these things as crutches is to just, it's more comfortable that way.
So a lot of times we don't even realize what our emotional crutches are until it either reaches a point that using the emotional crutch makes us actually more miserable or we subconsciously come to the conclusion like, ooh, I probably shouldn't be doing this anymore.
Let me play around with letting this thing go.
And then in hindsight, you're like, wait a minute, that was an emotional crutch.
It's very hard to address in the moment.
But when I look at my own life, it's very clear to me now what my emotional crutches were slash are because I think some of them are still unresolved maybe, or they're 80 % resolved or 50 % resolved, like whatever.
My personal emotional crutches are, number one, nicotine slash oral fixation in general, shopping, social media, scrolling, YouTube videos, podcasts, constant noise in my ears, constant things to watch, entertainment, but specifically on the internet, internet entertainment, definitely having internet
addiction, avoidant boys, okay?
Boys who do not like me back, okay?
And then one that I'm sort of hesitant to put on the list, but I feel like I should is alcohol slash parties.
I'm hesitant to put it on the list because I think that compared to my other emotional crutches, like this one is not that big of a deal.
Like I can kind of go without drinking or go without partying, whereas like I'm addicted to these other things.
However, there's been phases of my life where I have used drinking or partying to avoid reality.
I'm 50 50 on if that should be on the list.
So it's the last one on the list.
The other ones are more significant.
Now some of these were obvious emotional crutches, right?
Like my oral fixation slash nicotine addiction, it's pretty obvious.
Like I was definitely aware of that.
And I've had issues with oral fixation my entire life, okay?
Since I was born, like I was a kid, sucking my thumb up until I was like 10 years old to help relieve anxiety.
And then I had a few years off where I didn't have any oral fixation.
And then I started vaping or whatever, and that became my new oral fixation.
And then I got addicted to nicotine and then nicotine became its own sort of emotional crutch, but they're all sort of one and the same, but they're actually kind of different.
And anyway, that's always been obvious to me, but like shopping, avoidant boys, boys that don't like me back, like I actually didn't really notice that until more recently.
Social media, scrolling, internet addiction, I've been pretty aware of that.
So again, it's like some of these were sneaky and some of these were more obvious.
But something that I was sort of curious about upon realizing that I'm kind of getting rid of all of these emotional crutches was how did they form in the first place?
We developed these habits of relieving stress in ways that are maybe easier, like they involve instant gratification or they're just simply in the unhealthy category.
It's like, every time we're in a period of stress, we need to do something.
As humans, we rarely just sit in it.
We respond in some way.
And the likelihood that you're gonna choose something unhealthy is 50 -50.
You're either gonna choose a healthy coping mechanism or an unhealthy coping mechanism.
Emotional crutches form when people use unhealthy coping strategies to avoid facing challenges or making changes.
It's basically just choosing something that feels good but isn't great for you.
So how did my emotional crutches form?
Oral fixation, as I mentioned earlier, started for me at a young age.
I was a very, very, very, very, very anxious child.
Not really sure why.
Honestly, it's probably genetic.
Both of my parents have anxiety, specifically my mom, very anxious woman.
Bless her soul, but she is so anxious.
She might be the most anxious person I've ever met.
My dad, less anxious, but has struggled with anxiety particularly later in his life, like in his adulthood.
Nowadays, he struggles with anxiety.
But anyway, very anxious kid.
Horrible separation anxiety from my parents, going to preschool, going to school, going to sleepovers.
All of these things caused a lot of anxiety for me.
I just wanted to be comfortable in my parents' arms all the time.
And to soothe my childhood anxiety, I began sucking my thumb from a very, very young age.
I don't even remember starting.
It just happened. And then it became more and more of an emotional crutch as I got older because things became more challenging for me, right?
Like when you're a kid, you're not in preschool yet.
You don't even have a brain really yet.
And I was just kind of sucking my thumb.
I don't know, for God knows what reason.
And then the older I got, the more I relied on it to relieve my anxiety because the social challenges became greater, right?
Now I have to go to preschool.
Now I have to go to school.
Now I'm going to sleepovers with friends.
And those things triggered my anxiety so bad that I relied heavily on sucking my thumb.
And it was really hard for me to quit.
I didn't quit till I was like 11 or 12.
And that's definitely on the older end when it comes to quitting sucking your thumb, right?
Like most people quit when they're like five or whatever.
I could not drop the habit.
It was so hard for me.
And I ended up having to quit at age 12 because it was fucking up my teeth.
Like having my thumb in my mouth for 12 years straight pushed my front teeth out.
And I had like an overbite from sucking my thumb.
And I had to go get that fixed because that was like an actual issue.
And so then I had to like get this cage put in my mouth that would prevent me from putting my thumb in my mouth.
It was this whole thing.
It was horrible. But eventually I did quit.
And then five years later, I started vaping.
And the vape started as sort of like an oral fixation, right?
Like it just sort of brought me back, I think to my thumb sucking as a kid subconsciously.
It just like was sort of soothing for me.
And it started pretty surface level and like innocent, you know, it like wasn't that deep.
I mainly used the vape to combat boredom or like help me focus on like grueling tasks.
Like in particular, you know, it used to take me 30 hours to edit a YouTube video, which is great in all, but you know, it's hard to focus for like 10 hours at a time and edit a video, like just sitting, you know, on your computer, or at least for me, like I definitely have a bit of energy.
I like to move around and stuff.
And editing is sort of a grueling task, right?
You're sitting at your computer and that's it.
Like I'm somebody who thrives on like running errands, right?
Me sitting on the computer for 10 hours straight, it's a little tough for me.
So having an oral fixation helped me focus, helped relieve the uncomfortable feelings that came from that grueling task and it made it more enjoyable.
And then I sort of became addicted to nicotine and I noticed that nicotine sort of helped me focus and it also helped me release more happy chemicals in my brain.
So I actually had a higher tolerance for doing activities that I didn't like, which was interesting.
Like nicotine allowed me to just kind of do anything.
Like I was almost like superhuman in a way because the nicotine was constantly releasing happy chemicals in my brain.
I always had a vape on me 24 hours a day.
The second I ran out of pods, I went and got more.
I was constantly consuming nicotine.
I had nicotine in my system 24 seven.
Anytime I needed like a hit of happy chemicals in my brain, I would just hit the vape.
So like if I would be working on something that, you know, I really didn't wanna work on for whatever reason, or, you know, I had a really long day, right?
Like a really long travel day where like, I don't know, like I'm traveling across the country.
Like I'm in, I have like three layovers and whatever for some reason that was more doable because of nicotine, like as a substance, right?
The chemical itself just made me happier in a way.
Like I could get a hit of happiness.
Like I remember in my darkest of days, right?
Like being like, oh my God, like my vape is the only thing bringing me joy or giving me even like something similar to joy.
Now in retrospect, that's really dark, but that's how it really was for me, okay?
Like it really, it became that deep.
My vape was like the thread that was helping me hold on to my stability.
Now shopping addiction, I think formed because when I was a kid, all I wanted was to have a closet full of clothes.
You know, all I wanted to do was buy stuff.
And for majority of people and kids, that's not realistic.
We don't have a job.
Most of our parents aren't fucking millionaires.
So obviously we don't just get to go shopping and buy whatever we want all the time.
But for me psychologically, I always wanted that freedom.
I was like, oh my God, I want to just buy whatever I want.
Like I love clothes and I love technology and I love things.
I want more things.
When I make my own money one day, I'm gonna have a lot of things.
And then I did make my own money and then I immediately developed a shopping addiction in retrospect.
I didn't realize it, but I definitely did.
Now I will say I know people who have far worse shopping addictions than me.
I actually don't even think my shopping addiction was that bad.
It never sent me into debt.
It never, it was actually never even beyond my means.
Right? Like it wasn't like I was even addicted to buying expensive things.
That's a misconception about a shopping addiction.
You can completely have a shopping addiction and not spend beyond your means.
You can have a shopping addiction and that shopping addiction can be shopping on Amazon where things are lower prices or like those websites like Teemu or Shein or whatever, all those inexpensive sort of wholesale model sort of, you know, you can get a fuck ton of stuff on those websites for cheap.
You could be addicted to going to the dollar store and buying random shit.
That is the most dangerous misconception about shopping addiction is that you have to be spending money on expensive things.
Okay? And that's why I didn't catch my own shopping addiction because I actually didn't often splurge on like, I don't know, like a designer bag.
Like that actually didn't happen a lot.
I was addicted to buying vintage.
I was addicted to going thrift shopping.
I was addicted to buying weird little contraptions on Amazon that would help my daily life.
Like a weird little strawberry peeler.
You know what I mean?
It's like, why do you need that?
I just loved the feeling of buying things.
I would be like, oh, I want to buy new, like I should probably buy more socks because I probably don't have enough socks.
Or like whenever I was bored I would figure out something to buy.
Like, oh, I should probably buy new underwear.
Now I know you're thinking like, that's not that bad.
No, it is. Because if anytime I'm feeling stressed or overwhelmed and you know, the nicotine is not helping or you know, I'm bored of doom scrolling on Instagram.
I'm buying stuff. It's a slippery slope though.
Because even if you're buying things that are technically, you know, useful and you're not like buying super expensive stuff you still end up in an uncomfortable position because instead of maybe, you know, the more obvious shopping addiction timeline where it's like, okay, you want really nice things.
You make money. You spend all of your money on nice things.
Now you go into debt.
But mine was more like, I want a lot of things.
Some nice things. Some, you know, normal things.
Kind of just things in general.
I make my own money and now I can buy these things.
And because honestly not a lot of the things were super expensive.
A lot of them were thrifted or vintage or whatever or underwear or socks or like a weird contraption for my kitchen or whatever.
Instead of going into debt or something from the shopping addiction I ended up with so much stuff that psychologically I became miserable and it took years and years and years of sort of realizing, oh my God, I have too much stuff.
I have too much stuff.
I have to stop. I have to stop.
And routinely going through and getting rid of stuff donating stuff until recently I finally gotten my belongings down to a reasonable level, right?
I think what shopping was for me was instant gratification.
There's multiple moments of gratification when shopping.
There's enjoyment in shopping itself, right?
Looking around a store or scrolling online.
That releases happy chemicals in my brain but then also actually buying it, like making the decision.
There's a little bit of excitement in that.
Like even when I'm typing in my credit card or, you know, handing my card over to the person working at the store.
I don't know, I'm excited.
There's an excitement.
And then there's satisfaction in especially the first few times I get to use the thing I bought.
That's really satisfying.
But then, you know, the satisfaction from that fades and it's sort of short lived and then it's time to move on to the next thing.
Whenever I was having a tough time or didn't know what to do with myself or whatever and I didn't want to do anything that was like any heavy lifting, I would shop.
And it's one thing to like go shop around and like go pop into stores and see what's going on.
I always would be buying stuff, you know?
And that's what made it, I think, bad is that it wasn't just like, oh, today's a day off.
I want to go look around in some stores.
It's like, yeah, but also I would always buy something.
It was a lot. To do that just to combat boredom or to escape through it, that's not the way, you know?
Next, we have avoidant boys.
Okay, ooh, this one's tough.
I think that this started because when I was younger, you know, in middle school, high school, I never felt like I was desirable for a few reasons.
Number one, I was really outgoing and loud and whatever.
And I think that wasn't as maybe appealing to the boys that I liked for whatever reason.
So there was that. Also, I was a late bloomer.
Physically, I went through puberty really late.
So like I looked a bit younger and obviously boys at that age, you know, they're like, everybody's bodies are changing.
And I think these boys are growing up.
They're now realizing what they're attracted to and it's more developed, you know?
And I was not. So they were not physically attracted to me.
And they made that very clear by calling me flat and stuff like that.
Saying I had no boobs, no butt, whatever.
And I was kind of awkward and like nervous around boys.
So like, any time they would show interest in me, I'd always fuck it up.
I've always felt sort of uncomfortable and insecure about my abilities with boys.
I got a bit older and it was time to start dating.
And the boys that I liked were always the boys that were hard to get.
Guys that didn't like me at first.
Guys that only give me the time of day sometimes.
Guys that I'm nervous around, that like their approval means everything to me because I feel like I've won if they end up liking me back, right?
Whereas a guy who's really sweet and just organically likes me out the gate and I don't have to win him over or fight a bunch of other girls to get him, that's not as exciting.
That's not as satisfying.
That doesn't boost my self -esteem as much, right?
And I need that self -esteem boost.
Or I did need that self -esteem boost because in middle school and high school, my self -esteem was completely shot.
And then going into adulthood and actual real dating, I was not looking for a happy relationship.
I was looking for a boost of self -esteem ultimately.
I think that's why all of my first few relationships were such a catastrophe.
Number one, I was choosing guys that were emotionally unavailable for me.
I was also choosing guys that a lot of other people like.
So it was like, I was trying to win in a way, which is weird.
And then I was choosing guys that I was so intimidated by that I could never fully be myself around them.
And I was choosing this type of guy just because by being with them, I feel like it's erasing the feelings of inadequacy that I had as a young teenager.
Now the problem was it started as sort of this thing like, I just like these guys that are challenges for me.
I like the challenge.
It helps boost my self -esteem, blah, blah, blah.
But then it became more than that.
It became an emotional crutch where I liked dating guys that made me anxious, made me feel like shit, confused me, intimidated me because it was a distraction from my other anxieties.
If I could be anxious about the boy I like or the boy I am dating, I'm so distracted.
I'm not worried about anything else.
And there was something sort of soothing about that in a very weird twisted way that I barely even understand myself.
And I'm the one who was doing it.
So it did eventually become an emotional crutch where I became used to dating guys that were avoidant.
It was a distraction for me.
And the push and the pull of it was so riveting and exciting.
And it was so emotionally turbulent for me.
And like they didn't even know half the time what I was going through.
Like they thought everything was fine.
Everybody around me thought everything was fine.
But deep down I'm like, I'm constantly trying to win this guy over.
I don't know if he loves me.
I don't believe that he loves me.
I don't think he's gonna wanna marry me.
I don't wanna ask him.
I don't know if this guy even wants to have kids.
Like, is this somebody I'm gonna be with forever?
Like he's so hard to hold down.
He's so all over the place.
Oh my God, like I love him so much.
He's like amazing. I'm putting him on a pedestal because he's so hard to get and like hard to get means better, right?
Like, I don't know.
It was just this whole fucking mess, right?
But when you're all caught up in that shit, how the hell are you gonna have time to be anxious about anything else?
Next we have social media, doom scrolling, constant noise, constant entertainment, the internet.
I mean, obviously I think this started because the internet is ingrained in our society at this point.
I don't need to explain this, right?
Like why we're all addicted to our phones, why we're all addicted to the internet.
We all started going on it to be a functioning member of society, to stay connected with people, not miss out on stuff.
And then it ended up becoming an addiction because all of these tech companies are like, we need to keep these people addicted.
I think simply put, the internet is an emotional crutch for many of us because it's a distracting addiction.
It's something that you can disappear into.
It's created to be a complete distraction and there's nothing better in a time of stress than a complete distraction and the internet can very easily do that for you.
So, you know, I'm not unique in this one.
And then last but not least, alcohol and partying.
Again, I'm like hesitant to include this but there have been times where I've used it as an emotional crutch, so I'm including it.
I think I tend to use alcohol and partying as a crutch when I don't like my day -to -day life, you know?
And I need something to look forward to, like on the weekends, you know?
Like I need to have a fun weekend.
I go through these phases where I'm like, I just need to have a good weekend for fuck's sake.
It's like when I don't like my work life for the most part.
That's when I tend to be like, I want to just party.
Like I need to do something satisfying.
Whereas when I'm like satisfied with my work life and comfortable with it and I'm enjoying it, which is absolutely a privilege, though it does happen to me, you know, often.
Well, I mean, I have my fair share of challenges and I know what you're thinking.
Emma you have a job on the fucking internet, like shut up.
That's like fun and awesome.
And yes, but also, you know, I can't lie and say that it's always sunshine and rainbows for me.
There are times when it's challenging for whatever, whatever.
I won't get into it, but you get what I'm saying.
When I'm going through that where I'm having a really hard time, that's when I want to party.
That's when I want to drink.
I want to have something to look forward to at the end of the week.
Also, when I'm going through a breakup, whenever I'm going through a breakup, I will tend to be like, let me just get drunk every weekend and party every weekend and get validation from boys because I've just been rejected in one way or another by the boy I was just with.
So now I need to set myself free and be crazy and have fun.
Now, the next question is, what's so bad about emotional crutches anyway?
We're not all perfect, okay?
Is it really fair to expect ourselves to go through life without a few emotional crutches?
I mean, for fuck's sake, we're human.
And being human is not easy for anyone, okay?
Is it on a spectrum?
Absolutely. It's fucking horrible for some people.
It's far better for others.
But even then, even for the person on the planet who has the easiest life, they're still bullshit.
You know what I mean?
Should we allow ourselves to have some emotional crutches?
Is it so wrong? With the two emotional crutches that I was consciously aware of, oral fixation and nicotine, and then social media, internet in general, I used to constantly make excuses for myself.
I was like, hello, okay, I could be doing far worse, right?
I can fully function on nicotine.
If anything, I can function better.
I enjoy it. I'll quit eventually.
I'll quit when I have to get pregnant one day because you can't be on nicotine and be pregnant, obviously.
I'll wait till then.
And then with the internet, I was like, well, everybody's looking on the internet all the time.
It keeps me in the loop.
It's so easy to make excuses for your emotional crutch.
And it's easy to be like, the fuck?
You think I'm Jesus Christ or Mother Teresa?
What do you think? You think I'm not gonna have any flaws, right?
It's easy to justify your emotional crutches by saying stuff like that.
However, emotional crutches are absolutely detrimental to one's growth.
And they ultimately do more harm than good.
In the moment, it might feel like they are bringing us happiness or satisfaction or distraction or whatever, but long -term, more harm than good.
Emotional crutches don't actually get to the root of the problem and solve it.
It's a band -aid, basically.
If you have a big cut and you put a band -aid on it, you need stitches, you know what I mean?
That thing's not gonna heal unless you get stitches, which is a bit more painful.
And you have to go to the hospital and it's a whole thing.
It's not convenient and it's not fun, but that's the only way that you can truly treat a big cut, right?
It's the same thing with challenges in life.
If you're putting band -aids on it, you're not getting to the root of the problem and temporarily it might feel better, but long -term it gets worse.
It infects, it's a larger problem.
Also, you end up developing, oftentimes, an addiction to these emotional crutches.
And addiction is incredibly hard to break.
Now you have a festering issue that is untreated, but then now you also have an addiction on top of it, right?
That's why emotional crutches are so fucked up.
And in addition to that, in order to live the most authentic, genuine, fulfilling version of your life, you need to be living in reality, right?
You need to be rooted and grounded in reality.
And emotional crutches prevent logical reasoning.
Emotional crutches can be a form of self -deception that prevents all logical reasoning and allows us to ignore reality.
And that's also not healthy.
Like, listen, it can give you a false sense of being on top of the world, but only ever for a short period of time.
So I think most people would agree that we should all strive to remove emotional crutches from our lives.
Is it gonna be easy?
No. Is it gonna be an ongoing journey for the rest of our lives?
But it is something valid to strive for.
And for a long time, I didn't necessarily believe that.
I made excuses. I allowed myself to use these things with the excuse being like, I'm human.
It's fine. It is fine.
And like it is a process, but I think ultimately our goals should be to remove these things from our lives.
Because what you'll also realize is that they actually were making your quality of life far worse.
So it's like a double whammy.
It's preventing your growth and it's actually a net negative making your life worse.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm coming out the other end, having removed pretty much all of these emotional crutches from my life.
Obviously some are still a work in progress, but even though it's challenging, it's so clear to me how these things were preventing my growth and how these things were making my overall quality of life worse.
Like with my oral fixation and with nicotine, nicotine allowed me to do stuff I hated with ease.
It didn't force me to create a life that I love, which is so interesting, because, and listen, I know like I haven't given you any nicotine updates in a while about my quitting journey.
I don't wanna speak too soon, but I'm doing pretty well, okay?
Let me just say that I wanna wait until I like don't hit a vape every once in a while or like, you know what I mean?
Until I fully like come to you and say, hi, I fully have quit, but I am not consuming nicotine on a daily basis anymore.
And listen, that's a topic in itself, right?
I don't wanna fully dig into that yet, cause I'm not ready.
There's a lot of epiphanies have happened as a result of being on my nicotine quitting journey.
It's been far more deep than I expected.
But what I can say right now is that nicotine allowed me to do anything I wanted with ease because I always had this little hit of happy chemicals in my pocket, you know?
Now that it's not in my system constantly, I don't have that ability.
And I'm noticing that I'm saying no to stuff that I don't wanna do.
And there's a lot more stuff that I don't wanna do than there used to be.
And there's certain people that I'm like, wait, why have I been giving you the time of day?
Like you're not somebody that I want in my life.
Like I'm having all these epiphanies about things that I've just been putting up with because nicotine gave me this ability to just deal with anything.
So I wasn't ever really critically thinking about like what actually brings value to my life.
Like it was, it's so weird.
It's one of those things that it's hard to explain.
And if somebody were to have explained it to me prior, I would have been like, what?
That doesn't even make sense.
But it was completely clouding my judgment.
And I don't know, now I'm just, it's so clear to me what I like to do, what I don't like to do, what's worth my time and effort, what's not worth my time and effort.
My priorities are shifting completely.
Nicotine allowed me to disconnect from life 24 seven.
I was floating through life.
I don't know, I wasn't fully connected.
And that was something that was comforting for me, especially growing up in the public eye or whatever, which for me has been sort of challenging in a lot of ways, like very uncomfortable for me emotionally.
And obviously exciting and incredibly rewarding in a lot of ways, but also really overwhelming and terrifying for me.
And so nicotine weirdly allowed me to disconnect.
It's just something that the chemical does.
I don't know how to even explain it, but it did it.
And now I'm not able to hide behind it anymore, you know?
And I'm fucking stuck.
I'm stuck in reality now.
And it's uncomfortable, but at least it's real.
In addition to that, my quality of life was made so much worse by nicotine.
Number one, it absolutely made my anxiety worse.
I'm already an anxious person.
The last thing I need is my anxiety to be worse.
Nicotine undeniably made my anxiety worse.
And I know that now because for the first time ever, not ever, for the first time since I started consuming nicotine on a daily basis, I know what my equilibrium is.
I'm actually not as anxious as I thought.
I'm very anxious for sure.
But like I used to be in a constant state of panic.
And I'm realizing now that that was because nicotine was fucking with my brain.
And now I am 75 % less anxious now that I don't consume nicotine.
It was definitely making my quality of life worse that way.
And also I was constantly stressed about like my health.
I had constant health anxiety because I was like, listen, I'm consuming nicotine and some of these things are carcinogenic.
Like it's not healthy, right?
No doctor's gonna tell you that vaping is good.
And even when I was using the XIN, there was all these things about like, is it really healthier?
Is it not? And there's so much health anxiety.
By the way, deserved.
I should have health anxiety.
I'm doing something actively that's bad for my body.
And so now, you know, a month into not having nicotine in my system, I'm realizing the ways that it was holding me back and the ways that it was making me miserable.
Same thing with shopping.
I think it fully sunk in how severe my shopping addiction was when I most recently did my huge closet clean out where I basically got rid of all of the clothes that I don't wear on a consistent basis.
And I was getting rid of some stuff that I bought pretty recently within the last two months, three months.
And I was like, why do I even own this stuff?
And then I realized it's like, because you just like buying stuff, Emma.
You just like buying stuff.
It made me sick in a way, you know, watching me, you know, tear all these things out of my closet and put it in this big pile.
I felt gluttonous. I felt wasteful.
And I mean, I feel better because I'm donating, you know, this stuff.
And like, that does help, I guess, but like, there's enough clothes to go around without me fucking buying shit just to donate it.
Like, no, that's like, yeah, I can maybe feel a little better about that.
But I think that my feelings of guilt and a bit of remorse are valid.
I actually don't think I need to baby myself and be like, well, I'm donating it.
It's like, yeah, you're donating it and that's good.
But also if I wasn't donating it, somebody else would donate it.
There's a fuck ton of clothes going around in this world.
You know, clothes and like weird little gadgets and stuff, like that's ultimately just trash.
You know what I mean?
And I don't feel good about that.
Once I got rid of all of the clutter, right?
All the stuff that I don't use consistently.
And there was barely, and there's barely any stuff left, right?
Like I have the amount of clothes that I had when I was a kid, walking into my closet, there's tranquility.
I don't have decision fatigue.
It all became immediately clear to me when I felt the joy of the simplicity of the items in my home.
Like I only have items in my home that I genuinely use that are genuinely of value to me.
And that feeling is honestly more satisfying than any feeling I get from buying a new thing.
Only then was I able to be like, okay, you know what?
I can't shop like this anymore.
I just can't, you know, like the clutter, it makes me anxious.
Having too many things in my house gives me decision fatigue, like trying to decide like, oh, what pair of scissors am I gonna use?
Oh, what pair of socks am I gonna wear?
Oh, what outfit am I gonna wear today?
People do say that, you know, objects hold energy.
And like when you have too many objects, you'll feel stressed and anxious because there's overwhelming amounts of energy.
Through having less stuff, in realizing how I overvalued having choices, I thought having choices was the dream.
But I realized now the dream is to have a really good of one thing.
It's better to have one amazing candle than six like mediocre candles.
You know, when it comes to like shopping and enjoying shopping, I'm not gonna stop going shopping, right?
Like if it's the weekend and I wanna go shopping, I'll let myself go, but I'm not gonna buy anything.
And if I do buy something, it has to be better than the equivalent of what I currently own and I have to then donate what I currently own.
That's my new rule, at least for now.
But I'm gonna try to shop less and find other hobbies and you know, it's worth it because now I know what it feels like to not have too much stuff and it's too good.
Next we have my avoidant boy addiction.
Being attracted to these boys absolutely prevented my growth.
Not only was I incredibly unhappy dating these boys for the most part.
Like there would be happy moments, fun moments, but like at baseline, I was not doing well.
And it wouldn't even necessarily be because of the boy, right?
Like it wouldn't even be like, cause they're being mean to me and like maybe sometimes it was that too.
But like for the most part, it was actually because I chose them for the wrong reason.
It was my fault just as much as it was theirs.
And obviously the reason why it became an emotional crutch was also the reason why it was making me miserable.
It was so stressful that I didn't have time to think about anything else.
It was so anxiety inducing.
I didn't have time to be anxious about anything else.
Do you see what I mean?
But ultimately that makes your quality of life worse.
I had a hard time focusing my energy on anything actually productive for my life because I was constantly erect trying to manage these challenging relationships.
And a distraction so engulfing like this really prevents growth for obvious reasons.
How am I supposed to figure out what areas of my life I need to grow in when I'm so engulfed in this relationship that's ultimately not gonna go anywhere or succeed because it was founded on cracked foundation, you know?
How am I gonna have the time to like actually grow as a person if this is all I'm focused on?
But also too, part of my growth maturing journey is also working towards my ultimate goals, right?
And one of my goals in life is to have a family.
And I was not leading myself in that direction by dating this type of boy, right?
How am I supposed to grow and find that partner if I'm searching for somebody who is kind of toxic for me so it's a distraction and they're not really fully reciprocating their love for me so it's like a boost in my self -esteem when they do reassure me or whatever.
Being in a relationship for those reasons is all wrong, okay?
If that's what you're looking for, you're not gonna find true companionship there.
And that's ultimately what I want.
It's crazy too, because in retrospect, none of these boys knew who I was.
I never felt safe to be myself around them.
And again, not only is that uncomfortable emotionally, right?
To feel like, oh God, I'm dating this person, but they don't fully know me to my core.
They don't know my soul.
It prevents growth because my partner can't help me grow if my partner doesn't know who I am.
But I was so intimidated by these boys that I never could be myself around them.
And then we have social media, scrolling, internet in general.
Similar to the nicotine, only now am I able to realize how anxious constantly being on the internet made me.
I kind of had a feeling in the moment, like, oh, that's weird.
Every time I doom scroll, I come out of it incredibly anxious.
But now that I've fully broken that habit and it's not even in my pocket, right?
It's not even on my phone anymore.
I have a separate phone for social media and stuff.
I don't have it in my pocket at all times.
It's literally put away in a drawer only to be used when I'm gonna post something because that's what I have to do for my own mental well -being.
Only now can I realize how much anxiety the internet in social media brought me.
Now listen, do I still watch a YouTube video every once in a while?
Totally, do I still listen to a podcast every once in a while?
Sure, but like, I'm not doom scrolling and it's definitely not an emotional crutch anymore.
And now, you know, I'm, again, I'm able to realize how it was holding me back.
Like, when you're constantly online, you start to see everything through the lens of the internet.
It's almost like you're living in the matrix in a way because the world that is online is very different than the real world, okay?
The real world that's physical and tangible that we live in, our own personal world, is far more simple.
The world online is so much more complex.
We're interacting with thousands of people.
We're aware of what's going on in every single corner of the world at all times.
It's just a very different world.
So when you're online all the time, you start living in that world and that world is very overwhelming.
Not only is it overwhelming and anxiety inducing, it's also riddled with bad morals and bad values.
Like, what's rewarded on the internet is often not good.
Extremes, shock value, physical attractiveness, evil, catastrophe.
Like, for the most part, what catches our attention online is stuff that's not good.
And so when you're living in that world, when you're on the internet all the time, you start to sort of adopt the mindset of the internet.
You believe that that's what life is.
All of these extremes, the worst of the worst and the best of the best and the greatest of the great and the worst of the worst.
When in reality in the real world, it's far more simple than that.
A really good weekend for you might just be sitting in your backyard drinking a La Croix, whereas on the internet, a good weekend is being on a yacht in Capri, Italy.
It warps your sense of reality and it's not healthy.
It prevents growth because it fucks with your morals and your priorities and your values.
And it makes you miserable too.
Like, you know, going back to quality of life, being on the internet all the time and living in the matrix in that way makes you feel like shit.
You know, you're constantly seeing again, as I mentioned earlier, the greatest of the great and the best of the best.
And that's what you have to compare yourself to.
And obviously that makes you feel like shit.
And then last but not least, we have alcohol and partying.
I really do think that like, again, this was never really my biggest crutch, but alcohol and partying always brought me anxiety and rarely was fulfilling.
And it often just got in the way of the stuff that makes me feel good, waking up early, exercise, stuff like that.
I think it prevented growth for me because I wasn't trying to socialize in ways that are actually fulfilling for me, but maybe a bit more challenging or uncomfortable at first, like making a new friend and then going out to dinner with them or like going and painting pottery with a friend, you know
what I mean? Like that is harder socially.
It's not as like shiny and appealing, but it is ultimately more fulfilling.
Now, the only thing is when it comes to being single, I will say, like it's pretty hard to date around without going out.
I've met a guy that I've dated on a night out.
And so it's like, how can I sit here and say that that's an emotional crutch and it's bad when it's worked for me in the past?
I think it just depends on your intentions.
Like, I think if you're single and you want to socialize and mingle, I think there's nothing wrong with that.
I think it's an emotional crutch in dating.
If you're going out and partying to like numb the pain of your breakup, that's again, that's sort of a band -aid that's not really fixing the root of the problem.
But if you're going out because you want to find your next partner and you're excited and it's like just kind of a fun thing and there's kind of nowhere else to find people, like where else are you going to go?
It's a fun, easy, obvious way where a lot of people are single, then I think it's not an emotional crutch.
At least that's what I noticed in me, right?
Now this leads me, okay, to today.
I've pretty much gotten rid of all of my emotional crutches and it's all sort of happened all at once, right?
Like with nicotine, I've been trying to quit for a while now and it's been an ongoing journey but I am the closest I've ever been to quitting.
I mean, I don't consume nicotine on a daily basis.
In fact, I go weeks and weeks and weeks without consuming nicotine now, within the last month or two, I'm quit pretty much.
I've quit. I don't want to say that though because I want to wait until it's definitely set in stone because you can always relapse.
So it's like very scary to say like, I quit but I'm doing really well with it, okay?
And then this month I got rid of all of my clothes and so my shopping addiction has been put in check.
And so that's not really an emotional crutch for me anymore.
I recently within the last six months got two phones so that I couldn't feed into my social media internet addiction and I couldn't use that as an emotional crutch anymore.
I'm just not really interacting with boys who don't like me anymore, avoidant boys.
If I'm talking to them that like we have mutual feelings for each other, like I'm not playing fucking games anymore.
And I'm just not really in a phase where I feel the need to escape using alcohol or parties.
And you would think, you know it would be a relief to get rid of all these emotional crutches, right?
Because as I explained, they do ultimately cause pain but no, even though these emotional crutches cause me pain they cause me a type of pain that I'm more comfortable with.
The pain that is reality is so unique, you know?
It's so much harder to deal with than like a manufactured sort of pain that you're in control of.
The pain of reality is out of your control.
Whereas the pain of dating a toxic boy it's in your control in a way.
Now it's not a coincidence that I've ditched all of my emotional crutches at once.
I think I'm in a major growth phase in my life.
I think I'm in a larger growth phase in general.
I think there's like this growth phase that happens when you're going from a teenager to an adult that spans from like age, I don't know, 16 to probably 30 honestly, where a lot of rapid growth happens.
And I'm in that phase anyway, right?
But I'm in a micro growth phase as well that's happening for God knows what reason, you know?
It's just like part of my maturing journey.
I'm consciously realizing and apparently subconsciously realizing that these things are not working for me anymore.
These emotional crutches are ultimately making my life worse.
And I know in my heart of hearts that I need to eliminate these things.
And that's why I've done it.
But that does not mean it's easy.
Having no emotional crutches as I feel I do right now is one of the hardest things I've ever dealt with in my entire life, okay?
I feel naked because all of these things I used to hide behind and used to soothe me, they're gone.
And my fuse is short, right?
Like let's say I'm a bomb.
Now it's almost like somebody came up to me and snipped my fuse off completely.
I just keep exploding.
And there are many moments when I'm tempted to go back to the dark side with all of these things.
You know, there are moments when I'm like I just want a fucking vape, you know?
I just want nicotine again.
Like I want to go shopping and I want to buy stuff and I want to feel the dopamine of that.
I want to just sit and scroll on social media for hours and hours and hours.
I want to get drunk at a party and I want to be with boys that are toxic because it's like a distraction for me.
Those things helped me with my stability, weirdly enough.
And now they're all gone all at once.
It's fucked with my patience.
However, I feel my fuse growing again.
But this time in a healthy, sustainable way.
I'm having to find emotional stability and happy chemicals in more productive ways, you know?
Like I've noticed that I really am relying on things like exercise or hobbies that are intriguing to me to give me happy chemicals.
Like for example, I've been doing occasional hot pilates, hot yoga classes for a while but recently I got like really into it.
And honestly, it's just because it's not about looking a certain way or like how the workout is supposed to impact my appearance or my health or I don't even fucking care.
I just like how it makes me feel and it makes me release happy chemicals for whatever reason.
Like when I'm done with it, I have so many endorphins that it makes me feel so good.
So I'm like relying on that.
I also am really focusing on like getting more work done because I noticed that when I get a lot of work done in the day, at the end of the day, I feel really satisfied.
So I'm like trying to focus on productivity because I noticed that that also makes me feel good and releases happy chemicals in my brain.
And so, you know, I'm having to find happy chemicals from stuff that doesn't release as many happy chemicals, right?
Getting my work done and being productive does not release nearly as many happy chemicals as nicotine.
However, by stripping myself of all these things, you know, it's forcing me to find ways to supplement that are actually healthy.
But fuck, it's hard.
And I've been really grumpy and I feel really bad for my loved ones, but I'm starting to see the light and it's getting easier every day.
And my overall quality of life, despite the fact that I'm grumpy and my fuse is short, and I wanna go back to the dark side sometime.
Despite all of that, my quality of life is still better.
And that's something that cannot be understated.
My anxiety is so much lower.
I'm seeing things so much clearer.
It's overall good. I know it's good, but it's fucking hard.
And it's so hard that you almost have to like, you can't rush yourself into it.
You have to kind of plant the seed in your mind, like, okay, you know what?
I know that this is an emotional crutch.
I'm gonna work towards figuring out how to eradicate it for my life.
It's a process, you can't rush yourself.
You're gonna fail. You're gonna be fucking grumpy as I've been.
But I think on the other side of it is a much better life.
So I invite you to take a look at your own emotional crutches and plant the seed in your brain of how maybe at some point you might move on from them.
It's very hard though.
It is so hard, trust me.
If I could fucking hit a vape right now, I'd love to, okay?
If I could just go spend the whole day shopping, I'd fucking love to.
But with all things like that, there's a cost.
Anyway, that's all I got for today.
Thank you all for listening and hanging out.
I hope you enjoyed it.
If you are currently trying to get rid of your emotional crutches, I'm sending you my love because I know it's fucking tough.
And if you like this episode, new episodes of Anything Goes every Thursday and Sunday stream, anywhere you get podcasts, social media is at Anything Goes.
My social media is at Emma Chamberlain.
And my coffee company can be found at chamberlincoffee .com or at Chamberlain Coffee on social media.
I love you all. I appreciate you all.
And I'll talk to you soon.
Bye.
