Latest / The Reformed Tired Girls Club Podcast / Which Form of Escapism is Your Vice?
Transcript
- Heather Copfer: Hi you guys, welcome back to another episode of the Reform Tired Girls Club podcast. I am your host, Heather, and if you like this episode, love this podcast, and you feel called to leave a comment, a review, subscribe on Spotify, Apple podcasts, YouTube, know, all those good things that help me out, help the podcast out, I would really appreciate it and appreciate you. So today's episode, I wanted to spend some time talking about escapism. ⁓ talking about escapism because I am no stranger to escapism, some intense escapism, okay, if I may, and we'll get into that in a little bit. But have you ever noticed when you are avoiding pain or avoiding the reality of an uncomfortable situation and you just disassociate or you find escapism in things so you don't have to deal with the feelings and the emotions and the complexities of maybe your depression or your poor mental health, the severity of your health issues. And you know, sometimes we are aware of it and sometimes we are not. Right? And I don't think at the time, you know, more specifically when I was in my early, early twenties, like 20 and 21, 22, I wasn't aware of how I was using escapism, but looking back now and looking through my journals, which I brought with me here today, I'm like, oh boy, oh boy. You know, there was this entry that I wrote in early 2017 that I was just reading over and wanted to share that with you because I had a few forms of escapism that I love to gravitate towards, two of those being getting drunk and smoking a lot of weed. And in this journal entry in 2017, early 2017, I essentially wrote that I can't wait for summer so I can just be high and drunk 24 seven and not have to feel and be sad. Little intense, believe me, I know it's a little intense, sounds a little dramatic. And from this place here today, yeah, I can say that about myself. I'm like, wow, I'm so dramatic. And you know, I think that's a really interesting. thing to bring up and to kind of dive into because, and tell me if you can relate to this because I have a feeling you probably can. You know, sometimes I stop and wonder if what I'm remembering was true, if it was real, like if my perception of what I went through was accurate. And then I read something like that from a diary entry from 2017 and I'm like, no, it was real. It was real ⁓ worse than what I remember actually. And I think that's something that I'll like to do as we move through episodes in this podcast is to pull journal entries and to share them with you just to, not that I'm saying that I need proof that what I'm talking about really happened to me, but just to, I don't know, I just think that would be an interesting thing to do. And you know, I've said this before in one of my last episodes is that one of the greatest gifts I've ever been given was a diary when I was in fifth grade because at that time, not only was it a place for me to express myself and to sift through what I was feeling and the emotional toll of my home environment and my acne and my depression and my painful periods and varicose veins and narcolepsy and all of that stuff, but now I'm realizing that my diaries are actually serving as a different purpose, in that it's validating my lived experiences. It validates my trauma. It validates the severity of my health problems, all of it, right? And no one can tell me that I'm wrong. No one can tell me that I'm dramatic or that I'm making it up. Do you, have you had that experience where maybe you are telling somebody about something you went through and they don't believe you or they think you're being a little dramatic or they're like, no, no, no, no, I knew you. I know you. I didn't ever see that. And then it's kind of like a little gaslighty to where like, wait a minute, did I actually go through this? Was this real? Am I making this up? And that's such a mind fuck. It really, really is. And so I think again, having my journals now at this point in my life is an even greater gift than it was back then because it validates what I sometimes question. You know, because the further we move away from those times in our life and, you know, our memories get foggy, our memories block certain things. And for me, I can say that I question if things were really as bad as I thought they were. And they were! So my favorite form of escapism was binging. TV shows, binging TV shows and also getting really high and also drinking. And to the whole, the drinking and smoking aspect, something I have been noticing or that I have noticed at this age is I was very, I guess clever is the word, but I was very, I was very aware when I could and when I could not fall into my escapist tendencies, right? that entry was written at the end of a college semester. And I was very on top of my studies. I was like, I can't be screwing around in school. I need to make sure that I succeed because I just need to. And I can't be going to class stoned and I can't be staying up all night drinking and then expected to wake up and go to class. But When summer rolled around, I say I can't wait to be drunk and stoned all summer so that I don't have to feel. Yeah, I just, was very aware of when I could and could not escape into these things. I remember even at one point I would wake up really early, go work my server job, and then after my server job, I'd have to go to college and go to class. And then after class, I would... come home and then I would do all my homework and then I'm like, okay, now I can get high. Now I can numb out. Now I can turn on the TV and just be numb because, you know, I don't want to be alone with my thoughts. I did not want to be alone with my thoughts and my feelings and my sadness. And I, that was, that was the routine. And when I wasn't in school, it was just amplified. I used to just blaze through television shows. I'm talking like Gossip Girl, the Vampire Diaries. One Tree Hill, Friday Night Lights. I mean, can't tell you how many times I have rewatched all of those TV shows. I've seen them so many times because that's how I numbed out. That is how I numbed out. I'm like, let's just be high and binge TV. And you know, to be honest, I think my escapism was more so because of my depression. and not necessarily, you know, like my painful periods and my narcolepsy, you know, my health, my acne, my health issues, those things. But, you know, those also two kind of like tie in together where you just want to numb out because you don't want to feel the pain of these things, right? I recently just listened to a YouTube video from a talk from, I can never pronounce his name correctly, but it's like Dr. Gaber-Matte, if anyone knows who that is. ⁓ And he was talking about, you know, a metaphor for escapism. when you go to the dentist, they numb you. Why? So you don't feel the pain because they're going to be working on your mouth and they're going to be drilling and it's going to be painful. So they have to numb you so you don't feel that pain. And that's what escapism is. It's numbing ourselves so we don't feel the pain of our reality. And you know, everyone has their own forms of escapism. Like I was talking about earlier, I'm, I don't know what it is with me. I'm very, very, very freaking grateful for this aspect of me, but I was very conscious of how extreme I could use my escapism. I knew I had to do well in school. I had to work a job. I had to make money. But once that stuff was over with, I'm like, all right, let's get high. All right, let's get drunk. All right, let's binge TV until two o'clock in the morning. But for some people, and maybe you can relate or know somebody who can relate, sometimes escapism can get really, really intense and really dangerous. But I think it's also like very human of us to not want to sit in discomfort, not want to sit in pain because who wants to do that? Who wants to do that? I didn't. I mean, I kind of do now, but I'm a very, very different person now. And here I am just. talking about all of this stuff on the internet and I'm like, yeah, let's sit with it. Let's talk about it. But back then, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And you know, I want to talk a little bit about my astrology here. And I'm not an astrologer. I'm not trying to make this like a really astrology heavy podcast, but I will say that learning about my astrological placements and my natal chart has really helped me show myself. compassion and not be so hard on myself and to understand like, oh, I trend towards certain behaviors and patterns because of what is in my chart, because of how these specific energies are expressed through me. One specific thing within my chart that trends towards escapism and disassociation, you know, we call it the shadow side of a placement. I'm a Pisces rising and I have a 12th house. Pisces, Pisces in the 12th house with Saturn there as well. And one of the shadow sides, so it's like the light side, the shadow side. I don't like to call it the negative side. It's just the shadow side, right? But yeah, these Pisces placements of mine that are very prominent in my chart are disassociation and heavy escapism. And I'm like, okay, so yes, we all have escapism, escapist tendencies, but I feel like mine was very much so... ⁓ magnified and a little bit more intense. And I can give myself now a little bit more grace for that because I'm like, that's just something that's unique to me and my chart and not necessarily everybody else's. And, know, I always thought escapism was pretty universal. I think it is really still. But for me, you know, add in my mental health problems, my health issues and my Pisces placements. And the escapism is like magnified times five. It was a lot to deal with and I just wanted to numb out. I just wanted to numb out. didn't want to think. I didn't want to feel. I didn't want to be alone with my thoughts. And so I smoked, I drank, I benched. I know I'm not alone in this. I say that almost every episode because that's the whole point of this podcast is trying to just create space in a community with these, these shared experiences that we have and to let you know that you're not alone in it and there are people out there who can relate. So yeah, I would just invite you to leave a comment and share your experience. And if you still are in a place where you are using escapism as a crutch to not sit with your feelings or your emotions or the maybe not super positive reality of your life right now. Maybe think on that and say like, why? What am I afraid of? What do I not want to feel? What pain am I escaping? And kind of sit with that, even though it's uncomfortable. But sometimes we really do have to be uncomfortable to grow and evolve and to get out of it. We can't run away from things for forever. We can try, but it gets really exhausting. All right, thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of the Reformed Terror Girls podcast. And again, if you feel inclined to like, comment, subscribe, rate, I welcome you to do so. And I'll catch you next week.