1: It was always you

Family, friends, community — they’ve been there at times, and completely absent at others. Your mom nursing your flu, your dad explaining the same math problem for the fifth time, your brother laughing after you tumbled from the tree, fracturing a foot. There were the friends who waded with you through awkward growing pains and heartbreaks– who you could laugh with years later.

School was to glide us into work, life, and the trimmings of adulthood. When that didn’t quite happen — and the inherited world clashed with our lived reality — who carried you through the confusion?

You.

It was always you. The “support network” was training wheels, sometimes swapped for another set on a fancier vehicle.

Relationships matter — they keep us from becoming an echo chamber. But there’s a point of diminishing returns when social exchanges become wholly transactional or obligatory… it’s time to move on or take a break. We require self-preservation, especially if we were the responsible one, a parentified child, running interference to keep peace.

Unfortunately, the most in need of self-awareness are ones pushing uninformed agendas. So if it’s always been you, then what’s your obligation? To carry yourself when no one else can. Sometimes that means retreating.

A: Permission to retreat; throw a tantrum

The polemics and lightning polarization in today’s world make the sentiment of a tantrum unsavory. The “tantrum” here is inward-facing, not outward-destructive. If you had to keep your composure while people around you do un-people things, you deserve space and time for letting go.

Retreat, decelerate, and when you hit zero, see what’s left: tired, sore, sad, pissed? Do what you need to recoup — even if it means throwing a tantrum with admission for one. Think about it like a complete acceptance of all the debase emotions we are told to keep under a rock.

Contemporary society issues adults a behavioral script expecting stoicism and discouraging engagement with so-called “inferior” emotional states. These would be: bitterness, anger, resentment, melancholy, envy, fear, shame, self-pity, loneliness, despair, frustration, etc. They are socially coded as unproductive, unattractive, and regressive, even though they’re just as biologically hardwired and meaningful as joy, love, or excitement.
So suppressing natural affective responses — some of which may present as petulant or deflective — we risk long-term emotional ossification. This has demonstrably backfired.

How many people do you know who never nurture their inner child, live it shamelessly in public?

B. Methods of tantrum/self-indulgence

Toddlers are well documented for their sophisticated tantrums, directed outward for attention. Adults, however, rarely deploy such techniques for personal welfare. Bask in glorified self indulgence because who will do it for you if not yourself?

Personally, I conduct a full-day incommunicado: digital blackout, emptying of emotional receptacles while performing floor-based kinesthetic movements, such as rug angels. Whatever your method, make it 100%. Pay attention to every feeling on the “feelings spectrum” and tantrum responsibly. For example, anger points to boundaries crossed. Envy reveals what we secretly desire. Shame shows us where we’ve confused mistakes with identity. Melancholy and grief remind us of what we’ve loved.

Let them breathe responsibly without weaponizing them at others, and they become signals, stepping stones for a decluttered forward path.

So call it whatever you want. Let you reclaim yourself. It’s always been you, and it still is.

-Noon Mul 😉