How recording myself crying helped me be kinder to myself

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Lily Tomlin saved me.

Well, not really her but the character she plays on my all-time favorite Netflix show, Grace and Frankie.And not really her character so much as something she did — something personal, offbeat, radical, and in my case salvational.

First, a little background. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been trying to fix myself. Fix in what sense? Hard to say. Like most people, I’ve felt different my entire life, often unpleasantly so. This sense of “otherness” has at times brought shame, isolation, and despair.

So I’ve read self-help books, sought counseling, fiddled with meditation, mantras, positive visualization, and relaxation exercises. I’ve been told I have low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, all three, or perhaps “a case of the funkies.” (Less fun than it sounds.)

In response, I have taken up running, yoga, and for a time augmented reality bicycling. I’ve subscribed to the Tony Robbins newsletter, unsubscribed from the Tony Robbins newsletter, bought a jade face roller, talked to my doctor about medication, screamed in my car at stoplights, changed my diet, and read Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck six times.

Oh, and I bought a cactus.

None of it really worked. It's frustrating to feel like you can’t make your very existence a positive thing, and it’s worse when you feel like you couldn’t be putting more effort into doing just that.

Some days I fought the cosmic karma with relentless intensity, going full MMA on my complicated feelings. Other days, I melted into the couch like a forgotten chocolate bar in a hot car.

And one day, piled under three or four “Leave me here to die” blankets, I came across dear Lily playing her hippy woman with zero shits left to give, and everything changed.

Tomlin’s character, Frankie, was preparing to drink a glass of peyote-infused iced tea. To document the experience, she flipped on her iPhone camera and recorded a message describing her fears and hopes for the coming journey.

“I know not where this road leads, but I know that I will return changed,” she exclaims in a tone typically reserved for mystics crouching on distant mountains. “Because of this impending transformation, I called my loved ones to tell them goodbye. But no one was home, hence, this recording.”

It’s a funny scene, not at all framed as a life raft for viewers struggling with mental health, but it got me thinking. First, about the life-altering power of hallucinogens — turns out, peyote isn’t that easy to acquire — and second, about how it might feel to talk to myself as kindly as Frankie did.

My beaten up MacBook Pro was right there on the coffee table, and my willingness to try anythingwasn’t much further. So, I opened the Photo Booth app and recorded a short video.

Dated May 28, 2015 at 5:06 p.m., the clip doesn’t show much. I sit for a while, staring at my hands and occasionally glancing at the door. Then I describe my day and explain why I’m making the video.

“I don’t feel good, but I’d like to,” I finally say. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s stupid.” Click.

It would be weeks before I returned to recording, and I still can’t recall why I did. Maybe because I had tried journaling before, and my persnickety attitudes towards handwriting and grammar had scuttled that effort. It was certainly more embarrassing, saying my thoughts aloud and on camera, and it didn’t seem like it would make much of a difference. Still ...

By July 5, 2015 at 11:23 p.m., something has clearly changed.

“Listen,” I start, before launching into a six-minute diatribe about someone I had a crush on turning out to be a total flake. “We, you, somebody has to figure this out.”

My eyes are bright, my words punchy, and my hand gestures a little too big for the frame. But it’s far less dire than the previous entry. I’m speaking, presumably the way I speak to everybody, with enthusiasm, snark, irritation, exasperation, and tiny flecks of joy. Sure, I’m pissed about the guy, but I’m also just talking. I really needed to talk.

Less than 24 hours later, July 6 at 9:01 p.m., I’m back on screen.

Brick red and puffy, my face is covered with half-wiped tears, made extra shiny by the light of my computer screen. It’s not about the guy. Instead, I’m rehashing that “I don’t feel good” thing, but sounding more lost than when I first brought it up.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” I sob, taking the kind of deep toddler breath you can feel resonating in your chest. “It’s not supposed to be this hard. I just want to be OK.”

I lean on “OK,” transforming the second syllable into a kind of staccato agony. I sound exhausted and angry and bitter, and as best as I can recall, I was.

This was the first video I rewatched immediately after making it. I remember wanting video evidence that I was a worthless mess, and I wallowed in the self-loathing. I cried like this all the time, and I didn’t have a reason to cry like this all the time. I needed to pull it together or no one would ever want to be around me. I didn’t particularly want to be around me.

Part of the problem was the crying itself. My entire life I’ve cried big. Growing up, I never wanted to be the “sensitive one.” I didn’t like being the only kid who couldn’t take a joke, the one who talked too loudly in class, or the cry baby who couldn’t sort out what was and wasn’t worth a visible display of distress. For many years, sensitivity was to me an undesirable reality of being an undesirable person.

But when I got to see it in action, when I got to watch this exhausted woman trying her best to explain the angry bees inside her head, I actually started to like her — and her sensitivity.

It occurred to me that I also laughed big, hugged big, and screamed big. Everything about my reactions to being a human are big. Emotions hit me like an airbag, forceful counterbalances to the day’s events.

Sure, some people see those moods as signs of being unstable, dramatic, selfish, and even toxic. But suddenly I realized, they also make me bubbly, outgoing, grateful, and supportive. Maybe recording myself crying wasn’t the best way to see myself clearly, but for someone who hadn’t seen herself at all before then? It was a start.

As I later found out, there is a wealth of scientific evidence to back up the idea that talking to yourself is a viable coping mechanism. Numerous studies and academic texts have confirmed the self-soothing power of verbalizing your problems and the negative feelings that come with them.

“Language provides us with this tool to gain distance from our own experiences when we’re reflecting on our lives. And that’s really why it’s useful,” University of Michigan psychology professor Ethan Kross told the New York Timesin 2017.

“Think about a time with a friend or loved one ruminating about a problem. As an outsider, it’s relatively easy for you to advise them through that problem. One of the key reasons why we’re so able to advise others on a problem is because we’re not sucked into those problems. We can think more clearly because we have distance from the experience.”

Of course, I’m not a scientist. I have only anecdotal evidence to support the idea that recording these sessions does any good. But hey, it’s working for me.

In the years since I took those first videos, I’ve racked up a total of 317 clips, roughly 42 and a half hours of reflection (or more than twice as much time as all the Star Wars films combined, and with just as many explosions.)

The “I don’t feel good” theme has come up a lot, but I’ve also adopted a cat, lost a job, found a job, fallen in love, said goodbye to a friend, moved to New York City, moved to Los Angeles, and become increasingly fascinated with a weird-shaped toe on my right foot.

I’ve documented a surprising amount of my life this way. A woman of extremes, I’ve been tempted to look back on large swaths of time and broadly summarize: “Sophomore year sucked” or “I hated that job” or “He was the best.” Now, when I feel myself dismissing huge chunks of my life, I go back through my videos. And invariably, I find a complex person who has had good days, bad days, and a number of questionable haircuts.

Granted, there have been unforeseen consequences, namely an intense need to protect my laptop from the eyes of others and an intolerable adoration for the sound of my own voice. But it has also worked in ways previous self-care strategies did not.

I never have to wait for my next appointment, the doctor is always in — and might I add, her rates are exceptionally affordable. I’m also able to see my progress whenever I like; videos I took last week are immeasurably kinder than the ones that came before them. With each recording, I’m learning to love myself a little bit better, correcting the way I speak about myself in real-time. (“This stupid shit — is valid. You’re OK. You just feel ...”)

I’m not suggesting that anyone forego other approaches to mental health. Trained professionals provide expertise you might not have, and if some other method is already working for you, then you should stick with that.

But if you’re feeling out of options, that being stuck in a perpetual state of misery is just your life, then I’m here to assure you: You will find something that works. And maybe it’s this.

Over the years, my videos have changed. Sometimes they’re routine accounts of the day. Other times I just say what I need to hear, so I can avoid a middle-of-the-night phone call to my mom. Last November, I inexplicably did an Australian accent while describing my annual bout of post-Thanksgiving body consciousness. (Crikey! These pants are tight!)

There are also the days when I don’t make videos because it’s either not what I need, I don’t have the energy, or I can’t find my laptop. As plenty of former helpless self-helpers can attest, no solution is perfect, but there is a solution for everyone.

I used to scoff at the suggestion that I should “be my own best friend.” Well, it turns out I hadn’t actually met her. Now that I have, things are better. I only get to talk to her for a few minutes at a time, but they’re good minutes. She’s a decent, kind person who is doing what she can.

Honestly, I hope you get to meet her.