Wednesday, July 1, 2009

My fourth reflective journal

June, 21 2009

Along this semester I found that I really enjoy and feel the excitement of learning and exploring things that I never learned before. I am glad and feel lucky to have an opportunity to be part of DPLI 2009 batch. Otherwise, I must be still stuck working at my previous workplace which is a private school. I have learned and gained valuable experiences there but I think I will have more opportunity and a secure future with DPLI. Plus, I will get a qualification in teaching.

I have no other dream other than teaching and hopefully, one day I will upgrade myself by furthering my study in Master and then PHD. My dream is to become a lecturer whose have an expertise in teaching Physics. I really inspired by the way of Dr. Nurul and guided us in teaching Physics. I can imagine students will appreciate Physics if they explore and gain knowledge by themselves. I will appreciate all the opportunities that given to me and serve as a Physics teacher, learn and improve my skill and then, when the right time comes, I will do my Master.

It is easy to dream on whatever we would like to be but there are many things that hurdle us in achieving it. I personally, sometimes feel it is impossible to reach at the stage that I dream to be because there are many things that resist me especially my own personal problem. It sometimes affects me and breaks all the excitement of living.

As a very ordinary human being, I have lots of weaknesses. I can be so emotional and sometimes too scare of facing teaching practical and being a Physics teacher for me is very challenging. But, if I have a great feeling, everything seems to be possible and I feel like I can do many things in my life.

So, now my very own problem that I need to overcome is about managing emotional breakdown. I am aware that it is very important of being able to manage my emotion because it affects my performance in whatever I do. I am afraid if I let emotion controlling the way I act; it will ruin my own life and career. Thus, I have to take it seriously because opportunity usually does not come twice. I have to be careful and think rationally before making any decision or action.

Sometimes the feeling of melancholy, depressed, disappointed, anger, frustration, insecure, panics, anxiety, paranoid and many other negative emotions can overwhelm me until it compromised my personal well being; affect my performance and lead me to lose all of the confidence, lowered my self-esteem, and trigged me to isolate myself from other people. I am not the type of person that able to express and share my own personal feeling easily because I rather keep it by myself instead of telling others about it. I think I can be a good listener but sometimes I wish I can have someone to share the feelings that burden me as I believe that through sharing, one will feel better.

As I grow up, life becomes more complicated and responsibilities are increasing. Being an eldest sister in a poor family background, I couldn’t escape from thinking about my parents and my sisters’ future which sometimes leave me with a stressful feeling. I know that everybody may experience emotional breakdown just like me but the effects on us always depends on how we manage it. When I reflect on how I used to manage my emotion, it was hard to handle and I took a long time to recover because I often let myself get overwhelmed with the feeling or the problem. While I struggled with it, I couldn’t give fullest attention to what I am doing and eventually, it came with a disappointing result.

Therefore, I decided to reflect on this and searched information on the internet about managing emotional breakdown because I realized that this is the basis of being able to perform well or even successful in life. I need to discover and explore about this problem as I am going to have a final examination and a teaching practical soon, and with that I can prepare myself and make sure that I know what I should do whenever I am in trouble.

According to the information that I gathered from internet, emotional breakdown can be described as an anxiety or panic attacks, a trauma disorder. Emotional breakdown also can be used to describe a personal meltdown of an individual who just doesn’t know how to cope with present circumstances.

The author then listed steps on how to manage emotion and I think I can take it as guidance. The first thing is being aware of our own emotions and their importance. Emotions are the basis of who we are and what we do. We should learn to feel emotions without becoming a slave to it. Knowing what our feeling will go a long way towards understanding ourselves and why our life is as it is; for a better or worse.

Secondly, we need to learn to connect our feelings with certain thought patterns. Once we have discovered the words that accurately describe how we are feeling, then we need to take the time necessary to explore the various thought patterns and belief systems that may be associated with them; means we have to analyze and reflect on our own feeling rather than to let us stuck with the feelings.

Thirdly, we need to replace our old thinking patterns with new ones. We need to remember that we will always have emotions, because we are an emotional creature by nature. The goal is not to avoid having emotions. We need to think positively and build a fresh set of belief and thought pattern because it will develop more positive way of emoting.

The fourth step is managing emotions by feeling them. It is not an easy task to manage emotion difficulties. It is certainly not one that we should attempt entirely on our own. Talk with friends, family members, and trained professionals about other helpful means of dealing with our emotions. The best way to go about managing our emotions is by truly feeling them. Doing this will ensure a more fulfilling and happy emotional life, thus leading to better relationships with both those around us and with ourselves.

Being aware of the importance of managing emotion, I have to work on it and understand why particular situation happened and consider it without blaming myself or other. I guess it would be good if I can discuss with someone that I trust and hopefully the particular person will genuinely able to guide me with realistic and unbiased solutions. I should focus on the positive things in my life; think positive and never lose hope. I have to believe that I am the one who controlling my emotion.

I love reading self improvement books or magazines as it help me a lot and give me courage and motivate me to do better in life. Working as a teacher requires me to be emotionally strong and being aware of the importance and to have the ability of managing difficult emotion is really advantageous to me in my everyday life.

But most of all, the best way to be happy and to have a secure life is by always depending on God. Without God, it is hard for me to manage emotional breakdown. I always gain peacefulness and happiness through God. With a healthy feeling, I can live as a great person, able to manage all my responsibility and have a good relationship with everybody.

I found that by reflecting my problem, I realized the existence of the problem and it encourages me to overcome it. I will continually doing my own reflection journal as it helps me to improve my quality of living and I will do this in order to be competent in teaching and learning skill.

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