Gemma Spake

You've been lulled into a false sense of security by the honeymoon period.

So the emotional whiplash...

increases the intensity of all these really hard feelings it can also be particularly brutal because i don't know if you're a university student if you're at college if there are all these other people around who have made the same move as you sometimes like they're having a great time they look like they're adjusting fine they look like nothing is bothering them and you're probably thinking like why can't i be like these people why am i not finding this easy

The answer isn't just, you know, maybe they don't have as much to miss.

It's probably because of the person you are.

People who feel really deeply, people who are sensitive, people who are in touch with the world, who are empathetic, who are big feelers, who are emotional, and I say that as a positive thing, often struggle more with adjustments like this because they just feel everything on a bigger scale, including this nostalgia.

including the pain of saying goodbye, including the people they miss.

It also means that when the time comes, when the tide turns, when things start feeling good, you're going to feel really good.

Literally, you're going to feel this better than anybody.

In 2014, there was an fMRI study done on this very thing that looked at the emotional processing of people who were self-reported, highly sensitive people and those who were not.

And the hard emotions for them definitely registered

hugely and enormously, but so do the great emotions.

Like the happy moods showed up so much more brilliantly in their mind and as a feeling compared to those who weren't as sensitive.

So that's maybe a little bit of a silver lining to look forward to.

It's hard right now, but it's going to be matched with such an amazing greatness on the other side.

It's also really important not to fall too much into a comparison trap here, just because you're experiencing this differently from somebody who moved

six months before you or somebody else in your dorm doesn't mean it's something about you that you've made a mistake, right?

It's not because the situation isn't right for you.

Every situation, every person, I guess, just adjusts at their own time and pace.

And you know what?