Tiny Buddha

Tag: mental health

  • Learning to Be Seen After a Childhood Spent Disappearing

    Learning to Be Seen After a Childhood Spent Disappearing

    “The habits you created to survive will no longer serve you when it’s time to thrive.” ~Eboni Davis

    I learned early how to measure the danger in a room. With a narcissistic mother, the air could shift in an instant—her tone slicing through me, reminding me that my feelings had no place.

    With an alcoholic stepfather, the threat was louder, heavier, and more unpredictable. I still remember the slam of bottles on the counter, the crack of his voice turning to fists, the way I would hold my breath in the dark, hoping the storm would pass without landing on me.

    In that house, love wasn’t safe. Love was survival. And survival meant disappearing—making myself small, silent, and invisible so I wouldn’t take up too much space in a world already drowning in chaos.

    In a home like that, there was no space to simply be a child. My mother’s moods came first—her pain, her need for control. With her, I learned to hide the parts of myself that were “too much” because nothing I did was ever enough. With my stepfather, I learned to walk carefully, always scanning for danger, always bracing for the next eruption.

    So I became the quiet one. The peacekeeper. The invisible daughter who tried to keep the house from falling apart, even when it already was. I carried a weight far too heavy for my small shoulders, believing it was my job to make things okay, even though deep down, I knew I couldn’t.

    Those patterns didn’t stay in the walls of my childhood home; they followed me into adulthood. I carried silence like a second skin, disappearing in relationships whenever love began to feel unsafe. I learned to give until I was empty, to lose myself in caring for others, to believe that if I stayed quiet enough, small enough, I might finally be loved.

    But love that required me to vanish was never love at all. It was survival all over again. I found myself repeating the same patterns, choosing partners who mirrored the chaos I had grown up with, shutting down whenever I felt too much. I confused pain for love, silence for safety, and in doing so, I abandoned myself again and again.

    The cost was heavy: years of feeling invisible, unworthy, and unseen. Years of believing my voice didn’t matter, my needs were too much, and my story was something to hide.

    For a long time, I believed this was just who I was—invisible, unworthy, built to carry pain. But there came a night when even survival felt too heavy. I was sitting in the cold, in a tent I was calling home, with nothing but silence pressing in around me. The air was damp, my body shivering beneath thin blankets, every sound outside reminding me how unsafe and alone I felt.

    And for the first time, instead of disappearing into that silence, I whispered, “I can’t keep living like this.” The words were shaky, but they felt like a lifeline—the first honest thing I had said to myself in years.

    It wasn’t a dramatic transformation. Nothing changed overnight. But something inside me cracked open, a small ember of truth I hadn’t let myself feel before: I deserved more than this. I was worthy of more than surviving.

    That whisper became a seed. I started writing again, pouring the words I could never say onto paper. Slowly, those words became a lifeline—a way of reclaiming the voice I had silenced for so long. Every page reminded me that my story mattered, even if no one else had ever said it. And piece by piece, I began to believe it.

    Survival patterns protect us, but they don’t have to define us. For years, disappearing kept me safe. Staying quiet shielded me from conflict I couldn’t control. But surviving isn’t the same as living, and the patterns that once protected me no longer have to shape who I am becoming.

    Writing can be a way of reclaiming your voice. When I couldn’t speak, I wrote. Every sentence became proof that I existed, that my story was real, that I had something worth saying. Sometimes healing begins with a pen and a page—the simple act of letting your truth take shape outside of you.

    It is not selfish to take up space. Growing up, I believed my needs were too much, my presence a burden. But the truth is that we all deserve to be seen, to be heard, to take up space in the world without apology.

    We don’t have to heal alone. So much of my pain came from carrying everything in silence. Healing has taught me that there is strength in being witnessed, in letting others hold us when the weight is too much to carry by ourselves.

    I still carry the echoes of that house—the silence, the chaos, the parts of me that once believed I wasn’t worthy of love. But today, I hold them differently. They no longer define me; they remind me of how far I’ve come.

    I cannot change the family I was born into or the pain that shaped me. But I can choose how I grow from it. And that choice—to soften instead of harden, to speak instead of disappear, to heal instead of carry it all in silence—has changed everything.

    I am still learning, still growing, still coming home to myself. But I no longer disappear. I know now that my story matters—and so does yours.

    So I invite you to pause and ask yourself: Where have you mistaken survival for love? What parts of you have learned to stay silent, and what might happen if you gave them a voice?

    Even the smallest whisper of truth can be the beginning of a new life. Your story matters too. May you find the courage to stop surviving and begin truly living.

    May we all learn to take up space without apology, to speak our truths without fear, and to find safety not in silence, but in love.

  • The Unexpected Therapy I Found on My Phone

    The Unexpected Therapy I Found on My Phone

    “Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” ~Dr. Seuss

    The notification pops up on my phone: “Jason, we made a new memory reel for you.” I pause whatever I’m doing, probably something stressful involving deadlines or dishes, and feel that familiar flutter of excitement. What chapter of my life has Google decided to surprise me with today?

    I tap the notification, and suddenly I’m watching years of Father’s Day adventures unfold. It started accidentally—one Father’s Day trip to the Buffalo Zoo that somehow became our tradition. Instead of buying me something I didn’t really need, we chose experiences. Year after year, we’d visit a new aquarium or zoo.

    There’s my son at age three at the Erie Zoo, barely tall enough to see over the penguin exhibit barrier. The same kid at five at the Baltimore Aquarium, tentative but overjoyed as he touched a stingray for the first time. Then six at the Philadelphia Zoo, taking in the fact that there is a tube system where some of the big cats can walk overhead.

    Buffalo, Erie, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston. We’d mapped Father’s Days across the Eastern Seaboard without ever planning it. So much time has passed since we started. My son has grown taller, lost teeth, found his voice. I’ve gotten balder, maybe a little softer around the edges. But there we are, year after year, choosing moments over things.

    We tell ourselves to create experiences instead of accumulating stuff, but just how important that choice is never really hits until you play it back. Here was the proof: a memory bank I didn’t even realize we were building, one Father’s Day adventure at a time.

    The emotions hit in waves. Pure joy at his excitement over feeding the stingrays, happy sadness watching his younger self discover jellyfish for the first time, overwhelming gratitude for every single trip we took. This ninety-second reel has become medicine for whatever current stress I’m carrying.

    And that’s when it hits me. My phone accidentally became my therapist.

    When Technology Gets It Right

    I never intended for Google Photos to become part of my self-care practice. Like most people, my wife and I take hundreds of photos without much thought, letting them pile up in digital storage. The idea of actually organizing or regularly looking through them feels overwhelming. Iƒt feels like thousands of images scattered across years of living.

    But then technology stepped in with an unexpected gift. These automated memory reels started appearing, curating my own life back to me in perfectly sized emotional portions. Not the entire overwhelming archive, just a gentle serving of “Remember this?”

    At first, I was skeptical. Another way for a tech company to keep me glued to my screen when I routinely looked for ways to escape. But as these memory notifications became part of my routine, I realized something profound was happening. Google’s algorithm had accidentally created something I never knew I needed: regular reminders of how blessed my life has been.

    The beauty is in the surprise element. I’m not seeking out specific photos when I’m feeling down. That can sometimes backfire, making me feel more nostalgic or sad. Instead, these curated moments arrive when I least expect them, like getting a text from an old friend who you haven’t heard from it a while.

    The Science of Digital Reminiscence

    Research shows that positive reminiscence (deliberately recalling happy memories) can significantly improve mood and reduce stress. When we engage with positive memories, our brains release dopamine and activate the same neural pathways associated with the original experience. We literally get to relive moments of joy.

    Visual memories are particularly powerful. Studies in cognitive psychology reveal that images trigger stronger emotional responses and more vivid recall than other types of memory cues. When we see a photo from a happy time, we don’t just remember the moment. We can almost feel ourselves back there.

    Nostalgia, once thought to be a purely melancholy emotion, is now understood to be a powerful mood regulator. Research from the University of Southampton shows that nostalgic reflection increases feelings of social connectedness, boosts self-esteem, and provides a sense of meaning and continuity in our lives.

    But what makes these digital memory reels especially effective is that they’re unexpected and brief. Unlike deliberately scrolling through old photos (which can sometimes lead to rumination or sadness), these automated highlights arrive as pleasant surprises and end before we get overwhelmed.

    The timing is often perfect too. These notifications tend to pop up during mundane moments, like waiting in line, taking a work break, sitting in traffic. Exactly when we need a little perspective on what really matters.

    The Emotional Range of Remembering

    Not every memory reel hits the same way. Some make me laugh out loud, like the diversity of my son’s increasingly elaborate Halloween costumes or the series of failed attempts to get a decent group photo at our destination wedding. Others bring that “happy sadness” I’ve come to appreciate… seeing my grandmother in photos from a few years back, her smile bright even when her health was declining.

    Then there are the reels that just make me feel deeply grateful. The random afternoon when we decided to try goat yoga. The collection of action shots over the years: chasing my son around the house in a homemade superhero costume, his skateboarding phase, catching up with friends we haven’t seen in some time. These aren’t momentous occasions, just evidence of a life filled with small adventures and genuine connection.

    What strikes me most is how these photos capture joy I might have forgotten. In the daily grind of parenting, working, and managing life, it’s easy to remember the stress and overlook the sweetness. But here’s photographic proof: we’ve actually had a lot of fun together.

    The reels remind me that while life hasn’t been all butterflies and rainbows, the good has consistently outweighed the tough times. The visual evidence is overwhelming. We’ve been blessed, again and again, in ways both big and small.

    Embracing Digital Self-Care

    I’ve learned to treat these memory notifications as legitimate self-care appointments. When that notification pops up, I pause whatever I’m doing and give it my full attention. No multitasking, no rushing through. I let myself feel whatever comes up. The giggles, the happy sadness, the overwhelming gratitude.

    Sometimes the timing feels almost magical. The day my social anxiety took over because I had to present during three different meetings, a reel appeared featuring peaceful moments from the trip my wife and I took to Newport, Rhode Island (mostly so I could try a lobster roll). When I was worried about whether I was doing enough as a parent, I was served a compilation of my son’s biggest smiles over the years.

    It’s become a form of mindfulness I never planned. These brief interruptions that pull me out of current anxiety and remind me of the bigger picture. They’re proof that I’ve been present for beautiful moments, that I’ve prioritized what matters, that love has been the consistent thread running through our ordinary days.

    The Memory Bank We Don’t Realize We’re Building

    Those Father’s Day zoo trips felt routine at the time. Just something we did because that’s what families do on special days. I wasn’t thinking about creating lasting memories or building traditions. I was just trying to make sure my son had a good day.

    But now I see what we were doing, and that was making deposits in a memory bank that would pay dividends years later. Every photo was evidence of intention, of showing up, of choosing joy even when life felt overwhelming.

    The beauty of these digital memory reels is that they reveal patterns we might not see in real time. They show us that we’ve been more intentional than we realized, more present than we felt, more blessed than our current mood might suggest.

    The Gift of Automated Gratitude

    In a world where technology often leaves us feeling more anxious and disconnected, these memory reels offer something different: automated gratitude practice. They’re gentle reminders to pause and appreciate not just where we are, but where we’ve been.

    They don’t require apps to download or habits to build. They just arrive, like grace, when we need them most.

    So, the next time you get one of those memory notifications, pause. Let yourself be surprised by your own joy. Look at the evidence of love in your life. The big moments and especially the small ones. Notice how much good has happened, even during life’s inevitable challenges.

    Your phone is holding more than photos. It’s holding proof of how blessed your life has been.

    And sometimes, that’s exactly the reminder we need to keep building that memory bank, one ordinary, beautiful day at a time.

  • The Prowler in My Mind: Learning to Live with Depression

    The Prowler in My Mind: Learning to Live with Depression

    “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” ~Leonard Cohen

    When depression comes, I feel it like a prowler gliding through my body. My chest tightens, my head fills with dark whispers, and even the day feels like night. The prowler has no face, no clear shape, but its presence is heavy. Sometimes it circles in silence within me. Other times it presses in until I don’t know how to respond.

    In those moments, I feel caught between two choices: do I lie still, hoping it passes by, or do I rise and face it? Often, I choose lying down—not out of paralysis but patience. Sometimes the only way to coexist with the shadow is to rest, to surrender for a while, to let sleep take me. And sometimes, when I wake, I feel a little lighter. Not free of the prowler but reminded that it is possible to live alongside it.

    Carl Jung once wrote, “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in our conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” I know this to be true. The more I try to push my depression away, the heavier it becomes. But when I bring awareness—even reluctant awareness—its power weakens.

    The Shadow as Teacher

    The shadow is not only my enemy. It also serves as a teacher. Depression forces me to face the parts of myself I would rather outrun: shame, grief, fear, anger, discontent. But it also carries hidden truths. Jung suggested that the shadow holds not just what we reject but also forgotten strengths and possibilities.

    For me, the shadow’s message is humility. It reminds me I am not in control, that I can’t polish myself into perfection. It pushes me to listen more deeply—to the pain I carry and the struggles I see in others. It insists that healing doesn’t come from pretending the darkness isn’t there. It comes from being willing to see it.

    Buddhism and the Prowler

    Buddhism gives me another way to see this. The Buddha taught that suffering doesn’t just come from clinging to what we crave; it also comes from turning away from what we don’t want to face. That turning away is called aversion.

    When the prowler moves through me, my instinct is always to turn away. I want to push it out, distract myself, pretend it isn’t there. But each time I run from it, the shadow grows stronger.

    In meditation, I practice staying. I sit and breathe, whispering silently, “May I be free from fear. May I be at peace.” I’ll be honest, sometimes these words feel empty or even silly. They don’t always lift me. But saying them creates a pause—a moment of willingness to stay instead of running. The prowler doesn’t vanish, but it softens a little under the light of compassion.

    Creativity and the Shadow

    I’ve also discovered that my documentary work—filmmaking, writing, teaching—is only authentic when I acknowledge the shadow. My camera becomes a mirror. When I pretend everything is light, the images feel flat. But when I allow the complexity of shadow into my seeing, the work has depth.

    When I sit with people to listen to their stories, I often sense their shadows too—grief unspoken, fear beneath the surface, contradictions in how they see themselves. I can recognize those shadows because I have lived with mine. Facing my own shadow allows me to meet others with greater truth and compassion.

    To create honestly means letting the shadow into the frame. Without it, there’s no contrast, no tension, no truth.

    Caregiving as Light

    One of the greatest gifts in my life now is caregiving for my ninety-six-year-old mother. These small daily acts bring moments of unexpected reprieve.

    I remember one morning, bringing her a simple breakfast—just toast and tea. She looked at me and smiled, her face lighting up with gratitude. In that moment, the prowler loosened its grip. It was such a small thing, yet it fed the part of me that wanted to live.

    Playing her old-time tunes on my Gibson mandolin does the same. When I see her foot tapping or hear her hum along, something shifts inside me. Caregiving sheds light into the darker places of my heart. The simplicity of preparing food or sharing music reminds me that love and service are stronger than despair. These acts don’t erase the shadow, but they bring balance, showing me I am more than my depression.

    Feeding the Shadow, Feeding the Light

    I’ve come to see that I sometimes feed my depression. Not on purpose, but through worry, anxiety, and rumination. Each time I circle the same fears, I am handing the prowler a meal.

    And then there are other times when I feed something else. The words of meditation may feel hollow, the wolf story may sound idealistic, but the simple acts are real: making my mother breakfast, playing her a mandolin tune, writing with honesty, or even just breathing one steady breath.

    It reminds me of the well-known story of two wolves: A grandfather told his grandson that inside each of us are two wolves. One is fierce and destructive, filled with anger, envy, fear, and despair. The other is peaceful and life-giving, filled with compassion, hope, and love. The boy asked, “Which one will win?” The grandfather replied, “The one you feed.”

    For me, both wolves are real. The prowler and the peaceful one live side by side. I don’t deny my depression. I know it is part of me. But I also know I can choose, moment by moment, which one I will feed.

    Presence with the Shadow

    The prowler still comes. I suspect it always will. Some days it circles silently like a vulture. Other days it urges me to lie down and surrender. And sometimes, when I wake, I feel a small relief—a reminder that coexistence is possible.

    This is what presence has come to mean for me. Presence is not escaping into light or denying the dark. Presence is staying with what is—the prowler, the heaviness, the caregiving, the fear. It means breathing with it, resting with it, even sleeping with it, without running away.

    Both Jung and the Buddha point in this direction. Jung says we cannot become whole without making the darkness conscious. The Buddha says we cannot be free if we turn away in aversion. And I have learned that I cannot create or care for others or live fully if I refuse to face the prowler inside me.

    So I continue step by step. I breathe. I stay. I rest. I create. I bring my mother breakfast. I play her mandolin tunes. I feed the peaceful wolf. I coexist. The shadow still prowls, but I am here too—more awake, more human, more present.

  • Why Narcissistic Abuse Doesn’t Define You and How I Found the Love I Deserve

    Why Narcissistic Abuse Doesn’t Define You and How I Found the Love I Deserve

    “When it hurts to move on, just remember the pain you felt hanging on.” ~Unknown

    There was a time when I thought my heart would never heal.

    I’d been lied to, betrayed, and broken by a man I thought I loved. A man who turned out to be nothing more than a beautifully packaged nightmare.

    If you’ve ever been hurt by a narcissist, you know that the pain cuts deeper than most people can imagine. You know the way it seeps into your bones, the way it makes you question your worth and replay every moment, wondering if you could have stopped it.

    I’ll never forget that night in Paris when I learned what love is not.

    The Champs-Élysées was alive with golden lights strung high in the air. Shoppers moved slowly, bags swinging in their hands, laughter spilling out of nearby cafés. The smell of roasted chestnuts drifted through the crisp night. And in the middle of that beauty, my world shattered with one heavy punch to the stomach I did not deserve.

    It happened on the balcony of a famous Paris hotel. I had overheard a phone call. His voice casual, almost bored. “I’ll be home in a few days.”

    Home.

    To. His. Wife.

    My blood ran cold.

    The words clung to my skin like ice. Betrayal swelled in my chest, my breath sharp and ragged. I demanded answers. My voice cracked, trembling between anger and disbelief.

    The first slap was so fast I barely registered it. Then another. Then the kick. A sharp, merciless blow to my stomach that folded me in two and dropped me to the floor.

    My lungs emptied. I gasped, but no air came.

    I needed to scream. I wanted to claw, to fight, to make him hurt. But some part of me knew that to stay alive, I had to stay still. My body shook in silence, hot tears sliding down my cheeks, my ears ringing as his voice faded into a blur of meaningless words.

    The carpet felt rough beneath my palms as I steadied myself. My ribs ached with each shallow breath.

    When his rage finally burned out, I slipped away and stepped onto the balcony. The night air stung my face. Through the blur of tears, I saw the Eiffel Tower shimmering in the distance, each light flashing like a cruel reminder of where I was—the city I had dreamed of visiting. In love.

    I gripped the railing, fighting the urge to collapse again. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to wash every trace of his hands from my skin. I wanted to go home, crawl into my bed, and erase Paris from my memory.

    It took months to unravel what had happened that night. Months to understand why I had let a narcissist treat me like that. I wasn’t naive. I wasn’t unloved. I came from a loving family. I cared for people.

    So why did I believe I deserved this?

    Somewhere deep inside, I had confused love with proving my worth. I believed that if I could just give enough, forgive enough, understand enough, I could earn love that stayed.

    That belief had been quietly living in me for years—from the little girl who learned to keep the peace by being “good” to the woman who equated over-giving with strength. I didn’t think I deserved cruelty, but I didn’t yet believe I was worthy of love that came without pain.

    Looking back, all the signs were there. Endless red flags I chose not to see. The charm that drew me in, the constant need for attention, the way he twisted the truth until I doubted my own sanity. The anger when I questioned him, followed by the empty promises meant to keep me hooked.

    The bruises faded in weeks. But the ache inside stayed.

    For a long time, I hated Paris. I had been there with the wrong person. I had imagined us wandering hand in hand along the Seine, kissing on Pont Alexandre III as the city lit up around us. I had pictured mornings in Montmartre with coffee and croissants, sunlight spilling through tiny café windows.

    Instead, I got a nightmare.

    Deep down, I always knew real love was effortless. Not that it didn’t require work, but that it didn’t demand your dignity and your soul.

    After months of healing, I wrote down exactly what I wanted in a partner, and I refused to settle for less.

    Then, when I least expected it, he showed up. One email led to another, and soon we were talking across time zones, our words building a bridge neither of us had seen coming.

    He wanted to meet right away. I stalled. Part of me still needed the safety of distance.

    When we finally met in New York City, the moment felt like something written long before we were born. I had landed early that morning, wandering the city in the winter chill. When I called from a payphone near Bryant Park to confirm, I turned, and there he was, smiling at me like I was the only person in the crowd.

    In the past, I would have rushed in and molded myself to fit his rhythm. But this time, I moved slowly. I asked questions I used to avoid, and I said what I needed without apology.

    My healing had raised my standards, not for others but for how I treated myself in love. I was no longer searching for someone to fill a void, and because of that I could actually see him—not through the lens of fantasy or idealization but through truth.

    His steadiness and confidence didn’t scare me. They grounded me. He met me where I was. I could simply receive his presence without fear it would disappear. And that was brand new to me—being loved without having to abandon myself to keep it.

    Years later, we’re still together. We’ve faced storms, held the line when things got hard, and fiercely protected the magic we built. And we visited Paris together. This time, it was the city I had always wanted—champagne kisses, walks by the river, and a skyline wrapped in light.

    For the first time, there’s safety. There’s no fear in being honest, no punishment for being human. We listen, we repair, and we hold each other accountable without shame. When one of us feels hurt, we talk instead of withdrawing. When one of us makes a mistake, we forgive and learn instead of blaming.

    Love doesn’t take from us. It expands us. It’s steady, mutual, and kind. I can ask for what I need without guilt. I can express my fears without shrinking. We celebrate each other’s successes and hold each other through failure.

    For me, this love feels like finally being able to breathe, like exhaling after years of holding my breath, and knowing I can rest in someone else’s presence without losing myself.

    If you’ve been hurt by a narcissist, I see you. I know the nights you lie awake replaying everything. I know how heavy your chest feels, how loud the silence is.

    You may need to close the chapter that destroyed you, then open a new one and write the story you’ve been longing to live.

    Forgive yourself. Forgive them. Not for their sake, but because you deserve the peace it will give you.

    One day, you’ll wake up and realize the darkness is gone. The fear, the self-doubt, the endless ache are no longer yours to carry. And in that moment, you’ll know the truth: you will never again return to what broke you.

    It took months for my nervous system to finally feel safe around men again. For a long time, my body reacted before my mind could catch up, flinching at raised voices, shrinking from affection, bracing for betrayal even when love was right in front of me.

    This is how I slowly found my way out of the grip of narcissistic abuse:

    Belief work.

    I had to meet the invisible story I’d been carrying for years—that love had to be earned. Rewriting it didn’t happen overnight, but each small reminder felt like a crack in the opening around my heart. I began telling myself, again and again, I am deeply worthy of love. I am enough, exactly as I am. When my mind drifted back to old patterns, I didn’t fight it. I simply offered a new story, one where I was already enough and worthy of calm, steady love.

    Listening to my body. 

    I began to notice how my chest tightened or my stomach knotted when something felt off. Instead of ignoring those signals, I treated them as truth. My body knew what my mind wanted to deny.

    Somatic healing. 

    Breathwork, sound therapy, gentle movement, and trauma-informed bodywork helped me release stored fear and regulate my nervous system.

    I remember one session lying on my mat, my breath shallow, my chest heavy. As the sound bowls vibrated through the room, a trembling began to move through me. First it was rage, then a deep grief for all the ways I had abandoned myself, and finally a relief, like my body was releasing what it had carried for years.

    Something softened inside me. Something I couldn’t name. But what that moment taught me is that healing isn’t about forgetting. It’s about allowing what was once trapped to move through you, until it no longer owns you.

    Boundaries. 

    I practiced saying no. At first, it felt unnatural, even selfish. But every no became a small act of reclaiming myself.

    I started small. I stopped saying yes to coffee dates I didn’t have the energy for or to men who mistook my kindness for an open door. Then it extended into every corner of my life.

    I stopped overworking to prove my worth, stopped letting colleagues pile their tasks onto mine just because I was capable. I stopped replying to work messages late at night, stopped entertaining conversations that left me feeling small, but most of all, I stopped ignoring the quiet voice inside that whispered when something didn’t feel right. Each no created a little more space for truth, for me.

    Choosing safe people. 

    I surrounded myself with friends and mentors who treated me with kindness, who showed me what respect actually looks like. Their presence slowly re-taught my body that love doesn’t always come with pain.

    Clarity in love. 

    I wrote down exactly what I wanted in a partner, not just the surface traits, but how I wanted to feel with them: safe, cherished, seen. That clarity was my compass.

    When we began talking, I noticed I didn’t feel anxious waiting for his reply. I didn’t need to edit myself to earn his affection. There was no chaos, only ease. That peace told me I was finally aligned with what I had written. He embodied nearly every quality I had put on that list—emotional awareness, consistency, integrity, and most importantly, a tenderness that made my nervous system begin to trust again.

    Healing from narcissistic abuse isn’t linear. It’s a thousand tiny steps back to yourself. Some days you’ll stumble. Some days you’ll doubt. But little by little, the pieces come back together, and you realize you were never broken.

    When the right one arrives, you won’t question it. You won’t shrink yourself to fit. You won’t beg to be seen. You will simply know, in the steady, quiet place inside you that this is real, this is love.

    Rejection was never your ending. It was the redirection toward the life you were always meant to live.

  • When You’re Tired of Fixing Yourself: How to Stop Treating Healing Like a Full-Time Job

    When You’re Tired of Fixing Yourself: How to Stop Treating Healing Like a Full-Time Job

    “True self-love is not about becoming someone better; it’s about softening into the truth of who you already are.” ~Yung Pueblo

    One morning, I sat at my kitchen table with my journal open, a cup of green tea steaming beside me, and a stack of self-help books spread out like an emergency toolkit.

    The sunlight was spilling across the counter, but I didn’t notice. My eyes kept darting between the dog-eared pages of a book called Becoming Your Best Self and the neatly written to-do list in my journal.

    Meditation.
    Gratitude journaling.
    Affirmations.
    Ten thousand steps.
    Hydration tracker.
    “Inner child work” … still unchecked.

    It was only 9:00 a.m., and I’d already meditated, journaled, listened to a personal development podcast, and planned my “healing workout” for later.

    By all accounts, I was doing everything right. But instead of feeling inspired or light, I felt… tired. Bone-deep tired.

    When Self-Improvement Becomes Self-Criticism

    I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had turned personal growth into a job I could never leave.

    Every podcast was a strategy meeting. Every book was an employee manual for a better me. Every quiet moment became a chance to find another flaw to address.

    And if I missed something, a day without journaling, a skipped meditation, a workout cut short, I felt like I had failed. Not failed at the task itself but failed as a person. I told myself this was dedication. That it was healthy to be committed to becoming the best version of myself.

    But underneath, there was a quieter truth I didn’t want to admit:

    I wasn’t growing from a place of self-love. I was hustling for my own worth.

    Somewhere along the way, “self-improvement” had stopped being about building a life I loved and had become about fixing a person I didn’t.

    Self-Growth Burnout Is Real

    We talk about burnout from work, parenting, and caregiving, but we don’t often talk about self-growth burnout. The kind that comes when you’ve been “working on yourself” for so long it becomes another obligation.

    It’s subtle, but you can feel it.

    It’s the heaviness you carry into your meditation practice, the quiet resentment when someone tells you about a “life-changing” book you have to read, the way even rest feels like you’re falling behind in your own healing.

    The worst part? It’s wrapped in such positive language that it’s hard to admit you’re tired of it.

    When you say you’re exhausted, people tell you to “take a self-care day,” which often just becomes another checkbox. When you say you’re feeling stuck, they hand you another podcast, another journal prompt, another morning routine to try.

    It’s exhausting to realize that even your downtime is part of a performance review you’re constantly giving yourself.

    The Moment I Stepped Off the Hamster Wheel

    My turning point wasn’t dramatic. No breakdown, no grand epiphany. Just a Tuesday night in early spring.

    I had planned to do my usual “nighttime routine” … ten minutes of breathwork, ten minutes of journaling, reading a chapter of a personal growth book before bed. But that night, I walked past my desk, grabbed a blanket, and went outside instead.

    The air was cool, and the sky was streaked with soft pink and gold. I sat down on the porch steps and just… watched it change. No phone. No agenda. No trying to make the moment “productive” by mentally drafting a gratitude list.

    For the first time in years, I let something be just what it was.

    And in that stillness, I realized how much of my life I’d been missing in the chase to become “better.” I was so focused on the next version of me that I’d been neglecting the one living my actual life right now.

    Why We Keep Fixing What Isn’t Broken

    Looking back, I can see why I got stuck there.

    We live in a culture that profits from our constant self-doubt. There’s always a “next step,” a new program, a thirty-day challenge promising to “transform” us.

    And there’s nothing inherently wrong with learning, growing, or challenging ourselves. The problem comes when growth is rooted in the belief that who we are today is inadequate.

    When every action is motivated by I’m not enough yet, we end up in an endless loop of striving without ever feeling at peace.

    How I Started Shifting from Fixing to Living

    It wasn’t an overnight change. I had to relearn how to interact with personal growth in a way that felt nourishing instead of punishing. Here’s what helped me:

    1. I checked the weight of what I was doing.

    I started asking myself: Does this feel like support, or does it feel like pressure? If it felt heavy, exhausting, or like another form of self-criticism, I paused or dropped it completely.

    2. I let rest be part of the process.

    Not “rest so I could be more productive later,” but real rest—reading a novel just because I liked it, taking a walk without tracking my steps, watching the clouds without trying to meditate.

    3. I stopped chasing every “should.”

    I let go of the belief that I had to try every method, read every book, or follow every guru to heal. I gave myself permission to choose what resonated and ignore the rest.

    4. I practiced being okay with “good enough.”

    Instead of asking, “How can I make this better?” I practiced noticing what was already working in my life, even if it wasn’t perfect.

    What I Learned

    Healing isn’t a ladder you climb to a perfect view.

    It’s more like a rhythm—one that includes rest days, quiet seasons, and moments where nothing changes except your ability to notice you’re okay right now.

    I learned that sometimes the most transformative thing you can do is stop. Stop chasing, stop fixing, stop critiquing every part of yourself like you’re a never-ending renovation project.

    Because maybe the real work isn’t fixing yourself into a future you’ll finally love. Maybe the real work is learning to live fully in the self you already are.

  • The Whisper That Saved My Life When I Was Drowning

    The Whisper That Saved My Life When I Was Drowning

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post references rape and suicide attempts, which might be distressing for some readers.

    “Our lives only improve when we are willing to take chances, and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.” ~Walter Anderson

    This was my third psychiatric hospitalization after my suicide attempts.

    On this visit, something shifted. All I knew at that moment was, for the first time, I wasn’t in a hurry to leave.

    There was no window or clock. Just blank, pale walls I’d been staring at for twenty-one days.

    I lay there, shattered and broken in a way that felt beyond repair. It shouldn’t hurt this much just to be alive.

    Then I heard it—a whisper from deep inside me. It was little Jennifer, saying, “There has to be more to my life than this.” I didn’t recognize this voice yet as my inner child, but that whisper marked the beginning of my healing. It was the moment I stopped running and decided to stay with myself.

    I used to be so embarrassed by how my life had unfolded. I never believed I’d share my story with anyone, let alone write about it publicly. Now, I’m ready to tell the world.

    We rarely discuss grueling topics openly—mental health, suicide attempts, codependency, and shame. That silence is killing us one secret at a time.

    If you’re reading this and you’re where I was, I want you to know you’re not alone. No matter how broken you feel, you are worth fighting for.

    Before that hospital stay, I had spent years surviving. Much of that survival was wrapped around someone I loved deeply. I’ll call him Ethan.

    He supported me through surgeries, breakdowns, and diagnoses. Even after we broke up, we stayed entangled in each other’s lives, emotionally dependent and clinging to a connection I didn’t know how to navigate without.

    My world shattered around me when I was raped. Then my rape kit and other records went missing.  That’s when my second suicide attempt happened, landing me in the ICU. I felt violated twice, leaving an internal scar on me.

    I was consumed with rage at the world and myself. I didn’t trust anyone. I pushed everyone away, even the ones trying to love me. Friends and family didn’t feel safe. Nothing did.

    I couldn’t face the reality of my life, so I buried my head in the sand of online shopping, sleeping, and eating. It reached the point where I couldn’t function on a day-to-day basis.

    My nightmares were so intense that I’d wake myself up screaming. Then I’d look down and realize I had ripped my sheets in half while I was sleeping. I was terrified to fall asleep.

    When I was awake, it felt like I was fading. I didn’t even recognize myself anymore. The fear and depression were so heavy, I couldn’t be touched—not even by things that were supposed to feel normal.

    The shower water hitting my skin would make me flinch. The blow dryer made me panic. I had crying spells that came out of nowhere. During flashbacks, I would grind my teeth unconsciously and crack a tooth.

    After the rape, I was unable to remain in the apartment where the assault had occurred. Thankfully, being the kind friend he was, Ethan let me move back into his apartment, which I had previously lived in when we were dating.

    I fell apart in every way. I hadn’t showered in weeks and was still wearing the same Victoria’s Secret flannel pajamas, which had become loose from constant wear over the weeks.

    My hair was a wild lion’s mane, the kind you’d expect from a creature lost in the jungle, only ever softened when Ethan sat me down and brushed it with gentle care. The cold hardwood floors shocked my bare feet during those brief journeys from bed to bathroom or kitchen, my only ventures in a world that had shrunk to the size of his apartment.

    Ethan would leave for work before sunrise and return to a dark apartment. He’d turn on the kitchen light and see chocolate wrappers and tissues scattered across the floor, evidence that I’d been up, if only briefly.

    He gently encouraged me to shower but never made me feel ashamed of myself. He still hugged me every day.

    After two years of caring for me, he reconnected with someone from his past. That night marked the beginning of something new for him and the unraveling of what little stability I had left.

    I remember thinking, “How can he fall in love when I’m dying inside?”

    I stayed curled up under my pink furry blanket as I watched life pass by. Heavy tears slid down my face and soaked into the only thing that still brought me comfort.

    Every time he left the apartment to go out with his new girlfriend, my chest ached with a mix of emotions that flooded me. Jealousy, anger, and confusion bubbled up so fast I couldn’t make sense of it. I felt abandoned, forgotten, and replaced.

    As the hours went by after he left, my mind started to race. I imagined what she looked like, what they were doing, and whether he was happier with her than he ever was with me. The thoughts consumed me and fed my depression, and I started binging on food to numb the pain.

    He was just a human being attempting to continue with his life, but in my broken state, I saw it as evidence that I was unrepairable, that everyone else could heal and move forward except me.

    The problem was that I didn’t have a life to return to. I had no identity outside of him. I didn’t know who I was, what I liked, or how to care for myself emotionally.

    When I no longer felt needed, I lost my sense of worth.

    That whisper lingered with me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was my inner child—little Jennifer—asking me not to give up on her again. Healing her became one of the missing pieces I didn’t even know I was searching for.

    For years, I had relied on Ethan to soothe me when I didn’t have the tools to relieve myself. He gave me love when I hated myself, and care when I couldn’t function or forgive who I had become. In many ways, he was mothering the parts of me that I had never learned to nurture.

    It took me over a year to stop my old habits when I got out. I finally deleted all my dating apps and promised myself I wouldn’t use men, shopping, or food to escape anymore. I was choosing myself for the first time.

    I started buying myself flowers and offering the compliments I used to beg someone else to say: “You’re brilliant. You’re beautiful. I’m proud of you.” Now, I was becoming the one who gave myself the love and attention I was always seeking.

    I began going on self-love dates. At first, it was just five minutes of listening to music. Then it became six, and eventually seven. Sitting alone with my thoughts was excruciating for someone like me, who had always escaped with weed, alcohol, or other people’s company.

    I didn’t know how to manage my restlessness, but I kept showing up. I added one more minute each week.

    Eventually, I wore the prettiest dress and took myself to cafes, meditation classes, and movies. I didn’t know what I liked, so I made a list. I wanted to become someone I could count on. Slowly, I began to love my own company. The woman who once couldn’t stand being alone became someone I looked forward to getting to know.

    Those self-love dates didn’t just build my self-esteem—they became the foundation of finding myself.

    Each outing helped me rediscover little pieces of myself. I realized I was funny. I could make myself laugh.

    I no longer needed distractions. I never would’ve known any of this if I hadn’t kept showing up and learning who I was underneath the pain. Looking back, the most life-changing thing I ever did was stop abandoning myself.

    If I had loved and valued myself back then the way I do now, I still would’ve been heartbroken when Ethan moved on, but it wouldn’t have broken me the way it did. I would’ve known I could survive it and still build a life worth living.

    We build our relationship with ourselves just as we do with someone we’re dating.

    Remember when you first met someone and stayed on the phone for hours, even when you were exhausted, because your curiosity about them kept you awake? That same childlike curiosity is what we need to bring to our relationship with ourselves.

    Loving yourself isn’t a luxury. It’s essential. When you build a strong bond with yourself, you don’t fall apart when someone else leaves. You’re no longer waiting to be chosen.

    That’s what I was learning on those self-love dates. I asked myself many questions, explored my thoughts, and gradually began to learn about myself.

    If you’re feeling lost or unsure of who you are without someone else, start with these gentle questions:

    • Is there a book, song, or movie you’ve been wanting to try but haven’t had the chance to yet?
    • Think of a food you loved as a child but haven’t had in years.
    • What would your younger self be sad about that you stopped doing today?
    • What small detail, like an outfit, a scent, or a song, used to make you feel alive?

    The answers don’t need to excite you right now. They’re just starting points, tiny threads to follow when you’ve lost the map to yourself.

    If asking yourself these questions feels overwhelming, start with something smaller. Whisper to yourself: ‘There’s still hope for me.’ Because there is.

    Even in my darkest moments, when I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to live again, hope was waiting quietly beneath all that pain. Sometimes, the tiniest spark of hope is enough to keep you going until you’re ready for the next step.

    Those questions lead to curiosity. Curiosity leads to action. And action becomes the first step in finding your way back to yourself.

    You don’t need to wait for someone else to choose you. You can start by choosing yourself.

    That whisper I heard in the hospital became the roadmap to finding me.

    My biggest regret is not choosing little Jennifer sooner. I kept waiting for someone else to save her, but she’d been waiting for me to bring her home all along.

    If there’s a quiet voice within asking for you to focus on more than just your survival, please listen to it.

    It might feel impossible now, but that whisper holds the truth you’ve searched for everywhere. Your journey back to yourself may not look like mine, but I promise you this: you are worth fighting for.

  • If You’re Struggling with Your Mental Health

    If You’re Struggling with Your Mental Health

  • How I’ve Found Relief from Panic Attacks

    How I’ve Found Relief from Panic Attacks

    “Don’t assume I’m weak because I have panic attacks. You’ll never know the amount of strength it takes to face the world every day.” ~Unknown

    I was just eighteen when it happened. Sitting in a crowded school assembly, my heart pounded, my chest felt constricted in a vice, and the air seemed to vanish from my lungs. As my surroundings closed in on me, my inner voice muttered, “I think you are dying.”

    That was the day I experienced my first panic attack.

    Terrified, I fled from the hall. “I need to see a doctor now,” I gasped tearfully to the school secretary. “Something is wrong! I can’t breathe properly!”

    The secretary, recognizing what was happening, reassured me that what I was experiencing was a panic attack. Taking my hand in hers, she explained that it would soon pass.

    Her guiding me through a few rounds of slow, deep breathing eased the panic. Drenched in sweat and drained from the experience, I called my mom to fetch me.

    After that first terrifying experience, panic attacks became a regular, unwelcome presence in my life. I lived in constant fear, always on edge, dreading the next one.

    The fear wasn’t just about the physical symptoms; it was also about the overwhelming sense of doom, the fear of collapsing in public, of losing control, or even dying.

    Whenever panic struck, my immediate response was to escape, to flee from wherever I was. I would phone my mom or dad, hoping their voice would anchor me until the terror subsided.

    This pattern cost me countless experiences. Movies, parties, shopping trips—anything that could trigger a panic attack—became something to avoid. My world shrank as the panic attacks took over my life.

    Locked in Panic’s Cycle

    Panic attacks can manifest in various ways. I have experienced them all. Multiple times. Racing heart, shortness of breath, chest pain, dizziness, sweating, tingling in my arms and legs, dizziness, nausea, stomach cramps, sweating or chills, or detachment from reality.

    Even though I knew rationally that these were all panic symptoms, I sometimes found it hard to accept that nothing else was wrong. I know many people share this sentiment.

    In the beginning, panic was a lonely experience for me, as I was ashamed to talk about it to friends. This meant quietly suffering. It was a dark place to be. I ached within and longed for this condition to disappear forever.

    My once colorful world quickly morphed into a choking gray. Thankfully, in time, I chose to share my condition with others.

    In doing so, I created a supportive lifeline. People whose gentle, caring aid helped me to navigate the panic attacks when they felt too overwhelming to manage alone.

    Decoding the Trigger: The Nervous System’s Hidden Role

    I sought the help of a psychologist who helped me to understand the panic attack cycle. I consumed books on panic to understand the condition that had turned my world upside down.

    Panic attacks were foreign words to me when I first experienced them. However, I quickly learned how common they are.

    Through therapy, I realized my panic attacks were not random or a sign of weakness; they were the result of a dysregulated nervous system. Through various life experiences, my body’s natural alarm system—designed to protect me from danger—had gone haywire.

    My nervous system was stuck in a constant state of high alert, responding to threats that didn’t exist. This realization was a turning point in my journey.

    With this new understanding, I began to change how I approached my panic attacks. Instead of fleeing or resisting, I started to face them head-on. I learned to breathe through the discomfort.

    I had always been aware of the delicate interplay between mind and body and realized that my thoughts needed attention. My catastrophic thinking had become my nemesis, flooding my body with increased panic symptoms.

    I worked hard at changing my thoughts, and, over time, the booming negative voice was replaced with a more reassuring, positive one.

    Progress took time. Patience was an important lesson. I learned to be gentle with myself and to celebrate the small victories. When setbacks occurred, I encouraged myself to persevere.

    Panic Tips for Immediate Relief

    Grounding Techniques: I use the “5-4-3-2-1” technique when panic strikes. This entails naming five things I can see, four I can touch, three I can hear, two I can smell, and one I can taste. This is a powerful method, as it helps distract my mind from the panic symptoms.

    Conscious Breathing Rounds: This technique involves breathing in for four counts through my nose, holding for four counts, and then breathing out through my mouth for four counts. I do several rounds of these. The positive effect this has on my nervous system is evident after this exercise.

    Positive affirmations: Memorize a few positive affirmations to repeat to yourself during a panic attack. Affirmations such as “This is just a false alarm” or “I am safe, and these feelings will pass” are very useful. These gentle affirmations invite the nervous system to quieten.

    From Fear to Freedom: A Bold New Journey

    Today, panic attacks no longer rule my life. I’ve learned to manage and understand them. Their occurrence is far less frequent.

    If you suffer from panic attacks, know this: With the right tools and mindset, you can also regain control of your life.

    Find a caring therapist. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. You may temporarily require medication, in which case your therapist will guide you. Most importantly, do the internal work.

    Today, unlike forty years ago, when my struggles first started, panic attacks are widely discussed. And with access to the Internet, information on the topic is merely a click away. I wish I’d had that luxury back then.

    Facebook offers access to many free groups. Join an anxiety support group that resonates with you.

    Connect with your tribe. A shared space of meaningful interaction and empathy offers hope and encouragement.

    What could be more healing than the collective energy of your tribe cheering you on every day?

  • How I’m Learning to Live with Anxiety, Not Against It

    How I’m Learning to Live with Anxiety, Not Against It

    “Your anger? It’s telling you where you feel powerless. Your anxiety? It’s telling you that something in your life is off balance. Your fear? It’s telling you what you care about. Your apathy? It’s telling you where you’re overextended and burnt out. Your feelings aren’t random, they are messengers. And if you want to get anywhere, you need to be able to let them speak to you and tell you what you really need.” ~Brianna Wiest

    For half of my life, anxiety has been my constant companion. I went from a confident, fiery, and fearless girl to a woman plagued by self-doubt and paralyzed by fear.

    My struggle with anxiety began in college. A sudden shift in my living situation flipped a switch in my brain, leaving me unrecognizable to myself. I found myself living in a toxic environment with roommates who caused so much chaos that I no longer felt safe in my own home.

    This constant state of unease triggered the anxiety that would follow me for years. Instead of acknowledging it, I tried to outrun it. I looked outward for solutions, turning to the law of attraction and other quick-fix spiritual practices, but they only made me feel worse about myself.

    Chronic stress and anxiety wreaked havoc on my body. I experienced severe digestive pain, tingling in my hands and feet, dizziness, nausea, and a myriad of other symptoms. I sought help from doctors, naturopaths, and specialists, but no one could find anything wrong with me.

    Deep down, I couldn’t accept that anxiety might be the cause. I convinced myself that there had to be something seriously wrong with my health. Because I didn’t acknowledge that anxiety was behind it all, the symptoms only intensified.

    I would go months without symptoms, only to be hit by a new wave of terrifying sensations. The anxiety always returned, stronger than before. It felt like a never-ending cycle.

    Then, COVID-19 hit, a perfect storm for my anxiety. Not only was I navigating a global pandemic with a young child, but we were also in the middle of building a new home—a process delayed by the pandemic. We were moving to a completely different city, living out of boxes in a rental house while waiting for our new home to be completed.

    My anxiety surged as I dealt with virtual school for our six-year-old. And then came the most devastating news: My mother was diagnosed with bladder cancer.

    My parents moved into the rental house with us because their house had flooded. Watching my mom deteriorate from cancer only intensified my anxiety. My mother’s diagnosis wasn’t the only encounter I had with cancer; it started to feel like it was everywhere. The constant presence of illness and death heightened my anxiety, making me hyper-aware of every ache and pain.

    Insomnia became my nightly companion, lasting nearly a year. Some nights, I wouldn’t sleep at all.

    Anxiety about not sleeping became as overwhelming as my general anxiety. As bedtime approached, my chest grew heavy with dread. I cried all night, feeling utterly alone. When the world sleeps and you’re wide awake, the loneliness is crushing. It was just me and my millions of thoughts.

    Desperate to shut off my brain, I turned to a nightly glass of wine. I tried various supplements, but they only wreaked havoc on my body, causing my liver enzymes to rise and bringing a host of other health issues.

    Anxiety didn’t just change me; it affected every part of my life, especially my marriage. My husband, who was always calm and patient, started to become stressed and short-tempered because of my constant worry and fear.

    My anxiety created tension between us, and we were no longer the carefree couple we once were. Our conversations often revolved around my fears, and I could see how much it was weighing on him.

    As a mother, my anxiety took away the joy of being with my son. Instead of enjoying time with him, I found myself snapping at him, my patience worn thin by the constant state of unease I was in.

    I spent every day researching, desperate to find a magic cure. I tried cognitive behavioral therapy, tapping, and affirmations. But nothing worked. Though CBT has helped many, it wasn’t right for me.

    Trying to replace my negative thoughts with positive ones felt like plastering over cracks in a crumbling wall. The positive thoughts didn’t feel genuine; they felt like a temporary mask.

    Then I discovered Jon Kabat-Zinn. His books became my lifeline, introducing me to mindfulness and meditation. Slowly, these practices became a part of my daily life. I learned to befriend my emotions instead of running from them or burying them deep inside.

    I invited my anxiety to tea and listened to her worries. I hugged my fear and told her she’s not weak. I asked my anger what she’s holding onto and allowed her to scream and cry. I wrote letters to each of my emotions, and they wrote back.

    We cried together, and for the first time, my emotions felt seen and heard. I was no longer afraid of them; they became a part of me—a part of what makes me human.

    For the past five years, meditation and mindfulness have been my anchors. No, they haven’t cured my anxiety, but they’ve changed my relationship with it. Anxiety no longer controls my life. Instead of spiraling into panic, I ask myself, “What am I feeling? Where in my body do I feel this emotion?”

    These simple questions ground me, bringing me back to the present moment. By labeling the feeling, I strip away much of its power. I tell myself, “I’m feeling anxious, and that’s okay.” I repeat this until I feel calm.

    Sometimes, I even picture my anxiety as a physical presence—a person who needs love, patience, and understanding. I ask this person, “What do you need at this moment?” More often than not, the answer is simple: love.

    My anxiety, like all emotions, wants to be recognized, to be heard without judgment. Sometimes, it just needs a moment to be, to exist without being pushed away.

    Another tool that has been incredibly helpful for me is the STOP method by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Whenever I feel anxiety creeping in, I pause and STOP: Stop what I’m doing, Take a deep breath, Observe what’s happening inside and around me, and then Proceed with awareness. This simple technique helps break the cycle of anxious thoughts, grounding me in the present moment.

    I believe all our emotions seek acknowledgment and understanding. They want to be recognized without judgment. Sometimes they just need a moment to breathe, to exist in a safe space where they can shift from overwhelming to understood. They want to know you won’t abandon them but rather guide them gently toward clarity.

    Looking back, I realize that anxiety has changed me in ways I never expected. It has made me more empathetic toward others who are struggling with their own battles. I’ve learned that everyone is carrying something heavy, even if they don’t show it on the outside.

    My anxiety has also taught me the importance of self-compassion. I used to be my own harshest critic, but now I’m learning to be kinder to myself, to give myself the grace to be imperfect.

    Even though I’ve learned tools to manage my anxiety, it’s still a part of my life. There are days when the anxiety feels overwhelming, and the old fears creep back in. On those days, I remind myself that healing isn’t a straight line—it’s okay to have setbacks.

    When I feel the familiar wave of anxiety, I turn to the practices that I’ve learned. Mindfulness, the STOP method, and self-compassion. I let myself feel what I’m feeling without judgment, and I focus on small, actionable steps to bring myself back to the present moment.

    What keeps me motivated is knowing that I’ve come this far. Every setback is a chance to practice the tools I’ve learned, and each time I do, I’m reminded of my strength and resilience. My journey with anxiety is ongoing, but with each day, I grow more capable of handling whatever comes my way.

    Your emotions don’t define you—they are a part of you. A sign that you are alive and deeply human. Embracing them, rather than battling them, has brought me peace, and I hope it can do the same for you.

  • 4 Ways to Help Someone with Mental Health Challenges

    4 Ways to Help Someone with Mental Health Challenges

    “Just being there for someone can sometimes bring hope when all seems hopeless.” ~Dave G. Llewellyn

    Have you ever found yourself in a situation where someone told you something deeply personal and traumatic and you were stuck on what to say to them, how to act, and how to behave?

    This happens to me regularly, and it’s not that I don’t have feelings or emotions about what’s happened to the person. I feel deeply sorry for them. But I sometimes freeze and don’t know what to say or do.

    When it comes to mental health issues, this can be even harder to broach. And I say that with a severe amount of irony because I have mental health issues myself. I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in 2017.

    Sometimes, when we have experience with things, knowing what to say or do can still be difficult.

    Nevertheless, I want to share a few things I’ve learned from how people have treated me and how I’ve chosen to treat people.

    Hopefully, after reading this, you won’t find yourself acting awkward when someone opens up to you about what they’re going through!

    This generally applies to people you view as friends—people who would open up to you and be willing to share what’s happening inside their heads.

    So, I guess a theme or mantra we can keep in mind would be, “A true friend shows care and concern whenever possible and, in fact, is a brother or sister who is born for times of distress.”

    What does this mean?

    Well, we ourselves can be overwhelmed when a friend is suffering from mental distress. We don’t know what to say. We don’t know what to do. Of course, we feel bad for them. Perhaps we even empathize with them.

    But what’s more important is the fact that we show how much we care by trying to help them cope with what they’re going through.

    How do we do that? My first tip is to listen when they want to talk.

    You don’t have to respond to everything they say, but you should acknowledge what they say to show you’re fully listening. It could be just a gentle “aha” or an eyebrow raise.

    Remember to remain compassionate as well. Don’t jump to conclusions; keep an open mind and avoid judgment.

    When someone opens up to you, maybe they’re doing it for the first time and not thinking about how it sounds. They’ll probably say things that they don’t mean and might later regret. Just be a good friend and listen.

    And if you disagree with something they say, sometimes it’s best to say nothing.

    The next pointer I have for you is that when you decide to speak (when you think it’s necessary to respond), remember to speak in a way that consoles them.

    Bear in mind that your friend, family member, whoever it is, they’re probably anxious, and if they’re dealing with mental health issues, they likely feel some worthlessness as well.

    So, with your kind words, you can reassure them that you care, comfort them, and encourage them, even if you don’t know the ‘right’ things to say.

    Your words might sound a bit muddled, but that doesn’t matter; if your tone reflects warmth and kindness, your friend will pick up on that. They’ll understand that you’re there to care for them and that you’re doing your best.

    Something else to consider is making an offer to help practically.

    Don’t assume you know what your friend needs. Instead, ask how you can help.

    If your friend is struggling to express what they need, you could suggest something practical that you could do for them.

    You could do some chores around the house for them, go food shopping for them, clean up for them, or do something else that you know they need. You could also just offer to walk with them to get them outside, which might lift their spirits.

    Remember that sometimes, it’s not just what you say or how you say it; it’s the things you do that show you care.

    Maybe, like me, you’re not the best with words, but your actions can show that you care about your friend and want to help them.

    The final piece of advice that I have for you is to be patient.

    You might be ready to talk and offer sage and sound advice, but maybe your friend isn’t ready to hear it.

    If that happens, just remind your friend or reassure them that you’ll listen when they are ready to talk, and you don’t need to offer any advice at all if they just want an ear.

    Don’t take it personally if your friend says or does things that upset or hurt you. They might cancel plans with you or become irritable. Remember to be patient and understanding, because this is how you ultimately offer the support they need.

    And if they cancel on you, know that it doesn’t reflect badly on you. It’s a reflection of where they are at the current time.

    So remember: Be quick to listen, speak consolingly, offer practical help, and be patient.

    This winning combination offers the most benefit to you and your friend.

    Well done for wanting to help your friend out; dealing with mental health challenges isn’t easy, but having someone to talk to is so important.

  • 8 Ways Life Improves When You Value and Prioritize Yourself

    8 Ways Life Improves When You Value and Prioritize Yourself

    “Every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, ‘This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this!’ And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart, and say, ‘No. This is what’s important.’” ~Iain Thomas

    As someone who believes in the healing power of self-care, I absolutely love this quote. But I didn’t always believe it was true. And it didn’t feel good to do it.

    My heart was too tender to be touched for long. And for years, it seemed to be empty. I didn’t feel pleasure. I didn’t feel passion. I didn’t feel love or hope or joy. I just felt numb from years of pain followed by years of suppressing my emotions with alcohol, food, and other anesthetics. And my feelings and needs didn’t feel important to me because I didn’t believe I was important.

    I suspect a lot of people are living some variation of this story, even if they’re not consciously aware of it. Because none of us get through our childhoods unscathed. And many of us go into adulthood with mounds of unresolved trauma, resultant low self-worth, and an arsenal of unhealthy coping mechanisms to keep the pain at bay.

    We don’t prioritize the things that we need to thrive because we’re too busy surviving.

    It would be easy to blame the world for dragging us by the hand, because it does—oh, how it does. There are bills to be paid, and requests to be honored, and all the million little things we feel we need to do and figure out before we can finally take a break and breathe.

    But we also drag ourselves all around, trying to do it all and be everything to everyone, because it’s easier than facing ourselves. It’s easier than facing our deepest pains.

    And it’s easier than acknowledging the truth—which would set us free if we could only admit and address it: We simply don’t value ourselves enough to prioritize ourselves.

    Maybe because we blame ourselves for pain from the past. Or because we don’t think we’ve accomplished enough to earn kindness and care. Or maybe because we’ve learned that good people put everyone else first, and we desperately want to be good people—loveable people. All were true for me.

    But I think that’s the point of the quote. That our most important work is to heal the wounds that cause us to devalue ourselves so we can then prioritize ourselves enough to figure out what we need to do to feel and be our best.

    For years I tried to make my life better, starting by making myself better, but nothing changed until I believed I deserved better.

    When you believe you deserve better, you commit to creating it, and you keep going when it’s hard because you know you’re worth it. And oh, how life expands when you do.

    When you start valuing and prioritizing yourself…

    1. You’ll start feeling calmer, more energized, and more fulfilled because you’ll be meeting more of your needs.

    The hardest thing about being the kind of person who puts everyone else first is that you never feel like you’re doing enough, even when you’re giving all you have. So you not only try to do everything you can for everyone else, but you also try to make them all comfortable and happy—which is impossible, so you generally feel neither.

    When you make yourself a top priority, you’ll figure out what you need to feel comfortable and happy first. And you’ll give yourself permission to do those things without carrying the weight of everyone else’s feelings and problems, as if it’s your responsibility to fix them.

    Then, instead of trying to fill your tank with quick-burning fuel of approval, you’ll fill it with the kind of things that truly nourish you, which, for me, includes movement, creativity, and time in nature.

    2. You’ll experience the joy of growing and exploring new possibilities as you invest in yourself and your potential instead of spending money on distractions that leave you feeling empty.

    When you decide that your top priority is to take care of yourself and your needs, you’ll feel more confident about investing in yourself—whether that means undergoing training for a more rewarding career or going to therapy to start healing from your trauma.

    Instead of spending your money on Band-Aids that barely cover your pain and overall life dissatisfaction, you’ll devote your time, energy, and resources to addressing those things so that you no longer feel the need to numb yourself.

    3. You’ll prioritize healing and feel more at peace with yourself, your past, and others as a result.

    As you work on healing from pains from the past, you’ll find it easier to forgive the people who hurt you. And because you value and want to honor yourself, you’ll recognize this doesn’t have to mean allowing them back into your life. It can simply mean releasing your anger and resentment toward them—which is a lot easier to do when they no longer have access to continually hurt you.

    Healing will also allow you to see your past through an entirely different lens, with a deeper understanding of who and what shaped you and more empathy toward the little version of you who always did their best and has always been deserving of love and respect.

    4. You’ll feel proud of yourself instead of ashamed because, through healing, you’ll be able to forgive yourself for things you could have done better and focus on doing better now.

    As you build that empathy for your younger self, you’ll also grow your empathy for your present self, and your relationship with yourself will transform. You’ll start to focus more on what you’re doing right than what you think you’re doing wrong, giving you more and more reasons to feel good about yourself.

    You’ll simultaneously find it easier to forgive yourself when you struggle, and you’ll start seeing your missteps as opportunities to learn instead of beating yourself up and stewing in regret. This means you’ll bounce back more quickly, with confidence in what you can do differently going forward, which will make it a lot easier to actually make those changes.

    5. You’ll feel more connected to yourself and start to trust yourself more as you make time and space to hear your intuition.

    When you start allowing yourself time to just be—releasing the pressure to constantly do and achieve—you’ll find it easier to hear the voice of your intuition. Which means you’ll get clearer insight into what might be good for you, in all areas of your life.

    As you act on this insight and see (at least some) positive results, you’ll develop a deeper sense of trust in yourself. Trust that enables you to make big decisions you might otherwise avoid in fear of making the “wrong” choice.

    You’ll also spend less time worrying about what other people think because it will feel far less relevant when you’re guided by what you know.

    6. Your relationships will become more of a source of pleasure than pain because you’ll set boundaries with people who hurt you and let them go if they refuse to stop.

    When you put your own peace, happiness, and well-being at the top of your priority list, you’ll start setting clearer boundaries about what’s acceptable in your relationships.

    You’ll also find the courage to speak up when someone crosses your boundaries because you’ll know that protecting your heart and your energy is worth the discomfort of confrontation.

    That’s not to say your relationships will always be effortless and fun. People will still stress and disappoint you, just as you’ll sometimes stress and disappoint them, because we’re all only human.

    But you won’t say, “No worries” when someone’s behavior fills you with fear or “It’s okay” when you know in your gut it’s not. And when someone disrespects or mistreats you for the umpteenth time, you’ll find the strength to say, “No more”—which means you’ll spend a lot less time justifying and recovering from their behavior and more time enjoying people who treat you well.

    7. Your days will feel more enjoyable and exciting because you’ll be using more of your time on things that matter to you.

    The more time and space you allot for yourself, the more energy you’ll be able to devote to the things that matter to you. The things that make you feel excited to be alive. Your passions and interests and new possibilities—or the pursuit of discovering what brings you joy if you have no idea what that might be.

    Because other people also matter to you, you’ll still devote time and energy to them, but you’ll know it’s okay if it’s notjust about them. That you can suggest things to do or places to go or ask for their support at times.

    This isn’t just about filling time you previously didn’t have available to you. It’s also about enjoying more of your time because you’ll no longer feel guilty about doing less for everyone else, or at least you’ll feel less anxious about it because you’ll know you’re honoring one of your top priorities—yourself.

    8. You’ll feel physically stronger, mentally clearer, and more emotionally balanced.

    When you address your needs, invest in your happiness and healing, and make choices to honor and support yourself, you’ll notice improvements in every aspect of your health—physical, mental, and emotional.

    Because instead of merely surviving as you deal with the varied consequences of neglecting and devaluing yourself, you’ll be thriving through the process of taking care good care of yourself.

    And it will become a self-perpetuating cycle—because you feel better, you’ll continually do better, and then feel even better as a result. Unlike the opposite cycle that might be more familiar—when you feel bad, continually do things you feel bad about, and then feel worse as a result.

    This doesn’t mean you’ll always feel great and will never struggle again. You’ll still be human, after all. But you’ll feel a lot more confident in your capacity to get through your difficult times and make the best of every hardship you face because you’ll be acting from a stable foundation of inner strength forged through self-support and care.

    —

    Maybe you’ve already experienced some of these things. And maybe, like me, you feel like the path to valuing and prioritizing yourself has often been a journey of two steps forward and one step back—or one step forward and two steps back.

    Maybe some days you set boundaries and other days you suppress your needs in fear. Maybe some days you make time for exercise and meditation, and other times have one too many glasses of wine because it’s easier than feeling your feelings, or acknowledging what you really need to do or change to feel better.

    Healing isn’t a linear process. We grow, we stumble, we disappoint ourselves, then hopefully forgive ourselves so we can get back up and try again, one small step at a time.

    The important thing is that we keep taking those steps, even if we get knocked down for a while.

    That we try to face our pains instead of numbing them. Honor our needs instead of ignoring them. Acknowledge the things that aren’t working instead of settling on them. And most importantly, continually challenge the voice within that tells us we need to do or be more to be worthy of love and care.

    Once upon a time I thought my heart was numb because of everything that had happened to me. Then I realized that was the past, and I was the one numbing it in the present by treating myself worse than anyone else ever had.

    I only came alive when I stopped telling myself I didn’t matter and started working on believing I did—which started with treating myself like I did. One loving act of self-care at a time.

  • Please Don’t Tell a Depressed Person…

    Please Don’t Tell a Depressed Person…

  • 3 Popular Myths Around Having and Healing Anxiety

    3 Popular Myths Around Having and Healing Anxiety

    “Never fear shadows. They simply mean there’s a light shining somewhere nearby.” ~Ruth E. Renkel

    Before I started healing my anxiety, I thought there was something seriously wrong with me. Every panic attack, every morning filled with dread, every social event that I would mentally prepare myself for made me feel like I had some inner deficiency that no one else had.

    I used to work as a cashier at a grocery store and would avoid hanging out with people twenty-four hours before my shift. Yep. That means if I worked on Saturday morning, I wouldn’t hang out with anyone from Friday afternoon to the evening.

    Why? Because I had to “prepare” myself for my entry-level position at the grocery store. I had to “make sure I felt okay,” as if the whole world was watching to see if I didn’t smile for an hour.

    I was extremely critical of myself and felt that if I wasn’t drenched in positivity, I was useless to the world. And that if I wasn’t exuding confidence every moment of my life, people would think I wasn’t good enough.

    When I started on my journey to healing my anxiety, I uncovered a few life events that had had a major effect on my inner world. One of them occurred during a dance competition that I was a part of at a young age. I was maybe ten years old when I was a part of a Bhangra group, which is a style of folk dance that originated in Punjab, India.

    Bhangra is a highly energized style of dance, and when you watch a performance, you’ll see that the dancers are smiling really wide and having the time of their lives. This is an important part of the performance, as you’re meant to bring this high energy to the stage so that the audience has a good time.

    At one of my dance competitions, my group had just finished performing, and the judges were ready to say their piece. All of the judges had great things to say, except for one that decided to point out a flaw in my personal part of the performance. He said, “Everyone did such an amazing job and were smiling so big and having fun, but you” (points to me, younger Raman) “didn’t seem to be smiling so wide. Why was that?”

    As a ten-year-old, my heart dropped as every eyeball in that auditorium looked straight at me. I can’t quite remember what I responded with, but if I’m being honest, I don’t think I said much. I tried to keep it “chill.” I’m pretty sure I just shrugged and said, “I don’t know” while my soul exited my body out of embarrassment, and then eventually walked off the stage with my dance group.

    We were young, and we were just having fun with this dance competition. We weren’t trying to win a national championship, and we weren’t even trying that hard to impress the judges. Even though we did end up winning a prize, the critique from that one judge ended up dampening my spirits.

    Being singled out from the rest of the group really had an impact on me. Though our mind doesn’t understand why we might experience certain anxieties and fears as we get older, the child that experienced that pain still lives within us.

    And the judge from a dance competition becomes an inner judge that critiques us before a work shift as a cashier. “Smile bigger!!!” he says.

    It’s both the small moments and big moments of pain that stick around with us. And as much as our adult mind can dismiss the experience by thinking, “Oh, it was just one thing someone said, that’s not a big deal,” to that little kid, it is. It’s a really big deal!

    And that leads me to the first myth we have about anxiety: that there’s something wrong with us.

    If you have experienced any form of anxiety, there’s nothing wrong with you. Actually, your internal system is working exactly as it was designed! To avoid a possible future “threat” (in this case, the embarrassment from the judge in my story), we create an inner judge to “fix” what was wrong (in this case, not smiling big enough at the dance performance), which will hopefully avoid having someone critique us from the outside (at work).

    It’s a weird way that our inner world works, but it’s doing its job. Because the truth is, yes, if you spend twenty-four hours before a work shift to mentally prepare yourself for smiling big at work, then you’ll most likely smile big at work and no one will critique you for being a downer.

    Now, when it starts to get really difficult is when you stop having the energy to perform for the world. It becomes extra challenging when your inner critic makes you feel like you’re not enough. It’s usually around this time that people start looking for some help, because even though their inner world is doing its job, it becomes exhausting to keep up with it.

    Which leads me to the second myth around having anxiety: that if you have anxiety, you’ll have it forever.

    A lot of people believe that if someone gives you a label, that label has to last forever. Not me, though. For example, when my doctor told me I had moderate generalized anxiety disorder, I decided that it wasn’t going to be like that for the rest of my life and that I would do what I needed to do to heal the anxiety.

    Anxiety isn’t something you need to “cope” with. I recently suggested a tool to a client, a young woman, and she said, “Oh, yay another coping mechanism!” As excited as she was to try something new, I had to be authentic and let her know that her anxiety wasn’t something she merely had to cope with; it was something that could be transformed.

    The first step to transforming your anxiety is getting aware of what your dominant thoughts are. Oftentimes, it’s the hypercritical thoughts that are causing the anxiety. When we can become aware of these thoughts, we can then ask where they originated from.

    Just like how I have an origin story for my anxiety, you do too! Oftentimes, there’s more than one origin story—a culmination of origin stories—but it helps to start with one.

    The more open you are to healing through your story, and the more willing you are to transform, the more you’ll shift. Your anxiety doesn’t have to be in the driver’s seat of your life forever. It’s even allowed to be a passenger.

    And that leads us to the third and final myth around anxiety: that to heal, you must be completely anxiety-free and completely at peace at all times.

    The truth is, in my six years of healing, anxiety has popped its head up from time to time. The first time I offered workshops, I was a nervous wreck for weeks.

    I’ll still feel anxious if I’m trying something new, but the way I respond is different.

    When we start to heal, it creates a strength within us that allows us to show up differently in our life. Even though I felt really nervous to put myself out there in my career, I had the inner strength to go for it! That’s because anxiety was no longer steering the vehicle of my life.

    It became a welcome passenger.

    The truth is, if anxiety comes from that inner kid and her experiences, then I don’t want to kick her out of the car. That little girl deserves a safe space in my life.

    When anxiety pops her head up, I say hello. I journal from her voice, I talk to her, and I let her know it’s going to be okay.

    I remind her that I’m the opposite of that judge from that day, and that I will be the one to uplift and empower her. That she is welcome on my journey to show up whenever she wants to. And that I’d love to have her join me for the ride.

    I’m here to show her all of the magic that’s inside of her. And I’m here to remind her of her gifts and talents—the ones that no one can take away from her. She is a welcome passenger, and I will be driving the car to our greatest good.

    My experience with anxiety and the healing that came along with it has taught me to be kinder to myself, to see the human behind their mask, and to be a walking example of inner peace.

    Perhaps the more difficult moments of our life are also the ones that shape us into more of who we’re meant to become.

  • Depression Isn’t Always Dark Rooms and Crying Endlessly

    Depression Isn’t Always Dark Rooms and Crying Endlessly

  • 7 Pillars of Mental Health: How to Feel Your Best (Almost) Every Day

    7 Pillars of Mental Health: How to Feel Your Best (Almost) Every Day

    “Sending love to everyone who’s doing their best to heal from things they don’t discuss.” ~Unknown

    When I was twelve years old, I planned on taking my own life. I had a plan, I had the means, and I thought about it every single day for months. No one was aware—not my family, not my best friends, not my teachers at school or my peers. It would have been a huge surprise in my community had I attempted it, because I didn’t appear as someone who was severely depressed.

    Thankfully, I never acted on it, and fifteen years later I can speak about it easily, as I have truly healed my mind, and I doubt I will ever again experience such darkness.

    Over the years, my anxiety and depression morphed into a variety of different symptoms including eating disorders, substance abuse, and a deep lack of self-love and trust. Finally, I received some diagnoses between the ages of eighteen and nineteen, and I decided to jump headfirst into healing.

    Living with bipolar disorder, anxiety, and ADHD is not always easy, especially because I decided not to take any medication. (A personal choice that was right for me but might not be right for all.) After many years of trial and error, I’ve managed to cultivate a lifestyle that is fully conducive to healing my mind, and I uphold this healing lifestyle as my priority every single day.

    As I reflect on times in my life when I haven’t been at my best, or when I’ve fallen into a depressive episode, there are always aspects of my self-care routine that have fallen to the wayside. On the contrary, when I am at my high functioning, life-loving best self, I am effortlessly practicing what I call my seven pillars of mental health!

    I learned from experience what science also proves is good for us, and I promise that if you focus on these seven areas of your life most days (if not every day), you will feel better for it!

    1. Exercise

    When we exercise, our brain releases endorphins and a host of feel-good chemicals, which are essential for making us feel calm, content, and happy! Exercise is not only great for our brains, but also helps to boost our self-confidence, increase our energy, and boost our immunity, and has many positive effects for our body.

    The key here is consistency; double blind studies have found twenty minutes of daily exercise to be as effective at increasing levels of well-being as leading antidepressants. Let that sink in!

    Moving my body every single day has been a huge priority of mine for years, and it became even easier when I found hobbies that offer fun while I’m exercising! For me, that means going hiking, rock climbing, skiing, highlining, and pretty much anything else that gets me outdoors, in nature, and moving around.

    Find a way to move your body that you genuinely enjoy. It shouldn’t feel like a chore. You could go for a walk in nature with a friend, have a dance party in your kitchen, or try a new hobby or sport. Move your body, every single day, and feel the lasting benefits!

    2. Sleep

    Oh, elusive sleep, how important you are! Sleep is a crucial time for our bodies to regenerate cells, to integrate and process emotions, and to turn the lessons from our days into memories.

    When we have a poor sleep, we not only feel the effects the next day, but at least two days later (and sometimes even longer). Improving our sleep leads to lower levels of stress and anxiety, better cognitive functioning, stronger immune systems, and more energy.

    A huge shift in my mental health journey came when I decided to prioritize having a beautiful day over staying up late at a bar and sleeping the next day away. (Besides, that hike won’t feel nearly as fun if you stayed up drinking until 4 a.m.) Having a beautiful morning begins the night before, and you deserve to enjoy the daytime!

    Here are some tips to improve your sleep:

    • Go to bed and wake up at a similar time each day (ideally before 10 p.m., as the majority of your HGH, a hormone essential for cellular growth and repair, is released between 10 p.m. and 12 a.m. while you sleep)
    • Turn off the screens at least one hour before bed, if not sooner
    • Avoid eating a big meal at least two hours before bed
    • Set up your sleeping space to be dark, quiet, and at a cool temperature

     3. Nutrition

    You truly are what you eat, my friends! Not only does the food you consume literally become the cells that make up your body, but you also have an entire nervous system in your gut.

    The Enteric Nervous System (ENS) is where the majority of your serotonin and dopamine are produced. When our guts are healthy, our minds feel the benefits, and vice versa. This is also why IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) and anxiety are so closely linked, and why, for some, IBS can actually be cured with meditation and hypnotherapy.

    Nutrition plans are so specific for everybody, but some guidelines that are helpful to follow are:

    • Eat seasonally
    • Eat locally
    • Eat a wide variety of whole foods
    • Avoid processed foods (easier said than done, go easy on yourself)

    How you eat is equally as important as what you eat. Allow yourself to slow down, bring a moment of mindfulness into every meal, and practice gratitude for the miracles that brought this nourishment to your plate. I absolutely love food, and bringing in these simple adaptations had a huge impact on both my gut health (goodbye, IBS) and my mood.

    4. Meditation and mindfulness

    Modern science is proving what ancient wisdom has been saying for centuries. Meditating for as little as five minutes a day leads to lower stress and anxiety, improved sleep, enhanced creativity, and a huge host of other benefits! Download a free meditation app and give yourself a simple five minutes of time in the morning; your mind will thank you!

    Mindfulness is something that can be practiced throughout every moment of the day. It is simply an awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and the present moment. A trick I like to use is to post little sticky notes around my house with words like “pause” and “breathe.” Whenever I see a note, I’m reminded to take a moment to be mindful, check in with myself, and take a deep breath.

    5. Connection with nature and source

    The only two things that consistently increase our well-being more than we expect them to are exercise and time in nature. We are natural beings, and when we experience poor mental health, it often stems from a feeling of disconnection. Reconnecting with nature, reconnecting with source/ divinity/ spirit, and reminding yourself of the bigger picture you play in the universe can do wonders for your mood!

    As a menstruating woman, connecting with nature also means connecting with my body and tuning into my cycle. We require different things at different times of the month, and tuning into these rhythms is a beautiful way to reconnect to the cycles of nature all around us.

    6. Connection with humans

    You are the sum of the five people that you spend the most time with. What inspires you about them? What do you love about them? The cool thing is that they’re thinking the same things about you!

    We are social creatures, and we need each other, as mirrors, in order to thrive. Make a date to see a good friend this week, text someone you haven’t spoken to in a while just to tell them you love them, and flex your social muscle!

    When I first started figuring out my pillars of mental health, I thought that if I simply did the things to take care of myself, that was enough. I was quickly reminded that feeling happy is much better when shared.

    7. Good old-fashioned self-care

    Although prioritizing the above six pillars make up a rigorous self-care routine, it is still so essential to take “me time” and do whatever recharges you. This might be a hot bath, a day to yourself, or a gorgeous restful evening, but whatever it is for you, make sure you prioritize it!

    Upholding these seven pillars of mental health allows me to live a healthy, happy life, without medication, even with the diagnosis of bipolar disorder (among other things). (Again, not something I’m recommending for all—everyone’s situation and needs are different!)

    No matter what your mental health journey has looked like, I promise that if you prioritize each of these pillars, and always make the next best decision for yourself, you will find healing, just as I have.

  • Don’t Feel Guilty About Needing Breaks

    Don’t Feel Guilty About Needing Breaks

  • How I Calm My Anxiety Octopus at Home with My Aquaponics Zen Zone

    How I Calm My Anxiety Octopus at Home with My Aquaponics Zen Zone

    “Stay in the moment. The practice of staying present will heal you. Obsessing about how the future will turn out creates anxiety. Replaying broken scenarios from the past causes anger and sadness. Stay here, in this moment.” ~Sylvester McNutt

    Like many people, I have an anxiety disorder that twists my thoughts and feelings. I call it my “anxiety octopus,” as it feels like there are tentacles in my brain triggering fear-based reactions for no reason. In everything, even things that I am confident in, I suddenly feel insecure and unsure.

    It takes time to realize that the “anxiety octopus” has woken and is stretching, almost testing my powers of resilience that day.

    Today was one of those days where my resilience was low, and it took time to notice that the octopus had woken.

    There was nothing that triggered it, nothing special about today. Just a cold morning with the sun popping its head out, a morning that I normally love the briskness of, yet today, it was hard to get started. My feline alarm clocks kept meowing, even when I gave a morning pat.

    They wanted me up. The “anxiety octopus” didn’t.

    Sometimes when your heart races so hard, you fear that you are going to have a heart attack. That’s how it was this morning. Heart racing, inability to think, sweating profusely, your breathing becomes shallow, and you feel this intense fear, for no reason.

    This is the point where my doctors say, “Take medication.” This is where I think to myself, “Connect with my Zen.”

    You’ve probably heard of the power of garden therapy, which is incredible. But I’m an Aries woman, a fire sign that loves to flare; the Earth doesn’t actually calm me down or help with my anxiety. It does for many, but not for me. I need water to balance me out.

    My Zen Zone is my aquaponics systems. Yes, I have more than one. Truth be told, I have five and two more planned. Aquaponics is a form of gardening that you can do in any space; however, unlike soil gardening, it is growing food with water constantly cycling through it in a sustainable way. 

    Not to be confused with hydroponics, which also grows food with water and synthetic nutrients in an artificial system, aquaponics in a man-made (or woman-made, in my case) ecosystem. We have freshwater fish (mine are friends, not food) that provide fertilizer for the veggies, and the veggies filter the water for the fish. They both have their own space within an aquaponics system, and being closed-looped, the water is fully recycled.

    With constant fertilizer from the fish and water continuously flowing through the system, the veggies are in plant heaven. They grow faster in this system that is replicating nature. This is not a new fad; in fact, it’s a concept dating back 4000 years BC.

    Other than being a food growing system, which is totally awesome and in a changing world, necessary, it is also my Zen Zone.

    It helps to balance my fire energy and calm me down. Sitting outside by my little courtyard aquaponics system, powered by goldfish, this morning, I sat watching the fish swim and the veggies that are thriving, and I could finally breathe again.

    It’s as if hearing that water flowing gently through the aquaponics system was a signal for the “anxiety octopus” to go back to sleep. As if it connected with the water and found its peace.

    Obviously, there is no octopus in my mind, and this is how I manage my anxiety with these thoughts, but it is what works for me.

    I find peace in hearing the water, seeing the fish swimming, and smelling the herbs that are right there. I have a lot growing in this small system; you can get so much produce in a small space because the water filled with fertilizer passes through it all, whereas soil gardens are more limited.

    It makes me smile, as I know I have food security in my small space, no matter what happens.

    I think the best part is this little system costs me $10 per year to run based on the watts of the water pump. That is the cost to help control the “anxiety octopus” in my mind.

    It’s always fascinating to watch people’s reaction when they come to my home. I’m very private, and at times people visit for various reasons. Not one to be normal, my home is not just filled with animals (both living and artwork), but my unique aquatic family.

    As people move down the hallway, talking about what is going on in their life, I watch as they enter the dining room, where I have four very special aquariums. My first aquatic family. I see the excitement in their eyes, and I realize that my aquatic family are being better hosts than I am. I have a passion for the Murray-Darling Basin, so all my fish are native to the region. My Murray Cod, Eel-tailed catfish, Bass, and even my turtles are natives and mostly extroverts.

    However, the excitement changes as I take them out back to my main aquaponics system and courtyard aquaponics system. I watch them take a deep breath and, in that moment, I see something they are often unaware of.

    As they breathe deeply watching the fish and veggies moving slowly in the breeze, I see their “anxiety octopus” go to sleep too. Everything about them changes. It’s like they come home to a place within themselves that they had forgotten.

    In that moment, I feel I have done something I have been put here on this Earth to do. To help another person breathe again. Just by showing them my aquaponics systems and how they work. I reconnect them with nature too, as well as help them to find their flow.

    Sometimes no words are needed; just listening to the water and seeing something else being in balance, which is what aquaponics is all about, helps them to balance themselves out too.

    It’s not your conventional form of garden therapy. In fact, this only takes me ten minutes a day to maintain, so I have a lot of time to spend relaxing by the flowing water.

    There is something incredibly special about aquaponics, something that is often known but forgotten: Everything is interconnected, just as all things in life are.

    The fish cannot live without being in an ecosystem where the bacteria convert their waste into useable fertilizer, and the plants need to filter the water using the fertilizer. In that system, everything is interconnected.

    The lesson here is that when my “anxiety octopus” awakens, this interconnectedness ceases to happen. At this point, I need to trigger my awareness of this, and reconnect with everything. For me, as I sit by my aquaponics systems, feeling myself breathe a bit deeper, feeling my heart rate slow a little, I start to reconnect to the interconnectedness of myself—how my body works, how my mind works, and how I am an amazing soul put on this earth for a reason.

    You need to find what works for you to be able to do this. But no matter what you find to bring peace and balance into your life, remember this: We are all here for a reason. It doesn’t feel like it sometimes, and as life hits us in the gut it can feel like we can never get up. Feel like “What’s the point?” I’ve been there.

    For me, it was seeing aquaponics in a different way that got me up. Seeing that I didn’t have to hold onto others’ beliefs, that I could let go of everyone’s crap that I was conditioned to believe. That I could reconnect to the deepest part of myself and my purpose—to share the beauty and power of my Zen Zone and inspire people like yourself to find their own zen and purpose.

  • 3 Lifestyle Changes I Made to Overcome Dissociative Panic Attacks

    3 Lifestyle Changes I Made to Overcome Dissociative Panic Attacks

    “There is no greater wealth in this world than peace of mind.” ~Unknown

    A few years ago, I had what could safely be deemed a “bad year.” My live-in partner left me out of the blue, I became un(der)employed and racked with debt, I got in a car accident that totaled my car, and then…my dog died.

    After the year that I’d had, the death of that dog, my most treasured friend, was the final straw. It was the final straw for believing that things might turn around soon, and it was the final straw for my mental health.

    Shortly after her death, I started experiencing what I now know were dissociative panic attacks. At the time, however, I thought that I was going crazy, dying, and that my spirit was detached from my body. A feeling you can probably only understand if you, too, experience panic attacks and have felt derealization before.

    For a long time, I suffered. And wallowed. And gave up. But after about six months of living in this nightmarish state of near-constant dissociation and depersonalization, I had a moment of clarity. I knew that I had to give it my all to get better, no matter how long it took, because the alternative was bad.

    A panic attack is the ultimate manifestation of feeling a lack of control—feeling like you’re going to die, like you’re going crazy, like you’re disembodied… and there’s nothing you can do about it.

    So I started my healing process by looking for ways to take back dribs and drabs of control in my life.

    It didn’t happen overnight, but I am extremely grateful to say that it’s been over two years since I’ve had a panic attack. Something I never thought I’d be able to say when I was in the throes of the disorder. So how did I do it? I would love to share that with you here.

    These are the three tools that I believe had the biggest impact on healing my dissociative panic disorder.

    Adopting an Anti-Inflammation Diet

    Inflammation is the response our bodies have to foods that irritate our digestive system, and the amount of inflammation in your body has a direct impact on brain-functioning. According to Psychology Today, there is an undeniable correlation between inflammation in the gut and mental health disorders like anxiety, bi-polar disorder, and depression.

    I cut out gluten and alcohol completely (both notoriously inflammatory) and would have cut out dairy too except that I’d already done that a few years earlier for other reasons.

    Looking back, I think adopting this new diet was effective in more than one way… Cutting out alcohol was not only helpful in soothing inflammation, but it also allowed me to become much more clear-headed right out of the gate. I was never a huge drinker, but eliminating the ten to twelve weekly drinks I did have was enough to notice an instant improvement in the evenness of my emotional state throughout the day.

    Another surprise benefit was that making an intentional choice about the guidelines of my diet gave me back a sense of agency in my life because with every meal, I knew I was making an intentional choice about what would go in my body and why.

    Progressive-Overload Weight Training

    Unfortunately, weight training still seems to feel “off-limits” to many of us. There’s a rampant gym culture in our society, and it feels like either you’re in or you’re out. However, I learned during this journey to mental health that once you get “in,” it becomes clear that nothing and no one was ever really keeping you out!

    But why did I decide it was important to find my way “in” in the first place? To be honest, this one was a happy accident. I knew that it was important to start moving my body again, but it was January 2021, which meant it was too cold to exercise outside, and group fitness was still not an option thanks to the pandemic. Going to the gym, however, wearing a mask, was.

    What I discovered from my religious gym routine, and my dedication to learning how to weight train as a means to overcome feeling so awkward and uncomfortable during every workout, is that weight training has the powerful effect of connecting your mind to your body. Something I didn’t realize had been lacking for me.

    It’s impossible to lift heavy weights without becoming deeply aware of the connection between your mental cues, your breath, and your muscles.

    Dissociative panic disorder is a nasty feedback loop of feeling dissociated and disconnected, which is scary, and leads to our body trying to overcome that fear by dissociating and disconnecting. Developing a weightlifting routine created an interruption in that debilitating cycle and, over time, reminded me that I am firmly rooted in my body and that I have control over my physical reality.

    Meditation 

    When I first started experiencing dissociation, depersonalization, and derealization, meditation was absolutely not the right answer for me. In fact, attempting to meditate only made me feel worse—like I was on the brink of leaving my physical body behind entirely.

    However, once I regained a little bit of trust with my mind and body through other practices and knew that I would, in fact, not float away, I started using meditation to further the work I was doing in other places.

    Since I had discovered through weightlifting the importance of strengthening my connection to my body, the first meditations I employed were for deepening that body-awareness (also called somatic awareness or interoceptive awareness.) My entire goal was to become more familiar and friendly with my body so that I could remain grounded in my physical self throughout the day.

    Later, once I was feeling healthier and more optimistic about a panic attack-free future, I also began to employ meditations for future-visualization. I would tune into and sit with the feelings of connection, safety, and purpose as I allowed my mind to create pictures of my future life. In this way, I began to rewire my brain to understand, look for, and create positive emotions again.

    Now, more than two years after I made the life-changing decision to do anything it took to heal my panic disorder, I still fall back on all three of these tools to keep me healthy. I avoid inflammatory foods, I hit the gym regularly (and move my body in other ways), and I try to meditate every single morning.

    I know it can feel overwhelming to start a new routine, but none of these lifestyle changes will do anything but enhance your life. It’s worth it to try. I hope that a few months from now you, too, can look back at your panic attack days as just a difficult, but closed chapter in your life.

  • Releasing Fascia: A Simple Way to Reduce Tension, Pain, and Disease

    Releasing Fascia: A Simple Way to Reduce Tension, Pain, and Disease

    “Take care of your body, it’s the only place you have to live.” ~Jim Rohn

    I hear this happens to so many, but when it happens to you, it’s unsettling. I didn’t know what was going on with me, and I wasn’t getting any satisfying answers either.

    Most days were good, and I felt fine and went about my regular routine wearing my many hats: mother of two young kids, human mom to three fur babies, a household-manager-of-all-the-things and full-time dental hygienist. And then out of the blue, it could hit me like a ton of bricks… the backache, neck pain, jaw pain, tension headaches, and even migraines.

    I would wake up in the morning with tension or pain in my body, but I had no idea how it got there! Sometimes it was pretty intense too, It would drive me bananas because I couldn’t put my finger on the reason why.

    Didn’t do any yard work yesterday. Didn’t hurt myself. Didn’t trip or fall. Didn’t shovel snow the last few days either. It was so strange. I had no idea what was going on.

    I remember that the first time it happened, I was about thirteen years old. It was a summer morning, and I wasn’t able to get out of bed to go to my babysitting job. Another time, in my late twenties, my lower back seized as I was bent down shaving my legs, so I dropped to the floor unable to get back up. There were many times like these.

    When I had one of those unexplained episodes, I would feel off for a few days and then it would settle. Luckily for me, most days I just felt my regular minimal tension at night. It wasn’t intense, but it was enough for me to notice.

    Other times, I’d have migraines or tension headaches that would last for days at a time. It wasn’t fun for anyone, including my young family. I also felt guilty and stressed out with my list of errands getting longer by the minute. I wanted to avoid this at all costs because it would stop me in my tracks when it happened, and everyone around me suffered.

    During medical visits I was told I had muscle spasms, tension headaches, or migraines. And was told to relax (right!) or prescribed something for the pain or given a topical cream to rub on the affected area. It helped, but I still didn’t understand why it would happen out of the blue like that.

    In my circle, I was hearing things like: “Wait till you hit thirty or forty, that’s when all the problems start!” or “Wait ‘til you’re my age!’ or ‘Welcome to the club!” or my favorite one: “You ain’t seen nothing yet!” To be honest, it was upsetting and depressing to hear that things would get worse as I aged.

    Ever have an ultrasound, scan, or MRI only to be told that everything looked normal? That it must be muscular, or even worse, it’s all in your head? It’s a very frustrating diagnostic for most people, as they are left feeling puzzled and still looking for answers. They’re hoping to find anything that could help, to alleviate some of the pain and tension. They’ve done many things, but nothing seems to help…

    As it turns out, it’s all about fascia!

    What is FA-SH-EE-AH? It is a connective tissue in our body. Picture one continuous piece of a three-dimensional spider web, from head to toe. It’s a semi-opaque membrane, thicker in some areas.

    This tissue does not only wrap or divide our organs, muscles, and other body parts, like previously thought, but it actually interconnects every single one of our cells, all 100 trillion of them! Fascia is everywhere! It protects us, it supports surrounding tissues, and communicates with our entire being. It is the only system in the body that connects to every other system in our body.

    The magic of our precious fascia doesn’t stop here, as it also has a memory! It records our entire life, but it’s the traumatic events—the physical, repetitive, and emotional stresses (every fall, burn, bruise, surgery, repetitive movement), the viruses (hello, Covid!), and infections… plus unprocessed emotions, negative thoughts, limiting beliefs, and unhealthy habits and behaviors—that affect it the most. From the 3rd trimester in the uterus to our last breath, our fascia keeps track and memorizes everything.

    Our beautiful body does have the potential to auto-regulate, and so does our fascia. But we live in a world where productivity is a sport, our to-do lists are never-ending, and our over-scheduling is a badge of honor. This absolutely takes a toll on our body and mind! Therefore, our fascia doesn’t always release like it’s supposed to, and it starts accumulating tensions.

    Tight fascia, that is unreleased, clamps down on its surrounding tissues and gets worse with time. Left unreleased, it can get rock hard. Plus, since it’s like a 3D blanket, it starts affecting and pulling other parts of the body… just like when you tug or pull on a corner of a blanket, it pulls on the entire thing. The fascia in our body is the exact same!

    This is why the root cause of our symptoms may be coming from a completely different place in our body. And it explains why many therapies don’t work, as they treat the location of the symptom and not the cause.

    Bound fascia creates havoc on our health and wellness and has a domino effect on our body and mind. It impacts all our cells (every tissue that makes up the muscles, organs, bones/joints, and all the other systems).

    As an example, clamped fascia that is tight around and inside an organ (remember, fascia is in every cell) will affect this organ so much that it won’t be able to function properly.

    The pain in your neck that keeps coming back, your tight shoulder blades and digestive issues, could all be from tight fascia from that time when you fell off your bike when you were learning to ride at the age of five years old. Your fascia protected you in the fall, but it’s been tight all this time and is now pulling on your 3D fascia blanket.

    The TMJ issues you’ve been experiencing, the acid reflux, and reduced range of motion in your shoulder could be from when you had your appendix removed as a child. With scars, we only see a tiny scar on the skin, but inside, it’s an iceberg of adhesion and it’s pulling constantly!

    That nagging hip tension that’s been around for ages, the ringing in your left ear, and your weak bladder could all be from your high-risk pregnancy and stressful delivery. Those babies take up a lot of room, and our tissues should go back to their original place, but sometimes they don’t, and that starts pulling too! Not to mention the impact of all that stress of having a high-risk delivery; this too could very well be the root cause of your issues!

    Healthy fascia is the missing piece to health and wellness! A holistic approach is needed to release this complex tissue, which impacts us in so many ways. For optimal health, gentle movements are best to release bound fascia and relax your nervous system, which go hand-in-hand.

    If your intention is to release your fascia, you’ll want to avoid anything that is too intense or that jacks it up like HIIT, spinning, and marathons.

    Other than body work (osteopathy, energy work, massage), walking, swimming, yoga, and meditation are great options that you can do without an appointment. Every bit counts! Here are some things you can add to your daily routine to keep your fascia happy and pliable:

    First, stay hydrated! Drink water throughout the day. The general rule of thumb is to drink your weight in pounds, divided by two. That’s the number of ounces your body requires daily to function properly. Therefore, someone that weighs 200 pounds could benefit from drinking 100 ounces of water per day. Some exceptions apply, but for most people this is a good guideline. Remember, we are mostly water, and that includes our fascia!

    Stretching is a must! To stretch a muscle, it takes twenty to thirty seconds, but to stretch and release one layer of our dysfunctional fascia, it can take around three to five minutes, sometimes more.

    Yoga is a great fascia therapy, as it’s wonderfully designed around fascia lines; for example, downward dog stretches the posterior line of fascia. Thread the needle pose stretches the arm line. Fish pose stretches the anterior line.

    Hatha is the style of yoga that most of us think of when we picture yoga. Downward dog, warrior pose, child’s pose, lotus, to name a few poses, are all great options to try.

    In yin yoga, we hold the poses longer, about three to five minutes, which is long enough to release the fascia. That’s when all the magic happens! These poses are gentler. As we hold them, we can feel a little flutter or a soft release somewhere else in the body. It’s all connected!

    Another kind of yoga that is great for our fascia health is restorative yoga. This one is a very passive yoga done with many props. It’s all about supporting the body and feeling safe. This creates immense healing, as it activates the parasympathetic nervous system. It’s incredibly powerful and utterly relaxing! So, let’s not discredit this type of yoga because it’s more passive than the others. The benefits are exponential!

    EFT/Tapping Meditation is also a great option to release tension in our fascia. As we tap on specific acupressure points on meridians in the body (hint: meridian and fascia lines are in the same places!), we release stored unprocessed emotions, limiting beliefs, and negative thought patterns, which all impact our fascia.

    It’s an amazing body-mind release technique! Tapping also activates the vagus nerve, promoting rest and relaxation, which is what we want, as the happiness of your fascia depends on the state of your nervous system, and vise-versa.

    Fascia health is a journey, and it’s so worth it! Do yourself a favor and start releasing your fascia today. Caring for it has the best return on investment and undeniably impacts your health and well-being. You totally deserve it, and your future self will thank you!

  • Anxiety Sucks, But It Taught Me These 7 Important Things

    Anxiety Sucks, But It Taught Me These 7 Important Things

    “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” ~Soren Kierkegaard

    Let’s be clear:

    This isn’t an article about positive thinking.

    This isn’t an article about how silver linings make everything okay.

    This isn’t an article about how your perspective on anxiety is all wrong.

    The kids call those things “toxic positivity.”

    No toxic positivity here.

    This is an article about my lifelong relationship with anxiety and what I’ve learned from something that won’t go away. At times the anxiety spikes and feels almost crippling. I have a hard time appreciating the learning at those times, but it’s still there.

    That is what this article is all about.

    Please do not confuse me learning things from something that won’t go away with me endorsing that thing or saying it’s a good thing. I would trade everything I’ve learned from anxiety for less anxiety. I don’t even like writing about it because focusing on it this much gives me anxiety. But I want to write things that help people.

    How a Bare Butt Sparked My Anxiety

    Stranger Things has shown how cool the eighties were. For the most part, this is true. I miss arcades and the music. I miss the freedom I had as a kid that I don’t see kids having these days. I miss some of the fashion. I don’t miss people not knowing anything about mental health.

    We used to play football every day after school at a baseball field/park in our little town. This was unsupervised tackle football with kids a lot older than me.

    I remember one time a guy broke his finger. It was pointing back at him at a ninety-degree angle. He took off sprinting toward his house. One of the older kids said, “He’s running home to mommy!” and we all went back to playing.

    Oddly enough, possibly breaking my finger didn’t worry me. What did worry me was one day when a kid was running for a touchdown, and another kid dove to stop him. He only caught the top of his pants, pulling them down and exposing his bare butt. He made the touchdown anyway, but while everyone else thought it was hilarious, it scared me to death.

    What if that happens to me?

    I started tying my pants up with a string every day, pulling it tight enough to make my stomach hurt (remember, this was the eighties—I was wearing those neon-colored pajama-pant-looking things). I started to feel sick before we played football, before school, and before everything.

    You would think it was obvious that I was dealing with anxiety, but you have to remember that in the eighties and nineties, we did not talk about mental health like we do now. We didn’t throw around terms like anxiety and depression. I was just the weird kid that threw up before he went to school.

    The anxiety has gotten a little more noticeable over the past few years. It seems to have gotten worse since having COVID in 2020 and 2021. I don’t know if that’s a thing, but it feels like it is. It has forced me to deal with it mindfully and with more intention. It’s never pleasant, but I’ve learned a few things.

    1. Anxiety has taught me to be present.

    The crushing presence of high anxiety forces me to be exactly where I am at that moment. I’m not able to read or write. I cannot play a video game or watch a movie with any kind of enjoyment. There’s nothing I can do.

    This roots me in the moment in a very intense, authentic way. That might seem bad since I’m anxious, but there’s another layer to it. When I can be completely present with the physiological sensations of anxiety, I recognize that they are energy in the body. When I’m super present, I can see how my mind is turning those sensations into the emotion we call anxiety, and that’s where my suffering comes from.

    2. Anxiety has taught me about control.

    I’ve been told that my hyper-independence and need to be prepared for anything is a trauma response. I was a therapist for ten years, and I still don’t know what to do with this information. I do know that anxiety gives me a crash course in what I can control and what I cannot control.

    The bad news is that I can’t control any of the things that I think are creating anxiety. The good news is that I can control my response to all those things. Anxiety forces me to do this in a very intentional way.

    Anxiety also puts my mind firmly on something bigger than myself. Maybe it’s that higher power we hear about in AA meetings and on award shows. It’s good for me to get outside my head and remember that I’m not in charge of anything. It’s helpful to only box within my weight class.

    3. Anxiety teaches me to have good habits and boundaries.

    I’m bad about allowing my habits and boundaries to slip when times are good. I start eating poorly, I stop exercising, I stay up too late, and I watch a bunch of shows and movies that beam darkness and distraction directly into my head.

    I also start to allow unhealthy and even toxic people to have a more prominent role in my life. This is all under the guise of helping them because people reach out to me a lot. Over the years, I’ve learned I have to limit how close I let the most toxic people get to me, no matter how much help they need.

    When I’m feeling good, I start thinking I can handle anything, and my boundaries slip. Anxiety is always a reminder that the unhealthiness in my life has consequences, and I clean house when it spikes.

    4. Anxiety reminds me how important growth is.

    Once I clean house, I start looking at new projects and things I can do to feel better. I start taking the next step in who I want to be. This has been difficult over the past three years because the waves of anxiety have been so intense, but I see the light at the end of the tunnel as the good habits I put in place and the new projects and things I started are beginning to come to fruition.

    I chose to let my counseling license go inactive and focus on life coaching because it’s less stressful, and I’m better at it. This would not have happened without anxiety. I have changed my diet and exercise in response to blood pressure and anxiety, and these are good habits to have whether I am anxious or not.

    5. Anxiety taught me to be gentle.

    I’ve written and spoken a lot about my desire to be gentler with people. I’m not unkind, and I have a lot of compassion for people, but this is often expressed gruffly or too directly. It’s how I was raised, and I often feel like I am patronizing people if I walk in verbal circles when I’m trying to help them with something.

    When I’m experiencing high anxiety I feel fragile, which helps me understand how other people might feel in the face of my bluntness. I started working on being gentler around 2018, and I was disappointed in my progress.

    It was also around that year that anxiety began to become a fixture in my life again. As I look back now, I can recognize that I am a lot gentler with everyone around me when I’m anxious. Being a little fragile helps me treat everybody else with a little more care.

    6. Anxiety taught me to slow down and ask for help.

    When I started experiencing increased anxiety, it led me to make quick decisions and change things to try to deal with it. This makes sense. Evolutionarily, anxiety is meant to prompt us to action.

    The problem was that these decisions rarely turned out to be my best ones and often led to other consequences I had to deal with down the line. Because of this, I’ve learned that an anxiety spike is not the time to make big decisions.

    If I have to make a decision about something, I slow down and try to be very intentional about it. I’ve also learned I need to talk it out with somebody else, something I’ve never been inclined to do. Asking for help is a good thing.

    7. Anxiety helps me speed up.

    Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is the opposite of what I just said.

    Let me clarify.

    One of the most important quotes I’ve ever read came from the folk singer Joan Baez: “Action is the antidote to anxiety.” (Years later, I learned she might have said despair instead of anxiety, but I heard it the first way).

    Some tasks bring anxiety that I do not want to deal with. These usually involve phone calls or emails to bureaucratic organizations or errands that I find unpleasant and anxiety-inducing (avoiding these also makes sense—our evolutionary legacy cannot understand why we would do something that may feel dangerous).

    Over the years, I’ve learned that anxiety diminishes if I take the steps I need to take to address these tasks. The cool thing is that this has translated over to many of my day-to-day tasks.

    By acting in the face of anxiety, I’ve gotten pretty good about doing things when they need to be done. I mow the lawn when it needs to be mowed, take out the trash when it needs to be taken out, put the laundry up when it needs to be put up, and get the oil changed in my truck when it needs to be changed.

    Once we start addressing tasks immediately, it becomes a habit. Anxiety helped me do this.

    Anxiety Still Sucks

    So there you go. Seven things anxiety has taught me. I’m grateful for these lessons, but they don’t make anxiety any less difficult in the moment.

    Anxiety is meant to suck. It’s meant to make things difficult and uncomfortable for us until we do something to address the problem. The problem, unfortunately, is often un-addressable these days.

    We worry about things like losing our job, not having enough money, divorce, and the general state of the world. Anxiety did not develop to address any of these things, so sometimes being comfortable with discomfort is the best we can offer ourselves.

    Maybe that’s the last thing anxiety is teaching me.