Tiny Buddha

Tag: therapy

  • I Don’t Know Who I Am: How I’m Finding Myself Again After the Abuse

    I Don’t Know Who I Am: How I’m Finding Myself Again After the Abuse

    “When you turn the corner / And you run into yourself / Then you know that you have turned / All the corners that are left.” ~Langston Hughes

    Nearly two years ago I left a long-term controlling and abusive relationship.

    I didn’t know that I was in one. I just knew that I was desperate.

    Abusers take everything away from you. I don’t just mean your money or your home or your children, although they take those as well. I mean everything, including your sense of self.

    Toward the end of the relationship, I wrote in my journal: “I have nothing. Nothing. No future. No family. No home. Nothing. I don’t know what to do any more. There seems to be no hope.”

    When I first left I had nowhere to go. I stayed in a hotel for a while and then moved to a pay-by-the week residence. I genuinely could not see any future for myself at that time.

    When you read about leaving an abusive relationship, there is a lot of information about how hard it is to leave. It takes someone, on average, seven attempts.

    It also can be dangerous to leave. Abusers escalate their behavior when they fear that they are losing their control over you. These are important things to be aware of.

    What nobody seems to talk about, and perhaps there are good reasons why, is how hard it is to recover once all the dust has settled.

    I have spoken to the police and been to court and had some excellent support from a domestic abuse charity. I have been to support groups. I feel like I’ve processed a lot of the abuse and that I am now able to move on from that trauma.

    I have a truly amazing therapist, who recognized the situation I was in even when I was trying to hide it from myself. He helped me escape. I credit him with saving my life.

    I have my own flat now that feels safe. I live in a nice area. I’ve made new friends and I am starting to feel part of the local community.

    But two years on from this relationship, I still don’t know who I am.

    Someone recently asked me what I like to watch on TV. I have no idea. I surrendered all TV-watching decision-making to my ex-partner because he had a tantrum if I put something on that he didn’t like.

    I don’t know what I want to do for a job. Up until recently, I worked in my ex-partner’s field, even though it is a field I know little and care less about, because that’s what he wanted me to do. I don’t know what I care about.

    Why am I telling you this? Because I am certain that I am not alone, but sometimes I feel very alone. And if you out there reading this also feel this terrible confusion about who you are and what you want to do, and you also feel alone, I want to tell you something…

    You are not alone.

    This is normal. This is okay. Not okay in the sense that it’s enjoyable or good, but okay in the sense that it is an understandable consequence of your journey.

    You don’t have to feel like there is something especially wrong with you that you aren’t now skipping through the fields gleefully enjoying your freedom. Hooray! I can do whatever I want!

    This is, I think, what people expect a domestic abuse survivor to do once they’ve gotten away from their partner. It’s what I wanted to do. The idea of finally having the freedom to do what I wanted was so exciting.

    It fell down pretty quickly when I realized I didn’t know what I wanted.

    Other than pancakes. I love making and eating pancakes. Hot pancakes with fresh lemon juice and sugar.

    And therein lies an anchor that you can use to start rebuilding yourself and your life.

    Start with something small.

    When you are rebuilding yourself, it feels like this should be profound. You should find out what your values are. What your aspirations and dreams are.

    This is like running a marathon without having done any training. You can’t start with the massive things. Start with the small things.

    What do you like to eat for breakfast?

    Even that is a big question for me because my ex-partner controlled my eating. I wasn’t always allowed to have breakfast. He didn’t do mornings, and if I woke him up making breakfast, he’d start screaming and threatening suicide.

    One day I discovered by pure chance that I like pancakes. And I am sure of this. This is something small but something solid and real.

    I can use this with other things in my life, to find out whether I like them or not. Do I feel about this the way I feel about pancakes? It sounds ridiculous but it works for me.

    It’s okay to change your mind.

    This is a big one. When your life has been unstable because you’ve been constantly gaslit, and subject to the shifting and changing rules that a controlling person indulges in, you want stability.

    You want things to stay the same. And you think that who you are and what you want should stay the same.

    Pro tip: It doesn’t. Not even for “normal” people. And your mind has been infected with the thoughts and ideas of another person.

    When you ask yourself what you want, sometimes it’s not your voice that replies. You may not recognize this at first. Later, you think, wait, that doesn’t feel right anymore.

    You can change your mind. It’s okay. It’s normal.

    I desperately wanted a cat for months. I bored everyone to tears telling them how much I wanted a cat. I looked up pictures of cats and mooned over cats and planned out names for my cats.

    Now I don’t want a cat. Not that I don’t like cats, I just don’t feel ready to take on the commitment of a pet. And that’s okay.

    Try stuff out.

    Do you really like chocolate, or is it that your ex-partner liked chocolate? How do you know?

    Try it out.

    Do you like to sing? Try that out.

    Maybe you find that you love to sing and you hate chocolate. Great. You’ve learned something about yourself.

    I like pancakes, chocolate, and singing. I do not like marmalade.

    Give yourself time.

    I am eternally thankful that a lady in one of my support groups said, “It took me about six years to start feeling like myself again.” At that point I was about nine months out of the relationship and convinced I was a failure because I still felt completely unstable.

    At this two-year point I catch myself feeling frustrated with myself for not having made more progress. Come on, Lily. Why don’t you know what you want to do with your life yet?

    I don’t know because someone emptied out my mind and filled it with their ideas. And made the consequences for thinking differently from them completely catastrophic. I am still scared to hold the “wrong” opinion, even though these days nobody is going to throw heavy objects if I do.

    My brain was rewired over a long period of time and it’s going to take time for me to fix that. This is okay. It’s not fun. It’s hard work. But it’s okay.

    In the meantime, I am going to sing, make pancakes, and eat chocolate.

  • After the Assault: What I Now Know About Repressed Trauma

    After the Assault: What I Now Know About Repressed Trauma

    TRIGGER WARNING: This article details an account of sexual assault and may be triggering to some people.

    The small park down the street from my childhood home: friends and I spent many evenings there as teenagers. We’d watch movies on each other’s MP3 players and eat from a bag of microwave popcorn while owls hooted from the trees above.

    Twigs lightly poked against our backs. Fallen leaves graced skin. Crickets hummed in the darkness. The stars shone bright through the branches of the redwoods.

    Eight years later at a park in Montevideo, Uruguay, darkness again surrounded me. Leaves and twigs once more made contact with my skin. This time, though, I couldn’t hear the crickets or notice the stars. Details of nature were dimmed out, replaced by the internal clamor of a rapidly beating heart and shock flooding through me.

    By day, Parque Rodo bustled with life. Later that year I would ride paddle boats there with my girlfriend of the time. I would feed crumbles of tortas fritas to the ducks alongside my Uruguayan housemate, while he shared with me his dream to become a dancer in New York City. I would do yoga on the grass with fellow English teacher friends. It would become a place of positive memories.

    That night, though, it was anything but.

    ~~~

    One week earlier, I’d moved to Montevideo to teach English and become fluent in Spanish.

    My first week passed by in a whir of exploratory activity. I traversed cobblestone streets past colorful houses resembling Turkish delights; past pick-up soccer games in the middle of some roads; past teenagers walking large groups of varied species of dogs.

    I learned Spanish tongue-twisters from native Uruguayans while drinking mate on the shores of the Rio de la Plata. I sand-boarded for the first time and became accustomed to answering the question “De donde sos?” (“Where are you from?”) in nearly every taxi I took and confiteria (pastry shop) I set foot in.

    Now that it was the weekend, I wanted to experience the LGBTQ+ night life (which I’d heard positive things about). Located on the periphery of the expansive Parque Rodo, Il Tempo was one of Montevideo’s three gay clubs, catering mostly to lesbians.

    I hadn’t eaten dinner yet, so my plan before heading in was to grab a chivito sandwich (one of Uruguay’s staple foods). Chiviterias abounded across Montevideo, present on nearly every corner, so I imagined I wouldn’t have to walk far to find one.

    After taxi-ing from my hostel, I asked the bouncer if he could direct me to the closest chiviteria. Pointing down the street, he told me to walk for half a block. I’d then make a right and continue down 21de septiembre until reaching Bulevar General Artigas.

    ” Y alli encontrarás una” (“And there you will find one”), he said.

    A few blocks didn’t sound like a lot, so off I went.

    I walked for what felt like a while, without crossing paths with any other pedestrians.

    Isn’t this supposed to be a major street? I wondered. Also, shouldn’t there be some streetlamps?

    It was then that another pedestrian—a young man wearing a backward baseball cap—came into view.

    He was walking briskly toward me from the opposite direction. Pretty much the minute I saw him, I knew my evening wouldn’t be playing out as I’d envisioned. A chivito was no longer on the table. I wouldn’t be dancing with a cute Spanish-speaking lesbian at Il Tempo.

    “Adonde vas?” (“Where are you going?”) the man asked me as he got closer. Tension immediately took hold of my body, which I did my best to hide while quickly responding that I was on my way to a chivito spot.

    Yo sé donde comprar un chivito” (“I know where to get a chivito”), he said, gesturing toward the park. “Te muestro” (“I’ll show you”).

    My heart hammered, but I again tried to obscure any signs of fear. Maybe if I exuded only niceness and naivety, it would buy me more time—because the grim truth (that there was nowhere within eyesight to run to) was quickly becoming apparent. The foggy pull of disassociation came for me, wrapping its wispy arms around my heart and mind.

    Similar to how Laurie Halse Anderson wrote in Shout: “The exits were blocked, so you wisely fled your skin when you smelled his intent.”

    I chose not to run—because who knew how long it would be before I found a more populated road, or even a passing car? And how far could I flee before the man caught up? He’d likely become angry and violent if and when he did. Also, flip-flops make for pretty dismal running shoes…

    Maybe if I kept walking with him, we’d cross paths with another person, went my reasoning at the time. No one else was present on that dimly lit street, but maybe in the park someone would be—a couple taking a late-night stroll, or a cluster of teenagers cutting through on their way to the next bar; or someone, anyone who could step in and become a buffer. Parque Rodo’s website had, after all, mentioned that many young people hang out there at night.

    ~~~

    I don’t remember what the man and I talked about as we walked. I do remember a half-eaten chivito lying atop a trash can off to the side of the path; the sound of my flip-flops crunching against the gravel; that we continued to be the only pedestrians on our path; and that after a minute or two, the man announced, “We’ve almost made it to the chivito place.” I nodded in response, my appetite now completely nonexistent.

    Part of me still hoped I could buy time. That I could pretend I didn’t know what was about to happen, for long enough so that someone, or something, could intervene—so that maybe it wouldn’t.

    Nothing and no one did though. When the man finally grabbed me and pushed me against a tree, my feigned composure broke. Noticing the shift, he used both his hands to cover my mouth while whispering that he would kill me if I raised my voice (“Te mataré,” he repeated three times in a low hiss).

    Over those next few minutes, I kept trying to hold eye contact in attempt to get through to his humanity. I desperately and naively hoped that at any moment he would awaken to what he was doing and feel ashamed enough to stop.

    He didn’t though.

    When he tried to take my shorts off, a disorienting sequence of imagined future scenarios swiped through my mind like sinister serpants.

    They showed me dealing with an STD.

    Taking a pregnancy test.

    Getting an abortion.

    Doing all of these things on my own in a country 6,000 miles from home and from everyone who knew me.

    My fear of those imagined outcomes pushed me to speak up.

    ”You don’t want to go down there,” I warned, feigning concern for his well-being.

    He reached for my shorts anyways.

    And so I tried again, this time while looking him in the eye. Though I wouldn’t know the Spanish word for STD until years later when taking a medical interpreter certification course, I did have others at my disposal. Enough to explain that I’d once had “a bad experience” that left me with algo contagioso (something contagious).

    If this man cared at all about his health, he’d stop what he was doing, I explained.

    Maybe I was imagining it, but I thought I saw the slightest bit of uncertainty begin to share space with the vacancy in his eyes.

    Whether or not he believed me, he stopped reaching down and settled on a non-penetrative compromise.

    Afterwards he snatched up my shorts and emptied their pockets of the crumpled pesos inside them (the equivalent of about fifty U.S. dollars). Then after tossing them into a nearby bush, he ran off into the night.

    ~~~~

    As I stood up a dizziness overtook me, my soul quavering and disoriented in its return from the air above to back inside my skin.

    Still shaking, I found my way to the closest lighted path, walking quickly until I reached Il Tempo—the club I’d started at.

    I asked the bouncer if I could use the bathroom.

    Once inside I washed my mouth with soap—one time, two times, five then six. No number of times felt like enough.

    After returning to my hostel, I fell asleep, telling not a single soul. I wouldn’t for another six months.

    ~~~

    Part of it was that I didn’t want to bother anyone. What had happened was heavy, but it was over now. I was fine—and what was there to say about it? Telling people, this soon into the start of my year abroad, would just be needlessly burdening them. Not to mention disrupting the momentum of what I’d wanted to be a chapter of growth and new beginnings.

    Another aspect of it was that I feared the questions people might ask, even if just in their own heads:

    Why were you walking on your own at night? Why didn’t you take a taxi? Why were you wearing shorts? Why didn’t you run? Scream? Why did you follow him into the park? Why weren’t you carrying mace? Why didn’t you…?

    I too had asked myself these questions. And I had answers to them.

    I was walking on my own because I’d just moved here and didn’t know anyone; I didn’t take a taxi because I thought the walk would be quick, and taking one every time you need to walk even just a block or two gets expensive; I wore shorts because it was a hot summer night; I followed him into the park for the reasons outlined in my thought process above, and perhaps because fear was clouding and constricting my rational thinking.

    Still, I couldn’t shake free from the shame.

    The people I confessed to months later turned out to be wonderfully supportive. Looking back, I can see that though I’d worried about them judging me, I was the one judging myself—then projecting that self-judgment onto them.

    Still, even though my support group didn’t, I was also aware that society does lean toward placing accountability on victims—even more so in the years before the Me Too movement. Often, even now, the knee-jerk reaction is to question victims.

    After determining that the best way forward was to put the incident behind me, I then locked it away into a mental casket and began the burial process. I covered over it with mate and dulce-de-leche; with invigorating swims through the Rio de la Plata; with meeting lively souls in the months that followed.

    Though unaddressed, at least safely buried the memory couldn’t harm me. Or so went my thinking at the time.

    ~~~

    Following the assault, I began my teaching job at the English academy. I assimilated to Uruguayan culture as best as I could, all while providing positive updates to friends and family back home.

    The pushed-down trauma manifested in other ways though—in stress, depression, and near constant irritation. As Tara Brach put it, “The pain and fear don’t go away. Rather, they lurk in the background and from time to time suddenly take over.”

    I drank unhealthy amounts of alcohol (not just in groups, but also when alone). Many things overwhelmed me. Countless triggers seemed to set me off.

    The Uruguayan girl I’d been dating even said to me once, “Te enojas por todo” (“You get irritated by everything”). I ended up getting banned from that lesbian club I’d gone to the night of the assault, after arguing with the bouncer one night.

    Nightmares plagued me. I’d learned in my college psych class that one of the functions of sleep is to escape from predators. I wondered why, then, I came face to face with my predator every night in my dreams.

    ~~~

    I’d had other traumatic experiences prior to this one—many of which I’d stuffed away.

    The pain pile-up will level off, if only you just stop looking at it, I often tried to tell myself.

    It didn’t level off though. I’d flown down to Uruguay with the pile still smoldering, my conscious mind numbed to the fumes (having been trained to forget they were there). Following the assault, the pile grew—and continued to grow well into my return to the U.S.

    When we avoid processing, the traumas form a backlog in our hearts and minds, queuing up to be felt eventually. Numerous studies have found avoidance to be “the most significant factor that creates, prolongs, and intensifies trauma-reaction or PTSD symptoms.”

    It was only when I began inching closer toward my pain that I began to slowly heal the parts I’d stuffed down for so long.

    Healing took place when I began opening up to people. It took place in therapy and through getting a handle on my drinking. It took place when restructuring my network, prioritizing the friendships that were better for my soul, while trimming the ones that had served more of a distracting and numbing purpose.

    It took place in redirecting care to my relationship with myself—spending more gentle one-on-one time with her, out in nature or in a quiet room.

    Every time I run barefoot on a beach, my heart heals a little.

    Every time I leave a meaningful interaction (with either a human or the planet), my soul inches closer toward realignment.

    I practiced turning toward my truer self in all these ways—until eventually, as phrased beautifully by Carmen Maria Machado, “Time and space, creatures of infinite girth and tenderness, [had] stepped between the two of [the traumatic incident and me], and [were] keeping [me] safe as they were once unable to.”

    Though I want this for everyone who’s survived an assault, or any other serious trauma, it’s only within judgment-free space that true healing is possible. This means letting go of self-judgment, and surrounding yourself with people who can validate you.

    May the idea be wiped from our collective consciousness: that the choice to wear a particular item of clothing, or to consume a few drinks, or to seek out a snack late at night—basic things men can do without fearing for their safety—are responsible for what happened to survivors.

    May the prevailing understanding become that what is responsible—100%—is a person’s decision to assault. Full stop.

    May all of these things become true—because no survivor should have to experience shame alongside the pain that’s already so difficult to bear on its own. Because every survivor deserves a space to heal and reclaim what was taken from them: the ineffable sense of emotional safety that should be our birthright. We deserve a viscerally felt “you are okay” coursing through our veins. We deserve to feel completely at home inside our skin.

    May we arrive there some day.

  • How My Trauma Led Me to the Sex Industry and What’s Helping Me Heal

    How My Trauma Led Me to the Sex Industry and What’s Helping Me Heal

    “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ~Rumi

    The hardest battle I’ve fought is an ongoing one. It’s an all-consuming shadow of dread that never leaves, only resting long enough for me to catch my breath.

    I know what it feels like to be depressed. I know the feeling of pain and hopelessness so well it almost feels like home.

    I remember being around eleven years old and thinking, wow, this all seems so meaningless. I had become awakened by my consciousness and overwhelmed by emptiness. I knew then that there was more to life than what I was perceiving. These moments were brief but continuous.

    I grew up in an unstable family and took turns living with each and every family member. Everything was temporary and nothing made sense. As I grew older, my depression grew stronger. I did not experience love or security, and I felt like a burden to everyone around me. Each day I was disgusted with myself for still existing.

    How It All Began

    I was drawn to the sex industry because I was part of the wrong crowd, and by the time I hit my early twenties I had completely lost all will to live. I had no desire to even try to function in society as a “normal person” should. It was a place where I could indulge my self-hatred by abusing drugs, alcohol, and my body.

    The pain I carried with me was heavy and overwhelming. I wanted to be around people who I could relate to. People who had also given up on life. Although we had no direction, we had a sense of belonging and a feeling of home, which was something we craved. Our pain had brought us together, and that was all that mattered.

    We were bound by our trauma and our secrets. It was a place where it was acceptable to be angry at the world. It was my home, and these were my people.

    There is a great myth that women enjoy being sex workers. The pay is incredible, the hours are short, and sometimes it’s just one big party. I can’t speak for others, but from my experience I can tell you it is nothing like Pretty Woman. There is no one coming to save you.

    No little girl ever dreamed of growing up to be a sex worker. Most women working as escorts were victims of some form of sexual abuse as a child, including myself.

    I know you’re probably wondering why I would do something so extreme and thinking that surely I had other options. My depression was paralyzing, so this seemed like the ideal option for me. I was the ideal candidate. I couldn’t get the help I needed, and keeping a job or getting out of bed was almost impossible.

    I believed for so long that I was lazy; I was useless and good for nothing else. Gosh, I could hardly pull off being a decent prostitute!

    We don’t do this because we love sex or for that matter even like it; we do this because we feel trapped financially, or we’re desperate to survive our addictions and mental state.

    And sometimes we’re so consumed by our desperation that we’re oblivious to the dangers of being raped, attacked, or even murdered—and the worst part is that we don’t even care. We have been brainwashed to believe that no one cares.

    How I Changed My Mindset and Found My Purpose

    When I felt alone and had no one to call, I began to write and uncover my creative spirit. Writing was no longer just a form of cheap therapy but a way home to myself. It was a safe space that wasn’t invaded. It was a space where I could process the thoughts and emotions that had consumed me.

    I wrote about how ashamed, unworthy, and unlovable I felt. I thought no one would love me after the dark life I’d lived. And worse, I thought I deserved to be treated badly after everything I’d done.

    I wrote about feeling abandoned, alone, and rejected and desperately wanting to be normal and live a normal life.

    I could no longer continue to run from myself or sit back and watch as my life fell apart. I had hit rock bottom, and my suicide attempts had been endless. Something had to change, and that was my mind.

    I began reading books and listening to podcasts about who I wanted to be, as well as anything self-help related.

    I stopped abusing substances and started to see a little more clearly. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, especially without any professional help, but I did it.

    I learned that I’d made the choices I’d made based on how I viewed myself, so that had to change.

    I forced myself into a healthy routine and began meditating and practicing gratitude to start reprogramming my brain.

    I also forced myself to cry, which I’d hardly ever done because I’d been so numb.

    I removed everything from my life that was doing me harm and didn’t serve the future I was trying to create.

    I started taking better care of my body by getting more sleep, eating better, exercising, and even pampering myself.

    I learned to be grateful for my experiences and I gave myself permission to heal.

    After doing all these things consistently for a while, I started experiencing little bits of joy, and that was what kept me going. I now listen to my body and observe my mind. When negative thoughts pop up, I send them away.

    I stopped fighting the world and running from my trauma, took a deep breath, and realized that the world wasn’t out to get me. It was me all along; I was my own worst enemy. I had to accept that I deserved to be alive and embrace being human, in all its beauty and ugliness combined.

    I know that it won’t be completely smooth sailing from here, but I know now that, despite everything, I am worthy.

    Being in such a dark industry I’ve always had to fight. Fight for my voice to be heard, fight for my safety, fight to survive, and fight to be seen as a human being. I no longer need to fight; I can just be.

    I now believe that my suffering was my spiritual teacher, and these experiences happened for a reason—so I could help others somehow, even if just one person.

    The real cure to trauma is courage, and the opposite of depression is expression.

    So here I am, brave enough to not only own up to my past but tell my story. By doing so I let the light in, the light that I can now share with you.

  • Addiction Is Messy, But These Things Help Me Stay Clean

    Addiction Is Messy, But These Things Help Me Stay Clean

    “Staying sober really was the most important thing in my life now and had given me direction when I thought I had none.” ~Bradley Cooper

    I remember that exact feeling of shame that washed over me when I was filling Yeti water bottles with 100 proof vodka instead of water. Then I chugged it, all while knowing it was the worst idea. Yet, I couldn’t stop.

    Addiction is messy.

    My social outings were with the wealthiest in the town, always with plenty of other alcoholics in my midst. I surrounded myself with people who drank like me because why on earth would I want to associate with someone who doesn’t drink? It looked like I was living the life when, in reality, I was dead inside.

    The truth is, sometimes your soul has to die before you decide to actually be alive. My soul died, but my body continued living, and I wore a shield, defending myself from people. I wanted them to see the person I was projecting; the person I wanted to be.  

    I wanted to be all of the things that I was showing them, but I was truly depressed, anxious, troubled, and lost.

    My addiction started with a boy. I was addicted to him, to love, to the idea of love, and eventually, to his drugs. He became my dealer, my controller, my manipulator, and my life.

    He introduced me to hard drugs, and I immediately latched on. He completely stripped me of any sort of normal life.

    But I would do anything for him. The occasional use turned into daily use.

    At the time, I was in college, and I was still managing to do well. However, he got a job offer in another city thousands of miles away. He said if I didn’t come with him, we were done.

    I went into a depression I had never known before. I remember sleeping for days in my parents’ basement. The thought of being apart from this boy completely broke me.

    So I moved with him. My messy addiction was getting worse.

    It wasn’t long before he found someone in our new city who knew a dealer. I got excited knowing there was something else to try, so I dove right in. These drugs led to complete destruction. 

    I was now failing school. Me, a straight-A honor student. My mom came out to visit for my twenty-first birthday. She could tell something was off, but I had been lying for so long.

    I wasn’t ready to tell anyone.

    I knew I was only in the relationship because he got me drugs. I was scared to leave because he was my first love, and I didn’t know anything else. My life was a mess.

    I dropped out of college, claiming an “emotional breakdown.” I didn’t have a job. I had no idea what I was doing with myself.

    I was completely lost.

    A few months after my birthday, I called my mom and told her I needed to come home. Of course, the next morning I regretted it, but it was too late. My parents were on their way to get me.

    My soul finally completely died because of the mess I was in.

    I broke up with the boy.

    I quit drugs cold turkey. Looking back, I have no idea how I did this; I don’t remember withdrawals or cravings. I was determined to start cleaning up my life, but addiction is messy, cunning, baffling, and powerful. So I replaced drugs with alcohol.

    I always drank to get drunk. I felt that I had missed out on college life, and I needed to make up for it. I had been controlled for too long; I was finally free.

    I did what I thought was normal for someone in her early twenties. I drank every day, starting at 5 p.m. That’s what adults do, right?

    I didn’t think I had a problem until I realized how much more alcohol I needed compared to my friends. Every time we went out, they were completely hammered, and I barely had a buzz. I started bringing my own shooters in my purse so that I could have extra on hand.

    I would pour vodka into mini shampoo bottles so that it wasn’t evident that it was alcohol. I’d buy 100 proof to get the job done quicker.

    I thought it was fun. It was my secret, and I liked hiding it. It was like a game.

    When people saw me drink three glasses of wine, they had no idea about the water bottles filled with vodka that I had chugged earlier. I’d gauge how much I was drinking by counting the number of gulps I took or by seeing how many shampoo bottles were empty.

    I hid how much I was drinking very well. I was a functioning alcoholic. I had a great husband, amazing friends, and a stable job. 

    In my mind, there was no way I was an alcoholic because I had all of these things.

    There were several incidents that should have been the end, but I was never ready. It took years of looking at myself in the mirror, thinking, Ellen, this has to stop. You can’t continue drinking like this. So, I would try drinking a different way.

    Only wine during the week.  Vodka on weekends. Svedka instead of 100 proof Smirnoff.

    Anything.

    The only thing that stayed consistent was that I never allowed anyone to see how much I was truly drinking. I knew it deep down in my dead soul that I would either die drinking or that I would have to admit out loud that I had a problem.

    The day finally came, the day I had been putting off for years because I was so scared. My last drink.

    I learned later that my last day drinking was one of my “yets.” The things that make you convince yourself that you are not an alcoholic. “I haven’t gotten a DUI… yet.” Or “I haven’t lost my job… yet.” Mine was “I’ve never brought alcohol into work… yet.”

    My last drink was really a continuation of several days of drinking. I had finished everything that was hidden in the closet by 6 a.m. before heading to work.

    I took my lunch break early (like 9:15 early) and drove to the first liquor store. It didn’t open until 10:00. I thought to myself “only an alcoholic would be caught waiting for a liquor store to open; I can’t do that.”

    So I went to another one nearby. Yes! It was open!

    I went in and got my usual. The cashier rang me up and said, “Why are you here so early today?” I was so embarrassed.

    Little did he know I needed this to calm my shakes, feel better, and make it through the morning.

    I had basically woken up still drunk and was just continuing the drunk in order to feel okay. I was completely wasted by lunch.

    I knew I would be fired if anyone noticed. I had to get out of the building.

    I called my husband. I knew he’d be upset, but I have the most supportive and compassionate husband. He picked me up from work.

    He was scared, confused, and completely sad. Why was I wasted at work on a Thursday by noon? On the drive home before passing out, I finally knew that something needed to change.

    I knew that I was the only person who could make that change. I didn’t want to live this way anymore.

    For me. The only way getting sober works is when you realize you have to do it for yourself.  No one else can do it for you.

    And that was it. I started my journey in recovery that day.

    My sober life is amazing. Yes, I still have regular life problems, but everything is so much more manageable without the haze. I can do things now that I never did before, and everything makes a little more sense.

    I’m back to being Ellen.

    I have amazing things in my life that keep me clean and sober. Addiction is messy, but we do recover. First and foremost, I have a strong program of recovery.

    It wasn’t until I went to a rehab center that I learned that people in this world could teach me how to live a sober life and develop healthy coping mechanisms. I know how to soothe myself without substances and how to navigate this world without numbing myself.

    I work a recovery program that includes meetings, steps, and constant interaction with like-minded people. I have mostly sober friends and have cultivated lifelong relationships that matter.

    Secondly, I was able to get pregnant and start a family once sober; I have twins! I believe that the Universe had all of this lined up for me. I could never have done any of these things in any different order.

    Finally, I have good relationships with loved ones and peers. I am not lying to them every day, hurting them, and treating them terribly. I know I am loved, and I am not alone.

    Everything is perfectly in place the way it is supposed to be according to my journey. And now I can actually see that clearly.

    Addiction is messy, but it made me who I am today. Without this mess, I would not have this life. Now that I am clean, my soul has been brought back to life.

  • How to Deal With Low Moods: A 4-Step Plan to Help You Feel Better

    How to Deal With Low Moods: A 4-Step Plan to Help You Feel Better

    “And some days life is just hard. And some days are just rough. And some days you just gotta cry before you move forward. And all of that is okay.” ~Unknown

    I have always struggled with low moods. I guess that considering that I spent close to twenty years of my life inactive and depressed, this could be seen as progress. But that still didn’t feel good enough.

    I wanted to feel more balanced, light, and happy, and I wanted to achieve it in natural ways without having to take any kind of medication since that hadn’t worked for me in the past.

    So I began to research. I asked around. I read books. I watched videos. I became a psychotherapist.

    Most people can’t tell you how you shift out of low or bad moods. Sit with it, they say.

    And sure, that is a huge help because, up until that point, I would beat myself up over being in a low mood, which just made things worse.

    So ditching that beating-myself-up habit did help a lot.

    But here’s how I went further with it.

    During my studies and my experiences as a psychotherapist, I realized that everything has a cause. It might look random, but it never is. So there had to be a reason for my low moods. It was time for a lot of self-observation and self-exploration.

    Funnily enough, my work with my clients helped me uncover what I was looking for. It is, after all, always so much easier to see it in other people than it is to find it in yourself.

    I discovered that my moods were primarily linked to two things.

    The first one was needs, or more accurately, unmet needs.

    The second one was feelings, unexpressed feelings.

    Before my healing journey, there was no way for me to change my mood in any way because I wasn’t aware of my needs, and all I ever did was suppress and inhibit my feelings.

    Both of these things logically result in low moods.

    So why didn’t I meet my needs or feel my feelings? These simply weren’t things I had been taught how to do. In fact, suppressing my feelings was encouraged. No, it was demanded.

    If I didn’t, I would get punished. I would get hit. And a child learns very quickly how to keep themselves safe, so that’s what I did.

    I remember this one time I got bullied really badly. As I walked into the family home, I collapsed on the floor and cried. This was not something I had ever done before. It was a rare occasion. I had a proper breakdown.

    My mother looked at me in disgust, stepped over me, and carried on with cleaning the house.

    I don’t exactly remember how long I lay there, but it must have been a long time because she repeatedly stepped over me and ignored me in my pain.

    So that’s what I learned to do to myself.

    Whatever was going on, I ignored it.

    I never stopped to ask myself what I needed or how I felt. I didn’t give myself any reassurance or encouragement. I didn’t help myself in any way, so my only go-to point was depression or a low mood.

    On the inside, I kept my loudly screaming needs and feelings locked up in a tiny little jar just waiting to explode. I had to keep my moods low to keep the pressure down. I had to be quiet to make sure I didn’t accidentally unlock the biggest scream the world had ever heard.

    Today, I realize that my low moods were symptoms of me ignoring myself, not feeling my feelings, and not meeting my needs.

    I didn’t know how to honor my feelings and needs then, but I learned how during my work and healing journey.

    When a low mood visits me today, I don’t step over myself. I don’t repeat the patterns of the past. I don’t repeat the lack of kindness and warmth. Instead, I do these four things:

    1. I dig deep instead of surrendering to my low mood.

    I no longer just leave myself in it. I don’t just tolerate it.

    I notice it, stay with it, and love myself too much to not do anything about it.

    Instead, I get curious.

    2. I accept instead of fighting my low mood.

    There’s no point in putting yourself down when you’re already feeling low.

    You’re not doing anything wrong when you feel bad.

    It’s just a sign that you need to check in with yourself and figure out what’s going on for you so that you can take care of yourself in a healthy and loving way.

    So that’s what I do.

    3. I ask, “What’s going on for me?”

    Sometimes it’s obvious what’s impacting my mood. It could be a bad night’s sleep, an argument, or a cold.

    Sometimes it’s harder to figure out what’s going on, but then it’s important that I stay with it and don’t just shrug it off.

    In my experience, mood management has a lot to do with emotional self-care.

    I ask myself:

    • What feelings might I be suppressing?
    • In what ways might I be inhibiting or censoring myself?
    • Am I staying in the wrong kinds of relationships for me?
    • Do I forget to set boundaries?
    • Am I not having enough fun or variety?
    • Do I need to stretch myself more and grow?

    Learning how to meet my needs and feel my feelings were the two most important aspects of my healing journey. So much started to make sense once I knew what to do about my feelings or needs.

    My moods weren’t just random anymore. They made sense. And if they didn’t, I knew that I hadn’t found all of the puzzle pieces yet.

    4. I have compassion for myself.

    It’s wonderful to be a human. It’s also hard.

    We have feelings and moods and needs and relationships and dreams and fears and so much else going on.

    It’s not simple, and it’s not easy.

    We have to give ourselves some credit for all the great things that we achieve and do.

    But most of all, we have to appreciate who we are and how we are.

    We want to improve things. We want to feel better and be better for ourselves and for others. That alone needs to be celebrated!

    The not giving up. The striving to grow. The commitment to healing. All of that needs to be acknowledged.

    And all of you deserves compassion. Low mood or not.

  • How I’m Healing from Abuse After Going in Circles for Years

    How I’m Healing from Abuse After Going in Circles for Years

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of sexual abuse and may be triggering to some people.

    “Recovery is a process. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes everything you’ve got.” ~Unknown

    We are often told in therapy that we need to dig deep and explore our feelings until we find the root of our problem, as though we’ll finally have peace and relief just because we’ve found the “Nugget of Trauma.”

    The problem with long-term childhood trauma is that there was not just one Nugget, or one moment that we were left reeling from. For many of us abused as children, trauma encompassed our entire childhood and adolescent life.

    When I was in my early twenties my memories became a deluge, flooding into my mind all at once. I started with talk therapy, and it seemed like the one recurring question being asked of me was, “What’s the issue or event that you are struggling with?”

    So, thinking that they must know more than me about how to deal with the chaos in my mind, I would focus on one aspect of my childhood to try an work through it with them.

    I had a lot to pick from: beatings, torture, rape, sodomy, abduction, neglect, and the big pulsing mass of guilt and shame.

    I was ashamed that I could not protect my brothers and that, each time I was raped, it was because of something I had done that required punishment, like not wringing out a wash rag tightly enough. All of my abuse and the abuse of my brothers was, according to my father, my fault because I wasn’t good enough.

    Sound familiar? For many of us, the manipulation of how we think about the abuse and ourselves is the most painful and long-lasting trauma, but going into detail about this in therapy is exhausting, mentally and physically, and can cause a spiral into deeper depression.

    I didn’t know all this when I was in my twenties, and I barely understood the concept of talk therapy, which was: You talk about something that happened to you, and then the therapist tells you about the side effects of that experience to help you understand your feelings and behavior.

    It took me a long time to learn that having a realization about a certain event and learning how it’s affecting me in the present doesn’t mean the problems associated with it go away. And, unfortunately, the clinical view that I was making progress with those realizations, or “breakthroughs,” was false.

    For many of us, having a “breakthrough” doesn’t even mean that in two years we’ll remember it, and we may go through the same cycles of dealing with the abuse all over again. Like a big Wheel of Trauma.

    It took me years to recognize I was cycling through the Wheel of Trauma:

    • A deep dive into depression
    • Leading to anger at being depressed and feeling “sick of living with this”
    • Then the realization of how a specific past experience was affecting me
    • Cue the tsunami of relief and giddy hopefulness and a false belief that I was getting better
    • The relief soon wears off
    • A deep dive back into depression where the realization is forgotten

    I may never have recognized it if a friend hadn’t pointed it out to me. To find out I’d been going in circles was devastating.

    After doing some independent research on the neurological damage caused by early childhood trauma, I have begun to wonder if my brain was cycling just so I could have those moments of relief as a way to feel something positive and hopeful. That might be wishful thinking, but this is one example of why it is so important to write things down and keep track of what is going on in your head, especially in dark times.

    Trust me, I know so well how scary it can be to put things down on paper and suddenly find yourself looking at something that your brain put away a long time ago to protect you.

    I’m not going to say it’s easy or fun. I’m not going to say that I haven’t been triggered by writing. I have been, but I also came through it, and the memories I was so afraid of, while painful, aren’t as scary now.

    If you’re like me, your mind protected you when you were too young to process what was happening to you. But you aren’t that child anymore; you’re older, your mind is more mature, and you’re better equipped to deal with those experiences now.

    Be gentle with yourself, but also have faith that you will come out the other side if you have to come face to face with a horrible memory, or what I have dubbed a Nugget of Trauma.

    I’ve also learned that you can grab a Nugget of Trauma and pull it into the light, metaphorically. I don’t mean to take it out and analyze every detail. The goal isn’t to hurt yourself with old trauma; the goal is to learn how to move forward with it, and figure out some basic reactions you may have to that memory Nugget.

    Do you recognize the feelings that memory, or Nugget, has entwined with it?

    Do you behave in a certain way every day based on those feelings?

    Do you avoid certain people or places because they trigger that feeling?

    Do you feel this every day or just in certain situations or around certain people?

    How does it affect how you react to other people?

    How does it get triggered, and does it send you spiraling into depression?

    How do you feel about yourself?

    The goal isn’t to make it go away because it may never go away completely. But you can learn how to take care of yourself with this knowledge in hand and create new habits to counter the poison of the trauma.

    If something happens and you begin to feel a certain way, you will more likely recognize that feeling as something that is not associated with the present, and you can make a plan to take care of yourself in that situation.

    For example, I have come to recognize a sensation I sometimes feel when I’m with one or more people in an enclosed space, like a conference room or office. It is a physical, slimy, crawly feeling that I have to focus on and consciously control until I can make an excuse and leave.

    I’ve learned to recognize it so I can take care of myself in those situations. I leave, usually to a bathroom, and allow time for it to go away so I can feel safe again. If I can’t leave, I will hold a notepad or something in front of my chest as a barrier.

    Other things that may work for you are saying some soothing mantras, making a cup of tea, or taking a break and just writing it out. Smells can be a great way to break through a triggered response. Maybe keep some lotion or something else scented to help calm yourself and bring you back to the present. I love VapoRub for this.

    Your knowledge of yourself is the key to taking care of yourself, lessening past’s hold on you, and breaking the cycles.

    This means being completely honest with yourself and observing things you say and do without judging.

    When you can really see yourself without all the rationalizations, defenses, and excuses you cover your psyche with, you can better recognize your triggers, behavior patterns, and reactions.

    In my case, I am badly triggered by any cinama-graphic representation of rape. I will get up and walk out of the room, usually in a state of high agitation, and get really catty with anyone who tries to touch me or invade my personal space, which at that moment is about 1000 meters wide.

    It’s not a surprising trigger, and it doesn’t require a lot of analysis to figure out why it’s upsetting to me, but that isn’t really the point. The point is to truly be with myself in those moments to keep myself from spiraling down to the depths or physically harming myself.

    I’ve had to learn how to deal with my brain being doused in visual memories of rape and all the skin-crawling feelings that come with them. For me, this is where self-comfort and care has become vital.

    It’s almost like I have to be two people at the same time; while a huge part of me is freaking out, I have to be able to step outside of that, see myself in pain, and comfort myself back to safety and calm. And considering that I perceive most other people as threats when I’m triggered, I really only have myself.

    This was originally a hard lesson because I could listen to advice from friends or doctors or people on TV, but it was hard for me to take those ideas from “yeah, that sounds logical and smart” to actually living with those tools at my disposal and using them when I needed them.

    The first step was learning how to get myself to a mental state where I could use them. When you’re in the dark in your own mind and you can’t see the reality in front of you there is no logic that can break through.

    The damage isn’t logical, so it’s not an issue of logic or understanding; it’s a matter of taking care when your mind is in that painful moment and getting yourself back to the point where you have more control and are able to use those tools.

    It takes a lot of practice, patience, and honesty to develop self-care routines based on self-love and understanding. That understanding can’t always come from other people telling you what’s going on or why you’re reacting in a certain way. It’s best when understanding comes from caring enough about yourself to get your hands dirty and learn what’s really going on in your head.

    Admittedly, I have had long runs of not knowing what to make of the chaos in my mind, sometimes not even knowing what I was feeling, or what was real, or what was an attack from my past. In some moments of terror, not even knowing how old I was. It can be really bad at times, and I totally get that.

    The best course of action is to write as much as you possibly can every day about everything that is going through your mind. This gives you some idea of what your brain is fighting with.

    When you’re done writing, get some sleep or cry or go for a walk or talk to yourself on a voice recorder, or do something that will help calm your thoughts a bit. Later, you can look at what you’ve written and really see what you’re going through.

    This can be harsh at times, so be prepared for what comes out of your head. One of my dark writing sessions showed a seething self-hatred that was quite frightening.

    A lot of people take this journey with a therapist, and that can be a safe way to venture into the sometimes-ugly reality of our thoughts and being, like having someone with a life preserver waiting to pull us out of the muck if we get too deep and can’t get back out. I’ve had hit-or-miss experiences with therapists, but as mental health knowledge around early childhood trauma expands and improves, it is becoming a more viable option for some people.

    If you haven’t tried it yet, do some research and make an appointment. It takes time to build trust with someone, so be patient and remember to be kind to yourself.

    When I went to my last therapist I made a list of boundaries. I had been placed with a male against my noted preference, but I wanted to give it a shot, so I made a list letting him know things that would make sessions more difficult for me, like having him stand between me and the door. Little things to some people, but triggers for me.

    Don’t be ashamed of letting people know how best to help you. And know what helps you might change over time.

    After doing this for so many years I have learned that a method of self-care that worked for me in the past may not work for me today. Or a method that never sounded quite right for me before might now make sense. Allow yourself time and space to learn and grow and regress and progress.

    First priority: be good to yourself.

  • How Trauma Can Cause Mental Illness (It’s Not Just a Chemical Imbalance)

    How Trauma Can Cause Mental Illness (It’s Not Just a Chemical Imbalance)

    “What seems to be clear is that we humans are an accumulation of our traumatic experiences, that each trauma contributes to our biology, and that this biology determines, to some extent, how we respond to further traumatic events as they emerge in our lives.” ~Shaili Jain

    The stigma of mental health is decreasing. That’s wonderful, but the way we’re doing it is wrong and damaging. We are ignoring the trauma that is so prevalent and pervasive in our society.

    Think about how many times you’ve read something equating mental illness to cancer or some other disease. People say that taking medication for mental illness should be considered the same as taking medicine for blood pressure, cholesterol, or other medical issues.

    The phrase “chemical imbalance” is used quite often when referring to mental illness. There is a connection, but there’s so much more to mental illness than that.

    When we say that mental illness is simply a result of a chemical imbalance, we are pretending our trauma isn’t what causes so many of our mental health struggles. Most of us have had more than enough of others invalidating our trauma and the mental illnesses resulting from it.

    Now, before anybody starts screaming that their mental illness is purely a result of a chemical imbalance, hear me out. I do believe it is possible to have a genetic chemical imbalance.

    At the same time, I think that possibility needs to include a look at epigenetics. I’m not going into detail about that. Take yourself on over to Google for that.

    What I will say about epigenetics is that I believe these “genetic chemical imbalances” come from trauma that is inherited from each generation. It has been proven that trauma can change our DNA.

    That is probably why scientists have shown that some have a genetic predisposition to mental illness. The brain has a chemical imbalance as a result of epigenetics.

    Now, back to simply labeling mental illness as a chemical imbalance. I suppose it feels like a softer blow for some to believe that’s why they have a mental illness.

    This allows them to think that they and/or their experiences have nothing to do with their mental illness. Let me just take this pill to fix my brain.

    When I hear or read that anywhere, I get incredibly frustrated. It is minimizing or completely ignoring the fact that mental illness is typically a result of trauma.

    My father was a depressed alcoholic who died of cirrhosis nine years ago. I experienced a good bit of trauma as a result of his drunken rages on top of him being absent for a large part of my childhood.

    Not only that, but I had the additional trauma of my mother pretending there was nothing wrong with him. I was also taught to pretend the violence wasn’t a big deal.

    It was incredibly confusing for me as a little girl because my mind and body knew those experiences were traumatic, but I heard otherwise.

    I got a double whammy when it came to mental illness. Unfortunately for me, my mother was not emotionally available. I needed a parent who would validate my feelings and allow me to express what I was feeling.

    So, I had the genetic predisposition to depression from my father and probably my mother as well since she stayed with him for many years. However, I also had severe depression and anxiety as a result of my childhood trauma.

    I believed my depression was simply genetic and a chemical imbalance until I began therapy. As it became clearer that my childhood trauma was the biggest reason I struggled with my mental health, that way-too-simple theory began to piss me off.

    If a genetic chemical imbalance was the sole reason I was depressed and had anxiety, that meant my trauma shouldn’t have affected me the way it did. That didn’t sit well with me.

    How could a genetic chemical imbalance result in my thinking that I was worthless and unlovable? How could it be the reason I never felt safe, emotionally or physically? It just was not possible in my mind!

    A genetic chemical imbalance wouldn’t cause those negative, false beliefs. It would make me feel depressed or anxious overall, but not linked to any particular event.

    Witnessing violence in my home was the reason I had anxiety. I never felt physically safe after the first episode. I was always creating plans of what I could do to be safe if this or that happened.

    When I was little, there was a roof over a storage shed outside my window. If I heard my father throwing furniture or screaming violently, I could go out my window, slide down the roof, and run into the woods behind my house.

    I had escape plans for every room in my house. I also used to sleep with a portable phone so that I could call 911 if I was ever somehow brave enough to do that.

    Hearing that the violence I witnessed was not a big deal and being told not to talk to anybody about it resulted in a very confused little girl.

    I felt intense sadness because I believed that my father didn’t love me enough to quit drinking. When I would voice that sadness, I was told that I didn’t have a reason to be sad. So then I thought there was something really wrong with me.

    Why am I so sad if I don’t have a reason to be? Why should I feel unlovable if that’s stupid to say or feel?

    Once I began therapy, I learned that all of those thoughts and feelings resulted from my trauma. So, even if I didn’t have that predisposition to a genetic chemical imbalance, I would still have had depression and anxiety.

    Any child who experienced anything similar to what I experienced would have depression and anxiety. That genetic chemical imbalance garbage was keeping me from acknowledging the fact that trauma was the cause.

    As I mentioned earlier, I hear a lot of people saying they need medication for mental illness simply because they have a chemical imbalance. In my opinion, that is incredibly dangerous and prevents people from healing.

    It typically results in people thinking a pill will solve all of their mental health struggles. I’ve yet to hear about anybody who took a pill that completely removed all symptoms of mental illness.

    Now, I’m not saying the medication does not help. It most certainly does for many people. However, there is much more to mental illness.

    Not only that, but the chemical imbalance can also be a result of trauma. There is much more needed to heal trauma than just a pill.

    In my late teens and into my early twenties, I tried tons of different medications for depression, but I knew I needed more than that.

    Also, each medication only helped a little bit, and only with the day-to-day functioning to get my work done. I was just going through the motions, though. I never even had moments of peace or happiness.

    There was no medication that changed my feelings of worthlessness. I still felt unlovable. If I heard or saw certain things, I would get triggered with anxiety. Quickly, my mind would return to that childhood fear that I wasn’t safe emotionally or physically.

    If my mental illness wasn’t a result of trauma, then the medications would’ve cured it all.

    Oh, how I wish those medications would’ve been the answer for me. That would’ve saved me a lot of time, energy, and money in therapy.

    Therapists wouldn’t even exist if mental illness were nothing but a simple chemical imbalance. Medications for mental illness truly would be “happy” pills.

    It just doesn’t work that way. Mental illness typically results from years of trauma, covered up or not processed.

    Trauma needs intense therapy in order for the brain to get rewired. Trauma also needs to be acknowledged and validated for people to function in a healthier way and begin the healing process.

    Saying mental illness is just a chemical imbalance sends the message that your brain is just screwed up and some loose screws need to be tightened.

    Equating mental illness to cancer or any other medical illness or disease is denying the major damage trauma causes.

    For me, I had enough people downplay my childhood trauma. I’ve also heard way too many people downplay their own.

    So, let’s stop doing that. Let’s start naming trauma as equally damaging, if not more, than a simple chemical imbalance.

    Name the traumas that resulted in your mental illness. Acknowledge the significant impact that trauma has had on your life and the ways it continues to affect you on a daily basis. And find a good therapist who can guide you through processing your trauma, as I did, so you can heal. Your mind, body, and soul need you to do that.

  • How I Healed from Childhood Trauma and Stopped Sabotaging My Happiness

    How I Healed from Childhood Trauma and Stopped Sabotaging My Happiness

    “We can all make powerful choices. We can all take back control by not blaming chance, fate, or anyone else for our outcome. It’s within our ability to cause everything to change. Rather than letting past hurtful experiences sap our energy and sabotage our success, we can use them to fuel positive, constructive change.” ~Darren Hardy

    I parked my car and began to walk toward the mall while covering my puffy eyes with black sunglasses. I was fresh out of a session with my therapist, where I had hit a breaking point. We both came to the conclusion that I use self-punishment as an approach to almost all of life.

    As I was crossing the parking lot, all I could think of was: “How could I not see it? How could I be so oblivious to my inner dialogue and the actions I take to punish myself? Am I a hidden masochist without any sense of awareness? I should do better than this!”

    Considering that I used self-sabotage as one of my survival behaviors, coming down on myself for not doing better wasn’t the healthiest next step I could take. This time, I was able to recognize it and had one of the biggest epiphanies about how my trauma impacts my life. It was scary and liberating at the same time.

    When we grow up believing that we don’t deserve a lot, or at least not a lot of good stuff, we will subconsciously sabotage anything that creates a vision of a brighter future. Since the subconscious is programmed to validate any limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves, without awareness, our self-sabotaging behavior thrives.

    For the longest time, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. The logical part of my brain understood what was best for me. However, I still chose the self-destructive road of drama, self-judgment, complaining, victimization, and never walking my talk. 

    For example, to walk away from a marriage that mentally drained me would be a healthy thing to do. However, I stayed in a toxic partnership for as long as I could bear until I got so numb that I couldn’t feel anything. Since self-love was a concept I wasn’t familiar with, I found my significance in being disrespected, controlled, and emotionally abused.

    My logic told me to pack my stuff up and run as far as I could, but my survival mode kept me in. Although I was highly uncomfortable and most of the time in pain, at least I was familiar with the discomfort. I knew this place of constant self-sabotage and self-hatred.

    To the outside world, it didn’t make sense. To the left hemisphere of my brain, it didn’t make sense either. But to my trauma wiring, it felt like home. It was all that I knew existed and was available to me.

    When we experience domestic violence, whether as a direct victim or as a witness, our subconscious mind adopts self-destructive beliefs about ourselves and the world. Feelings of unworthiness and self-punishment paralyze us, and therefore keep everything the same.

    Although I kept tolerating situations I didn’t like far more than I felt comfortable admitting, I couldn’t let one question go: “Why do so many of us want to change, but no matter what we do, always end up in the same place with the same drama and same people? Why isn’t logic enough, and what defines true transformation?”

    I set out on a mission and began researching everything about domestic violence and its impact on children. I knew that my childhood wasn’t the best foundation for a happy and healthy life, but this time I decided to go deeper and get to the root of the problem.

    I learned that seeing my mum covered in bruises created feelings of fear, that struggling with her alcohol abuse brought feelings of unworthiness, and that the rough side of my father with his overly disciplined attitude, that lacked empathy, made me believe I wasn’t enough to be loved by him.

    As children, we interpret these experiences differently than adults. For the most part, an adult can step back and reevaluate whether this behavior is about them or the other person. Unfortunately, children don’t have this ability since their brains aren’t fully developed to understand it. Instead, they internalize these experiences and begin to believe that they are unlovable, not enough, and never safe, and they start to hustle for love.

    Since I grew up with these beliefs and didn’t address them for most of my life, I subconsciously sabotaged things I wanted because I didn’t believe I deserved them.

    On the outside, I wanted to build my business and position myself as a coach, while on the inside, I procrastinated because I highly doubted that I could ever make it. Or I would seek toxic relationships full of drama and toxicity. Since I didn’t believe that I was good enough for anything healthy and loving, I would stick around to validate my limiting beliefs of unworthiness. Self-sabotage and self-punishment were my way of life.

    After I began to understand the importance of our brain’s wiring in everything we do and how traumatic experiences define our lives if we let them, I knew that only thinking and understanding wouldn’t cut it. I would need to take serious action if I wanted to stop the self-sabotage and significantly transform my life.

    If you grew up in a household with domestic violence, you’ve experienced trauma of some sort that impacts the healthy development of your brain. You may find yourself in a constant battle between knowing what is good for you and doing the complete opposite.

    Although the trauma’s impact on our well-being is inevitable, so is the healing that takes place if we commit to it and work through it. Here’s how I did just that.

    1. Combining meditation and science to rewire my brain

    I was familiar with the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza for a while. After I read one of his first books, You Are The Placebo, I started to understand the power and importance of rewiring my brain.

    I learned that when we meditate, we lower our brain waves and become present. Once our mind is relaxed, almost half asleep, we can use visualization to bring up emotions such as love or compassion, which promotes healing. Or, we can visualize our desired goals while feeling the excitement and confidence that comes from achieving them.

    Since meditation allows us to go deeper and access the mind on a subconscious level, over time we can change or create new neuropathways, form new habits, and transform our belief system.

    Many scientific studies have shown how meditation improves sleep, reduces stress, and allows us to self-regulate, which is especially useful when working through trauma.

    I started practicing Joe Dispenza’s meditations and set a goal: Every day for the next thirty days, I must do a forty-minute meditation. No excuses, no procrastination. The game was on, and I knew that I had to commit fully to this process.

    It’s been eight months since I started, and I haven’t stopped my meditations since. Occasionally, I skip a day or two, but then I remind myself of the mission I am on and how important it is to stay committed to healing. It’s not a secret that self-discipline is the highest form of self-love.

    2. Getting a therapist

    To understand why I use self-sabotage, I decided to get a therapist. I needed to address my past and use self-awareness as a stepping stone to change.

    From the beginning, we focused on addressing the sexual assault I experienced. The biggest highlight of my therapy was understanding that I subconsciously punish myself and live in deep states of guilt and shame. For the first time, I started learning about my self-destructive tendencies and how to stop them.

    My favorite part of therapy was learning self-soothing techniques. One that I use regularly is wrapping myself into a blanket while drinking peppermint tea and breathing deeply.

    Many of us who have experienced domestic violence or other forms of trauma and abuse don’t know what love or compassion is. Since we hustled for survival and discounted ourselves as worthless and not enough, self-soothing is a foreign concept to us. Although you may find it weird and uncomfortable at first, it will gradually change how you see and take care of yourself.

    3. Practicing self-awareness and challenging myself

    A few months ago, I decided to take a three-day intense self-development course that many of my friends were raving about. I didn’t expect any significant transformation until the second day of the workshop, when everything started to shift.

    I became aware of stories I have created about my parents, who I am as a person, how I see myself, and how I live in a deep place of victimization and inauthenticity.

    Although I grew up with domestic violence, so did my mother and father. It was time to break the generational curse and take full ownership of my triggers, insecurities, desperation, and toxic tendencies that resulted from the abuse. I couldn’t play the victim card anymore since the only person I was playing was myself.

    4. Addressing my shadows

    Befriending parts of my personality that I despised was probably the biggest challenge, and frankly, it’s still in the making. However, I found the courage to look at my self-sabotaging behaviors—how I dislike disrespect and abuse but willingly go for more, and how I manipulate people or fear connections. That’s when I began to defeat the monster of self-sabotage and recognized the opportunity of healing.

    We are so eager to find the light that we forget about the dark side of ourselves that often holds us back. We want to look away and forget about everything traumatic that happened to us since our resilience to face the truth may be weakened at first. However, learning to accept those shameful and hurtful experiences and love who we became as a result of a trauma or abuse provides us an opportunity to grow into the warrior we never thought we could become.

    —

    After two years of intense healing and personal growth, I concluded that the only thing that can save us and truly heal us is to learn how to love ourselves, not in spite of what we’ve been through or who we are but because of it.

    Today I understand that the resilience I had as a child who faced horrific or traumatic experiences is the same resilience that’s available to me now to help me heal and thrive in life. I am learning every day what it means to live from the inside out and how the power and strength I often looked for on the outside has been within me all along.

  • Are You Pathologizing Normal Emotions? It’s Not Always a Mental Illness

    Are You Pathologizing Normal Emotions? It’s Not Always a Mental Illness

    “Don’t believe everything you think.” ~Unknown

    Society is becoming more accepting of mental illness. That’s great, but there’s a downside that we need to talk about. Not everything is mental illness. We need to stop pathologizing every single thing that we feel.

    What I mean by pathologizing everything is jumping to diagnosing yourself after every tough feeling you have. It’s great to be self-aware, but I think we are taking that a little too far, and it’s causing more depression and anxiety.

    Yes, I said we are taking self-awareness too far. I stand by that, but I’ll explain the reasoning behind my belief. We are supposed to feel a range of emotions. It is normal to experience sadness, anger, irritability, anxiety, grief, or any of the feelings that exist from time to time.

    Since society is more accepting of mental health issues, we now want to label any uncomfortable feeling as mental illness. We diagnose ourselves with whatever mental illness we believe we have at the first sign of emotional pain.

    That leaves us feeling like we are so screwed up. We don’t need anything additional to make us feel like we’re screwed up! Most of us already feel this often enough as it is.

    Before you start listing all the reasons I’m wrong or how my view could be damaging, let me give you some examples. If you read them and agree, this could help you see that you and your feelings are more “normal” than you may think.

    Recently, I was talking to somebody who was in the process of buying a house for the first time. He was telling me that he was having a lot of anxiety related to the process and everything that he needed to get done.

    I could see the stress in his body and face.

    He has a history of generalized anxiety disorder, so when he feels even a little anxiety, he starts fearing that his disorder will return in full force.

    That’s a logical and valid fear. Anybody who has ever experienced clinical anxiety knows how scary it is to consider its return.

    However, he was missing something incredibly important. Buying a house, especially your first house, will always come with some “anxious-type” feelings.

    We need to learn how to normalize feelings that most people would have in the same situation. Panicking at the first sign of difficult feelings can turn those feelings into something much larger than they actually are.

    Just a couple of weeks ago, I slept twelve hours straight one night. I woke up with no energy or motivation whatsoever. I still didn’t want to get out of bed after twelve hours of sleep.

    That is incredibly abnormal for me. Typically, I wake up at about 4:00 am to write and do stuff for my other job. This gives me time to work while my family is asleep.

    That morning I woke up when my husband did, a few hours later than my normal. I told him I was just so tired and didn’t feel like doing anything, which is uncharacteristic of me.

    I felt “blah” and just wanted to stay in bed all day doing nothing. So, thirty minutes after waking up, that’s exactly what I did.

    My husband had to convince me to eat because nothing sounded good to me. I didn’t even want my normal glass of wine that evening.

    The next morning, I woke up feeling blah again and couldn’t shake it. I forced myself to function and play with my baby.

    He seemed to be feeling like me. That concerned me because he is so incredibly intuitive. I even thought maybe he was picking up on my feeling down and blah.

    When I got back in bed after lunch, I started worrying that I was depressed. From childhood and throughout my twenties, I was severely depressed. I did a lot of work to heal and haven’t had symptoms of depression in about ten years. A little bit of panic started rising with my negative self-talk.

    “What is wrong with you? Why can’t you just get out of bed? Maybe you should do some yoga instead of being so damn lazy.”

    I started telling myself that my depression was coming back, and in full force. Thankfully, I was able to put a stop to those thoughts pretty quickly.

    For some reason, my mind and body needed to rest. I just needed to allow myself to do that. Just because I was tired and didn’t feel like doing anything for a couple of days did not mean that I was depressed again.

    It was hard for me to acknowledge that I might actually have been sick, that there might have been a medical reason that I was so exhausted and didn’t feel well.

    The next morning, I went to an urgent care office. Well, what do you know? I had an ear infection in both ears and a fever, and my throat looked awful according to the nurse practitioner.

    Immediately my mind was put to rest. Major depressive disorder hadn’t reared its ugly head again. I was physically sick. My body was fighting an infection.

    For any of you who have experienced mental illness, you may also have this fear that one day it might return to say, “Hello. Remember me? I’m back!” Any time we get a hint of a difficult feeling, we jump to the conclusion that our anxiety, depression, or whatever we had is returning.

    This happened recently for a friend of mine. She has a history of major depressive disorder that plagued her for many years. She went to therapy and has been doing really well the last few years.

    She is an introvert who works in sales. Her company had a week-long meeting with all the managers and sales representatives. If you’ve ever been in sales or know somebody who has attended a company-wide meeting for several days, you know how much extroverted energy that takes.

    A few days after her meeting, she and I were on the phone. I asked her how her day was going. She told me that she just felt down and not motivated to do the things she needed to do.

    She had even scheduled an appointment with her psychiatrist for the next week to see if her medications needed to be adjusted. She was labeling herself as depressed and feeling scared.

    After we got off the phone, I started thinking about how I just didn’t think that she was depressed.

    I know her well and knew that being around a bunch of people for a week was exhausting for her, since she’s an introvert. I texted her about this and asked her if she thought her “depression” could simply be her needing to rest after having to be “on” for a week at her meetings.

    Quickly, she responded that she agreed and that it probably wasn’t her depression coming back to haunt her again. She recognized that she needed time to decompress from having been around so many people for several days.

    That’s just another example of how we pathologize feelings that are normal. We want to immediately label what we’re feeling as “wrong” or “unhealthy” and catastrophize it when it’s not actually a catastrophe. It’s often just a normal reaction to what we’ve experienced.

    It’s wonderful that society is becoming more aware and accepting of mental health and getting help. However, not everything is a symptom of mental illness. We need to stop diagnosing ourselves with mental illnesses based on social media memes or things we read or see.

    Also, we need to realize that it is perfectly normal to experience sadness and anxious feelings. That does not mean that we are suffering with mental illness.

    When we jump to diagnosing ourselves or others, we’re actually causing harm because we aren’t allowing ourselves to experience our feelings or normal things. Instead, we are trying to find a pathological reason we feel a certain way so we can eliminate it as soon as it pops up.

    That is not healthy. What is healthy is allowing ourselves to experience the feelings that come up, learning how to navigate those feelings in a healthy way, and choosing not to shame ourselves for having feelings that aren’t “positive.”

    So, the next time you’re going through a difficult time and you’re tempted to label it as mental illness or something that has to be stopped and “fixed” immediately, pause and ask yourself a few questions.

    Is this something that many people experience? If yes, then give yourself some grace and time to recover.

    Are the feelings I’m having normal based on my circumstances? If yes, then you don’t need to label them as mental illness or something that you should be gravely concerned about.

    Is this preventing me from completing the tasks I need to complete? If so, is it lasting for more than a week or two? Mental illness diagnoses require alterations from “normal” functioning.

    Have other people noticed me struggling, and are they concerned? If not, then you are probably experiencing normal feelings for the experience you’ve had.

    Use these questions as a guide and give yourself a little more grace when you have appropriate feelings and reactions to difficult experiences. Also, keep in mind that most of what you read that tells you that you have a mental illness probably isn’t truly qualified to do so.

  • What Is Stress-Induced Illness? How Trauma Can Cause Physical Pain

    What Is Stress-Induced Illness? How Trauma Can Cause Physical Pain

    “Wisdom is merely the movement from fighting life to embracing it.” ~Rasheed Ogunlaru

    Three years ago, I fell into the blind spot of medicine: America’s unknown epidemic.

    After numerous tests, scans, scopes, and too many doctors to count, modern medicine could not find anything seriously wrong with me. I also consented to have my gallbladder removed. My first and only surgery at age forty, an “experiment” of sorts.

    Six months into the worst nightmare of my life, my spiraling health started to take a huge toll on me physically, mentally, and emotionally. I didn’t want to live anymore, but I was too chicken to take my own life.

    They Cannot See the Forest for the Trees

    If just one doctor had paid closer attention to my backstory and probed it further, the diagnosis would have been obvious and the treatment plan effective. Here’s the problem: My doctors were only focused on my presenting symptoms and not on my whole being.

    Instead, thoughts of the following conditions (in this exact order) became my daily companions: colon cancer, GERD, IBD, IBS, pancreatic cancer, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, gluten sensitivity, celiac disease, Meniere’s disease, interstitial cystitis, chronic pelvic pain, pelvic floor dysfunction, motor neuron disease, multiple sclerosis, bladder cancer, thoracic outlet syndrome, pudendal neuralgia, peripheral vascular disease, bile reflux, and a few other conditions I’ve surely forgotten. I was one big, hot mess.

    Of the twenty-six symptoms I experienced, the constant bladder pain was the most excruciating and difficult to deal with. Imagine a UTI that never goes away. Nothing could knock it down.

    The pain took me to the edge of wanting to take my life many times. At one point, I told a doctor that I would give him my entire 401k savings if he could make the pain go away.

    It’s Time to Surrender and Trust the Process

    In September 2021, I surrendered to the pain and requested a referral to an academic medical center after fighting it for nearly two years. Somewhere along the way, I made the conscious choice to walk with the pain instead.

    I quickly learned that doctors specializing in pain medicine do not try to cure pain, but they try their best to equip patients with strategies to cope with their pain. Along with the things my pain psychologist taught me, he encouraged me to reacquaint myself with Curable, an app I had actually loaded onto my phone almost a year prior but had quickly dismissed. Stupid mistake on my part.

    Addressing pain at an emotional and psychological level did not make any sense to me. After all, I had a structural problem, not a brain problem—or so I thought.

    Fortunately, during my second round of trying the Curable app, I discovered Howard Schubiner MD and one of his colleagues, Alan Gordon LCSW, a psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of chronic pain through pain reprocessing therapy (PRT).

    Dr. Schubiner is the founder and director of the Mind Body Medicine Program at Providence Hospital in Southfield, Michigan. His program uses the most current research methodologies to treat individuals who suffer from the mind body syndrome (MBS) or tension myositis syndrome (TMS), as described by Dr. John Sarno.

    What is mind body syndrome? I’m going to answer this in a second, but first I need to take this story back to my childhood. This is where the story gets very interesting and revealing.

    The Haunting Effects of a Bad Childhood

    As I started to dig deeper, I was introduced to the landmark 1998 ACE study that, as its abbreviation indicates, explored “adverse childhood experiences.”

    The ACE research concluded that the more adversities a person experienced as a child—whether it be a parental death or incarceration, poverty, neighborhood violence, or abuse—the more likely that person would be to suffer from serious physiological disorders as an adult. I had six childhood adversities: a household with substance misuse, violence, divorce, severe poverty, neglect, and incarceration of a parent, all at or before the age of ten.

    I also discovered a recent meta-analysis showing that individuals with a history of psychological trauma, regardless of the type of trauma, were almost three times more likely to have chronic pain than those who had experienced no trauma.

    Bingo! Just call me Sherlock Holmes.

    Translation: As a child, I was threatened repeatedly—not physically, but emotionally—causing my body to have a stress response. This prepared my body to fight or flee. Because my body stayed in this stress response mode for an extended period of time, crucial neural connections in my developing brain most likely suffered damage, causing me to be hypersensitive to stressful events.

    In other words, my alarm switch is always “on,” unless I can lower the perceived danger in my brain. My divorce was just the tipping point to my spiraling health.

    The Day the SWAT team Visited My Home

    To illustrate how inept society was in the early nineties at addressing emotional trauma, I only need to point to one early morning when the SWAT team jumped my backyard fence and pointed their submachine guns at me while I was feeding our family dog, Smokey. Their target was my dad (he sold drugs), but he was nowhere to be found.

    He had been out partying all night and had yet to return home. I was the only person home at the time. A scared shitless ten-year-old boy. I liked watching the reality show Cops, but this was completely surreal.

    This is the crazy part. The SWAT team left me in the backyard and told me to go to school, like nothing had happened. I never spoke to a counselor or therapist about this frightening event.

    I grew up thinking it was normal to not talk about emotions—or scary things like being stuck in the middle of a drug raid, alone and helpless. I grew up real fast that day.

    Mind Body Syndrome, Anyone?

    Mind body syndrome, or psychophysiologic disorder (PPD), is a certain diagnosis arising the majority of the time in the absence of tissue or structural damage in the body, when nerve pathways become continuously or intermittently activated by past or current life stressors.

    The Psychophysiologic Disorders Association states that the symptoms of PPD are due to altered nerve pathways in the brain that affect the body. Symptoms can include headache, back pain, chest pain, muscle or joint pain, abdominal or pelvic pain, constipation, diarrhea, bloating, nausea, irritable bowel syndrome, discomfort in the bladder or during urination, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and many other symptoms.

    To illustrate how inept today’s doctor is at diagnosing a psychophysiological disorder, I only need to point to my first-ever encounter with a board-certified gastroenterologist in March 2019. Gastroenterologists are doctors who are highly trained to diagnose and treat problems in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and liver.

    Basically, they get paid handsomely to look up people’s butts and take pictures all day long. If you ask me, it sounds pretty mundane and not all that creative. The best news you can receive after getting one of their colonoscopies is that you really didn’t need the procedure after all.

    Emotional Tone Deafness

    To help remedy my bowels that had gone haywire (the first of my many symptoms), I anxiously took the slot of the next available doctor at a nearby GI clinic. While on the examination table, I related that I was smack dab in the middle of a horrible divorce and in a lot of emotional distress after being in a dysfunctional marriage for the last ten years.

    The doctor’s response? Nothing. Zip. Nada. You could have heard a pin drop in the room. Instead of acknowledging my unfortunate circumstances, this dimwit doctor went about the rest of his examination and acted like what I had shared with him was the most benign, most boring thing he had ever heard in his life. By my definition, this was a moral injustice.

    News flash: The Holmes-Rahe Stress Scale indicates that divorce is the second highest stressor for humans, second only to the death of a spouse.

    Searching High and Low

    I had secretly wished that my doctor was going to validate my emotional trauma and scars and identify them as the cause of my bowel changes, but his lack of a response only reinforced the fact in my brain that something was structurally wrong with me. And so that’s the path I went down for nearly three years, trying to find something structural to explain one unexplainable symptom after another.

    When I say I turned over every stone, I really did.

    I went as deep as internal pelvic floor therapy to try to cure my bladder pain. That’s right. My physical therapist and I mapped out and explored every nook and cranny of my pelvic floor via my anal canal. As a bonus, I had homework to complete with a funky wand apparatus.

    Remember, I was desperate and willing to try almost anything. Everything except the butt gas. It’s basically ozone therapy gas that is administered into the body. In my case, I would have given it to myself through my butt.

    I can’t help but laugh when I recall the day I was first presented with this option. This is what my life had become. Wacky alternative therapies.

    In my career, I get paid to find solutions and fix problems. Fixing my health was no different, I thought. In my futile attempt to fix my health, I flushed thousands of dollars down the drain in the process and just about lost my sanity.

    Can This Really Be Real?

    At this point, one might ask if PPD symptoms are real or imaginary. The symptoms are real. In fact, the symptoms can be just as severe as those from any other disease. Some patients with PPD are ill enough to be hospitalized.

    Experts like David Clarke MD, a retired gastroenterologist and president of the Psychophysiologic Disorders Association, like to point out that one in six adults and 30–40% of primary care patients suffer from pain symptoms and chronic conditions that are “medically unexplained.” This is America’s unknown epidemic.

    But wait. There is a silver lining that comes with all this unfortunate news. Once PPD is recognized, treatment is available and is often effective in alleviating symptoms. Dr. Schubiner likes to ask: “Why manage your pain when you can cure it?”

    The Best Treatment Around

    So how effective is the mind body syndrome treatment? Dr. Schubiner and his colleagues published an article not too long ago demonstrating that emotion-focused therapy was superior to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for dramatic pain reduction in people with fibromyalgia, many of whom had experienced childhood trauma.

    Dr. Schubiner and Alan Gordon also helped lead the recent study at the University of Colorado–Boulder that showed that not only can chronic back pain be managed, it can be cured using a mind body approach. In their study of 151 total participants, 66% randomized to PRT were pain free or nearly pain free at post treatment.

    Once I heard this, I started to tackle my pain at the emotional and psychological levels. Along with somatic tracking, expressive writing, mindfulness, and reprogramming the brain, my favorite treatment activity has been intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy (outlined in Dr. Schubiner’s book, Unlearn Your Pain), where deeply buried emotions of anger, resentment, guilt, shame, sadness, and grief are uncovered and released. Healing often occurs rapidly once these emotions are stabilized.

    During this process of intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy (ISTDP), I have taken several of my most incompetent doctors, and even my dad, behind the proverbial woodshed, and I have given them the worst tongue lashing they’ve surely ever received in their lives. Cursing is highly recommended and encouraged.

    While I couldn’t literally slash the tires of the doctor who appeared earlier in this story, this was the next best thing. And it felt so good.

    You might be wondering what happened to my dad. He eventually turned his life around, and I am so grateful for this.

    Today, while my pain is not completely gone yet, it’s generally at about a two or three instead of a six or seven. I will take this any day.

  • Better Help: Affordable Online Therapy, Anywhere in the World

    Better Help: Affordable Online Therapy, Anywhere in the World

    **This is a sponsored post to introduce you to BetterHelp, a company I highly recommend!

    I hear it all the time—”I’m feeling more depressed than ever, and nothing seems to help.”

    I see it in blog comments. I read it in forum posts and social media replies. I also get stories like this in my inbox from people who are struggling to find a sense of peace and control in the constant chaos of their lives.

    And I empathize with all of them. I know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed and stuck, physically and emotionally, and helpless to change what isn’t working.

    Many will tell you the answer to overcoming depression is medication, and I don’t deny that it can often be a crucial piece of the puzzle.

    But I don’t believe it’s the only piece. It wasn’t for me. It took me a while to recognize it, but my depression stemmed from unhealed traumas that had left deep scars and created faulty programming. And I couldn’t heal until I addressed them.

    If you’re struggling with depression now, maybe a traumatic past played a role for you as well. Maybe it’s circumstantial—you’re grieving the loss of someone you love or struggling financially. Perhaps it’s related to a health condition. Or maybe you’re predisposed to mental health issues because they run in your family.

    Whatever your unique situation, I suspect that, like me, you’d benefit from digging deep to understand not only what caused your depression, but also which choices exacerbate it—and what you can do to help alleviate it.

    That’s where therapy comes in. I credit therapy with saving my life, since it enabled me to not only peel back the layers of trauma but also develop healthy coping skills so I could free myself from bulimia and self-harm.

    But I know not everyone is as fortunate as I once was. Therapy isn’t always covered by insurance, and it can be hard to find a specialist in your area that addresses your specific needs and issues.

    This is why I’m happy to have aligned with one of Tiny Buddha’s newest sponsors, BetterHelp. I know their online therapists are saving lives by offering counseling—accessible from anywhere in the world—at an affordable price.

    If you’ve wanted to try therapy but have a hard time motivating yourself to get out the door, or the cost has been a barrier, BetterHelp may be the perfect vehicle to provide the help you need.

    More About BetterHelp

    After you take a quick, free online assessment, BetterHelp can match you with a licensed professional therapist in under forty-eight hours.

    The service is available worldwide, and all sessions are done securely online. And not only is it more affordable than traditional therapy, but you might also be able to get financial aid if you need it.

    You can choose to schedule weekly video or phone sessions, whichever feels more comfortable for you, and you can log into your account to message your therapist at any time.

    I can tell you from personal experience that it sometimes takes a couple tries to find the right therapist. Someone might look perfect on paper but might not feel like a great fit once you connect.

    The beauty of online therapy is that you don’t need to trek to different offices in different cities to find someone who can address your specific issues. With BetterHelp, you can easily switch therapists at any time, without leaving your couch, if you feel your therapist isn’t a great match for your needs.

    —

    I consistently recommend therapy to those who comment and email me because I realize self-help can only go so far. You can read all the blog posts in the world but still feel clueless as to what you, specifically, need, or how to get out of your own way and apply all the good advice you’ve read.

    That’s because we’re all different—what works for one person might not work for someone else. And just knowing what might help doesn’t give you the strength, motivation, and faith to get up and give it a go.

    Sometimes you need outside assistance to make a plan, break your patterns, and take back control of your life. A BetterHelp therapist can help you do just that.

    Click here to learn more and take a free assessment, and as a Tiny Buddha reader you’ll get 20% off your first month.

    I wish you peace, joy, and healing, friends!

  • BetterHelp: The World’s Largest Online Therapy Platform

    BetterHelp: The World’s Largest Online Therapy Platform

    **Though this is a sponsored post, you can trust I only recommend products and services I personally love!

    If you’re like most people, you’re probably starting to consider the goals and dreams you’d like to pursue in the New Year.

    Maybe you’re visualizing the person you want to be, reflecting on what you hope to accomplish, and strategizing about everything you need to do (and stop doing) to finally feel happy with your life.

    Most of us spend our lives chasing happiness, checking accomplishments and milestones off a life to-do list, as if each pen stroke brings us one step closer to bliss. Except that’s not how it works.

    And that’s why most of us never find that elusive happiness we’re all seeking: We focus on all the things we think we need to acquire or achieve instead of looking within and figuring out what’s really holding us back. The unresolved traumas, the core wounds, the limiting beliefs—all the mental and emotional hurdles that keep us down and stuck.

    It’s easier to focus on externals, but addressing the internal doesn’t have to be so hard if we get the right help and support.

    For me, it all started with therapy. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be here today if not for the healing and insight I gained through years of inner work on a therapist’s couch. I’d probably still be bulimic, depressed, and driven by self-loathing, if I was even here at all.

    Fortunately, a lot has changed since then, and you don’t even need to leave your house to overcome your demons, break through your patterns, and free yourself from bad habits.

    If you’d like to make 2022 the year you finally get out of your own way, I highly recommend BetterHelp, the world’s largest online therapy platform.

    What Is BetterHelp?

    BetterHelp can assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist in under forty-eight hours. This isn’t a crisis line. It’s not self-help. It’s professional therapy, done securely online.

    The service is available worldwide, which means you may be able to find a therapist who deals with issues local professionals aren’t trained to address,

    It’s more affordable than traditional therapy, and financial aid is available for those who need it.

    How Does BetterHelp Work?

    After you’re matched with a therapist, you’ll be able to schedule weekly video or phone sessions, and you can also log into your account any time to send a message to your therapist.

    You can count on timely and thoughtful feedback whenever you reach out. But if ever you feel your therapist isn’t a good match, no worries—BetterHelp makes it easy and free to change therapists.

    Why Choose BetterHelp?

    Though I haven’t personally utilized BetterHelp, I feel confident introducing this service to you because I know how many people it’s helped. You can visit their site and you’ll find new testimonials added daily. Some recent ones include:

    I have been talking to Kamara to help me with my anxiety and depression over certain life events, since June of this year 2021. I find Kamara very attentive, intuitive, empathetic, and understanding. She is enabling me to think about my challenges in a way that is constructive and helpful in my healing journey. She gently encourages self-examination in a safe, caring way and allows self-expression without interruption, offering encouragement when needed. I would wholeheartedly recommend Kamara Marsh as a dedicated, knowledgeable, and effective therapist.

    —

    Melanie is extremely patient, and kind. She listens and empathizes with your concerns and gets you to confront your fears and worries whilst supporting you. She gives you the tools and the cues to work through your anxieties, and works with you to develop a deeper understanding into yourself. I have only had a few sessions with Melanie, but I am going to continue with her as I have faith in her practice.

    —

    Many people think therapists offer advice and solutions to help them achieve their goals and overcome their problems. They imagine the right therapist will have all the answers to fix what isn’t working in their life. But that’s not what therapy is.

    A qualified therapist helps you dig deeper and see clearer so you can better understand yourself and find your own answers. When you find your own answers, little can stop you, because you will have discovered not what’s right, but what’s right for you personally. And you’ll gain the skills needed to do it again and again, as you navigate life’s inevitable setbacks and challenges.

    If you’re ready to take charge of your mental health and make meaningful change in your life, visit BetterHelp to get matched with a professional therapist—and as a Tiny Buddha reader, you’ll get 20% off your first month.

    I hope you get the help you need to start creating your own roadmap to happiness!

  • FREE Online MindBody Therapy Summit for Healing and Well-Being, June 2-6

    FREE Online MindBody Therapy Summit for Healing and Well-Being, June 2-6

    Hi friends! I’m excited to let you know about the MindBody Therapy Summit, a FREE online event, presented by the Embody Lab, that’s coming up next week.

    In this inspiring 5-day summit, running from June 2nd through June 6th, you’ll hear from some of the most impactful healers, teachers, and researchers at the intersection of wellness, spirituality, psychology, embodiment, and somatics.

    What Is MindBody Therapy?

    MindBody therapy helps us understand and shift what gets in the way of being free, happy, and fully alive.

    While traditional therapy focuses on verbal processing and cognitive meaning making, MindBody therapy invites us into the wisdom of our body as the intuitive place of healing and well-being.

    How Can This Event Help You?

    Blending traditional wisdom and embodiment practices with contemporary neuroscience and psychology, MindBody therapy supports healing and transformation while working with every aspect of an individual—psychological, psychical, spiritual, energetic, and social.

    Through methodologies such as Somatic Experiencing®, Hakomi, Body-Mind Centering®, Gestalt, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Integral Somatic Psychology, and many other body-oriented approaches to psychology, you’ll gain practical tools to connect with your body and your true self.

    Who Is This Summit For?

    The MindBody Therapy Summit is for you if:

    -You’re seeking knowledge about psychology, somatics, trauma therapy, plant medicine, attachment/intimacy work, internal family systems work, experiential developmental psychology, social/cultural justice and therapy, stress and resilience, and applied poly-vagal theory.

    -You feel like you’ve hit a wall in your talk therapy and you’re looking for a fresh perspective on healing.

    -You’re interested in incorporating somatic methods of healing into your daily practice.

    -You’re ready to fulfill the highest expression of yourself and bring a new dimension of joy into your life.

    -You’re looking to connect with like-minded people engaged in psychology, embodiment practices, and self-inquiry.

    If you’re ready to access a new level of healing and wholeness, click here to register for the MindBody Therapy Summit and get FREE access to all 5 days of inspiring talks. I hope you find them healing and transformative!

  • Why I’m in Therapy Again, and Not Ashamed to Share It

    Why I’m in Therapy Again, and Not Ashamed to Share It

    “Emotional pain cannot kill you, but running from it can. Allow. Embrace. Let yourself feel. Let yourself heal.” ~Vironika Tugaleva

    Ah, therapy, my old friend. We meet again.

    I thought I’d released you from my life. I thought I no longer needed you to maintain my sanity.

    I was wrong.

    Third time’s a charm, as they say.

    The First Time I Went to Therapy

    I was eighteen when I had my first encounter with therapy. My parents had just divorced under pretty devastating circumstances, and my first serious relationship had crumbled at my feet.

    It was a double betrayal.

    My parents had hidden their divorce from me. I found out on our “family holiday” that we weren’t actually a family anymore. Plus, my partner had secretly been seeing another woman. He started dating her publicly less than a week after our five-year relationship ended.

    I was young, impressionable, and distraught. My whole life felt like a lie.

    I spent weeks wrapped up in the safety of my bed, emerging only to find comfort in food. I dropped out of university. My partner had isolated me from my friends due to his controlling and coercive behavior, which left me feeling totally alone. Everything felt pointless. I had no idea what to do with myself, and my thoughts were starting to scare me. So I sought help.

    Finding a therapist was easy. A quick Google search was all it took.

    But it took a long time to build up the courage to make an appointment, fill out the pre-session questionnaire, and actually walk into the building.

    I remember feeling so much shame. I thought I was weak and ridiculous for not being able to handle my emotions or deal with what was happening—but I also knew that my mental health was on seriously shaky ground.

    So I went.

    I walked into the therapy room, shaking like a leaf. My heart (and my mouth) were melded shut for the first few sessions. My therapist had to carefully wrench it open to encourage me to open up.

    Finally, I did. And when I unburdened myself of all that had been weighing me down, I saw it on her face.

    Judgment.

    At the end of the session, I walked out of that room and never went back. My worst fear—that someone would see the truth about what was alive inside me and judge me because of it—had been realized. I cursed myself for thinking therapy was a good idea.

    And so I tried to forget about my wounds as I unconsciously carried them into the next phase of my life.

    The Second Time I Went to Therapy

    Six years later, I started having debilitating panic attacks on a daily basis. The problem was I felt more than a little resistance to the idea of going to therapy again.

    By this time, my anxiety had steadily increased to the point that it became a normal part of my everyday life.

    I expected to be unable to sleep, constantly feel exhausted, and be plagued by fearful, intrusive thoughts. I got used to the fact that I couldn’t relax, always felt irritable, and lashed out at the people I loved—despite desperately craving their support—because I was in so much emotional pain.

    And honestly, I thought my anxiety was my edge.

    I was completing my master’s degree, and I thought intense stress made me work harder. It felt like a sign I was on the right track. I worked day and night, utterly consumed by my projects. In my head, I was achieving top grades because of my worrying.

    So I put the idea of therapy out of my head until eventually, I hit my breaking point.

    I had a terrifying panic attack while driving at top speed. Unable to breathe, I pulled over to the side of the road to keep myself (and other drivers) safe. It was my third panic attack that day. I’d finally had enough and knew I couldn’t live like this anymore.

    I needed help.

    I was still nervous about going back to therapy. But I was also ready to dig—to excavate all the junk I’d been hauling around and declutter my mind.

    Instead of going with the first therapist who popped up on Google, I did more research this time. I interviewed different people until I found a therapist I vibed with. And because I wanted to be the ‘perfect’ client, I went above and beyond in my therapy work (a big part of which was working on my perfectionism and my need for external validation. Go figure).

    I had a breakthrough. I found a deep sense of inner peace for the first time in my adult life.

    My therapist introduced me to mindfulness, meditation, and yoga—healing tools I’m still learning, practicing, and teaching to this day. For that, I’ll be forever grateful.

    The Third Time I’m Going to Therapy

    These days, I’m in a very different place.

    I’m in tune with myself. I listen to my body. I take time to be still. I do everything therapists tell you to do to stay well. I’ve traversed the territory of my suffering, including childhood trauma.

    And yet, I’m still human. I struggle.

    Specifically, I notice a dynamic playing out in my relationships. I feel intense anxiety about not being enough for my partners and not being worthy of love.

    I worry that they’ll find somebody better and want to leave me. I convince myself that they hide things from me and must be secretly planning their escape. I mourn the loss of love before it’s even happened. No matter how much my partners tell me otherwise, it’s still an issue.

    After much reflection, I know why—I still don’t feel like I’m enough.

    Although I can now recognize it, I need to work on changing that pattern. That’s where therapy comes in.

    The difference is that this time, I know where to go for help. I know what type of help to ask for. And, crucially, I feel zero embarrassment about saying I need that help.

    The first two times I went to therapy, I stayed quiet and stewed in shame. Here are three reasons I’m telling people about it this time around.

    1. Suffering is a universal human experience.

    To be human is to suffer.

    It’s almost impossible for us to live a gorgeously rich, fulfilling life and emerge from it completely unscathed.

    If we open our hearts, we suffer. If we live our truth, we suffer. If we stand up for what’s right—guess what—we suffer.

    Our experiences might not look the same. My story isn’t your story. But the core emotions underneath are what we can relate to.

    You might not have had a nervous breakdown at university, for example, but you might have had one at work. You might have had one after having a child. You might even have just realized you’re heading toward one.

    Maybe you’ve had a panic attack and you know how that feels. Or maybe you can’t stop yourself from worrying, no matter how hard you try.

    Our universal experiences connect us to each other.

    When I reveal the depth of my suffering, people open up and show me theirs. We dance in our shared humanity and release our burdens together.

    Remember this mantra: It’s okay not to be okay. It’s okay to admit I need help and support. We all suffer. Admitting I need help isn’t weak; it’s a brave act of reclaiming my mental well-being.

    2. Hearing others’ stories normalizes our struggle.

    Listening to other people’s stories—on their blogs, podcasts, or books—helped me to accept, and seek help for, my own suffering.

    All too often, I wish I’d heard those stories sooner.

    When I was twenty-two and running my own business (after reading The Four Hour Work Week), what if I’d known that the book’s author had planned to end his life and still suffers from depression? Would I have put so much pressure on myself to be successful?

    Would I have continued to measure myself against him, thinking I wasn’t doing enough? Or would I have seen him as a fellow imperfect human being and perhaps been more vigilant in managing my mental health?

    It’s impossible to know, of course. What I do know is that when people share their stories, it helps others who are going through something similar. Instead of judging them, we feel seen and understood. We feel less alone.

    It normalizes suffering. And it normalizes talking about, and getting help for, that suffering.

    Remember this mantra: There are plenty of people out there who are experiencing (or have experienced) what I’m going through. If they got through it, so can I. There’s hope for me.

    3. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.

    The third and most important reason I’m sharing my journey into therapy is simply that I’m not ashamed of it.

    I’m no longer concerned with being perfect, masking my truth, or only showing a polished facade.

    What’s far more important to me is to show my humanity. To acknowledge my imperfections. To love my flaws. To let my clients and students know that I’m a work-in-progress.

    We live in a superficial culture that values appearances above all else. But if all we care about is how our lives look on the outside, we never get to actually live them. We end up spending more time worrying about how many ‘likes’ we get on our Instagram pictures than we do being present in the moment we take them.

    In my experience, the road to freedom is letting go of worrying about what others think.

    So much of my anxiety was caused by perpetual imposter syndrome. I wanted to be seen as someone who was bulletproof. Someone who navigated the world with ease and confidence. Someone who was wildly successful (without really trying) and looked good doing it.

    I worried about being “found out.” I thought if people knew how much I struggled with anxiety and depression, I’d be seen as a fraud and would be exposed as a failure.

    But the people who love and appreciate us for who we really are? Who see our vulnerability and accept us anyway? Those are the people we want in our world.

    Remember this: There’s no shame in suffering. The people who love me will support me when I need it. It’s safe to be who I truly am and let people see the real me.

  • What to Do When Your Partner Won’t Work on Your Relationship

    What to Do When Your Partner Won’t Work on Your Relationship

    Young couple

    “It takes two to manage the relationship, but it takes one to begin the change.” ~Sheri E. Ragland

    So, your significant other doesn’t understand you. In fact you’re not even sure if they hear you. Despite trying to talk about things or take a break from each other, you end up arguing about the same thing over and over again.

    You try this and you try that. You back away, you move in. You break up, you get back together. You try everything you can think of, and nothing is working, but you don’t want to end the relationship.

    You finally realize that no matter what you two do, you eventually find your way back to the same conflict, repeating the same dance again and again and again. Nothing seems to ever change.

    So, you get excited when you finally figure out what you need to do—couples counseling! Relief floods you, confident now that couples counseling will save this relationship! And so, you announce to your other half, “We need couples counseling.”

    But alas, like a punch to your gut, your partner has no interest in couples counseling and refuses to go. Barely able to breathe, you know your relationship is really at an impasse and you are hopeless to know how to fix it. It is certainly doomed if you don’t get the counseling you both need.

    I know the feeling. In fact, my car was packed at least once, and I was sure I was finally going to leave.

    Thank goodness I didn’t.

    Did you ever hear the old adage, “I married my mother” or “I married my father”? There is truth to this statement. Despite our inability to recognize it, we do often marry or partner with someone like our mother or our father.

    And I am going to tell you why.

    First and foremost, it’s familiar. We’re attracted to what we know. Secondly and most importantly, we marry or partner with someone like our mother or our father in an unconscious attempt at resolving old conflicts and feelings left over from those original and significant early relationships.

    Read that again: We marry or partner with someone like our mother or our father in an unconscious attempt at resolving old conflicts and feelings left over from those original and significant early relationships.

    That’s a lot to mull over, for sure.

    Never underestimate the impact your childhood experience had on your life. Never underestimate the impact your relationship or lack thereof, with your mother and father had on your life. Even absent parents can have an immeasurable impact.

    They were the mirror through which you learned to see yourself. If, more often than not, you had a positive, encouraging, supportive mirror, you likely grew up with healthy self-esteem. If that mirror was more often than not, judgmental, critical, unsupportive, or disinterested, then your self-worth is likely at the lower end of healthy.

    Think about it. Those relationships, or lack of, sent you multitudes of unspoken messages.

    The question is: What are the messages you took in and how are they affecting your current relationship?

    I grew up in a male-dominated household and religion. It was not until I was an adult that I recognized that I believed men were more important than women. No one ever said that to me, but that was how I interpreted the male-dominated environments that gave little to no voice to women.

    As a result, I rarely spoke up, remaining hidden. I found myself in unhealthy and unsatisfying relationships where I allowed men to dominate me. I never fully showed up as a valuable and integral part of the relationship I was in.

    This is one of the ways that our past follows us into the present, inviting us to grow and learn beyond what childhood taught us. Figuring out how to navigate our emotional world and our relationships is paramount to this process. Hence, a not so peaceful, sometimes antagonizing relationship with the one you love can be the invitation you need.

    So, s/he won’t accompany you to couples counseling. What to do??

    Go yourself.

    The change we want in our world, always starts with ourselves.

    Now don’t get me wrong, I get it. If only s/he would [fill in the blank] it would all be okay. If s/he would stop [fill in the blank], I would be just fine. I just need him/her to [fill in the blank] and we’d be happy. And so it goes.

    Every relationship has a dance. You do this and s/he does that. S/he does that and you do this. That would be the repeating pattern that has you going around and around and around, never resolving a thing.

    You are both trying to convince the other of why you are right. That is a lose-lose situation.

    When you can both recognize that this is not necessarily a right-wrong situation, both having valid points, you might find your way to a win-win situation.

    If one partner changes their steps, breaking out of the old pattern, the other has three choices:

    1. They can, and often do, do everything in their power to get you back into the dance steps you are both familiar with. Don’t let them suck you in. If you don’t they will be left with two choices:

    2. They can leave altogether.

    3. Their other choice is to change their dance to get in step with yours.

    I understand, dear heart. This is hard and it is risky. Truly I do understand, because I’ve been there. If my spouse would just behave the way I want him to and treat me the way I think he should, then life would be perfect. We could just forget this whole dance thing.

    In other words, if he molds himself to meet my needs, I won’t have to be disturbed or expected to take care of my own needs. Ah, wouldn’t that be nice?!

    Maybe, not likely, but unrealistic, nonetheless.

    So, I finally got into therapy. Alone.

    Best decision I ever made. (Other than marrying my husband.)

    It was hard work. Grueling at times. I had to unearth my childhood experience to finally understand I was expecting my husband to meet the needs that my parents had been unable to meet.

    I was demanding. I wanted him to be interested all the time. Drop what he was doing when I needed him. I was irritable. I expected him to know what I needed without my telling him. I wanted him to coddle me and sympathize with my struggles.

    I didn’t want a husband. I wanted a parent.

    At some point in my therapy, I said, “If I had known then what I know now, I would have never married my husband.”

    I have since said, “Thank God I didn’t know!”

    I began to heal old wounds. My therapist became the surrogate parent who put a new mirror in front of me. This one showed me my strength, my ability, my heart. I began to realize I was capable and strong.

    My moods stabilized. Depression lifted. Anxiety subsided.

    I learned to listen to myself the way my therapist did. I learned to have compassion for myself the way my therapist did. I learned to love myself the way my therapist did. That was the mirror I needed—one that showed me my value, equal to that of anyone else.

    Having done so, without even realizing it was happening, I stopped looking for my husband to parent me. I didn’t need him to. I was now doing it for myself. I began to see him more clearly, realizing how present and steadfast he had always been.

    As I stopped putting demands on him, and accepted him just the way he was, he became more available to me. Our relationship improved. Tremendously.

    As my steps changed, he changed his own and we found a healthier dance.

    Now, I am not going to tell you that your outcome will be the same as mine. It may not be. You may get healthy enough to realize you don’t want the relationship anymore and you will then be able to take the appropriate steps to do what you need to do.

    S/he may leave. Then you may have to grieve what the relationship never was to begin with. If things aren’t working as they are, then maybe you have less to lose than you think and fear is getting in the way.

    Facing your fears, and delving in to your own insecurities, distorted beliefs, and unhappiness provides the opportunity to be free from emotional dependence on another person.

    And that is a good thing.

    That is a very, very good thing.

    Don’t wait for someone else to get on board before you do what is best for you. Love yourself first and the rest will follow.

  • How to Practice Self-Compassion: 5 Tips to Stop Being Down on Yourself

    How to Practice Self-Compassion: 5 Tips to Stop Being Down on Yourself

    Inner Light

    “If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” ~Jack Kornfield

    I never wanted to see a therapist. I imagined settling onto the storied couch and seeing dollar signs appear in concerned eyes as I listed the family history of mental illness, addiction, and abuse. I feared I’d be labeled before I’d ever been heard.

    But after experiencing the emotional shock of witnessing a murder, I knew I needed a space to grieve. So I gathered all of my courage and laid myself bare to a very nice woman who had Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements on her coffee table. I trusted her.

    Within moments of meeting me, that very nice woman shattered the world I knew. The characteristics I viewed as strengths—my drive, my nurturing nature, my strength under pressure—were neatly organized into a single neurosis: codependency.

    As I leafed through the pages of the book she recommended to me, I saw myself in the narrative of the co-dependent: giving until I had given all that I had; investing myself deeply in the mental health of those around me; constantly trying to make others happy.

    But rather than find comfort in the words on the pages, I found myself sinking into despair. All of those years I thought that I had escaped my past unscathed, and here I was, stuck with a label: codependent.

    Week after week, I dove deeper into this idea that perhaps I needed to confront my past; perhaps I did need to grieve. I cried. I raged. I stopped eating. I ate too much. My health declined.

    My therapist told me I needed to relax. So I woke up early every day, determined to be the most relaxed person I could be: always striving to relax harder, better. And yet I didn’t feel better; I felt worse.

    By accepting a label given to me by a near stranger, I had unconsciously shifted my focus from living in the present to fixing something that I perceived to be wrong with my past.  And it had overwhelmed me.

    My inner critic gained a strength previously unknown to me. Every day, I thought about how I might make myself better. I cursed at myself for being unable to let go, and then I cursed at myself for cursing at myself.

    I was exhausted.

    As I slowly came to realize that I could not keep up with that inner critic, something changed. I accepted that I couldn’t be perfect. I accepted that I was human.

    Only by finding my edge—that place where I couldn’t take any more—was I able to finally let go. When my inner critic started to rear its head, I learned to stick up for myself as I might defend a friend: “I am only human. I am not perfect, nor do I need to be.”

    With that simple acknowledgement—I am not perfect, nor do I need to be—I was finally able to free myself not only from the pain of past experiences, but also from the pain that came from reducing myself to a label.

    By learning to practice self-compassion, I became comfortable with the person I am today, free of expectations.

    The journey to self-compassion was a difficult one for me, but I believe it to be a journey that I will only need to take once. Today, I have the tools I need to practice self-compassion without having to first battle my inner critic, and these are tools that anyone can use:

    1. Acknowledge challenges and let them go.

    I always remember, “I am not perfect, nor do I need to be.” When entirely normal emotions come up—frustration, stress, anger, fear—I remind myself that no one expects me to be perfect. I allow myself to feel whatever it is I need to feel and to then let it go.

    2. Remember that you are exactly where you need to be.

    When we start our journey inward, we may learn things about ourselves that shock us. I try to remember that every challenge has its purpose and I am exactly where I need to be today.

    3. Practice self-growth rather than self-improvement.

    Improvement implies that there is something to fix. Rather than attempting to “fix” what’s “wrong,” I focus instead on strengthening what’s right. Work toward personal growth rather than some idea of perfection.

    4. Speak to yourself as you would speak to a friend.

    As I faced challenges in my personal growth, I learned to be kind to myself. If a friend was struggling with an uncomfortable emotion, I would never criticize that friend with language like, “Why can’t you just learn to be happy all of the time?!” So I don’t speak to myself that way either.

    5. Give yourself a hug.

    Go on. Right now. Just do it. That felt good, didn’t it?

    Self-compassion is an inside job. I’ve learned that if I am gentle with myself, the world becomes a gentler place. I invite you to experience it too.

    Photo by Joseph Vasquez

  • Getting Back Up After You Fall & Healing from Depression

    Getting Back Up After You Fall & Healing from Depression

    “The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.” ~Theodore Rubin

    Growing up I was a thoughtful and happy kid—carefree, easy going, not afraid to make mistakes and take on challenges.

    Just before I turned thirteen, my parents moved our family halfway across the world where we knew no one.

    I adjusted well, made friends, and felt content and successful in my pursuit of whatever I decided was worth pursuing. I was strong and confident. I worked hard, laughed easily and often, and felt as if I had the good life all figured out.

    Then shortly after I turned twenty-five a severe depressive episode hit me like a ton of bricks. Looking back, I can see how it came about, how several traumatic events stacked upon themselves until I finally collapsed under their weight, but at the time I felt annihilated, ploughed over, and destroyed virtually overnight.

    I spent the next nine months steeped in profound physical, emotional, and mental anguish.

    The shame was the worst part.

    Despite years of evidence to the contrary, when I couldn’t get myself off the couch for months, when I couldn’t enjoy any activity, and when I couldn’t smile genuinely at anyone or anything, I truly thought that this was my actual self, my real personality—that I was boring, unmotivated, useless, a loser, an anomaly; that I was weak, and that all of this was my fault.

    Essentially, depression lies to you—about everything. And when you are used to trusting your thoughts and being self assured and confident, it takes a long time to realize that the torrent of negativity in your brain may not be an accurate representation of reality.

    It’s hard not to trust your thoughts and it’s hard to sit and mull over what is true and what isn’t, but it’s an important exercise, even you only do it in small doses at first.

    There is a light in you that never goes out. (more…)