Tiny Buddha

Tag: trauma

  • 10 Ways to Calm Anxious Thoughts and Soothe Your Nervous System

    10 Ways to Calm Anxious Thoughts and Soothe Your Nervous System

    “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” ~Jack Canfield

    Freezing in fear is something I have done since I was a child.

    My first home was an unsafe one, living with my alcoholic granddad. Once upon a time, I didn’t know life without fear.

    I learned young to scan for danger. How were everyone’s moods? Were the adults okay today? I would freeze and be still and quiet in an attempt to keep myself safe and control an eruption.

    Unknown to me, between the ages of conception and seven years old, my nervous system was being programmed. The house I grew up in was shaping how safe I felt in my body.

    Living in a house with domestic abuse and alcoholism and losing my beautiful grandmother, who cared for me at five, was enough to make that foundation within me shaky.

    I learned to be on high alert, scanning for danger always, and became incredibly hypervigilant and super sensitive to the moods of others.

    Sometimes this superpower of mine kept me safe as a child. My dad wouldn’t always lose his temper if I was quiet enough. My mum would be available to me if I sensed her mood and provided her with comfort.

    As I grew, this superpower of mine caused me issues.

    I would worry all of the time about the thousand different ways something could go wrong.

    I couldn’t enjoy the moment and what I had right now, as my brain would be scanning for the next problem.

    I couldn’t sleep.

    My anxiety was like this monster in my mind, consumed by all the what-if scenarios, and as a result, I just couldn’t move forward.

    Life didn’t feel safe. Even though I no longer lived in an unsafe environment, my body and my brain were still there.

    This anxiety stopped me from applying for new jobs, challenging myself, dating, healing from the past, changing, and growing.

    I would be frozen by the fear of all that could go wrong. I felt stuck, frustrated with myself, and full of self-hate for living a life that made me miserable.

    The penny dropped one day. I finally realized that this fear was all in my head—99% of the things I worried about didn’t manifest into reality. My anxious thoughts didn’t make anything any better, but they were ruining what I had right now.

    Here are the ten steps that have helped reduce anxiety, fear, and overwhelm and help foster a life of happiness.

    1. Give that anxious, worrying voice in your head a name.

    This creates separation between you and the voice. You are not your thoughts. This is a voice from your ego concerned with survival, and you have the choice to listen or choose a more empowering thought. However, this voice could be sensing real danger, so listen to see if it is a risk to you right now or a potential risk that could happen.

    If real, then of course take action after some deep breaths. Otherwise, continue with the steps.

    2. The minute you hear the voice, recognize it is a sign that your nervous system is dysregulated and moving into fight-or-flight mode.

    Then choose to pause and take a few deep breaths. Coherent breathing can help calm down this response. This means take deep breaths in through your nose, inflating your belly for five seconds, and exhale while deflating your belly for five.

    3. Create a list of tools you can use when your mind and body are about to go down the what-if train.

    This might mean lying on the grass, dancing to your favorite song, EFT (emotional freedom technique) tapping, doing a yoga pose, or journaling to discharge fear. The minute you notice the voice, do something off the list.

    4. Repeat a mantra to calm your nervous system.

    Find a statement that helps calm you down and repeat it when the anxiety voice is back. My favorite is “If X happens, then I will deal with it.”

    5. Get in the present moment.

    What can you hear? What can you see? What can you smell? What can you feel? I like to get outside when I do this. Feel my feet on the grass and take in the moment.

    6. Place your hand on your heart and remind yourself you are safe.

    It probably doesn’t feel that way. But feelings aren’t facts, and your thoughts can only hurt you if you let them.

    7. Notice if you have moved into a freeze state.

    When we first start to worry, our nervous systems go into fight-or-flight mode, and adrenaline and stress hormones pump into our bodies. Then when it all feels too much, we freeze. We’re literally not able to do anything and go into despair.

    You can find the tools that work for you to move from freeze and slowly back up to fight or flight and then up to your calm state. It is a ladder with freeze at the bottom and calm at the top. (It’s called the polyvagal ladder.)

    You can split the list in point three into what helps you through freeze and what helps you out of fight/flight. A great way out of freezing is movement. Even five minutes of jumping jacks will get those stress hormones pumping. Then do something to calm you down, like deep breathing.

    8. Choose to trash the thought.

    Is this something that is a worry for another day? Imagine putting it in a trash bin. Or you can even write it down and put it in the bin physically.

    9. Start to notice your mental state throughout the day.

    Are you calm or triggered by worry? Are you frozen? Or is your heart pumping so your stress response is turned on and you are in fight-or-flight mode? What tool can bring you back to calm or move you up the ladder?

    10. Write what you are grateful for in this moment.

    Noticing what’s going well right now can disarm fear.

    Slowly, these steps can help you to regulate, discharge fear, and allow your nervous system to heal. You may not have been safe as a child, but you have the power to feel safe now.

    You have the power to change your circumstances and remove triggers that are recreating that feeling of unsafety.

    Your fear in your body could be very real and giving you information that maybe a particular relationship, job, or environment is not safe for you. Take notice and make baby steps to create a life that makes you feel safe, as this is the foundation for happiness. Give yourself what you longed for as a child.

    Yes, hypervigilance may be something that got programmed into your nervous system young to help you survive, but you don’t have to let it hold you back now.

    Changing, growing, and healing can feel scary and unsafe, but as you take those baby steps to create a healthier you, your confidence and self-esteem will grow. Your brain will get new evidence that you are safe, and those worrying thoughts will slowly disappear. A new worry may come, but then you can just repeat the process.

    These steps helped me stop living life small and in fear and allowed me to go after my big dreams—finding love, progressing in my career, and even buying a house.

    Anxious thoughts no longer hold me back. I just watch them with curiosity and know the steps I need to take to move through them. I took back the power I lost as a child, and I know you can too!

  • Children’s Movies are Obsessed with Death, but Don’t Show Healthy Grief

    Children’s Movies are Obsessed with Death, but Don’t Show Healthy Grief

    “Grief is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” ~Jamie Anderson

    I knew my son was watching me. We were inhaling fistfuls of popcorn while Frozen 2 played on the screen above. (Spoiler alert…)

    Anna has just realized her sister, Elsa, is dead, frozen solid at the bottom of a river. Anna must carry on life without her.

    My son turned his body and looked directly at me, ignoring the film. He knew what was coming. I began to weep. This is what he expected. He patted my arm with his little hand, which was buttery from popcorn and sticky from sour gummy worms.

    Anna’s body slumps over, and her broken voice begins a haunting song of grief: You’ve gone to a place I cannot find. This grief has a gravity. It pulls me down.

    I’m frozen, too, within memories of the death of my brother Dave by suicide just months earlier. Cartoon Anna and I together mourned our lost siblings. 

    My young son comforted me while I cried. As I think about it, it is such a twisted scene. Can’t we just go to the movies, eat a bunch of crappy food, have a couple of laughs, and call it a night?

    None of us intended for me to have a grief spiral in an animated film with a talking snowman and a plot line featuring a guy who is enmeshed with his reindeer. But the film is all about grief.

    It is about one daughter’s quest to heal intergenerational trauma and right the wrongs of the past. It is about another daughter trying to learn the stories of her lost parents, and in so doing, she enters a space that is unsafe and threatens her life, too.

    I guess it is completely predictable that this story would remind me so much of my own family.

    Six months before Dave killed himself, our dad had died of esophageal cancer. My son certainly saw my tears coming. He’s nine now. He knows that he has a mother who lives in grief. He knows that his mother has a wound where her brother and father once were and that the wound gets reopened from time to time. He’s seen me cry more than I ever imagined he would.

    Have you ever thought about how many children’s films feature the death of a parent or sibling? Here are the ones that come to mind off the top of my head: The Lion King, Frozen, Big Hero 6, The Land Before Time, Finding Nemo, How to Train Your Dragon 2, Bambi, Abominable, Vivo, Batman, the entire Star Wars franchise. This year’s Lightyear. You get the picture.

    Death is so pervasive in children’s films that a team of Canadian researchers looked at the prevalence of death in this genre and concluded that two-thirds of kids’ movies depicted the death of an important character while only half of films for adults did.

    The researchers also found that the main characters in children’s films were two and a half times more likely to die, and three times more likely to be murdered than the main characters in films marketed to adults.

    So, if my kids watched a movie a week, they’d see thirty-four deaths a year—usually the death of a parent or close family member. What is up with that?

    It is an easy plot device. What better way to thrust a character into a scenario in which they heroically redeem a terrible tragedy by going on a journey, taking back the throne, restoring the family name, and so on? The point of the movie becomes the main character rising again in the face of loss. It is the quintessential hero’s journey.

    I don’t have issues with kids being exposed to death. I’ve had lots of open conversations about it with my kids. When children’s films show children thriving after terrible events, there may be some psychological benefit to that, by helping kids know that there is indeed life after death.

    But I am worried about how the pervasiveness of these stories is shaping our expectations about grief.

    It’s an important conversation to have, especially when more than one million Americans have so far died from COVID. The impact on children has been immense. From April 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021, data in Pediatrics estimated more than 140,000 children under age 18 in the U.S. lost a parent, custodial grandparent, or grandparent caregiver.

    Children see death over and over, but there is very little treatment of grief in popular culture. In most instances, a film shows the hero standing with head bowed beside an open grave. The audience may observe a tear or a nod toward a period of sadness, but the character is back in action within sixty seconds, fighting the dragon, building the robot, or saving the world. 

    The other alternative is that prolonged grief drives one to become a villain. If loss is not quickly translated into action, it seems to fester into vengeance and evil. I’m thinking of the Kingpin from Spiderman, Dr. Callaghan from Big Hero 6, Anakin Skywalker (a.k.a. Darth Vader) from Star Wars, Magneto from X-Men, among others.

    These films are telling a story about grief that is a disservice to us all. Our society counts on a bereaved person bouncing back to action almost immediately. And if they don’t, in a prompt, timely manner, the suspicion is that the grief has ruined them.

    These films help craft a society that has no model for the emotion of loss. For the slowness of it. For the darkness of it. Especially in the lives of children.

    During the season of my loved ones’ deaths, my children were twelve, eight, and eight. They were tender and sweet. And young. But also, old enough.

    There was a lot of talk about cancer at our house. The kids knew the science. They shared a house with my dad while he went through his first round of chemo. They knew it was miserable.

    Early on I let them know that this cancer would probably cause Grandpa to die. I explained the size and location of the various tumors. I let them know that our time with him would probably be two or three years.

    I believe in being honest with children in a way they can understand. I didn’t want them to be afraid that Grandpa would die. I wanted to let them in on the secret that Grandpa was going to die. No need to keep anyone in suspense.

    I was with my dad when he died in California. My children were at home in Minnesota. A few minutes after he died, I called them on the phone. My husband, Rob, sat with them, and I told them one by one. I talked to them while Rob held them.

    When my brother died, Rob and I both sat with the children. We told the youngest and the oldest together. They were once again tender and fearful. Surprised. Wide eyed. We held them.

    They didn’t say much. Uncharacteristically, they didn’t ask any questions. They knew that Uncle Dave was mysteriously sick.

    My brother’s death was much more difficult to talk about with my children. They knew that he struggled with alcohol. They knew the word addiction. They knew that he had been in and out of the hospital. The problem with suicide is that there’s no good way to make the logic work for children.

    I can just imagine the torrent of questions: How much sadness is too much sadness? How much pain is too much pain? When the cat dies? When my best friend is mad at me? What makes your heart hurt so much that dying is the logical step? When does one reach that point?

    Psychologically speaking, talking with my children about Dave’s death was so hard because it threatened to dismantle their basic assumptions about the goodness, safety, and predictability of the world.

    In my conversation with my children, I didn’t want their sense of goodness, justice, and safety to be shattered. The world is no longer a predictable, good place when someone kind and loving experiences such darkness and ultimately a horrible, self-inflicted death.

    The world is no longer meaningful when there is no simple, rational explanation for how such a thing happened. The self may no longer be worthy of happiness and joy if someone like Uncle Dave could not find happiness and joy.

    Everything in me is organized against my children understanding this logic. I didn’t want it to enter their minds or their hearts.

    But it has. It will. They will come to know the full story of their soft-spoken uncle with the beautiful blue eyes. They will remember him on our couch and in the park and in the kitchen and at the lake. They will know the truth about him and how he was lost.

    And there is no way around the reality of suicide, the reality that the truth is beyond the careful, thoughtful, simple explanations of their mother. I can’t make it neat or easily digestible for them. It is too messy.

    My children have been up close and personal with grief these past years. They’ve held human ashes in their hands. They anticipate that I will cry during a movie scene in which a character loses a sibling. They know all about cancer. They’ve attended memorials

    It isn’t what I would have chosen for them—to be in a movie theater, comforting Mommy because the cartoon reminds her of her dead brother. That isn’t what I ever pictured when

    I first held their tiny baby bodies in my arms and my heart swore to protect them with every cell in my body. Sometimes I apologize to them in whispers: “I’m sorry that our lives have unfolded like this.”

    There is a way to use the deaths of children’s movies to facilitate conversations about grief and loss.

    A 2021 study in Cognitive Development found that animated films may provide the opportunity for parent-child conversations about death, because parents often watch these films with their children. However, according to researchers, few parents take advantage of this opportunity to talk about death with their children. I encourage parents to take advantage of these teachable moments.

    For my children, who have seen grief up close, my only hope is that they are learning about the reality of grief. They are seeing a more realistic picture than Disney will show them. They’re seeing me go to work, make pancakes, drive the carpool, laugh with my friends. They are seeing me live. And they’re seeing me cry.

    They are also seeing that the duration of grief is not five minutes of screen time but that it is years.

    When they came into my world, I didn’t anticipate that grief would be such a prominent lesson in their childhood. But after watching Dave implode, alongside the loss of our dad, perhaps grief, real grief, is a more essential lesson that I anticipated.

    Perhaps watching me slog through it will help my children navigate out of their own darkness one day. Disney is introducing them to death. It’s my job to show them the reality of grief.

  • How I Learned to Love My Body Instead of Hating Her

    How I Learned to Love My Body Instead of Hating Her

    “Your body does not need to be fixed, because your body is not a problem. Your body is a person.” ~Jamie Lee Finch

    I was thirty years old when I realized that I was completely dissociated from my body.

    I grew up in the height of the purity culture movement in American Evangelicalism. Purity culture was based on one primary concept: abstain from sex until marriage. But the messaging went further than this.

    I sat next to my peers in youth group while the male pastor stood on stage and told us young women to always cover our bodies. For example, two-piece bathing suits were completely out of the question for summer activities. Why?

    Our female bodies cause the young men to “stumble” and have impure thoughts. So out of love for the young men in our group, we must cover up and never do anything “suggestive.”

    The message was clear: My body caused others to sin. My body is bad.

    It would be impossible for me to accurately detail how many times and in how many different ways I received this message growing up.

    I didn’t know it was happening, but over time, I learned to dissociate from my body. My body was bad, and I was trying to be good, so I must distance myself from her.

    Thankfully, I listened to my body when she told me to leave this religious group and find my own way in the world. Yes, my body talks to me. More on that later.

    Recently, society has seen more acceptance of bodies. We see variety in body shapes represented in the media. While that’s a great sign that we are moving in a new direction, simply saying that we love our bodies isn’t enough.

    That feeling of positivity toward our body when we say that is momentary. We must take consistent action in order to make meaningful and lasting change.

    Here are the ways I was able to radically change my relationship with my body and learned to see her as my greatest ally and most prized possession.

    See Your Body as a Person

    A concept introduced to me by Jamie Lee Finch, seeing my body as a person changed everything.

    It allowed me to do one key thing: cultivate a relationship.

    Once I started referring to my body as “her,” I understood how far from her I really was. I didn’t know my own intuitive “yes” and “no.” I didn’t know what I really wanted in life.

    When was I safe? When was I in danger? These are questions that our bodies are designed to answer.

    So I learned to listen to her. And I talked back.

    A number of years ago, I noticed that I was constantly pushing people away. I really beat myself up about this, seeing myself as a cold, unloving person.

    Eventually I realized that this behavior started after a traumatic body violation that I had experienced. I understood that my body was resisting vulnerability and closeness in relationships as a way to protect me from further harm.

    I could see that my body had not been working against me, but for me. And I had the opportunity to say to her, “Thank you so much for trying to keep me safe, but I’m going to start trusting people again. I have learned from the experience and will trust my gut to alert me to danger.”

    I realized that things I thought of as “wrong with me” were in fact genius protective and defense mechanisms that my body wisely developed in order to keep me safe in my environment.

    I started talking lovingly to her, full of gratitude for all the ways she worked to keep me safe over the years. I started seeing past experiences through a different lens.

    About ten years ago, I was in a relationship with a man who wanted to marry me. I was in constant turmoil inside about the relationship, plagued with doubt and uncertainty, unsure if I should stay or go.

    I was so mad at myself for not having a clear “yes” or “no” about the situation. I didn’t realize this at the time, but I can see so clearly now that the anxious feeling in my gut was my body trying to tell me that this man was not my person.

    In truth, my body was always working for my best interests. No one looks out for me the way my body does. She has always been my most fierce protector.

    So I talk to my body and she talks to me. It’s the most important relationship I have.

    Write a Thank You Letter to Your Body

    There is a reason that gratitude practices have become so popular: they work.

    One I started to understand just how hard my body had been working to protect me, I wanted to show my gratitude.

    Writing a thank you letter can be the catalyst for a powerful mindset shift. It’s so easy to see all the things we hate about ourselves and our bodies.

    Write a letter to your body. Think about all the millions of ways your body has worked to keep you safe.

    How your body has alerted you when there’s danger, enabled you to speak truth by giving you gut feelings, and allowed you to experience the greatest pleasure.

    We can never know all the ways that our bodies tirelessly work for us. Gratitude allowed me to further cultivate a positive relationship with my body and work in partnership with her instead of against her.

    Gaze into Your Own Eyes

    If you’ve done eye gazing with another person, you know how powerful and bonding it can be. This is true when you eye gaze with yourself.

    I practice this by sitting on the floor in front of my closet doors that are large mirrors. I feel my body rooted into the ground before looking deeply into my own eyes.

    As a woman, I often look into my left eye, which is generally considered to be the feminine side. The masculine is the right side.

    This practice can bring intense emotions, so start with only a few minutes. You can grow your practice to twenty minutes or longer should you wish.

    See yourself. Really see. And feel the feelings that arise.

    It’s not uncommon for me to cry during this practice, reflecting on all the ways I’ve spoken negatively about my body and remembering how truly spectacular she is. She is beautiful, wise, and strong.

    Eye gazing will allow you to see and experience these truths. And when you embrace those truths, your relationship to your body will change.

    Try Mirror Work

    Remember when you were younger and a parent told you to say one nice thing about your sibling or friend that you were fighting with? There’s something about acknowledging the good in another person that regulates emotions and stirs positive feelings. The same can be said about your body.

    Mirror work is standing in front of the mirror and pointing out things you love about your body. This can be done clothed or unclothed depending on your comfort level.

    The thing you love can be as small as an eyebrow or as large as your torso. As you start to focus on one thing you love and sit with the positive emotions that arise, you will start to consistently feel more positive about your body.

    You’ll notice things you never saw before. Or see things as beautiful instead of ordinary.

    The sexy curve of your left thigh, the strong shape of your ankles, the color of that freckle on your shoulder. You are uniquely you and that is inherently valuable.

    Mirror work can be a ten-second practice or ten-minute practice. You can focus on the same part of your body every day or something different each time.

    I incorporate mirror work into my morning routine when I’m brushing my teeth. As I brush, I look at myself in the mirror and pick one thing I love about my body that morning. This way, it doesn’t feel like I’ve added another self-help practice, but rather I’m taking advantage of opportunities to multitask.

    When we take the time to see ourselves, what we really like about ourselves, we will learn to love what we see.

    Commit One Loving Action

    Similar to saying something nice about someone, doing a kind and loving action can also foster feelings of fondness and compassion.

    For a week, do one focused, loving action to your body. If you can’t think of anything, ask this question: What’s something I have been wanting to incorporate into my daily self-care or hygiene routine, but haven’t done?

    For me, this was moisturizing my feet. When I first did this practice, I had just moved to a new city with a much drier climate. My feet were so dry, but I wasn’t taking the time to moisturize them.

    So I committed to do this once a day for a week. It wasn’t long before I started seeing my feet in a new way.

    I was intentional when I sat on my bed and did this. I took my time rubbing the lotion in, observing new things about my feet I had never noticed before. Thinking about how hard my feet work and all the places they’ve stepped over my lifetime.

    After doing this for a week or so, moisturizing became a natural part of my daily routine. In fact, I consistently moisturize all of my skin now, something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.

    Some extra tender loving care will naturally grow your love for your body and cause you to care for them better.

  • Why Codependents Don’t Trust Themselves to Make Decisions and How to Start

    Why Codependents Don’t Trust Themselves to Make Decisions and How to Start

    “Slow, soulful living is all about coming back to your truth, the only guidance you’ll ever need. When you rush, you have the tendency to follow others. When you bring in mindfulness, you have the power to align with yourself.” ~Kris Franken

    Codependency previously created a lot of pain and agony in my life. One of the ways it manifested was in my inability to trust myself. I would overthink decisions to death, fearful that I would choose the “wrong one” or upset someone if they didn’t agree or were disappointed by my choice.

    I was terrified of “making a mistake,” and I exhausted myself trying to collect everyone’s opinion (to ensure they would be pleased with me) before finally settling on a choice.

    As annoying as it was, for me and everyone around me, I couldn’t seem to stand firm in my decisions. I longed to be more confident in my choices but couldn’t understand why it was so hard for me.

    Growing up with an authoritative, controlling parent, I didn’t have the opportunity and support I needed to feel my feelings and let my intuition guide my choices. I didn’t get to learn from my mistakes. When I made a mistake, it felt like death. I was often blamed, shamed, and criticized, all too much for my empathetic system to bear.

    I learned that if I placated and pleased, others were happy. And because I became so others-focused from such an early age, I never learned how to build my muscle for good decision-making.

    Feelings and emotions were not welcome in my world, so my only way through was to disconnect from feeling at all—though I felt responsible for others’ mood swings and feelings. I learned that sharing my needs or opinions was triggering for others, and I didn’t have the skills to navigate the weight of that. All this combined felt mentally paralyzing, so I began to look outside of myself to others for advice and guidance eventually.

    When you’re reliant on other people’s opinions and guidance, you’re much like a feather in the wind—susceptible to any small or big gust that comes along. You aren’t in control of your life, and you give others way too much power over how you feel.

    One of the best ways to begin to build self-trust and heal from codependency is to begin feeling your feelings again, living from the neck down as I like to say. Moving from our cognitive thinking brain (because I know you know making decisions shouldn’t be this hard) to the wisdom of our bodies.

    I believe that in order for us to really build this self-trust muscle, we have to learn how to trust our feelings. And that requires us to build a sense of awareness around why we might be codependent in the first place.

    Perhaps, like me, you were programmed from an early age not to trust your inner knowing, or intuition. This results in low self-worth. And this happens for a number of reasons.

    • You were abused or neglected (physically and/or emotionally).
    • Your feelings and needs were minimized.
    • You were judged, shamed, or mocked for your feelings, maybe even being called “too sensitive.”
    • Your feelings and needs weren’t as important as other people’s.
    • You didn’t have at least one parent or caregiver validating your feelings and sense of worth. You didn’t have someone mirroring back to you your value.

    If you experienced any amount of neglect, or had emotionally unavailable parents, like me, you probably learned to suppress your feelings in order to survive. And what we resist persists, so those feelings that we try to shove down only intensify.

    3 Tools to Build Self-Trust

    These three tips might help you learn to trust your inner wisdom so you can make decisions from an empowered place.

    TOOL #1: Do a daily check-in of your feelings.

    When we check in with our feelings regularly so we can meet our needs, we learn to trust in our ability to do what’s best for ourselves.

    When I first started doing this, I would set four alarms on my phone. When the alarm went off, I would do a quick check-in by asking myself, “What am I feeling? What am I experiencing right now?”

    Often, we run through life, not checking in to see how we are doing and feeling (especially if we struggle with people-pleasing and codependency). We do a lot of things every day, all day—go to work, make decisions, parent our kids—but we often don’t check in with ourselves and ask if we need to shift something.

    This is a big part of self-love, checking in and asking, before I have this conversation with my child, my partner, my boss, or customer service rep for my computer, what’s going on with me? Oh, I’m feeling ornery or hungry; here’s how I can address that before I have this conversation.

    You can also do this by journaling. Keeping track of your feelings in a journal can be a beautiful way to understand, process, and look back on your experiences.

    Here are some journaling questions to help you get started:

    • What do I need to hear from myself?
    • What do I need to do for myself to feel my best?
    • What do I love about my life right now?
    • Today I woke up feeling (fill in the blank).
    • Am I living a life aligned with my values?

    TOOL #2: Reparent your inner child.

    Reparenting your inner child is a beautiful way of giving your inner little one the things that he or she needed and never received in childhood. You become the parent you needed when you were a child. And, by giving to yourself what you didn’t receive then, you free yourself from the past.

    So much of reparenting yourself is about making choices every day in your own best interest. It’s becoming aware of your patterns and behaviors, understanding why you do what you do, and carving out time to give yourself what you really need. When you give yourself what you need, you start worrying less about other people abandoning you because you know you won’t abandon yourself.

    One of my favorite ways to reparent myself is to give myself the words I never got to hear as a small young child.  Words like:

    • I love you.
    • I hear you.
    • You are perfect and complete.
    • You didn’t deserve that.
    • I see that really hurt you.
    • What do you need right now?
    • That must have been very difficult for you.
    • I’m so sorry that happened to you.
    • You are smart.
    • You did your best.

    TOOL #3: Practice creating safety within.

    Because we, as codependents, were raised by either emotionally unavailable or narcissistic caregivers/parents, we developed what I refer to as “a hole in the soul.”

    Our parents’ responsibility is to mirror back to us our worth and value, but when they fail to do that, we will look to someone or something outside of ourselves to show us our worth and, in essence, feel safe.

    It’s an endless battle of trying to fill that hole. Low self-worth, self-value, self-esteem, and self-regard are typical for codependents. We look outside of ourselves for safety and approval, becoming dependent on that next hit or rush. That safety might last for five minutes, five hours, and if we’re lucky, a whole day.

    One of my trusted and reliable systems for safety was shopping. I would spend frivolously, buying things we didn’t need with money we didn’t necessarily have. This created a lot of stress and conflict between my husband and me, and further decreased my self-trust.

    He couldn’t understand why I had this insatiable push to spend, and I didn’t either. I just knew that my system felt safe and relaxed once I made my purchases—until the excitement wore off, which usually happened quite quickly, and I was back in the store, searching and spending, trying to get my next fix.

    I had a lot of stress and guilt because I knew what I was doing wasn’t healthy. Yet it was compulsive. I couldn’t stop.

    I longed for the connection and safety that I never received as a child but didn’t know how to get it in healthy ways. So I suppressed my needs in relationships and tried to fill that hole with shopping.

    It didn’t happen overnight, but once I learned how to create that feeling of safety within myself (with lots of support through trauma-informed coaching, therapy, breathwork, meditation, and proper nutrition, and after learning to speak up for myself), my codependent strategies (shopping, relationship addiction) slowly seemed to disappear.

    I no longer needed to rely on my old strategies because I knew how to trust myself and offer myself what I truly needed.

    I invite you to try this: Close your eyes and imagine something that makes you feel at ease, calm, and safe (maybe your favorite forest or beach, perhaps a little cabin nestled in the woods). Notice where the sensation of ease lives in your body. Be with it for a moment—just sit with and experience it. That feeling you just created was created by you. It is yours.

    Every time you do this exercise you release the belief that you can’t create this feeling alone. That you can’t be trusted, and that you must rely on things outside of you to create safety.

    When I first started this practice, I had to implement it every time I entered a store. I took a few moments while I sat in my car and created that feeling of safety within. That way, I felt a sense of calm and ease as I was shopping, keeping my prefrontal cortex online so that I could make rational purchases that I felt confident and good about.

    I started to build evidence that I could, in fact, trust myself to make healthy decisions. It was incredibly empowering and freeing to walk into a shop and simply admire the textures, patterns, scents, and products without feeling an overwhelming compulsion to put things in my cart that I simply didn’t need.

    Every time we connect with ourselves this way, we prove to ourselves that we can create safety within. And every time we make healthy choices from that place of internal safety, we deepen our trust in our ability to discern and do what’s best for us.

  • 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.

  • That’s Not Love, It’s a Trauma Response

    That’s Not Love, It’s a Trauma Response

  • You Can Be the Cycle Breaker: 9 Ways to Heal After Childhood Trauma

    You Can Be the Cycle Breaker: 9 Ways to Heal After Childhood Trauma

    “It’s up to us to break generational curses. When they say, ‘It runs in the family,’ you tell them, ‘This is where it runs out.’” ~Unknown

    I never even knew what I experienced was trauma. It was my normal. I was born into a world where I had to walk on eggshells, always on high alert for danger.

    I held my breath and always did my best to be good and to not cause an eruption of my dad’s temper. He literally controlled my every move through fear. I agreed to anything just to feel safe and to please him.

    I grew up with the example from my mum and my grandmothers that women were submissive to men. That men could do whatever; get drunk, not pay bills, blame, shame, and abuse their wives, and they would stay no matter what.

    They would allow their children to be hurt, as men were on this pedestal. I didn’t grow up in a violent home, but there was always the threat of it.

    It was the words that really haunted me for decades. They diminished my self-worth and self-esteem.

    I was terrified of men as a result. I unconsciously stayed single as an adult because the belief I had deep within my unconscious mind was that men were not safe.

    Any men I met reconfirmed that belief. I was determined that I wouldn’t bring children into a home like the one I grew up in. But I was not attracted to healthy men, so staying single kept me safe.

    This belief and my need for safety kept me very lonely. I just didn’t trust myself to not repeat the cycle I grew up watching. Especially since any men I was drawn to had some subtle abusive tendencies or emotional unavailability like my dad.

    I so wanted to be loved, but I was scared. So I began to take baby steps to become the cycle breaker in my family. My dream was to have a family, but I wanted a home that was safe and nourishing, with no tolerance for abuse.

    But I had no idea what that was. It was normal for me to experience the silent treatment or verbal abuse if I didn’t do as Dad wanted. He would be loving at times, giving me a crumb of love if I performed as he wanted.

    A crumb of love was normal for me. Having no boundaries and getting walked all over and treated badly was normal for me. I had to go on a healing journey to heal the wounds of the past and discover what normal and healthy actually was, as I had no idea.

    Here are my top tips for becoming a cycle breaker.

    1. Understand the generational trauma in your story.

    As small children we blame ourselves for how we are treated, but there are many reasons why our parents behave the way they do. It’s not our fault.

    Look at each parent and grandparent and review what traumas, big and small, they experienced. Look at the country your family is from to understand the bigger traumas your grandparents experienced like wars, poverty, political issues, etc. What happened in each person’s life to make them feel unsafe?

    It’s likely that your parents and grandparents didn’t seek help and therefore remained stuck in survival mode. This is the place in which you were born and brought up.

    This exercise helps you to understand their story. You don’t have to forgive them if you don’t want to because you deserved way better. But they brought you up the only way they knew how. They didn’t know how to regulate their nervous systems and take care of themselves, and that is what they taught you.

    2. Reparent your inner child.

    Take a close look at what you experienced as a child from birth to age seven. These are the years when your brain and nervous system were being developed. Your brain was taking in information on what was a perceived ‘threat’ and what felt unsafe.

    For example, I grew up around a lot of arguing, so raised voices overwhelm my body with fear. This is a childhood wound.

    Rather than being frozen by that fear in my adult life, I now reparent my inner child. I visualize going back in time to the memory where I felt unsafe or afraid and giving my inner child what she needed. Maybe some reassurance, validation, or love. I just let her know she is safe.

    This calms down the nervous system and helps heal wounds of the past.

    3. Review the family survival plan.

    We all have a survival program, as do our parents. For example, my dad learned to shout and control when he felt unsafe or his nervous system was dysregulated; I learned to be frozen and please in attempt to feel safe. We didn’t have any choice but to use these survival programs as children. We needed them.

    But as adults they could be causing us issues with loving ourselves, having healthy relationships, and maintaining our overall well-being.

    Take a moment and reflect on each family member’s survival programs. What is each person doing or what did they do during your childhood when emotions were triggered or that feeling of unsafety was intense?

    These behaviors are learned, not genetic! The first step is becoming aware of the behaviors that are not actually helping you to survive but are keeping you stuck.

    Examples of behaviors that are a nervous system response are:

    • Fight – control to connect and rage to feel safe e.g., narcissistic, explosive, controlling, entitled; a bully, a sociopath; demands perfection
    • Flight – perfect to connect and be safe e.g., OCD; adrenaline junkie, busy-aholic, workaholic; rushing, worrying, overachieving; compelled by perfectionism
    • Freeze – avoids connection and hides to be safe e.g., dissociative, hiding; hermit, couch potato; achievement-phobic, relationship avoidant
    • Fawn – merge with others to connect and grovel to be safe e.g., codependent, slave, doormat, domestic violence victim, parentified child, little adult, people-pleaser, relationship addict

    4. Work on behavior change.

    Once we’re aware of our unconscious toxic behaviors we can begin to take baby steps to change them. As we take small steps every day, over time, we’ll create new positive habits.

    First, we need to look at the behavior we are trying to change. For example, people-pleasing, which is a fawn nervous system response. We could introduce a new habit to pause for a half-hour before saying yes to someone. In this pause we can do something that makes us feel good and then make a decision if we authentically want to say yes instead of doing it just to please others.

    5. Get support.

    When we stop using old behaviors to numb feelings, pain from the past can rise up. When we sit and feel our feelings, they can pass in ninety seconds. But at the beginning this can feel scary and overwhelming.

    Create a support system to help you. This might include therapy, coaching, support groups, or working with a mentor. It doesn’t matter how you get support, just that it makes you feel safe. Working with people who are healing on the same journey can be helpful, as they can share tools with you.

    6. Cultivate daily practices to heal nervous system.

    This is one of the most important steps. A daily practice provides a moment in your day when your nervous system feels calm. Pick activities that make you feel safe and at ease. We are all different, so what works for one person may not work for another.

    Start small with just fifteen minutes and build as you need. You could try breathing, meditating, dancing, listening to your favorite music, journaling, repeating affirmations, or lying on the grass as examples.

    When you introduce a daily practice, you will notice what is triggering you to move you out of your calm state. Is it overworking? Or a particular relationship? When we are unconsciously moving through life we can’t tell!

    You can then start to bring in tools to help you calm your emotions when you get triggered. Maybe breathing or reparenting your inner child to get you back into balance rather than falling into old behaviors.

    7. Practice self-compassion.

    The transition from old toxic behaviors to new healthier behaviors is imperfect and bumpy. You may regress. You may get frustrated with yourself. Be kind to yourself through it all. You’re trying to unlearn generations of behaviors. Your subconscious mind does a lot of behavior automatically; it takes time to reprogram it, but slowly, you will notice you are getting there.

    Celebrate every tiny win, like “I did my breathing today,” and notice how these new behaviors make you feel.

    8. Learn to love yourself.

    When we grow up in dysfunctional families, we are desperate for external validation, as we may not have received this growing up. But all that love we want from others, we can give it to ourselves. By speaking to ourselves with kindness and love. By validating ourselves. By taking care of ourselves, mind, body, and soul.

    If you are great at loving others but not yourself, imagine your inner child and visualize yourself taking care of them. Nurture them, hold them, and show them love.

    9. Clear away beliefs that are not yours.

    We hold a lot of beliefs from our families. For example, a belief that I got from my childhood was “failure is not an option” because it was quite literally unsafe to fail! When I noticed that voice in my head a few times, I realized this was not my own but my dad’s.

    My belief is different. Failure is a part of growth and healing. This belief feels much better in my body, so I repeat this often with my hand on my heart to embed it.

    What beliefs do you hold that are not yours? What is a more empowering belief to support you and your journey? Repeat it as often as you can so it gets embedded in your subconscious mind.

    —

    No matter what you experienced in the past, you can create a different future.

    Join me and become a cycle breaker. It’s where the happiness is at.

  • How I Kept Going When I Wanted to End My Life

    How I Kept Going When I Wanted to End My Life

    “When you’ve reached rock bottom, there’s only one way to go, and that’s up!” ~Buster Moon, from the movie Sing

    When I first heard this saying, as I was watching the movie Sing on my way to another continent, a small light bulb lit up inside me. As I sat with this sentence, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t agree more.

    After hitting my own rock bottom a couple of years ago, I know that once you get there, there is no place you can go that is lower. It’s the final breaking point.

    And if there is anything I have learned about the final breaking point, it’s that you have two choices: either give up or start over.

    This theory can apply to many aspects of life, like when you’re in a job or career that is no longer working, so you hit rock bottom in a health crisis or a mental breakdown. You have a choice: Be insane and keep going, when you know deep in your heart and gut that this decision isn’t right, or “give up” and finally pursue the career or job that you have always wanted.

    Sometimes, rock bottom gives us a good reflection point on what is no longer working in our life, as well as the opportunity to change. But what happens when your rock bottom is wanting to end your life?

    I remember it clear as day. It was summer 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, and I was working remotely from home, like many others. Nothing was unique about my situation, except the fact that I had ended a very toxic, karmic relationship just three weeks into a global pandemic.

    The things that most people do in order to get over a breakup—like see friends and go out and have fun—were all things the whole world had to put on pause. Oh, and top of that, I was worried about dying from Covid.

    I never realized the effects lockdown could have on my mental health. While I am naturally introverted, there is a significant difference between being forced to stay in and choosing to do so.

    I realized that I had hit rock bottom during a beautiful summer day. I was outside, staring into my backyard, when I realized that I felt nothing. I no longer wanted to live, and I could no longer see the beauty and miracles of everyday life.

    I was disappointed that I woke up every single morning, because that meant another day that I had to muscle through. Another day that I had to survive. While I’ve had bouts of depression my entire life, I never came as low as I did then.

    By the end of the summer, I knew I had two options: I was either going to save my life or end it. But I also came to a humbling moment when I knew I couldn’t do it myself. I needed therapy. No one else could help me through this except a professional that could help me dissect my feelings, trauma, and emotions, as well as myself.

    Starting therapy was a blow to my ego, as I imagine it is for many. It’s sitting there, across from your therapist, when they ask you, “Why are you here?” knowing damn well that you are there so that you don’t die. That you don’t want to suffer anymore. That you are wondering, “Why am I even suffering? Am I just being overdramatic?”

    There are so many hard truths that you learn about yourself through therapy. But also, so many enlightening things, like the fact that it wasn’t your fault you endured abuse, gaslighting, and manipulation in past relationships. Even though you thought it was.

    Or that trauma literally shuts off the frontal cortex of your brain, especially when you are in “fight or flight” mode, because your body is just trying to survive. This is why there are so many memories that, to this day, I cannot remember. They are little black holes in my brain history.

    When you’re in therapy, you don’t notice the gradual changes at first. It’s not until months down the line that you start to notice that little things are bringing you joy once again.

    How the sun, in the cold harsh winter, after days of cloudiness, brought a small smile to your face. Or how you realize that you no longer partake in OCD behaviors that you thought you could never break before starting therapy. Or how your irrational fears are no longer at the forefront of your mind anymore.

    While not everyone will notice these changes, you will. And you will then start to think about how and why you didn’t start therapy sooner. How and why you didn’t choose yourself sooner. Do not berate yourself; this was all part of your journey.

    If there is anything that I have learned by wanting to die, it was that inadvertently, I also wanted to live. I just no longer wanted to live my life through the same suffering and stories. The body, mind, and soul can only sustain pain for so long before it can no longer do it anymore.

    One of the most pivotal things about my life, hands down, was my rock bottom because, as the saying goes, I could only go up from there.

    Up doesn’t mean that you change your life drastically in one day, or even a couple of months.

    Sometimes up is showering after a week of not having the energy to do it. Sometimes up is allowing yourself to feel a slight feeling of joy again, after months and months of darkness. Sometimes up is remembering to eat again, because you never had the appetite to eat when you were at your lowest.

    If you’re struggling right now and can’t get out bed, I’m not telling you that you are wasting your life. You are not. Even in the depths of suffering, this is all a part of your journey.

    But I can tell you this: Living—not merely existing—is a choice made of lots of little choices. Like the choice to get help. The choice to believe things can get better. The choice to do the little things that help you feel better. And the choice to recognize the small wins along the way.

    Other people can support you, but no one can make these choices for you but you.

  • 5 Ways to Start Healing from the Grief of Betrayal and Domestic Abuse

    5 Ways to Start Healing from the Grief of Betrayal and Domestic Abuse

    “If your heart hurts a little after letting go of someone or something, that’s okay. It just means that your feelings were genuine. No one likes ends. And no one likes pain. But sometimes we have to put things that were once good to an end after they turn toxic to our well-being. Not every new beginning is meant to last forever. And not every person who walks into your life is meant to stay.” ~Najwa Zebian

    It’s hard to describe what betrayal feels like. Unless you’ve experienced it, I mean, in which case you’ll know. You’ll know that moment—the punch to the gut, which in my case, even though I was standing in an empty room all on my own, literally knocked me to the floor. I’d seen something, you see.

    Proof that my partner had been cheating.

    It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining. I think I’d been listening to music, probably something upbeat in the hope it would squash the worry that something wasn’t quite right. Maybe (most likely, knowing me) dancing, to carry some of the nervous energy away. Scrolling on social media, distracting myself with other people’s realities, to stop me thinking about my own.

    And then something—something—made me look. A pull. An inexplicable urge. And so, of course, I did.

    There it was. What I’d known in my gut, but had been told repeatedly couldn’t be true. Labelled as “over-reacting,” “seeing things that aren’t there,” “being too sensitive.” What I now know to be gaslighting, that abuse isn’t always physical (even though in my case it was that too). Tangible evidence for all to see.

    And so here I was, in a heap. Collapsed to the ground like a house of cards that had been caught by a gush of air. But it wasn’t air that had taken my legs from underneath me. It was the end of a relationship.

    To this day, I don’t know how long I was lying there. I can picture it in my head even all these years later.  Like a boat that’s adrift. Wind knocked out of my sails. Listless.

    The night drew in, and with it came this incredible wave of noise. Like I was sitting in a busy café, and someone had turned the music up to try and compensate, but you couldn’t make anything out. Except no one could hear this noise, because it was all happening in my head. Thoughts about “what if?” and “if only,” ironically contributing to the din.

    I wanted a hand to reach out from the darkness and give me the answers. To say “It’s going to be fine.” But it wasn’t fine. It was painful. Distressing. Desperate.

    And then, something. A message. A friend. He had no idea what was going on; I hadn’t told a soul. But he knew. At least, he sensed it. So he had messaged me and gently reminded me that I have a right to be here.

    I look back on this moment in my life now as if it was another person. I’m still me, of course, but different, like we all are when we go through grief. Because grief doesn’t just belong to death. We experience it for anything that mattered to us that’s no longer there.

    A divorce.

    A redundancy.

    Even a child leaving for college.

    Endings mean we go through this process; not in stages, but a journey that takes as long as it takes.

    Here are a few insights and tips that might help if you’re on this journey now.

    1. Grieving is a unique experience.

    It’s raw at first; it can be messy, but it does look different to everyone. Some people feel rage, others feel numb. I felt completely lost for a while. There is no right way to mourn a loss; we just find our own way, hopefully with the support of others who get it. Even then, people need to resist the urge to cheer us up or “silver line” what’s happened.

    We don’t always need to find the “upside” of pain or be told “at least you can always get remarried” (sigh). What helped me that night was the generosity of a friend, a simple act of kindness in the willingness to just hold space with me.

    But of course my journey to recovery didn’t end there. Allowing myself to be open to the idea that I didn’t need “fixing”—that I just needed to go at my own pace, finding healthy ways to cope—was hugely beneficial.

    2. Feel what you feel.

    Sometimes we numb out with booze, food, or mindless scrolling so that we don’t have to feel the pain we’re enduring, and I get it; grief can be gnarly. But the reality is, whether we give our feelings a name or not, they’re there anyway. Sure, we can push them down for a while, but if we keep putting pain on top of pain, eventually it rises up and grabs us metaphorically by the throat.

    Give yourself permission to sit with your emotions when you can, or with someone else if it helps.

    3. Reach out.

    I am so grateful in my case that someone reached in, but in the weeks that followed I went in search of people and services that I knew would be able to help. I got in touch with a therapist to sit with my grief and found a mindfulness teacher—a Buddhist monk as it happens. He trained me to be still with the painful thoughts of rejection and abandonment I was having, and the trauma I had been through.

    I also found agencies who could offer practical help with housing and finances, as I literally had nowhere to go, having been isolated from friends and work, what I know now to be a common sign in these cases.

    If you or someone you know has been affected by domestic abuse or are suffering with difficult thoughts, find what services are available in your local area.

    4. Share what you know.

    I do not see what happened to me as a “lesson.” I didn’t need to experience trauma in order to be a “better” person; I was good enough before all this happened actually.

    Having said that, I did find meaning in these moments. I decided to use what happened to me to help others; I became accredited to work with victims of crime and now volunteer my time in a women’s refuge. I also work as an independent advisor to police authorities to help raise awareness of what helps (and what doesn’t), as well as writing and supporting people in other ways.  When you’re ready, you could use the benefit of your experience to help others too.

    5. Take care of yourself.

    I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that when you’re going through a difficult time, your needs matter too. You’re not saying “me first” to the people in your life; you’re just saying “me included.”

    For me, this meant making sure I was eating, getting enough sleep, and yes, even dancing round my kitchen—it all helps.

    I’ve always believed self-care is in the little things, like changing your bedding, putting out clean towels, and getting fresh air. But it can be other things, like spending time in nature, chatting with a friend, or learning new ways to cope healthily with what life throws at you.

    It doesn’t have to be expensive; in fact, restorative acts of self-care don’t have to cost a penny. I love taking myself off somewhere to enjoy a cup of tea and reading a book. You’re allowed to have and do nice things that can help lift your spirits. Give yourself permission to say no and make sure your tribe includes people that help you rise, not bring you down.

    —

    We deal with endings all the time in life, and some might seem inconsequential, but that doesn’t mean we have to forget or pretend they didn’t happen. We can honor our experiences in helpful ways; we might just need to figure out how to do that for a while.

    Allow yourself time and space to discover what helps you best. This might mean taking time out or just taking a deep breath, revisiting your values to understand what really matters to you, setting new boundaries, or distancing yourself from those who don’t help. As Elizabeth Gilbert once so beautifully said, “We can love everybody, but some we must love from a safe distance.”

  • 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.

  • My Second Mother: When Someone Steps Up Like Family Never Did

    My Second Mother: When Someone Steps Up Like Family Never Did

    We are all blessed with two birth parents, and if we are lucky one or two of those are positive role models and on board for at least some portion of our lives. If we are really lucky, we may have the good fortune to score another mom or dad figure, someone who appears virtually out of nowhere, as fate or serendipity might have it, and takes us under their propitious wing.

    Such a thing happened to me in the form of a bright, spunky, and emotionally generous woman named Joanie Arnesty, who helped me through the veil of darkness that infiltrated every corner of my being.

    As a child of a German-Jewish Holocaust survivor, my mother’s past of suffering and trauma filled my own life with perpetual sadness, which I found difficult to eviscerate.

    There was scant laughter in our house and constant retellings of what my maternal family had gone through in World War II and how many of them had perished in the Shoah. I yearned for the happy childhood I intuitively felt was my birthright but which evaded me because the spectre of war filled up our entire home.

    Although grateful for my parents, I felt the emotional burden of my mother’s scarred and tattered life to ultimately be too much, and I fled at age nineteen to a coastal California town to begin a college life. I was excited by the prospect of sand and sea at my doorstep and new stories and events that had nothing to do with the Holocaust, which had stolen so much from us.

    Throughout my adulthood I wondered why I had not been given a happy family and a childhood that was punctuated with cheery memories.

    In every photo that was taken of me by my Polish father—who had hoped to become a photographer but instead found himself bitterly working in low-paying factory jobs, never with anyone who appreciated his creative intelligence—I look depressed and off-kilter, as if the vagaries of life have already turned me to the dark side.

    My mother has piled my auburn-colored ringlets high atop my head, in some vague European-influenced do, and I am wearing clothes that are old beyond my years, somber and unflattering, out of step with the fashion of the day.

    In those pictures it looks as if I am always on the brink of tears, under the impress of her reminders that I should not be pouting, or acting “beleidig” (the German word for angry), and should be grateful for my very life when so many had died during World War II. 

    When I was finally able to leave the house of despair that was my family, I felt I had been given a second chance at life, although throwing off the yoke of depression would be a battle I’d fight my entire existence. It still pulls at me with its relentless and intractable force, not stayed or mitigated by a battery of allegedly efficacious anti-anxiety/anti-depressant meds in conjunction with weekly psychotherapy.

    When I look back the years often blur, although I seem to remember with some affection those when I lived in the world of academia.

    I made my way through undergraduate school, a year of graduate school, and finally three years of law school. Not in any of those venues did I ever meet anyone whose parents were Holocaust survivors or who seemed to live daily with the scourge of the remembrances attached to that horrific event.

    I had long ago learned to blend in, to shed the apparent manifestations of an inherited life where pain, not pleasure, always predominated. I chose as my companions those who laughed easily and often, who absorbed the impostor that I always felt I was without any real resistance.

    In my thirties, then settled in Berkeley, California, and working in the legal field, I met someone who would change the architectonics of my life and the notions of family, from the fragmented moorings of a biological one to a new definition of what benefits an intentional family might confer.  

    Joanie Arnesty entered my life, encountered at some now forgotten community event, and became the mother I had always hoped for, full of effusion and contagious laughter and shining hopes.

    The first time we met I recall her saying “Such a beautiful girl you are! That hair! People would die to have that glorious mane of hair. And a law degree? Beautiful and smart! Well, that’s the icing on the cake!”

    Compliments were not the tender my parents traded in, and I yearned inveterately to hear a good word thrown in my direction. With my own son, I have emphasized the importance of being around what I call “encouragers”—those who not only give you emotional support but do it with a fiery and unrelenting vengeance. These are the folks who throw fairy dust on any situation, and you emerge wiser and better.

    Joanie, who was my mom’s age, was the physical embodiment of the epiphany I needed and became the female parent who helped me navigate the sudden storms and vicissitudes of life and celebrate the good times. 

    The turbulences of her own life seemed to have borne no apparent adverse impacts upon her. The product of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, she lost her own mother, a Jewish woman who worked as a nurse and got involved with a married Irish Catholic man named John Brown, around five years old.

    Raised by her mother’s sister, she inherited her father’s red hair and storied charm and wit but never met or even saw a photo of him.

    After high school, she married a man who, in quick succession, gave her three brilliant daughters, but there were black eyes and beatings, which finally caused her to run with just the clothes on her back and the three children in tow.

    When I think of Joanie, I remember the name of a film, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, which turned out to be a perfect descriptor of her. A single parent, she raised three girls, with never a male in the picture, all embodying her own unshakeable confidence and optimism.

    She watched them eventually attain professional identities, as an optometrist, pediatrician, and university professor. During their childhood she held numerous jobs and worked as a seamstress, baker, cook, and babysitter and lived a lean but happy life, never dwelling on her own misfortunes, which were incontrovertibly substantial.

    As our friendship grew from a chance meeting, I grew comfortable in sharing insecurities and what it meant to have never felt comfortable in the family I was born into.

    When I told my own mother one day that I wanted to be a writer, she yelled at me in German that this was “a stupid idea” and added “you have a lot of those.” I never forgave her for that outburst, and I still feel the sting of what it means to be deeply and disinterestedly misunderstood. 

    I shared my mother’s words one time with Joanie, and this woman, who admittedly was not book-smart and tutored, said energetically to me, “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. Pablo Picasso said that. I saw it in a magazine and I cut the words out and put them on the refrigerator.”

    And there they were on her old General Electric fridge, with magnets on each end, their wisdom illuminated in the midst of Safeway coupons and doctors’ business cards.

    “You need to have faith in yourself and to follow your dream. You are a great writer, but you need to first and foremost believe that yourself.”

    I have many failings but do not number among them the inability to listen closely.

    The reality is that we may not have parents that are a good or appropriate match for us, but it is within our power to seek out those who can fulfill these roles. I consciously chose Joanie as a second mother, who encouraged me to feel that I was good and able enough and deserved the fruits of a celebratory life.

    In time she introduced me to my husband, saw me through a difficult pregnancy, and threw a large and amazing baby shower, replete with a ton of baked dishes and desserts, scratch-made by her.

    She seemed able to put her unique and affectionate brand on everything. She loved and worried over my son, who was born with congestive heart failure and an array of other medical conditions.

    She once said to me “you’re my fourth daughter,” and my eyes filled with tears. She was always at my side, bouncy and ebullient, helping to lift me emotionally when I so often foundered.

    My own mother, 800 miles away in Los Angeles, issued regular rebukes and continued her criticism, saying that I had ruined my life, remaining emotionally distant and mired in depression after my father’s passing.

    She could never see my life because hers was always in the way. It was as if she had no happiness to give anyone, including herself, and the role of a biological parent disappeared into the background.

    What I have taken from my own story is this: We don’t all have parents who can offer us the love and encouragement we need, but we can all search for a parent or a mentor to fill in the spaces where support is lacking. It’s not always easy to find a person who can fill that role, but there are lots of good people out there with love to give. We just need to open our eyes and hearts to find them.

    In my case, I required encouragement and someone who was willing to listen closely. I needed laughter because there seemed so little of it in my own familial background.

    I remember seeing another quote on Joanie’s refrigerator that stood out, remarkable because it really captured the essence of who she was. I wrote it down on a yellow post-it and have it to this day:

    “Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is a strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light.”

    The author was Frida Kahlo, a Mexican artist who I was not familiar with at that time. Joanie taught me the importance of rising above what could be the oppressive weight of life, of laughing often and out loud, and embracing a path of positivity.

    The photo of my son and I on her desk shows us both smiling, seemingly recovered from our battles— mine of a life filled with emotional turbulence and his of a successful fight with a life-endangering condition.

    Years later, when I moved to central California, I wrote her a letter and told her that I was writing again, that I had returned to what I characterized as being a “wordsmith.” A week later I received a beautiful card and opened it to see the words imprinted in a careful and deliberate hand: “Always be yourself.  And be grateful for your gift and the ability to share it.”

    I do not know that I am a good writer or that any critical commentary will make such a determination.  But I do know that having a second mother, who stepped in time with me like some ineffable Mary Poppins character, made a difference. Her enthusiasm and encouragement restored to me the idea of what a family who embraces you really feels like.

    In the end it is not the biological bonds that necessarily provide succor and strength and understanding—there are other mothers and fathers to be found, intentionally or not, that can provide those qualities as well.   

    Here is to all the Joanie Arnestys in the world that have rescued the people whose families were emotionally missing in action and gave us the hope to soldier on and create new networks of families to lean into.

    Anf if you haven’t found your own Joanie yet, here’s to you for moving through this sometimes challenging life without the love and support you’ve always deserved.

  • How I Stopped Chasing Men Who Hurt Me and Found Healthy Love

    How I Stopped Chasing Men Who Hurt Me and Found Healthy Love

    “There are two things you should never waste your time on: things that don’t matter and people who think that you don’t matter.” ~Ziad K. Abdelnour  

    “What is wrong with me?” I asked myself. Crying in the dark of the night. “Why doesn’t he love me?”

    I’d tried to fold myself in all the ways I could to be loved and accepted, but it was never enough. I found myself repeating patterns of chasing men who just didn’t want me. Same cry in the night, different men.

    The more I chased them, the more they ran away, and the deeper I lost my self-worth. 

    I was addicted to them. They were my drug. These men who were wounded and just needed a loving, caring woman to come save them. I wanted to be the answer to their pain so then finally, a man would choose me. Finally, I would get the love I had longed for and chased my whole life.

    I always chased men that were unavailable in some way. They may have been addicts, in other relationships, or just not ready for a relationship. The more they didn’t want the relationship, the harder I would chase.

    I would be up late in the night, full of anxiety, obsessing about them. So preoccupied with trying to make them love me that I forgot to take care of myself.

    I had no boundaries and would accept any kind of awful behavior. It would break my heart and I may pull back for a moment, but then they would notice and come toward me, so the pull-push cycle would begin again.

    I lacked self-love and self-worth, and this pattern was destroying what little I had. I felt like nothing and like there was something fundamentally wrong with me.

    My happiness, my everything, was tied up in receiving validation from these unavailable men. The older I got, the worse it got, and the more obvious it was that something was not right. My friends were getting married, having children, and moving forward. But I was stuck ruminating about my latest obsession.

    I even drove my friends mad! No matter what they said to me, it wouldn’t stop me chasing a fantasy. When they stopped listening, I rang a psychic line multiple times a day for validation that the man I wanted was ‘the one.’ So not only did my self-worth disappear but my bank balance with it.

    It was exhausting and brought me to my knees in my mid-thirties.

    Then I noticed something. If someone was interested in me, available, and wanted to move forward, I would feel suffocated and tell myself there was no chemistry. But if someone showed some interest but was not available, I would want them more than anything.

    I felt like there was something really wrong with me because of this pattern, but I was determined to change, so I could have healthy, loving romantic relationships.

    I read You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise Hay, and decided to change my beliefs.

    Here are the five things I did to heal so I could open up to a healthier relationship:

    1. I adopted a daily self-care practice.

    It became painfully obvious to me that I knew how to love others but not myself. So I began with adding some practices to my day to help me build self-love.

    I listened to affirmations on Spotify and read them to myself looking in the mirror. I tried meditation and hot baths to begin my journey. I was always researching new ways to show myself love. In addition to developing a self-care practice, I invested in support to help me get better, including therapy.

    2. I began doing inner child work.

    I went back to my earlier story through meditation and discovered that younger-me was always chasing after my dad’s unavailable love. Trying to help him, to be seen. Trying to fix him so he would tell me I was enough. Seeking his validation, his connection, because he was unavailable due to his own childhood trauma. My inner child had internalized this to means I was unlovable.

    I began to say affirmations to a photo of my younger self. “You are loveable,” “You are enough,” “You are worthy.” I would literally talk to her and ask her how she felt and what she needed. I would imagine playing with her and showing her love.

    I explored my inner child’s story and learned lots about attachment theory. I realized that I had disorganized attachment from my father’s inconsistency, and that this was not my fault but just part of my old programming. The great news was I could change this! A book that helped me was Healing Your Attachment Wounds, by Diane Poole Heller.

    When I recognized why I sought love from men who couldn’t give it to me, that ache for unavailable love lessened.

    3. I set clear intentions.

    I grew up on my dad’s little crumbs of love. It made me feel starved for love and attention, so later in life, I would accept them from any man who showed me interest. Even if they weren’t the right fit for me. I had no idea what that was!

    When I realized this, I compiled a list of what I didn’t want. I tuned into what brought me pain and unhappiness growing up. Things that made me feel unsafe. These became my red flags. For example, emotional unavailability, anger, shouting, gaslighting, denying my reality, and addiction were a few items from my list.

    I became conscious about what I didn’t want so I wouldn’t blindly go into a relationship that made me feel unsafe again.

    I also compiled a list of things I did want—must-haves like kindness and safety.

    4. I ended contact with unavailable men.

    This was a hard one and felt very uncomfortable. I took a step back from my ‘drug.’ I even unfollowed people on social media to allow myself space to heal. Sometimes I would have a bad day and make contact, but slowly my addiction lessened.

    To support myself through this process, I read books, listened to podcasts, and even trained for a marathon to give me another focus. Books like Father Therapy, by Doreen Virtue, and Facing Love Addiction, by Pia Mellody, helped me to understand my pattern. I also found communities where I could share my story and not be judged.

    I learned how to stop numbing the pain from my past with these unhealthy relationships by learning how to soothe myself and let my wounds heal.

    5. I dated myself.

    I stepped back from dating and focused solely on learning to love and date myself. To start, I took myself on a trip for three days in Italy. I took my books, went on tours on my own, and journaled about my story. I  regularly spent time with myself and even found new hobbies. Before, I had been so obsessed with these men that pleasing them was my hobby.

    I found ways to enjoy my own time and have fun! To feel whole and enough on my own. I took myself to restaurants and treated myself to gifts. I became the person I always wanted. Validating, attentive, kind, and fun!

    Sure enough, in time, I found an emotionally available man who chose me and was everything I wrote on my intention list. He had no red flags, unlike any of my previous partners. He makes me feel safe every day, and most importantly, he gives me space to continue the most important relationship in my life. The one with me.

    If you can relate to this pattern of choosing emotionally unavailable partners, just notice the behavior. It is not you. It is just a behavior you are doing to keep safe. Thank this part and know that it is possible to change and find your healthy love.

  • 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.

  • Why I Attracted One-Sided Relationships and Gave More Than I Got

    Why I Attracted One-Sided Relationships and Gave More Than I Got

    “I was once afraid of people saying, ‘Who does she think she is?’ Now I have the courage to stand and say, ‘This is who I am.’” ~Oprah Winfrey 

    In May of this year, I decided to take a personal development course, hoping to resolve some of my limiting beliefs and raise my confidence to pursue my professional goals.

    The course turned out to be far different from what I thought it would be, and it blew my mind. In just three days, I transformed the way I functioned in most of my relationships.

    A week before the course, I began analyzing my friendships, and one in particular came to my attention. I was becoming aware of the triggers that led me to doubt our connection and how healthy this relationship had been. The resentment that had built up in me was slowly being revealed, and I wanted to make a change.

    At first, I became very standoffish about the situation. I shut down and stopped reaching out. I reasoned with my ego that it’s not my job to make people aware of what they are supposed to do, or what I think they should be doing to make me feel worthy and valued. What can I say? Self-righteousness is a funny friend.

    I had no plans to approach the situation between us, believing that she was at fault since she wasn’t investing in our friendship and I was the only one doing the work. 

    On the first day of the course, the leader challenged us to make amends with people who we weren’t authentic with. Suddenly, my reasoning started to crumble. I had to confront the situation, no matter the outcome. It terrified me.

    As much as I resented the truth of neglecting myself and therefore creating relationships where I wasn’t appreciated and valued, it took me about three hours to let that go and reach for humbleness instead.

    It was 7:15 pm when I dialed the number. I was nervous, my voice was shaking, and I kept reminding myself not to sound blameful. As we started the conversation, I told her that there was something I needed to talk about.

    I went on to say that I didn’t feel our friendship was a balance of give and take and that there was a fair amount of negativity taking place.

    After I expressed my concerns, she said she didn’t quite understand. She asked for specific examples of what I didn’t like about our relationship, and I cited several instances where I felt dismissed and unappreciated.

    She went on the defensive and, after listening to me for a while, said, “I don’t think I can give you what you’re asking for.”

    Ouch. Suddenly, I felt a familiar pit in my stomach that often occurred when someone rejected me. My worth was threatened, and I could feel it with every ounce of my being.

    I wish I could tell you that this conversation ended with us resolving the issue and strengthening our friendship. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. I continued with the course for another three days while proudly sitting in my self-righteous state of mind.

    When we don’t address our struggles concerning our worth, we tend to neglect our needs to gain validation, love, and attention from others. Although, deep down, we know our needs aren’t met and we are abandoning ourselves, we feed our egos by finding significance in being the bigger person. 

    Putting things into perspective, here are questions I pondered: Who plays the bigger role in an unhealthy relationship? Is it a person who feels that everything is about them, or a person who gives them space to be this way in order to feel valued and needed? I am concluding that both are equally responsible. Lack of self-worth can present itself in many forms, and this was mine.

    Two days after the course was over, I spoke with one of my other friends, sharing what had happened and how hurt I felt by the whole situation.

    She challenged my story by asking me, “Have you ever told her that you need help? Have you ever shown her that you’re struggling and need her?” Her questions triggered me because, deep down, I was fully aware that I often don’t express my needs or struggles to others.

    Some of my favorite lines are “I got this” or “It is what it is.” Knowing what I know now, this may only work as a T-shirt slogan. But in all seriousness, I rarely communicated my needs since I didn’t consider them as important as the needs of other people.

    She went on to ask me, “Considering that you’re never open and vulnerable enough to allow others to be there for you, would you say you might have been a fake friend?” 

    Another ouch. Suddenly, I was faced with how inauthentic I was. Leading people to believe that I was Wonder Woman without any need for help was a double-edged sword. It meant that I denied my needs while secretly becoming resentful and angry.

    I realized that acting from an unhealthy place of unworthiness, while trying to maintain the role of a bigger person, was never about helping others. I was trying to fulfill some emptiness in my soul that I hadn’t healed.

    If we believe, for whatever reason, that we aren’t worthy or enough, we will constantly look for validation from the outside world and use self-destructive behaviors to prove ourselves since our souls are starving.

    Unless we heal our childhood wounds and stop seeking validation from our accomplishments or other people, we will spiral into a toxic circle of lack and inadequacy. 

    After a very honest and painful conversation with my friend, during which I sobbed like a four-year-old losing their most precious toy, I decided to reach out to her again. I was too scared to make an actual phone call, so I decided to send her a voice message instead.

    The purpose of the conversation was to be authentic about having been inauthentic. I expressed the hurt I felt and how fake I’d been in our friendship. I expressed my resentment and that my ego was still standing in the way, but at least I was aware of it. Also, I told her that she wasn’t the only negative person in our friendship, and that my resentment created an equal amount of negativity and toxicity for both of us.

    She replied by saying that she was acknowledging my message but needed to reflect on it. Since then, I haven’t heard from her.

    Although this may sound like a sad ending, I don’t see it that way. For the first time in my life, I stood up for myself and for what’s important to me. Instead of denying my needs, I voiced them. I was aware of the boundaries that were missing and made them important. I was acting from a place of worthiness and self-love. Although it meant that I was losing the friendship, at least I wasn’t losing myself, as I often have.

    While working on our healing and addressing our traumas, we often overlook the importance of others in our healing process. If we want to recover from past pains caused by difficult relationships, we must create bonds with people based on love, compassion, and mutual support. 

    Although our recovery is personal, even isolating at times, a big part of our healing happens within partnerships with others.

    For example, let’s consider a scenario where our trust was broken, and we were traumatized to trust again. It’s difficult to heal this problem on our own. We must nurture new relationships or fix old ones since trust is the essential foundation of a relationship. This is how we heal and gain confidence in trusting others again.

    Moving forward, I know I will face the challenge of helping others or being there for them from a codependent state of mind again. However, this time, I will be able to recognize it, pause, and reevaluate the actions and investments I make in other people.

    Although breaking the limiting belief about my worth has been a tough task for me, I am getting a glimpse of what it feels like to stand in my power and value who I am. Knowing that I have the potential to feel worthy in relationships, I can say, with confidence, that I am certainly not stopping now.

  • 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 My Narcissist Ex Was a Catalyst to My Healing and Self-Love

    How My Narcissist Ex Was a Catalyst to My Healing and Self-Love

    “It’s okay to let go of those who couldn’t love you. Those who didn’t know how to. Those who failed to even try. It’s okay to outgrow them, because that means you filled the empty space in you with self-love instead. You’re outgrowing them because you’re growing into you. And that’s more than okay, that’s something to celebrate.” ~Angelica Moone

    I thought I had married the love of my life. I had never felt a connection so strong before. I was sure he was my soul mate, and I thoroughly believed he was my twin flame—my one and only.

    I can’t even begin to tell you the horror that started to unfold after we got married. The accusations that my beloved other started to hurtle at me. That I didn’t care about him and I didn’t love him enough. He was convinced I was having affairs behind his back, and conspiring against him, and was clearly out to take his money.

    I was not just perplexed by this, I was shattered. How could he not see that I loved him unwaveringly, without question, and that I never even considered having eyes for anyone else? And trying to take his money? That was incredibly bizarre because I discovered, contrary to his initial proclamations, that he hardly had any.

    Yet I didn’t care. I loved him. I tried to love him, and I was convinced that my love would be enough—that he would know that I loved him, and we would soon return to the comfort and the knowing that our love for each other was real, safe, and forever.

    No matter how much I tried to love him, things were spiraling out of control. I couldn’t be five minutes late from the supermarket without suffering his wrath. Life outside of “us” was getting smaller and smaller.

    If I looked out the window, I was thinking the wrong thing or looking at something the wrong way. If I didn’t take his hand when we were together, I was advertising that I was single. Visiting friends or family or working outside of the property became as possible as flying to the moon.

    Eventually it happened: I stopped trying to love us back to unity and fought back. Initially to try to stop the despair that he didn’t trust me, then for my literal sanity, freedom, and autonomy. Without these things I was losing my soul.

    None of it worked. As my attachment to him became more panicked and devastated and I was losing control of my reactions, his abuse accelerated, and then I realized I was coming close to losing my life.

    I had complicated post-traumatic stress disorder. I shook. I sweat. I couldn’t eat. I could barely sleep. Everything and everyone I cared about was turning away from me.

    I had married a narcissist. I didn’t realize it at first, because back then, fifteen years ago, not many people were talking about narcissism.

    I had always believed that narcissists were arrogant people who were “up on themselves.” I had no idea that they were people who presented in our lives offering the love, total acceptance, validation, and “life” that we thought we had wanted our entire life. I had no idea that someone like this could enter my life and they would feel so right to fall in love with.

    The day that the word “narcissist” popped into my head, and I googled it, I nearly fell off my chair. I was ticking every point that was so “him” off a list of traits and behaviors. I was in shock.

    Entitled—tick. Can’t take personal responsibility for wrongdoings—tick. Has hair-trigger reactions to things that most adults don’t get bent out of shape about—tick. Argues in circles in ways that make your head spin—tick. Pathologically lies while looking you straight in the eye—tick … and on and on the list went. I needed to get to the punch line: Could a person like this be fixed? Could they get well from this disease?

    I searched high and low; I turned over every possibility and read all the research I could find. The answer was a flat “no.” Then, believing there is always a solution, I was determined to heal him, to fix our marriage, to return to the dream of the “one and only” that I just knew he must have been.

    It didn’t turn out well. In fact, it turned out terribly. Now I was experiencing things I never believed I could or would: Mental and emotional abuse that had me curled up in a corner. Physical abuse that had me fearing for my life. Financial abuse that was ripping my life to shreds. At times, for self-preservation, I had to escape. Eventually, I left him and relocated.

    But I wasn’t getting better away from him. I was totally unprepared for feeling so haunted. By the fact that he was in the home I had bought, seeing other women and seemingly having a great life while I was so empty, devastated, and traumatized that it hurt to breathe, it hurt to live, and I thought that I was going to die.

    I returned to him countless times. Either because he would contact me and promise to change, or I missed him so much I couldn’t function.

    Every time I returned, it got worse. The makeup periods were briefer, and the explosions more damaging and horrifying. Then, I broke. I had a complete psychotic and adrenal breakdown. I was told I would never heal from it and would need three anti-psychotics to be able to function, but I would never be the same again. I was told I now had permanent brain and nervous system damage.

    Of course, he didn’t care. He did what he had always done when I needed him—he discarded me. It was then that I decided to die. So, I started trying to formulate how to do this in the kindest way for my family and son.

    However, my soul had a different idea for me. A voice in my head kept insisting, “No, there is another way.” I thought it was just my madness speaking. I argued with it, but it wouldn’t let up. In desperation I walked into my bathroom, fell on the mat, put my hands in the air, and shrieked, “Help me, I can’t do this anymore!”

    In that moment the most incredible thing happened. It was like my head parted and the blinding truth entered me. I had never known such clarity in my entire life. Maybe you have to be “out of your mind” to really know the truth?

    The voice in my head told me that my husband was a catalyst. He was never meant to grant me my “self” and my “life”; rather he had come into my life to show me the parts of myself that were unhealed, that I hadn’t healed yet, to generate my true self and true life.

    A whirl of incidents and truths flashed into my mind. The ways I was so hard on myself and was always needing more, saying to myself, “Melanie, I can’t even like you (let alone love you) if you don’t get your to-do list all done, if you don’t lose ten pounds, if you don’t look like this or that … “ and how he had treated me the same—as not good enough, right, or acceptable.

    How I had always kept busy rather than “be” with myself, care, validate, and love myself. How I had terminally self-avoided and self-abandoned my inner being, and how I had yelled at him, “You don’t even know who I really am!” yet had never taken the time to have a real relationship with myself.

    On and on, the realizations came hard and fast. And I knew, he hadn’t treated me how I had treated him; he had treated me how I had really felt about and treated myself.

    I knew that if I let go of him, healed, and came home to my inner self, I would recover. I would save my sanity, life, and soul. I knew I could heal, get better, and do better. I knew that finally my life and love could be real and work.

    I knew this because in this divine intervention experience, I had been thrust into a vision in the future where I was healed and whole, and I had felt it for real. I saw who I was. I saw what I had and most importantly, I felt who I had become.

    He wasn’t the healer of my wounds; he was the messenger of them instead.

    I let go. I turned inward. I healed.

    This I now know at the highest level of truth: A twin flame, as the nemesis who reflects back to us our unhealed parts in intensely painful ways, offers the greatest love of all—the returning home to ourselves. From there my life has blossomed, from this true relationship with myself, life, and others in ways that I could never have previously imagined.

    I am love. I am self-acceptance. I am free.

  • Maturity Is Working Through Your Trauma

    Maturity Is Working Through Your Trauma

  • The Childhood Wounds We All Carry and How to Heal Our Pain

    The Childhood Wounds We All Carry and How to Heal Our Pain

    “As traumatized children, we always dreamed that someone would come and save us. We never dreamed that it would, in fact, be ourselves as adults.” ~Alice Little

    Like most people, I used to run away from my pain.

    I did it in lots of different and creative ways.

    I would starve myself and only focus on what I could and couldn’t eat based on calories.

    I would make bad choices for myself and then struggle with the consequences, not realizing that I had made any choice at all. It all just seemed like bad luck. Really bad luck.

    Or I would stay in unhealthy relationships of any kind and endure the stress that was causing. Again, I didn’t see what I was contributing or how I was not only keeping my pain going but actually adding to it.

    These are just a few examples of the many ways I ran away from my pain. The real pain. The one below it all. The one that started it all. The core wound.

    The wound of unworthiness and unlovability.

    The wound that stems from my childhood.

    And my parents’ childhoods.

    And their parents’ childhoods.

    But this is not a piece on how it all got started or who is to blame.

    No. This is about me wanting to share how I got rid of my pain.

    Because discovering how to do that changed my life in ways I never thought possible.

    It is something I would love for you to experience too because life can be beautiful no matter what has happened in the past. I don’t want you to miss out on this opportunity. Especially because I know it is possible for you too.

    Hands on the table, I am a psychotherapist and I have been for almost ten years. I also train and supervise other psychotherapists, so I should know what I’m talking about.

    But, let me fill you in on this: There are plenty of professionals who haven’t done ‘the work’ on themselves. I know, I’ve met them.

    And I have met hundreds of people who don’t have any qualifications, but they have done the work on themselves. I know, I’ve felt them.

    Doing the work, in the shortest possible summary, is all about facing your pain. It’s when you stop—or when you’re forced to stop, which is so often the case—and you’re done with running away from it.

    It’s when you finally give up.

    Sounds like a bad thing, right? But it isn’t.

    To heal, you have to see the pain.

    We all think we see it or feel it or know it, but we don’t.

    We know what it feels like to run away from it and the pain and stress that causes. The constant anxiety, the pressure, the breathlessness, the numbness. That’s what we know.

    But that’s not the pain, not the pain of the core wound. Those are the symptoms of not dealing with the wound, of not healing it because you’re too afraid to even look.

    It’s fear that stops us from healing.

    It’s not the process of healing itself that scares us; it’s what we imagine healing means. And it usually is nothing like we imagine it to be!

    Healing just means facing the pain.

    Let me try to make it more practical:

    Do you remember a time when you were very little, maybe three or five, or maybe a little older?

    Do you remember, in your body, how it felt to be misunderstood? How to want something and then not get it? How to be punished for something you didn’t do? How to be shouted at for no reason at all just because someone else was stressed out and couldn’t control themselves?

    Do you remember how that felt?

    I do.

    That’s the origin. All those little incidents when we were too young to understand what was going on, but we made it mean something negative about ourselves.

    Because what was reflected back to us by the world, by the people we loved the most, was that something was wrong with us, that in some way we were flawed, wrong, or bad.

    Our brains were too young to take a different perspective, to defend ourselves from unfair judgments and punishments, and so we took it all in.

    And believing something horrible about yourself that isn’t true hurts. Believing that you’re not good enough hurts. Believing that you’re unlovable hurts.

    It also scares us, and so we no longer feel safe.

    Safe to be ourselves. Safe to love. Safe to be loved.

    We start to hide from ourselves and our pain. We start to hide our truth and inhibit the great humans that we actually are.

    Because in those moments, those moments of misunderstanding, we receive the wrong message—that we are not worthy of being heard, trusted, held, or loved.

    We are pushed away, through being ignored, threatened, or punished.

    And then we start doing that to ourselves.

    We want or need something—just like we needed it then when it was inconvenient to a parent who shouted at us and invalidated what we wanted or needed—and we deny it or minimize it.

    We want to say “enough” and set a boundary with someone—just like we wanted to when we were little but were told we didn’t know what was good for us—but we don’t do it.

    We want to choose what we like or are excited by—just like we tried to when we were young but were told we were being stupid, childish, or silly—but then go for the boring, reasonable option instead.

    We carry the pain on.

    We don’t stop to ask ourselves whether that’s actually what we should be doing.

    We try to avoid re-experiencing the pain from our childhood by treating ourselves in exactly the same ways as we were treated back then.

    We don’t realize that we’re keeping that usually unconscious pattern going.

    The most obvious example I can give you from my life is that I didn’t grow up surrounded by emotionally available adults. So obviously I didn’t become one either. I wasn’t emotionally available to myself, and I didn’t choose emotionally available partners in my relationships.

    As a result, I got to relive my childhood experiences over and over again while not understanding why I kept feeling so depressed, unloved, and worthless.

    I kept the pain going by being closed off to how I was feeling and by choosing partners who would shame, reject, or ignore me and my feelings the same way my parents had.

    But I broke that cycle.

    I broke it when I faced my pain.

    I broke it when I stayed within myself when I felt something, no matter what it was.

    When I felt disappointed that I didn’t get the grade I wanted on an important university assignment, I stayed with that disappointment.

    I didn’t talk myself out of it. I didn’t talk down to myself and tell myself what a useless waste of space I was. I didn’t pity myself or blame my lecturer. I didn’t numb myself by binge-watching Netflix and eating chocolate.

    No, I stayed with the disappointment.

    It was like I was sitting opposite my disappointed three-year-old self, and I stayed with her.

    I didn’t shout, mock her, invalidate her, leave her, or make her wrong for feeling how she was feeling.

    I stayed with her. I saw her disappointment. I saw her pain. I knew what she was making it mean and I stayed with her.

    I didn’t push her away. I didn’t push the pain away.

    And guess what happened?

    It started to speak to me! And it made sense!

    It wasn’t scary or weird or awkward or crazy! It made complete sense.

    And it needed me to hear it, to understand it, and to parent it.

    Just like I parent my children.

    “Of course, you feel disappointed. You have put so much work into this, and you didn’t get the result you wanted. I get it. I’m here to listen to you. I want to understand you.”

    Do you know what that does? It calms you down. Truly.

    It calms you down. It’s such a relief!

    Finally, someone wants to listen! Finally, someone doesn’t turn away from me like I am the biggest threat they have ever encountered. Finally, someone looks at me with understanding and compassion.

    This is what I do with all of my feelings.

    If there is jealousy, I am there for it. I’m not shaming it, not judging it—I’m just here to listen, to soothe, to understand, and to act on it if it feels like that’s what it needs.

    So I turn toward the pain, the feeling; I try to understand what it’s all about and see if there is anything it needs from me, something more practical.

    Does my disappointment need me to ask my lecturer for feedback to improve my work for the next assessment?

    Does my jealousy need me to remind myself how worthy and lovable I am? Or does it need me to choose something beautiful for me to wear because I’ve not really paid that much attention to my appearance recently? Or does it need to speak to my partner because he’s much friendlier with other women than he is with me?

    A lot of the time the pain tries to alert us to doing something we need to do for ourselves.

    By not facing the pain, by not tending to it, we can’t know what it is that it needs us to do—and it’s always something that’s good for us.

    And so we go without what we want and need, and the pain only grows bigger and louder like the tantruming toddler that is only trying to express herself in an attempt to be heard, held, soothed, and taken care of by their parent.

    It’s time to stop doing that to ourselves.

    I did many years ago, and I feel like a different person. The way I live my life is different. The way I feel about myself is different. I no longer go without what I want and need.

    That can’t happen as long as you use up all your energy to run away from the pain.

    The pain is your invitation to do the healing work. It invites you to stay and listen, to find out what’s really going on below all distractions and symptoms.

    What is the feeling that needs to be felt?

    What is the pain that needs to be witnessed and understood?

    And what does it need you to do for it so the core wound can finally heal?

    You have the power to heal it. You are the only one you need to heal it. But you have got to stay and learn to be there for it, learn to be there for yourself.

    That’s it.

    Unlike other people, you don’t walk away. You don’t say no to yourself. You don’t go against yourself and make yourself wrong.

    You stay. You feel it. You give it what it needs.

    And that’s when it heals.

  • Why Stability Feels Unsettling When You Grew Up Around Chaos

    Why Stability Feels Unsettling When You Grew Up Around Chaos

    “Refuse to inherit dysfunction. Learn new ways of living instead of repeating what you lived through.” ~Thema Davis

    For anybody that experienced a chaotic childhood, stability in adulthood is unfamiliar territory.

    When you grow up in an environment where shouting is the norm, unstable relationships are all you observe, and moods are determined by others in your household, it’s hard to ever feel relaxed.

    As an adult dealing with the long-term effects of childhood instability and chaos, I jump at the slightest sound now.

    And I know I’m not alone when I say instability is all I have experienced.

    I recall one recent occasion when my flatmate asked jokingly, “What’s wrong with you? I live with you!” as she came out of her bedroom, and I was startled again.

    Stability, peace, and quiet are all unfamiliar to me.

    When chaos really is all you know, all that you are familiar with, stability is actually unsettling.

    Sabotaging Stability

    Stability can feel so unsettling to me that I’ll unconsciously sabotage its presence in my life, for example, by overthinking and causing myself anxiety over things being ‘calm.’

    If everything seems to be going well, I’ll subconsciously look to create some sort of problem in my life.

    Perhaps a friend texts me a message that seems less friendly than usual, but we’ve been close and getting on for months. I may choose to cause an issue with them and bring it up, simply because things feel stable.

    My mind is an expert at creating problems that really aren’t there.

    The battle against stability is most prevalent in my relationships. Of course, I’ve done the necessary work (in therapy and beyond) and know that this is largely due to complex trauma and my disorganized attachment style, but it doesn’t make things easier.

    In fact, sometimes knowing all of this can make it even more challenging, as everything seems so complex and difficult to overcome.

    Why Stability Is an Unpleasant Experience

    My therapist told me that in adulthood, we often recreate the family dynamics we experienced as children. For me, this has been very true.

    I have entered relationships where I have had to fight to be loved and accepted. I’ve also recreated the abusive cycle many times by accepting and tolerating emotional and sometimes physical abuse.

    It was only a year or so ago that I realized this. As you can probably imagine, it was quite an epiphany moment.

    For me, it’s taken a lot of courage to move away from drama-fueled relationships and to look instead for stability.

    Since we’re hardwired to expect instability and chaos when we have a turbulent background, stability can often feel boring. More often than not, this is the case for me.

    Without the drama, shouting, and familiar abuse, many adults struggle to function. Simply put, their identity or relationships are threatened when there is stability, as they aren’t sure how to behave or feel when the instability is taken away.

    How I’m Learning to Grow Comfortable with Stability

    It’s a process for sure for many of us, but not an impossible one. Or at least that’s what I remind myself.

    Sometimes I find it totally baffling that I’m more comfortable with instability rather than stability. However, I do know that our brains are powerful enough to be trained, and we can always learn new ways as humans.

    Once we gain greater self-awareness and realize we do not have to engage in abusive or chaotic relationships, we are ready to accept stability.

    It takes a lot of inner work to understand why we often choose emotionally unavailable or abusive partners. There is indeed such a thing as love addiction, which involves seeking out abusive relationships in order to ‘save’ or be a ‘savior.’

    One book I’ve found to be extremely insightful and useful for exploring the concept of love addiction is Women Who Love Too Much, by Robin Norwood. Written for those, like me, who have found themselves repeating toxic patterns in relationships, the book recalls various case studies involving women who enter unhealthy relationships in order to intentionally face chaos and abuse.

    Interestingly, the author also explores why women do this and how they are recreating familiar experiences from childhood, along with affirming their low sense of self-worth. Again, something I can relate to.

    Why Self-Love Is Key to Healing

    When we begin to love ourselves and put in the work to get to know ourselves, we start to recover and heal. In order to accept and attract stability into your life, it must first come from within.

    For me, I’m still not fully healed and try to sabotage stability in many ways. However, I am far healthier and content than I’ve ever been—and all of this has come from revisiting and confronting my childhood to gain an understanding of who I am and what has shaped my life, along with my relational tendencies.

    When you continually pour love into yourself and work to understand how your past has shaped you, you’re in a better position to create a brighter future.

    I’m finally beginning to accept the love I give to myself and the love from others. While I still get urges to sabotage or feel bored without drama, I can see and understand when I’m entering such a state.

    For me, this means I’m able to better prevent the sabotaging behavior, give myself love, and accept the stability that I deserve.