okay, perfect.

Not in a bad way

But not in a good way either

You work long hours, develop different skills and love for other hobbies

You fill any holes in your schedule with something to do that doesn’t involve alone time with your mind.

And any other intrusive thought or dark memory that you hate and blocked out. 

Half of us can’t even remember different parts of our childhood because of the trauma it caused and we turned it off.

You’ve shut that part of your life down and you’ve made more money at work, met more people, traveled to more places and developed the “bad bitch genre” and have pretty much all you wanted and needed in life. Smaller circle of friends, “loyalty”, the girl of your dreams*, and the status you wanted in life. 

Hoorah.

Now how long until everything that you’ve put aside catches up to you? The first holiday that you miss with your family? Your first home or first child? You have social media and some friends there to help you, but you also now have whatever trauma you’ve survived but haven’t processed at different levels of your life; to somehow teach this kid or tell your significant other without any sort of relapse into the anxiety or depression you felt. 

Coming off of Celexa (read the previous blog) I had a wave of emotions and feelings of loneliness all at the same time: let me elaborate…

Celexa helped me to mellow everything out- I was just kind of vibing. I had days that I felt the normal emotions of a college kid, and I had days where I just had no real emotions. It’s hard to explain; it was kind of like the tiktoks comparing your customer service voice to your real voice but the real voice was just muted for months on end. Then, when you speak with your real voice, you feel like a complete stranger to yourself. 

ANYWAYS.

So you’ve put on pause the part of the trauma where you understand:

• what happened,
• that it happened to you,
• its not okay,
• it’s not your fault for the other persons actions,

 And then you take the necessary steps to cope with the anxiety, depression, tiks or other results of the event. And this is the most important thing.

I pray that no one has to ever experience such things, but in reality, it sucks, and we all do. 

No matter how big or small.

“There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties or you alter yourself to meet them.” – Phyllis Bottome.

A publisher and thinker, Bottome wrote nearly 50 novels in her time. 

I’m sure you’re just as over the phrase “get over it, it happened so long ago.”

Replace “get over it” with “it’s time to work through it” and see what happens.

Just like an athlete has to go to PT for injuries.

You can only carry so much of the weight or the pressure of making sure that your friends don’t feel the burden you’ve been told that you are since childhood,

• or that your significant other doesn’t think that you don’t love them like your parents told you and how disappointed you made them,

• or that your child doesn’t believe that they have what it takes to pass a test because someone reminded you everyday how stupid you were.

*dramatic pause*

To set apart these myths is something you train your mind to do: pushing everyday the intrusive thoughts of bad habits and horrible self-images. I honestly thank one of my friends for introducing me to shadow work; without it, I would still be in la-la land, living my *best* life and ignoring what I needed to grow.

Understanding who you are and pushing who you were made to believe you are in two very opposite corners of the room is a valuable skill set that pushes you so much further in self confidence.