My entire life (and sanity) came out from beneath me in a matter of a moment.
In one seconds change, I learned that marriage doesn’t last forever.
I learned that people are not always what they say they are.
I learned that I am capable of a hell of a lot more than I give myself credit for.
The day I died was the day I began to bloom.
Sometimes life is on a completely different page than we are.
Ready or not, life is waiting to “keep things interesting”.
I was a stay at home mom who loved making the most of every day with her kids.
A wife who kept the house clean and food prepared.
Then one day I had my identity stripped from me when my entire life fell apart.
One moment I was married, the next I had the person I called my husband doing everything in his power to make life impossible for me.
I was threatened then rushed out of the house in days.
I got a job in a week and a half.
Food stamps were keeping food on the table while my in laws were consuming all of their time making sure we had nothing to eat.
My ex- mother in law went as far as “charging” her son $650/month for childcare of her grandchildren to ensure we got absolutely no money to live off… she is a multi-millionaire.
Some of the people I trusted most turned so cold they legit froze me.
A big relationship change, a move, a new job, new legal responsibilities, new enemies.
What is this life…?
Where am I headed?
I didn’t know it at the time but the death of my old life was the seed for my new one.
With so many uncertainties I couldn’t say I had high hopes.
I’d been locked in a house for years under surveillance and now I was free in a world where I felt trapped.
The first step to finding my feet again was starting to water my seed.
I’d been surviving for so long trying to keep everyone else happy and it was all for nothing.
The process started with determining what things make me happy.
I started taking out all of this negative energy in the gym.
Killing it at work made for a nice distraction and I quickly made my name known in my new company.
I slowly, and frustratingly, navigated through the legal papers and with time even started getting the hang of it.
It took a little time and a lot of hard work but things were starting to look up.
The little things have been the best.
I’m finally living my life on my terms and it feels freaking amazing.
I’ve been hyperactively trimming negativity from my life and thriving in the things that make me happy.
I’m learning to not say sorry for everything.
My life is far from figured out but I can now say with confidence that I’m beginning to bloom.
You see, you aren’t dying my friend.
Your life is just beginning.
Take the nasty that the world throws at you and silence it with your successes.
When life gets hard, remember your rainbow is on the way.
Don’t build your identity behind another person or you will never be happy.
Remove negative people from your life and reel in the peace.
I had boldly and clearly expressed my wishes in this relationship… what did she want from me?!
A tone that sounds so cold but saying goodbye to that friendship was never easy for me either.
I made one of the bravest protests in my life by saying I wasn’t going to do this one way friendship anymore.
Then I just shut off the feelings completely so that I could learn to live with that choice.
It’s just as hard as choosing to leave the one who keeps cheating on you- not because you want to but because you need to.
I want the friendship back so badly but she isn’t in a stage where she’s going to chose to grow up any time soon.
We all have our limits.
This isn’tmy rollercoaster.
But that wasn’t always the case.
You see, part of the freaking problem is that same annoying voice in the back of my head that keeps whispering, “you gave up on your friend… those are not your values.”
This voice sits and interrogates me until I’m blue in the face in conflict with myself.
A voice that’s so beyond false I can’t even believe it yet the power it still holds over me is so much more than I like to admit- even to myself.
This process has been constant battles of reminding myself of who I really am and the lengths I went to trying to save the friendship.
I wanted you back so badly and you still picked the drugs- again and again.
It was TWO YEARS of desperately searching for a way to fix this addiction.
I never compromised my values by refusing to enable her.
She mainly kept her distance and disappeared for long periods of time, leaving my mind to fester.
Boy did I make myself crazy in those two years…
I spent more time trying to fix her self-inflicted situation than I gave to my own family.
As a wife and mom to two young children, I feel like that in itself is why I did all that I possibly could have until it just wasn’t enough.
Instead of comforting my husband after a long day at work, I would obsessively google her name to make sure she hadn’t died yet.
While she was shooting up to numb the chaos she’d created, I was living all of it in full strength and it was freaking terrifying.
I did it because that is the type of friend that I am.
After two years of begging, pleading, making myself crazy, I just couldn’t do it anymore.
I never wanted to lose her as a friend, but our lives have taken two very different paths.
How many friends from grade school have you grown apart from?
More than you can count probably.
As we grow and change the people that mesh well in our lives change also.
It is completely appropriate to grow apart from people- that’s life.
Putting needles in my arm and nodding out in a motel isn’t really my thing and I think that it’s fair for me to acknowledge that.
I would have helped her get clean but she didn’t want the help to do it properly because she doesn’t want to be clean.
Being fed by a household that enables her every need.
Call me insensitive but as a former addict myself, addiction is NOT a disease that makes you incapable of asking for help.
You have to want help and be ready to put in some insanely hard work… you have to OWN everything and everyone you ever wronged while using.
This requires a great deal of not so comfortable self reflecting.
There is nothing easy about looking in the mirror and doing some serious, heavy self reflection.
It’s not an easy process, and yes I would know because I’VE BEEN THERE.
I came to that dead end where I’d had enough of what I’d made of myself and so I changed.
Until an addict makes it to that road, they will keep hiding behind their “disease”- another reason “they’ve been done wrong in this world”.
This ball is in her court and her court only.
I’m genuinely sad that our story had to end this way.
When she stood next to me as a bridesmaid at my wedding, I never could have imagined this is where we’d be in four years.
I hate that I just wasn’t enough to make you want to get clean.
It kills me that I couldn’t be that friend who helped you get through this dark time.
I’m sorry that I couldn’t help you get back to the sweet person I first became friends with.
I genuinely pray that someday this will all make sense to you.
Saying goodbye was insanely hard for me but it was a choice that I stand behind.
No matter how twisted the story gets through the telephone line, I know who I am.
I’m not the person who just dropped their friend when they started using heroin.
I am a die hard believer in a person who is hiding behind drugs and I refuse to put myself through their negligent choices anymore.
I am a girl who loves her friends SO much that I will NOT bite my lip and settle for anything less than what’s best for them.
I will fight for what’sbestforher, with or without her, until the day I die. ❣️
For many of us, genuine self confidence is a major hurdle.
‘Because I’m not beautiful …’
Says your mind.
Your mind is lying.
You can’t win the game it’s playing.
You’ve been chasing after perfection as if it’s obtainable.
But your eyes are lying too.
In this messy world with these cookie cutter goals…
The girl you see with what looks like everything, is living with a broken mirror as well.
She has her self imposed imperfections on display, yet none can see except the broken eyes that feel this way.
We are our own toughest critics.
Nobody sees us like we see ourselves.
Many of us are too busy shredding our own insecurities to have time to nitpick the invisible “flaws” in others.
I know that when you go out and feel like a spotlight is on you, like everyone is staring at your “flaws”, it’s hard to believe it.
But the streets are not filled with these materialistic beliefs that we are hammering into ourselves.
**eye roll**
Goes your mind.
Maybe you don’t feel beautiful because a toxic relationship stripped you of every sense of your worth.
As much as you try to remember who you really are, those pieces feel as if they are fading away.
Maybe a hurtful comment has branded truth into your negative feelings about yourself.
‘It must be true because someone else said it.’
So, SO false.
There is truth in the statement, “you will never be happy if your happiness is somewhere else”.
We feed these inner voices that are constantly compromising our happiness.
What if we really didn’t “need to just lose five pounds”, or “get a littleeee bit of Botox”, and we could just love ourselves like God loves us, simply?
What if instead of drowning in a pool of everything we hate about ourselves, we worked towards silencing those thoughts with the things we like about ourselves?
What if we tried “nurturing ourselves beautiful” instead of continuously failing at “hating ourselves pretty”?
Such a profound display of self love could be the key that unlocks your prison.
Every day is as beautiful as you choose to make it.
While day dreaming of your perfect physique may seem innocent enough, it’s not a healthy place to linger.
The fact is that you are not “that girl you’d die look like”.
You aren’t “shorter”, “blue eyed”, “skinny”.
By dwelling on the idea that your happiness lives in these things, you are setting yourself up for a long life of discontent.
What if the secret to feeling beautiful was way more obtainable than you thought…?
I know that telling you to love the person that you hate is the last thing you probably want to hear.
And that is the problem.
The truth is my dear, you are so beautiful.
You don’t need to change yourself, you need to change your mirror.
My animated personality and high functioning anxiety have unintentionally given me this reputation of being a complete hypochondriac.
A lifetime of being told that every inner intuition was a joke has taken from the grace I give myself.
Sinus infections have been a major part of my life.
I genuinely can’t even remember when this all started as that moment was likely silenced with the distrust I’ve developed towards my own sensations.
I’ve been muddling through life, neglecting chronic facial pain by reaffirming to myself that I’m “just being dramatic”.
I don’t feel fine.
I’ve had a sinus infection for as long as I can remember.
Every day begins with a blaring sinus headache.
Attempting to focus on anything is an impossible task.
It feels like living in a perpetual grogginess.
‘Stop being so dramatic.’
Drowning my thoughts with this message as I attempt to pull through another day.
The frustration lies in the fact that I can’t just turn it off.
No matter how much I try to convince myself that I’m fine, I don’t feel fine.
I’m playing a constant game of manipulation with myself.
It’s a confusing way to live.
Trips to the doctor happen as time and patience allow.
Usually this looks like long periods of not wanting to deal with it until it gets so bad that I cave in.
This past year, as symptoms became increasingly unbearable, I received at least five separate six-week trials of antibiotics and steroids.
The medications provide some minor relief but the problem always returns abruptly.
Over time, I’ve convinced myself that this is just “normal”.
And it is normal, for me at least.
2019 has been a year of taking back control of my health.
I’m tired of feeling like crap all the time… this isn’t normal!
I got a new psychiatrist who actually wants to work as a team.
I broke it off with my anxiety therapist after we couldn’t come to an agreement on proceeding with EMDR.
And finally, I had a CT scan done on my sinuses.
The results were one big wake up call.
“Your CT shows some major changes in your sinuses due to chronic inflammation.”
The doctor then began walking me through the imagery.
First he showed me an example of a normal CT scan of the sinuses.
The image showed air pockets throughout the sinus cavities.
My images were almost a complete contrast.
The right side appeared to be completely blacked out.
The left side, a close runner up, with only tiny pockets of air visible.
“How have you been functioning like this…? You have got to be miserable.”
He said, with complete empathy.
Words that were absorbed like a foreign language.
“I don’t know… I guess I just thought everyone felt like this all the time.”
I was referred to ENT to meet with a surgeon, whose remarks on my CT weren’t much better.
He stuck a scope down my nose to take a peek.
The good news?
I don’t have nasal polyps, which could require recurrent surgeries throughout life.
The bad news?
My sinuses have been inflamed for so long that some of the sinus cavities are swollen closed.
The right side has 3 of 4 nasal cavities completely sealed from inflammation.
The left side is narrowing and bacterial fluid has begun stockpiling.
Both sides will require surgery.
The surgery I’m having will require “cutting out bone” to reopen the sinus passages, allowing them to drain for the first time in years.
Multiple doctors commenting that this surgery could potentially be life changing.
I’m ready to experience this new normal.
April 3rd is the big day and it honestly can’t come soon enough.
I’m ready to experience life at my full potential.
In the meantime I’m left pondering a powerful lesson on self validation.
You see, if I had just listened to my intuition, this could have been taken care of a long time ago.
I have nobody to blame but myself for such neglect.
“Something in my body feels off.”
Is a statement that isn’t up for discussion.
You are the only person who knows how you feel.
Yet society has us trained to value the opinions of others above our own; To practice self care the way in which we were taught, which may not even be the best method for us personally.
I’ve learned that the opinions of others are irrelevant when addressing my personal feelings.
What are your self care habits?
Are you an exemplary advocate for your inner intuition?
It hurts that a drug can completely change a person like that.
I know it’s an illness butas a former addict myself, there comes a time when you have to look your crap in the face and grow up.
Did you know that less than 10% of heroin addicts achieve remission?
Instead the majority of heroin addicts will die as compulsive liars who wronged you time and time again… “victims to a self inflicted illness”.
Heroin changes people.
My friendship used to be the most natural thing on earth and the new relationship, with the addict, gave me panic attacks.
When you start using heroin your entire vibe changes.
As one of the most loyal friends on the planet, it took so much strength to say goodbye, especially to someone with our history.
But controversially, I had to.
I had to choose me.
And that is why I despise heroin with every bone in my freaking body.
God has a way of putting people in your life at the right time.
Simultaneously to the loss of one friendship, a brand new one began to blossom.
In no time at all, my new friend and I were attached at the hip.
I admire the way she carries herself.
She holds herself to this radiating sense of accountability- she owns her crap!
As a single mom who works full time overnight shifts, WITHOUT A CONSISTENT SCHEDULE, she still schedules play dates multiple times a week.
She’s an incredible mom and amazing person all the way around.
She doesn’t use her situation as an excuse.
The friendship has just been easy.
Our values are so aligned and in no time, God had affirmed my decision.
When she told me that she was a former heroin addict, I was shocked.
“What?! NO WAY!!! But you are so normal?!?!”
That is when I learned a powerful lesson about suboxone.
After a long, eye-opening conversation, my stance on suboxone has changed entirely.
Here are some of the points that helped me get there.
1) Generally addicts aren’t the most reliable sources, however, wearing your faults in regards to addiction like clothing is assuring when speaking to your sobriety.
2) Anything has the potential to be abused. Benadryl, dust off, laundry pods. When you use something in a way other than it was intended to be used, it becomes abuse. Just because some people choose to eat laundry pods, doesn’t mean we should stop selling them for the reason in which they are intended– hence why they are still on the shelves.
3) Addicts are obviously more likely to abuse anything, making suboxone treatment a slippery slope. This also plays a large part to this stigma surrounding suboxone- including my own opinion at one time. The 90ish percent of heroin addicts who aren’t able to achieve remission ARE likely abusing their suboxone.
4) Withdrawing from heroin won’t kill you but, it’s not for the faint of souls. Until a person is ready to stand up and start fighting for themselves, nothing is going to change.
5) When you use heroin, the drug triggers dopamine (what the brain receptors ignite as “pleasure”). American addiction centers explaining the effects of heroin use on the brain in simple terms. “Opiates, especially opiates as potent as heroin, activate the brain’s receptors to an incredibly dangerous degree, far greater than anything the brain can produce by itself. For this reason, heroin is abused as a recreational drug. Then, it is consistently abused because there is no other experience that can compare to blast of bliss and subsequent contentment that come with shooting up.”
6) American addiction centers citing, “repeated exposure to heroin is not only habit forming; the constant bombarding of a devastatingly powerful opioid on the brain’s receptors changes the structure of the brain itself, which in turn affects its neuronal and hormonal systems. Heroin erases the brain’s ability to produce dopamine and instead takes over how the user perceives pleasure and satisfaction.” Heroin use literally rewires the way your brain operates.
7) Suboxone, along with a couple of other rx drugs, are available to treat these changes in the brain. Suboxone.com stating, “known as a partial agonist, it (the active ingredient in suboxone) can attach to the same receptors as other opioids and reduce their effects by blocking them from the same receptors.”
8) My friend admitted that if you haven’t used opioids in awhile the initial use or two as directed might give you a little “kick”. After that, it just takes away the feeling of drowning in your new brain chemistry. Clean for just over 6 years when she moved to Colorado. She said that until she was able to find a new prescriber out here, the cravings were ridiculous. She couldn’t focus. All she could think about was heroin.
I held her through tears, realizing that without this prescription drug that I naively put a label on, I wouldn’t have my angel friend right now.
Instead my perfect little friend is functioning like super woman; Fighting to keep her life on track.
If you asked me a couple weeks ago what I thought of suboxone, it wouldn’t have been an enthusiastic answer.
Today I’d tell you that I endorse suboxone treatment because the 9-10% of heroin addicts who decide to choose lifeMATTER!
This is a lifeline for recovered heroin addicts; a chance to really have a shot at life again after a bad choice that they can’t ever take back.
I’ve seen the complete terror of heroin addiction; Now I’m pleased to see a beautiful success story involving suboxone.
Similar to an antidepressant, suboxone treatment could potentially be a lifelong commitment.
“I don’t care how long I have to be on it if it keeps me clean.”
**WARNING: Some of the content/images in this post may be triggering for individuals in recovery from an eating disorder! **
It was time to get back on a diet.
My eating disorder makes it difficult to lose weight without going extreme…
Even when I’m making every effort to not be obsessive, I find myself subconsciously testing the boundaries.
In 2015, I found a new way to “cheat the system” and have an eating disorder without “having an eating disorder”.
It started as a semi-innocent attempt to lose a little bit of weight and quickly spiraled into a full fledged eating disorder- but not the type of eating disorder that people talk about.
Although I wasn’t quite “clinically” overweight…yet, I was the heaviest that Ihad ever been and I felt like I needed to take control of my health.
November 2015
Losing weight freaking sucks.
I swear that you are never more “hangry” than when on a diet.
Whenever I think “lose weight” my brain goes immediately to starvation.
Starve yourself = get skinny.
When I’m serious about something I want results and I want them quick.
With the help of my Fitbit activity tracker, some low calorie/ high protein drink mix, and a food logging app, I had everything I needed to go full on eating disorder for almost a year.
I struggle with severe anxiety.
Many days it about controls my everyday life.
At the start of this new “diet”, I experienced the relief from my anxiety with an endorphin high achieved by high intensity exercise.
It also just so happened to fit right in with my new “healthy lifestyle”.
The statistics on my Fitbit were THRILLING- driving me to push myself beyond my limits.
The next piece to my master plan was the PERFECT protein powder.
Researching like crazy to find the best low calorie, high protein, powder.
Eventually choosing a brand that offered an 130 calorie serving while packing a whopping 30 grams of protein.
The original plan?
Substitute a couple meals with the protein shake.
The actual plan?
Protein shake with water for breakfast- 130 Cal
Protein shake with water for lunch- 130 Cal
Regular dinner with the family- max 300 Cal (typically consisting of a bite or two that I would chew very slowly to trick myself that I was eating more.)
Days that I didn’t have to cook I’d drink a third shake for dinner and skid through the day with 390 calories.
This new “diet” allowed myself a measly maximum of 560 calories a day.
Before I knew it my eating disorder was out of hand.
The initial adjustment was insanely hard.
I would think about food every second of every day.
It was miserable.
The only way to distract myself from the hunger was by exercising… all. day. long.
It wasn’t abnormal to have 600+ “active minutes” every single day.
There wasn’t time for anything else anymore.
My days literally revolved around trying to exercise the hunger out of me.
This was explained to loved ones as, “the more I burn, the more I can eat!”
Though the calorie allowance never actually adjusted.
Exercise became the most important thing in the world to me.
I withdrew from friends because I knew they wouldn’t be “up” for what I did all day- and I had to do it.
There were no exceptions, there were no “breaks”.
I clearly remember dropping out of anxiety therapy because I didn’t want to sit down for a full hour and not be burning calories.
But oh no, “I didn’t have an eating disorder”.
I was just “being healthy”- which also happens to be much more socially accepted.
Don’t get me wrong.
Exercise is indeed very healthy and an extremely important aspect of health.
This wasn’t just exercise though, this was an eating disorder.
February 2016
Exercise wasn’t healthy when it began taking priority over every other thing in my life.
390-560 calories a day is totally unacceptable- certainly not adequate fuel for 15+ miles of exercise a day.
Exercise anorexia is still not clearly recognized as an eating disorder, though some developments are being made in that direction.
I’m writing this because I know loud and clear that these behaviors were just as deadly as my anorexia/bulimia hospitalization in 2009.
Even though I weighed 100 pounds more this time around and was practicing what our society views as “normal healthy behavior”, it was equally valid as an eating disorder.
Eventually I plateaued and the extreme behaviors weren’t making me any skinnier.
By then, I needed to be skinnier… a lot skinnier.
If you have an eating disorder you can understand the feeling of never being skinny enough.
You could die as a pile of bones and still believe that you left this world “fat”.
And that’s what fuels this sick addiction.
I continued trying to amp up my workouts.
‘5 more pounds!’
One day, literally waking up from the kitchen floor.
Instead of feeling scared and ready to throw in the towel, I felt an overwhelming rush of pride.
I had starved and overexerted myself to the point of literally collapsing and this was something I accepted like a trophy.
My “out” came when I became pregnant in June 2016.
No way was I going to harm my baby trying to achieve the perfect physique.
My body quickly packed on the pounds after months of starvation.
I had zero energy, was hungry all day long, and embraced this change in protection of my pregnancy.
February 2017
Thankfully, I have been able to maintain regular eating habits after a short relapse postpartum.
I still haven’t lost all of my baby weight… and that’s something I’m learning to be okay with.
I’m blessed to have a husband who loves me just as much at a size 10 as he did at size 0.
You guys, these superficial standards that we all feel the need to chase after are so ridiculous.
God didn’t create food so it would give us panic attacks.
You are beautiful exactly the way you are. ❣️
Freedom from my eating disorder has been incredible.
I’m not confined to superficial desires anymore or the disappointment that comes with them.
Instead I’m choosing happiness, self love, and confidence.
You are all you have.
Be kind to yourself.
Self love looks beautiful on you! ❤️
January 2019
Check out my blog, Project Identity for more inspirational stuff! 💕
If you are struggling with an eating disorder, check out the links below!
There is a major issue in our world that we are all very aware of yet nobody wants to talk about it.
What am I speaking on?
Mental illness.
Our society is built on the idea of “being perfect”.
Every day we wake up and put on our best faces for the world.
Our social media’s are filled with smiling faces and while I’m not disagreeing that our lives have picture perfect moments, I’m calling bluff on this “perfection” front.
We are human and we are flawed.
Though our reality is a planet full of people who are desperately chasing after perfection.
We are not Jesus.
Instead we have Jesus, to teach us the most raw lessons of forgiveness as we inevitably mess up, time and time again.
And then there’s this thing called life.
Life is not peaches and cream people.
Life is a journey full of ups and downs, heart beats and heart breaks, setbacks and stand ups.
As our broken souls chase this fantasy idea of being “perfect”, it’s understandable that we internalize every failure as a flaw.
Life gets hard and we are trained to pretend that everything is fine, that we are fine.
Mental health isn’t discussed in the way physical health is.
And why?
They are in fact, one in the same.
People are so accepting of any body part breaking down, except our minds.
When our minds are broken, nobody wants to talk about it.
Instead our society is still running on this stigma that views the mentally ill as monsters.
People who are mentally ill are weird, unpredictable, dangerous.
It’s the 21st century and the advancements being made decade by decade are monumental.
Advancements in the mental health system on the other hand have been minimal.
Our mental health system is a freaking joke you guys.
It’s unacceptable.
For anyone who has never experienced mental illness, I hear you.
It has got to be confusing as hell when somebody “can’t just be happy”.
I get that you don’t understand.
Similar to the everyday battles someone with a physical ailment faces, yet also very different.
Our eyes can see why the man with one arm struggles in climbing the rope, our eyes validate this understanding.
When someone’s mind is under attack there is nothing to validate their behavior- nothing that screams “wow, I can’t imagine how hard it must be getting out of bed every morning”.
In turn this equals stigma and grave misunderstanding of the mentally ill.
When our brains are under attack we are left with a world of broken resources.
Mental illness is a tax on the poor.
If you can’t meet the price tag, genuine help is literally non-existent.
There isn’t a logical plan in place to actually help these people.
What needs to be done to change this?
Who are the mentally ill?
The bus driver, your next door neighbor, your best friends brother, your mom.
It’s not just the horrific individuals who commit mass shootings; the “crazy people” being tied down and shipped to an insane asylum in the movies.
Nobody is exempt from getting a mental illness.
Why are people in crisis being treated like animals?
Why are our publicly available crisis centers releasing people crazier than when they were admitted?
There is obvious room for improvement in the system and we need to do this to help our people.
Being suicidal in today’s world is like needing an emergency appendectomy in a world without doctors.
In my mind there are so many things that we could do differently.
Safe havens shouldn’t feel so cold.
I am coming up on one year of doing this blog.
It has been an insane process of self reflection and growth.
I’ve decided that I am extremely passionate about advocating for the mentally ill- people like myself.
It’s a cause that we are all too familiar with but refuse to constructively change.
It sucks being mentally ill in a world that views mental illness as abnormal.
And I’m ready to start pushing for changes.
Share this post if you want change in the mental health system.
If this post hits 5,000 shares, I will personally draft up a game plan and do everything in my power to get it to Colorado legislature.
Who better to brainstorm a solution than the people who know this battle all too well?
Togetherwe can change the way the world views and treats mental illness.
Change starts here.
Check out my blog Project Identity for more empowering content. 💕💕💕
This past year has been the most extensive year of self reflection ever.
And with understanding has come more questions- a lot of them!
Like last week when I processed for the very first time that I in fact, leave my physical body, subconsciously, hundreds of times every day.
Don’t get me wrong.
This isn’t some kind of witch craft or wizardry.
It’s a mental illness called depersonalization disorder.
It’s also the only way I can remember ever functioning…. making it that much more confusing.
How would you react if you realized that you’ve spent over half of your life physically “zoned out” while being somewhere else completely mentally…?
“Whenever my PTSD gets triggered I get like, trapped in another world for awhile. I don’t know what happens there because my memory in that time period gets completely wiped. Nothing really gets done while the time is running.
Sometimes I realize I don’t know what’s going on when I’m literally in the middle of a sentence with someone. It’s super stressful being around anyone really, for that reason.
But most of the time I don’t even realize that I’d left. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember and until just recently, I thought that everyone experienced this.
I know that sounds crazy… am I dying?”
My best friend who is studying psychology, responded with this:
“If I’m understanding you right it sounds like dissociation or depersonalization. Which is common for people with PTSD. It sounds terrifying but you are not dying. It is something that many people with PTSD experience.”
Off to the internet I went, in attempt to learn more about this madness, aka my life.
The first thing that stood out to me was “a confusing sense of identity“.
Looking no further than the name of this blog to check that one off the list of qualifying criteria.
As I continued reading, the checks started piling up.
‘Man… I had no clue there was a name for this!’
Dissociation is a mental process of disconnecting from one’s thoughts, feelings, emotions, or sense of identity.
A child is more able than an adult to step outside of themself and observe trauma as though it’s happening to another person.
Children who learn to dissociate in attempt to endure a traumatic experience may use this coping mechanism, even subconsciously, in response to stressful situations throughout life.
The dissociative adult may automatically disconnect in everyday situations, leaving them “spaced out” and unable to protect themselves in the event of real danger.
Dissociative episodes increase in frequency with the severity of trauma and triggers.
Smells, sounds, colors, places…. anything tied to a traumatic memory can send you out from the drivers seat of your body in an instant.
Wow…Just wow!
The research I have done on this disorder in the last week has been redundant.
I am so beyond confident that I battle with extreme depersonalization disorder, it’s like they wrote it all about me.
This understanding has come with the bomb of a realization that I am transitioning in and out of my body hundreds of times every single day.
With this knowledge I’ve made a few reflections.
1) I have depersonalization disorder.
2) I’ve been living this way for so long that the transitions are usually unnoticeable.
3) It would be nice if I could just stay inside my body all the time.
4) How do I make this stop?
Unfortunately, the answer isn’t that simple.
Like the majority of my mental health madness, this is going to take a crap ton of hard work.
“Stuffing” is my most often used defense mechanism.
It’s a process of trying to trick myself that any undesirable emotion or sensation isn’t really happening.
This is a subconscious behavior that happens like clockwork.
Typically for me, the “stuffed” emotion presents itself as high strung anxiety or irritability.
To “cure” the dissociative episodes I’m going to have to talk to my emotions and actually feel them… no more “stuffing”. 😳
As someone who has “stuffed” every foreign emotion for as long as I can remember, this feels like an overwhelming task to take on.
Dissociation is kind of like having your body and mind living on two different planets.
The first step will be simply increasing my personal awareness.
Mindfulness, sitting with my emotions… YUCK!
I need to practice the repetitive cycle of acknowledging my emotions as they arise and responding that they are valid for feeling that way.
I’d be absolutely lying if I said I wasn’t scared out of my mind.
This entire situation is freaking terrifying.
I’ve been functioning emotionally numb for far too long and I need to do this for me.
Once I begin allowing my emotions to be a part of me, my body will start relearning how to function as a whole.
It will be an intense process of triumphs and failures.
And after all, isn’t that what life is all about?
Trying and failing until we reach our goal…?
I’m ready to embrace this life for all that it is, the good and the bad.
For now, this book is still being written.
It’s my journey and I’m ready to start living it.
In a perfect world, this pursuit will end in an alignment of my identity.
When I got sober it was a fairly unique situation.
The day I quit drinking was also the very first day I wanted to quit drinking.
A couple days of seizures on the bathroom floor was enough to start anew.
It wasn’t until recently that I learned how much my personal experience has clouded my opinion on addicts.
To me, alcohol was an escape from myself.
I hated myself.
I hated my life.
Numb was the only way that I could continue functioning.
Alcohol was that door to checking out from reality and entering a world where I just didn’t care.
With booze, life always seemed less real.
I didn’t annoy myself as much when I was drunk.
The bottle was my ticket to escaping the life I couldn’t bare anymore.
My brother had his own struggles with addiction.
It would be years after my new leaf of living that nightmare with him before things turned around.
The only thing more difficult than addiction itself is watching a loved one throw away their life for it.
Your life becomes a living hell while they are escaping this reality with substance.
“I promise you that life in sobriety is fun T!!! PLEASE just give it a try and find out!!!”
I pleaded, for years on end.
The best word to describe myself in this plea would be naive.
Naive to feeling that every addict is running from reality.
Naive to think that my brother just liked being drunk too much to quit.
A couple weekends ago we were visiting my now 20 MONTH SOBER brother for fall festivities!
It’s MY FAVORITE family tradition we’ve created!
Our life is so normal now.
We get together and do things as siblings and I swear those are some of the best memories of our lives.
Day one we went to the most badass park I’ve ever seen! 👇
Day two we went to a corn maze and pumpkin patch!👇
And day three, during family breakfast, we talked about where we’ve been and how far we’ve come.
“Man T… I can’t believe you made it! I’m so proud of you!!!”
I professed.
“I had to stop or I was going to die. I’d wake up with ridiculous anxiety and start having panic attacks. It would feel like I was having a heart attack and the only way to make it stop was the booze. It was like a 24/7 never ending hangover.”
Tears started streaming down my face as I realized how much I hadn’t understood about his addiction.
Here I am, preaching to my brother about how cool life is when you aren’t confused all the time, and he wasn’t even confused…. he was sick.
He confessed the fine line of “sipping and driving”.
In other words he wasn’t drinking just to drink.
At just 29 years old, his body was beginning to show signs of long term alcohol abuse.
His body was reliant on alcohol and was literally shutting down without it.
Longer drives required greater focus and when he was “under-medicated” the withdrawal symptoms were so intense that he would end up pulling over for hours at a time in attempt to stop his heart from bursting out of his chest.
He wasn’t drinking to be drunk- he was drinking to stay alive.
He had punched the ticket but he no longer wanted to ride the ride.
“I was embarrassed with myself for how bad it had gotten. I would have died trying to detox on my own. There was a lot of shame in what it had become and the reality of those choices. It was like drowning and waiting for somebody to save you.”
The day his second niece was born was the day my brother amounted the courage to chase his lion.
“I need this to stop and I don’t know how.”
He admitted to a buddy of trust.
Thank you for hearing him, Carl.
It took ten days in detox before being medically cleared for inpatient rehab.
Detox from alcohol is a serious thing!
My brother put in some insanely hard work as he fought for his life.
**Did you know- detoxing from heroin isn’t deadly (though it feels like it), but detoxing from alcohol can be?!**
20 months later my brother is still prioritizing his recovery as an AA sponsor.
God gave me my brother back and I am beyond grateful for this.
I’m thankful that I have a sibling to enjoy life with.
I’m thankful I’m not living in a nightmare anymore.
I’m thankful for his journey, and the new understanding it has given me about addicts.
We are all different so it makes sense that no addiction is the same.
Every addict is running- our differences lie in what is chasing us.
Was your definition associated with a positive or negative perspective?
We are all individuals who think, feel, perceive things differently.
For me, therapy is a lifeline.
I never imagined myself as someone who would be so “dysfunctional” that I’d need therapy for the rest of my life.
And I’m notthat crazy.
I’ve simply found a therapist whom I trust and whose opinion I value.
The first time I sought anxiety therapy my assigned therapist was a man.
He was nice but we never really established that bond needed to make progress in my trauma saturated background.
Round two I was placed with Heather.
Instantly I felt right at home.
My personality needs a therapist who isn’t tiptoeing around political correctness.
I need someone who is real, raw and genuine.
Someone that I know I can trust with my deepest darkest secrets.
Heather has been that person for me.
As my therapist for a little over two years now, most weeks I couldn’t imagine my life without her.
Therapy is me time.
It’s the only time all week that I get to converse with another adult without a million kids hanging off of me.
I get to sit and unload all of my crap to someone that I don’t have to worry about offending… someone who has nothing but love and good advice to throw back at me.
Therapy is the place where I can navigate my troubled past while taking the necessary steps to improve myself.
A therapist is like that friend who has never done you dirty in the most one-sided relationship ever.
When I feel like bitching about stuff that’s stupid… there she is.
And the stuff that’s not stupid?
There again.
Heather is there to talk about everything.
She’s there and she cares.
Yes, I’d be lying if I said that therapy isn’t hard work at times.
While we’d all like to just pretend that our worst moments never happened…. they did.
If you never deal with your “junk” then it will haunt you in the form of panic attacks eventually.
We can’t run from trauma.
We must be courageous and face it head on- with those badass little friends called therapists in our back pocket.
And even when you’re feeling good, GO TO THERAPY.
Our mental health requires just as much conditioning and maintenance as our physical health.
If you quit your diet and started eating cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner then it wouldn’t be long before your health took a plunge.
All of the crap you put up with on a daily basis?
That is the “cake” of your mental health.
So one last time, define “therapy” in a single, brief statement.
Did your opinion evolve after reading this…?
For me, therapy is simply choosing to not eat cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
If you are struggling with trauma, mental health, or even nothing at all (psh…ha!), I encourage you to find a therapist who is a perfect match for you.
Find your Heather.
Take control of your mental health and reap the rewards of doing so. ❤️
“When I was a kid I remember crying in the mirror and feeling so badly that my parents had to have the ugliest kid in the entire world.”
I expressed to my anxiety therapist.
“What happened to trigger that? At the age of 4 or 5 a child doesn’t just come up with these feelings from nowhere… something must have happened.”
She questioned.
“Nothing happened. I’m just ugly.”
It would be YEARS of therapy before unlocking this can of worms.
Years of wondering if I was raped or abused as a child and just blacked out the entire thing.
Years of silencing that fear with my proclamation of ugliness.
‘At least if you understand that you are ugly you aren’t ugly and in denial…’
Confidence has never been my strong suit.
It wasn’t until my anxiety therapist gave me a list of books to look into that my life started making sense for once.
While she never said it directly, all of the books had a common theme.
Borderline personality disorder.
The second I looked up the definition, I felt my mom’s picture should have been pasted right next to it.
It was her exactly.
My mom has borderline personality disorder.
Borderline personality disorder is characterized by the following behaviors:
Intense, highly changeable moods
A pattern of intense and unstable relationships with family, friends, and loved ones- often swinging from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)
Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors (spending sprees, substance abuse, binge eating)
Extreme emotional swings
Hostility
Lack of restraint
In my case, “a pattern of intense and unstable relationships with family, friends, and loved ones- often swinging from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)”, my brother is the idealized and I am the devalued.
With this newfound knowledge about my mom, it has been an emotional rollercoaster the past few months.
Growing up in a home with a parent who has borderline personality disorder is an extremely traumatic thing to go through.
The fact that I never even understood this piece of myself for the first 26 years of my life completely blows my mind.
There is no denying that all of it makes sense.
Anger, sadness, frustration.
Every emotion showing its colors in myself at this new revelation.
‘Is therapy making me crazier?’
Instead of my mom just removing herself from my life all together, I grew up in an “I love you, go away” environment.
There was a constant push and pull.
Actions that were justified by clothing me in shame and guilt.
Our father, whom I got along with best, was away from home making the money.
The way I internalized my moms behavior as a child was processing it as a personal flaw.
The almost comical “obsession” (idealization) she had for my brother was a stark contrast to the way she treated me.
“Maybe if I was prettier my mom would love me too…”
The constant push and pull from a person in trust is enough to destroy someone entirely.
My feelings were never heard or validated.
I was always wrong, she was always right.
My attempts at having a voice were converted into backlash.
Growing up in the care of a parent who had borderline personality disorder distorted my self worth at a very young age.
The devalued child feels unworthy of love- even from themselves.
You get used to always being the one at fault.
To this day I overuse the word “sorry”.
I am sorry.
Sorry for any way that I may be bothering you with my presence.
It’s been hammered into my head that I’m a nuisance.
My mom loves me and I know that.
I don’t believe that she ever intended to hurt me.
Yet there is still a part of me that hates her.
A part that wants to give a voice to the child who didn’t have one.
A part that wants to say, “F you” and never talk to her again to pay her back for that broken little girl looking in the mirror.
Except I’m not going to go out like that.
Yes, this understanding has been quite the rollercoaster… but it’s one that I’m glad to be riding.
Without understanding myself I would never have the means to fix anything.
I can’t change my mom.
And I will probably never get an apology from her.
But that’s okay.
THERAPY TAKES WORK!
It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
But it’s the only way to obtain justice for myself, for the little girl in the mirror.
I know that someday all of this hard work will pay off.
I will love my mom forever and while I can’t guarantee it’s the end of the outbursts, I can agree to forgive her.
Holding firm in my boundaries while staying true to my values.
I’m choosing to live my life in love instead of hate.
I’m choosing to accept the things I cannot change and changing the things that I can.
Dear little girl in the mirror,
You are beautiful.
Have empathy for your mother even in the times that it’s hard.
You don’t HAVE to do so, but CHOOSE to do so.
Forgive your mom.
Live your life in love.
Learn to love yourself the way God loves you.
Your moms behavior has everything to do with her and nothing to do with you.
Remember that her outbursts are professions of her pain rather than expressions of her feelings towards you.
“Maybe you should just stop doing the blog if you aren’t able to make any income from it. It’s just so negative….ha. You are always talking about about weird stuff. People must think that you’re nuts!”
This blog has been an absolute rollercoaster.
Some days I ride the high of feeling like I’m helping people while in turn freeing myself of my “baggage”.
Other days I feel like an idiot and wonder why I’m wasting all this time for nothing, until it spirals so far out of control that I about quit.
“Should I really post that?”
“How are people going to react to this?”
“Will anyone react to this…?”
The truth is that it would be SO much easier to just go about my life and pretend like all the years of chaos never even happened.
Easier to pretend that I’ve been this “normal” person my whole life…
Easier to bury my skeletons than to go searching for them in attempt to resolve the trauma that they’ve branded me with.
My blog is called Project Identity because I hope to uncover what I feel are “missing pieces” of my identity through the process of this project.
In terms of adversity, I’ve had a very wide range of it.
Mental health, eating disorders, sexual abuse, dysfunctional families…. YOU NAME IT!
By revisiting these traumas, my goal is to sort through my life and figure out who I really am.
This is NOT in any way an attempt to glorify or normalize the things that I’ve done.
Im not sharing my deepest, darkest secrets with YOU to win sympathy or to place blame on others for things that have happened in my life.
My intention IS to help others by saying,
“this is where I was and look where I am now.”
An attempt to find the answers for survival after adversity– answers that I don’t necessarily believe that I have, yet somehow…. I made it.
And the story isn’t over.
People don’t just overcome something and live happily ever after.
With time, the book you just closed will start revealing itself in your next book.
Growing up in a home with a parent who has Borderline Personality Disorder left me running– self medicating with drugs and alcohol.
The consequences that I received for such behavior opened the door for a newfound battle of control with food (read Tell me to eat? I’ll starve myself).
All of the above rooting me in distorted self worth and eventually leading to rape and suicideattempts.
Recovery from both addictions simultaneously greeted me with crippling anxiety and PTSD- symptoms I now have to face head on, without a crutch.
I don’t believe that God dealt me these cards by mistake though.
Why?
Because I shouldn’t even be here right now.
The moment my life turned around was also the lowest, darkest place I’ve ever been.
My desire to live was gone, but God had other plans.
Just weeks after multiple failed suicide attempts and hospitalizations, my polar opposite walked into my life and we ended up pregnant.
I wasn’t living for me anymore.
A tiny human who would love me forever was too good of an offer to pass up.
God took the life I couldn’t handle anymore and replaced it with one that I could.
He wanted me here because He knows my heart.
My adversity is God’s opportunity.
His opportunity to change more lives.
This is why I do what I do.
I write about my rawest moments because frankly, life is raw.
On a daily basis I land myself in situations that I don’t necessarily want to be in.
How?
Because I don’t know how to just freaking say “NO!“
I’m an interesting character.
Anxious, goofy, and don’t forget that lovely “resting bitch face”… 😐
But no matter how “odd” or “different” I may be at first glance, deep down I am one of the kindest people you will ever meet.
I’m an empath.
If you ask me it’s a double edged sword.
While I love being able to offer compassion to those in need, sometimes it can be hard keeping myself afloat when I’m constantly drowning in everyone else’s emotions…
As an empath I feel withpeople.
Some days I feel solely responsible for ensuring happiness in what feels like all of the world.
It’s not a duty that I was assigned but rather one I must accomplish for my own emotional well-being.
How does this play into everyday life?
In many ways, but today I’m addressing one in particular.
Difficulty saying “no”
Empathic personality or not, I think many of us can agree that saying “no” can be challenging at times.
I just recently learned that apparently, you don’t have to give people a reason of why you can’t do something…?
Wait, what?!
This realization won’t be changing anything over here though…
As refreshing as that seems, it’s not really my style.
I’m more of the, agree to do something because I don’t have balls to be honest then send myself into an anxious frenzy dreading whatever I just signed up for, type of person. 🙄
A couple weeks ago I was getting ready to prepare dinner when the doorbell rang.
Peeking out the window, spotting a woman who appeared to be around my age with a little boy.
My enthusiastic five year old selling us out from pretending to not be home.
It turned out to be our across the street neighbors who we had never met before.
The little boy was going to be starting kindergarten at the same school as Karissa (my daughter) this year.
How crazy that we had no clue about each other until just now!
As excited as I was about all of this the timing couldn’t have been worse.
I’d been talking myself off the ledge all day as my anxiety had been through the roof.
Also in the process of scaling back on an anti-depressant that was causing me to sweat excessively (… TMI sorry! But I have a point I promise!!)
It had been one thing after another that day and I was one wind away from completely losing it.
To make matters even worse I didn’t have a bra on.
My sweet neighbors unaware of when is a good or a bad time for me unless I of course would just verbalize that, right…?
Right.
Just not for ‘Miss unable to express how I really feel’…
Aka ME.
“Do you guys want to come in?”
😑
There I sat bra-less and awkwardly dripping sweat on the couch…
When I’m awkward, I’m reallyawkward.
Instead of clamming up I start “word-vomiting” to this stranger about every and anything.
I don’t know how long we sat there but it felt like nine days.
The finale was Karissa slamming her finger in the door while they were playing.
She was screaming at the top of her lungs for at least five minutes while we continued visiting with our guests….
Eventually we exchanged numbers and tentatively planned a play date for a couple days later.
‘Man why am I so weird…? 😣’
Spray painting myself with embarrassment and shame.
Internally fighting on how to handle this “situation” if we did in fact, confirm this play date.
She was so nice and the kids had totally hit it off…
The empath in me told myself to just, ‘be a good neighbor and mom’.
But my anxiety is selfish.
Every time I tried reasoning with myself my pulse would soar, skyrocketing until I was so freaked out I continued brainstorming my escape plan again.
The morning of our plans I woke up to a text from her.
Crap.
The plans were no longer tentative.
A panic attack draped over me as I impulsively began typing…
Stopping myself to focus on slowing my heart rate as a tear fell down my cheek.
My first impression was an absolute train wreck…
This girl was cool, pretty and sweet…
There was no way that I could show my face right now, especially with my meds so out of whack.
What if I started sweating again… or rambling AGAIN.
I’d already told this poor woman my entire life story while pouring with sweat and bra-less…
Everything about this situation sucked.
The stress of it all was too much.
I sent the screenshot to my husband as I began venting my frustration:
Be honest?!?
I had no one to be angry at but myself.
Simply saying “no” could have avoided this situation entirely.
He was right…
but I can’t say “no”… remember?!
So I prayed about it and eventually, this is what I wrote….:
Oh my gosh I was actually honest…😳
The moment I hit ‘send’ on that text I felt like 80 pounds was instantly lifted off my back.
It was the strangest thing.
I was honest….and nobody died.
Even better?!
HER RESPONSE! 😍❤️:
This simple display of honesty strengthened our friendship in such a special way:
You guys…
This experience taught me so much!
If you struggle with saying “no”, like I do, I encourage you to give this a try.
