Stepping out…

It’s been a while since I wrote. I’ve been going through a lot. I honestly don’t even know where to begin to share really, but the reality is, I have to just start putting my fingers to the keyboard and let things flow. Part of my mission is to be vulnerable and share my journey, in hopes to help other people and to support this mission of change. By sharing my recovery story, I hope to help educate and give people understanding about how our untreated trauma can affect all areas of our lives without even realizing it’s happening. The goal is to keep up on at least one blog post a week, a few short Facebook posts, and maybe some Instagram or TikTok… I haven’t decided yet. But maybe me putting it out there will help keep me accountable, we’ll see. I’m confident that it will all come together in time.

Anyways, so here’s the deal, I am officially capped out. I have nothing left to give. I am making a conscious decision to Keep It Simple… for now. By focusing on me, my recovery and this project, I will heal and get better, so that I am better able to be there for others the way I am meant to be. The thing is, with all the things I am going through, and some most recent happenings, if I don’t slow down, I may relapse. I feel the urge to go back to my old coping habits of anger and destruction. No, thank you. I would much rather choose a healthier path, so instead I am focusing on Gratitude, Trust, Vulnerability and Forgiveness. Four very important virtues that I am still trying to figure out. Part of my journey is to understand and actively practice them in all aspects of my life. In doing so, I will be a healthier version of me. It makes sense though, that anger and destruction are where I want to go back to… it’s what I have known all my life. Growing up in an alcoholic home came with a lot of poor coping habits of not handling our emotions in healthy ways… and we definitely didn’t talk about our feelings. There was no positive communication or addressing conflict in healthy ways. It didn’t exist. To no fault of anyone. They are just not skills any of us ever had. It’s something now that I work hard at every day to change in positive ways. Through the work in my program, I have found new ways of expressing myself. I write a lot about that piece of my journey in my earlier posts. I would encourage all of my readers to check out my other posts over the years. It’ll give you some perspective into who I am on a deeper level and you’re likely to find some helpful tools. Perspective is where I really started to open up.

Throughout my time in recovery, I have been working extra hard to overcome (and grow) from the affects of alcoholism in the home and relationships, domestic violence, childhood sexual abuse, work traumas, mental health issues, chronic pain, single-momhood, and so much more. Those top three things are what has really driven my behaviors for so many years, causing the highest level of trauma. Now that I’m in recovery, all I have ever known has changed. It’s all new, uncomfortable and yet feels good. Proof that we do recover. Which is funny because most people hear recovery, and they think recovery from drugs and alcohol. No one ever thinks about the fact that a person has to recover from years of childhood sexual abuse by a family member and the many years of poor coping that follows. And that’s because it goes untalked about and is misunderstood. Just like alcoholism in the home… the family disease that no one ever talks about. Just like domestic violence… it goes untalked about, unreported. Imagine having multiple of these things piling up over years and years, and how damaging it can be to someone’s self-worth, never actually working through it in healthy ways. Yeah, pretty bad right? That’s where I’ve been… until the last few years anyways. Back in January things were getting pretty heavy for me… and dark. Scary dark. I started having really unpleasant, suicidal thoughts. It was a pretty scary time, and honestly sometimes still can be. It’s a work in progress. At least now I know how to pick up the phone and reach out when I start making my way down the dark rabbit hole that does me no good to visit. I used to live there. I am so grateful I made a decision to get better. It’s been quite the journey. But for the first time in all my years of living in trauma, I now no longer go straight to not feeling good enough or feeling unworthy. At least now I give myself space to use the tools I’ve learned and really heal. It’s taken a lot of practice and hard work to get to a place I am able to do that first and foremost… now it is just second nature. It was so much harder to do when I was stuck feeling like I wasn’t enough. For too long I let my self-worth be measured by others. It makes sense though given the fact that safety was taken away from me when I was just a young girl, I grew up in a home where my voice did not matter, I was constantly told that I would never amount to anything, and throughout my lifetime I have been treated/assaulted in ways that made me feel completely insignificant. And when a person is low enough, they accept unacceptable behaviors, making them feel even worse over and over again. Oh the things that will be discussed in time. For now I will focus on why I am sharing all this with you today… Moving forward, I will be sharing details about things I have worked through in my recovery, which can be quite triggering for some, and healing for others. Throughout the year I have worked hard to cope through clusters of my trauma in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing) Therapy; it’s basically a fast track, reframing the trauma and mindset, to more positive thinking/self-talk, reducing the need for many years of talk therapy. So far I have worked through my long-term childhood sexual abuse by a family member, a prior relationship with an alcoholic, and a DV event where I was strangled. Those were all pretty intense traumas that I worked hard to stuff down for a lot of years because I didn’t have the skill to work through them in healthy ways. I did the best I could. I had slowly accepted those things happened to me and that I was getting better, but through the EMDR therapy, I have come out so much stronger and with a much higher level of awareness and growth in healthy ways. It’s a blessing really. I know I am getting better because those are things I am able to talk about now. Maybe not always with ease, but I can do it without the pain they once caused me. I still have quite a bit to work through, and I’ll share along the way if I am feeling up to it. As of a few weeks ago, I switched over to regular talk therapy while I work to navigate a recent traumatic event that caused a pretty significant trigger, which as you can probably imagine, has me at a place that I have no choice but to take care of me before I have a complete breakdown. Triggers are funny like that. While I’m trying to work through feeling my feelings with the traumatic event, it’s causing me more awareness in areas I was not expecting to have to face like this from another event that surfaced and intensifies what I’m going through. And there’s no going back now. I am going to embrace this opportunity for growth, but it is really, really uncomfortable. Which means I have to take extra good care of myself, so that I don’t fall back into that negative self-talk of “I am not good enough” or “I am unworthy”… “I am unlovable”… “I am pathetic”… the list goes on and on. Being there mentally is exhausting. Battling that negative self-talk, also exhausting. It gets even worse when unhealthy, toxic people try to project their negative stuff onto you, which they do because they are uncomfortable within themselves. However, my history of being a people pleaser who likes to carry everyone’s burdens, is a recipe for disaster for those types. I always lose. I sure am glad that I know more about boundaries and detachment now. I am blessed to have my lived experience and extensive toolbox, as they help me be the person I am today.

Thankfully I have great support and I have spent the last couple of weeks setting myself up with the right support people for what I need right now, and I am going to face what I am going through head-on. I sure am proud of my strength. Even when I want to give up, run away, or worse crosses my mind, I put one foot in front of the other and take One Step at a Time. I continue to show up… maybe not with bells on, but I show up and give all I’ve got. We are all survivors. We all only know what we know. It’s important to always be kind to ourselves. Give yourself space to understand who you are as a person. Making a decision to do better is where our power lives. Stay tuned followers, the best has yet to come.

Here is some helpful information about EMDR Therapy in case you are interested in how it works. https://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr/