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Many questions arise when one proclaims that they are bisexual. But what about pansexual? Pansexuality is not a familiar term within people outside of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) community. I only learned about pansexuality in a feminism class three years ago. I had never heard the term before but when I learned its definition, I immediately came to like it. While I don’t mind identifying as bisexual, I prefer the term pansexual when it comes to my identity. But how are bisexuality and pansexuality different? Aren’t they the same thing?
I have experienced more panic attacks than I can count. On average, I have one panic attack per week, and that is after panic attack treatment. Before I knew what was happening to me, I was experiencing panic attacks multiple times per week. Because I am a social person, I often experience these attacks around other people. This has made me very good at explaining, in layman’s terms, exactly what a panic attack is.
It's not exactly news that living with anxiety can warp our perceptions of other people, especially their intentions toward us. Social anxiety can make the world, and the people in it, seem mean-spirited, harsh, or even cruel. For me, I judge others in a very negative light when I'm in the grip of a particularly severe episode of anxiety. I expect the worst from people, and am still often surprised when I don't actually get it. That's because most people are significantly nicer than my anxious brain's perception would have me believe. The good news is, I'm getting better at remembering this while it's happening and social anxiety doesn't warp my perceptions as often or as severely as it once did.
We all revisit places from our pasts to remember the memories connected to them. Someone may swing on a childhood swing set to feel a sense of innocence and someone else may revisit an old tree they used to climb to get back that sense of adventure. Memories stick to everything around us and when we least expect it, the feelings connected to those memories can erupt and, at times, overwhelm and possibly lead to self-harm.
There was one fatal flaw in my plan to wake up screaming--I wasn't asleep.
This was not a nightmare, at least not in the literal sense. Although surreal, this was real—I was really pinned to my apartment floor, three people from Waco’s Antioch Community Church really were yelling at Satan and said people really were attempting to perform an exorcism without my consent. Later, I would take the incident up the church’s chain of command: the burden of proof never on me to prove it happened, but to prove that I was not “manifesting demons.”
This is an extreme example of the mental illness stigma often seen in the Church.
Low self-esteem is often associated with depression. A low self-esteem can lead to depression and depression batters your self-esteem. Building self-esteem is important in the recovery from depression.
Recently, my work sent me on a training which entailed a road trip with colleagues and three days of intense meetings. Our training was supplemented by many meals and social gatherings between and during those planning sessions. Despite an abundance of food, I realized when I got back home that I hadn't really thought of food or the process of eating all that much through the entire trip. I equally realized that despite there being many new people there, I also hadn't felt compelled to share my eating disorder history with any new colleagues I was meeting. When I got home and thought about all of it, I was surprised. Why, for the first time in recent memory, did I not find myself thinking about food or feel compelled to discuss my history with others?
In the following video, I say to you what I needed to remember today. I am less than no one. I have value. I am chock full of potential and promise. So are you.
To help me remember I am worthy, I have to remember the vocabulary of abuse. The vocabulary of abuse is the words and techniques abusers use to keep abuse victims as victims. When I was an abuse victim, I found myself confused: I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't decipher or describe what that something could be (Gaslighting: Designed to Destroy Your Sanity). Before I knew there was a vocabulary of abuse, I was destined to remain an abuse victim .
I spend time outdoors every day. As a writer, I enjoy being surrounded by nature. Breathing in fresh air is liberating. It awakens my senses and filters my thoughts (Three Ways to Manage Your Mood). I gravitate towards a wide-range of outdoor landscapes that calm, yet energize, my mind, body and soul.
Being the season of witches, zombies, vampires and clowns, anything is possible. Strange, odd pranks are expected and people wait hours, huddled together in blankets, to spend twenty minutes on a haunted hayride. (I recently experienced this and it was more than worth it.) However, along with carefree traditions and stomach aches from candy overdose come aspects of Halloween that sometimes bring anxiety and unsafe thoughts to those overcoming self-harm: scars and the color red.
I believe she will only be able to rid herself of her demons, and hopefully her BPD as well, when she's ready to confront the abuse of her father. If she can put the blame where it belongs, she may stop projecting that victim/perpetrator cycle on the present men in her life. These demons are a metaphor for the purgatory she has created for herself. That reality has consequences in the real world, but it need not be real in the tangible sense. Exorcising her demons will require the expenditure of real physical energy and probably the destruction of aspects of her personality. If this ever happens, and it's possible but not probable, then these demons will evaporate. They are only as real as one's personality is real. In short, reality is not the question, it's what you make of the things you feel to be real.