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Individually, hating yourself and hurting yourself are difficult things to cope with. Simultaneously, though, self-harm and self-hate create a vicious cycle that can be challenging to break—but doing so is vital for healing and growth.
My history with therapy has been, to put it mildly, spotty. I’ve seen a number of therapists since I was a child, but I haven’t had good experiences with most of them – this was due to any number of factors ranging from some being incompatible with my personality to others literally causing me to cry after the session ended. Because of that, my desire to continue with any new therapist has not been strong. But because my mental health has been so unstable for a while now, I decided I needed to make a change. As of the end of last month, I decided to restart therapy, so this post will focus on that.
Therapy can be grueling sometimes. Anybody who tells you differently is either lying or trying to soften the blow. Regardless, they've done you a disservice, in my opinion. In order to reap the benefits of therapy, a commitment to work hard in partnership with your therapist is required. I've engaged in trauma therapy to help with my anxiety. My experience with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) trauma therapy is hard work that's paying off.
I have a few tattoos that symbolize the path I walked to heal from an eating disorder (ED). Some are more recognizable than others, but all of them are meaningful to me. However, with that being said, I've recently started to think twice before I discuss these ED recovery tattoos with acquaintances—or even friends—who ask about them.
I'm a person on the Internet, which means large corporations like Google and Facebook have likely collected enough data on me to recreate me as a Metaverse AI. The benefit of this is that my social media feeds are finely tuned to align with my interests, and Instagram recommends me products that I can't afford but definitely want. That said, I sometimes worry that the algorithms know me too well, especially when TikTok started showing me video after video of people discussing their attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Before I recovered from binge eating disorder (BED), I would not have identified myself as a creative person. My identity at the time revolved around sports, athleticism, and my appearance as a student-athlete. This image I held onto kept me in an awful cycle of restricting and binge eating. I felt like I had to keep up an athletic appearance. After I graduated high school, I knew I'd outgrown my old identity, but I did not know where to begin outside of that structured model.
"He's totally psychotic." "My breakup was totally psycho." How many times have you heard those types of phrases? I've heard it many, many times. While it's pretty common these days to have some knowledge about mental illness terms, psycho, psychotic, and even psychosis tend not to be understood. Let's delve into the meanings of psycho, psychotic, and psychosis, both from a common vernacular point of view and from an accuracy point of view.
Ever since I was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder, I have always perceived my anxiety as a bully and as my worst enemy. I hated that I struggled with anxiety and wanted nothing more than to get rid of it. Why wouldn't I? After all, my anxiety had stolen many opportunities and experiences I could have had if it hadn't made my day-to-day social interactions so tough. However, all of this changed when I learned to acknowledge the ways in which my anxiety has helped me and started expressing gratitude towards my anxiety.
Allow me to join the chorus and say it’s Mental Health Awareness Month. Each year, the mental health community comes together during May to amplify the discussions around mental health to reduce the stigma of mental illness and show people they’re not alone in their struggles.
I believe there is nothing unprofessional in being honest about your mental health at work. Since emails are an official means of communication in workplaces everywhere, employees should ensure they are real. Of course, the onus is on the employer because anyone in a mental health-unfriendly organization will hesitate to disclose mental health issues. But this does not mean employees are powerless. And in a pandemic world, where more and more people are suffering from conditions like depression, genuine emails are crucial.
I read this book many years ago, just as I was entering the turmoil of remembering, questioning and doubting myself all the way (as I'd been covertly taught over a lifetime). I happened to mention to my two sisters one day, "This is so strange but I've been diagnosed with PTSD." Both my sisters surprised me by responding, "Me too."
THEN I happened upon an old book manuscript that my now deceased father had written (not published), wherein the protagonist was obviously based upon himself and he rapes his "fiancee," who had my unusual name. Yes, truly.
Then I made myself look at the peculiar memory I always had where he violently threatened me but somehow I had never been able to recall what came before or after the episode. I had to admit that was a bit strange.
The pressures and powers to forget sexual abuse are great, both in family and society. In fact, I've come to the sad conclusion that the vast majority of survivors never really deal with their childhood wounds (a neglect for which there are always repercussions).
To critique an encouragement of people trusting their intuition in such matters is really getting the prescription dangerously wrong.
Thanks!