Seven Golds

 i am not my traumas, my mental health or my pain and suffering. i am not the things that happened to me. But they are part of me. They have shaped me, affected me, and caused irreversible damage. To deny reality is to deny who i am. Denying my own rights, dignity and voice. I have been walking the lonely and difficult path less traveled - I can assure you that it is actually harder than they say it is - because I wanted it to end with me. I am still working on it, for all of those things I wanted to end were passed on to me growing up, and possibly by past generations.  I am realizing, once again, how hard I can be on myself. But perfectionism was also a trauma response. Anything less than perfect was met with lack of love, punishment and abuse. I don't love my traumas, but I am learning to love my pieces. I became so dissociated from my body, myself, and my soul, but little by little, i am coming back to me. To safety. i am coming back to me - I love this.  It is my res...

  Things I am learning about resilience : "When you think about resilience, it's closer to talking about plastic, something that returns back to its original shape after you bend it. I think that humans don't really work like that. We don't go back to the way we were before we were broken or bent. [...] But is much more about reclaiming w hatever new shape your form has taken . A resilience that doesn't really ask us to forget, but that carries the memory of whatever harm or whatever fire we've been through. A resilience that carries that memory and still is committed to one's survival and one's going on in the world, however that shape looks." James Baldwin said this: "It was very important for me not to pretend as if the terrors of that time left no mark on me. They marked me forever."  From Psychotherapist James Finley: "It is in experiencing and accepting how difficult it can be to free ourselves from our hurtful attitudes and w...

 "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves."  "Today, there is no room for worthlessness." Compassion and sense of self can coexist. Paty ♥ Learn. Believe. Allow.  

  My therapist told me this week to step into the unknown as an alternative to always asking myself, “Am I ever going to get better?” She said this question was too much to handle. I knew having therapy twice a week was going to be challenging, but boy am I tired from it! I also had two other appointments this week, making it a total of four. I started calling some facilities to inquire about my insurance and like I suspected it, my insurance doesn’t cover mental health facilities. My therapist asked me yesterday if these things affect me, and I said that in a way yes, but that I choose to not let it pull me down, otherwise I can’t survive, but the truth is that when I called another facility and I was given the out-of-pocket cost, my heart dropped to the floor. Something else I told her was that I have struggled so much with this mental health, but I managed, somehow. Even when all I could do was to get out of bed and shower. I have faced a terrible flawed system, both in the ment...

I started having therapy sessions twice a week, and I will continue that for the next three to four weeks. The goal is to be able to figure out a plan of recovery to learn to live with my Complex-PTSD, and complex trauma. Learn better ways to cope with it. I need to teach my brain that my triggers are not real, not everything is a threat, and I am safe. I have gained a bit of strength and mental capacity, which will be used to focus on my healing and have some control on those decisions and action plans. My brain needs fixing and care. I need to focus on my healing, take better charge of this recovery. My therapist and I started discussing possibilities like partial hospitalization or intensive outpatient care, although the insurance could be a problem. And/or focused-trauma therapies, like EMDR. I don't know what healing means, or how recovery looks like. It has been said that trauma never goes away, and that healing is different for everyone. The more I learn about these conditio...