Who I Want to Be and Who I Want to Find

I am in the early weeks of what I realized needs to be a journey of rediscovering who I am. I see it as a three pronged approached - (1) continue to value and engage with the parts of me that have been consistently bringing me good things, (2) reconnect with part of me I lost or hid because other people made me feel like that things were bad, when really they are beautiful and part of who I am at my core, and (3) build up new parts of me that protect, honor, and enhance the parts of me that already exist. I remember back in 2019 when I was working through a long battle with a occurrence of anxiety, I really wanted to get back to who I was before the anxiety. And for a period during the post-pandemic world I was hoping to get back to me, both how I was feeling so great about my life in the 2nd half of 2019 and how I was earlier. But I realize now that I can't go back to those past version of me. I have to forge ahead and discover this new version, made from bits and pieces but also something new. And hopefully better.

I have spent a lot of time coping with and healing from trauma these last three and a half-ish years. It has been rough. The pandemic itself was a huge trauma, and it also created opportunities for other traumas that would have otherwise been easier to avoid had the world been "normal". Here's a thing about trauma that has really been irritating me through this journey - it doesn't all come up to be resolved at once. It's not like if I break a bone, or even a bunch of bones, and I can go to the doctor, get some x-rays, and then set out on a healing path. With traumas, whether they happened months ago or decades ago, memories will get triggered months or years later that give some new insights. Or we learn some new terminology that gives names to things that felt wrong but we didn't have the vocabulary or knowledge to understand why. It doesn't help that sometimes we will be made to feel like our hurting about things is wrong when it fact it was the thing that made us hurt that was wrong. Plus, we learn about the really big obvious bad things that are harmful to people, and we know that even when those things happen to others there are psychological things that happen that get people trapped in bad spaces. But we don't learn about the more subtle, more insidious ways that we can be hurt psychologically, or the behaviors that can be bad but be twisted into seeming normal or justified. 

A few weeks ago I had a reminder pop up in my YouTube suggestions of all places of coping behaviors that I developed in recent years. That reminder got me thinking about other things that led to me discovering other behaviors on mine were more coping behaviors. The thing that has really had me struggling recently with these discoveries is how much the coping behaviors are intertwined with traits of mine that I value a lot and think are really important parts of who I am. I consider myself an empath and someone who truly genuinely cares about people. There are so many amazing, interesting people out there and whether it's someone I know or a complete stranger, I find so much beauty in the different interactions I get to have with people. I also consider myself to be very perceptive when it comes to picking up on behaviors and personality traits that I feel I can get a better (if still partial) understanding of people than the average person. I think this is all a combination of how my brain naturally works (being empathic and the way it takes in information) and of the skills that I have developed through school, my career, and socially. 

Uncovering and healing from these coping mechanisms has me questioning whether these things about me that I value are genuine or if they are just coping mechanisms in themselves. What if I have only learned to care for and be so observant of people because I need to feel safe. What if I am not a good person after all, and just a surviving person. I have of course been fighting back mentally against this. Yes, there were times when I quieted myself and had power taken from me, and I told myself I was being supportive or it wasn't meant that way so I shouldn't make a big deal of it. Those are definite coping mechanisms that I used my skills to mask. But there are so many other times when I have exerted energy to care. And so many people that I put effort into caring for and showing up for that I don't have coping mechanisms with. I think that my biggest relief is knowing that with so many people I did not transfer over these coping mechanisms and was able to be my full self in spaces I felt safe. Yes, I did carry hurt and healing with me wherever I went, but I was still able to show up as the full me.

Going forward I want to continue to value and live these and so many other great things about myself feeling confident in who I am. I think that these skills are not coping mechanisms, they are just parts of me that can make me vulnerable to being misused. Not everyone shows up the same as me. I have to learn that just because I want to be open, vulnerable, and using empathy, that doesn't mean those I interact with can. Some people have not developed themselves enough to show up that way, some people are purely looking out for themselves, and others out right have bad intentions. It is up to me to gage whether I am being met in the same way instead of just assuming that I am. I learned that it is both okay that people have bad reactions from their trauma that need to be empathized with AND that past trauma does not excuse a pattern of current bad behavior. I learned that it's okay to be hurt by something that was not done with bad intentions. I learned that I can be supportive but I also need to stand up for myself. I learned that understanding and empathizing with people doesn't mean I have to accept all of their behavior that stems from that. I learned that if I have a problem with someone and they don't validate or accept my experience, I don't have to accept that - I can say I am valid and you are being unreasonable by not listening and I do not have to accept your solution or your behavior towards me.

Overall I learned that being empathetic and understanding are great qualities, but they are just two tools in the much larger toolbox of being a well rounded person. I have some really strong tools with connecting and appreciating others, and also some strong tools with taking an inner look at myself to improve. What I need now is to add tools to stand up for myself, to advocate for myself, to be brave enough to call things out. Because at the end of the day the people who truly value and care about you will call you out on things to help you and the relationship between the two of you, and NOT call you out on things to diminish and control you. Being able to take fair feedback shows you value people and you value self growth. Being able to give fair feedback means you value the other person and feel safe enough to share, and allows that other person either to show they value you by listening and that self growth is important to them, or to show that your energies are better elsewhere because they don't value you.

Honestly, part of me these last few weeks has been mad at myself for behaving in ways that hold me back and diminish me. And part of me has been mad at myself for ever letting me feel bad for being a caring person that takes others into account. I try my best with the information that I have, and now I have more information through therapy work and terminology that will mean the best I can do in the future is more informed than before. I am going to keep working at treasuring the things I like about myself, while keeping in mind that not every part is the right part in every scenario, and building up the parts of me that are right for the scenarios I struggle with. My mental health, and frankly my emotional safety and the way I am treated, those are not my fault but those are my responsibility. 

I would like to take a brief tangent to mention how all of my experiences with therapy and mental health make me feel very adamant that as a society we lack literacy in a bunch of this stuff. Maybe this is something taught in schools now, but I doubt it. There will should be more education for everyday people outside of going to therapy the teaches people how behaviors and words are helpful or hurtful so that we can learn how to interact in healthy ways and have this kind of vocabulary to talk about things.

Currently I am also on a dating journey to hopefully find my person. It has been hard being on a healing journey while trying to undertake a dating journey. I have taken lengthy breaks this year and last to focus on myself. Recently I have been asking myself am I really ready for a relationship. I came to the conclusion that yes, I am ready for a healthy relationship. Everyone is going to have things happen to them that make periods of their life hard, and I don't think there's really a time to be perfectly ready. I think there are times to be obviously not ready, but I think it really comes down to I am capable of doing what I need to be a good partner and can commit to working through things, even if I am still working through other things. I realized that what I don't feel ready for is protecting myself from someone unhealthy. I am still relatively newly aware of ways that I have given power to toxic behaviors. And I haven't had a lot of opportunities to put my learning about boundaries into play. I know that someone who is capable for being a healthy partner can help me feel safe to be open and vulnerable. But I am still worried that I won't be aware enough or I will make excuses for someone who does not want to or can't treat me well. But I am going to try not to worry about that so much and just take things a step at a time. I am putting hope and trust into myself to be better going forward, and can only prove that to myself if/when that time comes.

I have also been thinking about what I am looking for. I know what kind of traits I am looking for in a man - someone kind, good sense of humor, emotionally intelligent, some common interests. But I realized I had not spend really any time in the past thinking about what I am looking for in a relationship. I know that in the past my focus as really been on what I have to offer. I feel like I would be a great partner that has a lot of love to give and really wants to love someone. With this quest for a man I have been focused a lot more on what I want to get instead of what I have to give. 

I don't want to say I have been thinking about "what I deserve" in a relationship. I think that sounds kind of selfish and arrogant. Rather, I think of it as asking myself what I need from a relationship that will make me feel I am having my needs met. And obviously I want to avoid trauma - I've been traumatized by family, friends and coworkers - I don't want to add romantic partner to that list (which would make me lucky, unfortunately, compared to most). Here's what I came up with:

• Feeling Understood - I know that I have strength in understanding people, but I have not always felt understood in return. I need someone that is both capable and desires to understand me. I think about my BFF who has shown me this many times. I love the way that they ask me things because they were wondering how I would feel about them and truly wanted to know. They put effort into getting to know me, even after all these years, and I hope I still do the same. They also have shown me they know me in ways and times that helped me feel good about myself when I was lost. I think that the people close to us have this great opportunity to know us free of the self doubts and fears we carry around. I also remember a coworker that early in our friendship made some observation about me that was really off, but then as we got to know each other they showed they learned me and their observations about me were very accurate. I also really need someone who can and will understand me outside of their own view point to see me from mine. Not everyone thinks the same and has the same values or worldviews, and being able to see me through my lens is helpful. Or maybe I just need someone in similar views so they don't have to try so hard. I remember this time I told someone that I see myself aligned with Lawful Good (although I admit I know very, very little of DND). In response this person just said that all people are inherently selfish and no one can be more than neutral on the good/bad scale. Not only did I feel like this is a very different world view than me (I believe in an inherent goodness in people), but it also felt very invalidating of me as a person. To me, being kind and loving are so important not just to how I interact with the world, but how I think the world thrives in general. (I am also a "follow the rules unless they are unjust/bad" kind of person - basically I put goodness before lawfulness, but don't be unlawful just because you don't like rules or they are inconvenient.)
• Safety - I don't think a few years ago I would even think about this. But some therapy work I have done this year made me realize the importance of physical, mental and emotional safety. I learned that at many times in my life I have learned and had reiterated the bad lesson that I can't express a boundary or something that bothers me because people won't validate me, and instead it lets them know a weakness they can exploit. But I need that safety. Whether it's the safety to express a difference of opinion on something random and unimportant, or safety to draw an important boundary. I need to know that even if there's a disagreement or it's hard, I am still safe.
• Communication - duh. I know that there are places I still struggle with this, but I know that I am way more open and vulnerable than I have ever been, I am always looking for ways to improve, and even when I falter I at least show up to try and try again.
• Want to be Wanted - I am looking for someone who is going to make it very clear on a regular basis that they choose me. Maybe their face lights up when I walk into the room. Maybe they send me random messages or memes to let me know I was on their mind. I want someone that tells me regularly that being with me makes them happy. I want someone who makes it clear they see me in their life for the indefinite future and wants to do what needs to be done to keep me there. I am on the internet way too much and hearing horror stories of guys that string women along but are never really interesting. And all these terms - bread crumbing, keeping someone on the hook, others I am sure - the fact they happen so often with such definable behaviors, it's just gross.
• Best Friend - I really am looking for my new best friend. And yes I know that takes time, and I will probably naturally and naturely be inclined to move kind of slow, but I am ready to take that time down that path. This will literally become the person I choose to spend the most time with. I want things to not only be loving and sexy and romantic, I also want all the best friend stuff too - enjoying doing stuff together, sharing funny things, goofing around, just chilling. When I am not having a rough time, I am a really fun, silly person with lots of interests and random things to say. I want someone who wants all of that. I want someone to have dance parties in the kitchen with. I want someone to excitedly explain all my songs to while riding in the car with my iPod on random. I love video games, so like there's no risk of some girlfriend who complains about how much gaming time a guy has.

I know that at the end of the day, I really need to keep in mind both what I have to offer AND what I need to feel my needs are met. A relationship is about two people. I can't find a healthy relationship if I neglect either or let my future partner neglect either. It can be too easy that if you focus just on yourself or just on your partner that there becomes an imbalance where one person gets what they want at the expense of the other, whether intentionally or not. And knowing that I am more predisposed to be walked on than the other way, it is important to me to bring my needs into the conversation. I just can't overcorrect.

2024 will be an interesting year. I really am hoping it is a year for more growth and joy, and new things. But I also know that I have gone into years with positive hopes just for those year to suck ass in new and stupid ways. So I will just keep it as interesting. No matter what happens, I will keep working and keep trying. Someone told me recently that we shouldn't focus on being our best self, but rather our favorite self. I like this a lot too. I have had to abandoned many favorite selves in the past, and I am DEFINITELY not my favorite self now. But I am working on it. She's in here and she is going to be amazing!

Metaphorically Ready for Spring

Too many months ago to remember precisely when, a friend said to me something like I was in a winter season of my life. I wish that like real seasons that feeling was only for a few months, but alas that's not the case. In a very self vulnerable moment the other day I found myself thinking "I'm tired of being so resilient." How many times have I had to put my head down and just push through the difficulties? How many times have I had to rally myself to just keep going, take it day by day, whatever? It really has felt like what if this time I can't push through? There are times where I wonder how I used to juggle so much with ease with so much b.s. going on, and I just can't seem to do that as well anymore. 

That got me looking back over my life. Because part of me is like "okay Dayna, it can't have been that bad. Look at all the terrible things that people go through and you haven't". And also life is hard. Sometimes it's non-stop hard and maybe it's never not hard and I'm just being a whiny baby because I'm tired. But another part of me is like "sure, life can be hard and maybe there's always a juggling of things to keep life balanced and moving forward, but people get to experience periods of their life when they feel contented, where things feel manageable, where the biggest stressors are just relatively mild and mundane daily life stuff." Because looking back over the last decade-ish of my life there was definitely a LOT more time spent in stressful situations or head spaces that were oppressive, as compared to times that were fine. And maybe I have a point with myself saying I'm tired of being resilient because while I've never experienced something life shatteringly horrible, things are more often than not bad compared to fine.

It's funny because going through therapy and looking back on my like birth through college years, it's interesting to realize the bad stuff there and how it's definitely affected me a lot more now as an older, more self aware adult than it did as it was happening as a kid and young adult. Maybe it's easier to focus on the positive as a kid. Maybe there was enough good to weight out the bad. Maybe I was just too young and lacked too much knowledge about things to realize bad stuff was happening. Probably bits of all of the above. It's always funny having conversations with people about things that happen when we were younger that felt normal to us, but get weird reactions from others. I will say that a few months ago I had a great conversation with a friend who I have a shared life experience with that it was so nice to talk about. It was something I don't really talk about and didn't really have anyone I knew with the same experience, so it was nice to finally after over a decade talk about something in a way that felt friendly, open, and casual.

Thinking over things recently has made me realize just how chill and relatively stress free my law school days were compared to the time since. As you read this you must think either Dayna is nuts or she's so smart that law school was easy so I hate her. Believe me, law school was not easy. There were plenty of stress and difficulty. But it was all manageable. It was the kind of stress that was challenging, but not oppressive. I mean, I was at a point in my life where all I had to focus on was school. I didn't have any other life commitments. I lived and worked (except for some internships) with the same two blocks. My life was really contained. I had friends close by and so many things were scheduled for me. The thing I learned about school versus work is that school puts limits on how much you can do because time and experience has taught and institutionalized how much work one can realistically do. Even if it's hard, school cuts you off. But work won't. Sure, some jobs don't have enough work to keep people busy. Must be nice. But many places will dump things on top of you with no end, and it's up to you to learn to say when enough is enough. Sometimes that's by setting boundaries about how much work you can realistically do and say no to other stuff. Sometimes that's letting things fail to prove it's too much. Sometimes that quitting and going somewhere else because the people handing out the work won't listen.

It's funny because I've learned a lot about boundaries this spring with my therapy work - even as an adult I love some good worksheets and learning new things! Work Dayna is great with communicating, setting, and maintaining boundaries. Personal Life Dayna not so much. Maybe it's because Work Dayna burnt out so many times the boundary setting grew out of necessity. Personal Life Dayna has probably hit an analogous point now too. Or at the very least now I have worksheets that taught me the vocabulary of boundaries, how to help express mine, and how to know when others are violating them. Seriously, why isn't this taught in school?! Or is it now but I'm just too old?

My first year post bar exam was actually pretty nice. I had a couple interim part time jobs. I even stopped drinking coffee at one because it was stress free and I slept great. The one month of my life I look back on most fondly was that month when I wasn't working but I had accepted a job with my current employer because I got to not work but also I no longer had to worry about being indefinitely unemployed and running out of money. My month long sabbatical I took for December 2022 was almost as nice - the getting paid to not work was amazing - I am just more world weary and melancholy.

Those first few years of my job were horrible. I probably burnt out 3-5 times in three years. I finally took an improv class in 2017 because my whole life had become my job and I was miserable. I worked too much, took the stress home, didn't have enough personal outlets. The worst part was one person in particular that made my life hell. I'm no mental health professional, so my opinion is pure lay-person educated guessing, but this person is the only person I've spent significant time with that I would put good money on being diagnosed as a narcissist. Watching videos of how to tell you've been subjected to narcissistic abuse, I was like "wait, that seems REALLY familiar!" Thankfully for years now work has been fine. No more crazy oppressive ours, I work with so many amazing people, and most importantly no matter how stressful it can be or how hard things go, I've learned to leave it at work. I don't leave it in the office because my office is now the backend of my living room, but I leave it in the work hours. 

I remember 2016 being a very hard year. It started off with my grandma dying - my grandma who I spent so much time with and was so close to as a child. Right behind there was the typical Q1 work reorg that was very difficult and I had to do the work of multiple people on a team that I didn't belong on for a boss that didn't support me. That was the summer when the AC in our apartment went was out for 44 days because the slum lords of the property management company didn't want to pay to replace it. They got 4 different AC companies to say it was so broken it needed to be replaced. And while it was too hot my car also died, which sucked, but I did enjoy having a new car. I didn't enjoy withholding rent to force AC repairs and getting an eviction notice. We didn't actually get evicted because we were in the right with the AC being broken, but that doesn't stop bullies from trying to scare us. Thankfully by my October Ireland trip the year had calmed down, but damn I thought that one was a rough one and no more like that for awhile please!

Retrospectively I consider 2017 my hiding year. I challenged myself to read a book a week that year, so spent many evenings and weekends reading. I enjoyed it, but by the end of the year my anxiety had really begun to peak. Looking back, I really had a lot of stress and stuff wearing down my mental health that I was just ignoring. I hid a lot behind a bunch of books. 2018 was bad because what? Another really stressful work reorg? That was also when my anxiety just kept getting worse to the point it was disrupting my ability to just exist day to day. October 2018 was when I finally went to therapy for the first time. The end of 2018 and the first half of 2019 was a lot of healing from lots of stressors and learning anxiety managing techniques.

Honestly in the last 10 years, it really seems like the 2nd half of 2019 through early March 2020 was the only time I really felt good. Like any stress was manageable. I was content with my life and just living in the moment. No eye on a big thing in the future, no big oppressive source of stress. Just normal day to day, manageable things. It felt really good to be in a good place, to have put in so much work and have it really pay off.

And then 2020 happened. It's funny to remember there were a couple months in 2020 that were normal. I don't really need to go into detail about how oppressively hard 2020 and the pandemic were because we all lived it. Coming out of the pandemic in Summer 2021 was rough too. Although I was really excited to get back into the world and pick my life back up from the high it was in right before then, I learned very quickly I was NOT in the same place mentally to just jump back into an active social life and navigate the world as I had done before. I am still not quite as comfortable in crowded places as I used to be and haven't been as enthused about going to concerts as I used to be. But I did the work. I listened to my mind and body about when I hit my limits. As someone who likes to arrive when the party starts and stays until it shuts down, having to leave early or miss things altogether because I didn't have the energy was hard. But by listening to my mind and body, I worked myself back up to my old tolerances. 

Was it omicron that made us have a shitty winter '21/'22? I just remember thinking once that clears up, 2022 is going to be my year! I'm going to put myself out there more than ever, take on new things, finally be in an even better place than I was in the back end of 2019. But instead more trauma. I will say that I am so proud of myself for quickly going back to therapy. I had been meaning to go back since I quit in late 2020, and I really didn't want to handle new stuff alone. But of course I wasn't alone. There was something about being at home so much during the pandemic where I didn't have to hold back my emotions that I got reaquatinted with my sensitivity. I identify as highly sensitive, but I learned as a kid that I was "too sensitive" so I didn't learn to articulate difficult emotions and I learned to not cry in front of other people. And I had been working since law school on being more open with friends because I was allowed to struggle and I was allowed to have weaknesses and I was allowed to talk about these things with other people. So while things have been hard, and I've processed a lot a rough stuff in therapy these last 18 months, I have been in the best place healing wise. I have good coping skills that make me feel safe confiding in my friends and keep me from hiding in fear of trusting people. When it was hard I could rely on people for support, whether it was a trusted friend listening to what I was wrestling with or just having people who I could laugh with and forget my troubles for a few hours. A couple months ago I had something really scary happen and I didn't want to go home and be alone. I immediately reached out a close friend with no hesitation to see if I could spend time with them. I think in the past I would be a little hesitant to "bother" someone in such a place. But during a time that very easily could have scared me away from trusting people, I learned how to securely and opening rely on the people who love me. 

I've been thinking lately about how going to therapy is like playing video games. I guess probably closest to playing like a Soulsborne game, where you know you're going to get your ass kicked but the challenge is worth the grind. Not that I've ever really played one of those. I tried to play Bloodborne twice and couldn't get past the first boss both times and quit. But I didn't quit therapy! It's like you start out by jumping in and devoting regular time to it because you really want to just start making progress so you can get past the basics and really be in the meat of everything. After awhile you feel like you've really made some progress, but you can tell there's still so much to uncover and so much more progress to make. Occasionally when you think you've made some great process you'll encounter something that just kicks your ass so hard it almost feels like you're back at the beginning (or they take your gear away, which is such b.s. in games!). For awhile I'd been feeling like I was at that point in a game where you swear it should be over and you're kind of tired of playing that game, but every time you think "yay, I finally see the end in sight" something else happens that's like "how is there another boss to fight?" or "wow, this new thing I opened up about or concept I learned in therapy made me realize the treatment I received was worse and went on longer than I thought". But eventually you'll come (hopefully, whether you realize it or not) to the final boss - that final piece of work, stretch of time, or realization that takes you from being in the thick of processing and healing to being in that place were you can put down the analyzing and you've felt all the feelings, and can finally move away from the trauma. Like the scars (emotional or otherwise) will still be there and may pop up time to time, but like you've gone through it and out the other side. I've said to myself a lot when facing big, difficult emotions that sometimes the only way out is through (and I hear that in Patrick Stump's voice as a lyric from the Fall Out Boy song Bob Dylan).

Sometimes the final boss (both literally and metaphorically) is obvious and you've fought it a few times throughout the game and then you have that final showdown at the end where you finally emerge victorious. But sometimes you don't know the final boss or think you know, but actually it's something else entirely. You'll be questing along thinking any fight is about to be your last fight, any new discovery and processing moment is the last thing you'll uncover to work through, and then bam! There it is! The big ole final boss and it's such a surprise but also so obvious because it's been right in front of your nose the whole time that you didn't even notice it was there. You feel both stupid and vindicated at the same time, and now everything that has come before gets thrown into new perspective despite the hours, weeks, months, years to get there. And the fight tests everything you've learned up to that point and you think maybe this is it - maybe I lose because I'm not strong enough for this. Maybe I should run away. But no! You've come this far! Look at all the progress you've made! You have all these skills now! Just fight this last big boss and then it's done! I mean, it may be done or there may be a lot of clean up to do. But you've at least come to the end of the story. You know all there is to know, you have seen what came before through the final lens, and now it's time to process this last final things before moving on to a new story. Maybe the hero won and the villain lost. Maybe the cutscenes make it ambiguous, and everyone and no one was really right or wrong. Maybe you beat the boss but get sucked into a giant whole to be trapped in space and time, so you actually lost but the only way to finish the game was to accept defeat so you can go play something else that you like better. Maybe there will be DLC or a sequel, but some games are left to be one and done.

Semi-tangent: I will say The Last of Us 2 was one of those games that I felt like really did go on too long, and the last level could very easily been left out. And when it just kept going and going, I was so ready to be done! I mean, I enjoyed it and finished it, but it felt unnecessary.

Speaking of video games and real life parallels, I am really into horror video games. I've noticed that when I play a horror video and something scary starts chasing me, and I can't fight back (I'm looking a lot at you, Outlast!), I tend to completely lose my ability to reason about to do and instead just run in the opposite direction of the monster chasing me. And then once I'm safe again I look around, ask where am I, and then have to figure out how the heck I get myself back to where I need to be. Things get more difficult with progression when I have to maneuver past whatever was chasing me, which requires me to keep my head despite my brain yelling "threat, run, ruuuuuuunnnn". Turns out this happens in real life too. Except the results, in my opinion, are much more comical. Because it turns out the horror video game characters I have control of when running in fear have much more compose movement mechanics than I do when I get suddenly scared by something my brain reads as "threat, run, ruuuuuuunnnn" and I may have literally tripped my way out of a room or two. I have literally had times when it felt like part of my brain hijacked the rest of my body to walk me in another direction. I didn't realize I had an autopilot override! It's also interesting to think about how much easier to play a part of a horror game is when you know mechanically the scary thing can't actually get near you in some sections, even though the atmosphere and other stuff has changed. It's just the knowledge that you can move freely about a space under certain conditions without being on constant guard that can make the mind relax and actually focus.

Anyway, the point I have been intending to build up to after ALL of that rambling "this is why I need a break in my life" is that I feel like (or hope I feel like) I can finally get to a place again where I can feel content with my life. I am really trying to focus right now on rediscovering myself. I've realized that I have experienced so much in the last 10ish years, and even the last 3ish years, that I am never really going to get back to a past contented version of me. That woman doesn't exist anymore. She has been shaped by all the experiences that have happened since then. And while in some says that is sad, mostly I think it's a good thing. I have learned a lot about myself through these experiences and through the vulnerable, hard but beneficial experience of going to therapy. I think that right now I am discovering the new parts of me and putting intention into using learning to better myself. I am also rediscovering parts of myself I never really got to develop, and learning to use them in positive adult ways. I am also rediscovering things that brought me joy that I let go of because of other people made me feel bad about them. I may feel really tired of being resilient, but I have also learned that I am doing a better job in some ways that I thought, and what I really need to do is trust myself and advocate for myself more. I need to take all the positive things, all the grace, all the love, all the caring and understanding that I give others and give it to myself.

I don't know if the coming months, the coming new year have some restful contentment in store for me, or if my next oppressive stressful period is about to hit soon. But I've gotten stronger and more informed with everything each time. So even when it's tiring, I have so many people and fun times to bring joy that I'll be okay. And there's always jokes. Trauma just makes comedians better, right?

Therapy is a Journey, Not a Destination

Or maybe therapy is a bunch of consecutive journeys to a bunch of different destinations because once you get to one destination you realize there's another one to go to next. And then another and then another. Or some other kind of metaphor for the fact that the importance of going to therapy is doing the work as much as it is getting to a better version of yourself. I mean, in my opinion, if you're doing life right, there will always be something new to work on. Continual self improvement!

I am a fan of people going to therapy. I feel lucky/grateful/pleased/whatever to have other adults in my life who not only are also going to therapy, but are willing to talk openly about it. The more we make going to and talking about therapy a safe, run of the mill thing, the more people will embrace it. We don't shame people for getting procedures and medications for physical ailments, so we shouldn't do the same for mental ones. And I sure as heck would not say no thanks to treatment for a physical ailment because other people might respond negatively, so I shouldn't worry about the mental ones either. Any kind of treatment is going to improve your ability to function in your life, so the place in your body that needs healing shouldn't matter. Trevor Noah did a virtual Q&A with my company and is a big advocate of going to therapy, even if it's just a check up like you would do with preventive physical health. He's great and I love his advocacy for mental health! (Also, yes, humble brag that I was on a video conference with Trevor Noah.)

I first went to therapy in 2018 because my anxiety got so bad it was negatively impacting my ability to function day to day. Honestly I regret not going back when I was in college, but I was afraid that I would be told I was too messed up to continue college and get kicked out, so I didn't go. When I finally went I had a whole 34 years worth of stuff to chose from, but the more recent few years of work stress and burn out were definitely the biggest influences on my anxiety. Maybe all the crazy grinding and expectations put on millennials was enough to finally make us crack and be "no more!" we're going to therapy and doing our own shit!

My first round lasted until around late into 2020. Because of the pandemic stress I had a really hard time making phone calls, so when my therapy office stopped calling me to make appointments, I kept meaning to call for months and then finally it got too long that I just decided I couldn't call again. I restarted therapy in April 2022 because thankfully my company had something set up with Betterhelp that I signed up for. I like that I can make appointments online, but also my therapist remembers to make my next appointment at the end of each session, which I really appreciate.

Over the span of my adulthood, I've done some self awareness and personal growth work on my own. Not everything necessarily needs a therapist to identify or work on, but I think of it like a car - some maintenance I can do at home, but some needs a professional. I have also learned that getting mental health help during trauma instead of after trauma makes a big difference too - like getting your tired fixed as the air is going out instead of driving around on it indefinitely after it's gone flat.

This year I learned some interesting things in my continuation of self-healing and improvement. I learned about boundaries. The nice thing about going to therapy is I have worksheets that I can do to learn new concepts and explore how I relate to that concept. It's homework, except I'm the subject and as long as I'm honest, there's not wrong answers. Even before my 1st round of therapy I had done a lot of self reflection and work on how I felt like I needed to be put together all the time and I shouldn't let people know I was struggling. As an overachiever from a young age and as someone who was compared to other people my entire minor life, I learned the bad lessons that to be accepted I had to be like other people and my best was never good enough if someone was better, but also I couldn't let other people know it was hard because I did so much better than most people that it would be bad to complain or show weakness. For several years I worked on opening up more to people and making the intentional decision to trust specific people and open up. 

With new work done back in late April I learned some interesting stuff about my history with boundaries. Turns out that I learned bad lessons about having my boundaries respected. From a young age I learned that not to speak up about things that bothered me. Because if someone learned that something bothered me, they would then exploit that and do it over and over again, even against my protestations. So I learned that I shouldn't say something bothered me because my boundaries would not be respected. And once someone did learn about a weakness or dislike to exploit, I just had to accept that now that person knows and can do whatever they want and I cannot control it, so I have to just deal with it.

I learned that there are many different types of boundaries. Honestly, learning about each type, and doing the worksheets on how I handle those boundaries and have had those boundaries violated in the past was very difficult. I literally sat on the couch one day and just sobbed because my mind was flooded with decades of examples of people violating my boundaries and me feeling like why did so many people want to mistreatment me when all I ever try to do is be a caring, loving, empathetic person. 

The pandemic was a lesson for me about physical boundaries. As I have probably mentioned before, I was notoriously anti-hugs. And when the pandemic ended I thought I would be even more so having gone so long without hugging people. Except it was the exact opposite. I have become a prolific hugger. The problem was I was being hugged by people I didn't know well enough and who often didn't give me a chance to even consider consent. Turns out I just don't like non-consensual touching. But now there's become, at least in my social circle, a more normalized sense of asking people before hugging them or touching them in any other way. The work I did helped me further learn that it doesn't matter if the touching isn't considered morally bad. If someone doesn't want to be touched, don't touch them. I didn't have that respected as a child, so it took me a long time as an adult to learn that.

The Intellectual Boundaries section of one worksheet read thus: "Intellectual boundaries refer to thoughts and ideas. Healthy intellectual boundaries include respect for others' ideas, and an awareness of appropriate discussion (should we talk about the weather, or politics?). Intellectual boundaries are violated when someone dismisses or belittles another person's thoughts or ideas." This one stung. 9 months before I read this worksheet I had rattled off a laundry list of things that were said to me that got some not great labels put on them that all came rushing back to mind reading this definition, especially the part about how those boundaries are violated.

The Emotional Boundaries is where things REALLY hit home for me. And by hit home I am thinking full impact a runner rushing into home with all the force of a larger muscular athlete with spiky shoes. #SportsMetaphor. I identify as a highly sensitive person, meaning I experience physical and emotion stimuli more intensely than the average person. As a child I was really emotionally sensitive, and sadly as what happens with my sensitive kids, I was made to feel my crying and being sensitive was wrong. I put up a lot of barriers because of that to hide my emotions. I still cried and felt things deeply; I just hid it from people. Something interesting happened though during the pandemic. Because I was home all the time, I would just allow myself to feel and react to my emotions all the time. So by the time lockdown ended, I was so accustomed to being "emotional" that I unknowingly wore down some remaining walls. In the last 1.5 years of my adulthood I have cried in front of people more often than the rest of my 20ish adult years combined. Just several days ago a conversation I was having had me so emotionally overwhelmed, when I felt like bursting into tears, I did. Past me would have just held it in and took whatever was making me feel that way. But now I was like this is how I feel and crying would be express right now that I am overwhelmed and need a reprieve, so I just let it out. I do feel like maybe I have overcorrected some because of the isolation of the pandemic, and I now need to rebuild some healthy barriers between the world and my emotions. But for the most part I find sharing my emotions has been really healing and healthy for me.

This sentence of the boundaries worksheet was probably the most gutting: "Emotional boundaries are violated when someone criticizes, belittles, or invalidates another person's feelings." Imagine if you will an Amazon box that originally came from Amazon but has since been used for other packages. Under the current layer of tape holding it together is evidence of other layers of tape. Now imagine taking a big ole kitchen knife across that tape. That's how analyzing and working through emotional boundaries violations felt to a lot of my trauma, both recent and of old. Oh the joys of criticism. Because it turns out that if you criticize someone enough, they could start to avoid things that you criticize and become afraid of saying or doing anything you don't like, even completely unimportant innocuous things, just to avoid being criticized. I have a not that short list of things I have (re)discovered the joys of after having once avoided them because of criticisms. I will also eat pricey ice cream and watch trash reality dating shows out of spite if I have to. I'm not above that.

I think the biggest chunk of work and hurt around boundaries came with realizing all of the times my feelings were invalidated. Things that were only recently healed; things felt wrong in the moment but I couldn't say why; things that I thought were me being a bad person and I even apologized for: all came rushing back in this sea of learning that I had my feelings invalidated so many times. Sometimes it was just invalidation. Sometimes in addition to being invalidated I was made to feel bad because I expressed my feelings. It feels shitty to realize I apologized for making someone feel bad because I told them their traumatizing behavior hurt me. And sometimes there was just some classic gaslighting. Fun! 

For many many years before this year I carried around this narrative that I was bad at having hard conversations. I sucked at them, fumbled them, didn't know how to have them, was bad bad bad bad. Granted, I am generally conflict adverse - I'm sure a lot of things I've discussed above don't help. And when I have to discuss anything that could be less than positive I do feel icky about it. Being highly sensitive probably also makes hard conversations feel way more intense than they actually are. But here's what I learned. I would come out of these difficult conversations feeling like I did a bad job and had to learn all these lessons about how to better communicate and be a better person. And yes I've learned some good lessons that I will take forward with me because again, I am fond of continual self improvement. I can always be better. The problem is I realized I kept learning all these lessons about how I can treat people better, but I kept missing the lesson that I need to stand up for myself when people don't treat me correctly. Becuase the thing was I realized that all of these difficult conversations that made me feel scared to initiate, that made me feel really bad about myself, that made me feel like I royally failed, the thing in common where these were all people that were unsafe. And that the reason why it was so hard, so scary, so sucky was that these people didn't want to listen to what I had to say, these people were invalidating, these people cared more about asserting power, these people couldn't take personal accountability, whatever. When I started opening up the field of view to people that I trusted, people who were kind, people who could be validating, I found that oh actually I had had many difficult conversations that went just find. I just wasn't considering these conversations in the assessment of my abilities because since they didn't feel scary or feel hard or go badly, they didn't stick out in my brain as much. I've had difficult conversations that went well with people who I didn't really even get along with or like because we could both at least approach the situation as responsible adults in some capacity. So feeling really scared in these situations wasn't a sign of "I've got to do something I'm bad at and I'm scared" but rather a sign of "something about the interpersonal dynamic with this person is bad and my intuition is telling me having this conversation is unsafe."

NOTE: There are also sexual, material and time boundaries per the worksheets, but none of those resonated with me. I wanted to include them though in case anyone was reading this and thought the different types of boundaries are interesting.

Another concept I learned about this spring around boundaries involves having good boundaries, or having boundaries that are too porous or too rigid. I realized that in the past I put up a lot of rigid boundaries by not letting people see certain things about me because I had porous boundaries once people got close, so just don't let them get close. So I had already done a lot of work on breaking down the rigid boundaries. Now at this point in my life I have to learn how to improve my ability to assert my boundaries where they are too porous. Thankfully I have so many people in my life who I am close to that are generally respectful of boundaries so I don't have a lot of issues with it. That does though create issues with me getting opportunities to practice asserting my boundaries. It makes me nervous, especially with the whole dating thing. I already have one instance from earlier this year after I had learned about boundaries where I was very uncomfortable but didn't speak up for myself. I just don't want to find myself in a situation again where I don't like how I'm being treated and I make a bunch of excuses to why it's fine when it isn't. 

Here are some other things I've learned about boundaries. I am allowed to change what is acceptable to me at any time. Just because I made an excuse for something before or just because I didn't speak up the first time, second time, twelve time, doesn't mean that I can never speak up about it. As time goes on I'm allowed to adjust what's okay based on how things have changed. A boundary is not set in stone the first time something happens and then must be that way until the end of time. I also don't have to bring something up. If I don't feel safe addressing an issue, I can chose to just distance myself from people instead. My therapist said that if I have an issue with someone, she can help me work on the skills to better stand up for myself, but I can also assess the situation and decide that speaking up will not be productive because of the way that that person treated me, and I can just decide to stay away. Granted, that is easier said than done because I've had some shitty experiences raising issues in the workplace, and sometimes you just cannot avoid people in that environment. But it's still good to know it's an option. 

Another thing I have learned, and this may be more broad than just with my boundaries issues, but it's not my fault that I get treated badly. I didn't deserve the way I was treated by people who hurt me. My difficulties in calling out behavior that was unfair or harmful or that made me feel bad about myself was not my fault. If people treat me badly, that's on them. I don't have to call them out or stand up for myself for the behavior to be considered harmful. Bad behavior is still bad behavior. Now some people may not want to admit to bad behavior, or they may not want to do the self reflection it takes to realize they mistreat people, but that's not my fault. 

The learning about boundaries did have me doing an interesting thought exercise for my own personal experience. As I have mentioned before, I am highly sensitive. And part of that includes being very easily scared. Many people in my life have learned I can be scared and made to scream pretty easily. Embarrassingly easily actually. The thing is, I never thought to ask people who scared me on purpose to not do it. Working on boundaries and talking through my childhood stuff I realized that I just thought well if someone figures out I am easy to scare, they now have that knowledge and are going to scare me, and I just have to deal with that. So I started thinking about it and I honestly don't know if I'm okay with it or not. Like I know that I used to know this cute guy that would shake the back of my desk chair to scare me as he walked by, and I was okay with that because he was cute and gave us an excuse to talk. But I once had a boss when I worked retail that would try to sneak up on me and scare me, and I hated it! I worked nights and was usually alone in my section of the store, so having someone unexpectedly jump out at me was not fun. Plus I didn't particularly care for this person and he didn't know me like that. But them sometimes it's funny when a friend catches me on purpose, like when my one friend scared me while we were getting photo booth photos, and the last picture was pretty funny with me screaming. But then sometimes people seem to enjoy it a little too much and that can be annoying or scary. I don't know. I am allowed to decide what's okay whenever and ask to not do it if I ever feel like I want to. And I am allowed to be okay when people I'm close to and trust do it, but not be okay with it from someone who doesn't know me well enough.

If therapy work this spring was about boundaries, then therapy work this summer has been about fear! SO FUN! In late June some trauma got dredged up and I got really freaking scared. I also realized though that I basically had 3ish years of fear that I had not acknowledged and processed. Like objectively I knew I was scared at times. Granted there were times where I didn't realize I was scared. But like there's a difference between being scared in the moment, and then afterward being like oh crap I was scared. Or examining the implications of what the fear means. And I think that like there are different reason why the fear never got processed along with other stuff. First, the fear was really felt when I was in public around other people. I don't want to ruin my time around people by being afraid, and I don't want to ruin other people's time too. So overcoming the fear in the moment became an important thing to do. And then by the time I got home I wasn't afraid anymore. Second, there were times I was afraid and didn't realize it until years later. So the fear was just this metaphorical low-level humming always in the background but not perceptible enough, I guess. So while objectively and eventually I was able to point to behavioral changes in myself and recognize they were caused by fear, since I made so many excuses or disregarded so many things in the moment, I didn't catch the fear as it was happening.

I definitely didn't sleep well for like a month. Something about processing years of fear all at once made my brain wake me up multiple times in the middle of the night hella anxious. Waking up hella anxious is such a weird feeling because it's like I'm unconscious and then suddenly I'm awake and my heart is pounding out of my chest. And I'm like what was my brain even doing to get this way. I was unconscious!! And then just after I was finally able to sleep okay again, something else happened. So since I was like a teenager, when I get really stressed I tense the muscles in my chest. Sometimes it gets so bad it aches. Evidently one day I was so tense that I pulled a chest muscle, and it must have swelled badly or hit a nerve because it made my boob go numb. Of course I didn't think this was what was happening until after I got really panicked and went to the doctor. Thankfully everything seems fine. The muscle is still a little sore, but I am almost healed, thank goodness!! I did get stung by a bee this weekend, so I don't know when I'll next be injury free, but I guess as long as each heals okay, I will just deal with it.

Processing fear was very different from processing other emotions. Sadness is probably the easiest for me to process. Maybe because I'm a sad girl. Or maybe because I have always enjoyed crying or maybe because I can appreciate the beauty in sadness, even though it doesn't feel good. Sadness is an emotion I am familiar with. Processing anger has been an interesting experience for me. I have never really been an angry person. I think mostly I just get frustrated or annoyed. But being really angry has been unfamiliar. I get why anger is portrayed as red because it feels like this hot fire. Anger can feel emboldening, like come at my bro, I'm angry and I'm raring to go! Anger makes me incredulous that anyone would want to make me feel angry because I'm amazing and don't you know who I am, and why would you ever make me angry because then you'll miss out on all the things I have to offer. Processing fear felt the opposite of that. Fear is all vulnerability in the I'm going to be damaged sort of way. Fear feels like shrinking until I disappear, running away forever, shutting myself up and tearing myself down however much needs to be done to keep me safe. Fear is I have no control, no influence, no avenue for escape if something else happens, and I am just going to cower until it does.

Yoda said that fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the dark side. Well, Dayna says fear leads to anger, anger eventually cools down and leads to sadness, and sadness leads me to ask why I haven't bought stoke in Kleenex brand facial tissues yet. But seriously, I've realized that fear is easier to overcome once I've actually looked it in the face and named it. I still have those moments when I breakdown into tears and admit to myself that I am still really scared, and continuing to put myself out into the world scares me. I think it helps that things have adjusted too so that I'm not put into situations that were triggering to the fear and put me right back into that headspace on a regular basis, even though the real scary stuff was over.

Speaking of scary stuff and triggers, this was not a good time for me to finally watch the movie Midsommar. I enjoyed the movie a lot, but there were definitely moments where Florence Pugh did or experienced things that made me go "I've done that. I've experienced that." But also made me go "I've seen other people do that." It's sad and scary how even the most seemingly innocuous thing can flip that trauma switch because of the association between what happened and what is conditioned to come next, even if the initial behavior isn't coming from the person that was traumatizing.

I love learning psychology, although less so when it makes me realize painful things about myself. One thing I have been thinking about lately is about fight or flight. I learned that in addition to fight or flight, there's also freeze or appease. So basically, if faced with a threat (this can be a physical one but probably more likely a mental or emotional one) people's instinctual responses are to fight the thing, run away, freeze up, or try to appear the threat into not hurting you. From some of my personal experiences I kind of see fight and appease as related, and flight and freeze as related. It's like I've seen people who were threatened and would most of the time go into a fight response. And these don't even have to be like legitimate threats, just things seen as a threat to ego, position, opinions, etc. But sometimes, and I don't know if it's the person or a mood or something else, but the person instead of fighting would appease. Instead of puffing themselves up for a fight, it was tearing themselves down to seem more pathetic so the threat would no longer see the need to be threatening. 

I have been noticing my own experience with flight or freeze. I play a lot of horror video games, and one of the things I've noticed I do is that when something scary comes along that chases me, my logical brain shuts off and go into lower brain instinct mode, which means I just run away in whatever direction is the closest. Then once the danger is over, I have to figure out where the fuck I ended up and what I'm going to do next. But if I hear the fight is coming music and cannot see the enemy, I may also just freeze up until I know what way is safe and what way is danger. I have noticed that this pattern is the same for me in real life. I have had situations that felt overwhelmingly emotionally threatening to the point where my brain is like "nope". I have tried to walk into rooms and my fear brain will take over and walk me out of the room before I even have a moment to think if I want to stay or not, and how to make myself do that. However, there have been times when flight is not possible or where it would be too awkward to run away, so instead I just freeze. When I freeze it's like I shut myself up in my body and all my focus is on just staying in one position as quietly as possible until the threat is gone. I swear if anyone tried to talk to me during these moments I may just not hear because I'm so in my head. On the lighthearted side, I have amused my self with how klutzy and silly I must of looked trying to discreetly run away and instead awkwardly tripped myself in my haste. 

At this point I am really trying to not let fear hold me back. I've been trying hard to listen to my fear and interpret it reasonably. Like I recently started taking singing lessons. I have always loved to sing, and have gotten over a huge fear of singing in public over the last few years. I am finally getting lessons to really understand and tune my instrument. That all really scares me. But I found a great teacher and I am brave enough to push through, so even though it's only been 2 lessons, I am so committed and grateful that I am putting myself out there. The whole dating thing is more difficult. It's hard to know if the lessons I've learned about being mistreated and what different behaviors are will help or hurt. I still need to work on standing up for myself when I am uncomfortable. But I also need to make sure that I am not interpreting innocuous behavior as something worse. Because it's not necessarily once specific phrase or instance that is harmful, but rather patterns of behavior. And as I learn to speak up for myself better, reactions to that are also very telling.  

I think the biggest general lesson I've learned is that healing take time, it doesn't happen in a straight line, and it doesn't happen all at once. I just have to keep trying, keeping talking, keep working on the things my therapist suggests, keep letting myself feel my feelings, keep giving myself grace. Eventually all the things get uncovered, named and processed. But sometimes I don't know what I don't know until it's labeled, explained, gets a chord unceremoniously struck. There have been multiple times with different things where I've brought up things in a session that were just normal for me or I felt kind of petty for holding onto in my mind, but walked away from feeling heavier realizing my mind hung onto those things because they were not okay and it explains some other stuff. So as hard as it is, and as much as I worry it's taking too damn long, I will let myself heal however it takes because I know I am doing the work, however hard and messy it is. I don't want hurt to hold me back, and I definitely don't want to reenact my hurt onto others, so here I am, taking the hard road. But you know what? It's so much easier to face it and heal than to live hiding from it; people just can't always see that until they've started to climb that big ole scary Healing Mountain.