All Apologies

If you apologize for something, but then you keep doing it? Then you didn't really mean that apology.

If you apologize but you have to add a "but" after it? It's not a real apology.

I don't need your fake apologies.

I am beautiful

I am finally starting to look at photos of me now and seeing the beauty in myself; beauty I have always pushed aside because I'm too fat, my teeth are crooked, my eyes aren't straight, etc, etc, etc. It has been much healthier for *me* to find love for myself like this than it would have been to do all of these huge diets in order to lose weight to love myself.

Anxiety attacks can come in unexpected forms

Sometimes when I'm just going about my day, doing nothing in particular to cue an anxiety attack, I get this feeling of heaviness in my chest and quickly behind follows this feeling of dread. It says to me, "Your life will only get worse and worse. Nothing can ever get better, and everything you try to do will fail."

By this time the heaviness in my chest is accompanied by a numbness that spreads out from my chest and eventually takes over my entire body.

It can last for 10 minutes if I don't take my Vistaril (anti-anxiety).

It scares me so much, especially when I'm working on something important to me, like my business and the things I'm doing with the Timebank and I begin to wonder if that's a sign. I know, rationally, that it isn't.

This one just makes no sense to me. It has no trigger. It just lies in wait until I'm fairly happy and then it lunges at me and digs it's claws into my chest.

Thanks for that, Anxiety.

Back Down to Earth

Sometimes you feel like you're superwoman. You're doing well and you're happy and you feel so much better. You think you can tackle your goals and it will be fine.

But then you take that leap and realize too late that the ground is coming up way too fast.

I've been running on adrenaline all day, which is something that people with disabilities do sometimes. You don't have the energy for it, but if you run at medium speed you can keep going and going until the end. What happens when you stop though is that you crash.

It seems funny to me that Superwoman could be taken down by a simple square cake, but alas.

After the panic attack all I could feel was this heaviness. And now I want to sleep, but knowing anxiety, I won't be able to for a long time tonight.

It would seem to me that my depression/anxiety is trying to make a statement to me: Don't expect to be happy for long, because I'm still here, and I will make sure you realize that.

To say I love you

I'm struggling a lot with beliefs right now. I have a whole 2 pages of beliefs that get me all messed up already and still shifting through some of it.

I believe that if people don't try and contact me, don't ever say they are thinking about me, don't say they love me, then they don't. I know that's not true, but that's how it feels all the time. That I'm being cast aside.

I'm feeling very, very cast aside right now and melancholy about the reasons why. Maybe this is how the world has to proceed for the future to end up before me. I don't really know.

All I know is that it leaves a very cold, numb feeling in my body.

What will it take to make me feel again?

Shadows Have Claws (Trigger Warning: Cutting)

It's easy to fall back into old habits. My right upper leg is a testimony to that. It has been for years. My plan has been to get a tattoo there so it wouldn't be so easy for me to just grab the scissors and slice. But I haven't been able to do that yet, and so the new marks form.

Last I checked this morning they were still seeping blood. Not a lot, but enough to need bandages still. I had it all wrapped up last night, then decided I wanted to try something different because those cloth bandages suck and got these huge bandaids. I'll clean them out again tonight and see what needs to be done.

This is a hard shadow to face, because shadows with claws fight back. They lure you into their trap, make you believe they want to help, and then they strike.

It almost hit the jugular last night, but my husband stepped in before it could get there. I could easily have been found today in one of the parks in a blanket, dead.

So cheers to Asher.

That's strong evidence.

I ask my husband to give me evidence against my belief that I am a burden to everyone.

Ash: "You do stuff."

Gratitude #2

I am grateful to have food to eat.

Gratitude #1

So I think it will help me to say something I'm thankful for every single day. So I'm going to start that today.

Today I am thankful for my gaming friends. :)

After The Attempt (A story of a suicide attempt)

Don't Order the Headstone Yet

I'm sure most people didn't really notice, but a few did: I was offline from Friday evening to Tuesday afternoon. It wasn't because I wanted time away from the internet or because I went on a nice vacation.

Friday night I took 50 Tylenol PM in a suicide attempt.

I am extremely lucky to be alive. We got the ambulance there not long after I did it, and they gave me charcoal to drink. I was in the ICU for about 3 days with IVs and a catheter in. Then I was moved over to the psych ward on Monday and was there until Wednesday (so ~3 days in the ICU, and 3 in the Psych ward.)

I am going to be making a video to answer any questions people may have. I thought that would be better than just typing it up.

So, please put your questions here, or on Facebook or Google+ and I will be making that soon.

I am thankful to still be alive.

The broken glass

Have you ever had thoughts you can't stop thinking? Maybe you can't forget that kiss you got last night, maybe you keep worrying about your next job review, or maybe it's as simple as making sure you remember to get those eggs at the store!

I think everyone will have raised their hands by now.

Have you ever not been able to stop envisioning yourself throwing yourself from a moving car? Maybe you see visions of yourself cutting your own wrist, or maybe you think about what life might be like if you lost the most important person in your life?

So many hands have gone down.

Some of those hands shouldn't have gone down.

I think an important part of shadow work is to face these parts of yourself. If we can't admit these parts of us exist, how can we grow and get to a point that we can hold the control.

I don't like the idea that I have these thoughts in my head. I don't like that an image of my broken body on the side of the road can invade my thoughts at any time. I have no way to really explain why it happens. It doesn't only happen when I'm upset. It just comes into my mind, and I can't just shoo it away afterward.

I keep building the globe back up, this glass frame around me, but I can't escape the broken glass still on the ground.

If I the glass up and make it into something else, can finally be free?

What shadow work means to me

What is shadow work? (in my own words)

To face one's shadow is to face the side of yourself you want to hide from the world. To face the thoughts we pretend we don't think, the feelings we ignore, the part of us the world would reject.

In the philosophy and psychology world, there is a term that is used: the anti-self, otherwise known as the evil side of man.

The anti-self is the reason for every bad decision, every controversial thought. When you are selfish, it is because of the anti-self. When you think taboo things, such as killing (whether it be yourself or someone/thing else), it is the anti-self. It is everything that fights against the good within you.

Shadow work brings you face to face with the anti-self, the shadow, in order to better understand yourself and to liberate yourself from the chains you, society, family, everything places upon you. You take back control of yourself and your life by finding a way to walk with your shadow rather than against it.

It is only by accepting our shadow that we can control it.

What shadow work means to me

For what seems like my entire life now, I have had issues with mental illness (Depression, PTSD, Anxiety) that has seemed completely out of my control. I've gone through therapy, I've taken medications, I've been hospitalized. But I always seemed to be pulled back into it with no real way to pull myself back out.

This, with the aid of my trauma therapy, finally feels like a chance to gain control back. My brain will no longer be a prison because I can finally get the upper hand.

It means freedom.

Shadow Work

The term shadow was first coined by Carl Jung to describe the parts of us that we hide or try to ignore. It is made up of pieces of ourselves that we pushed down and denied in childhood as a coping strategy. These are all the parts we are ashamed of, that society rules as wrong or unacceptable, the pieces we don't want our friends or the world to see.

So, you must be wondering why we would want to find them then.

Let me quote The Work of the Soul:

"Through this work one is able to slowly deepen and include all of the many interior aspects and to be loving and kind to that which was previously rejected. This eventually allows us to be more compassionate to both ourselves and to others. It asks us to change our views, perspectives and beliefs. It asks us to invite the other in and to embrace our weaknesses and turn them into strengths. 

When we work with the shadow we begin to reclaim the projections we put on others. We turn inward and begin to gently listen and heal those aspects within ourselves instead."

In my own shadow work, I will be going through various books to help me find, face, and accept my shadows, and have decided to let you in on my journey in hopes it will help me learn and accept even more than I myself can see. 

Welcome to my shadow.