All I’m Interested In Lately Is Love, Laughter, My Personal Health, Growth, And Becoming An All Around

Your blog is absolutely fantastic and it's helping me so much you have no idea. Thank you!!!

aww, that really means a lot to me :3 i’m so glad you’re finding it useful. thanks for the message!!

That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief

The coronavirus pandemic has led to a collective loss of normalcy.

Understanding the stages of grief is a start. But whenever I talk about the stages of grief, I have to remind people that the stages aren’t linear and may not happen in this order. It’s not a map but it provides some scaffolding for this unknown world.

Grief counseling is something I have found hugely beneficial for dealing with the inconsistencies and unpredictability of living with multiple chronic illnesses. It was suggested to me by my therapist, who realized that my rapid cycling emotions weren’t just due to the ADHD, but because I was also constantly in a state of perpetual grieving; grieving for my past self who suffered and endured, for my current self still going through it, and for my future self, and a future that will forever be steeped in uncertainty.

I will always be in a state of grieving, because the stages of grief are not linear, and even after you reach the stage of acceptance, you will always carry some shard of the experience with you. In my case it’s less a shard, and more my entire existence. I live in a perpetual state of open-ended uncertainty. 

And now, so does everyone else.

You are grieving, both for the things going on right now, and the things we anticipate that will happen as a result. You are grieving, and that’s okay, you need to experience these emotions and process them. You are not being irrational, you are not being weak. You are being human.

Be kind to yourselves. This will pass. It will pass like the kidney stone of an angry god pissing vengeance into the wind. But it will pass. 

This is just extremely helpful right now, if you are feeling overwhelmed by current events, and maybe tempted to give up on the whole notion. TW for non-graphic suicidality at the link (but like... how to deal with it!)

Thank you for writing and sharing ❤️

I wrote a post as someone who has gone through months-long periods of time when I genuinely believed it was the end of the world and couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed because of it. These are some emotional strategies I figured out along the way, and hope they’re helpful to someone else.

People always think you gain trust first and then you’re vulnerable with people. But the truth is, you can’t really earn trust over time with people without being somewhat vulnerable first.

Brene Brown (via samxcamargo)

Levels of relationship, part 2: Safe people

(Part of my ongoing series of posts on Avoidant Personality Disorder. You can read part 1 of this post here.)

Having a safe person means so much.

When you have a safe person in your life, that relationship becomes really important. Here’s why.

With a safe person, I am welcome. It’s okay to exist.

They’ve demonstrated that they won’t hurt me, even when they have the chance. (They prove this by just literally not doing it, over time.)

They don’t react in the ways that I fear.

They’re consistently kind and supportive of me.

They’re actively considerate of my feelings.

A safe person cares about your feelings.

They really want to know how you feel, and they want to make sure you’re okay. How you feel actually matters to them.

And this is SO important for us -- because with AvPD, we are not good at dealing with our feelings. We’re not good at standing up for them, expressing them -- or even sometimes being aware of them.

So when someone proactively cares about how we feel, and maybe even encourages us (gently!) to open up ... it’s like they’re creating a space where our feelings are OK. It’s OK to have them, and to feel them, and to talk about them. And that’s something I don’t think people with AvPD get to experience much.

This could happen as subtly as you having an anxiety attack, and them acting calm and accepting instead of freaking out. You just get the sense that it’s okay. You’re okay with them.

Because our feelings are “allowed” in a relationship with a safe person, we’re able to let our walls down and let them see who we really are. It may only be a tiny bit of visibility, but it’s often a lot more than we have in any other relationship.

And when they respond positively to our self-revealing, we get emotional affirmation, and we can feel accepted. Which is hugely healing.

When we’re with them, we feel more like a whole person.

That emotional support and acceptance, in fact, is just like what people without AvPD get from their normal relationships.

And that’s why it’s so important to us. We have the same need for acceptance, friendship, and being liked as anyone else -- it’s just so much harder for us to receive it.

So with the rare person who can soften our defenses and let us feel safe being close to them ... that’s a treasure we never take for granted.

A note about dependency

I do think there’s some potential overlap with being dependent on someone (like with DPD or codependency). I became absolutely obsessed with my first safe person, and it wasn’t good for me or for them.

But I also think it's natural to value a “safe person” type relationship very highly, and to want to be close to them, and I don’t think that’s automatically unhealthy. This is just something we need to be aware of, and it’s a good idea to check on boundaries and comfort levels once in a while.

You can have more than one!

Just like people without AvPD can have more than one positive relationship, people with AvPD can have more than one safe person. It’s just equally rare to find a second person you “click” with that way. But there’s nothing automatically exclusive about it, and it can be nice to have more than one person to talk to.

It’s also a spectrum. Each relationship is unique, and it changes a little with every interaction. You might have one safe person who you’ve known for a long time, and then another one you’re still building a relationship with. The important thing is whether you get that sense of emotional support and acceptance from being with them.

And who knows? Eventually, you might just start calling your safe people “close friends” -- because that’s pretty much what they are for us.

“So much harm comes into this world when the wrong thing is said. But that’s nothing compared to the pain from what goes unsaid.”

—

Brad Meltzer

(via purplebuddhaquotes)

In this post I mentioned how, even in a good relationship with someone, I still question whether they’re going to reject me when I let them see things about myself. Even though I have no reason to think they would.

That’s part of how I differentiate normal, “reasonable” fears from disorder-y, “unreasonable” fears, now.

Is it connected to the real situation? Does it depend on actual facts, interactions, history? Or is it detached from all that -- “it exists no matter what’s actually happening,” “nothing that happens could make me feel confident and relaxed” -- is it an arbitrary fear.

And if it’s arbitrary? Then I know it’s not grounded in reality. I am feeling afraid because my mind tells me I should be afraid -- because of my mind, not because of the situation I’m in.

That could be an invalidating way to think, for some people. (People vary!! If it’s not useful for you, don’t feel bad for throwing it out!) But for me, it’s been very powerful. Because if the only “no” I have is from a fear that isn’t connected to the real, present situation, then I am actually free to choose whatever I want. Including trusting someone I love, and showing them the thing, and allowing myself to be seen and loved in return.

And that is, I think, what is allowing me to slowly, really heal. “Corrective experiences,” perhaps, to replace the ones that taught me to be afraid in the first place.

How To Feed Yourself When You're Depressed

Depression has a sneaky way of creeping into all aspects of your life, and making you not care about any of them. And yes, this includes food. Eating is a prerequisite for life, so it makes perverse sense that, for many people, it’s among the first victims of a depressive episode.

I just like this article a lot. ❤️ I know I’m not the only one having a difficult time right now, so maybe it will help somebody out there.

so heres a thing my mother always said to me growing up when i broke something on accident that i think is really important

and i know, from watching my friends and seeing their panic and terror when something broke, that not only were not nearly enough children told this thing, many children were punished in place of being reassured

and thats heartbreaking

so heres the words from my mom that i was always told, and theyre the same words that anyone who never got to hear them should hear now, courtesy of my mom, who has repeated those same words to many a friend of mine and now to you

if i ever broke anything, the first words out of her mouth would always be and have always been, “are you hurt?” 

i would say no

she would say, “thats okay, then”

and i would ask why

and she would say “because it was just a thing- even if its a nice thing, or an old thing, or an expensive thing, its still just a thing. it can be replaced, or we can live without it. there is only one you. there will only ever be one you. you will always be more important than just some thing.”