Heal at your own pace

This is more of a self note but I thought it would be helpful advice for people going through similar experiences. It’s not easy opening up online but when I was younger I had to deal with a lot of heavy situations alone, and if I can help at least one person that’s all that matters to me.

I feel like with any given situation people can have their own understanding of how to deal with things. For me personally if I am going through it and I tell someone, I often get caught up in how I should move on. If you have had experiences before where you weren’t believed, you understand. Especially with deep, complex things, I would rather just keep it to myself because the idea of someone judging me for how I decide to move on makes me sick to my stomach. I have struggled in the past to recognize that everyone heals at their own pace, and there are no set rules on how you should move forward. If you take years to recover, or if you take days/hours, it’s all unique to your experience and no one should have the right to judge you for it.

For example, a lot of situations in my life I have been forced to move on fast for the sake of my mental health. It doesn’t make what happened to me any less real. It was just what I had to do to survive. And there have been situations where it’s taken me years to do something I love again because I still haven’t healed that part of me yet. Both are normal, and both are okay. If you’re like me and tend to overthink every possible thing in the world, it can be easy to get caught up in other people’s perceptions of you, instead of your own. The perception you have of yourself is the only one that matters in this world. Because in situations where you need to be there for yourself, thinking about other people’s opinions will only bring you down. There will be times when people don’t know your full story and will make assumptions based on their level of understanding and that’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up over the things you can’t control and start focusing on you.

Not being believed when you are practically begging for help is one of the worst feelings in the world. Not only does it destroy your sense of safety, but it creates this void of isolation. You start to go through things alone, and stop trusting completely. Building trust is also such a hard thing to do when you’re already so low. So today I’m going to give you some tips on how to build trust with YOURSELF again. I believe trust with yourself is so important to how you carry yourself.

When I started building trust within myself again I started by journaling. I know I always talk about journaling, but it truly is a great way to get deep with your subconscious, and to start understanding yourself/patterns better. I would start off with a simple prompt like “why do I not trust myself?” “What are things I don’t trust?” “What are things I don’t trust about others?” and journal everything that came up. This is a great way to get everything out. If you don’t like to journal another thing I do is either record voice memos or literally just talking out loud. It sounds weird as hell but if you struggle to open up to people, this is so helpful. Talking about what actually happened, to release the overwhelming feeling is so important to the healing process. If you keep it to yourself the stress just builds up. So I always start by releasing.

The next steps I do to building my own trust again is taking everything easy. I will start to listen to what I need, instead of what other people are telling me I need. I will limit any set routines, and just take things day by day. ( if routines make you feel safe then continue to do so, this is just what works for me). I get back in touch with my inner child and watch childhood movies, eat fun snacks, do things I love, ect. But the most important thing to note is I do things that I want to do. In this process of my trusting phase, I am really just listening to myself and taking actions that reflect that.

Another thing that helps is building a healthy relationship with your intuition. I will start off by saying if you were ever taken advantage of, things like this can be hard to navigate at first. Because sometimes you can feel like everything is okay and fine, but then randomly it’s not and it feels like it’s your fault. But im here to tell you that being taken advantage of has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the person. It can be a struggle to trust yourself because you think things like how could I let this happen to myself? Why couldn’t I protect myself? And the thought of trusting yourself again can be very hard. You could have the purest, most accurate intuition in the world, and being taken advantage of would still have everything to do with the person who did it to you. You can’t control everything in life, but the healthy relationship you have with your intuition, will help guide you to more positive experiences. It helps you to understand your wants and needs, and actively choosing the things that bring you happiness. It helps to to recognize unsafe patterns and people, and can help you to know when to leave. As a chronic overthinker, I sometimes have trouble figuring out if it’s my intuition or my anxiety. One of the biggest tips I learned when distinguishing between my intuition and anxiety, is to tune into the energy of what you are feeling. Anxiety feels restrictive, fearful, bad. Intuition feels expansive, clear, and calm. An example of this would be, let’s say I’m on a plane and randomly get a thought that the planes gonna crash and I start to get super anxious because what if that’s my intuition? Because the thought feels fearful and restrictive, it would be anxiety. It doesn’t feel clear, it feels chaotic and cloudy. A good example of intuition would be when you’re toxic relationship that you know isn’t good for you and you start to think things like “this person isn’t good for me anymore” or “I know I shouldn’t hang out with this person again”. This feels more calm and almost like a gut feeling. The more I practiced distinguishing between my anxiety/intuition, the more in touch with myself I got. It is definitely a constant practice, but by implementing this daily you’ll see a lot of improvement.

I want to end this by saying that you can do everything right in this world, and still be hurt by people/experiences/places. The world is very unpredictable and unfair. But how you choose to go about your pain is what matters. Moving forward is what matters. Your experiences have shaped you, but they don’t make you. You have the authority to change your life for the better, and to overcome any obstacle that’s thrown at you. It’s never going to be easy, but over time your strength with guide you. Also note that your pain is your pain, and only you understand exactly what it’s like. No one should ever have the authority to tell you how or when you should move on. You don’t need peoples opinions to distinguish how much you sacrificed just to survive. Only you know how much it took to get to where you are today, and for that no one will ever have the power to tell you how to live.

If no one told you today I believe in you, and I love you. I am also thinking of putting together a survivors/mental health group where people can open up with stories, tips on healing, support, ect. It would be great for people without access to therapy. so if that is something you would be interested in please let me know!