this won’t be a big post, i think. it’s just going to be a bitty little reflection on some stuff that’s been on my mind and hasn’t been processed because i’ve been in full-on school mode for a minute. it’s just been a period of stress for a little while that i’ve been avoiding dealing with cause i’ve been tired! excuses and whatnot. which my therapist would probably say is valid, if not healthy. we only have so much mental energy, right? it can only be divided in so many ways. that’s been something i’ve been trying to do better with. you gotta give yourself some grace.

anyway, through this period of extended stress i’ve also been listening to a book and reading some articles that touch on trauma. and that’s another big thing for me. i know that i have trauma, and that i’ve experienced difficult things. but i can’t pinpoint the specific events in my life that were traumatic. it’s endlessly frustrating and crippling to my mental-health-self-confidence. it’s invalidating to not be able to know what even caused these feelings! and yet, i have nightmares sometimes. i have moments of intense fear and anxiety related to my trauma that occur almost unpredictably. and, one of the most frustrating things for me, reading about trauma, its effects, and healing is overwhelming to me. even though i can’t place why i feel these things, they are incapacitating at times. for example, i started Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score and dropped it after less than an hour. i feel like it’s some mechanism of my body, or my mind, avoiding “completing the cycle”, as Emily Nagoski put it.

this “cycle” is the cycle of stress – the body’s natural response to life-threatening situations. i learned it as ARE: alarm (initial stress response), resistance (fight, flight, freeze), and exhaustion (the collapse into tiredness after a fight). in my very unprofessional opinion, i think i’m stuck oscillating between alarm and resistance, never to actually hit the final come-down.

something else i’ve been trying to work on– and it’s especially helpful when working with students that get fixated on negativity– is gratitude. i find that when i focus on the good in life and in situations, i feel better. crazy, huh? it definitely requires conscious thought. effort. but it does get easier the more it happens. and so, even though i’ve been really stressed lately and overwhelmed, i have been trying to frame things positively. i try to think of what i’m thankful for, the things that make the stress and negativity worth it.

since beginning this post, i’ve had a session with my therapist in which i discussed all this. as always, it’s crazy how helpful just talking through things (with a qualified individual) can be. the main insight for this session was that trauma and shared experience is not so much about the events themselves, but the feelings that those events caused. he brought up a good point that even though my nightmares aren’t about being chased by a monster or a killer, the feelings that are evoked are still much the same as they would be if i was. the feelings that i experience because of my trauma are similar to the feelings others experience because of theirs, even if the events that led to our traumas differ. this was a huge revelation for me.

i think we’ll be done for now. maybe i’ll add more later. maybe not. see ya!