Not Running Away

It has taken me a very long time to learn to sit with my feelings instead of running from them. For my entire life, I was so disconnected from how I felt that I couldn't have given you an honest answer. I was fine, perfectly fine. No need to worry!

But as I've written on here before, that couldn't have been further from the truth. I was struggling, but I had stuffed everything down so far that I didn't even know I was doing it.

A somewhat funny memory that I always think of when talking about this is when I was still seeing my very first therapist and I told her about a song I had just listened to. I told her it was about changing myself for other people to like me, and hiding my feelings. I said, “I don't think I relate to that.”

She looked me dead in the eye and said, “Yes you do.”

I may have only been her patient for a year, but that woman knew me better than I knew myself, and I am so grateful for her. She taught me about anxious thought patterns and how to respond to them. Towards the end of my time having appointments with her, I began journaling.

As any budding writer, I had an obsession with notebooks and journals when I was growing up, but I never actually wrote in them. I don't have anything interesting to say, I thought. These notebooks just look pretty! But when I went to the store and picked out a new journal for myself, I promised it would be different this time.

I didn't make myself write in it everyday. I would do my best to pay attention to my anxious thoughts and what might have triggered them, and I would analyze it all before talking to my psychologist about it. It was a good system, and it helped me work out what I was feeling so I felt more comfortable saying it out loud.

It's odd, experiencing such strong feelings after bottling them up for so long. Whenever I panic and feel overwhelmed by anxiety, I can't believe there was a time I was ever able to avoid those feelings. How did I never notice that I felt like this?

That also scares me a bit. The level of disconnection I felt with myself was so deep and so hard to dig out of that even when my mind was trying to send signals for help, they went by completely ignored.

I'm still in the process of unlearning these habits, but I have made a lot of progress. Not only am I better at identifying my triggers, but I can also use (healthier) coping mechanisms to remind myself that I'm safe.

This is one of those things that, unfortunately, just takes time and work and practice. There isn't a simple step-by-step process to fix it. It's taken me five years to get to where I'm at, but there's still more work to do.

I'm rooting for you, you can do this!

–Abbie