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Complex trauma is a bitch to be honest with you. Anyone living with it can tell you how hard it is to get through some days. Some days it’s like a battle inside yourself that never stops for you to get a break. Today was probably the worst it’s been in awhile. I think everything is just adding up and it boiled over. I knew I was on empty before couples therapy today, but I didn’t realize it was going to be as difficult as it was. I can’t recall most of the session. I’m actual

I’m not doing good today. I keep having panic attacks thinking my therapist is going to terminate with me. And the frustrating part is… she hasn’t done anything that would make me think that. Nothing actually points to that being real. She cancelled because she was sick. She emailed. She rescheduled. She was normal. I know that. But my brain doesn’t care about the logic. I noticed the calendar changes, I noticed the cancellation, and my brain just went straight to “you’re goi

Today my therapist had to cancel my session last minute because she’s sick. I struggle in general with last-minute changes… but it’s even harder right now because I don’t have enough data or experience with her yet to feel grounded. I don’t have a pattern of behavior to reference, nothing in my body that knows “this isn’t a recurring thing,” nothing steady enough to fall back on. It’s a brand new relationship, and sudden changes hit differently when you don’t have safety buil

I’ve tried to type out a post several times talking about today but my brain is mush and I just can’t speak clearly enough for it to make any sense. So the update for now is… my session was cancelled last minute today and I’m kind of just sitting with that for right now. I’ll type out a more detailed post at some point but idk how long it will take me to feel like I can communicate clearly again.

Therapy doesn’t feel like a place of relief for me anymore. It’s not my therapist’s fault and she’s doing everything right… I just feel dread around it now. I don’t want to feel this way. I want it to be a place that feels like relief again. A place where even when I’m working through the hard stuff, I can feel like I’m not alone. Right now I can’t connect, which means I can’t feel that way. It’s just dread and anxiety and, if I’m being honest, grief and sadness and anger. No

You know… for once I actually know what I should talk about in therapy. But it’s also the last thing I want to touch. Losing my aunt. Losing my cat. Having a therapist I was in the middle of trauma work with choose to dip out by email. The fact that I’m still grieving the first therapist I ever worked with. Nope. Don’t want to go there. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not right now. There’s this other part of me that keeps whispering that maybe I’m not cut out for EMDR. That maybe i

Today I stopped to notice something small, so many bees drinking from the flowers along the lagoons. It felt peaceful to stand there and just watch them work. My brain is still quiet today. I’m tired though. My sleep hasn’t been at its best, but that’s okay. I’ll take a little sleep deprivation if it means I get some peace in my head. Anyway, I wanted to share this photo I captured, a bee on a flower, just doing its thing.

I was reflecting on how far I’ve come in being able to feel and name sensations in my body. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not something I have access to every day, but from where I started, I’m definitely at a completely different level. Anyway, as I was reflecting, remembering how much shame I had around trying to feel my body made me want to talk about it, to normalize the feelings that can come up when you’re not used to feeling your body. At the beginning, I couldn’t feel anyt

The night ended with my wife and I, in the middle of a cane field, taking photos of the night sky. I somehow got lucky enough to capture a shooting star. Check it out. Today was just what I needed.

This whole day has been good. I don’t know if you can feel the weight of that sentence but I need you to. I need you to understand that this is rare for me. And I can just hear the therapist question: “What was different about today than the other days?” Ma’am, I don’t know. I woke up like this. I drank a peppermint bark coffee? Are you telling me I can ditch the mental health meds for peppermint bark coffee? That will solve all my problems? This whole time? lol That line, I

I started my morning with a peppermint bark coffee. Funny thing, I used to only drink iced americanos and would turn my nose up at drinks like this. Not out of coffee smugness or fragile masculinity… I just never really liked sweet coffee. But lately, I’ve made exceptions for fall and winter flavor specials. It was a good way to start the day. I had a productive morning at work where everything felt a little easier, like I wasn’t forcing myself through each task. Maybe the co

There are some things I can’t write about. Some things I can’t let myself sit with long enough to find words for, even privately. I wish I could explain the complex nature of trauma. Or maybe I just wish I could explain mine. Some days I see things clearly. Other days I feel like the biggest pile of shit for even allowing myself to see them that way. It’s wanting desperately, deeply to be loved. To feel loved. And knowing that cup might always stay empty. I don’t know if I’ll

Today was my aunt’s funeral. The room was adorned with beautiful flowers and filled with so many people who hold love for her. I spent time with my cousin (her daughter) and listened to stories about my aunt’s life that I had never heard before. My favorite was hearing how my uncle met her. Picturing their love just beginning brought a smile to my face, even in the heaviness of the day. She was the baker of the family. She made every family member’s wedding cake, including my

I feel apathetic but also dirty like everything around me needs to be scrubbed raw but I can’t even get up my body feels heavy like i’m made of dust and old air I keep thinking if i could just clean something maybe i’d feel more like myself but i don’t even know who that is right now there’s no thread to hold onto no center just this dull static in my head each state i’m in carries its own kind of pain numbness burns different than sadness but it still burns numbness feels li

I want to walk out into the middle of the woods and scream until no sound can escape from my mouth. I want to punch a tree until the bark becomes my skin. I want to fall apart and never get back up again. I want to lay in the dirt and decompose, so I never have to feel the pain of not being enough..or being too much…ever again. I feel like I’ve only gotten worse since therapy. Maybe it’s that I’m realizing how much of me isn’t made for this world. Maybe it’s that I can’t exis

Last night my two year old niece slept over. Sometime in the middle of the night, she started crying, so I put her in bed next to me. When I woke up, she was cuddled against me. It was one of those moments that makes you pause. The kind that feels too simple to describe but still manages to fill your chest. This morning all she could talk about was wanting her nails painted. Lucky for her, her uncle also enjoys a good nail color collection. She picked purple, my favorite shad

I’m tired. Emotionally and physically. I don’t have much room in me to be vulnerable about what’s going on for me internally right now. A lot of it brings intense shame and it makes me feel selfish, so I’d rather keep it as a private process. It’s probably something I should process in therapy, but I don’t know if I can even let myself speak aloud about it. Anyway, I still wanted to show up to my blog today, but I think this is as much as I can give for now. That I’m in a pla

Tonight I’m feeling grateful for my best friend, Everett. He knows exactly what’s going on with me, and the second I said I didn’t want to talk about it, we slipped right back into our usual goofy rhythm… no awkwardness, no heaviness. No undertone of worry, because we have a sense of trust woven into our friendship. We know if the other person needs support we will say it. We talked for hours like we always do, laughing about nothing and everything. It’s rare to have someone

Tonight’s one of those nights where I have to write letters like this. The kind that spill out of missing someone I can’t reach. I wish I could tell you how much I miss you. How much I wish I could have been in your office today, sitting across from you, the air holding that quiet safety that always felt like a soft landing. I wish I could have heard your familiar voice filling the space between us. I miss your therapeutic silence, the way it could hold the weight of my grief

I had a very emotional afternoon. I ended up opening up about everything with my therapist. I didn’t plan to—but I’m also not very good at bullshitting, so when direct questions are asked, it’s just easier for me to be honest. I’m glad I did. I needed to talk about it all. Now I just feel… depleted. All the crying, all the remembering, all the trying to make sense of things that don’t make sense. I miss the connection I felt with my first therapist. It’s not that I don’t like