be kind to yourself. healing is a journey.

healing isn’t linear. you will have your good days and you will have your bad days. you may have experienced moments of relapse but remind yourself of this one thing: you are doing amazing.

just because you wake up feeling low on energy and want to stay in bed, doesn’t mean you’re having a setback.

just because you relapsed doesn’t mean it’s a restart to your journey. i understand that it was frustrating, it happens and you’re no failure. there is always the opportunity in getting back up and continuing on your road to success even if there are obstacles.

everything is a process. you will and already have gotten undoubtedly stronger with every passing day.

wanting to heal and grow was the biggest and most important step you could ever take. the first steps are always the hardest but you did it. i’m proud of you. be proud of yourself too.

take things slow with yourself. if your body wants to rest, let it rest. let your mind rest as well by letting go all the worries of “why you’re not active”. who cares if you take a slow day? do you know how much you’ve been through? the least you can do for yourself is be comfortable in your own bed without a care in the world. you’ve experienced enough guilt. let yourself be free knowing that you deserve to rest. you deserve moments of stillness. enjoy the now. it’s all we have. we’re not always meant to be up and running. we simply weren’t made that way. 

there is beauty in stillness, peace, and quiet. don’t put it to shame. instead, let your mind, body, and soul experience more of it.

do things at your own pace. if you think you can get up, brush your teeth and that’s all that you can do for the day, so be it. don’t force yourself to do things you can’t handle. you’ll be doing more harm than good. take it day by day. add an extra task as days go on. do something you believe will be fufilling like going on a quick walk around the block, going to the store to get a drink, baking a treat, sitting outside for a few minutes at a time.

this is your life so this is about you. cater things to your needs. you are important! if you don’t like something, don’t do it. if you feel tired, rest. if you feel like reading a book for fun, go for it. if you feel like going out with friends will boost your mood, plan it. if you don’t feel like the people around you don’t influence you to do and be better, let them go. if you don’t like that your thoughts are constantly reminding you of troubled things, meditate and practice flipping them.

you decide how all this goes. i just need you to remember that you’re doing everything right and the most important thing is to be kind and gentle & take it step by step. life is not a race, angel. you have all the time in the world to heal and transform.

— Nicole Addison

— Nicholas Sparks

I hate that the stock response for "I'm lonely/I feel undervalued by my loved ones/I want a romantic partner" is "well do you value YOURSELF? You need to learn to enjoy being alone!" as if lonely people aren't very intimately familiar with being alone. Self esteem and love are important but they're not substitutes for companionship or friendship or romance and pretending that loneliness is a personal failure that can be fixed by self-improvement feels not only delusional but pretty cruel

u know what makes me cry..... that one van gogh quote about life changing for the better..... “many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. and it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘what do i care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ yes, evil often seems to surpass good. but then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. one morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. and so i must still have hope.” yeah..... Crying....

How to Leave the Past Behind

When you’re feeling overwhelmed with your sadness and loss, it’s hard to believe that your life will ever change, or you’ll ever be able to smile or laugh again. But the truth is you will – it won’t always be this bad – and there are things you can do help move on with your life:

1. Decide to face your pain. An unresolved past never really goes away. You may think you have buried your anger and pain but the hurt is still there and it will surface later on. If you don’t face what happened, and the feelings it unleashed, you will end up being ruled by your subconscious mind. So try and find the courage to revisit all the pain.

2. Accept there’s nothing you can do to change the past. What’s happened has happened, and what’s done is done. There’s nothing you can do to turn back the hands of time, or to rewrite the story so the ending’s happier. But you can change how you think, and you can start over again, and build a different future that’s not poisoned by the past.

3. Be grateful for the good times. There’s usually something good that you can be thankful for. You don’t have to pretend that everything was bad – or write off any good times and happy memories.

4. Consciously let go and set your focus on the future - Don’t let the baggage, or the failures of the past, affect your identity or self esteem. You are not what you did, or how you acted previously. You’re not just a product of what happened to you. You are valuable, unique and you have so much to give. You’re the author of your future; you control your destiny.

5. Remove your past from your future. We all have a tendency to think that the past will morph into our future – and become our lot in life. But that doesn’t have to happen. The future’s a blank page. You can change your expectations and work towards those goals. Instead, look hard for the exceptions – the times when things went right – and notice what you did that resulted in success. You still have those same strengths, skills and great qualities.

6. Be realistic and take small steps at first. You can’t snap your fingers and find that life has changed. Accept it will take time, and you will still have some bad days. But if you keep on going then the past will lose its grip.

You don’t actually need to have been in a psych ward, or in hospital, or have self-harm scars, or have a huge, visible breakdown, for the pain you’re in to be taken as seriously as it should be. People tend to think that pain is only intense and severe and worth taking extremely seriously when they see outward, visible signs of it, or when a big event has taken place, like being taken to the hospital, or to a psychiatric clinic, etc. But lots of people just get up, go on with their day, and come home and wish they were dead. Pain is pain. Suffering that can be seen is no greater than suffering that cannot.

It's OK if you are struggling to process the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. It was hard. Some are still processing 2020 even, and that's OK too.

Personally, I'm right there with you. Don't shame yourself for struggling, you're not alone. 💛🌸

sometimes people will do or say something that utterly baffles you and you may never understand why that happened, may never get any answers or explanations. i sympathise with you, cause i know just how difficult and tedious a task it can be to move on from such things. maybe it ends up making sense down the line, maybe it won’t. sometimes people do weird shit and it’s more than okay to be upset, puzzled, sad, angry, hurt, and maybe even traumatised by it. i see you. i feel you. you’re not alone and don’t worry, not every person out there will be like them. there will be likeminded people that are on the same wavelength as you. keep going, lov.

— Nikita Gill, Powerful One Sentence Reminders To Read When You Are Doubting Your Growth And Healing

Recovering from trauma and abuse is less about "pushing yourself out of your comfort zone" and more about creating a comfort zone and learning to stay inside it. Don't let anyone convince you that there's no healing to be found in comfort, stability and safety when that's something you've been deprived off. Don't let anyone convince you that your recovery process has to hurt all the time in order to be considered valid.

Trauma didn't make me nice, I consciously made me nice because I don't want anyone else to suffer like I did. Trauma didn't make me strong, I made me strong. Don't you dare ever tell me my trauma made me anything but scared, broken, and confused. Don't give credit to the abusers for me being a good person. They didn't make me good, I made myself good.

in case no one’s told you yet, you feel exhausted and hungover and sometimes even sick after panic attacks/meltdowns/flashbacks/dissociative episodes/etc. because of very real chemical processes that are involved in your nervous system activation and de-activation during those times. it’s chemical dump effects, and no, you SHOULDN’T be able to just brush it off and feel and act normal. you’ve got a bunch of physical things that got activated and that all has to wind down. It’s not in your head, it’s very physical, and you need to work WITH your body during the after-periods instead of trying to curb stomp it. be gentle to yourself, okay?

I suspect quite a few people on this site don’t realize they are struggling with the effects of chronic trauma. In particular I think more people need to learn about the symptoms of C-PTSD.

Distinct from general PTSD, Complex PTSD is caused by prolonged, recurring stress and trauma, often occurring in childhood & adolescence over an extended period of time. There are many risk factors, including: abusive/negligent caregivers, dysfunctional family life, untreated mental/chronic illness, and being the target of bullying/social alienation.

I’m not a mental health professional and I’m not qualified to diagnose anyone, I just remember a million watt light bulb going off in my head when I first learned about C-PTSD. It was a huge OH MY FUCKING WORD eureka moment for me—it explained all these problems I was confused and angry at myself for having. The symptoms that really stood out to me were:

Keep reading

— Melissa Cox

Abusers are generally great at something called “manufacturing insecurity”. It means, even if you’ve never been insecure about something, abuser will create an insecurity about it, solely for the purpose of emotionally manipulating you. Meaning, when you’re not doing, saying, or thinking what they want, they have a go at your “insecurity”, triggering your pain, fear, guilt, shame, everything they taught you to feel, as a way to teach you that this pain is what you’re going to get if you fail to obey them.

It’s not exactly hard to manufacture an insecurity (provided you are cruel and vicious), all you have to do is take a social norm and convince a person they aren’t good enough in one or all departments. You convince a person they’re too loud, too fat, too ugly, slow, naive, gullible, stupid, lazy, selfish, sexual, provocative, demanding, and that this is the reason why they will always fail, it’s a reason why they keep getting hurt, it’s a reason why nobody will ever love or care for them. It’s utterly cruel, and an absolute lie. Deviating from the “norm” in any way is not a reason of any of those things, if you’re getting hurt it’s because people are hurting you, if you’re unloved it’s because people around you refuse to show affection and care. These things cannot be the individual’s fault, it’s always the environment setting person up for pain. And abusers already know this. But they make a step to convince a victim it’s all their fault, everything others do to them, their fault. And even worse, that they deserved being hurt.

This kind of nonsense blaming everything on unrelated trait of individual can lead to a person getting terrified they could have somehow caused horrible things just by being themselves, that it’s impossible to even predict what might happen to them just because they’re “this way” or another. It creates an atmosphere of panic and confusion, and they find themselves seeing no way forward but to accept guidance from abuser. Abuser then pretends to know what victim is to do in order to avoid pain and failure - of course, only up to the point when abuser decides to inflict pain on purpose, to control and manipulate.

You’re not stupid if you fall for this kind of trap, it’s designed to work on people who are self-aware, who work on getting themselves better, who are trying their hardest. You don’t even have to lack confidence, abusers will take a confident person and eat their confidence away. And once caught in this situation, it might be hard to believe that someone would stoop that that kind of cruelty and lie to you while knowing perfectly well that you are good, that there’s no reason on earth to criticize your traits, that you have nothing to be ashamed of. That you haven’t deserved any of it.

This is so true! I was forced by the person who abused me to feel insecure about being assertive, and practicing my newly found confidence. And they do it all because they don't want to see you be better than them in any way because in their eyes you should submit to their realms. And if not they will punish you.

if someone says that they were abused or violated by [insert whatever person you know] and you choose to side with the person accused then i hate to say it but you are an abuse/assault enabler regardless of how much proof, or lack thereof the victim has. i would much rather believe a potential liar than a potential abuser/rapist. just because it didn't happen to you doesn't mean it didn't happen. be empathetic and remember that the person chose to trust you with the information of what happened to them.