Trigger Warnings: Boundaries and Empathy

TW: suicide attempts, suicide

 I was going to write a follow-up post to my hospital stay, instead, I had a triggering experience in my psychology class so, I'm going to discuss triggers. When the professor talked about suicide without any warning on  Sunday morning, I decided I needed to share my thoughts and try to explain why the first line on this blog post is incredibly important to me, and most people. Somehow society has decided that giving a trigger warning is weak and makes you a "snowflake". First of all yes I am unique, and there is no one else like me, so yea a snowflake. Secondly knowing your boundaries and understanding that others go through things you don't understand and trying not to hurt others, or push others to hurt themselves makes you empathetic, not weak. The first thought that might come up when you push back on trigger warnings, is how could words that are spoken or written trigger an emotional response they are just words? That is of course not true as the words are shared to connect to people either to educate or to evoke an emotional response and create dialogue. Words have power people wouldn't use them if they didn't. When the teacher mentioned suicide attempts and thoughts this morning she wasn't trying to hurt anyone, yet I, as someone who struggles with suicidal thoughts, ideations, and sometimes even attempts got thrown off my mental seat. Talking about suicide with no thought to the fact that others may be going through struggles with it and no warning creates a space of fear, I had no idea what she was going to bring up next. The way the students were answering her questions about suicide.  And the discussion brought to the surface many of the same thoughts and emotions I went through. Can I handle it, today yes, but I felt bad about maybe needing to leave class as it was a shock I wasn't expecting, but I didn't want to leave. Secondly, I didn't want to bring up my issues in the middle of a zoom lecture to the whole class. I speak about suicide and a pipe dream I have is to write a book about it, but that happens when I am in charge of choosing to think, speak and write about suicide when I am in the mental space, where it doesn't harm my mental health and spiral me to a dark space. This morning I had enough mental energy to acknowledge that what was being said was triggering, take myself mentally out of the class and take my mind off of the thoughts by playing a game and then doing some cleaning after class. Had this discussion been thrown at me on Friday night the situation might have ended with me ideating about suicide and sliding down the path of suicide itself. This idea that society has internalized about having emotions and sharing them and being impacted by others is a huge part of the breakdown in our society. Our words have an impact we are the only species with the gift of spoken language (technically, not going down that route right now) and the use of language for connection or dissent is on us. Emotions and mental struggles are not unique to me, the choice I have made to share more has shown that to me with the number of people that reach out. I have lost people to suicide and have lost myself and refound myself through suicidal thoughts and attempts. That idea is for another day.  The importance of empathy for others and the choice of words is for today. Your words have power, and you already know that as you use them to help others, to connect, to hurt others intentionally or not. Trigger warnings are mental boundaries for people, they give me and you the choice to check in with yourself to see if you are mentally up for the discussion. Having and knowing your boundaries and understanding that everyone has mental and emotional boundaries, and that doesn't make anyone weak. Use trigger warnings even if you still don't understand the meaning of it as it can save many lives, and each life is invaluable to this world.

Psychiactric Hospital series: Part 1- The first days: Restarting the Race

Leaving the hospital is like being pushed off the dock on the start line of a rowing race. You use short, fast strokes to come to your balance and come to race speed, and only then do you slow down and lengthen your strokes for the duration of the race. Before the race starts, you know you have the skills and abilities to compete you have done the same things a thousand times in practice. Yet the nerves and pressure of the actual race change your initial response till you find the inner place of knowing your abilities and trusting that you can handle it. The first day and week out of the psychiatric hospital are the start of the race. Pushing open the door out of the hospital is adrenaline inducing, similar to the start of the race.  With that comes returns of the pressures of the race of the outside world-of life. The first afternoon when you get out, there is both this excitement of being out of the hospital and having your own space and being able to sleep in a completely dark room (#roomates, a story for another time, maybe.) Of course, you also get to choose what you want to eat for meals, which is a double-edged sword. While sometimes or even a lot of times the hospital food wasn't overly impressive, you were served three meals a day, without you having to do any thinking, shopping, and cooking. While I sometimes find cooking relaxing, the recreation of all the hospital structure immediately feels overwhelming, that hopefully turns into a small burn and then completely off, but being in a global pandemic doesn't help the process. One thing that came up right was having to organize my medications and set up timers to take my meds on time. In the hospital, we are given our medications at specific times without you having to do any thinking or preparation. You almost don't notice it anymore as you get used to the schedule of the hospital, but especially with the addition of an evening medication for me created an extra thing to remember that I struggled with for the first few days. Another internal struggle that arose in the first days out was the internal pull to two sides.  One to go back to the bubble of coloring and audiobooks in the hospital and the other side wanted to organize and get back to doing all the things I was doing beforehand. The balancing act is to keep rowing and change my behaviors as needed, as dictated by the race and my internal abilities. The art is understanding what my mental capabilities are each day if it's a day for a sprint or trying to keep rowing the race no matter how slow your strokes become. The first days pass in a blur like the start of the race sometimes, with the focus completely on finding the internal and external balance to rowing the race of life.

Ownership of my Wrists

Unchaining My Wrists

TW: Rape,assault,cutting 

My wrists. they came up briefly in my a few of my Pride series posts and they have been a point of contention for me my entire life. This is an intense post one I've felt bubbling but have been struggling to write and talk about since I found this sketch and got the tattoo on my wrist. I haven't owned my wrists for years. How can I say that? They are part of your body, you own your entire body. First of all, to that, I'll say you have never lived in a disabled body before, but that's a topic for another post. Secondly, I'm pretty sure most people who have been through any type of assault, will tell you taking back ownership of your body is one of the hardest struggles long after the incident. 

The first time I felt like I didn't own my wrists I was probably three years old, having cerebral palsy meant I wore leg braces since I was two or three until 9th grade. I got these braces made, probably once a year and that required being casted as a mold for the braces. Which also meant as someone who is partly claustrophobic and hating to feel confined, but I was too young to explain how the process made me feel inside, I would just try to pull or push the casts off my legs, so the caster had my mom hold my wrists and lay me on my back. I think it took me two or three years of this process so by the time I was eight years old I knew to just lay on my back and wear my internal wrist chains. These chains laid dormant for years,or so I thought. But thinking back to when I started hurting myself I never touched my wrists, whether it was pinching, slapping, digging in nails, cutting, burning lightly. Many people assumed I wasn't hurting myself since they couldn't see the results. Especially since society has mostly decided the only place people assume self-harm cutting happens is on the wrists. I really never thought about that at that point in time but most of this self-understanding came sitting on my psychologist's couch many years later talking about tattoos. 

This lack of ownership of my wrists continued when I was assaulted by a healer when I was six, I had already learned just to be quiet and let my wrists chain themselves to the table. This continued when I dated a guy and was used to just being quiet so when I even bothered to say no it was easier to just be quiet, when he grasped my wrists, they weren't mine to ask back for anyway. 

Finally, I started taking my body back for myself, but even my first tattoo there was discussion about getting it done on my wrist but decided on the forearm instead, for a variety of reasons, but an unconscious one, was that I still didn't feel like I owned my wrists. It took years of therapy, coming out of the closet, and learning to own the rest of my body to realize I didn't feel like I owned my wrists. Giving an explanation of the internal turmoil that happened anytime someone grabbed my wrists, and sometimes even my hands. This tattoo thought process was faster than some others I had planned, but I think that also explains where I was emotionally and mentally processing some of the old moldy boxes in the recesses of my mind. This sketch of a cracked heart growing new flowers of life came up in a tattoo giveaway, I didn't win, but the sketch entered my brain and found a spot next to the semi-opened up box of pain, and the growth coming from it. The sketch nestled itself into the box and helped empty it out a bit more, and then sitting on the couch again, I realized that the perfect place for this was on my wrist. Taking back ownership of my wrists one step at a time. 

Giving Grace

I am hard on myself. Regardless of how much I'm going through and how much I still achieve, I'm notorious for getting upset at myself when I'm having a mentally down day, and continuing the spiral downwards. During this time, while having so much of it thanks to the global pandemic, it has given me plenty of chances to practice giving myself the space of grace to be in the dark rather than getting angry at myself for not being in the productive state. Grace is something that really doesn't come easily or naturally to me, be it as a reaction to some of partially how I was raised, I feel sometimes with too much grace, and trying to remove anything that was uncomfortable and made my life harder at the specific moment in time. I remember even when I was very young my reaction to that was to work harder and to push harder to get to that uncomfortable place of pain and growth since it wasn't the norm, rather something I craved. While I do find it hard to give myself the grace space, I find when I do I can actually get back to what I want to get done faster. Sometimes it's coloring for five or ten minutes, sometimes it's going outside and just soaking in some nature. I don't know if anyone is into not giving grace like me, I started noticing that even though I love seeing flowers around where I was going, I literally wouldn't stop to smell the roses.  Until I started having this excessive amount of "free" time when I could and would finally listen to the voice telling me to keep moving and then shoving it out and started giving myself the grace to slow down and actually stop and enjoy the flowers around me. Actually stopping and appreciating the shape, color, and individuality of each flower. I even started letting myself photograph the flowers and try to snapshot that grace I felt for myself in the photo. This grace that I have found in slowing down and enjoying the flowers and photographing the moment, I'm trying to bottle the grace and use it when I get down and hard on myself and give myself the feeling of smelling the flowers and inhale some grace.

Internal Expresssion Restrictions

Sometimes I dont notice how restricting I am of self-love, and giving myself the space to be. Especially in the creative areas of my being. Over my time in the eating disorder clinic, I learned many of my restriction habits and signals and worked on the regulation of those habits with food, but not with creativity and other ways I restrict myself for an illusion of control. This came to a head as these past few days have been some of the hardest in the past month of the pandemic and pretty much complete isolation. I was in such a funk that even after my two planned workouts, a shower and a good meal, I was still just so stuck, mentally with both feeling so much and feeling nothing at all (that specific mental space I will elaborate on another time). I knew this had to do with feeling like I had no way to export and process the mess that was just a pressure cooker inside my mind but didn't really know how to relieve the pressure in a healthy way. Luckily in all my mindless scrolling of Instagram, I happened upon a good friend (basically a sister) post discussing the creative block along with a coloring book mid color. This reminded me I actually had a coloring book and inspired me to take it off the shelf. Of course, I struggled with the classic thought I have "Don't waste the coloring book you dont have so many, and this one is special you bought it your last week in Florida." My thoughts seem to not be my friend most of the time, but I managed to walk myself out of that ditch with "Yea, its special so use it in a special time, and also you can buy more coloring books, they aren't exclusive to America, and also there is Amazon you know." Finally, I opened the book up to where I had last stashed the pencils and realized it was a very unfinished picture from the one night I stayed up as late as they let me in the psychiatric ward coloring. This brought a different wave of emotions-the first one was shame. "Am I in such a bad place like when I was in the psychiatric ward that I need to color?" My immediate response to that thought was "seriously? just because you colored when you were in a bad state in the hospital, it doesn't mean you are in the same place. You can be in different places and still color to relax and calm your mind." So after running a mental marathon with myself over a coloring book and some colored pencils, I opened it up to a new design and started. I put on some background music- classical cello has been my go-to for a while (it makes me miss my days of cello, but also puts me in a calm space, another post another time). I colored for a while and could just feel my mind release-I mean I haven't been able to write anything for weeks and have been actually trying, it's not perfect and my mind sent other thoughts, but I was able to just fall into the soothing rhythmic colors and lines and tried to relax into the experience. Funnily enough, I chose a picture of a bird to color in and the picture I started to color in the hospital was of fish, so probably another post to analyze another time.  For now, I am just going to try and hold space for myself and not overrun my mind with thoughts and when I get overrun, then let them out.

Balancing Listening and Self Hate

I hate listening to my body. Living with cerebral palsy and chronic pain, you cant always listen to your body if you want to get things done, or just like have a daily routine. The problem is when  I get under the weather, I like to just power through until I get super sick and then I'm out for way too long . I got under the weather this past weekend when I stayed out too late listening to a friend, on top of just dysfunctional body issues. So for once, I listened to my body and slept more and actually took days off from working out. This created the feeling of failure, as I have been on this consist workout routine, with the point being to do the same workout for 100 days. Now my mind took this and decided that it had to be every day for 100 days, which was good for some points, it meant when I was on vacation in London I still made sure to do the same workout every day all weekend. The second side of this coin though was not wanting to give myself the time I need to heal when I'm just a little under the weather rather than waiting till I'm completely out cold. The problem is that the feelings of guilt, self-hate, a lack of consistency and inability to follow through on a routine, these thoughts rise up and overwhelm my mind entirely. This stronghold on my brain makes it harder as then it continues making excuses convincing me my body isn't well enough to work out for a variety of reasons, breaking through these reasons are harder than just getting up and working out. This can very easily derail the entire process of already working out the same workout for 26 days. Picking myself back up and controlling my mind while balancing my body is hard, but the feeling after the workout makes it worth it. Not the physical spasms and sweat, rather the feeling of owning my mind for that short time.

The Fear of Always Being Broken

My first thought for the title of this post was "the fear of never getting back to being healthy". The major problem with this title that I found for me was that I have this illusion of healthy that I want to get back to. For me its the year 2015 I was living in Florida training for the Paralympics in rowing, that includes training twice a day most days and then even managing two semesters in community college. Now my mind like many minds likes to gloss over the weekends I spent curled up in my closet in this silent stunned dysfunction, freaking out from thunder sending my mind on loops about dying from some PTS after an incident in the summer war (that's a story for another time). While I was having fewer struggles with my binge eating disorders (partially because I wasn't fully aware of the depth of the issue) there were totally Friday binges and then Saturday and Sunday fasts. The problem that is created with cracking holes in my facade of the perfect year, is the feeling that comes from that, the feeling of having never actually been ok. This realization of never actually being ok before leads my mind down the rabbit hole of anxiety, always being broken, never being whole within myself. This leads to intense fear about a personal inability to be whole within me. It does release the idea of getting back to myself, which in some ways creates the opportunity to be better every single day, yet creates a larger fear of the unknown, and feeling like I have no idea what tools I need to get to this place of being not broken. In a way, this creates the necessity of being ok with being in a broken state while still working to no longer being in this state, which is rather hard to achieve. I'm not sure the fear will ever disappear, and I'm not sure it would be healthy for it to completely disappear,hopefully, I will at least learn better tools in which to function in the fear.