Self Made Thought Blocks

My mind creates its own thought blocks. It puts up blocks against passions, dreams, an ability to feel and process what is going on. I only realized this when I was on three hours of sleep and was able to just speak my mind to my psychologist and dietician without my anxious mind stopping me from saying what I actually felt and thought. This feeling scared me as I realized how much my mind is able to hide from me during my day to day when I am trying to function on more than three hours of sleep. I'm glad I figured out that I am hiding from myself, although it sucks to know I can do that to myself, hiding dreams, issues, and thoughts. Writing this I feel crazy saying that I don't know all the thoughts running through my head, but knowing how messy and confusing my mind is, makes it a bit less upsetting. Understanding my creation of blocks can give me the opportunity to try to figure out what the blocks are being put up in front of, and how to start moving them individually. Just thinking about it as I am writing now in the middle of the night, one of the main blocks that has been coming up for me lately is blocking any idea of dreaming about I want to do in my life, instead of dreaming big which I used to do. I have somehow blocked my dreams and ability to think about new ones. Part of that is my large fear of failure, leading from an unhealthy obsession with perfection (that I'll leave for another blog post). Thought blocks come partially from my anxiety, that isn't a good reason to leave them be. Time to sit inside my mind and make some order.

Falling feelings like a Failing

I hate falling. Not mentally falling, but physically crashing to the ground. I hate when my legs collapse without letting my brain know beforehand so I can prepare and not try to stand up and walk at that exact moment. Yes, I have the privilege of being able to stand up and walk short distances and I know that it is a privilege that not everyone has. That being said my disability and functional sometimes legs don't usually give me a warning when they like to take a break while on duty. The issue becomes that my first thought and feeling when I fall is a failure which leads to an extreme feeling of anger at myself. The anger is automatic, I feel it before I allow myself to feel the physical pain of hurting myself during the fall. I hate the feeling that is underlying the anger, the lack of control that rears its ugly head every time my body does something without me telling it to, or giving me a signal before. It is one of my biggest struggles with my disability, the lack of stability in my body,but more importantly the lack of me having any preemptive knowledge of how my body is going to react to trying to get out of chair, standing up or bending down to pick things up, or grasping a glass to drink,amongst many of the daily tasks. The lack of control in the specific moment of the fall is large but it isn't necessarily the worst thing to happen.  The problem is the shame and anger combine into an almost lethal amount of self-hate, and the desire to be in control of the pain dished out to my body. This usually leads to a confrontation between me and the person asking if I need help,as I am not angry at them,rather my body,but in that moment I do not have the emotional capacity to explain that to the person trying to help me. Figuring this out is helpful for me but I have yet to be able to take this understanding and turn it into practice when I fall.

Fresh Showers of Tears

Tears. I have fought myself for years about tears and shedding them. I always felt like they showed too much emotion and weakness to myself and others. The lack of letting myself cry, even when I started to tear up, I would brush them away and force my emotions back inside my body. The evolution of letting the tears fall came super slowly, from realizing that pushing the tears back inside made the wave of emotions I didn't understand stronger. Letting the tears fall is still hard doesn't matter if I'm in a safe space with someone or on my own I still feel the shame of letting my pain and 'weakness' show. Sometimes it's even worse on my own, as the voices in my head telling me I don't have a good reason to cry and trying to remove me from feeling the pain and being in the moment. The thing is I've felt better after every time I've cried, regardless if my reality has changed or not the tears were a shower of calm. Personally, I find the best is crying in the shower with music on, it somehow has the strongest release of emotion. Tears are hard, I think I learned growing up in a lot of physical pain that no one could take away that tears scared others around me, so I stopped crying and put up a brave face. The problem was I didn't learn a good way to deal with the pain so it turned into a myriad of ways of self-harm. Self-harm doesn't always look the same, my self-harm journey has many twists and turns and I will write about it someday, but for now cry when you are in pain, and when someone around you cries,sit and allow them a safe space to let the self shower of tears fall.

Hating the Fall after the Rise

The Fall is always the same. The problem is the Rise looks different, today it was studying for five hours straight on an empty stomach. A few days ago it was sleeping during the day after not sleeping at night. Sometimes its spending time with family, sometimes it's being alone for a weekend thinking I'm doing self-care. The fall used to be the worst thing that could happen to me as I never believed I'd get to another Rise, which sent me into a deeper depressive cycle then what the down needed to be. Now I understand the cycle a bit, it doesn't necessarily make it easy to go through, but when I get to a certain place, I understand where I am and am more easily able to just be in that space in the cycle of the rise and fall. The fall is sometimes where my most creative moments happen, but it's also where some of my most self-loathing thoughts emerge from. The balancing game is to figure out how long can you allow yourself to fall down the never-ending black-hole, while still managing to see the sparkling diamonds of the high. The rise wouldn't come without the fall.  It is learning to love each place, the dark and wet creative place, and the warmth of the sparkling high and the time it takes to reach both places, and the cycle, knowing you will be back in both places again.

Self Inflicted Punishment

Self-inflicted punishment doesn't always look like punishment to the outsider. When I go to the gym on an empty stomach to create that punishing feeling to my body that I crave unhealthily, you the outsider just think I'm doing a good thing for my body by going to the gym. Most of the times going to the gym isn't used as a punishment, but every good thing can be used at different times as twisted mental punishment on my body. One of the many problems with self-inflicted punishment is that because it is your own mind creating the punishments they dont always flag as punishments which makes it hard to stop the punishment. It takes a lot of self-understanding to sit and evaluate the thought processes that your conscious mind is somewhat hidden from, by your unconscious. That process can only happen once you have flagged the thought and then have the mental capacity to breakdown and process the thought and accompanying emotions. Its a hard process as the unhealthy voice that is creating the thoughts tries to keep them unconscious to keep you doing the actions it wants you to do. Fighting the sick voice takes on many different angles as different realities trigger different emotions and self-inflicted punishments. Sometimes acknowledging the self-infliction of pain is the best you can do at that time with that issue when that is the case for me I have learned to try and do a different action of self-care that is not connected to the issue that I am fighting myself on. Self-inflicted punishment is basically a constant in my life that looks different almost every moment of the day, and I hope the more I am aware the more I can replace the unhealthy punishments with new tools of self-love that I learn.

Locking up Life's Palettes

 I lock up my creativity, as the power of self-expression scares me. The first step is always, the excuse of not having time. There are all always things to be done, which makes running away from yourself easier. It's a weird feeling, being afraid to sit alone with myself and just pen and paper. Sometimes it feels like your hand connects to a deep part of your mind writing out your inner conflicts, and feelings you haven't allowed yourself to feel. The first response to this phenomenon is to lock away my soul and emotions. Allowing the lies of being ok to filter through and overtake any questioning change.  The problem with continuously locking away my life source is that you forget that the life source exists while wondering why you're dying inside.
Emotions are the color to the black and white sketch of life.  Many times colors clash when they meet, and at the moment it looks like a mess. But as time passes and the colors blend into a unique painting that only you created, only exist because you felt the colors rather than falling into the cycle of grey. Canvases get switched at each major event in life, paints of emotions you know continue with you. There, of course, is the option to learn and create new colors. They will then always be in your toolbox for future canvases of new realities. The blend of colors is controlled by your control of balance. The colors of emotions hit the page in jarring jabs and only time and healing create blends of beauty. Fighting the color just muddles your mind into a grey fog, which only is released by immense color.

Not living for today.....Living for the next five years

           During my stay in the psychiatric ward getting out of my suicidal sand bar, the mantra that was instilled was just live today. Find a way to get through the day, coloring, listening to music, watching random videos; just make it through a day without succumbing to my unhealthy thoughts. That mantra is important and powerful when you don't want to see the next sunrise. The mantra became routine and for two months in a closed ward that's good. There were sparks of life for the next month or next semester that started showing up once I was mostly balanced on my medication. They were the next benchmarks achieved and they were the right step for the time.
         But there is an issue with just planning for the next month and the next semester,you get bogged down in the small details that at the end of the day have no long term impact on your plan. The plan that you need to have to keep you going on that daily path of functionality. There is only so much power in getting through today for tommorow,once you belive in the tommorow again. Now I need to sit down and reevealutate my dreams and build a loose plan to get to my dreams. Not to over plan-that is a problem I create when I plan out the smallest details and leave no room for life to flow beyond what I think can happen. I need to plan so I feel like I have goals and dreams I'm trying to achieve without creating too much of a pressurized reality that I collapse. It is far from easy but I think it will help me find deeper inner happiness that will be long-lasting. I will continue living for today,while also living for the next five,ten and fifteen years.