Blogs
Naturally, every victim of verbal abuse has their unique story. While some circumstances may be similar, each person's healing journey will take its own path and timeline. For myself, it took many years before I was ready to face my past and deal with it to begin healing. As I continue my journey, I have met and spent time with many other survivors, all who were at different phases of their healing.
Self-harm fanfiction can be a tool for healing or a harmful trigger. It all depends on the writer's intent and the reader's discretion.
Living alone has either been the best thing for me or the worst, and it fluctuates often. As an adult living with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it's easy to stray from the task at hand or spend a whole day doing nothing.
I recently realized there is a safety to wanting nothing. In spite of the fact that wanting nothing in and of itself is horrible, that safety can actually feel comfortable -- especially after a long time.
Receiving words of affirmation does not come naturally to me. My instinctive reflex is to feel uncomfortable whenever someone compliments me—even if the person doling out this kindness is a family member, close friend, or my partner. I automatically want to minimize the compliment, so as to deflect attention as far from myself as possible. But as I continue to live out the process of eating disorder recovery, learning to receive affirmation feels like the next step in my healing.
I have aphantasia, neurodiversity (a different way of thinking), whereby I am unable to visualize. Most of you reading this now can easily imagine a sunset, a calm lake, or fluffy white clouds against a crisp, blue sky. I simply cannot conjure images. Having a blind imagination, as it's sometimes called, used to trigger my anxiety insomuch as my inability to visualize used to cause frustration, anger, confusion, shame, and a feeling of failure.
During my mental health journey, I have experienced the harmful effects of stigma with regard to learning disabilities and mental illness. In school, students bullied me for being the last person to finish tests. Therefore, I thought I was stupid. The stigma placed upon me by my classmates led me to shame (or stigmatize) myself. Thankfully, I have gained many strategies to stop self-stigma from controlling my life. Here are five techniques I use to stop self-stigma.
"Wow, you look so pretty in that dress." -- Compliments like these are hard to accept when you have anxiety.
Around this time last year, I decided to cancel my gym membership and practice yoga at home to support my binge eating disorder (BED) recovery. I wanted to try a new way of exercising that would help me lean into my recovery. I'd been experiencing a deep shift of motivation in my recovery, and I was encouraged by my counselor and my partner to try something new. I had a feeling I'd outgrown my gym routine, and I wanted to experience a new way to interact with my body.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that I’m someone who can become overwhelmed fairly easily. Sometimes, I think it developed in my adulthood, but maybe it’s just something I never noticed or had the words to identify as a child. Whatever the case, being overwhelmed negatively impacts my mental health, and I want to talk about it to address the stigma around it.
Everything I've read and heard indicates that DID is for life. You either learn to live with it functionally or you let it become dysfunctional, but you don't "cure" it like you can cure someone of the flu.
What I have learned about switching on queue is that it is a "sometimes" thing. It depends on how well integrated the alters are and how good communication is within the system, how willing they are, and how safe they feel. I hope this helps. Usually, when DID is first acknowledged it may not be possible, but with time and therapy cooperation not previously even conceivable becomes habit.
Take care,