What Doesn't Kill You Will Try Again Tomorrow

Well well well, if it isn't hearing over and over that past trauma makes me a stronger person. It's really hard to hear stuff like that when you can't function. When the more that comes at you, the worse the trauma reaction is. 

The pain other people can't see, they can't understand. How horrible it is when the pain is inside of you. You can sympathize for those being physically tortured, because you can see it. You can't see the psychological. 

Glennon Doyle had Kate Bowler on her podcast, a woman who had been ignored for her pain by doctors, and after months and months when she was finally taken seriously, she was only given a couple months to live.

Kate said,

"I love it when people switch around cliché phrases like 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' to things like, 

'What doesn't kill you will try again tomorrow.'"

And Glennon responded,

"Yes, I have people who talk to me about how their assaults made them stronger, or how their abuse from their parents made them stronger, and I'm like, 'Did it really? Did it really make you stronger?'"

I have to say that I completely agree with that statement. 

I don't think what I've been through has actually, truly made me a stronger person. 

After this week, I've come to the conclusion that I'm actually a much weaker person mentally because of what I've been through. 

Other people wouldn't be psychologically tortured over the small things that I am. It's just true. 

Ability to function wouldn't go down. Ability to do what you love, to follow your routine, to be with people you already see every day… to even move. Will to live wouldn't diminish. 

My brain wouldn't be wired to sabotage relationships. My brain wouldn't race a million miles a minute with obsessive thoughts that I'm going to be abandoned and slowly but surely lose important relationships. My body wouldn't have an anxious sick feeling that can't go away until validation, resolution, and reassurance. When the reassurance and validation is something that most people are able to give themselves subconsciously. It's a core understanding that they won't lose what they love, that they are lovable, "helpable." 

Having past trauma takes away that core feeling, weakening the brain to easily react to things. 

I'm not stronger, I'm sorry, I'm just not. 

I have a knowledge of tools I can use in situations that cause these reactions that other people don't have… that they also don't need as often as I do, or in relation to small triggers. Does that make sense? 

I feel very, very weak today. I don't feel strong at all. 

There are many things I wanted to write about today. Like the 2 year anniversary of my book! 2 years, and so much has happened. My thoughts have evolved, I have evolved, relationships have been grown and lost. I want to post about it, but not today. I want to post about good, more positive things that have happened. I want to post about anything but what I'm posting about right now. But here we are. 

I read a beautiful book called Bravey by Alexi Pappas. She is a new role model to me, and I don't use that word lightly. I have a short list of role models. 

Throughout the book she talked about her relationships with other older women, the loss of her mother to suicide, her intense acute battle with depression, her fear in chasing her goals with becoming an Olympian and film maker and actress. 

So many things hit me, but one in particular addressed my anxiety, eating disorder, and depression. 

I have rules for myself. Some of them I don't even think about, and some of them are very present in my mind. 

Eating disorder rules like how I can only eat x times per day (which is why my dietitian tells me how many times I need to eat a day in order to break this rule), or that if I eat my whole meal plan, I have to do all my exercise. I'm not going to give rules that are too specific so I hopefully don't trigger anyone. 

Depression rules, like if I'm not being treated the way I deserve to be, then I don't matter. If I have trauma reactions, then I don't belong here. Etc. 

Anxiety/trauma rules - If I don't get reassured about someone being there for me every time I talk to them, then they might not be there. If everyone in my life doesn't agree that I won't be abandoned by everyone else in my life, I might be abandoned. If someone doesn't respond the way I expect them too, I am unlovable, and must get them to respond the way that I need them to or else I'm not loved or everything is changing for the worse. 

It's funny because most of these statements are phrased as hypotheses "if, then" statements that we all learned in science class in 5th grade. What's also funny, is that because they are phrased this way, they are provable statements. All of these statements have been disproved to me after some point, and yet they are still rules. 

However, with my brain, these outcomes of "then" become true to me if the "if" happens. For the eating disorder, the rules are futile. They just keep me in a relentless cycle. For the depression and anxiety… they are calamitous. I believe horrible, awful things about myself. I would say it also makes relationships harder, and I will, but I will frame it this way:

It makes them harder for ME. The people who are meant to stay, will stay. The people who love me, will stay. They will survive my trauma reactions and rules, as I survive theirs within the dynamic, because we all have to make it all work.

But it makes me miserable. Having these rules makes my life miserable. I live in fear and shame. I don't just visit fear and shame from time to time, I live there. 

Now, because of my problems I may be faced with losing more than other people for those who can't survive the dynamic, which sucks for me. But I also couldn't survive their side of the dynamic either, if they couldn't stick around. 

Anyway, this is what Alexi Pappas said in her book Bravey.

"Rules that don't feel right probably are not right. My mom must have had a rule that if she couldn't be perfect, she would rather be nothing at all. I wish she could have known that we are the ones in control of our own rules. We have to know that we are the ones making choices, that we make the rules." page 210.

How empowering is that… questioning who even set these rules! My brain must have set them at one point. Whether to protect me from trauma repeating itself, or because the world had me internalize a belief about myself, but no one is holding me accountable to these rules. And really none of them feel right at all. Did I mention they make me MISERABLE? 

I don't want to end up at the end of my life, chasing my rules to the point of, least harmful, never being happy, to most harmful, losing it early. 

WHO HAS A RULE THAT THE NEW YEAR NEEDS YOU TO CHANGE? I know some people have averse reactions to the thought of resolutions and others feel compelled to have a sense of newness. Everyone has their own truth. Here's my contribution to the arbitrary conversation:

Looking for a way to start the new year without making impossible new year's resolutions? I say, write down your rules, and break them. Rewrite new ones. Even if you can't ingrain them the way that your current ones are ingrained immediately (which you can't), just rewrite them. We have to start somewhere, don't we? 

I'm breaking a food rule tonight. It's New Year's Eve. I won't tell you what the food rule is, but it has to do with a food I'm only allowed to have at certain times. No one is encouraging me to break this rule, I'm breaking it myself. Screw all of it. 

BLAH. I'm not feeling very good today. Glennon was talking about how she hates the idea of "waiting" for better. I feel like my life, with my anxiety, is ALWAYS "waiting." Hope is important, but waiting is torturous. I need to believe that I have what I need right now, or else I will always be waiting for things to be better, to work out, to not torture me. But gosh darn it it's painful. 

"When none is well, all is well." God, help me internalize that one. 

Good luck folks, you are lovable. Go break some rules.

My sugar cookie person that will die in just moments when I eat it, on a holiday tinted by trauma.