After years of struggling with anxiety, depression, and PTSD, I set out on a journey to improve my mental health. At the time, healing my mental health looked a lot like engaging in self-care, changing my diet (from the food I ate to the things I paid attention to), and rewriting my core beliefs to align with who God says I am. Years of abuse had altered my core beliefs; not being able to see past the trauma from the abuse, I believed I was inadequate, unworthy and a hot mess.
The problem with this is that our thoughts create feelings that create behavior, so the more I believed those things to be true about myself, the more I acted on the feelings those thoughts created, ultimately keeping me stuck in a vicious cycle of trauma responses. Only I didn’t know that then, I simply mistook those trauma symptoms and responses as my personality because they were so deeply ingrained in who I was, or so I thought.
Growing up in foster care it was easy to get lost in mistaken identities. To maintain my home, I often felt like I had to make myself smaller to the point of near none existence and in turn became a people pleaser. I was fairly quiet and a good student so my mental health issues were often overlooked.
Then trauma-informed care wasn’t really a thing, and I didn’t really understand the feelings that accompanied the traumatic experiences I had so I pushed them down only for them to eventually grow into suicidal ideation. The daughter of addicts, I also found myself fighting genetics I didn’t understand and later ended up dropping out of high school when it all became too much.
Though I am far from that girl today, healing from trauma continues to be something I actively need to engage in on a daily basis. While mental health recovery is possible, it takes consistent and ongoing work. I imagine the healing process looks different for everyone, but throughout this blog, I will take you on my journey of discovering ways to improve mental health. What works for me may not work for you, but I pray that in reading my story, you are inspired to seek your own journey of mental health recovery.
While post-traumatic stress disorder is super real, so is post-traumatic growth. Getting to growth may be far from easy at times, but if you can push through the limits in your mind, it can be attainable. Despite having dropped out of high school, today I have a Master’s in Special Education and work as a Behaviorist who writes plans to support individuals in overcoming their challenging behavior.
Recently blessed with a beautiful baby boy, I am also a first-time mom navigating my way through postpartum. Now, healing from trauma is more important than ever. I want to do everything in my power to change the trauma narrative so the following generations receive healing passed down as opposed to trauma.
We may have little control over certain situations in our lives, but we do control how we respond to those situations. Remember, thoughts create feelings that create behavior, so don’t be afraid to challenge those thoughts! Check out my post on Core Beliefs to begin.
“Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.”
M. Gandhi
