Tag Archives: self-improvement

mental health

Should you see a therapist?

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This question is something that I’ve asked myself several times before seeing my first one. But here are some things that I used to do that made me consider going to therapy.

Feeling like you aren’t in control of your reactions.

Do you ever say or do something that you were confused about or felt it was out of your character? I was doing the same thing way too often. And I couldn’t pinpoint why I was acting the way I was and therefore couldn’t tackle the issues I had. I felt like I was not showing my true self and needed help having the reactions that I wanted to have.

Thinking about situations over and over again.

I used to lay down for bed wide awake with all of my past mistakes replaying as loops in my head. It occurred for so long that I thought it was the norm. But it’s not and I was ruminating. It was slowly causing a decline in my mental health as my sleep was compromised.

You turn to substances daily to manage your stress.

Nothing is wrong with your alcoholic beverage every once in a while but if you are using it as a crutch to help you wind down from the stress of daily life every day, consider seeing a therapist. Your problems can’t be pushed down with alcohol and/or other substances at the end of the day and are yearning to be felt and let out.

Do any of these speak to you?

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mental health

Why Yoga is Essential for My Self Care

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Here are some reasons for why I have been incorporating aspects of Yoga into my daily life:

  1. It reduces my anxiety: Concentrating on connecting my breath with movement dramatically reduces my anxiety every time. Even doing a light 20 minute practice improves my mind set.
  2. It helps me focus: Taking in deeper breaths and therefore increasing the oxygen and blood flow to my brain does increase my focus. If I am feeling restless while working from home, I do about 5 minutes of flow (downward facing dog, plank, upwards facing dog, on all fours, child’s pose) to help increase my focus.
  3. It helps me sleep: As it helps reduce my overall stress level, doing some balancing poses and supine poses are good for getting me ready for bed.
  4. It improves my strength and flexibility: This was one of the main reasons why I started to practice in the first place. I wanted to increase my body’s overall strength. Because a strong body harbors a strong mind.
  5. Improves back pain: As I increase my strength and flexibility, I noticed my lower back pain from sitting all day at work and school was significantly improved.

What has been essential for your self care practice?

mental health

My GPS Map

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While exploring my feelings about my passions around teaching instead of becoming a Nobel Prize winning scientist, I came across this blog talking about a GPS map [source: https://inalove.world/2020/01/06/what-is-your-gps-map/].

On one hand, the author INALOVEWORLD describes the more negative GPS map labeled as Guilt, Punishment, and Sin. However, on the other hand there is the more positive leaning GPS map labeled as Guiltless, Power, and Sinless. When thinking about why I am feeling so torn about my passions about teaching, I felt I was feeling so much of the negative leaning GPS map that is driven by fear and the opinions of others.

I kept being told that students are ungrateful and I won’t get paid enough. After some deep thought I realized that can’t be true as I am someone who is so grateful for learning and I know others in my life who are too. I know a lot of teachers who feel fulfilled by their work and every day I see ads for new and booming educational based businesses.

If I let myself be stuck on my negative GPS, I would not get anywhere I wanted to be. My inner self felt so torn trying to look away from my passions. I knew I had to lean into the positive GPS and apply those concepts to my ideas to follow my heart based on my own desires and not my fears.

“Intuition goes before you, showing you the way. Emotion follows behind, to let you know when you go astray. Listen to your inner voice. It is the calling of your spiritual GPS system seeking to keep you on track towards your true destiny.”

Anthon St. Maarten
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I am

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On one hand I feel embarrassed by the disillusions my mind told me.

But on a different hand I see I didn’t know any better.

I didn’t know any better because my family didn’t, and my community didn’t, and their community didn’t see.

So change can start with me understanding, learning, and growing past these invisible blockades warping my vision.

I have enough power to change a lot.

I have these thoughts to get me through the days.

I am always worthwhile because I just am.

I am a daughter, a sister, a partner, a friend, a cousin, a student, a scientist.

I am every one of those things and also none of them.

I am fluid, I am flexible, I am kind, I am generous.

I am whole, I am forever growing, I am

❤

Thank you for being with me beloveds. Also peep at my new self love tattoo in the main image!

mental health

BiVisibility Day

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It’s been a year since I’ve finally accepted and explored my sexuality. I don’t know why I’ve always felt I had to deny one part of myself to fit into a community and feel like I belong on this world. Why did I feel I had to be 100% of anything to be worthy of love. Why do I have to hide in the darkness when there is so much room and warmth in the light.

During this past year, I’ve realized more and more how love and my relationships with others are the most important thing in my life. Opening this part of my life up has showed me to not only feel more open to love with a partner but my other relationships have been more open as well.

I can’t ignore the fact that it is hard. I’ve opened myself up to love but at the same time I’ve felt open up to hate. However, no matter how much hate I get, nothing could get me to go back in the closet. I feel free, I feel supported, and I feel loved by myself and capable to love.

I am here and I am queer. Happy BiVisibility Day.

mental health

Living in a fantasy

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I am done wishing my life away or wishing to know the future of my life. I am done wishing I was white or had straight hair. I am done wishing I got perfect grades, went to X college, and did X-Y-Z after college. I am done wishing I did not have a toxic relationship with my parents. I am done wishing my mother wasn’t a narcissist or my dad was not an alcoholic. For the first time in a while, I realized how much I was living in a fantasy world in my head. A world where I was perfect and I made everyone around me happy. I have been entertaining these fantasies since high school. It makes me feel good as I got my hit of dopamine thinking about these perfect worlds. But this is not reality.

The reality is I am an imperfect person living in an imperfect world. None of that is my fault and I should not blame myself for not navigating it perfectly. I needed to forgive myself. I forgave myself. I make up excuses and I am very forgiving of other people, understanding that life is messy and these small mistakes are okay… But for me, if I do not have a perfect morning routine, I beat myself up for the rest of the day. Or if I wake up later than I am supposed to. There is no use in ruminating about it, I forgive myself, and I am not going to let it control me for the rest of the day.

The intense shame and guilt I feel when I am making these “mistakes” are just feelings brought on by my upbringing and personal experiences. It does not mean I am a terrible person or I will never get anything right… this was just how I was treated in similar situations growing up, but I can change that thought pattern. I can break the cycle.

I am allowing myself to sense my feelings without resistance. Feel what they are doing to my body. And start taking note. I am getting curious about how my body responds to my thoughts, and if it is something I want to continue doing. Because after all, it is my body and I have a choice on how I act in it. I know I can make the choices I want throughout the day and get to where I need to be if I listen to my body and listen to my thoughts.

I want to start relying on myself. This does not mean I am going to refuse help when I need it, but relying on myself to cultivate the life I want. I am not going to rely on someone to make me more fit, or smart, or happy. Other people might provide me with the tools but ultimately it is up to me to pick and choose what I want, and I will do so consciously and willingly.

I want to bring positive thoughts to the forefront of my brain to tell those negative ones to fuck off. I want to put myself and my loved ones first. Before objects, money, jobs, etc. Also, I don’t expect to live a perfect life free of problems, but I want to live life on my own terms with problems that I am grateful for.

I’ve been living in a fantasy for too long. It started as childhood dreams but now it is holding me back. I am grateful for my current life and wouldn’t want to change a thing.

mental health

Showing up for myself

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For most of my life I was taught to not feel my feelings, to not express my feelings, and to not act on my feelings… probably like most of us. It was seen ideal if I stayed a cool “neutral.” If I was too excited or happy I was told by my elders to calm down, and if I was feeling sad and expressed sad I was told to cry in private or just to not even start crying. These regrettable actions were not just my parent’s wrongdoings but everyone around them who also taught them this as they were growing up. What I do think is strange that I don’t think anyone on this planet has benefited from trying to suppress their feelings. So I really do not understand why it is seen as okay to choose or teach anyone to ignore something that makes us fundamentally human.

For me, my feelings, such as shame and my self-judgement, and my mostly destructive behaviors go hand in hand. Whether they were behaviors where it is obvious how I deliberately self sabotaged myself or if they are the little every day decisions that I do to try and block out my seemingly harmful thoughts, my thoughts and feelings always seemed to control my actions. Because of this self-taught behavior, I thought I had to push down my feelings to act like a normal person in society. It took me years to find out that my feelings were like a beach ball in a swimming pool.. and the harder I tried to push them down, the faster and stronger they come up.

So all of these thoughts started making their way up again because I am facing a long-term bad habit of mine, being late. Now, the reason I want to change this is because not only is it something that I do not like about myself, it is something that I despised in other people… making me hate myself even more if I was late. My mother and several others in my family have this problem of being severely late everyday, like 2 to 3 hours late. My mom has forgotten me places as a kid or has been hours late picking me up from school. It drove me insane. I always get to a point where I am better at being on time for things like work, school, and social events, but I always fall off the wagon.

This morning as I woke up at 8:30am when I told myself the night before (as I do several nights) that I am going to wake up at 6am to meditate, do yoga, go for a morning run, save the entire world and make it to work before 8….I finally realized that I can’t possible do all of these things I tell myself, it is just not reality. I am just over these methods I have been trying to get myself to get up and out the door earlier. Just yelling at myself to just wake up earlier and setting an alarm was not working. Even going to bed earlier was not giving me the motivation to get up and start moving. But this was what I was taught my entire life. I should just tell myself to do something and do it right? I should’ve known even simple things like waking up earlier would take a different approach.

Well firstly, I started to admit that shaming myself into doing something is not motivating. Screaming at myself to just wake up earlier is not going to make me feel happy to wake up the next morning. All of these choices I am making are for myself, so I should take it at a pace that seems comfortable to me and not beat myself up for not going from 0-100. I realized I needed to take smaller steps in the direction I wanted to go. I needed to start actually relying on myself. I needed to be ready to fail but to not give up or criticize myself. I needed to realize that my life is changed by small consistent efforts. I did not become a vegetarian overnight or a runner overnight. I need to remind myself that I am capable of so much and every small step in the right direction will move me forward to the life I want. I also need to see that my brain is lying to me by telling me this should be easy and I should just get over it when really everything in life is just hard. Waking up early and consistently showing up for myself and no one else is hard. Building up my self esteem is hard. Building up that trust in myself is also hard. Basically I realized building up the relationship I need and want for myself is a lot of work and I should not be ashamed of my struggle. I want to fully embrace the struggle.

So how on earth am I actually going to change this habit of mine. Well the first thing I am going to do is separate myself from the habit. Just because I show up late sometimes does not make me any less smart or less of value than any other person. Just because I showed up late to two events in a row does not mean I am going to never be able to be on time in my entire life. It is not going to make me the person that is always late forever. It will take a consistent habit rebuild the trust in other people I may have been late for in the past, but change is always doable. I have already gotten how my past has influenced my opinions about lateness, but they are just opinions. I don’t have to succumb to those harsh thoughts about myself and I know I have the ability to change.

I am going to try waking up at my preferred time, let’s say 6:30am. And just getting out of bed. Even if that is laying on the floor, I think that will be my next step. I don’t even want to think about how I should be doing a thousand things because I know that will make me just not want to crawl right into bed. That is going to be my first goal to get myself out of this habit long-term. I want to be intentional with my actions and not let them be controlled by deep, repressed feelings such as anger, shame, or guilt. This is a simple example but I am hoping by tackling this seemingly small challenge first, it will launch me into forming more habits I want in my life. Because I am worth it.

mental health

Using Resistance to My Advantage

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“For ever action, there is an equal and opposite reaction…”

Sir Isaac Newton

My love for science has been questioned, chewed up, and spit out more times than I can count recently. As I was pondering about science in general, I was recently reminded of good ole Newton’s 3rd law. As quoted above, this seems like a phrase that is common sense when it comes to the objects you may encounter on a daily basis. If you throw a bouncy ball down it will come up, if you jump off that middle school canoe, if will be pushed the other way. Easy right? ..But of course this is not always the case.

There are constantly other forces acting on objects that prevent that spring-back motion we think about like in the bouncy ball example. And we also know some objects have an easier time springing back or forwards, sideways, whatever, than others. Then my mind turned to resistance. I was thinking about how resistance plays a role in the energy around us and why do some things have so much more damn resistance than others. So what do all these questions and thoughts have to do with anything? Well maybe nothing… but as I stretched my mind past the sound of my old physics teacher saying these things to me, I was able to relate this to my brain.

I am starting to accept that my brain is this flawed organ that is just here keep my whole body functioning. It is selfish and it tricks my thoughts or what I believe is my soul, into doing what it wants. But your brain does not always know what is best for you… It is going off of society’s standards, cultural standards, and its own selfish needs mostly. It also LOVES negative thinking and can be too eager or too apprehensive. It can hold you back from living your life if you let it. However, I want to figure out how to not always listen to those negative thoughts and decide on my own what I want… and make my brain follow through with it.

To get any change in my thought patterns or actions, I realized I am going to encounter resistance. Now, this was the first thing that always left me disheartened. It led me to the “Why can’t it be easy, it looks easy for that person” type of thinking. And I “believed” I couldn’t do whatever I wanted to do. Or in a different scenario let’s say I want to do something that I’ve never seen be done before so I “believed” I couldn’t do it. Well the thing is, I probably can do more things I set my mind on but what has been holding me back is that I was listening to my brain. My brain who was calculating risk based off of my past instead of actually coming up with solutions to get where I want to be. I would let my brain win every time and trust its selfish nature, and eventually give up. I want to re-train myself to suppress those negative thoughts as they do not benefit me. From an evolutionary standpoint they are necessary as they helped us survive all this time as human beings. But right now all of those negative emotions do is hold me back and cause me anxiety. For me, it is best to check them more often than not.

But here is another thing about resistance, it is tricky. It can deceive us into thinking if we just push harder and push through we will make it. Like if I wanted to push an imaginary box across an imaginary floor for the first time in my life. The box could be filled with anything, flowers, medicine balls, you name it. I don’t know what that box can be filled with but I want to get to the other side. Now the floor will also exert its resistance on the box, which depends on what type of floor it is,something I can see, giving me a false illusion mostly on how much resistance I may encounter. Again, I can make a guess about how hard I need to push but I don’t know for sure. Now let’s say I have one try per day to try and push this box at a constant and fixed speed without stopping or knocking the box over to get to the other side of the room (I am making this more complicated but hang in there). The best way to approach this would be to start small. Feel it out. It is better to start small instead of over exerting yourself, potentially crushing the box, or hurting yourself, than to take it slow. You start small, and you make adjustments to get to that sweet spot right over the threshold where you are pushing that box at a steady pace. You can’t possible know what is inside that box, but you can learn enough to get where you gotta be.

Overall this whole scenario in my head gave me hope. I was thinking about resistance as something that can be overcome with persistence instead of something I should avoid. As someone who suffers from GAD, I can tell you if you try to avoid anything in life your brain is going to bite you in your ass. If you let the crap from the past dictate what you can and can not do, your brain will go into survival mode 24/7 and tell you all the ways you should inhibit your life to protect itself from these newfound “dangers.” I don’t know about you but I’ve come to the conclusion that my brain is an unreliable you-know-what sometimes.

I know I can’t achieve my goals overnight, and I also know that is okay. I am beginning to learn how to push myself in a healthy way, and that it is normal to continuously adjust to the ever changing resistance we feel in this world… that is how we get stuff done. These rules set in mother nature are fair and they can be utilized to my advantage. And though I have been questioning my love for science and branching out, I also realized that it still has my back and I will hold all of its lesson close to my heart.

mental health

My personal journey with depression

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Going back through the past and owning it as part of myself has been a hard journey. However, I think it is completely necessary to face all of the ugly parts of ourselves but also truly feeling good about the good parts of yourself. Admitting all of it has been very healing and has broken some of those walls I have put up in my mind from repressing what I thought was bad about myself.

I have really been dragged through the mud these past few months. Though I may have reached a low point in my life, I feel that it accelerated the uphill healing that I needed. This is because for most of my life I felt numb. I would see horrible things and have horrible things occur to me and my family… but I felt nothing. Because of this numbness I started to self harm. I was about 13. I thought for some reason that it would open up whatever was blocking my emotions. Plot twist… it didn’t.

Self harming made me more closed off and I quickly fell into one of my first long depression spells. I did not care about what I looked like anymore. I blanked out for most of the day at school. No one ever mentioned anything, or maybe others assumed something was going on at home. I was just floating through life.

I remember the adults around me were always explaining to me how my life was going to go and how I have to do this and think about a college major. I most definitely needed to heal before I could run but no one knew what was going on in my head. I barely knew because it was my normal. I was starting to feel overwhelmed. Then came my anxiety.

I kept feeling like my heart was going to explode and though I was fit, I was running out of breath even going up a flight of stairs to a class I was stressed about. When I would hear heavy critiques from my mom or if a random guy was catcalling me at the mall, I would get this same feeling. The only things I felt at the time was this void or the feeling I was having a heart attack.

One day the dark cloud went away, and I went along with my seemingly normal life like nothing had ever happened. Years passed and I was suddenly 16. By this time, I really pushed away any thoughts I had that might upset the people around me, like my family or mentors. I looked like how I thought they wanted me to look and I did what I thought they wanted me to do. I received a lot of positive praise for this as well. I had this false feeling of peace. I still had the void and this numbness but life was good, I had no complaints.

When I went away to college and spent more time alone in my single dorm room, the dark cloud returned. Combined with stress and being at a college I did not want to be at, surrounded by people who had completely different views than me at a small catholic college, I became depressed again. I would just study and go back to my dorm without eating to just sleep in the dark. I performed well in school my first year but felt I was barely hanging on. I think my summer job as a lifeguard with all of my best friends that summer truly saved me to return me back to my “normal” self.

Up until this point, I thought it was completely normal to have constant negative thoughts abut myself. I did not like a single thing about myself and I did not know why. I constantly wanted to (and still do most times) be invisible. I thought I was not worthy of anything I wanted and I was not excited about life.

Sophomore year, the depression came back. Classes were difficult, I was realizing more and more I did not align with anyone I was spending my time with. I did not feel I had a safe space anywhere. Though shit was bad, this time the depression came with all of my emotions. I felt as if all of my repressed emotions over the years were spilling out and were out of my control. I was crying all of the time. Lying about why I was crying because it would come out randomly in class or in meetings. I was having constant migraines, neck and back pain, and grinding my teeth. My health was at its all time lowest point.

And though I was experiencing emotional roller coasters all day, deep down I was happy because I felt more human. I felt so much better to be able to genuinely cry and experience emotions other than that void. There was still so much fear in me but I was beginning my healing process. Memories from my past were coming up and I felt like I wasn’t blacked out all day. I felt present in my body. Through this intense period of my life, I decided to make major changes. I transferred colleges and made the decision to go against my parent’s wishes. I hung out with people I liked and decided to cultivate a life I wanted.

Beginning of junior year. A friend from life guarding committed suicide. I grieved. It was a wake up call that I need to do everything in my power to help myself when I am feeling my mental health is not quite right. I told myself I would not be ashamed anymore or tell myself it was not a big deal. I would reach out for help no matter what my pride and ego told me. I learned how powerful our connections with other people are. I slowly scraped myself off the ground and decided to keep moving forward.

Senior year. I was appreciating myself more. I was setting boundaries with the people in my life. I felt so happy this year. I was feeling accomplished and I felt ready to bloom into my next self. However, I was still unsure about what my next self would look like, and I thought the answer would magically come to me if I waited long enough. I was going to therapy. I was taking care of myself.

Now. I have been learning, healing, taking steps forward and steps back for the past two years since I’ve been in grad school. I have accomplished things I never thought were possible and I am excited about the future. I am thinking about peace corps and yoga teacher training and more schooling and just how to live my life the way I want to. I understand my depression will always come and go but I can always rise above it. It can be a part of me but it does not have to define me. I have permission to grow. I have permission to heal. I can be whoever I want to be.

I love my thick afro

I love my skin

I love my hairy legs

I love my arms

I love my scar on my breast

I love how flexible I am

I love how far I can run

I love my voice

I love my eyes

I am smart

I am worthy

I am whole

mental health

When the Ego Takes Over

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I spent this weekend hanging out with family and friends, as well as binge watching YouTube, pretty ordinary. However, during that time I spent relaxing I felt a sudden urge to dive deep into the Id, Ego, and Superego. Even though this is a concept I have encountered countless amount of times in school, I wanted to really research Freud’s theory and how it is interpreted by others. After seeing that freaking iceberg more times than I would have liked, it finally clicked with me…. I have a major problem with my ego.

I know this might sound obvious to others. Of course it seems I have a problem with my ego since I have anxiety, I’m afraid to voice my concerns to other people, etc. But it was not obvious to me. When I think about someone’s ego, I think about a fragile man ego. One who lashes out easily and is not composed (no offense…). But I believed myself to be the exact opposite of that. I soon realized that it didn’t matter, neither are healthy. I’ve learned as much about as much as an ego can be loud an boisterous, it can be fearful, ashamed, and self-defeating… just like my own.

The Id

I’s like to start by saying my knowledge on Freud’s theory is still very basic, but I will go through my interpretation regardless. In short, the id is the part of your personality present from birth. It is driven by the pleasure principle and by your immediate needs. This component is important because it was essential to your survival early on in life but becomes a problem in later in adulthood. As someone matures, they learn to control the unrealistic id with the superego and ego. However, if one is always listening to their id because of problems with the ego and superego, major issues can arise with your personality and relationships (and eventually quality of life).

The Superego

Learning more about the superego was very useful and intriguing to me because it was an aspect of myself that I thought was the strongest. I am someone who exercises daily, started a journey towards vegetarianism in middle school, and is always holding my tongue…. well as you can guess this is not all good, but let’s go into what the superego is. The superego is actually one of the last components to develop as it holds all of our internalized moral standards that we acquire from out culture and our parents. It tells you if a decision you are making or an experience is good or bad, regardless of the objective facts of the situation. This is very important because this means the superego is dependent on a person’s experiences….. I really let that sink in. I knew deep down that when I see another person doing something differently than I would do it, that they are not necessarily always wrong, but I never used that thought process on myself. When I feel shame or guilt about something I do that is not wrong in any way shape or form, it is my experiences making me feel this way. Which leads us to the ego.

My Ego

The ego is what is responsible for dealing with reality and it weighs the costs and benefits of an action to make sure both the id and superego are satisfied. I mentioned earlier that I feel like my ego is fearful, ashamed, and self-defeating… well knowing that the ego is in this constant balancing act between the id and superego, this aspect of myself is probably strained. And the reason why it feels so strained is because it is not strong enough. My ego has not been strengthened to withstand the constant pressure from the id and superego because it has been ignored by me. I have not dealt with my past afflictions head on and learned from my ego. My ego is also not something to be controlled. I need to feel my ego but know that it is not a defining right or wrong for me, I can objectively look at situations without the judgement from my strained ego. I have also fallen down the rabbit hole of learning about death to your ego and how the ego is just an illusion. And though I do not think I have to kill my ego to be free of it, I feel that recognizing that it doesn’t have to rule your life is a way to start the healing process. Developing a healthy and well coordinated ego is how you break out of the imaginary chains you are in. I feel that the ego needs to be healthy and functioning to make proper decisions and judgement calls but it should not rule you.

How I am strengthening my ego

Realizing nothing stays fixed or unchanged. Things are constantly moving and evolving whether we notice or not. My external environment made my ego and it is/was far from perfect. Forgiving myself for not knowing everything and coming to terms with my childhood is key. Knowing my decisions might not always be perfect but to just be aware of the seeds I am planting. I am not responsible for other people’s experiences. I am not responsible for making everyone around me happy and comfortable. If something unpleasant does occur, learning to accept the reality of the situation, voice any concerns, and grow in that discomfort. Be humble. Always put my long-term happiness first.

End ❤