Anita,

Thank you for understanding. There are a lot of perspectives on medications and I understand your suggestion is because you care. In the past people’s suggestion of medication felt more like “I don’t really care enough to listen to you, go take a pill and shut up”. To me this attitude of fixing every uncomfortable human experience through medicating is part of the collective suppression of pain that needs attention. I see value in pain, not that intentionally seek out emotional pain, but when it is present I want to understand it, and see what it is trying to communicate to me, just like a mother would attend to a crying child.

The more research I do on mental health and psychology, the more it comes back to the conception of connection for me. I was listening to an interview with an artist who visited one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes in Africa, and when he told them he was from America they jokingly responded “oh the place where people jump off buildings” as if the concept of suicide was so foreign to them. I was so jealous of that kind of response which to me is an indication of how we live, disconnected from nature, other people, and ourselves is one of the main ingredients for our suffering. I’m just trying to help restore a vital part of our humanity that has been lost through industrialization.

What i mean by distancing my trauma from my identity, is that I am trying to no longer identify with it. Basically when i’m triggered which happens almost everyday, i’m interrupting the process of :

Trauma triggered>Negative beliefs about self activated>because”I’m not good enough”=depression

instead it’s starting to look like this

Trauma triggered>Negative beliefs about self activated>because “I have been through painful experiences I did not have the wisdom, knowledge, or support to understand at the time what was happening and had to make sense of it in a way to help me survive and function in my environment”= relief from believing “I’m not good enough” as an absolute truth which is part of my identity.

Don’t get me wrong I still am extremely sensitive to getting triggered and there is still pain, but there is hope and relief because I feel I have a choice in how I interpret that pain. I’m choosing to interpret the pain more objectively and leaving room for other beliefs i can identify with like “i’m lovable” which dramatically changes my behaviors.When i feel “lovable” or “good enough” i’m more motivated, more willing to take positive social risks which will eventually turn into those external supports i need.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by noname.