Hi Sarah,

Thank you so much for your reply, I am very grateful to read about your experience. I am pleased you were able to turn your life around despite facing similar issues. I hope I will be able to get there someday.

You are right, my brain has been trying to escape the pain. I guess I had difficulty processing how people could be so destructive to themselves and others, especially their family. And even if I understood some people just ended up like that due to their own suffering, it wasn’t enough to process it well. So many behavior I witnessed made no sense and were scary and hurtful. I didn’t want to be a part of it so I chose to escape and not suffer from it by zoning out and focus on the little things that helped me. But it wasn’t healing, it was surviving. And I am now afraid to face the pain as I am afraid it will never go away.

But you are right, there’s no healing or soothing if I don’t face the pain. Do you think it can be done alone? Or do I have to have trusted people to help me with this? I do confide my pain to some friends, sometimes, but it doesn’t make me feel better. Probably because I wasn’t able to have a kind/reassuring look on my pain, so I should learn to practice that.

Thank you for your virtual hug and your kindness.

I am grateful for the access I had to education, through school and internet. I am grateful for the people out there who try their best to make a difference and bring good into this world as their existence makes me hopeful. I am grateful for all the little things that help me relieve the pain and cope.

I guess I will need a lot of journaling to find the negative beliefs that are doing me wrong and reframing them. Would it be okay to ask for help if I get stuck in some reframing?

I will write this letter to my inner child. I think it’s an exercise that will take a while but I believe it could be really helpful. Maybe my inner child would need to write a letter to me equally, maybe it could help me figure out how I feel and what I need. I struggle reaching to myself and my feelings so I will need to reconnect with my inner child somehow.

Self-care is something I’m struggling a lot with, I run on automatic mode a lot, do things because they have to be done. But there are some things that help me hopefully. What saved me during my darkest times, and the only reason why I decided to keep on living despite my life being a mess, is creativity. I love writing and drawing, it makes me happy, stimulated, and my love for it always gave my life meaning when nothing else could. It’s my support system, but I try to thrive for more, as it is not enough. It doesn’t replace healthy relationships and meaningful human interactions (even if it can emulate them). I also want to find and nurture activities that could ground me into reality, creativity is amazing but I also use it as an escape from my own existence sometimes.

I am definitely looking for some kind of psych evaluation and maybe therapy if I find a good one. That way, I would have an official acknowledgment of my difficulties/disabilities, which I kind of need to convince me I am not the problem, that my struggles are real and not just something I’m making up. And they deserve to be treated. Since my issues have been overlooked for so long, it’s necessary they get the proper care.

Somehow, I’m still worried someone will jump at me, telling me I am a burden and not deserving the help I’m seeking. It’s silly, and I’m not sure what it’s coming from, so I shall face this fear. I just hope I won’t meet too many people denying me during this journey.

Thank you for acknowledging my struggles, and for your hopeful words, they mean a lot to me. Also thank you for sharing the facebook group and the meditation video, I’ll be sure to check them out, meditate and your words, and put your advice into practice.

Have a good day,

Linarra