I’m very lucky that I got a lot of help with my mental health over the years. People like me usually end up addicted to drugs or dead. Instead, I have a beautiful family and I’m half way through my bachelor’s degree. I can’t complain. I don’t have flashbacks unless there is a trigger. I feel like my body remembers more than I do now. Yes, I have anxiety, but things could be worse. I noticed because of the beta blocker that half of my anxiety is related to being uncomfortable with the physical sensations of anxiety. Simply removing those sensations makes things more manageable.

Our dog is feeling lonely and having anxiety when we leave the house. We’re talking about getting another dog to help him feel better.

Soon it will be two weeks since we’ve had an argument. I’m glad that things are going better.

I’m reading a fascinating book called Letting Go by David Hawkins. It made me want to share what I just read. It was discussing the effects of expressing negative feelings to others. Essentially, it has negative effects on others. And for us it provides a temporary release and suppresses the issue out of awareness.

I thought that this was a wonderful insight that I hadn’t heard of before.

The answer is said to be taking responsibility for our own feelings. It is said that we project our feelings about ourselves onto others.

Consider blame and ignoring. I blame myself for making mistakes and perceived weakness. I ignore my own needs. I hide from even myself.

Hi Jana

I agree, that tends to be my pattern. I’m still reading it, so there is a lot I haven’t learned yet.

But essentially, it says a scared person will look for things to be afraid of, an angry person will look for things to be angry at etc. It suggests that repressed and suppressed emotions build up to a point that they are released.

This made me think. What makes someone an angry or any kind of person etc? I have a couple of thoughts about this. I’m neurodivergent and for me that comes with difficulties with emotional regulation. So in one part, that. On another part, the past. And there is also, the present. I feel like the past makes things much more painful than they should be for me.

Love, peace and best wishes! 🙏❤️

Hi Jana

You are spot on! Thank you for sharing your own fascinating cultural communication experience and insight about cultural differences. I totally agree. Even the US and the UK are very different cultures and we speak the same language. It’s kind of an issue between my husband and myself, as well as myself and his family.

The UK is kind of like Canada in which we apologize for everything. And I mean everything! Even minor inconveniences. It is considered extremely rude in my culture not to apologize. It’s basically an insult.

Whereas the US doesn’t have as strong an emphasis on apologising. There is a strong belief in being fake nice and faking a positive attitude in the US, especially where my husband is from because they shoot and kill each other over minor disputes. It’s actually against how people from the UK operate. Whilst we do apologize, we don’t fake being positive. We show our emotions albeit  in a reserved way and I would say are more negative in attitude than Americans. We are very strictly anti-violence in the UK, so feel perfectly safe in doing so.

In the UK, grandparents still operate on the honour based system. Kind of like Downton Abbey but less posh. I would say that I’m more traditional than most younger people and I get on very well with the elderly population here.

The younger generation tends to be freer with how they choose to communicate and in my opinion are quite troublesome. The say one thing and do another. Whereas older people are more direct and honest in their interactions.

I think that you are excellent at writing to others by the way. 😊

Love, peace and best wishes! ❤️🙏

I reached out to her when I was pregnant because she has a fear of not seeing her grandkids. I said that she could see him as much as she wanted and she didn’t bother very much. It has been 9 months since she last bothered to see him. She kept cancelling and stopped replying to messages.

Being pregnant sucked. It hurt a lot. It was like carrying around a bowling ball that you never get to put down. On the plus side, no morning sickness. But it didn’t get on well with my health issues. I kept falling and getting faint and had cramps. And I could barely breathe when he got so big he was crushing my lungs. I couldn’t even walk in the end. It was horrible going through all of this without medication. I survived on herbal teas to help me through the flare ups.

I was so scared to have a baby. I had a phobia of having a baby for my whole life because of my trauma. I was terrified that I would be a bad mother and that it would change me like my mother said it changed her. Fortunately, it didn’t. I mean, yes my mental health deteriorated. And I suffered. But I managed to stay myself.

And my life fell apart. We were evicted while I was pregnant. And we had a visa and we had to move house quickly. Then my cat died. The more the pregnancy went on, the more stressed I got. And then of course there is the sheer panic of planning giving birth as someone who has experienced sexual abuse. I was terrified of being retraumatised. The last thing anyone wants giving birth is to go through a massive PTSD episode. Fortunately, the planning went very well.

I wasn’t prepared for how much work a baby was either in the beginning. It was nuts. They say it takes a village… a village would have been very helpful. Even just one person would have been a blessing.

I can’t even think about all of the loss with the pets. I’ve always had pets. For my whole life. I’ve always had something. I’ve had quite the menagerie. Cats, dogs, rats, gerbils, hamsters, fish, snails, insects and a horse. Not all at the same time of course. The idea of losing my last pet and being alone is terrifying. They are family to me. When people cannot be relied upon, the love of an animal is always there.

I’m starting to forget what my lost cat looks like….

It occurred to me the other day. That what when difficulties occur, the problem is not necessarily the issue itself, but how we react to it.

For example, when two people have a disagreement about something. It is how they choose to treat each other that is important. Not the disagreement itself.

The willingness for people to work together as a team is the only way to truly win. Being right, “winning the argument”, getting what you want is not important. It is treating each other with kindness and respect that is important.