50 Things I Learned Through Therapy
A Halloween Treat
Happy Halloween, lovelies. Here’s your treat. It includes a few tricks. ;)
You attract the energy you put out.
Your body affects your mind and vis versa. Your gut, your diet, your water intake, your physical activity all affects your mental health in a huge way.
We surveil our days for good or bad unconsciously. Turning that practice conscious and actively surveilling for good can actually rewire your brain.
Safety is the first step in mental health. If you do not feel safe, you cannot access the higher parts of your brain including memory, emotional regulation, relationships with others, learning, and finding purpose.
Nervous System
You can mitigate much of your irritability and bad moods by asking yourself if I’ve had enough to eat or drank water recently.
Your nervous system being in fight, flight, or freeze means your thinking and rational brain is literally not accessible.
Nervous system dysregulation is at the heart of irritability, brain fog, overwhelm, burnout, anxiety, insomnia, alcoholism/binge eating/other unhealthy coping mechanisms, and more and there are really simple ways to regulate your nervous system.
Braaaaains (spooky)
Brains love patterns and will repeat them until we consciously change something.
Brains even love toxic patterns because it means when the outcome is the same, we were right. Brains love to be right because it makes them feel safe. Our brain is wired to keep us safe (by repeating patterns) not necessarily happy.
You can rewire your brain!
Your brain will lie to you. Your body will not
Loving Yourself
Loving yourself, every part of you, will change everything. Treat yourself like someone you love and want to take care. Always.
There is nothing wrong with you. You may have things to heal and patterns to change, but you are not broken or bad.
You can often find your own shadows parts by watching what you judge in other people.
The things you don’t like about yourself (anxiousness, insecurity are two of mine) are most likely reasonable reactions to your past or coping mechanisms. And they probably kept us safe or even saved our lives at one point. They are not unchangeable personality traits.
No behavior or feeling IS you. I no longer say I am a depressed person, I say I am feeling depressed or depression is visiting me.
People grow through compassion and curiosity, not judgement. Tough love doesn’t work. This applies to the self and to how you approach others.
If you can’t find compassion for yourself, picture the child version of you (your inner child) or if that doesn’t work, treat yourself like you would a best friend of loved family member.
The opposite of uncertainty and anxiousness is self trust.
You can tell the difference between intuition and anxiety in a few ways.
Your intuition speaks in statements, your anxiety speaks in questions and what ifs
When your nervous system is regulated, it is easier to access your intution.
Emotional Regulation
Emotional regulation is not a skill we are born with. Some of us didn’t learn how to do it as kids and have to learn as adults.
Our bodies hold our unprocessed trauma and our unprocessed emotions. Move. Shake them out. Tune into your body.
Guilt is the most useless emotion. “Should” is the most useless word.
Feelings can’t be processed if we are holding shame for them at the same time.
Other people’s emotions are not your responsibility. Similarly, your emotions are your own responsibility.
We don’t have to fix everyone’s bad mood. And we should be able to regulate our own emotions to not fall into their mood. Empathy is helpful until it goes so far that you cannot regulate your own emotions.
Interacting with other people
People are more worried about what’s going on with themselves than you.
People’s actions and behaviors are entirely a reflection of their own inner world and not about you. That means your actions are also a reflection of your own inner world.
Current relational issues are often unhealed childhood issues. Our attachment style (how we learn to attach to other humans) is formed in childhood, usually before the age of four. All of our adult relationships will follow our attachment style. We can change this, but we have to do it consciously.
There is very little that is objective in this world. How people think and react is entirely based on their own set of experiences. We cannot expect their brains to work the same as ours and so, we rarely understand people’s intentions without actually asking.
Most things can be solved through open, empathetic, and vulnerable conversation that communicates your own experience instead of assuming or placing blame or intention on the other person.
Relationships (personal and professional) ending does not mean failure nor does it mean there is anything wrong with you or with the other person. It’s just not a fit. And that’ s okay.
It’s okay to walk away from a conversation to regulate yourself before continuing.
How you talk to others (including pets!) is often how you talk to yourself.
Our nervous systems sync and co-regulate with the people (and animals!) we surround ourselves with.
About therapy
Mental health medication is not a cure all. It is intended to get you into a space where you have the energy and ability to do the inner work to heal.
There are such thing as bad therapists, there are such thing as therapists that aren’t the right fit for you. It is okay to change therapists until you find one that fits.
There are many many different approaches to mental health issues. Some that I have tried:
Talk therapy and psychoanalysis
Internal Family Systems
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Gestalt Therapy
Embodiment and Somatic Therapy
Medication
Reike
Holistic “medication” - supplements, vitamins, exercise, diet
Trauma
Trauma isn’t only the obvious stuff. There is no hierarchy for trauma.
Our parents can have done their very best and still have left us with trauma to heal and things to unlearn. Misattunement can cause trauma.
Trauma is generational - you hold the unprocessed trauma of your family before you. And anything you do not heal will pass to the generations below.
Other Stuff
Our society is a mess. Depression and anxiety and ADHD and a whole bunch of mental health issues are reasonable reactions to the world around us.
Success and purpose are found in just being.
Some of us are more sensitive to our environment, but we can do things to protect our sensitivities. (I love my noise cancelling headphones.)
We are highly conditioned by the environment we grew up in.
We can unlearn things but we have to be conscious of them first.
Memory is subjective. All of it.
We are so powerful.
You deserve to be seen, heard, and loved.
Don’t sneak or you’ll ruin your immortal soul.
Expect this post to be in constant edit-mode. If any of these resonate with you or if you have a favorite I missed, throw it in the comments! Or share a picture of your childhood Halloween or pet in a costume. Please!
Want to dive deeper on any of this with me? Check out my Mental Health Homebase
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This is amazing and so insightful.