The G that comes around

The first word starting with G that comes to my mind is Gangsta. The second one is Guilt.

But guilt is also one of my oldest visitors, as I have always been an introverted perfectionist. It was always easier to take the blame myself than to look for the person that’s actually guilty. And it took me years of inner conflict to see that, more often than not, guilt is an atavism, a toxic, unnecessary emotion.

Let me be clear: unnecessary, not useless. Guilt is, in fact, a very important emotion, as it stands for our inner moral compass. We often feel guilty when we say or when we do something wrong. Something that hurts or even harms the others. Something breaking our moral principles, and probably the society’s ones as well.

This only means that guilt is an emotion with huge destructive potential, as it is so intense, and people tend to feel guilty for so many reasons. That’s how I define guilt trips: unnecessary feelings of guilt. It takes us by surprise when we decide to cut off someone or to say No, it takes over whether it is or not the case to do so.

Obviously, all feelings are valid, and no one is ever allowed to tell you what to feel or not. But guilt is a legitimate feeling in very few cases. If your words or actions are not putting anyone in danger, if you don’t harm them or become a threat to their well-being or existence, your guilt doesn’t have a reason to exist.

Actually, I have the feeling that the thing we often label as guilt is, in fact, shame. A feeling that guilt is very often coming with as a pair. Try to put I feel ashamed for instead of I feel guilty when you tell how you feel to someone else, or even to yourself, and observe how it feels. If it rings true, if it is, indeed, guilt, and not shame… Just try and pay attention to yourself, even take notes of the process in your diary, if it helps you. If anyone would ask me, I’d say we feel, 9 out of 10 times, shame. But as shame is associated with being dirty, guilt becomes a more popular substitute.

However, there is another possibility, even if darker. To feel guilt as a result of your past experiences. If you grew up in a household where you used to be the guilty one for whatever happened or to be accused because there was the easiest way for the accuser to deal with their frustration or rage, there are chances that you’ve internalized the It’s all my fault mindset, successfully applying it today. In other words, toxic environments often create grown-ups that believe that they’re to blame for whatever goes wrong in their lives. Just like in their past, when they were blamed either way.

And this is how guilt becomes a toxic, irrational feeling, instead of a legitimate one, the moral compass that helps to separate good from harmful. By being used by the powerful figures of the grown-ups as a way of dealing with their negative emotions while avoiding taking full responsibility for their actions or words.

The best thing is, however, that one can work and break-up with the toxic mechanisms learned along with life. We can set ourselves free of whatever harms us mentally and spiritually. But this only happens while working together. When we tell our friends that they’ve crossed our boundaries again. Or when we tell them how their words or actions make us feel.

It also counts as healing our old wounds when we ask ourselves Is this what am I really feeling? And if not, then what is it that I am feeling? and observing ourselves. Looking at our patterns: the type of people we feel attracted to, the kind of contexts that we find ourselves jumping into, the kind of feelings that we allow to express themselves freely.

Because what we tend to label as guilt, is rarely actually guilt, and mostly a  mixture of rage, shame, and remorse. Three very different feelings, with different triggers, but which tend to pass anonymously, being labeled as guilt.

Managing guilt trips is, as any other remarkable change, a matter of work. A matter of understanding what’s triggering the feeling, of the life experiences that root it, and of questioning one’s mechanisms. It is about asking yourself How am I acting when I feel guilty? and How can I act different and healthier, instead? It is also about questioning one’s close people, as they can see some angles which are unavailable to you.

And, as dealing with any emotion, is about understanding it, about being patient with yourself, and asking for help. For the support, a specialist could provide, and especially asking for your loved one’s support and patience. Unlearning emotional patterns is a bit harder than building them, as you’re discovering new ways of being yourself. Your real, uncontaminated from other people’s unhealed traumas, self.

The word that frightens begins with C

Last week, I had a talk with a good friend that asked me, Lucretia, why are some people always complaining about their lives, but they refuse to make a change for the better? I admit, I’ve been taken by surprise by her question, as nothing from our little chit-chat was pointing to it, but it also made me smile.

Truth is, even if all kinds of words have all kinds of powers, one has the particular power of scaring people more than everything. Its name is Change. Of course, we’re told that change is good, that we need to look for it and embrace it with all our being, but the truth be told, for most of us, change ain’t pretty at all.

Change is not frightening by itself, as most people understand that it is nothing to be endlessly avoided. What makes it frightening, though, is its complexity and, even more often than that, its costs.

Because change is, before anything else, a process. A long-term process, involving being put in front of your own mistakes and flaws, and asked Do you like what you see? The real answer is, usually, no. And this is where the fun begins. Choosing to change is the first step, and the easiest to take, even if it doesn’t feel easy at all. The root of change, however, of noticeable change, is giving up. You give up whatever you notice that is holding you back- beliefs, habits, relationships. You might even have to give up on perspectives, and that’s a tough one to be done, I admit.

If you think about this, the existence of people who fear changes becomes understandable. No one likes the process of changing, but we all want the results of it. It sounds foolish and naïve, but it’s called being human. Evolutionary talking, change was never something good, or something to be hyped about. It meant loss, uncertainty, anxiety, maybe even danger. That’s how our brains got wired, during a long, long period, to resist change. That’s also the reason why we fear more social changes than we do fear the technical ones.

This is also why it takes so long for an individual to actually change something that bothers its life. It is, above everything else, an inner battle- a battle between your current dissatisfaction, and your amygdala, telling you that everything is fine just the way it is now, but it might not be as good if you’ll make changes. Maybe things will get worse, instead of getting better. That’s how your close ones dismissing changes think. This is how the change resistance sounds like.

It has never been about laziness or dreaming small dreams. It has never been about not wanting to be a better version of yourself, either, we all want that. It has, however, always been about fearing the process and the costs. Costs that are not small at all, if you give them a second thought. If you add to this some past traumatic events, the resistance to change is bigger than one could possibly expect. And, at some point in our lives, any changes, however big or small, involve the risks of new traumas. So, once put in front of this eventuality, the ordinary individual will make the safest choice, which is, usually, stagnation.

Because after the moment of deciding to make a change, confusion is coming. Ok, I have to change something, this is not what I want my life to be like. But…what should I actually change about my life? And this is how the whole process, anxiety generating and pretty painful, begins. There is a good reason behind the old saying the first steps are the hardest to take, and it applies the best when it comes to the trauma survivors faced with an urge for change.

This is something that personal development didn’t have the courage yet to tackle. Everyone tells you how wonderful the changing process is, and what a wonderful person you’re gonna be at the end of it. Somehow, nobody talks about the ugly fights that happen before one takes the decision to engage in a changing process.

About the self-monologues one has, that tells you to keep what’s working not as a way of seeing what could serve your purposes and what should be changed, but as a way to keep everything. And that also includes the things, beliefs, routines, and relationships that brought you up to that point, too.

Another reason why we have to battle our tendencies of resisting change is attachment. Yes, the good old emotional attachment. We have finally figured out a way of doing things that work (ok, ok, it could be improved, but it works out fine just like it is, too!), so we got attached to it. We like it. And you come and tell us that it should…change? For the sake of the better? The answer will be, most likely, a big no.

Because we like things as they are, and we want them to remain that way for as long as possible. We like our good evening routines and our good morning habits. We like having certain persons around us, even if we are aware that our lives would be way better without them around. This is how it works- we figure out something, we notice it working out in a decent way, we get to like it, and then we dismiss the guys that keep preaching change over and over again.

Yes, change is good. Sometimes, it is so, so needed. But the moment when an individual becomes aware of its need for change is something deeply personal. No book or workshop will ever teach you how to spot it, or how could you tell if somebody has reached that point. This is why most of the change missionaries tend to fail. Because there’s no outer clue to tell you if that the person in front of you needs a change in its way of lifestyle, or it is just your projection about it who’s talking.

So, whenever you feel the need to tell someone that they could just make a change take a deep breath and ask yourself which was the last remarkable change you have taken yourself. You might be surprised of the answer, and it might just as well remind you that every person has its very own life map, with changes and all the milestones marked accordingly. Learn to see the differences between their maps, and yours, as it is the only right way to choose for evolution.

Life after trauma

Traumatic experiences are not a taboo topic anymore. We’ve started to read more about them, talk about them, and to notice that they’re not as rare as we have initially thought they are. Actually, it seems like everyone has had at least one traumatic event during its lifetime, even if we talk about ordinary people or celebs who seem to have it all. But firstly, what is a traumatic experience?

According to APA, trauma is an emotional response to a terrible life event, such as an accident, rape, natural disasters, as well as physical and emotional forms of abuse. And, if we take into conssideration forms of abuse such as bullying, sexual harassment, the number of people affected by traumatic life events is nothing to be neglected.

This is also one of the main reasons why the public conversation about trauma and living with a traumatic history is rising and spreading sparkles on the Internet, as well as in the offline. Because is something relatable, a piece of shared history, a collective narrative that allows us to say that’s my story, as well!

But there’s also a dark side to this seemingly all-glitter-and-support narrative. We do talk about our triggers, about the depression, anxiety, panic attacks and mental health issues we encounter as parts of the post traumatic life. We exchange tips and tricks about how to manage the episodes in order to obtain a minimum level of damage. But we don’t talk that much about the recovery process, and this is one of the parts of the conversation regarding mental health that, in my opinion, goes wrong. It happens, even so, for some really understandable reasons.

Firstly, the recovery after a traumatic life experience is a really intimate topic. More intimate than the story of the trauma itself, because if the traumatic event is a fact, something that could have happened to literally anyone else, the recovery is not. The recovery is a personal decision, to take back your own life, while freeing yourself from the depression, anxiety and other issues that put your progress and well-being on hold, but it’s also how you deal with your traumatic history. A journey, a decision, and a way of reacting at something that has obviously changed you.

But that’s not the only reason. It happens often that mental health problems are treated with a suspicious attitude, involving social stigma. Those are not really problems, they say. Or the already famous there’re other people in the world who have it so much worse, that you’d better stop complaining.

And why would someone talk about a thing that he or she knows that’s gonna be belittled for? Not to feel more inadequate than it already feels like.

Yet, recovery talks remain one of the most unexplored parts of the mental health discussions. Talking about it, however, would bring on the table some real emotional support, created by sharing not only stories about facts that happened, but also strategies of coping with what’s left behind, tips on rebuilding yourself, or about how to recognize and avoid another experience with traumatic potential.

It can be, if you ask me, a really powerful tool, serving both the person who chooses to share the journey to recovery with the others, and the people who are interested in finding out more, as it has the power not only to inform the people about what this process really takes, but also to inspire, empower and create.

By sharing the recovery journey after a traumatic event, it means not only that it loses its power, as you begin to heal, but also that your bad experience helps other people. It helps by letting them know that, yes, there is life after the trauma. It empowers them, as they reach a deeper understanding of their life experiences and understand the fact that they are not the things that happened to them. It creates a real diversity, as allowing people to show themselves without the stigma, even if they feel like they’re at a low point in their life, that they are not good enough or simply unworthy.

It was only after having my share of traumatic life events, that all of this got at me, and I’ve understood that it is something worthy, needed to be talked about openly. That it could help others who happen to live the same things, and face the same feelings. That now is my time to give back, after receiving the support, advice and courage to move on.

And by writing about my own mental health, about everything my recovery taught me, I hope that I will help the ones who read the articles find their ways to well-being, and towards discovering new parts of themselves. Because, at the end of the day, the biggest, scariest, yet most beautiful goal of this whole talking about mental health is finding out about ourselves. About what brings us joy, about what makes us angry, sad, about what makes us overreact or become apathetic. About our bright and dark parts. About what make us to really be who we are, because the answer of this question is never what happened to me. We are far more than just the things that happened to us at certain points in our lives, but this is a truth that only together we can truly, completely understand, and this articles series wishes to help with that, as much as it is possible.