I constantly have to put tons of effort into being more positive and into getting closer to staying with those emotions once they do come around. It’s not enough that I’m on anti-depressant, the only one that has ever worked for me. I haven’t been in therapy for a few years now, also partially because of the issues I have. I have a phone phobia and trust issues, so it’s insanely hard for me to even pick up the phone and call different therapists. I like to think that I don’t need a therapist anymore, that I have shit until control now, but I don’t. I need to admit to myself that I am still a damaged person, and that no matter what I do I will never fully be “healed” from the emotionally abusive and controlling childhood I grew up in. I can work on it, I can try to get help in various ways and try to help myself in various ways, but it’s never going to just disappear. It’s something I have to live with. When I started to have panic attacks in my early college years, I was driven towards meditation/spirituality. I sought out books on meditation, and I started to do these meditations fairly often. I started to eat healthier. I did get a lot of help from doing this. I was able to significantly reduce my panic attacks from this. It wasn’t until years later that I finally got on the anti-depressant that got rid of my panic attacks, and significantly improved the other psychological issues I had that lead to me functioning very poorly.

I haven’t lived with my whole dysfunctional family for years. My dad did the most damage on me psychologically by far. My mom did too, but in a pretty different way. After years and years of constant and frightening verbal arguments between my two parents, and years and years of being controlled in every way by my drill-sergeant-esq father, I got pretty fucked up. I also had to watch my oldest brother go through a few different mental breakdowns, as a result of our crazy upbringing. When I was 12 years old I went downstairs in the basement to find my dad holding my brother up against a wall by his throat. My brother had his face all painted up in Mudvayne-esq style. He hadn’t slept in days. My brother was having his first Bi-polar mental breakdown and my insane father thought he could fix him. The problem was that my dad was the one who needed fixing, and no amount of therapy and medications ever really did fix him, or get him anywhere near normal functioning.

I remember seeing my brother taken away by an ambulance. I remember visiting him in the hospital and my dad crying when he told me how my brother said “I’m sorry” to him when he got his first Haldol injection, to take him out of his psychotic episode. I remember feeling such intense sadness and sympathy for the both of them. They were both and still are such damaged people. I tried for so many years to make things better for them, to be there for them, to try to psychologically support and care for them in a way that most people couldn’t. What I did and what they fostered was mostly just a really unhealthy and psychologically dependent relationship with the two of them. I’d like to try to “re-frame” my upbringing but it’s really no use. The damage was done and all I can do now is try to heal. All I feel I can really do is try to learn how to cope in a healthy way. But at 25 years old I have still yet to learn how to do that.

I’m not the same exact person I was as a moody 13 year old. I don’t spend my time feeling sorry for myself or being depressed all the time. I don’t feel hopeless about everything like I used to. I’m free from the bonds of my family that lead to fuck me up so badly. But like I said before the damage was done, and it will last me a lifetime.

I believe I was born a Highly Sensitive Person and an Empath. Then I grew up in a household that was terrible for someone like me. My upbringing would fuck up people who are minimally sensitive, never mind someone as sensitive as I was/am. My parents were/are both really sensitive people as well. But something tells me they aren’t as sensitive as I am. I felt everything that happened between the two of them, between me and each of them separately, between my two brothers, between my brothers and my parents, all so strongly. I felt the impact of all of it. I’d rather view myself as a survivor than a victim but at the same time I don’t think I’ve loved myself enough to validate the fact that I was a victim. I

feel like no one truly understands me. I have felt like that for most of my life. Every time I get anywhere near close to feeling like someone understands me, I find out in one way or another that they don’t. They have no idea what my mind is like, they have no idea just how emotional I am. I know I can’t use this as an excuse for me to treat anyone any particular way, but I feel like I put so much fucking effort into treating everyone really well. I feel like I’m generally super caring towards most people, and I generally love people. I see the best in everyone, much more than most people I know. Because I have such a deep understanding of psychology though and of emotional sickness though as well, I can clearly see other people’s issues too. Because I am so empathetic and highly aware of how people can be emotionally affected by others’ words though, I refrain from criticizing people as much as I can. It’s really hard for me to be open and honest with people when it comes to their faults, even though I try so hard to be.

I hold so much in. Since I have taken the Myers’ Briggs Personality Test, and got the result of INFP, things make even more sense. I’m mostly introverted and also very much driven by my emotions, I internalize my emotions. I have *so* many emotions too, and I know the whole spectrum of them very well. There’s so much that I don’t verbalize to other people, for the sake of not bringing them down. I also don’t open up about these things either, because the last thing I want to do is be the way I used to be. I used to be so unraveled that I couldn’t help but talk in depth and way too often about my problems and what I’ve been through. I lost many friends and boyfriends for this reason. I had a close friend tell me that I needed professional help, and then he stopped being my friend. I’ve had many people abandon me. I understand why. Now I shut down more than ever when I’m emotionally upset or stressed. It’s been so rare that people would actually be empathetic when I did open about these things, and it’s also been so rare that I have not been judged or criticized for being as sensitive as I am. I learned not to trust people. I learned to put their needs and their emotions ahead of my own.

I am so tired of having to explain myself, and then that not even helping matters. I’m so tired of trying so hard not to hurt other people, and chose to hurt myself instead by bottling things up and being hard on myself. I have one close friend now who is the person I have felt the most similar to in my entire life. I don’t get to spend time with her very often though. She has yet to be confused by my reactions to things. She has understood where I was coming from every time, and has been more than empathetic and supportive. We’re so much alike. I think she has been through more trauma that I have though, and as of right now her life is much worse than mine. She tells me to contact her whenever I feel I need to, but I find myself refraining from this because I don’t want to bring her down any farther than she already is. I know she has so much stress and negativity around her as is, the last thing I want to do is add to this. I only want to help her. She’s the only other person in the world that I have actually felt is enough like me to understand why I am the way I am. She’s the only person who has ever actually completely validated the level of trauma I’ve been through. She doesn’t judge me. She just understands and listens. She knows what to say and when to say it. God I wish I could see her more often. But more than that I wish I could learn how to provide myself with that same level of care. I wish I could comfort myself when I get in a dark place. I wish I could make myself feel better, or regulate my emotions. I’ve come along way from where I’ve started but, I still have so far to go.

When things get extra stressful, chaotic, or just overwhelming, I retreat. This is what I’ve learned to do. I withdraw and shut down. Sometimes I will vent to people but that only helps momentarily, and even when I do vent I feel bad about it. I wish I could turn my emotional sensitivity down a few notches. I wish I could also become more assertive. I wish I could fully learn some of the Chakra rights. I need to learn that I have the right to speak and feel without fear of punishment or judgment. I need to learn that I have the right to be and to have. That I have the right to my own personal space and that I welcome and wanted in the places that I live or am. I was never really allowed that when I was growing up. I’m glad that I got into spirituality at that time when I really needed it, but I have lost touch with it again for years. I have been sucked into the responsibilities and realities of adult life. Everything is so serious and stark now and it’s hard because this is a new reality to me. My previous realities were terrible and I never did believe things would get better. They have gotten better but now I have a whole new set of harsh realities to face and I feel like I’m suffocating. I try so hard to remain positive. I somewhat succeed but a lot more so when it comes to other people. I can have generally positive viewpoints on people and I’m good at emotionally supporting other people. But I’m pretty terrible at emotionally supporting myself. I never did learn how to do that. I was never taught how because I was never given consistent and healthy emotional support. In fact most of the time I was just never good enough and whenever I did express emotion in the form of sadness it was invalidated and denied. I was told to stop being a baby, to get over it. I don’t know if I will ever will get over being told to get over it. It’s like the coldest thing you could say to someone in pain, other than worse things like telling them they are worthless (which I have was told many times over as well).

I just want to move into the new chapter of my life and get away from all that is negative or makes me feel hopeless.

That’s the best word to describe how I’m feeling right now. It’s pretty nice actually, for once I’m not thinking about a ton of stressful shit. Right now I have a playlist of this really peaceful, calm, instrumental music going. I think that’s helping me a lot. I LOVE instrumental music. The lack of words is nice, I find it more relaxing because you can do a lot more thinking, talking, writing or whatever without getting overwhelmed by multitasking while hearing all kinds of “noise”. Sometimes I just want the quiet. Even if I’m listening to instrumental music, it still feels like I’m having some quiet time because I’m by myself and just listening to this really low key music. I’m realizing, or remembering rather, how much peace I need. I desire harmony. I try very hard to maintain it between myself and others and between myself and the rest of whatever environment i’m in.

Of course I desire harmony. I’ve been really attracted to the color teal lately. I want to buy clothes in that color, I want to wear it a lot, I want that color all around me. I was wondering why that is since I know that oftentimes we become attracted to the colors that correspond with the type of energy we need from the chakra which represents that particular color. I researched this, and then I thought about it a lot. I’m attracted to teal right now because teal is the middle ground between blue and green (which are currently my favorite colors). The blue chakra represents harmony, tactful and good communication, speaking your truth, self expression, truthfulness, and purpose. The green chakra is all about love. It’s about balance, compassion, renewal, generosity, and unconditional love.

This makes so much sense to me. All of those attributes are ones that I am first of all very focused on and interested in, second of all I very much need all of these attributes in my life right now, and third of all attaining these attributes will lead me closer to self-actualization. I truly believe in the existence of chakras as I have personally had several spiritual/visual experiences that proved this to me and I have had Reiki treatments in which I physically felt this spiritual healing even though I was hardly physically touched throughout it. I remember that when the healer was hovering over my face with her hands, I saw the colors purple and green. Throughout my life purple and green have been my favorite colors and I’ve been very attracted to them. This also makes sense to me. The purple chakra and the indigo chakra are the two uppermost chakras. They are the most spiritual chakras. The indigo chakra (third eye) has to do with intuition, mysticism, understanding, imagination, and following your soul’s path.

God I love this stuff!! I forgot for a little while how passionate I am about spirituality. I would say I am very spiritual. I used to meditate every day and I would read and talk about spirituality often. I think since then I have gone off my path a little bit due to being preoccupied with other things. Throughout the whole time though I still had the goal and desire to get back to meditating every day.

I had a spiritual experience a couple of weeks ago when I was at work. Granted I was beyond exhausted as I had only slept 2 hours of light sleep the night before, and had to go into work for 7 am. My shift went from 7 am-11 pm as well. And this shift was THE worst one yet, too. I ended up having a panic attack and dissociation, I felt all shaky, eventually I puked and then spent awhile feeling very weak and with an upset stomach and ulcer pain.

At one point I was by myself in the living room, sitting down, and I SWEAR TO GOD that I saw a spirit. It was a entity, it did not have a face or look human, it was just this spiritual mass that moved around in a swirling motion and was translucent in color. I spotted it on the wall that was about 20 feet away from me. I then focused on it and as I did this it began to come towards me in its swirling, slow motion. I began to be able to see more details in it. It’s hard to compare its appearance to anything I have seen in my typical physical reality, but it was very much like the substance that I saw when I tripped and had a very visual/spiritual experience. It was comprised on this kind of web-like material that swirled in several directions but was in a fractal design, with many layers. The pattern was a very tight/detailed stripe pattern. It was like the rings in a tree stump, the ones that represent the amount of years the tree has been alive. This experience was amazing. The most amazing part was that when I was truly open to what I was witnessing, it came over to me, I actually talked to it and said “I hope you’re a nice spirit” and “I see you”, and some other things I don’t remember. I extended my arm out and then extended out my index finger and it came right up to my finger, touched it, and swirled all around it. It had been so long since I last had a visual/spiritual experience and though I felt really terrible right before I spotted the spirit, I’m still glad that I was able to see it because my brain was in a state of hyper vigilance. I think that I was using more parts of my brain at that time because I had no energy reserves elsewhere.

I can’t say that I’m not afraid of death, I don’t think I’d even use the word afraid though. I’m curious about it, very interested in the soul, and actually am looking forward to the experience. This doesn’t mean that I’m looking forward to dying, I just have a feeling that the experience will validate my theories and opinions on this topic, and that will be really great. I’m sure it’ll be overwhelming but from all of the Near Death Experiences I have read about, most of the time their experience is extremely positive. Typically the person feels unconditional love, hears a voice that tells them that they are loved and that everything will be ok, and generally feels utter peace and acceptance.

I believe there is far too much inside each human and living organism for it to just vanish completely after the physical body dies. We have so much in our minds, so many thoughts, so many complex emotions, so many senses, so many abilities. Personally when I’m in my most spiritual state of mind I feel very full, I can actually feel the existence of my soul, and I can feel that my physical body is just a shell around it. This doesn’t make it any less important or amazing, it’s just certainly not all that we are. Our physical bodies themselves are amazing as well. It’s fascinating that we have SO many systems going all at once in a near perfect condition. We can survive an incredible amount of sicknesses, our bodies are extremely tough and work so well. Sometimes I just look at my fingerprints and I’m in awe. The intricate pattern of the prints, the fact that we all have unique patterns that are all this intricate. Our physical bodies are amazing machines capable of many things and extremely resilient as well as complex and highly organized.

I planned to write about a whole slew of other things but they were more negative. I didn’t intend on going in to this subject so much but I just went with the flow. I’ll write a separate post about the other things I wanted to write about. I want to leave this one off on a positive note.

So I just looked through a couple of years worth of photos I took (of myself during those times, pretty narcissistic I know), and it made me think of a lot. Thoughts that summarize what happened during those years–my 4.5 years at college. Thoughts about what changed and what didn’t. And what lead to me being the person I am now from the way I was at the beginning of my time at college, what influences and circumstances altered and molded me.

I used to be healthier, physically healthier that is. I smoked a lot of weed during those 4.5 years but I also took an entire year off and a few half-year or so breaks from it entirely as well. I experimented with acid and ecstasy. Those things altered me and also helped me to find myself a little bit more. But I won’t say that it was a smooth ride, because it sure as fuck was not.

My small experimentation with acid changed me probably the most in terms of learning the most about myself and what was at the core of me. At first I had a major panic attack/ego death at the beginning of my first trip. I ran to the bathroom when I started to feel severe panic, I puked a bunch, I stared at myself in the mirror, and I didn’t recognize the person in the reflection. I felt separate from my appearance. And I think this was also ego death. Yes it was severe dissociation but it was also the completely shocking and scary as fuck realization that my true self is not my ego. All of the defenses I had been putting up, all of what I thought was my identity, was too centered in my ego.

In a way I think dissociation is not just a response to trauma, but I think it is also a small glimpse into the truth that is: We are spirits, composed of light/love, we are simply held inside our physical bodies, our shells. The first realization of this is so scary, because our egos don’t want us to figure that out, and they fight like hell to convince you out of it, which may be the main source of severe anxiety that occurs during dissociation. Here you are, realizing the separation of your soul and your body, while you have just spent your entire life believing that you are just a physical being.

Acid didn’t make me just freak out, it made me face all that I was repressing, and all that I had repressed for many, many years, came to the surface, and reared its ugly head in the course of a few minutes. It was beyond words actually, and as much as I describe my experience, I cannot explain how exactly it uncovered all of that that quickly. Basically acid forces you to face yourself, completely, and your ego loses the intense control it usually has. The ego’s primary purpose is to keep control, to make sure you reason your way out of anything that isn’t based on reason, so that you can be safe. But this is limiting because in doing so it keeps you from truly changing, from truly viewing things in a holistic way, from letting go and realizing that you are not the center of the universe and there are forces at work that you will never be able to fully explain through reason. It’s human nature to want to explain everything and to relentlessly attempt to learn all that there is to know, thus knowing everything about everything. What people don’t want to accept is that there are so many things that we will never be able to fully figure out or have the answers to. And this scares the shit out of people so they usually avoid it all costs.

One major benefit of using psychedelics is that you can no longer hide behind your ego, you can no longer keep trying to think everything is based in science and reason and facts. It forces you to lose control and to realize that letting go and opening your arms to new experiences and even scary experiences is the key to growth.

Psychedelics are also the reason why I know for sure that at my core I am an artist, a visionary, and a highly emotional/healing type person. When I tripped, after I got past the shitty part, it started to go entirely the other direction and everything started getting mind blowingly awesome. I started to see lines of color coming in from the corners of the room that met at the middle, and these lines of color were both matter and energy, and they were made of the primary colors. They were not only in the room but stemming out of all of the people that were around, and the colors were different in terms of which ones dominated for certain people. One guy that was in the room had sooo much red in his energy field, and I remember telling him that and I think he just laughed ha.

The reason I say that I found out I’m a visionary/healing type person is that not everyone sees these kinds of things when they trip. My trip was incredibly spiritual and artistic, very visual but also very visceral. And this totally makes sense because those are the very elements of my core self. Not only did I begin to draw later on in my trip, but I also continued to draw everyday, just for myself, from then forward for a long time. My work was the most creative it has ever been, the most colorful, the most abstract and full of energy out of anything else I had previously made. I basically couldn’t stop drawing. It was like I realized that art and creating art was such a strong and important part of me, and though this wasn’t conscious, I know I did it a lot because I felt inspired *and* like I absolutely had to express these creations/visuals. I had to capture them, because in doing that I was becoming more in line with my true self. I also got very spiritual after I tripped, and I began to research chakras and meditation a lot. I bought a book on all of the chakras and it had meditations in it for every one of them. I began to meditate every day as well, and I could totally feel my spirit when I did so. I’d feel this tingling and warmth rushing to my feet, and I *felt* like I was energy. I felt like I was so much more than just my body and even my mind.

The interest in Psychology has always been there for me but even though it has to do with emotions, it is still pretty based in reason. There are so many categories and definitions in psychology, and then there are so many logic-based responses to dealing with disorders once they are diagnosed. You are to go to therapy and talk it through, you are to take medication that will chemically alter your brain. Even though Psychology is the study of the mind, it is less connected to spirit than my strong connection to art and meditation. But, psychology has the great intention of *healing* souls. The word souls isn’t used very often in psychology, but it certainly is about healing damaged emotions, and emotions are very much a part of our souls.

So during this whole time I’ve been talking about I was majoring in both Psychology and Art, and I was really getting into drawing and meditating. I didn’t choose the best period of my life to decide to take on the intense experience of tripping, as my family life was incredibly fucked at that time. So initially I had a lot of good revelations and I came more into myself, but then a few months later I began to spiral downward. I’m sure this was for a combination of reasons, but mostly I was just so exhausted, and so not prepared to take on college at that time. I could barely handle my family life. I also felt very isolated at college and at home. So basically I was left to face all of these huge changes on my own. And so I fell apart. Uncovering my artistic nature also lead to uncovering the dark side of my unconscious. There’s no way to avoid uncovering your unconscious feelings when you’re working creatively.

So I began to come down from my amazingly great feelings time to return to what my unconscious contained. There was a lot that was not dealt with well, because I had no outside emotional support and I internalized nearly everything that happened in my dysfunctional family. There was no one to tell me otherwise, and I had no real escape or way to live my own life, other than by going inward more into my imagination. So you see what I’m saying? As I learned so much about my core self and what I was here on earth to do, I also learned just how deeply I had been damaged by my family, and by my long-term feelings of being inadequate, a lone wolf, the one who doesn’t fit in with anyone or anything. So I got very very depressed and was for a long time, I stopped being able to be creative because I was so depressed that I turned numb and hollow. I couldn’t sleep like at all, I felt like I had no identity at all and I lost every single bit of that spark I had previously. I lost that confidence and enthusiasm. I never would have come out of that dark pit if it weren’t for starting Wellbutrin, which I’m still on.

So, identity. That’s what I thought a lot about looking through those pictures too. My identity is so fluid. I could be anyone or anything. I am so many different things, I have so many different interests, I have a couple different selves. Throughout that time I went from Hippie, to Indie, to Formal, to Hippie, to Nothing, to Punk/Hippie. It was pretty much in that order, though I would also change my style and interests dramatically between these various scenes. I would often take on the identity of the people around me. I think I still do that to an extent now, but not as severely as before. I know who I am a lot more now, but I don’t *feel* it as much as I did for that period after I tripped, I don’t meditate or make art everyday anymore, and I haven’t been able to put my psychological skills into use yet either.

I guess I never got to the stagnation element that I intended to write about. Basically I am a very fluid person but I am also rather stagnate. There are some things in my life and within me that have been the same for a very, very long time, and I still don’t know to change those things and struggle with doing so to this day. Then there are the other things about me that continue to change all of the time, and I am pretty fluid in thought and beliefs. I get sucked into people’s stories when I read them, I get sucked into movies when I watch them, I begin to feel like I am those people or I am also a part of those stories even though I’m not. That is part of the fluidity, but it’s also that I am very empathetic and highly sensitive.

Ok this post is way too long, but I hope some people read it. I think I will be writing in here more often.