My Story of Pain and Purpose

I am complex.

We all are. We are all so much more than what others see. We are more than what others believe us to be. We are more than unmet expectations, boxes that have been constructed for us to fit into, and the disappointments others express in us.

We are also so much more than the good days. The perfect Instagram worthy posts. The pinterest projects and endless to-do lists that finally got done. We are more than sunshine and rainbows and the smiles plastered to our faces.

We are more than the fake and phony. We are more than the pretending and “I’m fine.” We are more than our illness and wellness. We are complex.

When I set out on this journey to share my story, I really did not think of the extent of what my story was. You see, I had been taught (somewhere along the way), that my story and my voice did not matter. It was not as important as someone else’s. The pain not as great as another’s. The trauma not as significant and therefore devalued; it means nothing if someone has it worse. But I want to change that narrative. I believe fully and wholly that transparency and vulnerability create meaningful connection. When we realize that we are not alone in our journeys, that people genuinely care and understand, we are able to move forward with hope.

I hope that in my sharing, you will find your light. You will believe that wellness is possible. Healing is possible. You are worth investing in and that people do genuinely care.

I was just a little girl, 4 years old when my Opi (German grandpa) passed away. I can still remember playing happy birthday for him on my portable keyboard. He was in his bed a lot at this time, but that didn’t matter, I loved him, and he loved me, and I just enjoyed his company. One day my parents sent me to stay with my cousin. I recall vividly them hurrying me into the car to get back to my house. I plead for them to tell me what was going on, but no one would. When we got back everyone was crying, and my Opi was gone. No one would tell me what was going on, but his bed was empty. That was when I first drew the conclusion that when I leave bad things happen. This thought process planted its faulty seed into my mind and sprouted years of agony and trying to be there for everyone and everything. But bad stuff inevitably happens. Shortly thereafter my parents decided to move to the United States. I was 6. I left behind my friends, family, pets, home, and belongings. I got on a plane and moved to California, we lived with my “American” grandparents. I did not speak or understand English, I was put into an ESL class (where everyone, including the teacher spoke Spanish), I had no friends, and I was the weird foreign kid. An immigrant. Throughout school I endured pretty severe bullying, from kids and teachers alike. I was locked into dark bathrooms, death threats were issued to me and my family if I ever told anyone, I was called a Nazi often. So, I became a chameleon. I learned how to fit and adapt. How to be liked and how to keep others happy. Once I had “friends” the bullying did not matter as much anymore. Some kids thought it was cool that I spoke a different language and that I was “different.” What I really wanted them to believe is that I was the same.

At home things were not much better. My parents worked a lot, they had to, and I respect how far they have come and the lives they have made for themselves. I endured a lot of verbal abuse from a relative. I was told I did not matter. That I would never have friends. I was too ugly. I was not worth life. I was told, as a young girl, that no one would ever want me. This person would purposely make fun of me when my friends were around, call me degrading names, tell me I should run away or die. What was meant to break me, only made me stronger. I realized this person was afraid of me. Afraid of my courage and strength, of my intelligence and resiliency. This person wanted to bring me down because they were unhappy; they projected themselves onto me. I watched as they continued to try to berate and belittle me, and I chose not to break. I chose not to let them see me cry. To say it didn’t hurt would be a lie, but when you are exposed to pain repeatedly, eventually you go numb. The numbness worked to my advantage though, it allowed me to live my life as the positive person that I knew I was. I have always loved people; loved helping and being there for others. No one was going to change that about me. I grew up around substance use and abuse as well, I learned that a lot of people self-medicate at an early age. I was a latch-key kid and always tried my hardest to help my parents in any way I could.

When I was younger, I didn’t know that I had anxiety. I would feel sick every day (somatic symptoms) and go to the nurse. I had trouble sleeping even when I was little and would experience night terrors and nightmares basically every night. I learned how to stay up all night reading with a flashlight because it was better than the night terrors. My intrusive thoughts sometimes got the best of me and they manifested in OCD tendencies and perfectionism. I pushed myself hard and was always in competition with someone (self-imposed) to keep myself at my best. I worried about literally everything. I worried about worry.

At the age of 11 another life-altering event happened. My Omi (German grandma) was visiting and staying with us. My brother was 2 at the time and napping in his room and I was helping my Omi with laundry while watching a show. She said she wasn’t feeling well, but didn’t want my mom to worry, said she would be fine. My mom left and went to work. My Omi went in her room to put away her clothes. When the show ended, I realized she still wasn’t back, and I went to check on her. That’s when I found her. She was on her floor in her bedroom. I panicked. I called my other grandma hysterically; I ran to my neighbors who called 911. But it was already too late. The fire department and ambulance seemed to take forever to get there, they wouldn’t let me go inside. My neighbor waited with me outside of my house. That day changed a lot for me. I lost a lot. And I realized that I would never be enough. When my Opi died, I drew the conclusion that bad things happened when I wasn’t there, so I was always there for people. But my Omi still died. I didn’t pay enough attention, I wasn’t fast enough, I didn’t respond well. The inner critic was right, that relative was right. I would never be good enough.

That didn’t stop me from trying harder though. I was in all honors classes. I took 7 periods most of my high school years. I was involved in extra-curricular activities and volunteered. If anyone needed anything, I was there. I was a people-pleaser. Very good givers attract the best takers, and I was okay with that. At least they thought I had something to give.  

High school was also the time I developed my truly unhealthy relationship with food. Growing up I was placed on a lot of diets. I think it was common then for moms to always be dieting because I remember all my friend’s moms always being on some sort of new diet-fad as well. But I decided that I could just not eat. So, I didn’t. For a long time. I lived on water and gum. Everyone thought I looked great; they complimented how disciplined I was (although they had no idea, I was not eating at all). I started to not feel my best, I was tired and light-headed a lot, I would get dizzy spells and just drink more water. My mom was doing my hair for a baby shower when I passed out and smashed head-first into the bathroom mirror. Thankfully, I wasn’t hurt. My parents had no idea what was going on. My dad got really upset and learning to eat again wasn’t easy. Yet again, I wasn’t enough. What I learned through this though was that, while I can’t control others and what happens, I can control what and how much I eat. I needed control of something, so this became my thing.

After high school I worked full-time, went to school full-time and tutored on the side. I always kept myself extremely busy; when I am busy, I don’t have time to think. I had learned how to “manage” my anxiety (which I still didn’t know I had) by distracting myself. Sure, there were days I wish that everything would just go away, or that life would end, but distraction was a good tool to keep my mind occupied.

Around this time someone very close to me tried to commit suicide as well. To say this was a shock is an understatement. Looking back, I see how alone this person felt and how the idea of not needing to be “in it all” anymore was appealing. I am so glad God had different plans though!

  In my early 20’s I met my husband and we had our son. We were relatively young parents and we didn’t have a lot, but we tried our best to do our best. My husband and I had to learn (over the years) how to break habits we didn’t even know we had. We had to learn how to communicate effectively and not recreate our families of origin. We struggled a lot, for quite some time. But we never gave up. When my son was 4, he and I were driving home and were hit by an intoxicated driver that was high and drunk. We had minimal physical wounds (praise God) but we both suffered extremely mentally and emotionally. My son ended up with a PTSD diagnosis, and this was what spiraled my anxiety. The accident allowed me to go back to school though and obtain my masters, and during that program I had my first public panic attack. It took therapy, medication, and a medical diagnosis to finally find reprieve. I had to battle a lot of negative thoughts, core beliefs and faulty thinking; I had to replace my distortions with healthy coping mechanisms and begin to see that not everything is my job. Therapy pushed me, a lot. Therapy taught me, a lot. Therapy helped save me.

I still struggle sometimes; I think we always will to some extent. This world is fallen and broken, and we desire perfection in an imperfect place. But now I have the tools to help me. I learned how to set healthy boundaries and let go of toxic people and relationships, or to minimize my exposure to ones I can’t end. I learned how to shift my focus and keep my eyes on Jesus; how to have grace, not only with others, but with myself. I learned how to advocate for myself and my needs, whether medically or relationally. I know now that when others project onto me, I do not have to accept it, and I can still pray for them and love them. I learned that my anxiety and panic lives with me. My body is its house and sometimes I forget it lives there, but other times I still struggle with sharing space. I learned that wellness is complex too, but it is SO worth investing in and fighting for. I learned that I can’t be enough, but I don’t have to be enough. I give myself permission to be fully me, and I will always do my best to love big and be there for others because that is who I am to my core, but I will no longer be a people-pleaser or welcome mat. I learned that we all have beliefs and ideas, we all have opinions and its okay to be different (even when others don’t want you to be). I learned that this world is perfectly imperfect and that I can lean into that because, so am I. I will never fit into someone else’s box, I will never be someone else’s ideal, I will never be anything but who I am. I can learn. I can grow. I can become a better version of myself, but I will never be perfect, and I have learned to be okay with that. Progress is greater than perfection.

This is a very condensed version of my story. There are specific details I left out and diagnoses that are not mine to share. I have walked through a lot in my life, and yet I know others have walked through more. The things I chose to leave out I did because I do not want to hurt others in sharing my story. I know we all have a version that is true to us. This is my story. It includes pain and illness, but more than that it includes hope and wellness. I may not have always known what I was up against, but if my story shows you anything, I hope it shows you how strong we are. How we learn to cope and adapt. How we can still unlearn negative behaviors and learn positive ones. I hope that my story shows you that we are all connected to each other. Pain and suffering are not discriminatory, they will choose anyone, at any time. But when I reflect back on all of this what I see most prevalent, is the purpose to my pain. My pain catapulted me into my purpose. It showed me that regardless of what we face in life we have choices. It showed me my own strength and ability to rise. It showed me that love always wins and that I have a heart that desires to make a difference.

My story matters.

YOUR story matters.

One day, when you are ready, you can tell your story too. I hope in doing so you can reflect on your story and see your strength and determination. Your heart and soul. That you can see you were worth investing in and fighting for all along. Our stories matter. Our voices matter. Your life matters, and you are never alone.

Cognitive Distortions... you don't need them.

For many of us, we are entirely unaware of how prevalent cognitive distortions are in our lives. We have allowed them to run rampant in our every day thought processes and when someone points out how dysfunctional they are, we can even become a bit defensive.

Cognitive distortions serve no healthy purpose. In fact, they often lead to more irrational thinking, dysregulated mood, as well as intrapersonal and interpersonal problems. We find that those struggling with distortions regularly struggle to maintain a positive outlook or hope that things can get better. They often have more difficulties in their interpersonal relationships and allow their distortions to dictate the outcome of their relationships.

All this to say, cognitive distortions are relatively normal to have. Most of us have struggled, and often even after learning about distortions and how to work through them effectively, still do struggle with at least one. Below you will find a list of the 10 most common distortions. It would be beneficial for you to go through the list and notate any that you feel resonate with you, or that you are aware that you do regularly.

1.      Mental Filtering: When we choose (often unconsciously) to focus on everything that is not working. We filter out all the good and only see the bad.

• Reframe: Begin by listing 1 thing daily that is going right or is good. Eventually work up to 5-10 items daily.

2.      Jumping to Conclusions: When we make *irrational* assumptions about other people or situations based on our feelings rather than on facts or evidence.

• Reframe: Examine the evidence. Is your conclusion substantiated? Challenge the feeling. Remind yourself that feelings are not facts. Question what the conclusion does for you, does it help you or hurt you? And, are their healthier alternatives?

3.      Personalization: When we take undue blame for everything that goes wrong in our lives and others, and we find ourselves to constantly be a victim of circumstance.

• Reframe: Examine what part (if any) you did have in the outcome, accept whatever responsibility you have in the matter and work on letting others accept responsibility as well.

4.      All of Nothing Thinking: When we see everything in black or white, right, or wrong; there is no middle ground or space to compromise.

• Reframe: Challenge yourself by finding alternative (middle ground) solutions or compromises. Start small and work up to adjusting on a larger scale.

5.      Catastrophizing: When we blow things our of proportion or make situations/events worse than they actually are. Everything will always be bad.

• Reframe: Challenge your thinking. “Are things really as bad as I feel?” And then challenge your feelings; Why am I feeling this way, what evidence do I have that supports this feeling?

6.      Overgeneralization: When we have a habit of using past experiences (often based in feelings rather than evidence) to predict or make assumptions about the future. “She ALWAYS…He NEVER…”

• Reframe: Challenge the absolutes (always, never, must..) and is there evidence to support a different outcome? Could things be different if we didn’t use absolutes?

7.      Labeling: When we make global statements about ourselves or others based on situation specific behaviors. We use one event to label the rest. *this often mirrors our internal belief system.

• Reframe: Where is the evidence that this is true in every situation? Reminding ourselves that using one event to determine the outcome of everything requires further reflection.

8.      Shoulding and Musting: When we use “should and must” to have unreasonable expectations of ourselves or others. “You SHOULD…I MUST…”

• Reframe: When you notice yourself using these words, challenge yourself to see if the expectations are reasonable. How are you feeling? Is your feeling based on evidence? Are there any other healthy alternatives that can help you reach the desired outcome.

9.      Emotional Reasoning: When we allow our feelings to dictate how we see situations, people, and outcomes. The tendency to allow our feelings to control our perceptions.

• Reframe: Being mindful in the moment and questioning our feelings. “Is how I am feeling skewed or biased? What evidence do I have to support my feelings?”

10.  Magnification and Minimization: When we tend to minimize our own positive attributes and devalue ourselves, while magnifying someone else’s positive attributes and putting them on a pedestal. In other words, recognizing and magnifying some else’s good while putting yourself down.

• Reframe: Challenge yourself to find reasons that you are deserving and capable. Start out with listing one thing daily that you are good at, that you do well. Eventually build up and add to your list. “What about today/this situation makes me deserving and capable?”

So, what to do once you have identified which ones you struggle with? You work on reframing your thoughts. A mental health professional can work with you to identify which ones you struggle with (do not be surprised if multiple resonate with you) and help you to gain more effective and healthy coping skills. Cognitive distortions often come from a time when they served you. For example, at some point in your life someone you trusted told you what you SHOULD do, and you saw the unreasonable expectations they had on themselves (what they MUST do). This led you to utilizing the “shoulding and musting” in your own life without even recognizing where it came from. At one point it was normal. But that does not mean it was healthy. Which leads you to finding healthier alternatives for the distortions.

To some extent we may all do these from time to time. To say that we could entirely eradicate ever doing any of these would not be beneficial, but we can minimize the frequency and extent to which you utilize these to cope. Our thoughts are based on our perceptions and our perceptions are our reality. But if we can change our thoughts, we can change our reality. We can go from hopeless to having hope. From struggling interpersonally to maintaining healthy and thriving relationships. From intrapersonal discord to shaping who we want to be and loving the life we live. You are not destined to live with unhealthy thinking patterns or maladaptive (unhealthy) coping skills. The thing about our thoughts is, they are often founded through feelings, and feelings are not facts. When we take the time to examine our feelings and their validity, we find that we have unresolved hurts or ineffective coping skills that have served us but no longer do. We find that we can let go of those feelings and focus on the facts, we can change our thoughts, we can lean into the discomfort temporarily to create a life we will love, we can choose a different path than the one we are currently on, and we do not have to let our past dictate our future outcomes.

It's all of us

Its you, its me, its all of us. When we talk about mental health, we aren’t talking about “the crazies” or the “abnormal(s),” still not entirely certain what the definition of those two categories are anyway; we are talking about every single person. Just like we are all either physically healthy or unhealthy, we are all either mentally healthy or unhealthy. There is so much to be said for those who seek help, who want to change their lives for the better, who talk about the hard stuff. That takes courage, it takes vulnerability, it takes strength. Struggling is not synonymous with weakness; we all struggle. Weakness is our inability to recognize the struggle as universal and change the way we interface with it.

We are all faced with difficulties at some point in our lives. It is not a matter of “if,” it is a matter of “when.” But we can no longer allow those situations to define us. We must fight for our mental health. We must take care of ourselves mentally in the same way we strive to care for ourselves physically.

The definition of Mental Health is as follows:

“According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health is “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community”

(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov )

In other words, to be considered ‘mentally healthy’ one must not have impaired functioning in any area of their lives. Normal stressors include but are not limited to, work, home commitments and social engagements, money, even health… Normal is considered anything within your usual realm, outside of that we can conclude that you are out of the norm and therefore subjected to additional stressors which could require further help or assistance.

Whether you are dealing with a chronic mental health disorder, whether you recently experienced a stressful or traumatic situation and are dealing with residual effects, or whether you find yourself  just wanting to change your story you have a right to be heard, understood and validated. Your feelings matter. Reaching out and asking for help is never easy; going down the road of unpacking your story can be painful, but also incredibly beautiful. You can’t change what has already happened, and you can’t control the future, but you can change your perception. You have the ability to write a story you will love, to live a life you will love. You can choose today to begin your new journey and do something you have yet to do. Even a small step in the right direction is better than inaction. It is often said, “your speed doesn’t matter, forward is forward.” Reach out to someone, connect, take time to breathe, go on that trip you’ve always wanted to, spend time outside, read a good book, allow yourself time to rest, enjoy your favorite food, and always know that everyone deserves to have a good therapist to talk to. Your mental health is worth it, and you are worth investing in.