Allowing Ourselves to Be Who We Are

Survivors who struggle with complex post-traumatic stress disorder or any trauma-based mental health problem often fight feelings of being inferior or not good enough. We focus so much on our downfalls and mistakes that we lose sight of the good things we do and the positive traits we bear.

In this piece, we shall examine what it is that makes a person good enough.

Why Don’t We Feel Good Enough?

Many times, the reason we spend so much time feeling not good enough is that we have so much negative self-talk going on in our minds.

Not only does our inner critic put us down, but it also replays the messages we heard during the trauma we survived. If we were told we were ugly, we internalized those words and thus began to believe that we were unattractive and not good enough. …

Isn’t everyone?

As children, many survivors faced not receiving love from their caregivers without paying a tremendous price, and even then, it wasn’t true love. This lack of attention and care left most abused and mistreated children living in a limbo of desiring the love they deserved.

In this article, we shall discuss why you may not feel good enough for love and ways you can change that for good.

Everyone Deserves to Be Loved

Everyone deserves love and respect, and yes, this includes you. The need and search for love in childhood is a fundamental and elemental part of being human. …

Learning to Live

Healing from a childhood so full of trauma that it causes dissociative identity disorder (DID) and many other mental health disorders is incredibly difficult and the road is hard and long. The two greatest destroyers of the healing process that poison our minds and keep us from progressing as we should are shame and self-hatred.

In this article, we shall discover together how shame and self-hatred hold us back and some methods to escape their grasp as we walk down the road less taken.

The Destroyer of Healing Called Shame

Shame is a natural emotion that helps keep human beings in line. If you do something wrong, you feel ashamed and hopefully will not do that thing again. …

Trying to understand what goes wrong

More often than people wish to think, folks go to mental health specialists and receive a misdiagnosis. This isn’t entirely the professional's fault as they are bound to the diagnosis they choose by the symptoms and traits described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) which is currently in its fifth edition.

This article will focus on how two mental health disorders, bipolar disorder, and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) and how the latter is often misdiagnosed as the former.

Bipolar Disorder

Everyone experiences high and low times in our lives, but in bipolar disorder, these peaks and valleys are much more severe and can be debilitating. Bipolar disorder brings major changes in mood, thinking, energy, and behavior patterns from the highs of mania to the extreme lows of depression. These cycles may last for days or months and the mood changes are so intense that they interfere with the person’s life, damage relationships, and disrupt their ability to function. …

Finding out you are good enough after all

“The most important day is the day you decide you’re good enough for you. It’s the day you set yourself free.” ~ Brittany Josephina

If you were raised in a trauma filled home, you may have grown up not knowing how you fit into the world. Some days you may feel that you do not belong on planet earth and that you were a mistake.

Buy you do belong and are certainly good enough and deserving of all the love and attention deserved by every human being.

What Does it Mean to Feel Good Enough?

Feeling good enough sounds like such a foreign concept to those who are survivors of childhood trauma that they struggle to understand it. …

And six methods to increase it and make you a stronger person.

Emotional intelligence (EI) involves the ability to identify, understand, use, and manage your emotions. Having high emotional intelligence skills can help you communicate better, resolve conflicts, empathize with others, and reduce anxiety plus stress.

Your emotional intelligence greatly affects the quality of your life as it influences your relationships and behaviors. EI is the same thing as self-awareness as it enables you to live your life with purpose and intention.

Many people move through life making vital decisions based on their current circumstances and sometimes the situations seem to be beyond change. However, this thought pattern limits your options and solutions to the problems you are facing. …

Celebrating the challenges of life

As the title suggests, October is the month in the United States when American citizens are challenged to consider their mental health. It is not a month to point fingers or experience self-loathing over seeming loss of control but rather to celebrate humanity’s ability to gain and keep control of themselves.

This article will focus on what emotional intelligence and locus of control are and how they affect one’s emotional awareness.

Emotional Awareness

The term emotional awareness refers to the ability to recognize and understand your own emotions and others’ emotions. …

Opening our hearts up to save lives

***Trigger Warning***

This piece discusses suicide and suicidal ideation, and some people might find it disturbing. If you or someone you know is suicidal, please, contact your physician, go to your local ER, or call the suicide prevention hotline in your country. For the United States, call The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800–273-TALK (8255), or message the Crisis Text Line at 741741. Both services provide free, confidential support 24/7. You can also dial 911 in the U.S. for immediate help.

This piece will concentrate on how suicidality impacts men to honor suicide awareness month.

The Cold Statistics of Suicide Among Men

In April 2020, the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced some very alarming statistics. Suicide ranks number four in causes of death for people ages 35–54. Suicide ranks as the second leading cause of death of people ages 10–34 as well. In fact, between the years 1999–2018, the suicide rate increased by 35% for all people in the U.S. That is a massive jump in deaths by suicide in the U.S. Suicide has become the tenth leading cause of death among all ages in the U.S., including men, women, and children. …