Author: hermagicalthoughts

Empathy

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A couple of weeks ago I was very emotional and had really felt like I was taking on other people’s emotions. I have often felt this in my life and have been learning more about being an “empath” and a “highly sensitive person.” I have resonated with a lot that I’ve read/listened to, but recently I came across a quote on a post that made change my perspective a little bit.

I follow a few “self love” and “positivity” accounts on Instagram, because if I’m going to continue using social media, I am taking more control of what is in my feed and what I want to consume daily. Well, one account had posted this quote that they had written and it really stuck with me: “Empathy can often be confused with projection. It may seem like you feel other’s pain deeply, but the need to heal them comes from your own wounding. There was a time when you needed protection, so now you try to save everyone” (@VexKing on Instagram).

Now I read this and was like “Okay I am being attacked right now,” but in reality, I truly needed this realization. I feel like looking at situations where I felt someone’s pain or emotions, I can now dig deeper within and see where I was feeling that pain in myself. Sometimes it’s hard to hear certain things because they can feel harsh, but honestly those harsh truths can be so liberating when you take a good hard look at yourself.

When I was feeling my friend’s pain from her dealing with her best friend passing, I was feeling my pain from when my close friend passed a few years ago. When I feel stressed about how my friends are handing certain situations, it’s because of the way I’ve handled things/been handling things and I’m protecting my own insecurities onto others. When I am upset at family members for how they act, it’s because I can usually see myself in them during those times.

It’s amazing how simply reading a few sentences could completely opened a whole new perspective and avenue for healing for me. Psychologists explain how we are to work through our triggers and how explore therapy can be quite beneficial for a lot of patients, and we have to be very honest with ourselves in order to do that. Avoiding our triggers and our bad thoughts is only delaying our healing; and we deserve to heal.

Bummed, but Looking at the Bright side.

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Today my boyfriend and I were supposed to go to Iowa to visit my family and celebrate our Christmas together; we do a white elephant exchange every year and order Happy Joe’s Pizza and it’s always a great time! Well, this morning I went for my weekly covid test and it was unfortunately positive. I called up my Mom, who let me know that my Dad woke up with a rash (which is apparently a symptom of Omicron) and they weren’t going to Iowa either.

Needless to say I was pretty shook and upset this morning, but as I’ve been practicing, I started to look at the situation with gratitude. I am grateful that I took that test this morning, because if it wasn’t a requirement for work I wouldn’t have taken it as I am completely asymptomatic. In which case I would have unknowingly exposed my family to the virus. I’m also grateful that I feel well and that my boyfriend feels well and his at-home test was negative.

I’m also looking at this as an opportunity to do what I want/need to around the house. Today we hung up curtains that I’ve been meaning to hang for a while now. I plan to read and write more during this time at home; I want to take time to focus on self love/care.

I am proud of myself for not allowing myself to let this whole situation completely upset me. In the past, I’d be so irritable and upset for hours, if not days, over something I literally have no control over. It’s so important to count your blessings and appreciate what you have. It helps make life a lot more bearable.

Crystals

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Three separate people have gifted me crystals this past Christmas. My best friend and I finally celebrated our Christmas together yesterday (LOL yeah, we’re late AF), and she got me a witchy mystery box that came with three different crystals, a stone, some seeds, bay leaves, and little notes that explained what all of them do and are used for!

She bought it from a small shop and she sent in a description of me, and the shop owner used their insight and sent a cleansed mystery package. It’s honestly interesting to me; I’m not quite sure I necessarily believe in witchcraft or that type of thing, but I do believe that our minds are powerful and we can do a lot with just focusing more on positivity and goals.

From what I know about “witchcraft” (which is barely anything so take this how you want to) is that’s it’s about setting intentions, removing negative energy, and manifesting whatever it is that you desire. In general people speak about the “law of attraction,” which is basically getting what you desire by focusing on it with intent, and I see that same idea here in a way. I think overall that it is just bringing people to be more present and aware, which is then making us notice more around us and appreciate more (which isn’t a bad thing)!

I don’t know how much I’ll dive into this; ironically one of my other good friends was just over on Friday night and was saying how she wants to get into crystals, so part of me is like “is this a sign?” Do I even believe in signs? I’m unsure at this point. I’ve been trying to focus more on my health as I think I may have been experiencing blood sugar issues, so I’m working on adding protein to every meal as my doctor recommended. I think that should be my main focus at this time, but I am definitely interested in learning more!

Relief.

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I let my friend know that I was struggling to hear about her friends death, and honestly the conversion went so well it almost left me feeling angry with myself; instead I reminded myself that I am still growing and I can take this as a lesson and move forward. I found myself hesitating to put myself first out of fear of coming off like a selfish asshole, when in reality that’s the exact opposite of what I am trying to do.

It’s okay to be overwhelmed and it’s okay if certain things are triggering; what’s not okay is expecting people to understand when you haven’t communicated with them. I was avoiding an important conversation out of fear of confrontation, but having the conversation felt like a huge weight was lifted off of me. And now I can also take time to heal and see what boundaries work for me.

I ordered a couple more books off amazon today. After reading “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success,” I feel the need to dive more into learning about being aware and present, as well as the law of attraction. I have always believed in and been interested in Karma, but I never focused so much on what I was giving to the universe each day. I am excited to go on this inward, spiritual journey and learn more about myself.

Yesterday was the first time in several months, if not a year, that I had inspiration to write a poem. I sat down and wrote the first two lines that I had sitting in my head, and the rest just seemed to pour right out of me. Although it’s probably not my best work (I’ll have to go back and re-read it), I am just happy that I had that sudden feeling to write!

I’m excited for the week ahead, and excited to see my best friend this upcoming weekend for us to finally celebrate our Christmas together LOL. I hope everyone has a great week!

Therapy.

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I just finished up speaking with my therapist! Much different from our last conversation considering a month ago I had finally been setting boundaries and felt like I was sticking to them, and then today I feel like I’ve gone completely backwards and didn’t actually do anything that I thought I did. Hearing her say that this is kind of a “curveball,” made me feel somewhat better in a weird way; maybe just because it seems like anyone would be struggling with this and I feel less alone in it? I don’t know if that even makes sense.

We talked about a couple goals for me, one of which is journaling. I do write on here weekly, I guess sometimes more when I’m going through shit, but the act of physically writing down my thoughts/experiences will be beneficial for me. I actually used to write a lot when I lived with my parents, and it definitely was an escape/coping mechanism for me. Since being on my own with my boyfriend, I live in a much calmer environment which hasn’t required that need to escape.

I need to write out what I’m feeling in order to help myself understand it better. I feel it’ll help organize my thoughts as sometimes I feel like I am taking on other peoples’ issues and I’m not as good as I thought I was at determining what is “mine” and what isn’t. Another goal is to have subtle boundaries. I do NOT have to answer my phone when a friend/relative calls if I am not in the right headspace. NO ONE needs instant access to me, and me setting boundaries is NOT meant to hurt anyone, it’s meant to help myself.

I know I have a lot of work to do, but I am ready. I am tired of making myself physically ill my own stress, and honestly even over other people’s stress. I want to regulate my nervous system and find peace within myself, and I deserve that. More reading, more meditating, more breathing.

Triggered.

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A close friend of mine is grieving the loss of one of her best friends. I knew the girl who passed as well, but wasn’t very close with her. Needless to say, this is upsetting, however I think it has also caused me to fall physically ill. I’m having similar issues to what I last March: random nausea/vomiting that comes out of nowhere. I’m having weird cramping as if I’m going to get my period, but it ended four days ago. I’m negative for covid and my doctor just ended up giving me nausea meds again to help, but I need to do some deep diving into healing because I cannot live like this.

Talking to my friend as she vents about her grief is actually physically affecting me. I am having a hard time, because this is bringing up a lot of memories of when a good friend of mine passed away a few years ago. I’m also sad about this current situation, but I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about my friend and she recently was in a dream of mine where I told her about this girl who just died.

Now obviously I need to be there for my friend who is here and dealing with her best friend’s death, but how can I do that without feeling so ill and depressed? I’m taking a break from my crafting/small business as I need to take this journey into healing myself from the inside out. I have been in therapy for years, but I clearly haven’t been doing enough work.

I recently read about the importance of silence and meditation and I am going to try to mediate again. This time will be different, because I truly have a goal here: healing. If anyone has any advice/experience with being empathic/highly sensitive, I am all ears. I see my therapist tomorrow as well which I’m looking forward to, I’m sure she will have some tips.

Growth.

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I feel so very blessed every day to have such an amazing man in my life. I am always blown away when I think about the fact that we met at the age of 16, started our relationship together, and here we are 10+ years later still happily in love. I won’t sit and pretend that we didn’t have fights or hardships, I mean when you’re a teenager isn’t everything just a bit dramatic? Maybe not necessarily, but our brains were still very much under-developed and my emotional control was, well, much less controlled. I’m so thankful that he has stayed with me through my mental struggles and has never once made me feel like a burden. He is so patient with me and always makes me feel so loved, and for that I am forever grateful.

I remember moving out together at age 19- I had finally been able to escape my chaotic childhood home and be out on my own under my own rules. Little did I know that this would only exacerbate my anxiety at the time, as well as my depression. I’d sit and cry about how I had everything that I wanted, yet I felt like my brain was on fire, yet completely numb all at the same time. I was so upset that I didn’t feel “happy.” I’d tell my boyfriend how much I loved him and I loved our life together, all of which was 100% true, but that I still felt sad and almost empty or un-fulfilled. I just could not understand why I was feeling so empty and why I couldn’t just be happy there in those important moments of my life.

Now after many years of therapy (and ongoing therapy), I know that it is because my nervous system was used to being in a certain state, and now that I no longer was in an environment to keep it stimulated in that way, my brain was finding other ways to it. I could not sit still and relax. Period. I always felt the need to be doing something, and if I knew something needed to be done, it needed to be done right away. I always felt like I was racing the clock; I couldn’t even allow myself to just lay in bed or relax on the weekends. I always felt stressed and rushed, and I also felt like I was just doing this to myself which only made me angrier and hate myself and my brain more. If I did allow myself to physically relax, then my brain would just start going; how can you sit here when you could be doing x, y, and/or z? Why aren’t you doing this, that or the other thing? But why? I finally was in a space where I could control what would happen around me…but that control became obsessive.

Honestly, I am still learning how to deal with my anxiety and control issues; I see my therapist every 3-4 weeks and am actively trying to re-wire my brain with better habits. I have come a long way from where I was when I was 19, and again I feel so blessed that my boyfriend has been with me through all of this. When my anxiety was at its worst, I was so irritable and angry all the time and I took it out on him, because he was the only one around. I didn’t want to be mean to him, and then I’d feel guilty and sad about it because I was hurting the person who was sitting here loving and caring about me. I knew I didn’t want to do that anymore, and that was when I reached out and started my long journey of seeing therapists and trying different medications that got me where I am today: unmedicated and still actively going to therapy. I no longer feel constantly irritable or like I am running out of time, and I take time to sit and appreciate everything around me.

I am so proud of where I am now compared to seven years ago. I am so proud of where I am from when I started this blog compared to now. My goal with this blog was to learn how to love myself, and I truly feel that I have learned how to do that. There is still so much work to do, but it doesn’t feel so overwhelming anymore… it actually is kind of fun! I am going to continue on this journey so that I can develop more healthy habits, learn more about myself and my brain, and hopefully make myself better so that I am less likely to pass on my traumas to my future children. To anyone reading who feels super anxious or overwhelmed with life, just know that it can be a long journey, but it is a worthwhile journey. You deserve to take care of yourself and understand yourself.

Wishing you all a happy and healthy new year!

Very busy

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I feel like the end of the year is always a rush, but this year I feel extra busy with Christmas crafting and it’s honestly great! I had another order from my Etsy shop over the weekend, and then a couple orders from friends! It’s a lot, but also I’m very thankful as I am proud of how my small business is coming along.

I have some plans in the works and will update as things move forward! I hope everyone is surviving the holidays!

Moving Forward Always.

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I finally saw my therapist on Friday; it’s been a few months since I had a job switch and insurance lapse, not to mention she gets hella booked out. It was great seeing her, and honestly receiving some validation that I’ve been doing better with setting boundaries made me feel great! I’ve been much more focused on my personal progress and my goals; I’m being much more mindful about what I spend my time doing and who I spend that time with.

My therapist had mentioned how she recently read that the average friendship lasts six years (she prefaced this with the statement that this is not a researched medical/professional fact). Six years doesn’t seem like a long period of time, and it kind of makes sense since humans are constantly evolving. Our interests/values tend to change and develop over time, hence why we all become our mothers LOL.

My therapist recognizes that it is hard for me to let go of people; I have always been a “people-pleaser,” and I’d hate to let someone down or make them feel like they’re being abandoned. I know we all have our struggles and sometimes you just need a friend, but it is also important to recognize if there is any benefit to the friendship considering it does involve both parties. If you are constantly being dumped on, but never being checked up on, is that truly a friendship?

Where I struggle with that is also the fact that I never really ask people for help. If I’m upset or struggling, I don’t reach out to friends to vent and unload on them. Could I? Yes, I know I can, but do I need to? Not really. The thing is, I’ve always kind of had this mindset that you need to do shit on your own. My mom always said “The only person guaranteed to be with you until you’re dying day is yourself;” so I’m really the only one I can rely on.

In that same sense, since we are the only ones who are truly with us until we die, why not love ourselves? Why not take the time to do the things that we enjoy? Why not focus on what is going to make our own lives better? At what point are we “wasting time?” If your conversations with friends start feeling like a waste of time, where does that leave you? It is okay to let go of what is no longer beneficial for you.