Over the past week-ish, I’ve been scaling back on my online presence.

I want to talk about this a little because there’s got to be someone else out there that gets to feeling the same way I do sometimes, and because I’ve promised to share everything about building my online business, I need to keep up with that transparency.

Also, this blog started as a therapy tool, 9 years ago, and I’m going to continue to include that as a part of it.

Realizing that I was nearing an emotional mini storm, I stopped. I was beginning to feel this pressure, from none other than myself, to NOT stop until I had my desired of success…..that was just a step in front of what I had already succeeded. I have made huge leaps and bounds in building this business. But it was becoming triggering… this goes back to a lot of psycho babble from childhood and early adult, so I won’t get into that… if you want to find those posts, you can cruise the archives of my page….😁

Anyway, during these past few days, I kept telling myself that ”this” can wait, ”take care of yourself” “don’t give up” ”don’t be afraid”. This last one is, and has been one of my most debilitating roadblocks throughout my entire life.

I kept saying the phrase my grandparents told me as a child ”can’t never did anything”.

This was a seriously rough time. I know some may think it’s not, but for someone who has struggled with paralyzing fear their entire life, triggered by childhood trauma, etc etc, this needed some real good self talk, coping skills, feet in the dirt, praying, mind cleansing, day at a time, type of rough. Understanding as well..

Understanding that it’s ok for me to give myself a break, mentally, emotionally, deep breathing type of break. Because as I said in the title, I would catch myself holding my breath. Weirdest realization, given the history…🤷🏻‍♀️

People say, just take a break.. from what? When I get to feeling this way (fear), my mind goes straight to childhood, then to a memory from there that relates to the fear I’m feeling at the moment. It may not make sense because the present doesn’t resemble the past, but the FEELING my body is feeling, goes straight to the first time I felt that, and it’s generally a childhood instance.

Then, because my brain is totally fucking awesome at remembering things, it proceeds to go through, on some days, ALL of the memories that correspond to that feeling (in this case fear). Therrrreeee sheee gooooees folks!! And it’s Shassy with 50 furlongs ahead of Present Day, flying by All Those Previous Memories in 1 and 45.

I win! Yay!

Nope

Then I have to find the logical side of my brain and realign all of that shit that it just remembered, but it in the right time frame, and somehow bring myself back to liking myself again.

This is a colossal pain in my ass. It’s exhausting, retraumatizing sometimes, and just so flipping cold backed.

Add in that I am a recovering addict, and some days are really tough.

It’s a long psychological self awareness thing, that my therapist and I have been figuring out, for years.. before you knock the 7 years I’ve been with my therapist, put yourself in my shoes….anywho… It’s using my coping skills, because when these times happen, it causes ptsd symptoms, and yea, if you are dealing with ptsd, from any kind of trauma, then you understand. But for time…and as I’m really trying to make this a decent read, and not a small book…I’ll leave all of THAT out. Lucky you. 🙄

The point of this is, really, to just remember to see the signs. Know when to step back and take as much time as you need. I was initially going to just take a couple of days… but after those couple of days, I wasn’t ready. I just let myself take a breath, and reminded myself to take it one day at a time.

It’s just that one day at a time, sometimes takes a couple weeks, when the ride down the twisty turny slipper slide starts.

I did eat WAAAAAYYY too much gelato though. But it was soooooo good.

I miss the ocean more than is probably good, and that has had some long term future goals being tweaked…. But that’s the peace of long term goals… you can change them.

✌️

Shassy