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Forced Into A Mold Not Made For Me

Somewhere along the way, I forced myself into a mold that wasn’t made for me.

As a child I believed that no matter what I did, I wasn’t good enough. As a young adult I believed that no matter what I did, I wasn’t good enough. In my 30s and 40s I believed that no matter what I did, I wasn’t good enough. (Except at work for some reason. At work, I knew I was good at my job and readily accepted constructive criticism, but I digress…)

In my life outside of work, if someone chose me to be their friend or significant other, I quickly figured out who they needed me to be, and became that person. My parents taught me the only way to be accepted and loved was to never make them mad or let them down. My mom wanted me to be a nurse, so I wanted to become a nurse, nevermind that I have always been a germophobe and wash my hands until they crack. My dad wanted me to be punctual to show respect. I made it my life duty to always be at least 5 minutes early.

I was a chameleon. Constantly changing to fit in with whatever my surroundings were. I was exhausted. I was anxious.

I went to therapy. Lots of therapy. I recognized patterns in my life. I figured out who I wanted to be, well I’m figuring that out as I go, and I forged a new path, a next chapter. I am not my past, I am my future. I can’t ever control what happens to me, but I can control how I interpret and respond to it.

I am finally becoming me.

Going to the Dump

My dad died a few weeks ago. We haven’t spoken since November 1st, 2013. That was the day he threatened to shoot me if I went to his house with my children who wanted to see their grandpa.

After his death, I found out that he was in the hospital for weeks, and asked the two people who knew to not tell me. About a week before he died, he refused anymore treatment, knowing the outcome of that decision would be death.

For years after my dad threatened to shoot me, I wondered what I did so wrong that my own father didn’t love or want me. Through years of therapy I have learned that it had nothing to do with me, it was all him. It was his issues and it was his loss.

He missed out on ten years of my kids’ lives. He has no idea about the amazing, hard-working young adults they have grown into. He missed ten years of my life to as I have worked hard to become the authentic version of myself that I was always scared to be. He was the cause of that fear, along with many other people, who only loved and accepted me when I behaved exactly as they expected, but I digress.

My brother was tasked, by my dad before his death, to take care of his unfinished business and all the other things that have to be taken care of after death. Last weekend he asked me to help him take some things to the dump.

As we were unloading the trailer of all the things we needed to dispose of from my dad’s place one thought ran on a loop in my mind…

He lived 79 and half years and we are throwing most of his stuff away. As we unloaded the trash, I recognized a couch my parents bought when I was about five years old. We tossed it. It did not look like it was in any condition to be used as a couch. His home has piles and piles of stuff. It’s obvious his mental health deteriorated as he aged.

I mourned the loss of a father many years ago, but it was hard going to the dump to throw the possessions of his life away. It cemented the fact that he will never be able to make things right in our relationship. It also solidified that it was his loss.

Anomaly

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, an anomaly is a person or thing that is different from what is usual.

When I was eight years old, my mom decided that our family needed to go to church. I was too young to argue, but I was terrified that first Sunday when I walked into the Children’s Church without my mom. My sister and I got separated leaving me in tears. An adult in the room saw what happened and helped me sit next to her and the Children’s Pastor asked me to take my frown and turn it upside down. That made me smile.

That was my first church experience, I would spend the next forty years in church, not always the same one, but always an evangelical denomination. As I got older, I was an anomaly there.

As a child I learned that we should love our neighbor (Matthew 22:39), help the hurting (Good Samaritan Parable Luke 10:25-37), that God created every person (Psalm 139:13-14), and God cares so much about us that he knows how many hairs we have on our head (Matthew 10:26-31). Since I felt like I had to earn love in my family, learning there was a God who loved me no matter what was encouraging to me.

Unfortunately as I got older, I was taught that God’s love has limits. We are only to love those who have the same beliefs as us. We are only to love those who love like us. I learned that if I hung out with the “wrong” people or listened to the “wrong” music I needed to ask God for forgiveness or risk being sent to hell.

I left the church a few years ago. I felt like I was different from what is usual; an anomaly. I still believed that I should love my neighbor, no matter what, not based on their religion, immigration status, or sexuality. I couldn’t sit through another service discussing how we need to pray for others, but at the same time vote for people who were determined to deny rights to everyone equally. People are people no matter what they believe, where they came from, or who they love.

ALL people are worth basic rights and being treated with dignity and respect!

We are all worthy of love and acceptance. There is no asterisk or “but” in that statement.

I am demoralized by the reality that I live in a nation where over half the voting population believes that we only have to take care of ourselves.

I must still be an anomaly.

Tough Days Happen

Sea Sanctuary - #Repost @positivelytherapy ・・・ Bad days happen. Tough emotions happen. Confusing thoughts happen. Some days are going to feel like a completely messy scribble. And that's ok. • • • • • • #

I work with high school students. Today, I had two students who were having anxiety attacks come to me.

One was able to use the techniques I was giving them as well as some of their own to calm down. That is great!

The other, used various techniques and could not get their breathing to slow down, their tears to stop, or their brain to stop racing. That is okay too.

Sometimes we just have a day(or a lot of days) where we can not quiet our minds. When our hearts continue to race and our thoughts spiral into places we don’t want them to go. And that’s okay.

In the long run, feeling like that is going to have physical consequences for us, but sometimes we just need to feel what we feel. We need to accept the facts of what is happening to us or around us that are making us feel this way. Eventually, if you use techniques that you have found work for you to slow everything down you can get back to normal.

Calming techniques for one person, may not work for another. That’s why it is so important to find what works for you.

Here is a website that has ideas with videos to instruct how to use each technique they present. https://www.mind.org.uk/need-urgent-help/what-can-i-do-to-help-myself-cope/relaxing-and-calming-exercises/

Many people in anxiety attacks get upset with themselves for not being able to calm down, or call themselves names for having the attack in the first place. These reactions DO NOT HELP. It’s important to accept that it happened in order to get to a calmer state. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 4% of the world’s population have an anxiety disorder, you are not alone in what you experience. You can also reach out to a therapist for help in gaining techniques and strategies for when it happens and in making your life improve over all.

Heal to Handle Joy

A friend of mine sent this image to me recently. I have no idea who to credit for it, but it is so true.

I spent most of my life hyper-vigilant, not knowing who I could trust, even myself. I often felt like there was an overwound spring, ready to break free inside of me. The anxiety often threatened to pull me under and drown me. It took a toll on my body as I am still learning to relax my overly tense muscles.

Therapy has helped me tremendously. The first few times I went, I did the work to get through the trauma of the moment. Then because of insurance, or time committment, I would end treatment with new skills and strategies for dealing with the stresses of life.

This time though, I have continued beyond the trauma of the moment and gotten to the base of my mental health issues; feeling worthless, not good enough, abandoned, alone, and dealt with them. Now, instead of always waiting for the next bad thing to happen, I believe that I will find joy.

That is a terrifying, new experience for me. I’m not saying that I haven’t been happy before, but I never trusted it, history had shown me that good times don’t last. You get your heart ripped out of your chest, cut to pieces, and left alone to put it back together again.

As I have been learning to live my authentic self, not making myself fit into a certain mold or expectation of me, I have found people who like me, and all the oddities and nerdiness that go along with me. It’s scary to be vulnerable and honest with yourself and others, but in the process, I am learning how to handle joy in my life. I’m not scared that I have to behave a certain way to keep people likeing me, they just like me.

Therapy taught me that I can be me. As a friend learned in one of her therapy appointments, I’m not for everybody and everybody isn’t for me and that’s okay. As I have embraced who I am, I have learned to find joy in acceptance, peace in solitude, and contentment with others. I no longer feel as though I am a spring ready to break free, now if I could just get my shoulders to realize that they are not responsible for keeping everything inside so they can relax…

If you need someone to talk to, I am now an Associate Marriage Family Therapist working at Share Homes Foster and Adoption Agency in Lodi, Ca. If you are in California, I can work with you. Send a message for more information.

Surviving to Thriving….

For most of my life, I have lived in survival mode. Everything was difficult when it came to interpersonal relationships. I needed to be loved and accepted and I felt like I had to earn it. I believed that I was not worth love and acceptance just for who I am. That belief has caused extensive grief for myself and unfortunately, there has been collateral damage to those closest to me.

In June 2020, I knew I couldn’t handle living in fight, flight, or freeze mode any longer and reached out to a therapist. At that point I felt like I was barely surviving. Struggling to tread water, to keep from drowning in life. That therapist, and then another one, were the flotation devices that I needed.

On a Saturday afternoon in October 2021, I was laying in bed. Getting out of bed was an unsurmountable obstacle that day. I could feel the darkness of being underwater overwhelming me, I did not have the energy to come up for air. I reached to my bedside table and grabbed my journal that was always there, waiting for me to empty the swirling thoughts in my head.

That day I wrote this in my journal:

“Spinning, swirling

Thought sprials, going nowhere,

Energy zapped, utterly exhausted,

Light evaporating, gray overshadowing,

Growing weary,

suffocating,

drowning.”

I realized I needed more help. I got on antidepressants. I started seeing my therapist weekly. I reached out to friends to hang out and talk and ask for help when I needed it.

This past week I saw my therapist (yes, I have been in therapy for three-and-a-half years.) I told him, that for the first time in my life, I feel like I am thriving. I have many things in my life to be grateful for and a lot of accomplishments, but most of them were done in an attempt to just survive this life. For example, I did well in school because I knew that an education would get me away from my parents.

At the end of January, I finished a master’s degree in psychology. This was something I did, not because it would help me survive, but because it would allow me to help others in survival mode heal so that they can thrive.

The next step for me is applying for my Associate Marriage and Family Therapist certificate, so I can start working with others on their healing journey.

Hopefully, that adorable puppy in the picture will work with me as a therapy dog.

A Long Time Coming

I have spent the past few years learning about myself. The journey truly began in the spring of 2016 with a series of Facebook posts that all started with the phrase, “You might be in an abusive or controlling relationship if…” I was writing them to help a friend who I thought was in a controlling relationship, but also to help all people who might be in that kind of relationship and not realize it. In the process, I ended up helping to finally heal myself from the abusive and controlling relationships that I experienced in my childhood, adolescence and young adulthood.

Through my healing journey, I realized that I was a people pleaser. I did not even know what I truly liked in some cases, I just liked what others liked. I really like cheesy rom-com movies where you know exactly how the story is going to end. I really don’t like NASCAR, except the white noise of the engines while I take a nap. I like some sci-fi, but not others and I can’t tell you what makes me like some and not others yet, but I’ll keep watching to figure it out.

I learned that I don’t like fighting. If I think someone is mad at me and is about to start or does start a fight, I will do whatever is necessary to appease them and keep them happy. I will retreat into my shell, and ignore my wants and needs to keep the other person happy. This is not a healthy coping strategy. I am working on this.

I have learned how to say what I am feeling, what I need, and what I want without feeling like I’m asking for too much or being too needy. I learned that just because I was made to feel that asking for my needs to be met as a child was asking for too much, it is not. It is normal and necessary for humans to function.

I learned that it’s okay to ask for help; that relying on yourself from a young age because you cannot trust anyone else to help you in your time of need is not a healthy coping strategy. It means that those who should have been there to take care of you when you were younger weren’t.

I have learned a lot over the past seven years and I will continue to learn more on this healing and growth journey I am on. I will never again settle for a person because they pay attention to me, I am looking for a true partner in my future. Someone who loves me as I am. Someone who I am able to be myself with from the very beginning and able to grow and change with as I learn new things.

I am excited to be at this point in my life. I am content with where I’m at. I have great friends, a good job, and a home that I love and am totally comfortable in.

Believe in Yourself

I grew up doubting myself in everything I did. There were excellent reasons for this, I was conditioned to doubt not just my abilities, but even my own emotions. I was terrified that the upper level of the Bay Bridge heading to San Francisco would collapse onto the lower level, crushing the cars below; I never wanted to go over the bridge.

I told my mom about that fear.

Her response: “That’s completely ridiculous. There is no way the Bay Bridge will collapse.”

On October 17, 1989 at 5:04 pm the Loma Prieta earthquake rocked the San Francisco Bay Area for 20 seconds at a magnitude 6.9. Among the billions of dollars in damage that was caused, the upper level of the Bay Bridge collapsed onto the lower level killing one person.

I wasn’t ridiculous, but I had been dismissed. After the earthquake, my mom continued to dismiss my fear, telling me it was a freak accident, caused by the earthquake and anything else she could think of to not take my fear seriously.

There are too many stories like this from my life, I could go on for pages and pages. (I actually did. The book is called Worthless No More, go check it out under the books tab.)

I have spent the past two years in therapy with an incredible therapist. I have also spent a lot of time learning about myself and seeing what beliefs and behaviors I had that needed to be changed.

The biggest change I needed to make was to believe in myself. To trust that my feelings are valid, that my thoughts are valuable, and that my words have worth.

I have spent years teaching these things to my students, hoping that they’d take it to heart and ignoring it in my own life.

Now, I believe in myself. Now, I trust myself. Now, I know my worth.

And you can to.

You are AMAZING!!!!

Puzzle Pieces: Make Me Fit

For most of my life I felt out of place. Like a piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit… and I wanted so bad to fit somewhere, anywhere. I wanted to belong to the beautiful picture that I believed was on the cover of the box of this roller coaster called life.

I felt so close, so many times, like I almost fit. It didn’t matter to me that it wasn’t a perfect fit. It didn’t matter to me that the picture wasn’t perfect. I would force my piece of the puzzle into the pieces around me. The part of the picture I had on my piece fit in close enough with the whole thing that it worked for awhile. I stayed connected to other pieces of the puzzle that weren’t a perfect fit for too long far too often in my life.

Eventually the pressure of being in the wrong place, trying to fit in where I didn’t belong, having the edges of my puzzle piece constantly rubbed the wrong way, effected my mental health. It forced me to make choices that impacted my life. I had to decide what was more important, keeping up a façade of fitting in, which must have been rubbing other people’s edges wrong too, or getting out of that place and finding a place where I truly fit; without rubbing my edges, or anyone else’s, wrong.

There have been a few places and a few people as I have gotten older where I feel like I fit perfectly. When you look at this picture, you can see that the edges fit snugly, with no pressure points. When you find the right people to be with, there won’t be pressure points.

I’m not saying that there will never be disagreements with people that you fit with, there may be, but the discussion or argument will still be respectful. Just because people fit, doesn’t mean they’re exactly the same. It just means that they images on their puzzle pieces work together to make the same big picture.

My puzzle is still incomplete. I haven’t found everybody who fits in my puzzle perfectly. I’m being more careful about it though because I don’t want to ruin the edges of my puzzle piece, or theirs’. In the end I want mine and everyone in my life to have perfect puzzle pieces to create a beautiful image for our life.

I may be getting a late start on it, but hey… better late than never.

Hittin’ the Road

Meet Cam the Campervan

I can’t tell you how long I have wanted a little camper van like this one to drive across the country. In the 90s I owned a Volkswagen vanagon for a few months until my first husband wrecked the engine. I never got to take it farther than Santa Cruz, and I never got to camp in it.

I have been a few trips with a travel trailer to Montana, South Dakota, and the Grand Canyon, but not yet from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Coast.

Until now.

After my enlightening, soul strengthening, trip to Iceland last October, my kid asked when we were taking that trip to Ocean City, MD. Inspired quite a few years ago by this sign in South Sacramento, CA.

We started planning. We started saving. We started driving.

It’s our Epic Road Trip. Just us girls before she graduates high school. We’ve gone for a hike to see Native American ruins in Arizona. We went to a nuclear museum in Albuquerque. We ate at a Cracker Barrel restaurant for the very first time in Texas. We’ve been to the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis where MLK Jr. Was assassinated. We wnt to the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum that honors those lost in the bombing there and reminds us to never forget what happened that day.

This has definitely been a trip we won’t forget and we’re only a few days in. We’ll be posting videos about it on my YouTube channel @mishellwolff3652.