My Personal Challenges for 2022

 2022. It's crazy. 2021 felt like it went incredibly fast and yet felt like it took 5 years. The weirdness that comes from socially isolating and being forced to spending most of your time at home. This isn't something I am new to, thanks to all my illnesses, but I was starting to emerge from the last depressive episode. Plus usually my partner isn't home.

I've been working on learning what I actually enjoy doing since I began therapy and stopped repressing so much. I've gotten better at grounding which means I dissociate less. I still struggle with emotions, both understanding what I am feeling and being overwhelmed. I feel like I've made progress with slowly sifting through my hobbies and joys from before trauma therapy and learning what I truly enjoy.

Painting

I  know I definitely love being creative and painting is part of this. I want to try some mixed media painting, drawing and sketching before painting, and painting on different surfaces. I've decided I am going to attempt to do one painting project a month, but I don't want to be too ambitious in case my mental health interferes so I am aiming between 8 and 12 pieces for 2022

Triggering Repressed Trauma

I don't really like blogging about my traumas in detail, but the following one I can. For those with triggers, it doesn't involve abuse or sexual assault at all. It's an unprovoked trauma brought about by an accident involving escalators.

This trauma is one I don't actually remember. I know it happened because I was told about it, numerous times. I don't know if I'm traumatised by the event, or the retelling of the event, or both. Whichever it is, I'll always wear shoes on an escalator without fail and that's the extent of my issues with escalators. I'm not scared of them.

When I was young, under the age of 5, my mum used to take me with her when she'd go shopping. One day, at our usual shopping centre entry, I went on the down escalators without shoes on. I'm not going to go in to what led up to me being shoeless as that's a trigger for me, but I was shoeless and with my mum.

Next thing you know my pinkie toe has gotten caught in the side, I'm screaming and crying, there's blood everywhere, and I think I needed stitches. I have the scar on my toe, it goes almost the whole way around! So it must have been pretty horrendous. Again, I don't know, I can't recall it.