Adventures in Self-Compassion

Looking back at arguably the most radical decision I made in my entire life

Sorry/Not sorry for missing last week and posting a day late. The last two weeks were rough on my end. Last week, the wheels came off on my energy levels. I was struggling to move and even focus on easy things, never mind trying to string together several sentences into something coherent.

I fought my way back last week, only to be hit with something that felt and acted suspiciously like a migraine yesterday. The only thing is… I managed to break it in a single day. (Yay!)

Today, I’m feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed, so I thought I’d sit down and see if I can put downs some thoughts for you guys. Both to feed the algorithm gods and as proof of life you you, my readers.

Speaking of. THANKS SO MUCH FOR ALL THE SUBS AND FOLLOWS! I appreciate every single one of you. <3

I’ve been thinking of this post for a few days, especially as a follow up to what I’ve been writing about lately. I mentioned the part of me being a reforming perfectionist recently, but I didn’t really talk about why I started deconstructing that. You can click below to read it if you want.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway. I used to pride myself for my perfectionism. My entire identity and sense of self-worth was tied up in it. I probably would still be on that particular merry-go-round if not for all the fall-out that happened with my family around Covid-time.

I’m not ready to go into that just yet. Needless to say though. Every single one of the survival skills I had built up to deal with my undiagnosed ADHD failed. One after the other. Eventually, I reached a point where I felt like a shell of a person. Like there was nothing left.

I realized there has to be a better way. So I started listening to podcasts and reading think pieces by people studying neuroscience and neuropsychology, looking for a way at first to optimize myself back into happiness. But the more I did, the more I realized I need to do the opposite.

I needed to learn how to trust myself again. To treat myself with the love, compassion, and tolerance I extended to people around me. To stop expecting myself to deliver at this ridiculous level of excellence day after day until I burned myself into a husk.

It actually seems so laughably easy to say. Almost like I flipped a switch and everything went away. It was nowhere near that easy. Once I let go of my self-identity as person with her shit together, there were months where I basically ceased to function at all. It’s what I call diverting all resources to life support. If I got up. Fed myself. Fed the pets. Maybe brushed my hair and teeth. Maybe did one other thing…. That was about what I had in me. I was just so exhausted. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. Spiritually.

That’s a big reason why I disappeared from all socials (including my somewhat successful ones) for years. Basically…. I had reached the point where I said to myself: “Okay. I can’t keep struggling for air so I’m going to stop. Either I float or I drown, but I need to trust myself to float.”

I floated. In a massive, black, bleak and stormy ocean of isolation, hurt, exhaustion, depression…. And then… just when I thought I’d be okay, my business, the thing I was clinging to, the one thing that had kept me going before, failed. In three brutal blows in one month.

In that moment, I decided to apply what I had been learning and approached everything with radical acceptance and radical self-compassion. I mourned. I grieved. When people around me thought I was being lazy and doing nothing… I let them.

Just before that crash happened in my business, I spent a little over a year on my own with my two pets, with very little contact with the outside world. I needed to find my voice. I needed to find what I wanted. I needed to find…me. And to listen to her.

I started posting here regularly once I found her. Once I realized what went wrong with how I approached my creativity. And slowly but surely, I started functioning again, having found the life I want to live.

One where I am not beating myself up when the ADHD… ADHDs. One where I don’t have to justify myself to the people in my life. One where I don’t react in fear to uncertainty. (This one is hard. Try trusting things will be okay when people who lived in your home betrayed you.)

One where I do trust people. Where I speak freely and write freely because I don’t rejection. One where I don’t measure the worth of what I’m working on by how much it earns me.

Is it smooth sailing? No. I’m still learning how I can keep that life. There are many things that would want to steal it, so I have to be careful with the decisions I make. But that’s why I’m here today.

Usually I have a no work on Saturday rule. But today… this isn’t work. This is a light bloodletting to release something that’s been on my mind while I wasn’t doing great. A reminder of how much I have healed. And that it’s okay to hit two-week setbacks.

As long as I stay. As long as I keep going.

What about you? How’s your life journey going?