A Life Conditioned to Chaos

From an early age I was conditioned to living life with a certain level of chaos, so I was desensitized to stress and the early warning signs of burnout. 

The night before my body started shutting down, I received a promotion and by all counts should’ve been celebrating my achievement. Instead, I was at my tipping point where my body said, “No more!” this ends NOW! In the 6 months prior I had moved, started a new job in an industry I knew nothing about, changed my youngest daughter’s school and daycare, and multiple important relationships in my life were one argument away from imploding.

Two weeks prior to the event, I dropped the bomb on my husband that I wanted a divorce and my relationship with my oldest daughter could be described as rocky at best. I was overstressed and overworked trying to be everything to everyone in my life while neglecting the most important person…me. 

Finally… A Discovery

After leaving the hospital I connected with a therapist to work through the trauma I collected throughout the years. With her help, we slowly unraveled the many layers of healing and I finally found the answers I sought. I was finally dragged out from my denial that my life was perfect. I was no longer in denial that my husband was emotionally, verbally, and mentally abusive with highly narcissistic traits. While he was the main source of my stress and unhappiness, it wasn’t all him and he certainly wasn't to blame. I had to learn and accept that I played my own part in allowing and accepting his behavior and treatment.

My family of origin played a huge role in shaping my beliefs around what “healthy” relationships were so I needed to form new beliefs around relationships that better served me and the life I wanted to live. From an early age I was groomed by my family to not have boundaries and to accept all people and situations into my life, even when they weren’t healthy. It was drilled into me not to judge others and to be accepting of everyone - no matter what. While that’s a beautiful space to hold for others, it doesn’t really cultivate safety in relationships and we need to have boundaries.

I can’t fault my family as they just didn’t recognize that this belief didn’t serve them and so they passed it along to me and my siblings. Hello generational/ancestral trauma and dysfunctional patterns! Throughout my years, I had completely abandoned myself and my needs for the sake of everyone else and in the pursuit of people pleasing, societal success and things codependency. Was I happy? I thought I was, but as the denial slipped away I realized that it had been so many years since I was truly happy and myself.

The further I progressed in my healing, the more I recognized the changes and boundaries that I needed to establish with friends, family, romantic relationships, and work for my health. In order to properly heal and move forward, I needed to end the toxic patterns and cycles taught to me in childhood and reprogram my brain to a new default program that reflected my true values and beliefs. Piece by piece, I collected the parts of myself that I so willingly abandoned or gave away throughout the years, finally making myself whole again. 

Your journey does not have to be like mine. I’m here to assist you in connecting with your most authentic self.