@Nadeem Al-Hasan it really feels that way. I've been getting slowly more and more poorly over the past few years before I collapsed in February and became housebound. Before that I was afraid to feel my grief and sadness, I'd lost so much over the pandemic and in the years following. It felt like a black hole that if I allowed myself to sink into I'd disappear forever. The gift of being as ill as I am is that I have nothing left to lose and its freed me to feel. I'm not scared of my emotions anymore, and I'm finally allowing them fully. I believe this is how I will heal too. The breathwork is really helping me with this!

CBT isn't really advised for dealing with trauma, it doesn't get to places within us where trauma is held, and can in many cases make it worse. I'd be interested to hear how you find this breathwork when you are ready. Embodied approaches, feeling, breathing, sitting with, allowing, accepting etc are usually much more powerful and liberating, but can also be scary too. It's learning to trust our own feelings, trusting our bodies, noticing and bringing compassion for whatever comes up. CBT can have a tendency to teach our systems that what we are thinking and how we are responding is what's at fault, rather than learning to listen to our true emotions and our bodies and coming into our true self and being present.

@Alek Hackett I have been working a lot on compassion, for myself that is! I've spent a lifetime having huge compassion for everyone else, but learning to turn that towards myself, especially that parts of myself I don't particularly like, is eye opening. I will hold some compassion for you too Alek, while you find it for and through your breath xxx

Freedom and the unknown are scary spaces to be. Especially for people who have experienced a lot of trauma. The trauma wires your brain to cling to predictable patterns because it perceives these as safe even when they aren't. So choosing to do something differently, and then of course being consistent with that, is literally fighting against your own brain. And when all your energy if fighting to just survive the day, you have nothing left to then fight your own brain. This is why trauma persists and then gets carried down through the generations, and of course why people go back to traumatic situations again and again. It's also why we need so much care, compassion and awareness when working with this stuff. When there is so much pseudo/toxic positivity, and shaming in the 'new-cage' world it can be as equally damaging as the trauma/prison we are breaking free from. It's hard for us to find people and spaces that are genuine and informed in this kind of work. It's important that we share the rough moments too, the moments when we wobble and struggle and fail again and again, because that's where the real healing is, in the honesty, the truth of being human, the acceptance and allowance of all aspects of ourselves. Thank you for also speaking of the difficult moments in this thread, as well as how you are coming through them, true freedom is in embracing it all xx

@Nadeem Al-Hasan it really has shifted things. I've been crying a lot, really sobbing, since, but it feels like a healthy process. I feel I'm finally safe to grieve, the child part of me can grieve because the adult is there keeping her safe, she doesn't have to be on lookout anymore xx