I was introduced to a concept that took me a few months to understand, another few years to grasp and a final few years to embody – holding the dialectic – where you hold two seemingly opposing ideas as both true. It wasn’t easy and I was scared at first it takes courage and strength to unpack one’s baggage and actually deal with it. Let me explain my journey that led me to my worldview. Most of the time, those answers came from group therapy classes or my academic classes other times, the answers came from a kind stranger who happened to say the perfect thing to me at the right time. Slowly, over time in a most synchronistic fashion, I received answers to my questions that, today, make up my worldview. What drives people to do terrible things to each other? Why do bad things happen to innocent beings like children and animals? In the back of my mind during all this time, I was asking the following questions of the world: I graduated college, two graduate schools and law school due to these new life skills. For the next 20 years, I went in and out of outpatient therapy, taking group classes like sexual assault victims classes and Dialectical Behavior Therapy ( 1) where I learned life-changing skills: how to manage emotions, express feelings, set and observe boundaries, handle trauma, and communicate healthily. I saw it like school, a place where I could better myself and learn new things. Throughout therapy, residual traumas – bullying and abuse during childhood and through adulthood from various sources also surfaced and I had to deal with those, too. On top of it, I was found “gifted” and “highly sensitive” – which sounds elitist but in this context it means that my traumas impacted me more than it would the average person. I was diagnosed with PTSD and suffered from depression and anxiety. I was sexually assaulted twice in college. Twenty years ago, I was in college and had a breakdown, resulting in my family dragging me to therapist after therapist until finally, there was one who I felt understood me, and I opened up to them. This is the first time that I am sharing my story publicly in print, and I am scared but, this is a moment over 20 years in the making, perhaps more. Courage is committing to something and doing it despite the fear you feel.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |