positive change...a mind shift

There has been a shift.  How to explain....I no longer look at others and think, "How do they make it work and I can't?"  I look at others and think, "So, that's how it is supposed to be!  That's how a person makes life work for them!"  I do not know if it was getting back into a running regimen.  Committing to surrounding myself with good people.  Committing to at least 30 minutes each day directly with my children doing an activity that includes emotional, mental, and physical comfort.  Using the essential oils that target each need, feeling, and thought process.  Telling friends exactly what I need them to tell me in order to fight against the false, negative self-talk....

Whatever the reason, there has been a shift.  I am no longer as sad.  I am no longer as distressed.  I am no longer anxious.  Well...wait, I cannot say that exactly.  I, at times, am still overcome and overwhelmed with these feelings.  It can last anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple hours.  It no longer lasts days though!  As I was running tonight, I had this thought, "It didn't get easier.  I just learned how to accept it.  It's still hard as f*@&."  How I shifted my thought process, I honestly feel is a compilation of everything I have been doing the last month.  The first and foremost thing I have been doing is listening to my heart and my gut.  Then convincing my brain to follow suit.  I am a smart person.  I have a Bachelor's degree and a Master's degree.  I have studied quite a bit about the brain and how it functions with emotions and environment.  But, when mental and verbal abuse comes into the picture of life, all that knowledge gets thrown out the window at 90 mph.  A very intelligent person can feel and will believe they know nothing about certain situations or experiences.  It is the craziest feeling and thought I have ever experienced.  To see with my own eyes something, be told it is something else, and believe what I had been told not what I saw with my own eyes!  How does that happen?!  Did I want to believe the lie so I convinced myself, as well?  Who really knows.  What matters is that it takes quite a bit of healing to replenish that abusive thought processing.  

I learned something else the other day at a staff meeting about trauma, the brain, and our reactions to life.  It is something I have learned before multiple times.  Maybe it was the way it was explained this time or maybe I have more trauma experience to apply the knowledge to or whatever the reason, it rang a bell in my thoughts.  They explained the fight, flight, freeze mode that brains with trauma are constantly in, but they went a thought further and explained the reasoning.  They explained, "A brain with trauma exercises in constant emergency mode (amygdala or lymbic system) because it feels more safe there than in the complex thinking mode (prefrontal cortex part of the brain)."  Makes sense that a brain with trauma would understand reality as always unsafe because it has been conditioned to think and function that way.  The amazing thing about all this is that the brain and it's cells are resilient and able to be replenished!

This is where, I think, I am shifting to finally.  I am shifting to the idea that there is good in this world. That I can be shown love in many forms from many people.  That my heart and gut will not always have to work overtime to convince my brain what is real.  My brain, my cells that hold the trauma and pain, and my heart are healing!

I have in my classroom window a block of wood that has this quote by Walt Disney on it:  If nothing changed, there'd be no butterflies.   How very true.