From February to July, I’ve continued to maintain the healthy coping skills I’ve acquired in therapy and have made even more progress. I started group DBT therapy in April and that’s also helped me tremendously. Listening to members in that group talk about their issues has made me gain a lot of perspective. I’ve also had a few obstacles along the way of course. In May, I upped my dosage on one of my meds that ended up with me having a major depressive episode, here’s a blog post about that:

Borderline Awareness Month: I Could be 1 in 10

A year later, I can honestly say that I’ve been successful in managing my emotions in a much better and healthier way. My growth has been phenomenal in many areas of my life due to my hard work. I’ve had incredible support from my therapists, medical providers, friends, followers, and family who’ve helped facilitate my growth by encouraging me and giving me the space I needed to be who I needed to be at different parts of this process. Sometimes that was a complete emotional mess, sometimes that was an angry and salty poet, sometimes that was a cringy mom or a moody coworker. Restarting this blog and creating content for it has been instrumental in my healing process and has been a great outlet for the inspiration and creativity I’ve had during this time. Another beneficial thing I’ve done is simplified my life by letting go of anything that doesn’t serve me. I keep my life simple with work, kids, friends, family, and writing and this is the right combination for me to maintain my emotional stability. I’ve learned to prioritize my mental health above everything else because the consequences for me and everyone are too great for me not to do so. I understand now that the “old me” before her diagnosis was trying to have “everything” and well, that extended my emotional bandwidth to the point it was detrimental to my mental health to the point that I constantly lived in a flux of emotional dysregulation. I don’t blame anybody or even myself; I did not have the knowledge or awareness at the time to do any better.

I’m not completely where I want to be because I have two areas that I still have problems with:
-sticking to my boundaries especially when I feel pressure from others to bend to their will and desires
-my cognitive distortions which include black and white thinking and thinking in absolutes
I’ve lived with these cognitive distortions since I can remember, and it’s been really hard to break these unhealthy thinking patterns but I’m working on it.

There is a lot more to say about this journey, but I’ll save that for later throughout this year.
To conclude, here are a few thoughts:
To have an immense amount of progress and growth this year; I had to learn to be brutally honest with myself about things I had been lying to myself about for too long. I had a tendency to blame others when I felt terrible about my life. This year, I changed that pattern and I had to learn to hold a mirror to myself and take accountability for any harm I’ve done to myself and others and that was extremely difficult to do. It also meant facing some of my biggest fears and insecurities and that was fucking hard. Sometimes it was so much work, I wanted to give up but I didn’t. And now I’m here, at a place where I’m truly happy and content with myself and my life. And to not have major depressive episodes every other week where I’m stuck in this rut of misery feels like a type of freedom I can’t describe. To manage hard emotions like anger and sadness without it affecting my whole week or my whole day is something I always felt was impossible until now.
And while I am thankful for everyone that’s been helpful in my journey, I feel the most gratitude to myself and my determination and resilience. I had always known myself but just this year I’ve finally started to understand myself and finally felt a sense of freedom to be who I really am without a need to filter out the crazy or hard parts that make me the complicated and resilient human that I am. A year later, I no longer allow life to happen to me and feel powerless and have an immense need for validation from others. Now I’m a person who lives a life with intention and purpose for my own betterment.