agape

i actually… love people who double or triple or infinity text … what are you excited about because i’m excited too! message me seven times please i’m glad you have a lot to say and i am willing to listen!!

Martha Stout   (via internal-acceptance-movement)

“You Couldn’t Just Leave?” Trista Mateer  (via tristamateer)

Colleen Hoover (via quotemadness)

august rolls over and yawns. wakes slow and heavy, stretching like a cat. outside, the sound of birds, the smell of grass. august turns over in an empty bed. his eyes feel swollen and tired. on the nightstand, a note from july - no one carries light like you do.

Edith Wharton, “The House of Mirth” (via misswallflower)

Unknown (via creatingaquietmind)

What they don’t tell you: Self care sometimes isn’t fun. It’s going to class even when you want to stay in bed and rest. It’s paying bills on time and running errands even when every strand of your being cant stand it. It’s going to therapy and taking your medicine even when you don’t want to. It’s using coping skills even when going back to self destructive ones seems more appealing.

Recovering sucks. It’s hard. But you have to believe in the light at the end of the tunnel. And even on those days you don’t, you fake it till you make it.

Recovery is still worth it.

If you struggle with anxiety, overwhelm, or just plain feeling like a failure, I have a mantra for you that’s been really helping me out lately:

Just show up.

I used to skip class because the whole thing was so overwhelming: I had to get dressed in something clean even though I never had the energy to do laundry, walk to school, sit in class for up to three hours, plus pay attention, take notes, and participate in discussion. In reality, I was being a perfectionist, and life would have been a lot easier for me if I had Just Shown Up. By staying home because of my depression and anxiety, I wasn’t giving myself the chance to do any of that. I was such a perfectionist that being a “bad” or average student was unthinkable, so I stopped being a student at all.

If you’re having trouble getting something done, Just Show Up. You don’t have to be employee of the month. You don’t have to be valedictorian. Just Show Up.

ime it also helps to be like “you dont have to stay the whole time, you just have to go” bc most of the time once youre there it’s fine. a lot of things are like that, like… you dont have to finish the dishes, just start them. a lot of the time once you start a task it’s easier to finish than to stop, especially if you can trick yourself like “after five more minutes if i still feel bad i’ll go home” or “after washing two more dishes i can stop for today”

even if you don’t finish the task, you started it, and by completing part of it you lessened your future workload and ALSO taught your brain that things may not be as daunting as they seem

You don’t have to be grateful that it isn’t worse.

read that. read it again, and again, and again. somebody, somewhere, always has it worse than you. there is one person on this planet that has it the worst of all, and that person is NOT the only person allowed to be unhappy with their lot. if things are bad for you, they are bad for you. period.

This goes for trauma as well. A lot of times survivors get trapped in a cycle of  minimizing/diminishing their trauma because “other people have it worse” - but there is no hierarchy of trauma. There is no ranking system for which traumas are “better” or “worse.” Your trauma is valid. Period.

IMPORTANT TRUTHS.

As a therapist, lemme just say: almost every trauma survivor I’ve ever had has at some point said “But I didn’t have it as bad as some people” and then talked about how other types of trauma are worse. Even my most-traumatized, most-abused, most psychologically-injured clients say this. 

The ones who were cheated on, abandoned, and neglected say this. The ones who were in dangerous accidents/disasters say this. The ones who were horrifyingly sexually abused say this. The ones who were brutally beaten say this. The ones who were psychologically tortured for decades say this. What does that tell you? That one of the typical side-effects of trauma is to make you believe that you are unworthy of care. 

Don’t buy into it, because it’s nonsense. It doesn’t matter if someone else had it “worse.” Every person who experiences a trauma deserves to get the attention and care they need to heal from it. 

i want to be loved in a way that doesn’t bruise i want to remember this a year from now and not cringe

(via safanoora)

Beaded by W tassel necklace