Category: Self-Care

Posted in Confessions, Keep Moving: Motivation and Inspiration, Making Sense Analysis, Mental Health, Potential and Worth, Power, Reflection, Self-Care, What Just Happened: Personal Anecdotes

Breaking From Trauma: Accepting Split Pockets of Peace

Posted on by SparklyWarTanks

The Split Second

A week ago I sat at the edge of my bed and noticed a sensation I forgot I had the ability to feel. While coming to terms with the symptoms of my anxiety and basking in its reality for most of three years, I hadn’t felt a day that didn’t consist of nausea or worry. I haven’t felt nauseous for two weeks now. I recalled the sensations of calmness and suddenly didn’t understand what to think. Feeling okay felt strange and alien.

Being in a constant state of panic, worry, or fear became how I lived for years leaving calmness and peace strangers in a barren abyss. No thoughts resided in my head, my body felt rejuvenated from a full nights rest, and an overwhelming desire to get some work done filled me with energy. This is what it feels like to be okay, to be ready to take on the day. I didn’t think I could feel like this again.

Recollections

Although this year continuously has torn me to pieces, I didn’t realize the amount of effort I put into dragging myself out of countless depressive moments. Whether it was getting out of bed, not sleeping in, giving myself a bedtime and writing/career goals, eating more fruits and less bread and sugar, or even choosing to separate myself from thinking about situations I cannot control I became unconsciously active in my desire to feel better. Physical aches and pains have plagued this years list of what nows, but learning to not overthink is my new habit of choice.

Despite finding myself in really low moments and contrary to what I expected to become of me by this point, I recall several split moments of peace like the one mentioned above. Pockets of rainbows I would call them.

Accepting and Welcoming Peace

Confused by how I could possibly see or feel pockets of peace in arguably the worst year yet, it’s only fair to give myself some credit. Fear of leaving my trauma behind brought up some old feelings following the pockets of peace, allowing me to realize the comfort I sat in when it came to my anxiety and depression.

I’m used to feeling anxious and depressed. I don’t know what it is to not feel constantly overwhelmed with everything. Living and existing in a state of uneasy chaos is how I know to survive. I learned to live like this, who am I without it?

Witnessing and realizing that I’m able to feel better has caused both panic and peace disrupting the old state of chaotic homeostasis (if that makes any sense). I found myself having nightmares almost every night filled with both obvious and hidden messages. I’ve also recently become aware of my shadow and toxic characteristics, making me aware and awake when it comes to how I interact with others.

Now, because of all that’s happened, I’m able to gain control and pull myself to a more stabilized consciousness quicker than before. Both bizarre and contradicting as it seems, I’ve always thrived in a state of turmoil, it would only make sense for the key to my healing to lie in my darkest moments.

What Now?

Aware that I’m in another phase of transformation like in my college years, I’m open and accepting of something new to come. Despite the on and off nature of these pockets of peace, I know I’m able to gain control of my mental wellness more than believed before.

I’m both scared and excited to continue to take on the beast that is overcoming my trauma and will not give up knowing I can and will.

Posted in Events, Keep Moving: Motivation and Inspiration, Mental Health, Potential and Worth, Power, Reflection, Self-Care, Self-Talk

“This is Me” Reflection: Self-Reflection is Powerful

Posted on by SparklyWarTanks

To acknowledge, reflect, visualize, create, and share goals, aspirations, next steps, and working points are the backbone of improvement and progress. “This is Me” opened up a space of opportunity to understand not only who you are, but also what you want. To be able to pick images, quotes, letters, words and symbols that reveal and mirror what it is you want to accomplish takes strength and dedication.

The Event

Who am I?

Before building our vision boards, I came up with a small diagram to get everyone to think of different angles to approach the “who am I?” question. While this is the most complex question to ask yourself, visualizing different parts of your identity can help to jump into ideas about goals, achievements, feelings, strengths, limiting beliefs, toxic tendencies, memories, things you’ve learned, and where you want to go.

It’s not only useful to think up goals and how you want to get there but also asking yourself critical questions of ways to improve allows for a grounded and holistic approach to becoming who you want to be. Vision boards allow you to see yourself in all that is you. They show you the space to see past, present, and future possibilities while influencing and reminding you how to get there by reflecting on yourself.

While we tend to focus on one part of our identity, it’s helpful to dig into ourselves and all of our dimensions to answer questions only one part may not be able to answer. Focusing on our career and professional goals can be supplemented by our mental and spiritual strengths to place ourselves in work environments that fit us. What do we actually want? How can we improve and become better versions of ourselves by tapping into all of who we are? We are a complete being, therefore we must look at everything that makes us a whole.

The Boards

The more we looked at our identity’s focal points and where we were currently, the more we were able to grab images that mirrored how we wanted to approach our visions. I was excited to see how much work was put into visualizing the “who am I?” question. With only a limited amount of time, we were able to build and dive into ourselves to create works of art that symbolized us and what we wanted to accomplish next.

I’m extremely grateful for those who came out to “This is Me.” We answered big questions, reflected on who we wanted to be and where we want to go, while also being gentle and progressive with our progress.

Moving Forward

As I become more and more of myself every day, I see and appreciate how far I’ve come. Understanding and witnessing others in their goals, feelings, and aspirations helped me to see myself in mine. While I will always be a work in progress, I must also look at how much progress I’ve made. With all that I want to accomplish I get stuck in how much I need to do instead of appreciating the process.

I’ve learned to love and see myself as so much bigger than ever imagined. I say “I can” more and I’m excited to see where I go next. “This is Me” showed me to appreciate everything about my identity even the things I need to improve. I am me in everything that I am and will continue to work toward becoming more of myself.

Stay tuned for more events and reflections.

Posted in Bulletins, Keep Moving: Motivation and Inspiration, Love, Mental Health, Potential and Worth, Power, Self-Care, Self-Talk

Bulletin: Protect Your Energy

Posted on by SparklyWarTanks

What is it To Protect Yourself

Whether you are highly sensitive, vulnerable to energies, have a high sense of intuition, or are big on healing/helping others it is especially important to be grounded in your independence, boundaries, and sense of self. While it’s easy to believe you have the ability to change or alter how someone thinks or approaches life, it is not true that you can help/fix everyone you come in contact with.

There are times where your kindness will be taken for weakness making you susceptible to getting hurt by someone who does not have your best interest at heart. In order to become clear of your stance in any relationship without being manipulated, make sure to set clear and solid boundaries (and stick to them), know and become comfortable with yourself (whether its what you like, dislike, or are uncomfortable with), and be smart about your comfort level. While we pride ourselves in being open books, sometimes it takes getting to know someone before exposing real information about ourselves. Being patient will play a huge role in this process.

How to Put Yourself First

Growth, self-improvement, peace, and patience can motivate you to protect yourself and your mental stability. You and your energy are important.

Practice self-care, self-awareness, compassion, empathy, and critical thinking in order to build a higher sense of self and safety. Take the time out to understand what is happening in a situation before immersing your entire self in it. Your body and intuition will tell you when something is not right. Listen to it. We might get excited about what something could be instead of what it actually is and before we know it we are not where we thought we would be.

Love yourself enough to take your time, talk things through, and say no when necessary. You are responsible for yourself and what you allow. What are your standards?

Next Steps and Questions

As you come in contact with new people ask yourself critical questions in order to get a firm footing in what you actually want out of that interaction. We may like to think of ourselves as void of wanting something specific, but we must ask ourselves what is our motive. We may be in difficult spots in our lives and before we take care of ourselves we take pride in taking care of others. We tend to look for things to fix instead of looking inward for healing.

Where are we in our lives? Do we need a break? How am I feeling? What do I want? How am I coming off to others? Am I practicing self-care?

Become self-aware in yourself and in turn you can protect yourself and your sensitivities.

Posted in Keep Moving: Motivation and Inspiration, Potential and Worth, Power, Quotes, Self-Care, Self-Talk

What You Manifest is What You Recieve

Posted on by SparklyWarTanks

What you see for yourself, what you say to yourself, and what you speak out loud is what will come to existence. While noticing and accepting the power of manifestation, you are able to see the life, body, and mental stability you are exuding. The more negativity and doubt you spew into manifestation the likelihood of it happening will increase. Practice patience and understanding in order to receive and reap the benefits of your desires and wants.

Success is a state of mind in manifestation. You are already successful. Desiring more than your current state is only a matter of persistence and work. What you say you can do, you are already doing. You are working toward a goal, an anticipated manifestation.

Become more of what you want without the doubts that come with obstacles. The path that is created based on the work you are putting in, is what is being manifested to you. Sometimes it may not look exactly how you planned, but it is exactly what you need.

Posted in Keep Moving: Motivation and Inspiration, Mental Health, Potential and Worth, Self-Care, Self-Talk

Subduing the Mental Bully: Creating a Positive and Workable Self-Talk

Posted on by SparklyWarTanks

 

What is Self-Talk?

How often do you think about the ways you speak to yourself? When faced with an unfortunate circumstance, a setback, challenge, or difficult moment how do you respond or reflect on it? How can you become more active in managing or controlling your mental approach to hardships, triggers, or difficulties? The daily dialogues you have with yourself are the most powerful steps in improving your mental well being. Changing how you speak, manifest, affirm or declare ideas and reflections have the potential to alter how you view and approach negativity. Therefore, as we debate, struggle, or even celebrate mentally, self-talk is how we are processing what goes on around us. What is self-talk?

Self-talk is reflective of how we see ourselves in our circumstances. If we feel overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, or depressed, those feelings will continue to overcome us until we get a hold of a more positive and workable view of our current state. How do we flip a negative self-image or view to a workable one?

The Toxic Perfectionist

When first introduced to the phrase “self-talk,” I sat anxiously in a counselor’s office while in college. Unaware of how self-talk affected my daily activities; the ways I spoke about myself reflected my daily thoughts. Quickly noticing the pattern, my counselor intervened every time I bullied my academic and personal progress. She showed me how my language and self-talk sabotaged my mental health. Instead of being proud of my achievements I would comment with phrases such as “I need to do better,” “That’s just who I am,” ” I’m failing,” I’m not good enough,””I have too much to do, but I feel like I can’t do it,” what’s wrong with me?” “I have to finish,” I have to fix myself.”

The more negativity I fed myself, the more I was unable to see a workable view of my anxious and depressive thoughts. My anxiety and depression continued to build because of the continuous negative self-talk I grew up maintaining. I fed my urge to remain the best; I pushed myself past my limits, forced myself to finish everything, added more than I needed to most of the time, and did not accept any grades under an A-. I was a toxic perfectionist.

The Switch

Now that I’m aware of the dangers of negative self-talk, I work more diligently and actively to flip, switch, and change how I approach overwhelming situations. I think twice about how I view working, writing, and accepting new opportunities (since I’m no longer in school). I make sure I’m being more gentle and kind to myself in general as well. In order to maintain an approachable and more workable stance to challenges, I am changing how I see myself in each moment. I see myself in power and not in defeat. I see what I can do instead of what I can’t.

Here are some ways you too can switch up and subdue your mental bully by changing phrases you may think of everyday:

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Try to manipulate and change your mental language in order to further improve your mental health for yourself too. What are some phrases you can change to better approach a difficult or challenging situation? How can you control or manage the situation better by the ways you think and see yourself in it? What does your self-talk look like now that you are switching it up?

Posted in Defying Shadows Articles, Keep Moving: Motivation and Inspiration, Mental Health, Potential and Worth, Self-Care

Defying Shadows Article: How to Manage and Pull Yourself out of a Panic Attack

Posted on by SparklyWarTanks

What are tactics you can use in pulling yourself from a panic attack? If you feel overwhelmed how can you gain control of your intrusive thoughts? What are ways you can manage and understand how to avoid triggers that can potentially lead to a panic attack?

Check out my Defying Shadows article in learning methods to help you through panic attacks.

How to Manage and Pull Yourself out of a Panic Attack

Posted in Declarations, Keep Moving: Motivation and Inspiration, Love, Potential and Worth, Power, Self-Care

#Writeitdown Declarations to Live by and Internalize: Worth

Posted on by SparklyWarTanks

Look at yourself and ask if what you put up with reflects how you want to be treated. Do you deserve better? How do you view your self-worth? In terms of relationships, self-development, job opportunities etc. how do you view yourself?

Know that you are worthy of love, acceptance, and peace. Remove yourself from any situation that jeopardizes or challenges your self-worth. Your happiness and well being will always be more important. Gracefully remove yourself from anything that makes you question who you are.

Be patient with your journey as you search and work to better situate yourself in spaces that reflect your growth.

Posted in Events, Mental Health, Potential and Worth, Power, Reflection, Self-Care

“Storytime” Reflection: To Transform and Grow Means to Reflect and Change

Posted on by SparklyWarTanks

What does it mean to reflect, grow, transform and in return become a better, more grounded empathetic product of your experiences and trauma?

“Storytime” allowed me to not only reflect on my past transformations and continuous growth but also listen to true stories of warriors. There were survivor stories, growth stories, pain stories, reflective stories, and stories that showed true perseverance. I applaud and thank those who attended this event. Although the group was small, it still contained voices that spoke with courage and bravery. This group of people was no doubt a group of heroes.

As I too am going through a time of painful transformation and reflection, I can’t help but look up to those who attended and shared at “Storytime.” I think about their stories daily in order to help me make brave choices that allow me to see my worth.

The Theme: The Tree and the Butterfly

When planning and organizing “Storytime”, I wanted to create a space where others can bring an artifact to represent or supplement a moment in their mental health journey that symbolized growth or transformation. What does it mean to grow and transform through mental trauma?

The tree or symbol of growth and the butterfly or symbol of transformation became fit in becoming the theme of “Storytime”. To transform is to move past a prior state and into a more comfortable, enlightened state and to grow means to change, adjust, and become better in whichever ways fit your life and experiences.

In order to be able to reflect on your experiences and become better and more comfortable in yourself, you must first open your perspective. Allow yourself to move past the pain and complacency of heartache and struggle.

I learned in ” Storytime” that speaking out loud and speaking confidently as you share can help in understanding who you are in your experiences. Leading with a mindfulness breathing exercise also allowed a space where reflection became fit and vulnerability more accessible. Live only in the present moment.

Although the stories were stories of mental struggles through big experiences, my guests were products of growth and transformation. I’m proud to know that these people exist. They need to know constantly that they are worthy of life, love, compassion, and acceptance.

Final Thoughts

I thank The Mighty for opening up the door for me to do these events as well as helping me to learn my passion. I’m constantly learning as I experience with others. Continuously reflecting on the “Mighty Mic” and “Storytime” has opened my perspective and my heart to the lives of many.

I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

Posted in Keep Moving: Motivation and Inspiration, Potential and Worth, Power, Quotes, Self-Care, Self-Talk

Self-Mastery

Posted on by SparklyWarTanks

Self-love is self-awareness. Look at yourself and reflect, ask yourself who you are. Become comfortable in the discomfort that comes with reflection.

There are parts of yourself that are toxic, there are parts that need improving, there are parts that are growing. Grow and realize what you need to do to become better.

In return, you will become more of yourself, you will feel more peace, you will be able to feel empathy and help others in their self-development process too.

Put work into yourself.