"The After Life"

December 17, 2025- I’ve put a lot of time and mental energy into writing this blog post. Actually, let me be more honest. I spent a lot of time and mental energy thinking about writing a blog post. I also have spent a lot of time and energy thinking about making handmade zines, starting an OCD psycho-education group, starting a walking/biking therapist meet-up group, starting a therapist mastermind group, filming and editing videos again, making an exposure therapy documentary, and the list goes on. Forever. And this is an issue, because I will not go on forever. I have a finite number of days on this planet, and instead of doing one of these things at the bare minimum, I do none. I come home from a day of sessions, I turn on “Mad About You”, “Gilmore Girls”or “Frasier” for the 1500th time and I soothe myself. I eat dinner, I do a few calf raises and I melt into the soothing voice of Paul Reiser and Kelsey Grammer and I forget all responsibilities. Or wants. Or deep creative desires.

“What’s the point?”, I think (or maybe feel unconsciously). I’ll just get excited about something, maybe start it, and because I have no discipline (an excuse because I have demonstrated many times that I do), I will never pick it up again. Out of sight, out of mind, plus the added "benefit" of not being someone who hyper-fixates on a task. Nope, I am a mental explorer. I explore ideas…in my head….and with anyone who will listen….forever. Or, an even more compelling viewpoint, this is a self-soothing time of my life. I worked hard and continue to. I deserve to relax at the end of a work day. I’m tired. From life. All of it. 

I often tell my clients as I finish up sharing a new skill or tool for them to practice for the week that I would never ask them to do something that I haven’t either also been asked to do by my own therapist or asked of myself. The only reason I have the privilege of saying this is I have had 20+ years of therapy, off and on, since I was 20. So there are few things I haven’t had to do as a client with Complex PTSD like mediating black-and-white thinking, standing up against the big bad health OCD monster or having to see my partner’s perspective on a matter (kill me now). But over the years with practice, these are now second-nature ways of thinking. And I can stand before you and say with evidence that it does get easier. 

But what about starting things? The excruciating tension of having so many things I want to do before I decline past the point of being able to do them. I often tell my clients, “Don’t wait to be great to figure out what you are great at.” It takes time to find out what you are searching for, made even tougher by not starting the search. So in this way, at the cusp of my 42nd year on this planet, post-survival mode after a long, tedious and terrifying childhood, post-college and grad school (I started at 29 years old), and post meeting and falling in love with a partner who has a higher percentage of secure attachment than insecure, I find myself…unmotivated. Where does motivation come from when I am not barely surviving financially and have to hustle 2-3 jobs. Where does a desire for a relationship come from if I am not codependent and in constant need of reassurance? How do I get excited about a project without a terrorizing inner critic telling me I have to prove myself through said project in order to be deemed valuable? I am lucky enough to have survived to the “post” part of my healing journey (or so I think I am there, at least). My Psych 101 professor quoted Carl Jung once stating that “everything before 40 is research.” Somehow I lived long enough and made enough healthy choices, and a lot of unhealthy ones, to make it to the side of reaping what I sowed. 

I imagine the post-healing phase is not talked about too much because it is surely a privileged place to be at this time in history. To be stable enough financially, to have a community and a stable partnership. For my health to be good enough that I’m not spiraling. I have an inner critic now that is saying, “you are going to be admonished and laughed at because OH POOR YOU YOU ARE MORE HEALED AND STILL SUFFERING YOU POOR THING.” But I guess that’s a part of the process. All the voices that could show up, internally and externally that can shut me down and embarrass me. “How could I not have seen that coming! I have so many blind spots, how embarrassing to be seen in my absent-mindedness.” But there is another voice. She is strong, stable and can talk to anyone about anything with love and graciousness. She is my functional adult self. She (I) can handle disappointment and new information. She maintains eye contact and breathes deeply and wants to hear it all, as she loves to grow. And she does grow. Slowly and with a lot of nurturing touch points. She can choose to stop when needing some time to heal a new inner child who shows up (just when I thought I figured it all out too, how shocking and embarrassing). 

So I invite you on this adventure with me. To figure out what I and what we are doing on this healing journey. I want to offer insights when I demonstrate hard-earned security and I want to join you in the toxic shame spiral and the intense rejection sensitivity when I regress and feel like I am back at square one, 20+ years ago. It’s time now for integration. For my inner children, my fearful parts, my hurt heart and my functional adult to come together and no longer be in a war, but preferably on a cloud, like a Lovesac, if you have ever had the luxury of laying on one. “I can do all things that are done while sitting on a $2000 bean bag chair.” Or however the saying goes.  

Here are my promises to you. These will always be in my words. I will never ask AI for help in editing or re-writing something. I promise these posts will be 100% me, my thoughts, my troubles and my vulnerabilities. Because we deserve to remember what it’s like to be innately human. And although I am not fighting the future, I hope at some point for my lower back to be replaced with a cyborg that will never hurt again, (also what is a cyborg, not sure, is it metal?), I want you to be seen in the chaos and the messiness that only a human with a tricky brain and a body that unfortunately keeps a score of mostly bad things, could understand.