A post about being brainwashed in romance

 Being brainwashed for most of your life really takes its toll on every aspect of it 😅 im still trying to put pieces together to figure this thing called "life" out, and it has been one of the biggest struggles of my life. 

I was with my ex bf until recently off and on since 2013. Id say a total of 5 years "on." 

I've been realizing how messed up that relationship was...but I was so used to being brainwashed and having to do mental gymnastics in order to make sense of the world through the lens of my "beliefs," that it just made me think that mindset was normal, even in romantic relationships. 

There were a lot of things (im just realizing how many things there were) that my ex didn't want to talk/hear about. So I trained myself early on to just completely disregard my past and things that had happened to me, good and bad, simply because he was the main person I even talked to at all, and especially about "myself."

I was so used to not talking about myself/my life experiences that I literally FORGOT about A LOT OF THINGS that had happened to me/I had been a part of. I literally did not even THINK about these things for so long that my mind had literally forgotten them. All because this guy I was in love with didn't like to hear about my past. 

I was listening to an audiobook (that I have listened to several times) last night...theres a scene in the book explaining how this prehistoric woman started to ride a horse for the first time. From the prehistoric perspective, it explained it as how the very first human that rode a horse probably came to that conclusion/finally had the idea of putting things together to think "what if I sat on the horse and then I could actually 'run' with/as fast as the horse?" 

It seems so stupid but in that moment I was like, "wait a second, ive ridden horses before, too!!!!???" I remembered how much my butt hurt after and how I was thinking "how do people do this regularly???" 😅 I had literally just FORGOTTEN that i had those experiences personally!  Those memories included my mother in one case and my brother in another case and YSA (young single adult) activities where my exhusband was, and just being "church-related." 

For all those reasons, and the reason that my ex was not comfortable with hearing about my involvement in those types of situations, I had just trained myself to not think about those things. For several years. To the point where my conscious brain just FORGOT ABOUT THEM. And it's insane because that was SUCH a big part of my life for most of it! And I just never had a chance to talk about those things or bring them up. So much so that i forgot they even happened until times like last night, where I remembered I had ridden a horse several different times, and my own life was so foreign to me at this point that I was so disconnected from mySELF.

I just wanted to share that because even though it's so embarrassing coming to these realizations, I felt so much anger towards my ex for being so unempathetic, so unwilling to even listen to me at all, that I had forgotten about my own memories just to make him comfortable. That is so much more power than any one person should have over anyone. I cannot believe I didnt see how NOT normal that was until just recently! 

It is NOT normal or okay to shame someone so deeply just due to your own discomfort and inability to empathize and deal with FEELINGS at ALL that you completely make someone you "love" NOT feel anything anymore. 

What we resist PERSISTS. The FEELINGS included in those memories/life experiences for me never went away. I just never faced them/dealt with them. And it caused so much anguish, depression, anxiety, and instability in myself that I wish so much I had known how to deal with so that I could just HANDLE them so they never piled up on me like that.

Please, talk about your feelings. Man, woman, non-binary, gay, straight, gender-noncomforming, child, adult, teenager, black, white: people of ALL RACES, COLORS, GENDERS, AND AGES: 

TALK ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS. Emote! Never get comfortable with someone who doesn't want to hear those things. It is NOT healthy, emotionally, mentally, OR physically! 

I will repeat this because it's worth hearing twice: WHAT WE RESIST PERSISTS.

You might get away from your memories for seven or ten or twenty or forty years, but the feelings involved in those memories never leave you. You can try to squash them or bury them or pretend they don't exist, but you will still feel them and they will still manifest in some way. And you won't have control over them at that point. It is so much easier to just deal with them in the moment as they come rather than trying to not feel them.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. If you have any memories of me, good or bad, id love to hear them in the comments. If not, that's cool, too. 👍🤟❤

Exiting the Plan of Happiness

"The Plan of Happiness" (an original poem of sorts)

It's sad that it's confusing for me to feel happy.

The very first time I pushed through my own limiting beliefs keeping me in the prison of never having experienced joy. Feeling happy.

For the first time in my life I felt zero self consciousness. It's so sad that my first reaction to that moment after that feeling though, was devastation. For my sad, lonely, confused inner child, and for myself in that moment for being 29 years old when I literally first felt happy.

It was so confusing to me that I had literally made every choice I had ever made for the hope of THIS feeling, this amazing, orgasmic, LIFE-gasmic moment where I would suddenly feel everything I had always been missing. I always knew something wasn't there but I just never fathomed that this would be what that something was: feeling happy.

It took me hours of sobbing and simultaneous rollercoasters of emotion, to try to reconcile my entire past with the present moment, what I was feeling, and the sudden opening of a door to an entire WORLD filled with new possibilities for the future, because i finally felt happy.

He held me while I cried for hours, and my mind was overflowing with sudden realizations that I now had the capacity to actually understand correctly. I had done so many things in the name of this emotion, but suddenly everything I had done made so much sense! The flooding of realization made me so happy!

I didnt feel self concious about feeling these emotions. I let myself drench his t-shirt with my salty tears, and I finally let myself express them without a filter. I was so fucking happy.

But I couldn't help but think it must have been confusing for him...my sudden realization that made me finally able to understand that I had been cutting myself for years to just heighten my misery and pain so that I could put a wet washcloth on new scars and feel the flooding of RELIEF. I thought for so long that "relief" was "feeling happy."

I fought so hard to trudge through the utter terror of what everyday life felt like. I felt "okay" occasionally...and sometimes "content." But I realize now those were just times that I was "less burdoned" just for that moment. But that wasn't me feeling happy.

It was so hard and confusing when I realized that everything I had been taught to believe in, these principles that if I lived my life by, I would be saved. I could rest easy. I should have "felt happy."

But all I felt was scared. Scared and confused and hurt, because the "Father in Heaven" I was taught to believe in so HARD without doubt, who supposedly loved me so much he sent his "only son" to die for me...but i was just one of his daughters. I thought that He "wept when I wept," and for some reason that comforted me. But that NEVER made me feel HAPPY.

An entire life lived in fear and wasted to depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder. To a religion that never gave anything back to me...nothing real or lasting or anything to save me from the life I was drowning in. To a mother that always expected the best from me and also the worst. Nothing I could do would ever be good enough for her, and since "this life is for enduring to the end and passing this test," I was set up to never be happy.

So many things fell into place and made so much more sense in that defining moment of my life, a moment that will be seared into my mind forever---the moment I first felt happy.

I realized, "there are a lot of people who do not know that some people have literally NEVER experienced that emotion before!" If someone just could have told me that THIS is what i was fighting for, this literal brand new emotion that i had NEVER EXPERIENCED to even know that i had never experienced. I literally had NEVER been happy!

I felt so much value in having that perspective! I felt special! And for the first time ever I didnt feel SELFISH for feeling special! That made me so happy!

But I think about it now and it makes me sad, because i know now that the one thing my family had always prayed and hoped and fasted for, that I would just "get better," that I would stop feeling so hopeless and wanting to kill myself; none of their prayers or efforts to "help" in their way ever made me feel happy

Their prayers did not cause me finally feeling happy.

I felt strong that I had EARNED this feeling. Through the mental anguish it took to separate myself from the things that I knew would bring me "tolerance" from my family, I LEARNED hard lessons. I went to DBT and started working out my issues in therapy. I made myself stay alive out of sheer will power even when I thought i had no will to live. And I finally broke through my glass ceiling of anxiety and fear to LET MYSELF feel happy!!!!!!

It's confusing that, for the only reason being that my parents are taught not to believe I even could feel happiness outside of their religion and dogma, I have to feel guilty about finally feeling happy.

But im still climbing. The more I have the freedom to finally embrace who I truly am inside, the more I am not trying to fit ANYONE'S expectations or "mold" of what they think I should be, the more power I feel in reclaiming my own voice. I can speak for MYSELF now, and that makes me incredibly happy. 

I have finally unbrainwashed myself through a lot of hard work and facing hard cognitive dissonance, through sitting with those feelings and letting myself FEEL for MYSELF. Without having to tell anyone to validate it for me: that makes me SO HAPPY! 

I am an exmormon, I exited the "Plan of Happiness," and I am finally happy.