FIND
THE MIDDLE

Boundaries, Needs and Balance

Sometimes our minds can start to look more like a dark ally on a stormy night. Sitting in these dark spaces alone can make the thoughts and feelings feel darker, bigger, and completely overwhelming. The courageous act of speaking these thoughts and feelings out loud to a caring individual can be the first step towards healing. I believe that everyone benefits from doing inner work whether the goal is to know yourself better or to relieve the painful and often scary symptoms of anxiety, grief, depression, and trauma. No one needs to white knuckle their way through life. No one has to struggle alone.

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All of us develop patterns of behavior based on survival instincts from the moment we are born. Ideally, as we mature our survival skills would mature as well and that's often not the case. A behavior that was successful in the past can hurt us in the present and keep us repeating the same self limiting patterns over and over. Everything we do has elements of relationship. Professional, romantic, platonic, familial, athletic, and academic relationships make up our societal existence. By learning how to be in relationship with ourselves we learn how to be in relationship with others. We learn what our boundaries are and then how to set and maintain them. Then the work becomes identifying needs; then meeting our needs and ultimately maintaining balance.

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Anxiety and trauma manifest in so many different ways, depending on a person's age, culture, gender, and socioeconomic status. Dissociative disorders, and DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) specifically, are incredibly complex highly functioning defense systems that orbit around setting boundaries and meeting needs. Growing up with a narcissistic caregiver is something that follows you after you move out, showing up in romantic, professional and platonic relationships and you can be free of it.

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“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable” - Banksy

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people” - Carl Jung

“We’ll Carry On” - MCR

Books that impact my work and my life: Eastern Body Western Mind, Anodea Judith, Women Who Run With the Wolves Dr. Clarisa Pinkola Estes, PhD, The Heroines Journey, Maureen Murdock, The Body Keeps  the Score Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D., How Yoga Works, Geshe Michael Roach, The War of Art, Steven Pressfield, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, Peter Levine