life doesn't have to be so difficult

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]My brain is trying to slow down by playing whack-a-ole with the things that come up. When in reality, the way that I can actually truly slow down is if I allow the things to come in and allow them to exist, but not identify with them. What are the little baby steps that I can take today to get closer to where I want to be? We don't need to solve the whole equation. We don't need to solve it. There's nothing to solve.

[00:00:44]y'all. It is so nice out here, dude. It is so freaking nice out here. I'm so glad I came out here today. I'm honestly feeling a little bit um depressed again. Here we are. or we're depressed again. But it's okay because we're in the driver's seat and everything is going to be perfectly okay no matter what. I journaled a little bit. I finished editing the video that I'm going to upload in a little bit later today. Maybe I'll schedule it for tomorrow morning. But that video is about basically more in-depth as to how immigration is going and how the study permit process works or at least how it's been for me. And also just talking about life. Guys, look how pretty the sky is.

[00:01:28]genuinely look how pretty this guy is.

[00:01:38]Um, but anyway, yeah, I've been feeling kind of sad and I think it's mostly the anticipation of knowing that I have to leave and return to the States for a little bit to apply for my study permit.

[00:01:50]That's only if I do get the CAQ, which we're waiting for right now.

[00:01:55]So, it's definitely getting to about that time where I'm excited for the possibility of actually getting my CAQ.

[00:02:04]However, I'm also very sad that I'll need to be leaving for like a month and a half to two months, something like that. I don't like the idea of being away from my partner and my cat. And I've been loving it here. The weather is so nice most of the time. I've loved the snow. I've loved the different environment. I love being away from the place that I was essentially wanting to be away from. You know what I mean? So, having to go back, I don't want to do it, but I have to and I will. I don't have a choice. There's a squirrel.

[00:02:46]Oh my god, he's so cute.

[00:02:50]He's standing up on his hind legs like a mircat. This is going to be really difficult for me to stay on topic when there's squirrels that are running around cuz I love watching squirrels. I think they're so fun. I have this one squirrel squirrel. I have this one squirrel named Mark and we call him Mark from the park. And the reason why he stands out is because he's the fattest one in the park and I've been trying to find him, but they did go into hibernation for a little bit. So, it's possible that Mark from the park lost a bit of winter weight. So, I don't know which one is which. So, they're all Mark from the park now. Every time I see a squirrel, it's Mark. I had a therapy appointment the other day um that I called her for out of the blue because of my dreams. I wanted to try to get some help with the traumatic dreams that I've been having and see if there were any methods or anything that she could help me with to ground myself after having these types of dreams. um like the one I had last night of my partner being an old man talking about how his life is getting gray because he doesn't have me anymore and I just can't really sit with that comfortably by myself without some sort of um help. So I scheduled the appointment and long story short, we have scheduled a DBR appointment. It stands for uh deep brain recovery. And so what it is is it focuses on the reptilian brain rather than the cognitive neo cortex. CBT usually focuses around the concept of you your feelings are valid. It's okay to feel them and learning to feel safe feeling your feelings. Um and really just learning yourself and learning the language of therapy and how to talk about things. I feel like I'm at a point where I need something a little bit deeper than that. I I need something a little bit more specific and intensive when it comes to my brain. Because what I told her is that when I'm feeling imbalanced and off because of these dreams or even just a anxious experience that's been going on, usually I feel a lot of my anxiety in my body and a lot of these emotions sit in my body. I can cognitively say all of the facts that it's safe to feel my feelings and I can put my finger on how it is that I'm feeling and know all of the intellectual side of things, right? But I realize growing up that I'm actually really bad at feeling safe to feel it. And so what I do usually is I intellectualize it so I don't have to feel it. So I'll do research on it. I will, you know, watch YouTube videos on it. I'll I'll try to put bounds around it and wrap my head around it so that it feels more controllable. That's not feeling. That's not living. That's not being a human being. That is another way to dissociate. And so that's something that I've been working on a lot in therapy over the years. But now because I specifically mentioned that I it feels stuck in my body like it I it feels like it sits in my stomach and I I don't know how to get out get rid of it. I go on walks. I journal, which helps a little bit, but at the end of the day, I can feel that. It's like it's in my bones.

[00:05:59]It's like it's in my I just feel the trauma sitting in my bones. I am excited to try it out because apparently it helps with that shock factor of childhood or early trauma. Most prominently for me, that is my parents' divorce. I was like 11 years old. It really shook me to my core. Obviously, when it happens, I think that's a very normal thing to to happen in a child's body and nervous system is that shock.

[00:06:30]However, I never had any place to fall.

[00:06:33]And so, over the years, I learned to dissociate in different ways. I learned to survive and cope and just get through it. I talk a lot about the analogies or the powerlessness that I learned based on the analogies that my mother taught me growing up like hang on to the boat until the storm's over. Um or just dodge the baseballs that are being thrown at you. I was never taught how to hit back or resourcefulness or feeling uh like I had a a sense of autonomy or like like I was in the driver's seat of my own life or had any power over how I react to the situation.

[00:07:21]So anyway, now through therapy, I have developed those types of tools and I feel like I'm more capable of being in the driver's seat in my life and how I heal and that's going to include this DBR therapy that I am going to try. I think it's going to be virtual. I asked her if it would like lessen the effectiveness of it because I don't I don't know how it works. I'm not familiar with it. And so she said that it can be done virtually and that it's not going to be less effective or, you know, less effective than being in person. I'm going to be doing that soon and I'll be doing a video responding or like a video reviewing the experience, I guess. I don't really know what to expect with it, but I'm really excited to learn how it makes me feel because it's therapy that I've never really done before. The type the the method is really getting into that childhood wound shock element in your life. And since then, it's just been sitting in your body manifesting in different ways. you know, my sciatic pain that I don't have anymore, thankfully. It only really flares up when I've been walking without the proper shoes and all of that kind of stuff, you know. So, it's but it used to be chronic. I used to have chronic sciatica and I no longer have that, but that's the, you know, different ways that trauma shows up as chronic issues in your body. And um I am looking forward to learning the other ways I may not be aware of that trauma has manifested in my body. So yeah, I'm looking forward to that. And I was a little nervous to reach out and ask her because it seemed for me it seemed stupid to bring up that I was having dreams and that kind of thing. And she really reassured me that it was not stupid.

[00:09:22]And these things are important. These things are very important to take care of. I came up with this analogy for myself and it's probably not a unique one. I'm sure that it's been done many times before or thought of, but for me it really clicked because it was a a good way for me to understand what serves me and helps me and what doesn't. And a lot of the coping mechanisms that I've developed over the years of being afraid to feel things like isolating and bedrotting and scrolling on short form media and all of that kind of stuff. A lot of those survival mechanisms really did get me through a lot of hard times, some challenging times that I really did not think I was going to make it through. However, that's exactly what they are. They're survival mechanisms.

[00:10:19]They're coping mechanisms. And they're not they're not serving me for the long term. You know what I mean? The coping mechanisms that I've developed got me through. Yes. But that doesn't mean that they're productive. And it doesn't mean that they are helpful like they were in the past. In the past, I had no other choice than to do those things. Now I have a choice. That's the difference is that now as an adult, I have the choice to make better decisions and develop better habits for myself to get through challenging times like this one where I'm anxious most days. The depression sneaks in sometimes and I'm just feeling sad and and scared and and I'm going through a time in my life right now where I really need to be in the driver's seat for myself and really show up for myself. So the garden analogy is an analogy that I created for myself in my head. I found that it works really well is imagining my well-being and me and my sense of confidence and self um as a garden. And in this garden, so I've had this garden since I was born, right?

[00:11:27]And growing up, everyone else planted what they wanted in my garden. I had people, you know, rob my garden and take things from me that I was trying to grow myself that I did want to grow. For the entirety of my life up until this point, I have not been able to really choose what gets planted and what happens in my own garden. So, what this looks like in practice is pulling weeds from my garden. You know, if I notice some weeds growing somewhere, you know, I'm spending too much time on screens, that's a weed. If I'm spending too much time on Tik Tok or too much time playing video games, that can become a weed. If I'm not feeding my body correctly and I'm eating shitty food and just feeling bad and crappy all the time, that's not contributing to the health of my garden.

[00:12:14]And eventually, these things are, you know, the little weeds are natural. A little bit grows here, a little bit grows there. You notice it, you pull it.

[00:12:21]But it's when you let these weeds grow and get out of hand, that's when it becomes a problem because it takes even more work and effort to get rid of the weeds than if you were to get it in the beginning. And because I wasn't taught how to notice these things as a kid, a lot of my weeds are rampant.

[00:12:39]>> However, 15 minutes.

[00:12:41]>> Hell yeah. That's a that's a really good mile. So yeah, I wasn't taught how to notice these weeds or notice them as, you know, things that need to be plucked or pruned. And so as an adult or as a child, I didn't have the ability, even if I was aware, I didn't really have the tools or the resources or the support or the ability to tend to my garden. You know, in my early 20s, I started to become a lot more aware of how these things have affected me deeply. And um recently I came up with this analogy to kind of hold myself accountable for the ways that I'm not taking care of myself when I need to be. Yeah. If I'm spending too much time on the game, if I am not going out for walks, you know, these are all weeds. These need to be dealt with.

[00:13:24]tending to my garden, pulling out weeds may also look like stretching my body in the morning or journaling or doing these little things here and there that can help my garden stay clean and clear so that I have a good headsp space and a good foundation to really continue to grow in life and actually heal from the things I need to heal from instead of just running from them in different ways and wondering why life feels impossible.

[00:13:51]Life doesn't have to feel impossible. It doesn't have to feel this difficult.

[00:13:56]Yes, hardship is going to come. It always will. There will always be something going on that can be a source of worry and a source of anxiety, anger, frustration, confusion. There's always going to be something going on like that in life. That's life. But in between those things and even while those things are happening, why rob yourself of being able to enjoy the little things like the sun and the sound of the birds and the wind, even the sound of the cars, how beautiful the clouds are today. Like these are the little things that we just dissociate from when we're so caught up in our own brains. So yeah, I just wanted to do a little video out here today. Um, I like being outside, especially when the weather is like this. So, I'll probably be doing more videos like this in the future. I might even do maybe a little picnic. I'm thinking about a little picnic. That might be kind of nice. Bring a little sandwich out here. Little iced coffee and a sub.

[00:14:53]Oh, yeah. I'm excited and looking forward to making more content for you guys and making more content for me because part of this process and the part of the reason of me even doing this is for me to feel like a real human being and feel like I'm actually grounded in my own body in the world and just know myself better.

[00:15:15]So, I invite you to do the same. I hope you enjoyed this little little talk. I appreciate you for being here and I encourage you to do something to tend to your garden today. Whether that's drinking a little bit more water, that's a good start. If you are feeling bed bound, if you are feeling like bed rotting is the only way that you can make it through the day, I'm proud of you. I love you. And if anything, try to roll out of bed and stretch your legs.

[00:15:42]Just at a as a bare minimum, just stretch your legs and then get right back into bed if you need to. Just do a little something. You know, you got this. You got this.