There is a lot of different language in our community about being broken, being injured, being permanently damaged but there are multiple ways to look at this. I knew my withdrawal from psychotropic drugs as the most intense and severe disruption my nervous system has ever experienced.

So I suffered. And I suffered hard. And there were many days I had zero hope. I was miserable and just sort of put an invisible football helmet on my head, put my head down, and grinded out the time. I was in an invisible prison and didn’t know when the judge would let me out.

There is a magic place where surrender, radical acceptance, patience, distraction, and delusion meet. I was delusionally optimistic as if I had a psychic laser that would take me to healing. I did not want to entertain any other outcome. And would you look at that. All my “delusion” paid off and here I am on the other side, throwing a rope to you to show you how to do this.

And you won’t be perfect. All of this is messy. You will trip and fall and scrape your knees and beg God himself to rescue you from this hell and he won’t, and then you’ll curse his name. You will have hope one day and then not again for a month. And all of this is okay. Because you will heal despite kicking and screaming for it to be different.

So please - FOCUS ON HEALING - start doing healing practices, even if you feel they are not working - they are helping you pass the time and that means it is working - and it’s helping to rewire you so that when you’re done you will be wired and ready to rebuild your life.

So instead of viewing your nervous system as injured or damaged or permanently altered, focus on its healing capacity, that your DNA is wired for surviving and thriving, that you are in a healing crisis, that it is working REALLY HARD for you right now to repair itself. Shift your focus away from the scary stuff and towards healing and where you are headed. Healing is the outcome. Do not entertain anything else.