passionsfire2

[passionsfire2]

I am Safe

The seas are stormy inside while I observe them from a distance.  With each swell, I can feel the energy increase.  But I am just observing.  I am safe.  And when the swells get to be too much and I feel caught up in the power of the storm, I can always return back to my body.  I am safe.  Those stormy seas are in the past, yet the body remembers it as it were happening all over again.  So I breathe.  With each deep breath I am reminded of the present moment.  I am safe.  I repeat, I am safe with my left hand on my heart.  As the storm withers away, I build trust in my body.  It will tell me what it needs.  I build trust in the healing process. . Tara-Fay (My original work)

[passionsfire2]

Everything Feels Out of Control

(I wrote the following below this paragraph exactly one month ago when everything in my world and around me was turning upside down due to Covid-19.  There have been some very difficult days, but particularly the first 2 weeks when everything was shutting down.  I’ve learned to control the anxiety for the most part by staying extra active with running, hiking, biking and yoga.  We have been very fortunate to have fantastic weather in BC and not be in complete lock down throughout this crisis.  However... the anxiety is there when I need to go out in public to run errands and grocery shop.  Never in a million years did I think grocery shopping would take me half of the day to contemplate whether or not I need to go.  And then once I muster up the courage to go... finding it a terrifying and highly unpleasant experience.  Anyways, this whole situation has united us as a shared experience.  I know I am not alone in feeling all the different emotions that I’ve been experiencing.)  

I can feel the fear around us of the uncertainty that lies ahead for us.  The fear around me, coupled with my own anxiety has made it difficult to look forward to the future.  Everything feels like it is crumbling and I have no control over it. How do we cope when the world begins to feel unsafe, when we are suppose to keep our distance from our loved ones, when people are fighting at grocery stores, when people are taking advantage of the panic with scams, when people look at you if you have a cough unrelated to COVID 19, when the media feeds us with too much harm, when the elderly and vulnerable are fearful to grocery shop, when everyone is in survival mode... Where do we turn to? This is our new normal... As the situation is rapidly changing in BC, across Canada and globally, my heart aches with fear like many of us.   I’m terrified of what the aftermath will be.  I’m terrified for all the families who will lose a loved one, I’m terrified of the long term negative health effects after recovering from Covid-19, I’m terrified of the long term negative effects that a future vaccine may have (not an anti-vaxxer, just cautious), I’m terrified of where our economy will be. There is so much to be terrified of and it feels so surreal right now.  Is this even happening?  

This is no longer a "no toilet paper" meme, although the humor may be a good distraction for the time being.  However, there is hope and we must cling to it. We must do our part to help others in anyway possible (especially the vulnerable).  We must try to calm our survival instincts (the anxiety).  We need to follow guidelines issued around health and safety collectively as a whole. Then and only then, will we have a fighting chance to get back to living life.  I'd rather do this sooner than later. 

Sending love to all who are feeling terrified - we will get through this, stay strong my friends and safe.  XOXO

[passionsfire2]

Grief ebb and flows like waves crashing against the rocks.  Each wave hitting a different rhythmical flow that is ever-changing, never the same.  Some waves gracefully dance to the shoreline while others abruptly collide with rocks.  There is serenity, healing, freedom and then there is anger, sadness, pain.  Every day is different.  Every wave of grief is different.

Tara-Fay

[passionsfire2]

You see, as I am realizing now... Life is not a race, it's about the journey.  You have to learn how to appreciate it through all the ups and downs.  Life is messy.  But in the mess, it can be beautiful.  My life is a beautiful mess and I am far from perfect.  Some days I lose hope, some days I do nothing, some days I fight the negative self-talk and other days I can't.  With all the mess and chaos in my heart, I am determined to make it into something beautiful.  I am right where I need to be.

Tara-Fay

[passionsfire2]

Navigating the Therapeutic Journey

Picture yourself out in a stormy sea.  You are terrified, have no control and are at the mercy of the sea.  This is kind of how it felt to embark on the therapeutic journey, but once I started I realized that I, in fact, had control and didn’t need to be terrified.  The problem was that in this stormy sea I was met with many options to take control of the situation.  In other words, I was empowered to make decisions based on how to approach the stormy seas within.  These options are vast and some work, while others don’t.  It’s a tough place to be in.  One day feeling like therapy was working and the next being discouraged.  Perhaps, that’s all part of the theraputic experience and we must learn how to navigate ourselves through these crashing waves towards forever healing.     

One of the toughest parts about being in counselling is that everything is up to the client.  It’s their session, their valuable time and money.  I’m a very indecisive person so at times it has been challenging to decide what to talk about and what approach to take in therapy.  Today was a very tough day for that.  Last week we had planned a possible EMDR session or some guided visualizations.  I came in discussing some other things and then I was given some options on what to do today.  (EMDR, guided visualizations or work on a treatment plan.)  Not knowing what to do or what to work on, I sat there quiet for a few minutes.  Then, my counsellor suggested we try something we haven’t done before, guided visualizations.  This was to keep things a little lighter today because I won’t be seeing her for about 2 weeks and I have a huge trail running race coming up.  Well... it seemed to be a waste of time and money.  I thought in the beginning it was working, but eventually I got distracted.  My mind wandered a bit and I had a hard time picturing myself in the future as a new more confident person after visualizing the things I wanted to let go of and placing them in a container to let go of.  I was a little disappointed with where that session went.  I openly admitted that it didn’t do anything after when she asked how it was.  I was feeling a little upset and discouraged about this not working.

I am now at the point of evaluating whether or not therapy has been effective, if I have the right therapist/therapy, if my defence mechanisms are getting in the way or if I’ve just been wasting time and money.  I feel defeated in the sense that I’ve been in therapy for almost two years with the same counsellor who I like but things seem to be becoming more difficult in a way.  Perhaps, I’m finally facing the cold hard truth about some things and acknowledging others, while grieving them.  Now, I know there has been some progress because I asked my counsellor today.  She was very honest with me.  The progress has been slow but that's because I have been very detached from my emotions and tend to dissociate from them.  What has helped she said, was EMDR because I have finally been able to let my emotions out.  She’s absolutely right.  I find that EMDR has been helping a little with the release of unfelt emotions but at the same time, its been emotionally tolling for days after a session.  Causing me to feel down quite a bit.  I’ve been finding that more things have been coming up and I just don’t know how to move past it all.  I feel like I’m forever damaged and stuck.  I’m not coming to a resolution with anything we have done EMDR with.  Just releasing emotions and slowly feeling less distressed about particular memories.  Other than that, my counsellor has been a great support and I am grateful for her help on this journey but I think we are at another crossroad.  The deeper issues seem to be becoming bigger or I’m making them appear to be bigger by overthinking/overcomplicating them, or by somehow refusing to let go. 

At the end of today’s session, we discussed my frustration with where things are progress wise and she made another suggestion.  Another difficult decision for my indecisive brain... So along with deciding where to go treatment wise with continuing EMDR, talk therapy, starting group therapy, taking a break from therapy or what to work on next, she threw out another suggestion.  A suggestion that at first seemed like she was giving up on me.  It seemed like a little act of betrayal but rather my brain was playing tricks on me for a moment.  She suggested that I try and switch things up a little by seeing another counsellor that she knows.  The two of them refer clients to one another.  My understanding of this is that I would still be a client to my current counsellor, but in an effort to gain another perspective on my end as well as my counsellors end, I would see her for a few sessions to shake things up a bit.  She would then give feedback to my counsellor on where to go next if I wanted to stay with her.  I’m not sure if I’m ready to start again with someone new.  At least this time it wouldn’t be completely starting over because my counsellor would inform her about what we have been working on.  However, I do have mixed feelings on this because it took me awhile to warm up to my counsellor and now I would have to try again with someone new.  Also, is this even ethical?  Wouldn’t having two counsellors with different approaches make the whole therapeutic experience more difficult and confusing?  Maybe, I’m just reading into this too far.  There certainly could be benefits of gaining another perspective and perhaps, I should be open to it.  I have been presented with too many options right now and I really am at a loss as to where I should go from here.                

[passionsfire2]

By working through the trauma in my life and sharing the journey, little by little, shards of glass are put together in a beautiful mosaic.  A mosaic of the person I am meant to be.

Tara-Fay

[passionsfire2]

There’s Beauty and Healing in Tears

I walked out of my counsellor’s office dazed, lightheaded and exhausted.  A feeling that nearly overcame me as I stumbled walking to the restroom.  I looked in the mirror and saw the raw emotion left from a difficult EMDR session.  My eyes were red and glazed over from the tears left in that office.  My face glowed a pale innocence.  The innocence and pain of a child who’s experienced their first heartache.  My body, after being highly anxious and tense, was oddly calm.  My mind was silent, almost in shock.  “There’s beauty and healing in tears.”  I told myself looking in the mirror.  In this state, I have been stripped down to raw emotions that went years without surfacing, and it’s exhausting.  Once home, I plunked myself on the couch with my favourite furry blanket for comfort and tried desperately to nap.  Of course, now, my mind was racing with all kinds of thoughts.  Eventually, my brain settled down and I was able to nap for a bit.  Then I had this huge urge to write a little about my experience today.

So here I am, 3 hours after my EMDR session trying to put into words my experience.  Today was my 3rd session.  It was by far the most difficult one I’ve experienced because of the intense emotions around the memory.  So much unfelt emotion came bubbling up to the surface.  At times it was so overwhelming that it was causing me to feel confused about what I was processing and the emotions attached.  At the very end of the session, my counsellor suggested that we process this again in another session because of the many emotions that came up.  Uck...  I don’t want to go back to process this again, but if it means that I can put it behind me for good, its a risk I’m willing to take. 

Those of you who may not know what EMDR is, I’ll try my best to explain it to you from my experience and what my counsellor has told me.  Firstly, EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing.  The idea behind it is to fully process traumatic memories by working through the negative thoughts/feelings associated with the memory.  Then replacing those negative thoughts/feelings with positive ones.  This is all done through a technique called bilateral stimulation which can be eye movements where the counsellor waves their fingers left to right in which you follow with your eyes, or tapping left and right.  There are other forms but this is what my counsellor does.  I find I’m able to process better when she alternates left and right tapping on my knees.  That way I can close my eyes.  While she taps, I have to think of the image, thoughts, feelings, (physical and emotional) about a particular distressing memory.  This can be overwhelming because the tapping speeds up the processing and it can feel like you are reliving it, but you are not.  She will do a set of taps and then stop.  Together we will breathe in and out a few times.  Then she will ask me what came up referring to (emotions, feelings, body sensations, images and thoughts).  Sometimes she will say go with that and start another set or she will ask me to think about something else that came up in a previous set before starting another set.  She guides it but I’m doing all the work with processing anything that comes up.  This is repeated until the distressing memory is no longer causing an emotional reaction and it can take more than 1 session to work through.  The most important part of this process is staying grounded and feeling safe.  This is your counsellor’s job to make sure that you are not being re-traumatized, that you are grounded and feel safe.  With today’s intense session, there were several moments where I felt lightheaded and she and I both knew I wasn’t grounded.  So we would pause the sets until I came back.  We would breathe together, she would tell me to move around, look at a picture or pick up something until I was grounded again.  At the end of an EMDR session, it is highly crucial to wind down before leaving, especially if the session is not completed.  You don’t want to be leaving in a heightened emotional state, it's not safe.  My counsellor guided me through some relaxation techniques for some time before she and I agreed that I was ok to leave.

Well, that was just a blurb of my experience today and it may be a hard few days since processing can continue for a few days after.  With my previous sessions, I have awoken in the middle of the night to weird thoughts and feelings.  This is normal too because most processing after EMDR occurs at night when you are sleeping.  This can bring out nightmares as well.  Hopefully, I won’t have any nightmares tonight!!  Anyways, this is getting a tad bit long.  So I’ll end it with saying that, from what I’ve experienced so far with EMDR, I think it will have wonderful benefits.  In fact, I felt lighter after my first session but that memory wasn’t nearly as distressing as the one I’m currently working on.  Friends, if you have any questions please feel free to ask!  I’ll do my best to answer them :)

Thanks for reading!

XOXO,

Tara-Fay <3                       

[passionsfire2]

There Will Be No Tears Shed For 26

As I sit here on the eve of my 26th birthday, I can’t help but look back on this pivotal year of tears, heartache, healing, and change.  25 was a difficult year, but it was also a wakeup call to a whole host of anxieties, insights and realizations that I have never experienced before.  I often wonder if this was a new level of maturity in adulthood.  Is this essentially the definition of the Quarter-Life Crisis that millennials have jokingly nicknamed?  I have joked about it but now I wonder if it actually is real.  As I have learned in previous psychology classes, our brain is not fully developed until about age 25.  Would this have to do with the sudden wakeup call, the sudden anxiety of needing to have everything figured out, the tough realizations/insights that come out of the blue, and the new depth in which you can reach inside?  Can anyone else relate?  I have to tell you it’s been scary, the things that have come up but it’s been motivation for change.  

I could sense from about age 23 that things were getting to this point, to the point of a crazy breakdown but I ignored this gut feeling.  Sure enough, a few years later I found myself sobbing on my bed that evening of my 25th birthday.  All I could think was, “I’m halfway through my 20’s, what the hell am I doing?  I’m still at home, no degree, no boyfriend, no kids… I must be a failure.” This then sparked a lot of negativity which caused my anxiety to increase and I was feeling very alone.  Thankfully, I was already seeing a counsellor at this point because things got increasingly harder as the months went on by as a 25-year-old.  I was faced with confronting the past, with getting out of my comfort zone on several occasions, the anxiety that was holding me back and multiple losses.  In all honesty, I don’t think I would have pulled through quite as well if I didn’t have a counsellor to talk to.  I am very grateful.  Although, I feel the real work is just beginning and I’ve been in therapy off and on for over a year and a half now.  We had to switch the approach from just Talk Therapy to some EMDR because I wasn’t feeling or expressing the emotions of what we were tackling. Thanks to my learned defence mechanisms. Anyways, now I’m a little off topic. We’ll save that for another blog post.

So yes, most of the age 25 for me was difficult but there is a silver lining.  I have made important changes to my life and am now setting goals to achieve my purpose of helping others with their mental health.  I have developed a new found love of writing and will publish a book one day :)  Slowly but surely, I’m beginning to find out who my authentic self is, how I can love her more each day and how I can trust her.  I’m leaning in and delving deeper in my counselling sessions and taking back all the control I gave away.  I am healing the inner child from within and becoming a stronger woman because of it.  

There will be no tears shed for my 26th birthday.  You know why? Age is just another number in which it gives us another year to expand and grow.  It allows us to look back to see how far we’ve come and evaluate where we want to go in that year.  It is another year of youth that has come and gone but as I get older, I’ve realized that what’s in your heart matters the most.  The most beautiful people that walk on this earth have an inner beauty that radiates; love, compassion, wisdom, knowledge and strength.  They are of any age and background.  I strive to be one of them and it will take years of learning and growing. 

There will be no tears for my 26th birthday because it is another year of growth and I cannot wait to see where this year goes.  Will I finally feel whole?  Will I be able to own my story and live authentically?  Will I be able to go out in the world fearless?  Will I travel?  Will I find the man of my dreams who treats me with the respect I deserve?  WIll I be able to live my life more creatively and with more purpose.  But most importantly, will I be able to leave the past in the past for good?      

[passionsfire2]

Why Talk Therapy Alone May Not Be Effective if You Struggle to Express Emotions

I’ve been on a healing journey for over a year now, which began when I got to a point in my life where I felt extremely stuck.  I was feeling extremely alone (even in a group), riddled with anxiety about where I was in life, constantly putting myself down for not being further with my life and overall just felt lost.  Most of this I believed stemmed from some trauma I had been through in which I had not fully processed. So, one day I had enough and realized that I deserved to take care of myself wholeheartedly and deal with the demons on the inside.  I’d been trying for 5 years without much success.  If anything, I was good at distracting/ignoring what was going on in my mind.  Which at times was good but it wasn’t helping overall.  That’s when I made the courageous decision to reach out to a Counsellor I found online who has extensive knowledge/experience with trauma, anxiety, and depression.  That’s how the journey began and I’ll save the parts in the middle for another post.  Let’s fast forward 1 year and a couple of months.

Alright, so just over a year has gone by and I feel like I have opened up a can of worms, and sometimes I find myself thinking “I’m so damaged, there is a lot wrong with me, can I actually fully heal, can I move past all of this, can I live a life free of the past?”  The tough thing is, I thought by now I would be in a much happier place.  While talk therapy has helped me to acknowledge some difficult truths and helped me to find/work towards my purpose; I didn’t feel like it was helping me to put my past behind me.  Now, I’m not suggesting that it won’t be helpful for others because it varies from person to person.  It just wasn’t the right tool on its own for me, I needed more.  That’s when I explained my situation to my counsellor and she suggested we try EMDR or Hypnotherapy.  I decided after some research and talking to my therapist that we should try EMDR.  Not only was I hopeful but I was also curious at how bilateral stimulation would help to desensitize, reprocess and help to find a resolution to past traumas.  So far, I have had two intense sessions with today being my second.  It’s still too early to know whether it will be effective.  A lot of the healing happens in between sessions so it can be quite difficult.  I’ll write another post on what EMDR is and my experience later on.  

Now, I want to explain what I learned in today’s session as it gave me a clue as to why talk therapy may not have been very effective for me.  At the end of the EMDR session, I told my counsellor that I really hope this works as I have talked about many of these things to other people without fully processing them.  She explained that in my case I have been dissociating and detaching from my emotions.  This explains why I don’t get emotional when I talk about some of the traumas I’ve been through.  I just stumbled across this quote on Instagram; (“If you cannot tolerate what you know or what you feel, the only options are denial and dissociation.” - Bessel Van See Kolk)  It is very accurate.  So far with the two sessions of EMDR, I’ve been able to let my emotions out in a safe supported environment.  I haven’t been able to do that with just talk therapy.  EMDR is intense.  My counsellor explained that a good part of my healing will be expressing the emotion that I’ve held back.   Thanks to EMDR I might be able to fully put the past behind me.   Although, its still early to know whether or not this will be helpful, I am hopeful :D  Again by no means am I suggesting that talk therapy isn’t beneficial because it certainly has its benefits, and everyone will experience it in different ways.  Also, I am by no means an expert with different therapy techniques.  I’m only speaking from my experience.  If any of you have been through EMDR, I’d love to hear if it was helpful, how you made it more effective and how you coped on tough days.

Lot’s of love,

Tara  

[passionsfire2]

I am a Survivor, Fighter, Warrior

Hello friends, I’ve always envisioned this blog as being light-hearted, creative and inspiring.  In order to be inspiring sometimes you have to share your story of strength and unfortunately most times its not pretty.  Life isn’t always pretty but it’s about what we learn from our struggles that define us and change us for better or for worse.  Over the last 6 months I’ve been on a journey of healing and rediscovering who I am and what I want in life.  It’s been extremely rocky as I’ve had to deal with past trauma’s and come to realize some very difficult truths about myself and these past experiences.  As inspiration for you to speak out and for my own healing I want to share a part of my life I tried to hide from for 5 years.  #MeToo, I’m a little late to the party on this one but I wasn’t ready to speak out. 

Take care my friends and please speak up if you are a victim of sexual violence.  The longer you hold it in the worse you will feel about yourself and keep speaking about it.  Everytime a story is released another part of you heals.

Lot’s of XOXO, Tara

Please be warned the following poem is not graphic but it may be triggering.   

    I Am a Survivor, Fighter, Warrior

You took away any self worth I had and replaced it with disgust in myself You took away my sense of safety and replaced it with fear You took away my control and left me vulnerable You took away my ability to enjoy sex and replaced it with anxiety You took away my trust in men and replaced it with solid walls You took away the last of my innocence and replaced it with a cold heart

You stole so much from me in a few short minutes that I couldn't comprehend what was to come next until the shock and numbness wore off. I am angry that your selfish heartless actions changed my life forever.  

You will never understand how I feel about myself and my body You will never understand how much it meant for me to loose my virginity to you but at that time I wasn't ready You will never understand how I'm tormented by images of that night when something reminds me of you You will never understand how hard it is to heal from rape You will never understand the shame I feel and how I blame myself, even though the blame belongs to you You will never understand the dark thoughts that have crossed my mind and occasionally do to this day

You will never understand...

You broke me into a million shattered pieces.  Shards of glass I'm desperately trying to piece back together and as I heal, I'm discovering the pieces will never fit back together exactly the way they were before and maybe that's ok.  

You broke me but not completely.

You didn't break the fighter inside You didn't break my zest for life You didn't break my spirit You didn't break my hope for healing You didn't break me on my darkest days

I AM STILL HERE!

I am a SURVIVOR, a FIGHTER, a WARRIOR and I am STRONGER then I have ever been.

[passionsfire2]

[passionsfire2]

“If You Are Not Falling, You Are Not Learning.”

Hello lovely friends!  Those of you who follow me on Facebook and Instagram know that I'm a die-hard skier who probably posts too many photo's on social media but who cares, ski season comes once a year and I'm devoted to soaking it all up in its glory.  Today was one of those days.  It was my first day back in my “ Winter happy place.”  The excitement overwhelmed my body and my legs wobbled as I tried to regain the “skiing form” after waiting nearly 8 months.  I quickly figured it out and enjoyed the day.  

During one of the lifts up, I sat beside a father and son.  The father was teaching his son how to ski and I was listening to every word he said.  What stuck out to me was when he said “If you are not falling, you are not learning.” After he said that a bunch of memories flooded my mind of some of the nasty spills I took learning how to ski.  Thank goodness I never broke anything.  Anyways, I made a good connection with that quote and realized I would not be the skier I am today if it weren't for those bad falls.  I took it a step further realizing; it can be applied to everyday life.  If you just switch the word “fall�� to “making mistakes,” then it works for everyday.  However, the problem is... nobody wants to fall.  Every bad fall I had hurt.  But with each fall I became a stronger skier.  

I'll be the first one to tell yeah, I hate making mistakes and when I do, I feel embarrassed.  It's tough to make the mistake in the first place but even tougher to admit to it.  Instead of the physical pain from falling you have the emotional pain from making the mistake.  I'm sure you can relate to some degree.  What happens after?  For some of us we learn from it, while others repeat the mistake and may learn from it down the road.  Where we run into trouble is when we no longer accept that making mistakes is human nature and a part of personal growth.  This is when we are our own worst enemy.  This is when negative self talk takes over. This is when the pressure to be perfect is our main focus.  None of this has to happen if we simply allowed ourselves to be open to making mistakes and learning from them.  When I say “be open” I don't mean let the mistakes happen and then talk down to yourself.  I mean embrace the mistake, think it through without criticizing yourself, forgive yourself, learn from it and let it go.  We have the choice to allow our mistakes to destroy us or to shape us into stronger individuals.  If I didn't fall skiing would I be a better skier?  If you don't allow yourself to make mistakes and learn from them... would you be a stronger, wiser person??

xoxo,

Tara

[passionsfire2]

Lately, for some strange reason I’ve taken a fancy for leather bow chokers. When I first saw them a few months back at the place I work at I thought they looked weird and not chique in anyway!! Well I decided to try one out for myself and it’s an original. They are very easy to make!

Here’s how:

Supplies: 1) leather cord (at least 1m) 2) silver plated jump rings (different sizes) 3) cord end caps 4) a small needle nose plier

How:

1) Take the leather cord ends with each hand and bring across the front of your neck. Then cross the back and bring forward. Tie a bow above. This will help you measure how much cord you will need.

2) Take a cord end cap and place where you would like to start a chain. Clamp and squeeze into place with needle nose pliers Repeat on the other side. Take off the necklace.

3) Next take the smallest jump rings you have and space out about 3-5 rings between the cord end caps. Use pliers to gently squeeze into place when satisfied. Don’t squeeze too tight. You will have to add other rings to them.

4) Now create your own unique chain using jump rings. Once done attach one ring from each section to a ring on the leather cord and pinch with pliers.

5) Try it on and adjust as needed!!!

I hope you found this easy to follow and fun to create!! Have fun with it :D

XOXO, Tara

[passionsfire2]

Passion’s Fire

It’s time to get serious about this blogging thing... I use to blog. Then I stopped. I loved it, but something drained my energy for it.  I was no longer passionate about sharing my life and creativity with others.  The other day I envisioned creating a new updated version of my old blog, using the same name I had used for my previous blog.  Well here she is!!  I’m really excited this time around because I’ve been pondering the idea of what Passion’s Fire means to me... (besides a pretty sweet name} and what it will spark in you.  My hope is that I can inspire you creatively through my art, thoughts, quotes, stories and positive vibes.  I was passionately created to share my creativity and life.  Stay tuned.  This blog has just begun!

xoxo,

Tara