19 December 2017. A day that completely broke me from the inside, yet a day that was a major reason behind all my earlier broken pieces finally coming together and helping me heal. It was the day I failed for the first time in my life. On an exam I had literally given my all. […]
You don’t need to be depressed to start therapy. You don’t need to be suicidal to start therapy. You don’t need to be carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, crying yourself to sleep every night, or going through a dark traumatizing experience, to start therapy. You only need to be a human […]
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Talking heals. Even if you’re not talking about your actual pain. Simply talking and knowing you are heard, truly heals. Feeling heard is a basic human necessity that we will all always need, no matter how much we continue taking pride in our own listening skills. I personally thought I had a problem opening up […]
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It’s okay. The magic of assuring yourself that it’s okay. Things can go wrong, life can take unexpected turns, but as long as you remember to remind yourself that it’s okay, it’ll be okay. As I started understanding more about the voices inside my head, I decided to make it a habit to say “it’s […]
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Feelings have names. Each one of them. And it’s extremely important to learn and practice how to call each of the things we feel by their actual real ones. I remember the first couple of times when my therapist would ask me “how do you feel?” towards the end of our conversations and my mind […]
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Just like you deserve to name and feel every emotion that comes your way, it’s important to allow others the safe space to experience and express how they feel too. Therapy introduced a new word for that in the dictionary of my mind: Validation. Human experiences and emotions are extremely complex. No two people can […]
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When opening up about their feelings, most people aren’t looking for: a) sympathy and confirmation that their struggle is the worst out there, or b) theoretical advices and reminders that they still have it better than others. There’s a grey area in-between; one we often tend to miss. An area of simply allowing others to […]
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My favorite kind of validation is that which comes from inside. When I start feeling a certain feeling then watch myself allowing me to just feel it. Without trying to swallow it in. Without trying to rationalize things. It doesn’t come easy to me on most days. But when it does, it totally warms my […]
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Self-talk is, I believe, the most important aspect of a person’s relationship with themselves. The way you talk to yourself inside your head. Especially when no one is listening. It’s so scary how much self-talk can literally ruin lives. And yet it’s so beautiful how learning to take more control of it can also magnificently […]
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One beautiful thing that’s slowly changing about me during this journey is, my current ever-growing belief that I simply deserve to take up space. Because I really do. Every human being out there truly deserves that too. I deserve to take my time at the cashier while I look for my card or cash despite […]
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I used to think something was inherently wrong with me. Everyone around seemed to be doing just fine. All the time. But me. I got anxious over the littlest things. I sounded very awkward on every first encounter, and maybe even those that came after. I could hardly ever think of the right thing to […]
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A few months before I start therapy, I wrote this: A post about how I never knew how to be there for people. It irritated me so bad. So here I am, a couple of months after therapy, writing up a reply to my younger self, and her seemingly troubled thoughts. Dear March-2017 me, […]
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This is not something therapy has taught me. This is rather the story of how this whole series came to life. I’m so happy with where it’s going so far (alhamdulillah!) and so I feel like I need to document a couple of my steps along the way. (This might be longer than most […]
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“قد لا ينام البعض من كلمة قالها أحدهم وهو يمزح.” “Some people might not be able to sleep because of a word someone jokingly said.” This is a sentence that’s been overly used in sarcastic contexts all over social media lately, and that I, myself, am guilty of having laughed over a couple of […]
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This is one major revelation I’ve gladly walked out of therapy with. That I actually love my nose. No joke. I’ve always had self-image issues, but my nose was the worst. When I was younger, I was constantly reminded I have a somewhat “long” nose, and so it was the one major feature I […]
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I haven’t posted on here for a while, and I probably won’t be posting for another longer while. (Trying to turn this into some more interesting projects, please pray they come to life!) There’s just something I needed to document and continue reminding myself of for now. So here I am, coming back to write […]
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I was watching Eslimah’s video earlier on her very painful experience with still birth, and even though I could not relate to the experience itself, this sentence resonated with me on so many levels. It’s almost like my very own God-sent message through her words. Because for the longest time, my journal pages have been filled […]
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If there’s one thing I’ve learned from therapy, it’s that every feeling has a purpose. And there’s often something that those “unpleasant” feelings try to protect us from. I’ve witnessed that firsthand with anxiety. It wasn’t until I accepted my anxiety and became better friends with it, that I got to watch many pieces of […]
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If you’ve been around for a while, you definitely know I’m a huge fan of giving things names. And you’d definitely understand how much satisfaction it brings me now to be coming across a phrase that gives the process of naming things, a name too. 😁 I love this. So much. It reminds me of […]
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