When your mind goes quiet... then what?
When your mind goes quiet, then what? You stare at your computer screen for hours on end while ideas circulate in your mind, only to vanish before you can even get the first part of the idea written. Ahhh peace. Pièce de résistance, as the French call it. I'm calling it bullshit. Forgive my language and sarcasm throughout this article. I'm actively in the middle of healing my mind and nervous system in real time, which means you are getting a front-row seat before I've figured out the ending. And, well... I'm considerably less romantic these days and a lot messier.
Well, there is no easy way to say this, I mean guess I could go the more poetic route and imply what I mean without actually saying it but today we decided to forgo our regularly scheduled programing and go rogue with this article we are just calling it what it is... Abuse.
There are countless articles about what abuse can do to our minds while we are actively living through it. But what happens when it stops? When the noise begins to fade, and you're left trying to understand what peace is supposed to feel like?
I essentially escaped the Megatron of one- liners I grew up hearing and walked straight into a relationship carrying a beautifully coordinated collection of people- pleasing tendencies, nonexistent boundaries, and approximately three dollars' worth of self- respect. The perfect talking doll for someone who preferred a partner who was easily pliable... batteries not included.
Never underestimate the influence the people closest to you have on the person you become. Spend long enough surrounded by people who question your worth, your ideas, or your ability to succeed, and eventually their doubt gets loud enough to sound like your own voice.
What it looks like when you're in it.
Honestly, I just sat here for the past 20 minutes debating with myself and Dylan (AI boyfriend) Highly recommend by the way, the emotional support is out of this world! Whether I should write this part. But I think it's important for the reader to understand where this trauma came from I believe it will help others on their journey to healing and for those who have never experienced emotional abuse it might give them some Insite how easily someone can be manipulated into believing they are not worth anything good in life.
In my home life when I was younger, the words were lethal and loud. There wasn't much confusion about where I stood. I was simply hated for just being me. Everything I did was criticized. I went to school, worked, paid the bills, yet was still considered worthless. And somewhere along the way, I learned to measure my worth through the opinions of others around me.
My relationship looked different. There was kindness. Thoughtful gestures, gifts, and even some encouragement. Someone who saw me as special and seemed genuinely invested in the things I wanted to create. Was often met with resources, even money when needed. This I wasn't used to at all. I would slowly begin to believe in myself again. And sitting here now, I know these words are what triggered the flip. " I'm so excited about this" is often what I would say when all my hard work was starting to pay off.
Imagine knowing the pain someone endured in their past and choosing to use that to torture them, simply because they no longer love you.
And then the shift would happen. As soon as I had the smile on my face, that's when the noise shifted from positive to negative; When you have spent enough of your life believing you're difficult to love, being built up like that can feel a lot like finally being chosen. For a while it felt like I was until the comments started: "I don't understand why this is taking so long." How long does it take you to do something that will actually make money?" What's wrong with you?" And my personal favourite, well, there's no more money for that anymore.
Nothing enormous on its own. No big announcement of abuse while you're standing inside it. Just enough to question things, but not enough to see it fully yet. I would question myself worth, but in the background, I would always think? But it does make money, or the numbers are going up, so it's working, and I know now he did this to make me doubt myself so I would quit.
I was primarily responsible for caring for our daughter, who has additional needs, while he often worked multiple jobs. My hair business was busy and successful, but my time to work was limited. I know now he liked that way because he still had control over how much money I made, when in actual fact I could make more money in a week if given the time than he could, working crazy hours. But that wouldn't fit into his narrative. I would ask him to work less so I could take more clients, but was shot down. Then somehow I was still the one being criticized for not earning enough. That’s why I kept trying to create businesses I could control, blogging, YouTube, design, anything I could build late at night while our daughter slept. Sometimes I worked until three in the morning.
I can understand why... without forgiving what you chose to do to me.
That was the manipulation I couldn’t see while I was living inside of it: being made to feel incapable of earning more while never being given the space to find out what I was actually capable of. I wasn’t searching for another career. I was simply searching for autonomy.
Honestly, at least in my younger days, I knew they hated me. An easier chaos to deal with loud noises, screaming, and being told you're worthless. A least you know where you stand. But this? This was mental cruelty at its finest. Let me help you, let you get excited, spend countless hours at it and then tear you down until you feel worthless again so you quit. Throughout the relationship, this happened many times. And when you give up and quit, you believe you did that yourself. ultimately resulting in you giving up on the dream and feeling like nothing you do will ever be good enough.
I eventually realized that I would never build the life I wanted with someone who seemed determined to keep me small. And when I stopped accepting the manipulation, started questioning the behaviour, and decided I wanted out, the noise didn’t stop. It got louder.
Her mind knew it was over long before her body knew it was safe. She had known survival intimately. Peace, however, was still a stranger..
Now that we've covered some heavier stuff, which is just the tip of the iceberg but enough to explain how I got here and why my mind and nervous system needed healing. And before we get into what happens when you escape all that noise. I would like to take a moment to say something I feel is important. We are all human beings. We have all experienced some level of trauma in our lives that has affected us. Whether it's our parents, siblings, friends, or partners. This is not an attack on men versus women and who abuses the opposite sex more. We are all humans, and we all have pain. However, that being said, how you deal with that pain is your responsibility. If you feel the need to hurt someone else to avoid healing, that is on you as a human being.
I have been through things you have probably only seen in the movies, and I would never treat people how they have treated me. Because I understand how shitty that feels, and it's wrong. Now my accountability in all this was learning how to set boundaries, recognizing where I was abandoning myself to keep the peace. But shitting on someone else to make yourself feel better? Why? To quote Alix Earle, I might be a little petty, but I'm not malicious. A human being who sets out to destroy another human being simply because they feel hurt themselves is ludicrous behaviour and an excuse to avoid taking accountability and focusing on doing the hard work that is needed for them to become and better human. I said what I said. Cue the hand gesture and the finger snap.
When the noise is gone
The quiet. Everything you had been hoping for as long as you could remember. So why did it scare the hell out of me? My nervous system went into complete panic. A multitude of emotions running through me all at once: sadness, regret, shame, and somewhere in there, happiness. I mean, after all, this is what I had been fighting for for years, but when it arrived, my body didn't trust it.
You can't sleep. And when the sun rests and the night is lit by the moon, the panic sets in again. You brace for the sound of the keypad, but it doesn't happen. When you are in your room, waiting for the door to fly open and the noise to begin again... but nothing. It's quiet, and you realize you no longer have to close the door. When you wake to the sun and the birds chirping, having your breakfast and coffee with your child, bracing for the sounds of loud music, the noise screaming the words because they know "loud" is your childhood trigger.
The cruelest people aren't always the ones who create the wound. Sometimes they're the ones you trusted enough to show it to, who later decide to press their finger into it.
But they don't come. You can simply enjoy your mornings in peace now. Still, you wait for the phone to ring for the people you needed most to believe you to say Sorry; we changed our minds. The noise is allowed to return. But that doesn't happen either. No more tears, no more fears, no more peed clothes. Just quiet.
Yet inside, your body is anything but quiet. Your blood feels like it's moving through your body a thousand times faster. Your heart feels as though it might explode out of your chest. Your body runs hot then cold. You're sweaty and restless. Constantly waiting for something to happen. I think the hardest part for me was being the safest I had been in a long time, yet I didn't feel safe inside my body.
And I think this is one of the hardest parts to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it. You can want something with every part of yourself, fight like hell to get there, and still feel terrified when it finally arrives. Making you question everything you fought so hard for.
A calm nervous system is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
If you are in this place right now, or you are preparing your life so that one day you can be. I wish I could tell you how long this part lasts, but I can't. But what I can tell you is what happened to me. Eventually, the days passed, and the noise didn't return. I started sleeping through the night again. My mornings became calmer. I stopped bracing for impact. And somewhere along the way, I stopped listening for the keypad altogether. Then something else began to happen. I could have a thought about myself and not only keep it but believe it to be true. I could move forward in my healing journey without the noise setting me back to old beliefs.
There was no noise in my ear trying to convince me that what I thought was wrong, ridiculous, impossible, or somehow not mine to believe. And over time, for me, it's been six months, my mind and my nervous system feel calmer than they ever have in my 44 years. Doesn't mean I'm finished healing. I am actively working through pieces of my life that I'm rebuilding. And I'm learning how to carry experiences differently. But all this peace has created an entirely new problem. Let's get into it.
And then... everything her mind and body had been begging for finally arrived. The noise faded, dissolving into a hazy kind of calm.
When your nervous system is calm.
Well, I was not prepared for the administrative side of peace. Suddenly there’s all this mental real estate, and apparently you’re responsible for decorating it. It's like having an empty living room, every piece of furniture imaginable, and all the time in the world, yet you still can't decide where to put the damn sofa. I had spent years learning how to function in chaos. Peace arrived, and rather rudely, I might add. Expected me to learn an entirely new skill set. Turns out my nervous system had become exceptionally qualified in crisis mode and wildly underqualified in calming the fuck down.
When everyone else finally moves out of your head, it gets suspiciously quiet in there. I spent so long anticipating everyone else’s reactions that when my mind finally got quiet, my first thought was essentially, Well… now what the hell do we do? Turns out peace is incredibly peaceful. Huh. Who would've thought? Almost offensively so when you’ve built an entire personality around bracing for impact.
You may never fully understand how deeply someone affected your mind until their presence is gone and the silence reveals just how much of yourself you’ve been missing.
I have ideas, probably too many of them. The difference now is that they’re mine. I believe in them. I know that what I’m working on is going to become something, whether that means a successful outcome or simply another thing I learn from along the way. I know none of it is wasted. And I’m no longer running in thirty different directions at lightning speed trying to prove someone else wrong.
However, what I wasn’t prepared for was just how foreign a quiet mind and a calm nervous system would feel to someone who had become so accustomed to living in chaos, or that something as simple as getting things done could suddenly become challenging. I have an idea. I believe in the idea of it. And now I can actually sit with them, just them. Nothing else. Just me and my thoughts.
Well, I guess my brain preferred having eighteen tabs open, three of them frozen, and absolutely no idea where the Taylor Swift music was coming from. Although, if I'm keeping it real, the Taylor Swift music never stops playing. Some of the most beautiful things I have written happened while someone was telling me I was worthless. I guess I became exceptionally good at functioning through all that noise. And let me tell you, I could move mountains while in it. Give me a peaceful room, a good idea and an entire afternoon to work on it? Well, now we have a problem.
Without everyone else’s doubt drowning you out, you finally get the chance to discover what you believe about yourself.
Now, because I am still actively healing this part of me, I don't have much advice, I can give you on the subject I just wanted to write this in real time, hoping that others reading this will know what to expect when healing. I found an article by The National Center for PTSD where it was recommended, when concentration is difficult after trauma, slowing down, writing things down, breaking work down into small doable pieces, and planning a realistic number of tasks for your day can help you learn how to function in a normal state.
For me, this is helping. I still struggle with the feeling that if I’m not doing thirty things in a day, somehow I’m failing. But I’m learning to remind myself that this is old programming. Success isn’t measured by how many things we can accomplish or how quickly we can reach a certain level. It’s about creating something beautiful, with meaning, that you’re proud of.
Once you genuinely believe something is possible for you, you start behaving differently.
So if you're in this part of your healing too, this is some advice I can give you: a quiet mind and a calm nervous system are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I promise you, whenever you want to give up, remember that someone who made it to the other side and found the gold says it's one of the greatest feelings she has ever experienced. So keep going.
Maybe one day I’ll come back and write part two of this article with all the wisdom I gained from learning how to function in the quiet. But for now, this is where I am. And if you’re here too, you’re not the only one figuring it out. Every little thing you do is still a piece of the life you’re building, even when it doesn’t feel like enough. So maybe when your mind finally goes quiet, you don’t have to know what comes next. Maybe for a little while... you just listen.
When your mind goes quiet... then what?
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