About six years ago, one of my coping strategies went haywire. It interfered with my life and led to my rock bottom. My internal drug of choice was/is dissociation. I checked out, turned the lights off, and basically stopped recording my life or played a better version that I made up in my head to escape when I couldn’t.

That checking out has cost me dearly in my jobs, relationships, and my life—decades of tolerating poor jobs and people. My survival tools helped me survive childhood, but they restricted my life and kept me stuck. It went undetected and felt normal for decades.

Then, to avoid feeling triggered or hearing my inner critic’s messages, I pulled back from that area. It’s not safe to go that far. Every single time I retreated, I got a little smaller. The glass ceiling dropped a little more. I reinforced a bad coping strategy. My needs and wants didn’t disappear, and I tried to use some cheap knockoff of what I really needed and wanted.

Those coping strategies were automatic too. Sometimes I didn’t even realize it was happening. I reverted to how I was in childhood to a degree, and my focus and perception narrowed. I stopped making sense and just got flooded by feelings. Old, new, or imagined it didn’t matter. I lost and distracted myself from the present problem by thinking about someone, something, or anything else.

Stepping out of that process required awareness, bringing it into the open, being gentle with myself, and taking the pieces of the machine apart. Oh, I am stressed out, and I feel the urge to dissociate about “x”. “Why?” That stopped the machine cold or at least took the edge off. Instead of automatically switching tracks, I started to see that switch as a symptom and not the cause.

It’s that space that made all the difference, instead of immediately getting those intense fake emotions and feelings. It stopped working “right”, it short circuited. Through awareness, I started to detach. Initially, I felt angry about it. “Why does this keep happening?” Then, slowly, I started to stay present with myself and the current problem a little more each time.

I appreciate the present moment more. I see my life more clearly. I wonder at all the small things like a sunset, shadows, sounds, music, the sky. The pauses between words. All the colors and changes from fire.

It is all beautiful.

I regret missing it because I was afraid of what might happen.