I keep a strict routine and regimen to help keep myself in check and I hate how off it feels today through no fault of my own.

#Hypervigilance #TimeChange

On my morning walks I've long noted a big-bubba truck with New Hampshire plates parked by a construction site, mostly for the Blue-Lives-Matter flag w/ Punisher Skull and Patriots logo bumper-stickers on its rear window. Today I noticed the former had been left partially peeled-away, and I thought to myself, "It wasn't his adult-children disinviting him from holiday dinners due to his MAGA allegiance, but Kid Rock's shitty lip-syncing over the weekend that proved the final straw for him."

#Hypervigilance #AntifascistTerf

Day 21 — My Soft Confession: The Fear Behind “The Other Shoe Will Drop”

Soft confessions are not easy to share, even when you’ve done enough healing work to name them out loud. They come from tender places. They come from the versions of us we protect the most. They come from wounds that no longer bleed but still ache when touched. Today’s prompt moves straight into that tender place.

My soft confession is this:
When I am at my worst — my most anxious, my most overwhelmed — I brace myself for bad things to happen.

I do not mean this in a dramatic, catastrophic way. I mean it in a patterned, conditioned, deeply ingrained way. It is the quiet expectation that joy has an expiration date. The subtle fear that peace is temporary. The instinct to prepare myself emotionally in case life decides to pivot sharply and take something away.

It is the mental whisper:
“When will the other shoe drop?”

This mindset didn’t appear out of nowhere. It didn’t build itself in a vacuum. It grew out of lived experiences, of survival instincts, of trauma responses, of watching stability turn unstable more times than I could count. It grew from rhythms I adapted to without realizing it, cycles of uncertainty that shaped my body and spirit long before I understood what anxiety was.

Growing up between cultures, in spaces that required toughness, responsibility, and resilience, I learned early on that good moments often came with shadows. Peace was often followed by disruption. Happiness felt fragile. Safety felt conditional. So my nervous system learned to stay alert, even when I didn’t want it to.

It was not pessimism.
It was preparation.

But preparation becomes fear when it never turns off.

For a long time, this mindset guided how I moved through the world. If something good happened, I waited for the balance, the moment life would swing the pendulum back. If something went right, I scanned for what might go wrong. If I experienced a stretch of calm days, a part of me braced for the impact of something unexpected.

This is not an easy thing to admit.
Especially as someone who has learned, slowly, intentionally, painfully, to embrace softness again.
Especially as someone who writes stories about healing, courage, and reclaiming magic.
Especially as someone who is actively trying to rise out of survival mode and into something more spacious and gentle.

The good news is that I am not as ruled by this mindset as I used to be.
Therapy helped.
Self-awareness helped.
Spirituality helped.
Taking deeper care of my nervous system helped.
The soft bruja challenge itself is part of my healing.

But even now, the old pattern shows up when I am most stressed or anxious.
That is the moment when the voice inside me, the one shaped by years of emotional bracing, tries to step forward again.
It tells me to prepare.
It tells me to expect loss.
It tells me to tighten my heart just in case.

And that is when my healing work kicks in.

Instead of letting that voice run wild, I meet it.
I name it.
I breathe into it.
I challenge it.
I remind myself:

Good things don’t have to be balanced with suffering.
Joy is not suspicious.
Peace is not a threat.
Life is not waiting to punish me for being happy.

I also remind myself of the emotional truth I’ve learned over time:
The shoe dropping isn’t destiny, it’s actually hypervigilance.
It’s my nervous system trying to protect me from disappointment.
It’s little-me, the child version of myself, trying to keep me safe the only way she knew how.

And she deserves compassion, not shame.

Now, when I feel myself bracing, I use grounding rituals:
A deep breath.
A hand on my heart.
An affirmation.
A lavender candle.
A tarot pull for reassurance.
A moment outside under the moon.
A reminder that I have survived everything life threw at me and still rose.

I’ve also noticed that when I am truly overwhelmed, the fear of the other shoe dropping is not actually about the future. It’s exhaustion plain and simple. It’s the part of me that needs rest, but instead tries to predict disaster. It is a signal that I need to pause, tend to myself, and ground my spirit.

Sharing this confession is vulnerable because it reveals a part of me that is still healing. But vulnerability is also medicine. Naming what scares us takes away its power. Naming what we’re working through reminds us, and others, that softness and strength can coexist.

I am not ashamed of this confession.
It is an honest reflection of where I’ve been and where I am going.

And the truth is this:
I am better now.
I catch the pattern more quickly.
I interrupt it more gently.
I remind myself more confidently that joy is not dangerous.
I choose softness more intentionally.

Yes, the fear still rises sometimes.
But I no longer let it steer me.
I hold it.
I breathe with it.
I speak to it.
I shrink its influence little by little, day by day.

And that is what healing looks like, not perfection, but awareness.

So here is my soft confession:
I still brace for the shoe to drop.
But now, when it feels like it’s falling, I remind myself:
I am safe.
I am capable.
I am healing.
I am allowed to trust joy.
And not every sound is a shoe.

#anxietyHealing #authorLife #emotionalVulnerability #hypervigilance #intuitiveLiving #LatinaMentalHealth #SelfReflection #softBrujaChallenge #spiritualHealing #TheOrdinaryBruja #traumaAwareness

The symptoms associated with trauma can also be found in a wide range of other conditions.

These include:

- Autism
- Schizophrenia
- BPD and other 'personality disorders'
- Depression
- Anxiety disorder (GAD)

And many others.

⬇️ (more info below)

#Autism #Trauma #Safety #Hypervigilance #Anxiety #AuditoryProcessingDisorder #PersonalityDisorder

Every day I reach loose cannon and from there return.

#CPTSD #Hypervigilance #Impulsivity #Pun

Going on 8 years since being struck by a car, I’ve only begun to be able to comfortably sleep on the side of my worse-off leg (replaced hip, femur, knee, and ankle). This is likely due to the cushioning affect of increased muscle mass surrounding the femur, which has always been the most painful area. The left side has always been preferable to sleep on for digestive purposes, so I’m happy to finally be able to again. Shit’s fascinating, though—despite the apparent strengthening and muscle-memory, because of the deadened nerve-perception still present there, I wobble so severely upon first getting up out of bed in the morning, for the inability to sense my leg 'still asleep', that I find myself having to slip immediately into a horse-stance (which itself took me five years to be able to hold myself in again). My left leg now 1/4 in. // 1 cm. shorter than the other, I’ve had to walk with a lift in my left shoe. It’s been heartbreakingly difficult to walk barefoot since the accident, but I’ve started doing so over the last two weeks. Yesterday was the first day I went barefoot all day. I basically have to walk in a duck-and-dodge boxing style. Pushing it towards the positive, I consider now maybe I COULD return to live in Japan, (if my book sells well there), with the ability to remove my shoes as guest to walk on tatami. But the truth is, I started walking barefoot out of preparation for finding myself made shoeless in an internment camp. Kneeling for long periods of time is the next thing I’ll be working on.

#CPTSD #Catastrophizing #Hypervigilance

Are You #Hypervigilant?

What #hypervigilance can look like, and #potential ways to #overcome it.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/click-here-for-happiness/202309/are-you-hypervigilant

I’m feeling stressed today in all honesty.

But at least I have eldritch cookies and bangers like this:

https://open.spotify.com/track/4c7p96bXh5NG3b1ofhLGfr?si=WnXj-SRPTnGynB9jkZ6TAg

-Allēna

#anxiety #NEISvoid #attaboy #cptsd #actuallyautistic #hypervigilance #stress #actuallyAudhd

#actuallyAuDHD #ActuallyAutistic #anxiety #attaboy #cptsd #hypervigilance #NEISvoid #stress