Beautiful Trauma: “Pressed Into Silence” (Expanded Edition)
Written by Andi Bazaar, Timothée-freimann Schofield, Tydalé-Oliver Schofield, Seth Gryffenberg, Jwan Höffler Conwall and “introducing” Arthur McQuarrie | Jan 19, 2023
"Speaking your truth and destigmatizing mental health really important. The more that I've been truthful, open and vulnerable about what my experiences have been and what they are that's the most healing thing in the world."
“To all mental health warriors out there, I see you. I know you’re struggling. I know it’s hard but you’re not a broken toy to be fixed. You’re on a healing journey, rooted in self-compassion and self-discovery.”
I will never forget the day I was creating and one of you who treated me like shit. You see things a lot differently, although your intentions were never meant to be hurtful shit happens. Sometimes you have to apologize for the way you treated people when you were not at the best place in life.
"My pride is never too high to not try, I’m just tired. Tired of forcing shit and tired of reminding people how I’d like to be treated."
It's like I’m not perfect but to be treated like shit for doing the right thing is something I’ll never stress losing people over. It was never enough cuz people only change for those they wanna change for, let it go.
I’ll never make a close friends group cause if I want to keep something a secret I won’t put it on the internet especially Twitter/IG and also I don’t trust enough people for a whole group.
It's literally easy for you to just ignore it cause guess what sensitive people it’s never going away ever, the internet has always been like this trust me like just don’t go looking for if you know you’re going to be so fucking petty about it I am so annoyed about this.
And sometimes it makes you worse than by going after people for just asking questions. This means maybe you're guilty of the same shit or have done. This is why I never Trust groups who make fun too cancel a person.
You should know that the Internet never forgets be true be bold and people will have trust in you. Never trust people you only know on the internet, unfortunately it happened to me I trusted a person and I flet like I was "exploited."
You know what, very fair point in times like this there should be a ballast of absolute trust. The internet will never allow that. So you gotta hope that most people be smart, informed but not panicked and fear-driven. Now more than ever is this a critical skill.
First of all, I wanna thanks to Andi Bazaar and Oliver Schofield for creating this space to allow people dealing with anxiety and depression find help. My journey was born out of healing from the mental health and today I am grateful I am healed.
I wrote about this extremely tough year which broke me, dealing with the worst mental health I've had and healing from it using a variety of different habits. It does not make for great prose, but it was my year.
I remember praying myself out of depression, when I felt like I couldnt talk to anyone I physically wrote letters to God. Sounds strange but thats how my healing took place, no one will understand mental health the way you experience it so deal with it the best way you know how.
I have struggled with my mental health since childhood, what helps me is connecting back to the land-mind, body, spirit and emotions. Healing is a lifelong journey, my experiences are my struggles but they are also my gifts and I’m grateful to be here.
- “sharing my story with others allowed me to see that my experience with anxiety wasn’t something i had to be ashamed of. i wasn’t alone. this is the assurance and validation i want students to find in my classroom.”
- "speaking your truth and destigmatizing mental health really important. the more that i've been truthful, open and vulnerable about what my experiences have been and what they are that's the most healing thing in the world."
Healing is painful work, I offer this advice to anyone on this journey as someone whose come dangerously close to losing my private battles with my own mental health.
Listen to that inner-child environment been silenced, they will guide u back to yourself and truth. Listening to your inner-environment will mean confronting painful truths about many people in your life, it could mean painful realizations about yourself and the identity you’ve formed to survive. It can unveil ugly truths about our world but it’s important and loving work.
WHAT HELPS YOUR MENTAL HEALTH AND HEALING?
🧠💜 FOR ME:
being in nature, poetry, music, engaging in social justice-oriented activities nurture my self-compassion and healing coping responses to suicidality, traumas and eating disorder cognitions.
I'm so ashamed to do nothing with my life because all I can focus on is healing from my mental health issues, I want to be successful but I can’t it’s so frustrating. I'm in constant sadness and rage.
When I see people of my age or younger achieving big things I feel so jealous and again so ashamed to feel that way, the hardest thing with depression is watching the world go by without me im in this state since I have 19, it’s a huge part of my life and it’s just suffering.
Reminding myself to not compare myself to others when it comes to learn code, I’m dealing and actively healing my mental health issues and sometimes it all becomes too overwhelming for me.
3 yaers ago, my dad said “what if you write about your anxiety?” — I said “that sounds terrible.”
And it was, but also healing and beautiful and for anyone who struggles with mental health or loves someone who does writing helped me navigate healing years ago and it remains a vital part of maintaining my mental health. Poetry often helps me express deep emotions like nothing else can!
To all mental health warriors out there, I see you. I know you’re struggling. I know it’s hard but you’re not a broken toy to be fixed. You’re on a healing journey, rooted in self compassion and self discovery.
REMINDERS TO YOURSELF:
- I hope you make that commitment to better your mental health and not stigmatize the steps whatever they may be, you take in order to do that.
- I hope you can reflect on your past and look to your future self with the same compassion and empathy that you offer to others around you.
- I hope you strive to get yourself out of situations and spaces that impact your mental health.
- I hope that you not only put yourself in safe spaces, but also create them for others around you + you are enough.
This is my method of assisting with my own mental health and well-being.
We all have feelings, acknowledging them, (self awareness), caring about them (self kindness) and talking about them (self healing) helps to support your daily wellness. Remember you are not alone and support is always there, be brave and act when it comes to your health. YOU MATTER!
I am tired but I won't stop growing, that is what mental health healing teachs me. I change my route, I improvise my ways. I remove obstacles, I let the people go. I receive the bullets. I fall, I heal, I bounce back. It just that, it won't stop me from living.
Yesterday, I made one of the biggest decisions in my life which was to put my mental health first. I’m terrified, excited, nervous because I have no idea what to expect in the future but I know I made the right decision and I’m looking forward to the next chapter in life: "Healing."
One of the most healing realisations I’ve had on my mental health journey is that I don’t need to contribute anything to “deserve” to live. That’s not how a capitalistic society wants you to feel but I’m giving myself permission to just exist and so as a man telling this story I am still faced with disbelief. People will ask me why I keep talking about it when its in the past, when I've been "free" for so many years.
I keep talking because it could happen to anyone and my experiences may help.
"Mental Health isn't just something that needs discussed one day or month a year, its a 365 day thing, we should all be free to talk about our experiences all the time."
My experience of abuse destroyed my mental health and nearly destroyed me but there has been healing, I no longer bottle up my feelings. I don't hide from the truth, I own my mistakes and I won't go quietly into the night.
I should probably put a blog together at some point about the storyline, I've just got to make sure I'm in a good place when I do.
Anxiety attacks and Depression have always been my hardest battles to come fight. It’s mental health week, let’s care for our self’s, loved ones and our neighbors. Let’s spread love and healing to those who are fighting with mental health and prays for the ones we’ve lost to it.
It’s been a rough year and a half (for everyone), but this morning I finally saw my doctor about anxiety issues I’ve been dealing with for a while now. Hoping this is the start of brighter path.
I understand how important having time to yourself is. Your mental health, getting “me time”. You need moments to yourself sometimes. Just you, no one else. I’ve definitely learned that during my time of healing from passing. It helps, but I’m still going through it.
- You have permission to rest.
- You are not responsible for fixing everything that is broken.
- You do not have to try and make everyone happy.
For now, take time for you. It's time to replenish.
We live in a society where we have a hierarchy of control or trauma. We have normalized taking out issues on the person we have control over. Parents to kids, men to women, bosses to employees. Instead of treatment/cultural introspection, we simply pass problems to the next person.
The reason why certain situations are triggering or remind us of our trauma is because our brain is trying to protect us from another traumatic event happening. If anything resembles the setting in which a trauma happened, we may feel overwhelming anxiety.
If you feel that happening a lot or in settings that impact your quality of life a lot such as work, school or home, please go to therapy or even take medications as they will help cope with these symptoms and reduce that hyper-vigilance/anxiety we may often experience.
I feel so angry whenever I hear of some therapists’ behaviours in our culture. Breaking confidentiality, using religion, the homophobia and applying societal pressure on their clients. Instead of removing trauma, you add another layer to it and scare them from trying to recover.
PS: it doesn’t matter if they are minors. Confidentiality is supposed to happen what. Where I practice, the age of consent for confidentiality is 12 and it helps young kids so much in opening up knowing that they have agency over their own lives.
We don’t need to forgive in order to recover from our trauma. The pressure and perceived “nobility” of forgiving people who may have intently traumatized us is another form of gaslighting when it is forced upon someone and it is definitely not a prerequisite for inner peace.
We need to stop pressuring people into forgiveness. Not only is it not the path to healing when it is forced but it can make us feel worse and aggravate the trauma and depression. We can recover and live a happy life without forgiving if that’s not something we are ready to do.
LET’S TALK ABOUT EMOTIONAL NUMBNESS
With everything that happened the last few years, there are many people going through this now. It may seem like a good compromise where we don’t feel that anxiety or trauma anymore, but numbness is a big problem for our mental health.
WHY DO WE FEEL NUMB?
We are going to start with some reasons that we sometimes overlook but can actually play a significant role. Deficiencies of different minerals and vitamins in our bodies can be a cause, anemia and other physiological factors that can require a check up.
However, a big reason why psychologically we may feel very numb is due to emotional exhaustion. Going through multiple bouts of anxiety, intense depression where we may cry a lot or experience many emotions at once are very taxing on the body.
Let’s take an exemple of someone going through a panic attack, every time this person experiences a panic attack:
- their heart rate increases, their breathing is faster, adrenaline is pumping.
- their thoughts are racing, all our body is on guard and ready to fight or flee.
This can be beneficial in a situation where our life is in danger but when we are experiencing panic attacks or reliving our traumas in our minds, there is no danger to our life but our mind activated the same mechanisms because it feels that same sense of threat.
When that happens for an extended period of time, learned helplessness sets in. Our mind starts to think that there is no way out, we are stuck in the dangerous situation. Our body has been through a lot trying to deal with these situations, the purpose now is to lessen the pain.
Numbness dims the emotions and the connection we feel with our bodies. Pain is less bothersome, our thoughts are slowed down and it becomes hard to keep track of them. We don’t care about anything anymore, we lose what made us panic but we also lose everything else.
We can’t feel love, care, empathy, anger or any other regular emotion we may had or if we do it is just a hint of it because of that learned helplessness and numbness. There is no longer a sense of urgency, we may postpone therapy, the doctor, our work because nothing matters.
We lose track of everything that connected us with the world and other people and feel as though we are zombies who are there but in all the real ways that matter are no longer present. In a big way, it is scarier than any anxiety we can experience.
Sometimes, our minds will test the waters. The numbness will lift to see if it is safe, if we experience anxiety or any intense feeling for that matter the numbness will set back in again to protect us. So what can we do?
Let’s remember that the numbness is the consequence of something happening, something we haven’t dealt with. Therefore, we need to process and start healing from the underlying causes. Whether it is depression, anxiety, trauma or burnout, we would focus on those causes.
Therapy is definitely something that becomes crucial at this point because we have postponed the process long enough and the numbness is the signal that we need to do to solve this cycle, if therapy is unavailable or unaffordable, medication can help a lot too.
Breaking the cycle anyway we can is something that we have to prioritize no matter what even if we don’t have the energy, we can ask a loved one or anyone we trust to set up an appointment, to help us drive there or be near us for that support.
Please know that even though it may feel permanent and that we would never feel another emotion again or that we are doomed to be a living zombie, it won’t be the case. There are solutions out there, our ability to connect with ourselves and others is what makes us “us”
Let’s talk about (fear of) abandonment, it is one of those things that we talk about often that we portray in various ways through jealousy and anxiety with a lot of negative connotation.
- what is it?
- where does it come from?
- are there ways to deal with this?
Let’s start with saying that no one has a fear of abandonment out of nowhere, it is not something that develops on its own. Just like any other form of trauma or mental health concern, it stems from certain points in our life. Most of the time, it is from a loved one leaving us.
This can be leaving in the form of literal abandonment when someone we are deeply attached to walked away from our life, it can be because they passed away or a host of possible angles where that person is no longer present. That instant break in a deep attachment is traumatizing.
It is even more traumatizing when it happens early in life, this is because attachment in infants and children is very strong. It is biologically necessary for survival and development. Furthermore at that age, we don’t have the tool or understanding to deal with our emotions.
All we know is that the person we loved was there before and left. We may even have a life pre-abandonment and post abandonment in our memory. Every trauma that we go through in our life, our minds will seek to protect us from it happening again.
That means that we become hyper vigilant about signs people are withdrawing, they don’t have to mean that the person is actually withdrawing. It could be that they had a bad day, that they are struggling, etc but because we are very vigilant we notice those disturbances.
Consequently, panic will set in. We will start thinking the worst and believing those conclusions that we reach. The way it usually happens is we will try to reverse that dynamic, we will seek to reestablish the status quo of that attachment.
This is when emotions such as jealousy or even anger come in, we feel betrayed and it reduces our self-esteem deeply because we feel as though they are withdrawing because of us. We don’t seek to logically know the reason, it is going to be about us and how it makes us feel.
This is selfishness, it is a trauma response from the previous time we were abandoned. We may not even remember that time well for this to happen again. It is just our brain activating the abandonment protocol and seeking to protect us.
HOW DO WE DEAL WITH IT?
First, it is important to heal from the initial time we felt abandoned, the source of that trauma. When it is reduced, processed and healed from, our minds won’t feel the need to activate that alarm system, the hypervigilance reduces.
It allows us to start processing emotions better and cope with them even if that alarm gets activated from time to time. Challenging our thoughts and emotions as they are happening is also important. For example, if someone I care about deeply starts withdrawing,
I may not be able to prevent the panic and anxiety from setting in but I can tell myself: “the conclusion I am reaching is an interpretation stemming from my fear and anxiety” — let’s actually find out what is truly happening we can then communicate with the person.
We can ask them what is happening and be able to draw conclusions that are more logical. Furthermore, it is important to remember that anxiety peaks quickly. When we are in the midst of a panic attack, it peaks around the 20 minute mark and then start to reduce.
During that panic mode, we won’t make a decision or act. This is to prevent making mistakes or acting on conclusions made during a moment of panic. We will use coping mechanisms such as deep breathing, challenging our thoughts, using our support system.
Once the panic attack has reduced, we can then act more logically. Taking those steps back can be difficult and take a lot of practice, but the more we do them, the more automatic they become. So if you try this and it doesn’t work out 100%, don’t give up, it is a learning curve.
Depending on how debilitating that fear of abandonment can be, it is important to seek help as soon as possible and start working on it. This is especially important due to the nature of human relationships. Friends, partners may come and go and this is normal.
Not all breakups or friendships drifting apart are abandonments or bad. It can mean we are growing or getting out of a situation that was toxic for us. It can be that we realized we wanted more. Making that separation and processing it in therapy is crucial.
I hope that this part has been able to shed light on abandonment and fear of abandonment.
A SPECIAL THANKS TO:
- Andi Bazaar (Writer)
- Mark J. Levstein (Co-Editor)
- Yevhn Gertz (Director Photography)
- dr Oliver Schofield MD (Consulting/Co-writer)
- dr Seth Gryffen MD (Consulting/Co-writer)
- dr Khaan, MD (Consulting)
- Timothée Freimann schofield (Photographed/Co-writer)
- Clayton Euridicé Schofield (Editor/Journalist)
- Scott Wynné Schofield (Publicist)
- Henrie Louis Friedrich (Analyst)
- Jwan Höffler Conwall (Art Interior Design/Co-writer)
- Hugo-licharré Freimann (Ass Director)
- Shot at GQ’s Studios by José Schenkkan and Benjamin Schenkkan Joseph
- In appearance by "Arthur McQuarri" (Model/Co-writer)
- In collaboration with "The Me You Can’t See UK" (TMYCSUK) / @tmycsuk
