This is my third time attempting to write this blog entry. I am not sure why the universe doesn’t want me to say what I want to say, but it has changed now three times. My first choice was to write about the movie, “Elemental” and about generational trauma that showed up in the characters. I barely got five sentences wrote before I stopped and changed my topic. The second time I actually completed the entire blog about the topic of resilience. I just knew it was one of the best blogs that I have written to date. Then, it all deleted. All my work wasn’t saved in any way, and just gone. It was 11pm when I finished it and I had to wake up to go to a conference for work the next morning, so I gave up. At least that is what I said to myself. I told myself that I was going to give up on the entire idea of writing a blog at all. No one was paying attention to it anyway. I don’t know how to best promote it. I decided that the last blog I wrote was that one and I wasn’t going to do it again. There were a million thoughts racing in my mind that night. I felt all the emotions. I was mad, I was sad, I had apathy for myself, and I even felt a bit anxiousness about my business altogether. Despite all of my feelings, I just went to bed. I remember that night I didn’t sleep well, and it was because I had given up on the whole idea of blogging. As you can probably guess, there is a lesson coming. I’m not sure when I decided that I wasn’t giving up on blogging because every time I went back to try to re-write the blog on resilience my brain and body movements would not work together enough to allow me to do it. So I knew that I really had given up. Well, I am here typing, and you are reading so obviously I didn’t give up. Honestly, I think it was the moment I started working on my email campaign for my newsletter when I decided that I wasn’t giving up, and that was literally 30 minutes ago. What I realized is that I was giving up out of anger. I was giving up out of imposter syndrome thinking. Let me explain both of these. I got angry at the fact that I wrote such a great piece, and instead of saving it, I got up to grab something to drink/eat, and when I came back it was gone. I was mad at myself and the computer. I shouldn’t have been mad at the computer because it was only acting in the way that computer’s do (how they are programmed). I realize that I must of hit a button as I was moving the laptop off my lap, and it wouldn’t return because other buttons were hit before the undo buttons. I had ruined the blog post. This thought turned into how I wasn’t good enough to be a blogger. That thought turned into how I am not good enough to have a business. That thought turned into I am not good enough to coach or train anyone. I allowed my inner critic to spiral out of control in just seconds, and that lasted for weeks until now. I started trying to write this blog in early October. I actually stopped doing my weekly goals for my business, I didn’t respond to emails as quickly as I normally would respond, and I put my focus back into my 9am to 5pm job instead of my passion, my business. I didn’t recognize this as a pattern of behavior of listening to my inner critic. Now, you would have never known any of this was going on with me because I acted as life was going on with no abrupt changes. I woke up, I got dressed, I kissed my husband and child, I drove to work, I did my job, I came home, I cooked dinner, and life just went on. I am so programmed to NOT stop and evaluate my emotions, and recognize my feelings that I went on as business as usual. The part that I did notice was how often I was taking a deep breath during the day. I noticed how my chest was hurting more often than not. I noticed that I would tear up on simple conversations with others that were emotional, but could ultimately stop my tears from flowing. It was all a too familiar feeling, so it felt natural to me. The feeling of suppression. I was suppressing my emotions, again. This was my go-to for most of my life. When I was younger I told myself that I wasn’t going to feel so strongly. That I wasn’t going to “feel” because it hurt too much to do so. I had been hurt too many times. I created my own rules and terms for how I would navigate life without my emotions. While this served me during some really hard times in my life, it does not serve me now. Despite not serving me, my brain is wired for that and still has some wiring for that type of disassociation. I say all of this to say that the journey is never over. You don’t wake up one day and magically be healed. There is no magic wand to fix the inner critic. Even someone who is trained with all the education and continued professional development has times when her mental health is not high on the spectrum of health and old habits are hard to break. And all it took was one accidentally deleted blog post. For a month I suppressed my emotions, denied my feelings, and behaved as though nothing was wrong. That was the furthest thing from the truth. It is the skills of noticing that alerted me that there was more here that needed exploring and evaluating. In my evaluation of not wanting to blog anymore because one blog got deleted, I realized that it was way deeper than that. Notice when you stop doing something that you enjoy. It is an early sign and symptom that something is not quite right, especially when trauma is a part of your past. Once I noticed my body, noticed my feelings, and then noticed my actions, I knew exactly what needed to change. I needed to feel the disappointment of having a blog post that I really liked be gone. I needed to grieve that loss. While this may sound trivial, the small can impact the greater good because it is easy to fall back into old habits, which is what I did. Now, I am not saying hold a funeral for a blog post, but grieving isn’t just for people. I am saying that I could have allowed myself to cry about it. I am saying that I could have allowed myself time to sit with all of the reasons why this particular blog post meant so much to me in that moment. Taking the time to do those things could have prevented the spiraling from the inner critic and other actions that occurred after that and lasted for a month. The best thing that came out of all is this is that I now know another trigger and the trauma response that shows up for that trigger. The trigger: Messing up something important to me. The trauma response: Giving up on what is important to me. I was able to use my framework N.A.M.E. to get through it. I noticed my body, my feelings, and my reactions. I acknowledged them. I managed them. I considered the expectations that I placed on myself to succeed. I decided that my passion is stronger than my doubt. Are there experiences in your life where you need to use the N.A.M.E. framework? Allow me to help you, because I know first hand it is a journey through life, not a race to the end.