Something I’m working on as a woman with anxiety and late-diagnosed ADHD exacerbated by complex trauma is integrating my hyper-confident side and my hyper-self-conscious side. I feel like Dr. Jekyll & Ms. Hyde a lot because I’ll do/say/post something on a confident day and then second-guess it on a self-conscious day, and I don’t know which one to “trust.”
But I don’t think it’s as simple as one of these parts of me is a monster and the other part is “good”. I think it’s that as I heal and get better at regulating my nervous system, the cravings for connection & validation that sometimes drive me to overshare myself will lessen, and the fears about being too much for other people that sometimes drive me to overprotect myself will also lessen, and then maybe I won’t feel like I have two different personalities fighting for dominance.
Maybe then I can just be Dr. Jekyll-Hyde who only shares herself from a place of fearless self-love and can shrug off people who don’t like me and walk away from people who hate that I’m healed. I think then I will be the most authentic version of me since I was a sassy threenager who didn’t care if her hair was messy and her belly stuck out. I think then I will be free.
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