Dawning Creations

About The Blogger

It’s 2019 now. Wow! Time went by so fast. I started this blog years ago and just started posting again slowly this summer. Then, once again, I stopped. For a long time I stopped writing and kind of just became stagnant in all facets of my life. I became caught up in the monotony and adult responsibilities. I’m typically a positive person but that situation, I let take my mind to places I never should have let it. I will explain as this goes on.

Before I really get into the sticky emotional content, I want to give a HUGE ThAnK YoU to everyone who followed me when I started this blog years back and when I began really posting weekly again in fall. When I post material, usually poetry and photography I try to reach people on an emotional and psychological level. I want everyone who comes onto my page and reads my material to feel connected to others through the poetry or know they’re not alone in something they’re going through. If not that, I hope they can just enjoy my poetry and photography. When I write, I like to write from my perspective but also take from many others’ perspectives in my life or from the perspective of objects or animals. I feel a great connection to places I’ve been where I’ve been taken on a spiritual adventure. It’s almost like an out of body experience but better because I’m fully aware and my body is useful , taking in everything with the use of my five senses. I’ve never been more grateful to God, then times like these. I love writing about these experiences and taking my readers with me. I want everyone to experience these things with me and know that they can enjoy these priceless experiences. Our fives senses take all in when we let them. I conceive that it’s important to be present, even in the chaos to enjoy the little gifts that are reaching out to us, especially US- the artists.

Now I’ll get into the emotional, squishy, uncomfortable stuff…
I work as a TSS ( Therapeutic Staff Support). It can be a highly rewarding career, depending on your perspective and patience more so needed with the adults you have to work as a team with. To be successful ( by successful- I mean happy and helpful in your profession working with the children we encounter), you must enjoy your craft, using the techniques provided by your supervisors and most importantly, you must TRUST. Trust is a concept I’ve never fully grasped growing up. I’ve had some childhood trauma and many let downs but WHO hasn’t?! If I’m being wholeheartedly honest here, I don’t know why I struggled with trust so much. But you NEED to trust the people you’re working as a team with best you can and accept criticism as being honest and beneficial to the child and you as their helper.

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When I first started in 2015, I was a mess of anxiety and crippling self-loathing. I was working at a psych hospital as a mental health technician. It was greatly dissatisfying, in that I worked overnight and hardly got patient interaction- other than telling them to go back to their beds. I tried to be as helpful as I could but I mostly had to grade sheets for their points- It’s a system they use on the adolescent unit. The higher the points they earn, the more privileges they acquire. It was lonely and I felt I was just a body occupying space.

Needless to say, as soon as an opening came about at my current position, I jumped on it. I didn’t know fully of what to expect. Naturally, I was a nervous wreck. I started in August and really enjoyed the clients I had, even though the one teacher was a little tough to work with. I can understand now some of the techniques I used weren’t the best. I redirected too loudly, and gave too much praise when it was not needed. Point blank, I was a novice and just beginning to learn all of these techniques and the art of planned ignoring. While working with these children, I learned a lot and gained incredible experience which I am extremely grateful for. I am especially grateful to the BSCs ( my supervisors) that helped to me perfect these techniques and correct my mistakes. I needed that push and the discipline.

At that time, I was experiencing severe anxiety. I would show up to work and be calm working with the children but working with the adults or speaking with them , I would struggle and stammer over words, experiencing panic attacks. I hid it well but it still sucked trying to work with that going on. I really struggled with accepting constructive criticism because my own self-critique was overly harsh. . I ended up going on Celexa for a year and then Zoloft. For both I was on the lowest dose they had to help take the edge off of the social anxiety. Before being on the medicine, I couldn’t speak during supervision. I would sit like a child my head down, doodling and only speak when it was my turn to discuss clients. I was so awkward and embarrassed. I remember a few times when one of my coworkers would try to joke with me- poking me and commenting on my doodles. He would ask to use a pen and after a while it became our own inside to joke. I would come to supervision expecting him to ask for a pen and laughing about it. He was the first coworker that reached out to me and I was grateful for that. For two years, I was good.

Then, the medicine stopped working. It started having the opposite effect. I was less motivated. I didn’t write or do photography anymore. I wasn’t motivated towards the children anymore. Small little feats with them, didn’t faze me, which is scary. I was beginning to fixate on all that was wrong and all that I wasn’t achieving with a particular client. I was experiencing burnout, which happens but it wasn’t just burnout with this client. It was burnout within my entire life. I was just done. I cried all of the time and was experiencing panic attacks in the form of not just crying, but raging. I would smash anything I could get my hands on and hurt myself. There were times my fiance would have to restrain me. When I came out of this, I would remember a little of what happened but not all of it. I think the anxiety and frustrations would just build up. I didn’t have plans in place for myself to cope appropriately and I would explode. There were a lot of changes with clients and a lot of new challenges that I felt I wasn’t ready for. The medicine became ineffective and I believe making me worse. I realize it was a combination of things but after experiencing worse feelings than prior, I decided to off of the medicine. I was very depressed and anxious. A few coworkers who really got to know me brought this to my attention and really got into my head in a good way- a way that I needed. I started talking with them, my fiance, and family about going off of the medication and why I felt I should. They backed me and agreed to tell me if they felt I was any worse or better. I also started really praying and relying on God. I asked him what to do and to help me to rely on others and trust others and to trust myself in him. Through his council and that of my family, friends/coworkers/ fiance, I began developing coping skills to help me deal with my extreme lows and anxious moments- panic attacks. I started talking with my fiance, mom, or his mom or my brother when I felt it coming on until I was calm. I would walk away from paperwork ( It comes with the job) or anything that was aggravating me at the time until I was calm and levelheaded. I began walking every weekend one or two days with my friend/supervisor and talking. We still walk to this day and are very close. She’s incredibly insightful and nonjudgmental. We both experienced a lot this past summer and got each other through all the hardships. I feel like I wouldn’t be writing again or coping as well without her. I would talk with my mom who has to deal with mental illness. I knew she would understand and she’d sit with me, sometimes all night to help me come down from panicking and to dissect why I was so upset. She would always and is always the only one that truly understands because she experiences it at a higher level than myself, having bipolar disorder. She is a brilliant writer. We write in the same room and decided to use our shared art to cope and to enjoy. Without her, I wouldn’t be able to cope as I now do.
Matt, my fiance would sit and listen and hug me until I let it all out. He would never pass judgement and still never does. He is my rock and other half. Without him, I would never be in this positive and motivated place.

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-This is where I get into writing again-

In October, I saw a show with my friend Ann. It was the High As Hope tour, Florence and the Machine. She stated during her show that no matter what we do, no matter how small to us it seems, we make a difference. “Keep doing it. Keep showing it up. You’re changing lives.”-Florence Welch. This opened my heart and mind and reminded me that I needed to write again. I remembered how much I missed it watching her perform and pour her heart out to thousands of people. She was honest about her struggles and it made me feel truly connected to her and the audience. I hadn’t been inspired for such a long time. The medicine I was on blunted a lot of my emotions and the anxiety I was experiencing took over my thoughts. The exercise and talking was helping but I needed one more change. I needed to change my thoughts- the wiring in my own head. All the people in the world could love you and be there. However, if your inside voice hates you, you will hate you and all will fall apart. When I got home from that concert, I wrote six poems. I felt such a release. Soon, I began writing even more, almost daily and then I began posting on here again. Since then, I’ve been a writing machine and I haven’t been so unhappy or anxious. Writing is truly cathartic. Writing about these experiences and the ones I experience while traveling or just in random moments, really changed my life for the better. Thank you for joining me. I hope I can help and inspire someone like me or who I used to be.