Hi, welcome back. You're listening to health as **** and I'm your host, Erin Javins. As always, this podcast discusses topics and uses language that may not be suitable for all listeners. Listener discretion is advised. First things first, I want to start off by saying I'm so sorry to everyone. I know that I normally drop episodes on Friday and today is Sunday.

This week has been crazy and hectic and everything that I had planned got thrown out the window and I am truly, truly sorry. But thank you for your patience. In addition to that, we're going to do something totally different this week. I am going completely off script. I have scrapped everything that was planned for this week's episode. And we'll come back to it at another time. But for this week, I'm just gonna talk to you guys about how my week went and. Um, what? What has happened? So. First of all, I've had an amazing week. I was taking wins left and right this week. I was on Cloud 9. Had so many things happen that derailed what my week was supposed to look like, but they were all. Wonderful and amazing things. But even good things can still sort of derail our master plan sometimes, and that's OK and we learn to roll with the punches, right? So. I had so many people reach out to me this week just to give me so much love and hype me up and. Tell me how proud they were of me and how inspired they were by me and. It felt so good. And I. Was so, so thankful for that support and that love. Even

when we're doing great. Even when life looks fabulous. Sometimes we still need support, right? So I'm going to tell you guys a story about the kind of support that I needed this week. So Friday night. I had a Mardi Gras ball to go to and. Sort of semi last minute, our captain of our dance team that I belonged to changed the dress code of what we were going to wear. And. That was kind of stressful to me because I as as part of my. The the way that I handle my neuro spiciness is I have to plan ahead, I have to know what to expect and so it was kind of thrown at me last minute and I didn't really have a plan. And I was very stressed out. And I've talked a little bit about and I will talk more in detail in future episodes about my support system. So I texted my husband and said I'm really stressed out. Plans have changed and I don't like the way that my wig looks and I don't know what to do. And I haven't slept and I'm very stressed out and I have to take a nap and I guess it's just going to be whatever it'll be. Maybe I just won't even go. So I lay down to take a nap. And. Three hours later, my husband still wasn't home. From going to get a dress shirt. And so I called him to kind of see what was up and where he was and what was going on. And he told me that he had travelled to 10 different wig stores. Within. 45 radius of our home to

find me a new wig to wear that night and that he had found one. He had actually found two. And that he was on his way home. Now. Buying a wig may not seem like emotional support, but it 1000% was the support that I needed. I needed for someone to help me be able to regulate how. Disregulated. I was in that moment. I felt very out of control. I was very stressed out. I didn't know what to do and he saw that I was struggling and that I didn't have. A plan in place to be able to deal with those emotions and so. He took charge and he did what he felt like I needed in that moment. And while it may not always be buying a new wig, sometimes that's what you need is you need a person in your life. Who can see when you're struggling and who is capable and willing to step up and do whatever it is that they have to do in that moment to support you and to help you?

no

So everything was going great. Life was going great this week. Everything was wonderful. I was feeling so loved and so supported and so positive about everything that I'm doing. And then? I woke up to it was seemingly a very tiny blip on the radar, something that probably would not even register on someone else's radar as being a thing that they should even focus on. But it it kind of rattled me a little bit. I woke up to a one star rating on this podcast. And I'm going to start by saying that's fine. If you hate it, that's totally OK you're allowed to hate it. I don't have any hard feelings to the person who hates the podcast. It's OK.

But let's talk about how that one star rating feels. To someone who is recovering from trauma. It feels like rejection. And for someone who has trauma and who is recovering from trauma and who has mental illness and is recovering from their mental illness and is and is walking out their healing journey. Rejection. Feels really terrible, even tiny rejection. So even on the heels of this. Massive amount of love and support that I have received. That one tiny lip of rejection. It stung, it felt really bad, and it made me perseverate on the thoughts of why doesn't this person like me? What what could I do differently to make them like me? And so I had to, I had to sort of dial it back and I had to take stock of where were those thoughts coming from. And they're coming from my trauma. They're coming from a place of feeling like I'm never going to be good enough and feeling like I'm never going to measure up to what people expect me to be. And so that one star rating was actually really helpful for me because it gave me a minute to sort of. To sort of sit in my feelings for a second and and take stock of them and and think about how I'm responding to those feelings. So if you had feelings of reduction this week? It's OK for that to sock. It's OK for that to hurt your feelings or for it to bother you. There's nothing

wrong with it. It bothering you. You're a human and your feelings are always valid. But use that as an opportunity to. Figure out why it is that it bothers you so bad, why does it matter so much? And then work towards retraining your brain to be able to appreciate those feelings because they're helping you move along in your healing journey.

I don't believe in glossing over the bad. I believe in accepting the bad and processing it and using the negative. To fuel my mission to walk out my healing journey. So I know this isn't a regular episode. It's totally unscripted. It's just. An idiot with a mic just talking to you. But that's OK. Sometimes that's what we need to do, and maybe that's what you need this week. There will absolutely be a full episode coming this week, so please, Please be patient and be on the lookout for that. Like going into this week. I want you to remember a couple of things #1. It is OK. To have one tiny thing that derails your journey. Be able to reframe how you're viewing your journey and allow you to make the adjustments that you need. I want you to remember going into this week that your journey is specific to you and no one can tell you what is or isn't right. And I am so proud of you every single day. And even on the hard days, you're still doing it every single day. And I'm proud of you. And you are worthy and you are deserving of healing. And I am so glad that you're here. Thanks.