As many of you already know, I decided to go back to school in 2021. This was a decision that came out of a moment of clarity in which I thought, "This isn't how I want my life to be, so what can I change?" And then, a few months later, I was given the opportunity to go back to school so I could actually make the career change I'd been thinking about. (Thanks, Mum!) Now, I've just finished the first half of an accelerated certificate course in an area that I've always felt drawn to.
I have to tell you, friends, even though I really wanted to go back to school and even though I've always done well in academic settings, I was scared. As some of you might recall from my earlier blog posts, I was secretly and terrifyingly mentally unwell during the years that I was working toward my BA in applied psychology and my sociology minor. During that time, I hated myself, and so I felt like I didn't deserve friends or even the opportunity to go to such a good college. During that time, I also had an unhealthy relationship with school, I guess you could say. I used it as a distraction from my mental health, and so every semester I practically ran myself into the ground trying to avoid dealing with the mental illnesses I didn't know I had. There was also speculation that the stress of going from a high school senior to a university freshman was the straw that broke camel's back, so to speak, and contributed to the sudden onset of my OCD symptoms in the second semester of my senior year.
So, yes, of course, given that past experience, I was scared of what would happen to me if I took the leap and actually went back to school. Would the past repeat itself? Would the stress be too much so that it would exacerbate my symptoms? Would the similarity of the situation trigger new symptoms or a new mental health condition that would also need treatment? Would I be able to have a healthy relationship with school instead of relapsing back into the old pattern in which I used school to avoid dealing with my mental health conditions? I had so many concerns that were all related to the way I had been before. The fear was almost enough to make me back out before I even tried.
Then I remembered something that Allison Raskin (YouTuber and fellow cool human that also lives with OCD like me) said in her Just Between Us podcast. (It's on YouTube. Check it out.) She was talking about how therapy changes us, and she said something like, "This version of me has never been in X situation." She said it weeks and weeks ago, but I still think about it. I was especially thinking about it as I got myself ready to embark on a new educational adventure.
Allison Raskin was right. People don't stay the same. We grow, and we change all the time. We create different versions of ourselves as we heal from traumas. I know I'm a different version of myself than I was even three years ago as I was just starting to heal. I also know that I'm a completely different version of myself than I was while I was in college the first time.
This current version of myself (from a mental health perspective) has never functioned in an academic setting. It's like a whole new experience with a new person. I don't need to worry about this new version of myself drifting back to the way I had been while I was in college the first time because this newest version of myself hasn't experienced that self-hatred, that same level of fear, and that sensation of drowning in darkness that the older version of me lived in as a constant state of existence. This current new version of myself has never been through a spiral without the tools and information to handle that spiral. This new version of me recognizes the importance of caring for my mental health. That meant this new educational opportunity could happen with a clean slate, so to speak, from a new perspective, with a healthier brain.
I'll end with this: It's normal to worry about how we'll react when we're putting ourselves in situations that previously had an unpleasant thing or trauma associated with them or that we previously didn't handle in the healthiest of ways. If you've made progress in healing from that trauma, it's normal to be concerned about how the situation might affect your progress. But, remember, people don't stay the same. We change and grow and create new, healthier versions of ourselves as we learn and heal from our trauma. This version of you (probably) hasn't been in whatever situation you're worried about, and, so, it's more like a clean slate than repeating the past.
