"I spent most of public school sure that I was the only one who was scared to go home at night."
"I had to go [in grade 3] to special education class and continued on until grade 6. This had a negative effect on my learning ability. I was a shy, insecure child as it was and this only perpetuated my insecurity as being a stupid little Indian girl."
I realized I had become an alcoholic to cope with my issues but somehow passed all my classes.
"I just wanted to forget for a little while and the way I accomplished that was by fooling around with my friends most of the time. It was an escape for me."
We have all learned from our lives. Some of the ways we learned to cope with tough times may have helped us survive then, but now they may have become patterns that keep us stuck. For example we may hurt ourselves through addictions, unhealthy eating or sleeping. or cutting or punching ourselves. People might label us (e.g. “he’s just an addict") or blame us. Sometimes our habits are not so easy to see — like when we repeat over and over in our heads that we are stupid. we can’t do anything right, we don’t deserve love or anything else good...
All these patterns started as a way to cope with hard times, probably a very long time ago. Now the same habits often get in the way of learning - being disorganized messes things up at school, and serious habits like addiction or cutting mess everything up. Telling yourself every day that you are forgetful or stupid makes learning new things much harder.
Please check out the resources we have available below!