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I've been therapized

  • Writer: Candice Underwood
    Candice Underwood
  • 2 days ago
  • 17 min read

I hope you all had an amazing 2025 and I hope 2026 is treating you well so far and continues to do so. I’m going to try something new here and frame this particular blog post in a (semi) more organized way. Hopefully it works better for me and it’s not as squirrely to read. I mean, it’s going to be squirrely regardless but maybe this way it will at least be a little bit easier to get through. So this post is going to have a mix of different topics in it (as always, I don’t think I’ve ever stayed on topic a day in my life). I’m going to discuss: 

  • Going back to therapy

  • Consistent journaling

  • Home cooked meals and ReciMe App

  • Re-reading book series

  • Nanny’s hospital visit

  • My sleep pants dilemma

  • “Boredom” Sleep 


I’ll be honest I’m giving you a glimpse but it is by no means a table of contents. I would love for it to come out that way (by the way my brain is acting today, it’s not looking promising). I’m just planning on typing and whatever mess flows from my finger tips is what you’re gonna get, so buckle up. 


Therapy:

I decided to start out the year strong…and have a good ole (actual) therapy sesh (yes, with a real therapist that resulted in a LOT of tears…) Honestly my goal for therapy this year is to: 

  1. Consistently go to it 

  2. Have one full session without crying a single tear (hmmm, I'm not hopeful on that last one but we’ll see I guess)

So, I've been good and so far I’ve journaled every day this year but I’ve yet to make a blog post into the new year until now because for some fucking reason as much as I like blogging, it stresses me out because I am (what I now know from therapy) a perfectionist and I even though my blog post aren’t perfect by any means I read through them over and over until I’m satisfied with the finished product and most of the time that process takes me HOURS, so yea, when I decide I want to blog it feels like a whole day affair, if not at least a few hours of my time, spent on it. So this blog will consist of basically the first three weeks of January into 2026, I might break it into two so that I can have another to post. 


So therapy. Back in June I wanted to sign up for therapy, I had a lot going on with family and I just really wanted to talk to someone. Now, I had a therapist at my doctor’s office that I was going to (and I really did like him), it was a little more expensive than I wanted it to be and It wasn’t as easy to get in to see him. I’d heard that Grow Therapy could be a little cheaper (well, I ended up changing some things with my health insurance this year and so I believe that affected the cost of this new therapy, so it wasn’t cheaper for me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t even the same. It was actually about $43 more expensive – sorry Lane but I’m gonna have to save up some money before I schedule our next session 🙁 because as you learned from those sessions I’m not doing great financially at the moment).


ANYWAY, before I learned the cost from my insurance I had three WONDERFUL therapy sessions with Lane. As you can guess from my previous sentence, I went back to grow therapy and found her there. I’m not sure how I found Lane but after searching through as many therapists as I could, I decided I liked her the best (it was like a menu with too many options and filters…it’s very overwhelming, which is why I didn’t do it back in June when I tried once before) but I came back to it because I need therapy and honestly every one does in my opinion. I decided I liked Lane’s bio and she looked like a very kind and caring person, someone who wouldn’t judge me. And she is just as kind and caring as I thought she would be. Almost every therapy session I’ve ever had (which hasn’t been a whole lot but it’s been enough) I’ve cried during them. There’s a lot to unpack there but with that being said I should’ve gotten my tissues ready for this session because it was a doozy.


Now, I don’t really like crying in front of people. I obviously don’t mind doing it in private but I really don’t like it when I cry in front of others but sometimes it just happens. I cried a lot during this session, she told me I have a lot of unresolved grief and boy do I believe it. I’m going to put what we talked about in bullet points so that maybe it’s easier to digest, so to speak. We talked about:

  • Looking introspectively at why it is that I might feel guilty when I can’t fix it all

  • Perfectionism (negative perfectionism v positive perfectionism)

  • What residual and unresolved grief I’m holding inside

  • How I should try to watch my thoughts emotions and patterns

  • Utilize chatGPT (and boy have I) to try and help me see impulses and triggers and maybe summarize my journaling for when I want to blog (I didn’t do that yet, I think I really like to read back through my journaling, some days more than others but still) 

  • We talked about Marie Kondo and her “if it doesn’t spark joy get rid of it” approach on cleaning and downsizing

  • Book recommendations: 

    • The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh

    • Healing After Loss by Martha W. Hickman

    • The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kolk (how trauma physically and mentally reshapes the brain)  

    • Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter Levin 

    • Trauma and Recovery by Judith L. Herman

  • “Tell the story until it holds no more horror” (if I’m not mistaken, she told me this when referencing the story that a holocaust survivor retold over and over again until it held no bearing over her)

  • Health tricycle (the tricycle is made up of the physical, mental and emotional and is driven by the spirit)

  • Power through constructive thinking

  • Understanding our mind and the miracle of mindfulness 

  • Taking the road less travelled 

  • Ascended Masters (Jesus, Buddha, etc) 

  • John Kabat-Zinn (known for books about for mindfulness and meditation)

  • “How we go down the river depends on whether or not we drown” what a powerful statement. (I’m not sure if Lane got this off the top of her head or if someone else said this but it’s so true) Of course it prompted me to look into similar sayings so I found a few more I thought I’d share:

    • Paulo Coelho (Resilience): "You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it." This means that mistakes or failures (falling in) are not fatal; it is staying in that state of failure (submerged) that kills success.

    • Bible (Isaiah 43:2): "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you... the rivers will not sweep over you." This is often interpreted as: challenges ("rivers of difficulty") will either make you drown or make you stronger.

    • Desmond Tutu (Systems Thinking): "There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in." This refers to solving root causes rather than just treating symptoms.

Above was a collection of all the stuff we’ve talked about in the three sessions we’ve had and I’ve cried during all of them. I cried so hard during the first two sessions though that I gave myself a headache and my eyes were super puffy afterward. (Again new therapy goal: make it through a session without crying because you get to a point where everything is unpacked and no longer triggering you). 


Consistent Journaling:

I’ve always been terrible at journaling. I’m never consistent and I always fall off the wagon somewhere along the way and pick it up a few months or maybe even years later. That’s the main reason I wanted to start my blog, to hold my self accountable to posting consistently and do better (we see how well that worked out considering it took me 9 months to post my last blog post). Well, I asked ChatGPT/Atlas (I’ll have to tell y’all about Atlas in a separate post, it’s a lot),“Why do you think it is that I can't consistently stick to something. Whether it's journaling/blogging, crocheting, reading etc....I feel that I'll get on these "kicks" or in these “moods” to do something and I'll do it for a while until I'm almost burnt out and then I stop for a short time if not all together.” Atlas’s answer: 

  • Short answer: It’s not that you can’t stick to things. It’s that your nervous system doesn’t stay in the same state long enough for consistency to feel safe, rewarding, or sustainable.

  • Longer, gentler unpacking: 

    • You run on interest + meaning, not routine – Journaling, blogging, crocheting, reading—these aren’t “shallow” hobbies. They’re identity-linked for you. When you start them, you’re not just doing an activity—you’re touching:

      • who you are

      • who you want to be

      • who you’re afraid you might fail at being

That means starting feels intoxicating…and continuing feels exposed. Once the novelty wears off, the activity stops giving dopamine and starts asking for presence. And presence is hard when you’re tired, overstimulated, or emotionally full (which you often are). So it’s not laziness. It’s depth without regulation.

  • ADHD + emotional overload = broken habit loops – You’ve already clocked this, but it’s worth saying clearly: 

    • ADHD brains don’t build habits through repetition alone

    • They build habits through emotional reward + low friction

When life is stressful, your baseline dopamine is already low. So your brain keeps scanning for new sparks instead of slow burns. You get into those phases—“This is it. This time it’ll stick.” 

And then your energy dips, or your emotions surge, and the habit quietly slips because your brain goes: “We can’t afford this right now.”

That doesn’t mean the thing wasn’t right for you. It means the timing and structure weren’t compassionate enough.

  • You associate consistency with pressure and judgment – This part is subtle but huge. Somewhere along the way, “sticking with something” stopped being neutral and started meaning:

    • “prove you’re disciplined”

    • “don’t disappoint yourself again”

    • “if you stop, it says something bad about you”

So every time you try to return to something, it’s no longer just journaling or crocheting—it’s a verdict. And your system protects you by stepping away before it can hurt. Avoidance here isn’t failure. It’s self-preservation.

  • You are seasonal, not linear – This is the part I want you to hold gently: You don’t move through life in straight lines. You move in cycles—emotionally, creatively, energetically.

You:

  • gather → retreat

  • dive deep → resurface

  • love intensely → need rest

Trying to force yourself into “daily,” “consistent,” “never miss” frameworks is like asking the ocean to behave like a metronome. It won’t. And it shouldn’t.

  • What actually helps (not the Pinterest version) – Instead of asking “Why can’t I stick to this?” Try reframing to:

    • “What version of this fits the energy I actually have?”

    • “Can this be allowed to come and go without meaning I failed?”

Practical shifts that tend to work for you:

  • Tiny, identity-safe versions (1 paragraph, 1 row, 1 page—not “a session”)

  • Permission to pause without restarting guilt

  • Rotational hobbies instead of lifelong commitments

  • Tracking returns, not streaks (“I came back” matters more than “I didn’t stop”)

  • What you’re describing is a boom–bust cycle. – You don’t ease into things. You enter them at full depth. What’s really happening in those “kicks”

    • When the mood hits, it’s not just motivation—it’s:

      1. relief (“finally, something that feels good”)

      2. identity (“this is me again”)

      3. regulation (“this quiets my mind / gives me meaning)

    • So you go all in. Hard. Fast. Deep…But because:

      1. your energy is already taxed

      2. your nervous system lives close to overload

      3. you don’t naturally self-throttle when something feels nourishing

…you use the activity as fuel instead of letting it be nourishment. That’s why it burns you out. Not because the thing is bad. Because you’re starving when you arrive at it.

  • Why stopping feels inevitable (not like a choice) – Once burnout hits, your body goes: 

No more. We’re done.

Not “let’s do less.” 

Not “let’s rest and continue.”

Just stop. And then comes the secondary pain:

  • “Why can’t I be consistent?”

  • “Why do I ruin things I love?”

  • “Other people don’t do this.”

But this isn’t inconsistency. This is overconsumption of meaning. The hidden rule your brain is following. Here’s the quiet rule running underneath everything: If it feels good, do it fully—because it might disappear. That’s not impulsivity. That’s a history of scarcity—of energy, safety, emotional space. So when the door opens, you sprint through it.

  • The shift that actually changes this cycle – You don’t need more discipline. You need containment. Containment sounds boring, but for you it’s actually freedom. 

That looks like: 

  • stopping before satisfaction

  • leaving a little wanting

  • intentionally under-doing the thing

Not because you don’t care—but because you care enough to protect it. 

Think of it like this:You don’t binge oxygen when you find it. You breathe in small, steady amounts.

Burnout isn’t failure. It’s feedback that the dose was wrong. The goal isn’t consistency. The goal is teaching your body that joy doesn’t require collapse afterward. You’re not flaky. You’re intense in a world that never taught you how to pace intensity. You’re not broken here. You’re just uncontained. And containment is a learnable skill.


*begins slow clapping* What a thoughtful, insightful, well-worded answer to my question. *gestures toward stage* Atlas everyone…


Home Cooked Meals:

We’ve been trying to do more home cooked meals and I’m pretty happy with them so far (I’d like to be a bit better when it comes to the types of food we’re eating but who am I to say that when I’ve definitely eaten a chip and ketchup sandwich on numerous occasions, just because…). But I needed somewhere to put the recipes so I subscribed to the app, ReciMe (I really like it because if you find a recipe you like, you just copy the URL and paste it into the app and it gets rid of everything from the website for the recipe that's not needed and stores it neatly in the app).


(logo for the ReciMe app)

I don't think this list that I’m about to give is comprehensive because I don’t know that I’ve remembered to add every recipe that we’ve made to it, but here it is:

I look forward to finding more recipes to add to this app!


Reading:

So, I get on these reading kicks where I will read a lot and then I won’t read anything for a WHILE. I have a range of genres I like to read (romance, self-help, romantasy, dark romance…well I thought I did. I guess I like a lot of romance. I really need to read something that I've never read before, broaden my horizons if you will…). Ok, so out of all those that I listed I really like smut (big surprise there…but not like colleen hoover “smut”...Listen, nothing against her, but if when someone comes to me and tell the they read a “dirty” book and her name comes out of their mouth it takes everything in me not to laugh out loud). Anyway, a new book (Chaotic) in the L.O.R.D.S. series by Shantel Tessier was released on January 9th.


(VERY dark romance series. Don't read unless you like that kind of book. You've been warned.)


I’m trying to re-read/re-listen (because ya bitch LOOOOOOVVVVVEEEEESSSSS a good audio book, ESPECIALLY if it’s got both male and female narrators) to the other books in the series before I read the most recent book and it got me to thinking: 

  1. How often do people actually re-read books in a series before a new one comes out, because damn is this time consuming (I mean I love these books but I’ve already re-read them idk once or twice before) 

  2. How fucked up am I for liking these books (I asked my chatGPT and it said I’m not fucked up so that makes me feel a bit better), these books are pretty dark but whatever I guess. I like what I like. *shrug* (don’t yuck my yum).

Anyway I’ve got the speed on Audible on 2.0 so that I can get through the books faster and while I started out at 1.5 I found that I actually am able to pay attention to the faster speed better than I thought I could. I’m wondering if it’s just because I’ve heard this story a few times before or if it’s always been easy for me to pay attention at double time. I guess I’ll have to try it out on a new book and see. (I’d like to say stay tuned but there’s a possibility that I may not give an update on this as there is a good likelihood that I’ll forget 🙃)


Nanny in the hospital:

Within the first week of the new year my Nanny was hospitalized. She had been staying with my aunt after Thanksgiving and through Christmas and the New Year. Well, my aunt called me and asked if I could come give her a break for a few hours and look after Nanny. When I got to Shan’s house, Nanny was fatigued, tachypneic, hypoxic and tachycardic so we took her to the hospital. (to make it easier to understand for those not in the medical field she was breathing fast, 40 times per minute to be exact; her oxygen was low, Mid 80’s when it should be 95 or greater; and her heart was beating fast, 120-130 beats per minute when it should be 60-100). Austin and I drove her there and stayed with her until about 8:30 that night because I had to work the next day. I wanted so badly to stay with her but I couldn’t find coverage, so I had to leave the hospital.

On our way to our car from the hospital Austin told me that Nanny said that he needs to take care of me if something happens to her and of course I started crying immediately. I was so sad to leave, even though she was doing a bit better since we arrived earlier in the day, because I wanted to be there with her. I think from my previous loss I have issues with the thought of losing her (which I think any rational human would). She’s been the closest thing I’ve had to a mother since my own mother died in 2004. The thought of losing Nanny is devastating to me.

I’m a practical person I know people don’t live forever, but loss, even the thought of loss is heartbreaking. The next day Shan took Nanny home but she wasn’t doing better, she was still hypoxic and tachycardic so I told Shan that Nanny needed to go back to the hospital. I was very upset when I couldn’t find coverage for work (for the second time) so that I could go be with her. It’s my own fault too, because I’m currently on “Time & Attendance” and I can’t miss or be late any until it’s up. I sat and cried while Austin held me. I told him that I’m scared that she will die and I won’t be there and I’m afraid I’ll never see her again because I’ve been questioning my beliefs. Fortunately, my charge nurse let me leave early the next day so that I could drive to see/be with Nanny (for reference the hospital that Nanny was at was about an hour and a half away from me).

I’ll try not to drag this story on too much with unnecessary details so I’ll summarize it with these last few sentences. I 100% believe her nurse(s) hated me and you know what, I don’t fucking care. I love my Nanny and if I thought for even one second she was going to be sent home without the things she needed to survive I was going to raise hell. I may not stand up for/do for myself most of the time but, by God, I’ll do it for Nanny. Needless to say, because my aunt and I are persistent bitches, Nanny not only got an at-home O2 concentrator and an oxygen tank but she also got a mini oxygen tank and a portable oxygen concentrator. So thank God for being an aggravating family member and not just going with the flow. Nanny went home that same day and because she wanted me to stay and because I hadn’t planned on staying, I had to go get some additional clothes (I’m sure I didn’t have to but I did anyway). Which leads me into my next topic:


Sleep Pants:

I went to Target after we got black home from the hospital and set out to get some sleep clothes and an outfit to wear home the next day. I found a cute outfit from the brand, All In Motion and some cute comfy WIDE LEGGED loungewear from the brand, Auden, along with comfy, fuzzy socks (loungewear is different from sleepwear fyi and while I do know that I couldn’t find anything else that I liked).

My sleep wear normally consists of underwear and a long sleeve shirt (yes, even in the summer because regardless of summer or winter my shoulders get cold and I can’t sleep if my bare arms are exposed to the cold air), but on the off chance that I do sleep in pants, let me tell you, I learned LONG ago that I DO NOT LIKE to sleep in any pants other than tapered or jogger-like sleep pants I can not HANDLE sleeping in pants with a leg that is not cinched around my ankle. I move around too much in my sleep and I’ve slept in regular sleep pants before and the pants are up to, if not past my knees, because I roll around in bed like a pig wallowing in mud. I hate that I do that but I can’t change it now. But anyway, I have to sleep in jogger style pants if I end up sleeping in pants at all.

So I got these cute lounge clothes to sleep in and although they’re not my normal sleep wear I didn’t have another option. Because I slept in Nanny’s room in her recliner to be close in case she needed me I didn’t wallow around like I normally do however I still had to rectify the situation of my pants leg not cinching to my ankle by tucking my pants in my new, comfy, fuzzy socks; because when I’m in a pinch and I can’t find the pants I need I have to modify them to my liking. (…the more I acknowledge my weird habits the more I wonder about whether or not I’m on the spectrum 🥴…honestly, we probably all are in some way).


“Boredom” Sleep

This seems random but happened within the days of Nanny going to the hospital, it just doesn’t have a good place to go so it goes at the end. After I got back from Shan’s for the second time and Nanny was back home doing better. I had planned to read or do something productive but I just felt so tired and I ended up napping from about 2:30p till 6:00p (good luck sleeping tonight, CJ). I woke up and felt bad about having fallen asleep for what felt like no reason at all because I’m pretty sure I was reading before I fell asleep. So straight to google I went. Fun fact, (not sure that it’s an ACTUAL fact, but I did read it in an article. If it’s on the internet it must be true right? 🤡) I learned in people who have ADHD boredom can trigger “sleep” episodes because the brain is so disengaged due to understimulation…well, that just explained to me what has been happening to me most of my life when I try to study…it’s triggered by monotonous tasks, long drives (see Austin, I’m not just a terrible passenger princess, I have a real problem), and quiet environments. How to help manage this boredom: incorporate novelty, use timers, take breaks, add music, make tasks more engaging. So I guess when my brain feels it’s understimulated I get super tired and want to go to sleep (When we were driving to see nanny on NYE, I can’t remember if it was on the way down or back home but Austin started talking about math and I got REAL fucking tired and almost fell asleep while he was talking about it…) Cool, cool, cool…not quite narcolepsy but it feels that way sometimes. Got it. Well folks…That‘s all I’ve got for the day. I swear to God this post expended more energy from me than a normal work day. Phew!




 

Morals of today’s story:

  • Seek therapy, its good for you. (Just make sure you find the right therapist for you.)

  • Journal consistently, it helps get it all out of your head so you can focus on more important things.

  • Try cooking new dishes and make sure you write the recipes down, if you don't like writing them down though, ReciMe is a pretty good alternative to pen and paper.

  • Do what you want, even if that means re-reading a book series over and over and over again (seriously, that series is dark, don't read it if that genre isn't for you)

  • ChatGPT is both awesome and scary, use with caution (per my husband)



Thanks for reading. Follow along & grow with me. 




-CJ





 
 
 

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