For better or for worse, personal development is the primary theme of my life. I might not still recommend each turn in my path, but what follows is a basic outline of how I’ve survived to the ripe old age of 45 as a queer neurospiced meatmech maneuvering late stage capitalism while battling lifelong suicidal ideation (keeping in mind my social status as a privileged white person).
Throughout my teens and early 20’s, presuming I would not live any longer than that, I actively damaged others and neglected myself while incessantly performing public psychic surgery with very little self compassion or guidance. I began reading “self help” in roughly 2003, when introduced to “Control Theory” by William Glasser. Soon followed work by Daniel Rutley, John M Gottman, and “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle, and my ‘content’ as it’s referred to now followed suit.
In 2005, suffering the death of a childhood friend, I decided to see a psychiatrist, beginning a long multi-decade journey through multiple practitioners and modalities, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Cognitive Process Therapy, Parts Work, and EMDR, in tandem with Somatics, peer support, Systemic Family Constellations, The Landmark Forum (NOT recommended), Nonviolent Communication, silent Vipassana retreat, various other meditation techniques, and The Grief Recovery Method which I facilitated in my practice.
Over time my reading focus shifted from how to fix the failing cishet relationship escalators in my life to things like Michon Neal’s 5 ways Amatonormativity sets harmful relationship norms for us all and many more community members and bloggers lost to the sands of time, as well as writers like bell hooks, Audra Lorde, and Ijeoma Oulu, sparking the beginning of fierce rejection of the assumed superiority of the scholarship of whiteness I had previously animated as violently and offensively as possible.
At my best in 2019, I was in three support groups, seeing a therapist weekly, medicated, had a peer counselor, a vibrant social life, a vocation I enjoyed in which my therapeutic enthusiasm was helping (other privileged and mostly white) people, the freedom to choose my own schedule, a few close friends, an art studio, pet sitting side hustle, and swam with my able body a few times a week. I still managed periodic ideation linked to PMDD, but the consistency and relatively short lived nature, as well as my support network, anchored effectively.
Cue, COVID-19.
I made some rather euphoric personal development strides in the early stages of the still ongoing pandemic in relative isolation, particularly the self directed form of art therapy that was Ringmaster Rex and the two years of system mapping integrations that followed. However, anything misapplied can become toxic, and I definitely took the perceived ruggedness of my mental health for granted, culminating in 2024 handing me my absolute ass. Looking back, I can see my dissolution as the pandemic persisted in many respects mirrored my deeply painful and isolated teens in ways I wasn’t perceiving while in it.
Even well established progress is non-linear, subject to circumstantial and environmental changes, and, in the absence of consistent nurturance, can and will fall away over time. But returning to levity is possible, and that’s what I’m currently focused on in 2025 as an active member of multiple recovery fellowships, as well as tempering my stubborn habit of immediately outsourcing my personal gains attempting to coach others prematurely.
After many years of solo therapists and collecting tools I often forget to use without being prompted, the stability of longstanding financially accessible fellowship of near-constant online meetings with many to rely upon rather than one or two private practitioners and a few overwhelmed friendships is a welcome shift. I did not find that sort of longstanding support through my social or career efforts to usurp the individualism I grew accustomed to in my upbringing, and it’s a game changer to have that foundation now.
As well, after a long life looking down upon 12 step programs for various reasons (some of which are still entirely valid) I am finding that not only have I been somewhat informally stumbling through these steps out of order and without a stable community to participate with for most of my life anyway, viewing my various relational struggles from a lens of addiction to things like fantasy and romantic intrigue rather than a collection of DSM-5 pathologies has offered new pathways toward hope of sustained recovery from the latest collection of dark solitary years I just experienced as part of my journey thus far, a long winding road of stops and starts, victories, and hard to swallow lessons.
“I would like to be remembered as somebody who made the path a little easier for somebody behind me” – Heather Flemming