How I'm getting my confidence back in writing, in my body, and in bed

As told by moi, un human with 18+ years of therapy who knows a thing or two about heartbreak, divorce, eating disorders, sexual trauma, and mental health

Welcome to week 5 of season three of THE MESSY MIDDLE!

The theme of this season is showing up authentically, and ya girl has been taking that real seriously. If you’re just joining us, I invite you to go back to week one and start there :) Otherwise, you are welcome to dive right in, right here, right meow.

What to expect in today’s newsletter:

• Lessons learned about healing (and what healing is and isn’t)

• Three personal challenges I’m facing and how I’m navigating them (spoiler, one is my sexual trauma, urgh)

• Journaling Prompts + Tip du Jour

If you are someone who is at a crossroads in your healing journey (did somebody say, healing burnout?), recovering from or struggling with an eating disorder, or navigating physical intimacy with a history of sexual trauma, this newsletter will feel like a warm “you are not alone” hug.

Something I’ve been working on in the last week is reminding myself I am not a worthless lazy weirdo, and that I do in fact, have a thing or two to offer this cray-hay world.

Not sure why “a thing or two” is the theme today but here we are. Welcome to my brain. I’m glad (and also a little sorry) you’re here.

Don’t worry, it’s a very safe place, I will never judge or criticize you, and I can *almost* guarantee that anything you judge or criticize yourself for is something I can’t stand about myself so let’s team up and be awkwardly brave self-destructive yet always healing buddies!

WHAT?

What I mean to say is, hi. I’m Rachel, and I have been in therapy for over 18 years for an eating disorder, suicidal depression, anxiety, sexual trauma, and most recently, the grief of my divorce.

What I’ve learned along the way is this:

1. Healing does not END. It is not a finish line. It is a constant learning and unlearning.

2. Healing is not a lifestyle. My entire life does not have to center around fixing or changing myself. That only perpetuates the same “not enoughness” narrative that made me very sick in the first place.

3. Healing is something we do to mend what ails us—if we’re no longer “ailing,” chances are it’s time to take a break. When we feel well, we can focus on stabilization, which is where I am now. If you feel burned out from healing, chances are, you don’t need more healing (right now). You can read more about healing burnout in this blog post I wrote. You might just need stabilization—to find routine and balance and learn what keeps you at baseline rather than learn what trauma made you say that strange thing on your date last week. It’s ok to say strange things on dates.

4. Not everything is pathology. We live in a click-bait 5-signs-you’re-a-toxic-narcissist pain-to-profit social media land that has, surprise surprise, found a way to monetize HEALING FROM MENTAL ILLNESS. It’s honestly disgusting and diminishes the real suffering a lot of folks are going through. I don’t mean to minimize general anxiety or stress or any part of the spectrum of human feeling and thinking—it is ALL VALID AND REAL. And, AND, when everything is a sign or symptom of something to the magnitude of a diagnosis, it puts us, the consumer, in a position of constant terror that something is wrong with us. Sometimes nothing is wrong with you. Sometimes you’re just a person. People think and feel and make mistakes and get confused. That’s people-ing. Let yourself people without the pathology.

Now, I focus on living more than I do on healing. And, sometimes I have to pick up the healing-kit again. This is that time.

What I’m trying to say is that NOW, now after YEARS of unpacking, unlearning, re-learning, skill-building, shedding, building (and whatever other synonyms there are for opening up my brain with a psychological scalpel and getting way too familiar with why I am the way I am just to find out that when I make changes the majority of the universe is not going to have done the same so in some ways I’ll feel even lonelier than I did before—oh fuck I’ve run-on sentenced again).

What I’m TRYING to say is that now I just let myself live. I’m not hyper-fixated on affirmations or shadow work or healing my inner child (though all of those certainly helped me along the way and I’m an advocate for all of them). Now, I’m focused on being a person.

Still, I come to crossroads where I recognize my thought patterns creatinf barriers to accomplishing goals. I notice old self-beliefs resurfacing that challenge my desire for intimacy. I witness my body shut down, still, in sexual interactions, and I’m reminded there is room for more attention to a little healing. Re-connecting to myself from a place of love—not a place of needing to fix or solve.

So at these forks in the road, I call on a thing or two I know about healing. I call on a thing or two I know about getting back on my feet, facing the direction I desire, and recalibrating.

Here’s a fork or two I’m facing, and a thing or two I’m doing about it.

Photo by Lidia Nikole on Unsplash

I’m lacking confidence in my leadership, specifically in spaces like this and social media where I have clearly established a presence and authority.

Last week I went to Harvard for a Mental Health Creator’s Summit (read more about that mind-fucking-blowing experience here). My imposter syndrome game was 🔥🔥🔥🔥. My confidence with my writing and what I have to offer has dwindled in the last year.

Most of that is a result of a) burnout; b) not having a boss/coworkers, aka I get zero feedback so I really don’t know if I’m on track, ever; and c) I generally operate on the “I’m not doing good enough” side of the confidence spectrum.

That experience was a massive confidence boost. Having an authority figure recognize my work helped me swing my “I’m not doing good enough” pendulum just enough to reach “maybe I’m doing something important.” This provided me with the energy and motivation to nudge the pendulum all the way to “I’m making a difference, and I should keep going.”

I’m diving right back into affirmations for this one.

Here is what I’ve been telling myself to keep my confidence swingin’ towards the Big D energy side of the spectrum:

• I’m a leader

• I have valuable insights

• People resonate with my words

• My perspective is of value to people

• People want to learn from me

• My lived experience gives me wisdom

• Believing in myself does not make me self-centered

• I have a voice, and it is safe to share it

If you have anything to add, I am ALL EARS.

My body image is dwindling, and I am having thoughts and urges to engage in disordered eating/activity.

Shiet. Well this one is gonna be a lifelong one. Eating disorder recovery means waking up every day and HAVING TO FACE YOUR ILLNESS. I can’t abstain from food. I can’t not feel my body’s physical existence. I can’t not put clothes on. Ok I guess I could but I might get arrested for public nudity, which is also lame and a topic for another newsletter.

Unlike many other mental illnesses, eating disorders are like…breathing disorders (FYI that’s not an actual disorder, this is an analogy—stick with me). Let’s say I have an unhealthy relationship with breathing. Or air. I can’t just, not breathe. I have to find ways to cope with what breathing feels like or triggers in me. I have to learn to mitigate any anxiety I have about air. I have to learn to manage my experience to and with the very thing that keeps me alive and cannot be harnessed or held or manipulated, and yet is the very thing I’ve demonized or tried to control.

Luckily I have had a LOT of support in developing tools to manage my relationship to food, body, and self. So here is what I’m doing now as I notice myself slipping into a state of potential relapse:

• Texting my support group

• Letting my friends know I’m struggling with my body image

• Eating breakfast every day, whether I feel hungry or not

• Body Neutral affirmations: mantras about what my body can do for me (not how it looks)

Read more about body neutrality in this article I wrote for MindShine

Sex is still a place I go to disappear. Or rather, a place I long to go and stay visible, but continue to shut down and withdraw.

Merrr, I really avoid this one. I’ve tried to work through this in therapy but honestly, it’s been the slowest of all my healing. I think it’s because the only way to really heal alot of my sexual trauma is…with sex. But safe sex, with a partner I trust, who knows my history, and is willing to pause, communicate, and let me go slow.

The last safe partner I had was my ex-husband, and I only started working through my sexual trauma a year before we got divorced.

read more about working through sexual trauma with my ex-husband in my memoir

We didn’t really have time or the ability to understand how to work through that together, and in a lot of ways it put a strain on our marriage. We had been having sex one way for 8 years, and suddenly I was asking for a whole re-work of how we approached intimacy. I’m not saying I was wrong to do that—I’m saying I understand how that flipped our whole physical relationship upside down, and it was incredibly difficult and confusing to navigate.

I can do all the yoni-healing and cervical de-armouring and mind-body meditations and self-exploratory masturbation I want to alone at home but that only does so much. It’s not alone at home that I dissociate. It’s in the presence of a partner. It’s when I’m triggered by a pace or a face or a touch and I immediately fawn into the belief that I’m an object for their pleasure. Performer-Rachel activates, and I lose all sense of my own pleasure.

So I think, for me, to re-wire that reaction, I have to be in relation. I have to be with another. I have to be in that moment when I usually leave my body and have the psychological safety with another to say, “hey, this is usually the part where I disappear. This is the part where I leave the arena. And I don’t want to leave this moment with you, so can we slow down?”

What I can do on my own to prepare for those moments are:

• Set a boundary on how many dates I go on before being physical

• Rehearse specific sentences or lines I could say in those pivotal moments

• Continue practicing mind-body meditations and breathing patterns that keep me in or bring me back to my body

Again, if you have ideas on this, I’m all ears. I refuse to move through the rest of my intimate life as an object.

---

Below are a couple practical tools for you, if you want them.

If you’re here for the stories and to know you’re not alone, you can skip the tips and journaling prompts and head to the Messy News + Updates (there’s a pretty exciting update y’all!!)

Today’s Tip: Let go of “healing” if you’re burned out. Re-integrate old tools if you’re at a fork in the road.

No matter where you are in your journey of living, only you can really know what you need.

So ask yourself, in this season of living, healing, and being, what do you need? Do you need a break from the constant self-help and self-reflection? Or do you need an extra pair of water wings to get you through this stretch of water?

Let yourself take a few weeks to honor where you are. Remember, these choices don’t mean forever: they mean for a time.

---

Journaling Prompts

Today’s journaling prompts will help you navigate where you are at that fork.

1. What is something I have been healing or working on in therapy that I feel disconnected to?

2. What is something I’m avoiding healing or working on? What am I afraid of?

3. When I think about writing affirmations, rehearsing conversations, or using other tools to help my mental health, what feelings come up?

4. What is the story I’m telling myself today about my mental health or wellbeing?

5. Are there any areas of my life that I feel confident about? Am I focused on those, or am I focused on things I’m not confident about?

6. When I take stock of what’s working and what’s not working in my personal or interpersonal (relationships) life, which list is longer? What does that tell me?

7. What pressure am I putting on myself to be “healed?” How can I relieve that pressure, if it’s there?

---

Thank you so much for reading and subscribing to The Messy Middle.

If this newsletter struck a chord, or if you *ahem* learned a thing or two, it would mean the absolute FUCKING WORLD if you became a paid subscriber.

Paid subscribers get access to ALL my past newsletters and every weekly newsletter to come. PLUS our Mess Hall community chat, monthly journaling prompts, AND if you choose a founding membership a free copy of any of my books 📚.

If you can’t afford the monthly subscription, email me at rachel.havekost@gmail.com and I will be more than happy to offer you a comped membership.

Thank you for your support and doe existing. With so much messy love,

Rachel

---

Messy News + Updates:

I’m writing another book!

Starting in September, I will be writing my next book, HERE, on Substack. Every week I will write a new chapter in “serial” fashion. Chapters will be available to all subsrcibers, and paid subscribers will get access to an audio version and the chance to give me feedback/ask questions.

The book will be a quasi-follow up to my memoir, “Where the River Flows.” I’ll be writing about life post-divorce, but not the narrative we see in media where the story ends in finding another man. Nah, dog. Life after divorce is not just about finding love again.

I hope to break that story UP and remind you that life post-divorce is just life: there is no finish line or “here’s how you know you’re done” because life isn’t like that. What if life post-divorce was about re-discovering the self? Fostering community? Deepening friendships? Stepping outside your comfort zone and trying new things? What if it wasn’t about loving again or self-love but simply about living?

If you know someone who might want to come along for the ride, you can refer them using the link below. (p.s., if three people you refer get a paid subscription, you’ll get free months on yours!!)

---

Refer a Friend

As you may have seen above, the refer-a-friend program is LIVE!

How to participate:

1. Share The Messy Middle. When you use the referral link below, or the “Share” button on any post, you'll get credit for any new subscribers. Simply send the link in a text, email, or share it on social media with friends.

2. Earn benefits. When more friends use your referral link to subscribe (free or paid), you’ll receive special benefits.

• Get a 1 month comp for 3 referrals

• Get a 3 month comp for 8 referrals

• Get a 6 month comp for 20 referrals

---

I have two 1:1 Writing Consultation left for August.

If you’re interested in starting a Substack, writing a book, sharing your story on social media, or creating any kind of written content about your mental health or healing, I’m here to help.

---

That’s all, sugar plums. I love you to the moon and back.