Wait, I'm the Adult?! Life, apparently, requires supervision.

September 19th, 2026

By Emergency Contact (EC)

Therapy has given me an incredible ability to identify exactly why I am losing my fucking mind.

Unfortunately, it has not always given me the ability to stop losing my fucking mind.

Which feels a little misleading.

Because I can be standing in the middle of an emotional spiral thinking,

Oh. This is a trauma response.

Cool.

Still having it.

I can identify the trigger.

I can tell you which pattern it activated.

I can probably explain where the pattern came from, what it’s trying to protect me from, and which coping mechanism I’m currently using that is absolutely not fucking helping.

I could make you a PowerPoint.

There could be transitions.

Maybe a pie chart.

Still spiraling.

There is something uniquely infuriating about being self-aware enough to know that your brain is being an asshole and somehow still being unable to convince it to stop.

Because there’s this idea that once you understand why you do something, you should be able to just… not do it anymore.

Congratulations.

You found the trauma.

Here’s your little certificate.

Please exit through the gift shop.

Except apparently that’s not how this shit works.

Sometimes I know I’m catastrophizing while I am actively catastrophizing.

I know the thing happening right now is touching something much older.

I know the intensity of what I’m feeling doesn’t necessarily match the size of what just happened.

I know the person standing in front of me is not every person who has ever hurt me.

I know.

I fucking know.

And sometimes my body does not give a single shit what I know.

That has probably been one of the hardest parts of healing for me.

Not figuring out what’s wrong.

I’m actually pretty fucking good at that.

It’s realizing that understanding yourself and being able to regulate yourself are not the same skill.

For a long time, I thought awareness should equal control.

If I could recognize the pattern, I should be able to stop it.

If I knew something was a trauma response, I shouldn’t react to it.

If I knew I was overwhelmed, I should be able to calm myself down.

If I knew better, I should do better.

And when I didn’t?

I was fucking brutal with myself.

Because there’s a particular kind of shame that comes with looking back at something and thinking,

You knew exactly what you were doing.

You knew exactly why you were doing it.

So why the fuck did you still do it?

That question has followed me through a lot of therapy.

And slowly, painfully, annoyingly, I’ve had to learn that knowing better and having the capacity to consistently respond differently are two completely different stages of healing.

Awareness matters.

But awareness is the beginning of the work.

Not the fucking graduation ceremony.

Sometimes awareness just means I realize I’m spiraling five minutes sooner than I used to.

Sometimes it means I notice the physical signs before my brain catches up.

Sometimes I recognize that I need to walk away before I say something I don’t mean.

Sometimes I regulate before I react.

Sometimes I regulate while I’m reacting.

Sometimes I realize afterward.

And then I have to do another thing therapy has taught me:

Own my shit.

Apologize.

Repair what I can.

Figure out what happened.

Try again.

There is no dramatic soundtrack.

No montage where I journal beautifully in a sunbeam and suddenly emerge as a healed woman who drinks enough water and never has an unhealthy coping mechanism again.

Honestly, that bitch sounds exhausting.

Healing, at least for me, has been much less cinematic.

It’s catching something earlier.

It’s recognizing a pattern I didn’t recognize before.

It’s setting a boundary and then spending three hours wondering if I’m secretly a terrible person for having one.

It’s having the same trigger for the hundredth fucking time and realizing that this time it hurt for twenty minutes instead of three days.

It’s fucking up differently.

It’s fucking up less.

It’s fucking up exactly the same way sometimes and being incredibly pissed about it.

It’s trying again anyway.

And maybe that’s the part we don’t talk about enough.

Progress doesn’t always feel like progress while you’re living it.

Sometimes it just feels like being painfully aware of your own bullshit.

Sometimes it feels like standing inside your own brain with a clipboard going,

Yep.

I see what’s happening here.

This is deeply unhealthy.

And your brain goes,

Great observation. Anyway—

and continues driving directly into the fucking guardrail.

But I know things now that I didn’t know before.

I catch things I didn’t used to catch.

I repair things I once would have avoided.

I understand parts of myself I spent years believing were simply defective.

And there are moments now—small ones, mostly—where something happens that once would have sent me completely over the edge…

and it doesn’t.

Or it does.

But I come back faster.

I think that counts.

Actually, I know it does.

Because healing isn’t becoming a person who never gets triggered, never reacts badly, never spirals, and never has another ugly moment.

At least I don’t think it is.

I think sometimes healing is simply creating a little more space between what happened to me and what I do next.

Some days that space is enormous.

Some days it’s approximately three fucking millimeters.

And some days I am completely aware that I am spiraling while my brain continues driving directly into the fucking guardrail.

But even then—

I know where I am now.

And I know how to find my way back.

That has to count for something.

—EC 🌈