Hi. It's Me – Becoming Yourself

Non academic personal view on change, integration and absurdity of perfection.

Jan 07, 2026

change is annoying but certainty is absurd

I am sitting in front of a notebook trying to create a weekly routine. A daily one too. I am trying to guess times where I need to sleep and wake up to be ready for every possible scenario. In the current situation, waking up at 9 am is perfectly acceptable, but what if one day I have a doctor’s appointment at 8 am?

Pages get scrambled and torn. I get more frustrated because how can I plan a future routine when I have never had a concept of tomorrow or safety of predictability.

One of many legacies trauma brings us is a painful drive towards perfectionism. I understood it clearly last year when I almost told the doctor that I’d rather experience rape again than learn German words on timer for 5 minutes only. I started with 3 minutes back then, because 3 minutes was my maximum tolerance for doing non-perfect work.

Routines are crucial. Predictability creates safety. Safety gets us from hyper-vigilance to calm. Here comes the paradox? Change is inevitable even in routines, static homeostasis is not a real concept, a need for stability is satisfied by constant adjustment.

That’s how timelines became windows: wake up in period from 8 am till 10 am; morning routine is split on checklists: non negotiable care tasks, regulation, some things that will make the day move coherently.

Tolerance for imperfection builds slightly day by day, hour after hour. It is a constant internal feedback loop of “I did it this way and I was staying safe anyway”, reminders of orientation in time, place, self and context to see that the traumatic event is over even when impact still stays and stings.

a lot of “no” period

“That’s certainly not a movie,” – I said to myself when an unexpected integration happened during one of the spravato sessions. I stopped crying for a few minutes to drink and get a snack. After being nourished I resumed an overwhelming new state of coherence. Suddenly everything makes sense and that is too much.

At the same time muscle tension is gone. So many things are gone, so many things are coming. In the first hours or days of becoming myself I did not know who I am exactly or who I wanted to be, I started with a clear picture of who I am not (and never was).

The contrast between past and present is more bright:

That is certainly not like being in a movie.
Things that I internalized to survive trauma aren’t mine to hold onto.
I don’t have to be perfect.
I don’t have to be skinny.
I don’t have to bear shame for what was done to me.

I suddenly became aware that I knew I am brilliant. I knew I would figure stuff out at some point.

dynamic of recovery

Markers of successful integration are grief and anger. The ability to keep caring for ourselves while grief paralyses or anger overwhelms is a new skill to develop.

During the hospital stay, I made a timeline of my life. It took two meters of paper, and I joked that, well, now I have to live until I’m a hundred years old to fill it in. I got bedridden with influenza hours after starting it, and to this day I have not come back to finish it. I remember the distance. I was 26 and far from traumatic events in terms of time, distance and agency. At the same moment I realised that I am 26, so young and there is so much future ahead of me.

The grief came unexpectedly. Suddenly I am still fully aware of what was done to me, I dealt with it and I see what I have lost because of that. So many things would be different if trauma never happened, if I did not have to learn to survive and then unlearn to get a chance to live. What life would I have? Would I be a doctor by 26? Would I write my first novel and publish it? Would I be a mother? I was hit with the realization of how much I was robbed from.

Grief paralyses body and mind. It is a constant loop of “what if”, “why me”, “why no one came to save us from it”. Not brushing teeth or not eating seems like irrelevant problems in comparison to deep existential “what if trauma never happened”.

It would be great if trauma never happened but it did. It ended and keeps impacting me till now.

The recovery here is the same as everywhere else – it starts with small steps. It’s grieving and laying under a blanket and getting up for 10 seconds, going back to laying down but moving toes now. You can recover only with movement. That sucks, to be honest.

Anger comes too. That things were not supposed to happen, that people should have been stopped and I am not going to let anyone treat me that way. The anger came loud with “you are not going to treat me like that”.

I broke up with an abusive boyfriend before realising he was abusive.

It was not supposed to happen and it happened.

Someone should have come to protect us and no one did.

The anger is tingling through muscles and I can’t remain still. It comes. It passes. It is overwhelming. It teaches. To differentiate right from wrong. To keep ourselves safe.

The anger is an impulse to catch and to act on if it is not harming. I got to scream. I got to talk. I got to be assertive in my own protection.

And sometimes I have to punch the pillow and remind myself that thoughts are not the same as intentions so everything is going to be maybe not totally fine but definitely without jail time.

Hi. It’s me and I matter

When things settle down and there’s a lot more clarity – the love becomes more articulate. Acceptance is easier. Actions are coherent. The discovery is a journey.

I found out I can afford to buy flowers from the supermarket. I found ways to take care of my body – I changed my favorite shower gel with a strong lemon scent to a gentle oil cleanser and suddenly I did not have to force myself to shower.

I read a lot of my writing that got saved through years of erasure attempts and was surprised that well actually it was all me all along.

The gift of integration is access to yourself. It is not a reboot, building or discovery of a hidden “true self”. Maybe the restoration of selfhood that people, who caused trauma, attempted to erase.