After healing from years of living with an unhealthy mindset, mental health struggles, depression, anxiety, estrangement, and even alienation, these are some of the things I came to understand.
I don’t believe this explains every estrangement or every person’s mental health journey.
But it helped explain mine.
And the more I listen to conversations surrounding estrangement, alienation, trauma, and mental health, the more I wonder if this is a piece we’re missing.
Triggers are connected to memories—but the memory isn’t always the nightmare.
For those of us living in survival mode, a trigger can feel like a nightmare.
Something happens in the present and suddenly you’re feeling something much bigger than what is actually happening.
For years, I thought the memory itself was what was hurting me.
Healing taught me something different.
The memory wasn’t necessarily the nightmare.
The memory was reminding me of something that once was.
And the trigger was like an alarm.
It was telling me:
There’s something here. Pay attention.
Something about this feeling, interaction, argument, rejection, disagreement, environment, or experience resembles something my mind once recognized as unhealthy.
So instead of continuing to run from my triggers, I eventually started asking them questions.
Why does this bother me so much?
What am I actually feeling?
What does this remind me of?
What happened during that memory?
And most importantly:
What was unhealthy about it?
Not:
Who was right?
Who was wrong?
Who was good?
Who was bad?
Just:
What was unhealthy?
Then something unexpected happened.
More memories started coming.
One trigger connected to one memory.
That memory connected to another.
And another.
At first, that can feel like you’re getting worse.
You’re remembering more.
You’re feeling more.
You’re seeing things you hadn’t thought about in years.
But I eventually stopped being afraid of the memories.
I started tracing them.
Something in my mind was connecting dots.
And every time I understood what was unhealthy underneath one of those memories, something began changing.
The trigger eventually became less painful.
It became more like a memory.
It could still teach me something.
But it didn’t have to hurt me anymore.
And that’s when I understood something else.
I finally understood why people sometimes thought I was “holding onto the past.”
They couldn’t understand why something that happened years ago still mattered.
Eventually, neither could I.
But I wasn’t willingly holding onto the past.
My mind was.
Somewhere along the way, through things that happened to me and even things I may have unintentionally done to myself, my thinking had become unhealthy.
And those experiences didn’t have to happen in only one place.
Unhealthy can be learned anywhere.
At home.
At daycare.
With a babysitter.
At school.
After school.
With friends.
At camp.
In sports.
In dance.
Through relationships.
Through loss.
Through divorce or parental separation.
Through someone moving away.
Through a traumatic event.
It wasn’t always the thing I remembered that was “bad.”
Sometimes it was something happening within that moment that my mind recognized as unhealthy.
Fear.
Rejection.
Instability.
Feeling unheard.
Feeling unwanted.
Feeling responsible for someone else’s emotions.
Feeling like I had to keep the peace.
Feeling like I didn’t belong.
And when unhealthy experiences continue, eventually they can shape the way we understand ourselves and the world around us.
That’s what I eventually recognized in myself.
By the time I was young, I was already struggling.
I dealt with depression, anxiety, and extremely low self-esteem.
In 10th grade, I attempted to end my life.
I never felt like I belonged.
I latched onto people easily.
As I got older, I became more depressed.
I struggled with my weight, relationships, family dynamics, and so many other areas of my life.
There was unhealthy all around me.
But I couldn’t recognize it.
Because I hadn’t learned what healthy looked like.
I graduated high school with a 2.85 GPA, and quite honestly, I’m surprised I graduated.
Looking back now, I can see how much I was struggling.
And those struggles didn’t simply disappear when I became an adult.
They followed me.
Eventually, everything crashed.
In August 2024, at 51 years old, I believed it was the end of me.
My mind—and eventually my body—had taken the toll of years of unhealthy thinking and living.
I crashed hard.
But what felt like the end eventually became an awakening.
And the beginning of my mental health healing journey.
That’s when I stopped asking only what was good or bad.
I started asking:
Is this healthy or unhealthy for me?
That question changed my life.
Because when I started identifying unhealthy versus healthy—not good versus bad, not right versus wrong—I finally had something I could learn from.
I started learning what healthy relationships looked like.
Healthy conversations.
Healthy boundaries.
Healthy habits.
Healthy responses.
Healthy thinking.
And as my mind became healthier, something else grew stronger.
My faith.
I had always believed in God.
But believing in God and truly having faith—giving my life to God—were different for me.
The stronger my faith became, the healthier my mind became.
And slowly, the things that once controlled me started changing.
Triggers became memories.
“Toxic” became something I could look at more clearly as unhealthy—while also recognizing that unhealthy exists at different levels.
And I could finally acknowledge something else:
I had been unhealthy too.
At times, I know I was toxic.
Healing allowed me to see that without destroying myself over it.
The thoughts of not wanting to wake up anymore that had plagued me for years stopped.
The painful past wasn’t painful anymore.
And somewhere along the way, I forgave it.
Not because everything that happened suddenly became okay.
But because I didn’t need to carry it anymore.
Then came another lesson I wasn’t expecting.
Once I became healthier-minded, I could see unhealthy things much more clearly.
Red flags I couldn’t recognize before suddenly seemed obvious.
And they were in far more places than I ever imagined.
Once you’ve experienced what an unhealthy mindset can do to you—not only mentally, but physically—you can’t simply unsee unhealthy anymore.
And for me, that meant something difficult.
I couldn’t always go back.
Sometimes I could be around an unhealthy environment very little.
Sometimes not at all.
Not because I hadn’t healed.
Not because I was still angry.
Not because I was refusing to forgive.
But because I had healed.
I finally knew what peace felt like.
And I wasn’t willing to give it up.
That’s something I think is missing from some conversations about estrangement.
Sometimes distance after healing isn’t about punishing someone for the past.
Sometimes it’s not about holding onto the past at all.
Sometimes you have forgiven.
Sometimes you have healed.
Sometimes you have given it to God.
But healing also taught you what you can and cannot continue exposing yourself to.
I can’t go backward.
I can only go forward.
Because I finally understand what going backward could cost me.
I’ve reached a place in my life where I feel peace.
And I’m not giving that up.
I healed.
I forgave.
And I gave it to God.
Because it is no longer mine to carry.
And maybe one of the greatest things healing taught me was this:
It never was.
Shared from lived experience, not expert advice.
Healing Unlayered 
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