We can then carry that sense of confusion, of chaos inside us every day without ever really understanding what is causing it. I know because I lived like this for almost 4 decades. There was no life raft, no place of safety. The experiences of the past and my decisions about what they meant, were dragging me beneath the surface and continually causing me to feel like I was drowning. I became so detached and distant from who I was. I had spent all my life fitting in yet never felt like I belonged anywhere. From the skin in I was avoiding everything I had experienced by self-soothing using any means possible. I grew up in a household with a parent who was struggling with trauma and using alcohol to cope. Just like the generation before her and the one before that. I experienced childhood abuse and found coping strategies that included substances, and behaviours of avoidance, that ultimately kept me alive. I experienced adulthood through the lens of a frightened child and life had become a heavy mess. A brush with death in 1999 shocked me to sit up and take responsibility for who I had become.