Healing From Trauma and Finding Your Voice: 10 Years of Diary of a Flopping Fish

It has been a long few weeks here at Diary of a Flopping Fish. There are many ideas cooking, and a few previously announced ones that are finally coming to fruition. It is great looking back from where this blog started to where it is now, but there is still so much more to grow.

Diary of a Flopping Fish has finally become an LLC, which doesn't really change how it operates at all but just provides a more cohesive brand identity. The articles, full of information and a little entertaining, will still be free to access. No one's information is going to be collected or sold, and there won't be an ad takeover that prevents you from interacting with the page.

A Modest Beginning

Ten years ago, I began this as just a blog after I moved to Michigan, and it was only intended to be a place to show my creative writing. I was not even brave enough to put my name on the blog because I didn't want people talking down all my hard work and potentially scaring me away from doing it. This is not the only creative venture I have ever taken, but I have often been thwarted by taking others' opinions for more weight than they should really have over my actions. Of course, a lot of this has a lot to do with the loss of self-esteem, and maybe the creation of this website is really a showcase of my struggle to get my confidence back and find myself again.

I remember talking to a close friend at the time and saying that I had this idea for the name of my blog. They thought it was a great idea, and here it is, ten years later, still being kind of funny and also very on point. I named this blog Diary of a Flopping Fish because I am a Pisces, and throughout my life I have always felt like I was failing at everything, and I could never find somewhere that I fit; I felt like a fish flopping around on dry land.

I don't intend this website to ever be a pristine showcase of what can be accomplished. This website is always going to have a raw vibe of what real living is like, and a realistic view of healing trauma.

Healing From Trauma: The Real Reason This Site Exists

Covid had a big effect on everyone for different reasons, but it certainly had a negative impact on my mental health. One reason is because of the anxiety of not knowing if anyone I cared about was going to die because of Covid. The other big reason that Covid had a negative impact was because it created a very isolated environment for me, and I still don't think I have recovered my ability to be in public.

Unfortunately, during Covid, I was also trying to recover from compounded trauma and definitely stuck in a heightened state of awareness for a long period of time. It was hard to find a good therapist, and it was even harder to find relief from my stress because the only solution professionals really gave was medication that either masked my symptoms or created new symptoms without treating the old ones.

It has taken years, but I'm just starting to feel normal leaving the house again. Yet still, I created this whole website, and I don't really talk about the big things that forced me to leave my home state and drove me to start fighting to end the freedom that various forms of coercive control have in our society. Honestly, I probably never will go into detail about it here because some things are just too painful, and this site was never meant to be a biography of me.

I created this site because when I needed information and firsthand survival experiences of something that wasn't intimate partner violence, I couldn't find anything that applied to me. While I was only searching for information, I also concluded that many victims are forced into silence because they are afraid of the repercussions of speaking up about their abuse. It is only after studying the ins and outs of coercive control and how DARVO works that I realized how much of a problem coercive control has created in our supposedly free society. Sure, we're all free to make our own choices legally, but in reality, many of us have strings attached and are just puppets to people in our lives who say that they love us, so they need us to do things that are against our own free will. This is ingrained in our family systems, work systems, and friendships. No, it doesn't affect everyone. I think that many people who were taught, or allowed, to express healthy boundaries as children are mostly immune to the usury of unhealthy people. However, for those of us who weren't, we are always a target for the sneaky, sneaky buggers who just take and take and take.

This Website Is for Us

This website isn't just for me; it is for us. Diary of a Flopping Fish is a place where those who are abused have a voice, even if it may be mostly through me. We have purpose, hopes, dreams, and we heal. If there is nothing else that this website serves, I believe it can show that we can heal from trauma. I would not have been able to accomplish everything that I have with this blog if I did not heal from being constantly on alert, and the brain fog that stopped me from staying on the same train of thought. I would not have been able to complete my Associates Degree with high honors if I did not heal my self-esteem and keep looking for options to enable me to go back to college (which was financial aid and the Reconnect Scholarship available in Michigan, if anyone is wondering).

I have said it before, and I will keep saying it: Nothing that is worth it is ever easy. That has been my mantra for the past ten years because I almost gave up so many times. I would be lying if I said that I didn't have fantasies about packing up and getting lost in the Michigan wilderness, which of course were shot as soon as I realized I wouldn't be able to use the internet anymore. Getting through college involved a lot of tears, and if I didn't have a support system, I would not have done it. It hasn't been easy to get myself out of the house and meet new people or adjust to new situations.

However, I'm not perfect and I'm never going to be perfect. I will always be a little weird when I'm trying to socialize, and I'm not "over" having CPTSD. The damage that was done to my self-esteem, identity, and other aspects are far more ingrained and harder to heal than typical PTSD (not to minimize PTSD, but there is a different prognosis between the two). Also, there is the question of not knowing what parts of me are features of the disorder, and what parts might just be me. The only answer is to really learn to love all the parts of me, even if some of them might be results of trauma. Expecting perfection from myself that prevents me from releasing things that I know might not be the best might also be a result of trauma, and I've had to learn that sometimes good enough is enough.

What's Next for Diary of a Flopping Fish

For the future of Diary of a Flopping Fish, I am still keeping the raw, growth-in-spite-of-trauma energy that got me to ten years of creation. I plan to expand to other forms of media such as podcasting and video as soon as I am able to achieve the set up for it.

The most exciting thing that is going to happen is that I am going to start selling merch for Diary of a Flopping Fish that will be print on demand through Printful. I will have a variety of merchandise from t-shirts to mugs available for sale right here on the website. The sales will help keep the articles free and enable me to keep investing time and effort into this blog (yes by paying myself, let's be real here). Of course, if anyone doesn't want to buy anything but still wants to give a couple bucks to Diary of a Flopping Fish for the articles they enjoy, they can still buy me a coffee through this link.

I am currently looking at ways to create community through diaryofafloppingfish.com or another platform, so expect that in the future there may be a discussion board or group available. I am also going to branching out to tell other people's stories so stay tuned for that to go live within the next few months.

Though I have grown to register as an LLC, this is still a one-woman show, so please bear with me as I try to deliver quality over quantity. Perhaps one day I can hire employees, but it took ten years to get this far so who knows how much longer it will be until I can afford help. I am very passionate about sticking to my decision not to use AI to create the content for this blog, so it does take time for me to research and write each blog post that you see on this page. Much of the graphics on this page are also created by hand or through a graphic design program such as Canva, Inkscape, or GIMP, and it takes a lot of time to do that as well. Diary of a Flopping Fish just isn't a content mill, and I really need people to tell other people directly about this site because only content mills get rewarded with the highest SEO rankings that drive search traffic.

In conclusion

Thank you to all of those who have supported this website and stuck by me in any way over the years. Here's to another ten years of Diary of a Flopping Fish and continuing the fight against all forms of coercive control. I believe that the best way to fight injustice is with knowledge, and the first sign of oppression is knowledge being purposefully confused and suppressed. Help Diary of a Flopping Fish spread truth and knowledge.

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The Diary of a Flopping Fish and any posts or articles published on Diaryofafloppingfish.com are not reviewed by a therapist or medical or mental health professional. Resources are cited, and opinion is opinion. No advice or opinions in any articles replace professional advice from a doctor, therapist, or any other kind of health professional. The author is not a licensed professional of any kind.