There's a very specific moment when you realize the thing you thought was discipline was actually just fear holding you in place. You've made the break now, maybe from a relationship that dulled you or a version of yourself you can't recognize anymore, and suddenly the structure you had, the one you mistook for willpower, is gone. What's left feels formless. You meant to rebuild yourself, but you don't even know where to start when the scaffolding wasn't real to begin with.

Rebuilding discipline doesn't begin with a routine. It begins with understanding that what you're calling discipline right now might actually be the aftermath of control, obligation, or someone else's expectations.

You've spent years showing up for things that didn't serve you, and your nervous system learned to call that commitment. Now that you're free, the absence of that pressure feels like weakness. It's not.

Why Discipline Feels Impossible After You've Left Something Behind

When you finally walk away from something that consumed you, whether it's a toxic relationship, a job that drained you, or a version of yourself that no longer fits, your body doesn't immediately understand that you're safe now. It's still braced for the next demand, the next crisis, the next thing you have to survive.

Discipline, the real kind, requires energy you don't have yet. It requires trust in your own decisions, and if you've spent the last few years second-guessing everything or being told your instincts were wrong, that trust is gone.

You're not lazy. You're recalibrating. Your system is trying to figure out what's worth doing when no one is forcing you, shaming you, or expecting you to perform.

The work of rebuilding discipline is actually the work of rebuilding your relationship with yourself. It's learning what you want to do, not what you should do or what would make you look like you have it together. When you're navigating this process while also dealing with the residual doubt from past failures, you might find clarity in Why Do I Feel Stuck Lately?, which addresses the specific feeling of knowing what to do but being unable to do it.

What Journaling Actually Does in the Rebuilding Process

Journaling for healing isn't about writing down affirmations or listing things you're grateful for when you don't feel grateful. It's about creating a record of what's actually happening inside you while you're trying to build something new.

When you write every day, even for five minutes, you start to notice patterns you couldn't see before. You see that you make decisions differently on Tuesdays than you do on Fridays. You see that certain environments make you sharper and certain people make you fog over.

This isn't therapy. It's data. And when you're trying to rebuild discipline, data is everything.

What matters is knowing what actually drains you and what actually fuels you, not what you think should based on who you used to be or who you're supposed to become. Journaling for healing gives you that clarity without requiring you to perform for anyone. This is the foundational work that helps you understand whether journaling is worth it in the first place: can you see yourself more clearly because of it, or are you just going through motions?

The Five Foundations You Need Before You Can Build Anything

Before you try to force yourself into a morning routine or commit to a new habit, you need to establish what's actually true about you right now. Not aspirationally true. Actually true.

1. Know what time of day your brain actually works. Not when productivity culture says it should work, but when you can think clearly without forcing it.
2. Identify which commitments you're keeping out of guilt and which ones you're keeping because they matter to you. Guilt-driven discipline will collapse the moment things get hard.
3. Recognize what rest actually looks like for you. Scrolling isn't rest. Avoiding isn't rest. What activity makes you feel like yourself again?
4. Notice what triggers the feeling of failure. Is it comparison? Is it a specific person's voice in your head? Is it the gap between where you are and where you thought you'd be by now?
5. Document what you actually completed today, not what you didn't. You're looking for evidence of what you already did, not cataloging what's missing.

These aren't self care journaling prompts designed to make you feel better. They're diagnostic questions. You can't rebuild something if you don't know what broke in the first place. The work of getting honest about these five areas is what separates journaling for mental clarity from journaling as performance.

How to Use Your Journal to Track What's Actually Working

Discipline isn't built through willpower. It's built through pattern recognition and course correction. You try something, you notice how it felt, you adjust.

Start with one behavior you want to establish. Not five. Not a complete overhaul of your life. One thing. Maybe it's drinking water before coffee. Maybe it's closing your laptop at a specific time. Maybe it's saying no to plans when you're already depleted.

Each day, you write three sentences in your journal: what you committed to, whether you did it, and how you felt afterward. Not what you think you should have felt. What you actually felt.

After two weeks, you'll start to see what's working and what's theater. You'll see that the commitment you thought would change everything actually makes you feel worse. You'll see that the small thing you almost dismissed is the only thing that's actually sticking. This is where a journal for emotional clarity becomes essential: it shows you the truth your mind tries to edit out.

This is how discipline becomes yours instead of borrowed. You stop doing what worked for someone else and start building around what works for you.

My Best Life Journal Build discipline that doesn't break you by tracking what actually works and releasing what doesn't, with guided prompts that help you recognize patterns before they become problems. Shop the Journal

The Difference Between Discipline and Control

If you grew up in chaos, or if you've been in a relationship where someone else dictated your time, your body, your decisions, you might have learned that control is safety. You might have learned that rigidity is strength.

Real discipline is flexible. It adjusts when circumstances change. It doesn't punish you for being human.

Control says: if you miss one day, you've failed. Discipline says: you missed one day, what made that happen, and what do you need tomorrow to try again?

Journaling helps you see the difference. When you write about why you didn't do the thing you said you'd do, you start to notice whether the reason is legitimate or whether it's the same avoidance pattern dressed up in new language. This is one of those moments where journal prompts for one-sided love can unexpectedly apply: you might discover you're treating yourself the way someone else treated you, demanding everything and offering no grace.

You also start to notice when you're being cruel to yourself in the name of accountability. When the voice in your journal sounds like someone who hurt you, that's not discipline. That's an echo.

What to Write When You Feel Like You're Failing

There will be days when you don't follow through. Days when the plan you made feels impossible, when getting out of bed took everything you had, when the idea of doing one more thing makes you want to disappear.

On those days, you write exactly that. You don't write around it. You don't try to fix it in real time. You document it.

You write: I didn't do the thing today. This is what I did instead. This is how I feel about it. This is what I need tomorrow to be different.

The act of writing it down does two things. First, it stops the spiral. You're not just sitting in the failure, you're observing it. Second, it gives you data for the next time this happens, because it will happen again. This is exactly what a breakup journal for women is designed to handle: the days when you can't perform progress, when all you can do is survive and document that survival.

Discipline isn't about never falling off. It's about knowing how to get back on without destroying yourself in the process.

Self Care Journaling Prompts That Actually Build Capacity

Most self care journaling prompts ask you to reflect on feelings without giving you a way forward. They leave you softer but not stronger. These are different.

• What is one commitment I kept this week that I didn't think I could keep? What made it possible?
• What boundary did I want to set but didn't? What was I afraid would happen if I did?
• What does my body need right now that I keep ignoring? Why am I ignoring it?
• If I removed guilt from the equation, what would I stop doing immediately?
• What does discipline look like when I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone?
• What version of myself am I still performing for even though they're not watching anymore?
• What small thing did I do today that I usually dismiss as not enough?

These aren't prompts designed to make you feel warm. They're designed to make you honest. And honesty is where discipline starts. These self care journaling prompts work because they force you to confront what's actually happening instead of what you wish were happening.

How to Know When You're Ready to Add More

You'll know you're ready to layer in another commitment when the first one stops feeling like effort. When it just becomes what you do. When you don't have to negotiate with yourself about it anymore.

That might take two weeks. That might take two months. It doesn't matter. You're not racing anyone.

The mistake most people make is trying to build everything at once because they're afraid that if they don't change immediately, they never will. That urgency is fear, not discipline.

Your journal will tell you when you're ready. You'll notice that you're writing about the same habit with less resistance. You'll notice that you're not tracking it as obsessively because it's just part of your day now. The Crowned Journal approaches this from the angle of rebuilding confidence after years of shrinking, of learning to take up space again even when it makes other people uncomfortable.

That's when you add the next thing. Not before.

When Rebuilding Discipline Means Letting Go of Who You Were

Part of what makes this so hard is that the version of yourself you're trying to rebuild might not be the version you need anymore. You might have been disciplined in all the wrong areas, committed to things that were slowly draining you.

This process isn't just about getting back to who you were before everything fell apart. It's about becoming someone new, someone who knows what's worth committing to and what isn't.

That's a grief process as much as it's a rebuilding process. You have to mourn the version of yourself who could tolerate things you can't tolerate anymore. You have to release the identity you built around being the person who never quit, even when quitting was the right choice.

Your journal holds space for that. It lets you be both: the person who's building something new and the person who's still processing what it cost to get here. This is the work that addresses the deep questions about whether you're being slowly unloved by someone or whether you're slowly unloving yourself by forcing commitments that don't fit anymore.

The Long Middle: What Happens After the Motivation Fades

The first two weeks of rebuilding discipline feel almost exciting. You're making changes, you're seeing progress, you're feeling like maybe this time it'll stick.

Then week three hits. Or week five. And it stops feeling new. It just feels like work. And the voice that says "what's the point" gets louder.

This is the moment that separates the people who rebuild from the people who cycle back to where they started. This is where journaling becomes non-negotiable. This is where you learn whether journaling for healing actually works for you or whether it's just another thing you tried and abandoned.

You write through the boredom. You write through the doubt. You write even when it feels pointless, especially when it feels pointless, because the act of showing up for yourself when no one's watching is the entire point of discipline.

You're not doing this to feel motivated. You're doing this to become someone who keeps commitments to herself even when she doesn't feel like it. That's the shift. And it only happens in the long middle.

How to Journal When You Don't Know What to Write

Some days you'll open your journal and your mind will be blank. Not in a peaceful way. In a numb way. In a "I have nothing left to say" way.

On those days, you write that. I have nothing to say today. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm tired. I'm scared this isn't working.

Then you write one sentence about what you did today that you didn't have to do. One thing. Even if it was brushing your teeth or answering a text or getting out of bed.

The goal isn't to manufacture meaning. The goal is to keep the channel open. To prove to yourself that you can show up even when it's uncomfortable, even when it feels empty. These are the days that answer the question of whether journaling for mental clarity is real or performative: can you show up when there's nothing pretty to write about?

That repetition, that showing up when there's no reward, is what builds the kind of discipline that lasts. Not the Instagram kind. The kind that holds you when everything else falls apart.

Why Comparison Will Destroy This Before It Starts

If you're journaling to rebuild discipline while also watching other people's highlight reels, you're setting yourself up to quit. You'll see someone six months ahead of you and convince yourself you should already be there.

You'll see someone who seems to have it all together and forget that you don't know what it took for them to get there. You don't know what they're still struggling with behind the curated version.

Your journal is the place where you practice staying in your own lane. Where you measure yourself against where you were last month, not where someone else is today.

Every time you catch yourself comparing, you write it down. Not to shame yourself, but to notice the pattern. To see what specifically triggers it. Is it a certain platform? A certain person? A certain time of day?

Once you see the pattern, you can interrupt it. You can choose differently. That's discipline too. The discipline of protecting your focus from things that fracture it. This is part of using self care journaling prompts in a way that actually serves you: noticing what pulls you out of your own story and choosing to come back.

The Role of Rest in Rebuilding Discipline

This is going to sound contradictory, but rebuilding discipline requires you to rest more, not less. Not the performative rest where you're still thinking about everything you should be doing. Actual rest.

Your nervous system can't rebuild if it's constantly activated. Your brain can't make new patterns if it never gets a break from processing.

In your journal, you track rest the same way you track effort. What did you do today that felt restorative? Not what you think should feel restorative. What actually helped.

For some people it's walking without headphones. For some it's cooking something slow. For some it's sitting in silence for ten minutes without trying to fix anything.

You're looking for what brings you back to yourself, and then you're building that into your week with the same level of commitment you'd give to a work deadline. Because it's just as important. More important, actually. A journal for emotional clarity tracks both effort and rest because both are necessary for sustainable change.

What Comes Next After You've Rebuilt the Foundation

At some point, you'll notice that the things you struggled with two months ago don't require the same level of negotiation anymore. You'll notice that you're doing them without thinking about them.

That's when the work shifts. You're no longer rebuilding. You're maintaining. And maintaining requires a different kind of attention.

You start writing less about whether you did the thing and more about how it's changing you. What are you noticing about yourself now that you have structure? What's becoming possible that wasn't before?

This is also when you start to notice what still isn't working. What you thought would solve everything but didn't. What you're still avoiding even though you have more capacity now.

The journal doesn't let you hide from that. It makes you look at it. And then it gives you space to decide what to do about it without pressure, without judgment, without anyone else's timeline. For the specific work of processing what your routine reveals about what you're still carrying, the My Best Life Journal was built for exactly this.

How to Handle Setbacks Without Losing Everything

You're going to have a week where everything falls apart. Where you don't do a single thing you said you'd do. Where life happens and your carefully built routine disintegrates.

This is the test. Not of your discipline, but of your relationship with failure.

If you quit the moment you mess up, you're still operating from the place that says perfection is the only acceptable outcome. That's not discipline. That's control dressed up as self-improvement.

You write about the setback without dramatizing it. You write what happened, what made it happen, and what you need to start again. Not next Monday. Tomorrow. Today, if you can.

The comeback is faster every time you practice it. The gap between falling off and getting back on gets shorter. That's the metric that matters, not whether you ever fall off at all. This is where journaling for healing becomes practical rather than aspirational: it teaches you how to fail without quitting.

When the People Around You Don't Understand What You're Doing

Not everyone is going to understand why you're suddenly unavailable at certain times or why you're not saying yes to everything anymore. Some people benefited from your lack of boundaries, and they're not going to celebrate you building them now.

You'll feel pressure to explain yourself, to justify why you need this structure, why you're being so serious about something that seems small to them.

Your journal is where you process that without caving to it. You write about the discomfort of being misunderstood. You write about the urge to abandon what you're building just to keep the peace.

And then you make the decision: is this worth protecting even if it costs you approval? Most of the time, the answer is yes. But you have to arrive at that answer yourself, not because someone told you to choose yourself. This mirrors the work of journal prompts for one-sided love: recognizing when you're giving more than you're receiving and deciding whether that exchange still serves you.

The Questions Your Journal Should Answer Six Months From Now

If you're doing this right, your journal six months from now should be able to answer these questions clearly:

• What patterns did I break that I thought were permanent?
• What did I learn about my capacity that I didn't know before?
• What relationships changed because I changed, and how do I feel about that?
• What commitment did I keep that surprised me?
• What do I still need to work on without judgment or shame?

These aren't rhetorical. You should be able to flip back through your entries and find concrete evidence of change. Not vague feelings of improvement. Actual documented shifts.

That's the difference between journaling as a performance and journaling as a practice. One makes you feel good in the moment. The other builds something that lasts. This is what makes a breakup journal for women effective: it gives you proof that you're not the same person you were when this started.

Why This Matters More Than You Think It Does

Rebuilding discipline isn't about becoming more productive or achieving more or finally being the version of yourself that has it all together. It's about proving to yourself that you can make a commitment and keep it, even when no one's watching, even when it's hard, even when it doesn't feel like it's working.

That's the foundation of everything else. That's how you start trusting yourself again after years of breaking promises to yourself, of choosing everyone else, of disappearing into what other people needed from you.

Your journal is the witness to that process. It's the place where you stop performing and start building. Where you stop pretending and start being honest about what's actually hard and what you actually need.

This work doesn't look impressive from the outside. No one's going to congratulate you for writing three sentences a day or keeping one small commitment to yourself. But six months from now, you'll know the difference. You'll feel it in the way you move through your life. In the way you make decisions. In the way you show up for yourself without thinking about it. This is where you finally answer the question is journaling worth it: not by whether it feels good, but by whether it changes what you're capable of.

Starting Small When Everything Feels Urgent

You want to change everything at once because you feel like you've already lost so much time. You look at where you are and where you thought you'd be and the gap feels unbearable.

But urgency is the enemy of discipline. Urgency makes you try to do too much, burn out in two weeks, and quit because you couldn't sustain the unsustainable.

You start with one thing. One commitment. One line in your journal every day. You protect that one thing like it's the most important thing you'll do all year, because it is.

Everything else builds from there. Not all at once. Slowly. In a way that doesn't break you. In a way that actually lasts. This is where self care journaling prompts become tools rather than exercises: they help you identify that one thing worth protecting.

The Moment You Realize It's Working

There will be a day, probably months from now, when you'll do the thing you committed to without thinking about it. You won't have to negotiate with yourself or psych yourself up or remind yourself why it matters.

You'll just do it. And then you'll realize: this is what discipline actually feels like. Not forcing. Not performing. Just doing the thing because it's what you do now.

That moment won't feel dramatic. It'll feel quiet. Normal, even. But when you write about it in your journal that night, you'll see how far you've come.

You'll see the person you were six months ago, the one who thought she'd never get here, who thought discipline was something other people had. And you'll see who you are now: someone who kept showing up even when it was hard, even when no one noticed, even when it didn't feel like it was working.

That's the version of yourself you're building toward. Not perfect. Not healed. Not without struggle. Just capable. Consistent. Committed to yourself in a way that doesn't waver when things get difficult.

That version is already in you. The journal just helps you find her. This is the proof that journaling for mental clarity works: not because it makes you feel better, but because it shows you who you're becoming when you're not looking.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to rebuild discipline after leaving a toxic relationship or difficult situation?

There's no universal timeline because rebuilding discipline depends on how long you were in survival mode and how deeply your sense of self was compromised. Some people start to feel traction within a month of consistent journaling and small commitments, while others need three to six months before things begin to stick without constant negotiation. The key indicator isn't how fast you're moving but whether you're seeing patterns emerge in your journal entries that show you're learning what actually works for you rather than repeating what you think should work. Your nervous system needs time to understand that you're safe enough to build again, and rushing that process usually just leads to burnout and starting over. A breakup journal for women can help you track this process honestly without the pressure to perform recovery on someone else's timeline.

What if I keep breaking commitments to myself even when I journal about them?

If you're consistently breaking the same commitment, the commitment itself is probably the problem, not your willpower. You might be trying to build something that doesn't actually align with your current capacity, your actual values, or the life you're trying to create. Go back through your journal entries and look for patterns: are you breaking commitments when you're overwhelmed, when you're around certain people, or when the commitment itself feels like an obligation rather than something you genuinely want? The solution isn't to try harder; it's to get more honest about what you're actually capable of right now and what you actually want to build. Sometimes discipline looks like releasing a commitment that isn't serving you rather than forcing yourself to keep it. This is where journal prompts for one-sided love can unexpectedly help: they teach you to recognize when you're giving more than you're receiving, even in your relationship with yourself.

Can journaling really help with discipline or is it just another form of procrastination?

Journaling becomes procrastination when you use it to avoid action, when you spend hours writing about what you're going to do instead of doing it. But when you use journaling as a tool for pattern recognition and course correction, writing for five to ten minutes a day about what you committed to, whether you did it, and how it felt, it becomes one of the most effective ways to build sustainable discipline. The difference is in how you're using it: if your journal is full of plans and intentions but no documentation of what actually happened, you're planning instead of building. If your journal tracks reality, your actual behavior and your actual feelings about that behavior, you're creating the feedback loop that makes discipline possible. This is what separates is journaling worth it as a real question from is journaling worth it as skepticism: you can measure whether it's working by whether your behavior changes, not just whether you feel better about your behavior.

What should I do when I miss multiple days of journaling and feel like I've already failed?

You write one entry that says exactly what happened, why you stopped, and what you're going to do differently starting now. Not next week, not next Monday, right now. The gap between falling off and getting back on is where discipline is either built or destroyed, and the longer you wait to restart, the harder it becomes to begin again. Missing days doesn't erase the work you've already done; it's just data about what interrupted your pattern and what you need to protect going forward. Most people quit entirely when they miss a few days because they're operating from an all-or-nothing mindset that says if it's not perfect it doesn't count, but discipline is actually built in the comeback, in the willingness to start again without punishing yourself for stopping. Journaling for healing teaches you this specifically: that healing isn't linear and neither is rebuilding discipline.

How do I know if I'm being disciplined or just controlling myself in an unhealthy way?

Discipline feels sustainable and adjusts when circumstances change, while control feels rigid and punishes you for being human. If you miss a commitment and your immediate response is shame, harsh self-criticism, or the urge to double down with even stricter rules, that's control. If you miss a commitment and your response is curiosity about what happened and what you need tomorrow to try again, that's discipline. Your journal will show you the difference: look at the language you use when you write about not following through. If it sounds like someone who hurt you, if it's filled with words like "should" and "always" and "never," you're operating from control. If it sounds like someone trying to understand herself without judgment, you're building discipline. The goal isn't to never mess up; it's to learn how to mess up without destroying yourself in the process. A journal for emotional clarity will reveal this pattern faster than almost anything else because it forces you to see the voice you use when no one else is listening.

What's the best time of day to journal for rebuilding discipline?

The best time to journal is whatever time you'll actually do it consistently, but many people find that writing at the end of the day works better for rebuilding discipline because you're documenting what actually happened rather than what you hope will happen. Morning journaling can be helpful for setting intentions, but if you're only writing about what you plan to do without ever tracking whether you did it, you're not building discipline, you're just making lists. Evening journaling forces you to confront reality, to write about whether you kept the commitment you made to yourself and how it felt. That honest reckoning is uncomfortable, which is exactly why it works. You can't lie to yourself as easily when you're writing about something that already happened versus something you're planning to do. This is one of those self care journaling prompts that sounds simple but changes everything: what actually happened today, not what I wish had happened.

Should I share my discipline rebuilding process with friends or keep it private?

Keep it private until it's solid enough that outside opinions won't derail you. When you're in the early stages of rebuilding discipline, you're vulnerable to other people's skepticism, their unsolicited advice, or their well-meaning but unhelpful encouragement. Your journal is where you work this out without having to manage anyone else's reaction to it. Once you've established a pattern that's working, once you can see evidence in your entries that you're actually changing, then you can decide whether sharing it adds value or just creates pressure to perform. Some commitments are meant to be witnessed only by you, and there's power in building something that doesn't require external validation to be real. This is especially true when you're using journaling for mental clarity: the clarity comes from being able to think without performing for an audience, even an imaginary supportive one.

How do I use journaling to rebuild discipline when I don't trust my own judgment anymore?

You start by documenting what actually happens without interpreting it yet. For two weeks, you just write what you did, what you felt, and what the outcome was, with no analysis about whether it was good or bad or what it means about you. You're collecting data before you draw conclusions. After two weeks, you look back and notice patterns: when did you feel capable? When did you feel stuck? What environments or people or times of day showed up repeatedly in the entries where you followed through versus the entries where you didn't? Your judgment doesn't need to be perfect right now; you just need to be willing to observe yourself honestly. The trust rebuilds slowly as you see evidence that you can keep small commitments, that you can notice patterns, that you can course-correct without catastrophizing. Journaling for healing works here because it separates what happened from what you've been told about what happened, giving you space to form your own conclusions based on evidence rather than fear.

What if my discipline collapsed because of something I can't control, like health issues or major life changes?

Discipline that collapses under circumstances you can't control wasn't weak; it was built for different circumstances. The work now is building discipline that fits your current reality, not trying to resurrect the version that worked when your life looked different. You use your journal to identify what's actually possible right now: what can you commit to on a hard day? What does showing up look like when you're operating at half capacity? What needs to be released entirely because it no longer serves the life you're living? This isn't failure. It's adaptation. Your journal becomes the place where you grieve what you can't do anymore and document what you're learning to do instead. Self care journaling prompts designed for rebuilding often ask what you're capable of today, not what you were capable of six months ago, and that distinction matters when your circumstances have fundamentally changed.

How do I journal about discipline when I'm afraid I'll just see proof that I'm failing?

You redefine what counts as data worth tracking. Instead of only documenting whether you kept commitments, you also document what got in the way, what you did instead, and what you learned from it. You track effort, not just outcomes. You track the moments you wanted to quit but didn't, even if you didn't complete the thing. You track the decision to try again tomorrow as its own form of discipline. Your journal isn't a report card; it's a record of what it actually takes to rebuild when you're starting from nothing. Most people are terrified to look honestly at their patterns because they've been taught that seeing their failures clearly will destroy them, but the opposite is true. Seeing your failures clearly, without dramatizing them, is what allows you to interrupt them. A journal for emotional clarity shows you that you're not failing as catastrophically as you thought, that there are patterns of success you've been dismissing because they're small, and that the shame is louder than the evidence.

About TAIYE

TAIYE creates guided journals for women who are rebuilding after something broke, who need structure without rigidity and space without emptiness. Each journal is built around a specific emotional reality, whether that's leaving a relationship that slowly eroded your sense of self, learning to trust your instincts again after years of being told they were wrong, or figuring out what discipline looks like when you're no longer performing for anyone.

The work we do assumes you're capable of honest observation and that clarity comes from documenting what's actually true rather than what sounds good. Our journals don't tell you how to feel or who to become; they give you the framework to figure that out through the repetition of showing up for yourself when no one else is watching. This is where discipline becomes yours instead of borrowed, where the commitments you keep are the ones that actually serve the life you're trying to build.

Disclaimer

This content is for informational and reflective purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health care, therapy, or medical advice. If you're struggling with mental health concerns or trauma, please consult a licensed professional.