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Aracnae · Mar 13, 2016, 04:22 PM

So, I've made an active effort to practice my own version of exposure therapy. Basically, what I do is expose myself to triggers on my own terms until I'm de-sensitized enough to handle those things.
For years, I couldn't handle my birthday. I didn't want people to bring it up, I couldn't do birthday parties.

Possible trigger:

This was because my parents would single me out on my birthdays and treat me worse than usual. It was worse when they'd go through the effort of inviting family over and making a cake. I had to pretend everything was great and act grateful, knowing that most of my gifts would be taken away because I was "too old to play with them" and that I'd be doing slave labor until the wee hours of the morning to make up for my mother having to do so much work on my behalf. And of course, the obligatory birthday beating after mom was good and hammered.

Anyhow, I've turned my feelings about it around by turning it into a different kind of celebration entirely. It lands on 3/14, so we celebrate "pi day" and eat pie until we burst. I also usually do a sort of St. Patrick's day celebration at the same time. It has turned my birthday from a day that I hid from the world and got drunk alone to a day I can actually celebrate, and I'm happy about that.
*another positive thing: March is the month when everything is sold in my favorite color, green, so I take advantage of that now too!