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Many mental health struggles can be understood as ruptures in the relationship between time and self. Depression often pulls memory inward, organizing experience around what happened to me, while anxiety sends imagination forward, preoccupied with what might happen to me.

Rumination and worry emerge from the same system that evolved to protect us across time, yet they become exhausting when trauma, shame, or uncertainty prevent emotional experiences from being fully integrated and induce overestimation of threats.

What we call symptoms are often the psyche’s attempts to stabilize identity and restore coherence under conditions of overwhelm.

Healing unfolds as the frame of identity gradually expands beyond the weight of a solitary narrative - aka the story of my life. Spirituality, understood as lived presence and connection rather than belief or dogma, correlates with recovery because it loosens the burden of self-centrality and revives a sense of belonging and circulation within something larger. This reorganization allows past experience to become instructive and future possibility to feel approachable.