Spoiled Plans, Dog Hair, and Other Things I Can’t Seem to Sweep Up
Everything hurts and I’m doing my best. Kind of.
Well. I broke down.
I totally burned myself out.
I screamed. I cried. I told Jose I wanted to quit—no, maybe needed to quit—my job.
I stressed myself out so badly that I got sick. Just a cold at first. A fun little summer cold! Which got better after about a week… and then turned into a sinus infection, because of course it did.
In a lot of ways, this whole miserable process is holding up a mirror and showing me what still needs my attention. Like:
Not waiting until I’m on the verge of rage-quitting before I speak up at work.
Maybe needing accommodations or additional support at work. Because 20 years of shift work and a job that banks on my anxiety in order to function well? Yeah, that adds up. And I’m seriously over it.
Being kinder and softer with myself instead of a complete asshole all the time.
I’ve been trying to focus on regulating my nervous system before diving deeper into trauma work with my therapist. But the truth is—I’m so fried that on workdays, all my energy is funneled into just getting to work. That’s it. That’s the win. On those days, the only other things I manage are:
Taking my meds
Eating something
Making sure the animals are taken care of
Attempting to maintain some semblance of a normal hygiene routine
Putting on clean clothes (jeans don’t count - they don’t have to be freshly clean all the time!)
That’s it. The house is a wreck. Jose isn’t doing much, if any, better than I am, at the moment, so of course I don’t feel good asking him for help.
The only time I make any progress at all is on weekends—and even then, it’s mostly small stabs at decluttering and organizing. It feels like doing something, but I never actually get to the cleaning. The floors are covered in dog hair. Goblin keeps rogue pooping in the basement. We had to gate it off. Now Roo’s afraid of the gate and won’t go near the back door to go outside.
And last night, after work, I came home to… dog diarrhea. Right in front of the rats’ cage.
Poor little guys had to smell that for who knows how long. They were definitely disgusted. Littlefoot, Petrie, and Spike (who inhabit the bottom portion of the cage and are thus, the closest to where the incident occurred) were all gathered up sniffing up a storm while I cleaned up the mess. My boys all got a couple extra treats for putting up with the stench.
I’m exhausted. I feel like I’m just barely treading water.
And honestly? It feels like I’m right back where I started before I ever began this healing journey.
But—
I’m trying really hard not to look at it that way.
Because even if it feels like I’m back at square one… I’m not.
This time is different.
This time, I know what to look for.
This time, I’m not giving up—I’m just pulling back. Trying to preserve what little energy I have while still keeping some focus on the path forward. I’m not where I was way back before I joined The Emily Program, with a full blown eating disorder, completely shut down, and disconnected from my body, and my own emotions - no I’m not that far gone. Thank goodness for that. But 6 months ago, dead of winter, seasonal depression, sleeps until 2 hours before work, gets up and doesn’t even brush her hair before work Heather? Yeah, that’s where I feel like I’m at. Bare minimum to survive the day Heather. And I don’t like it.
I haven’t gone on a walk in weeks, and I’m mad at myself for that. I’ve fallen back into sleeping late and escaping into TV and social media. And I hate how easy it is to slip into those patterns.
But I texted Jose earlier:
“I hate the past few weeks, how I’ve kind of returned to sleeping late and escaping into TV and social media. But it’s really hard to get myself out of that too. And I know some of it is to be expected when I’ve been sick and stressed, so I need to be a little more self-compassionate.”
And there it is.
Right there.
The answer isn’t in being tougher on myself. It’s not “just do better.” It’s not “you’re such a failure.”
It’s kindness.
It’s compassion.
It’s understanding myself the way I understand Roo, trembling by the gate, too scared to move forward.
I don’t get mad at her. Even when it’s frustrating.
I soothe her. I adjust. I meet her where she is.
Where is that grace for me?
🍫 Emergency Snack Pack for Burnout Brain
Zero effort. Zero performance. Just something small and kind.
👃 Take one breath through your nose. Let it go.
🐢 Let your shoulders drop.
🧍♀️ Gently touch your own arm—like you’d reassure someone else.
🎧 Find one soft thing to rest into (song, blanket, light).
💧 Drink a sip of water. No pressure. Just… sip.
🍟 Leftovers from the Shame Buffet
(a.k.a. Journal Prompt)
“If I treated myself like I treat ___ when they’re struggling, what would I do differently right now?”
Fill in the blank. No overthinking.
Or, try this one:
“What’s one thing I don’t have the energy to do right now—but I wish someone else would do for me?”
Even wishing counts.
Recalibrating: One Bite, One Breath, One Step
A slow and snack-sized approach to regulating your nervous system and building self-trust again
🪄 The Myth of the Big Fix
Perfectionism. All or nothing. Black and white thinking. These are the titans of change, productivity, healing, and creativity that I’ve been battling for decades. Couple that with my (apparently?) deep well of self-hatred (see previous blog post) and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
It’s the perfect combo for self-sabotage: high expectations with little faith in my own abilities = repeated failures that feel like proof I’m just fundamentally broken. Why even start unless it’ll be perfect? Mistakes? We don’t do those. Want to live a healthier life? Great! You must now do everything—flawlessly—every single day.
Or else the day is ruined. Might as well start over tomorrow. Or next week. Or maybe never.
Has that ever worked? Has that kind of shame-fueled thinking ever worked for anyone?
In recovery, I heard “progress over perfection” a thousand times. I even believed it. But I wasn’t living it. Not really. Maybe I’m still not—but I’m closer. I’ve noticed something new: a growing willingness to keep going. To get back up. To forgive the small hiccups. The crumbs on the counter. The toast that burned.
For the first time, I’m making real change—without intensive therapy. WHO EVEN AM I?
Apparently, I’m the Heather who’s learning to be gentler with herself. Who finally understands the (almost insultingly simple) truth: tiny, boring, consistent choices = real, sustainable change.
It’s not motivation—it’s momentum. And I’m finally done chasing the blaze of perfectionist glory. Instead, I’m recalibrating.
One bite. One breath. One step.
✨ The Plan (That Isn’t Really a Plan)
The plan is simple: live with a little more intention. Pay attention. Take everything one tiny bit at a time. I’m starting with the building blocks of a more balanced me.
🥪 One Bite at a Time
First, I’m teaching my body to trust that I’ll feed it regularly. That alone is huge.
Just because I don’t binge anymore doesn’t mean food isn’t still tangled up in shame. Binge eating disorder doesn’t live in a vacuum—it’s often paired with food restriction, moralizing, and a heaping scoop of guilt.
So now, I’m working on:
Starting the day with breakfast within an hour or two of waking up
Eating something every 3–4 hours
Making thoughtful, nourishing choices—without obsession
Checking in with hunger and fullness cues, and actually honoring them
Allowing “easy” foods, not just “ideal” ones
And reminding myself (again and again) that food doesn’t have moral value—and neither do I, based on what I eat
🌬 One Breath at a Time
I’m also working on regulating my nervous system—because wow, is it tired. I can’t handle conflict. My brain doesn’t know the difference between a life-threatening tiger and my husband asking why I moved something in the kitchen.
Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn? I’m the group chat admin. My sympathetic nervous system has been running the show, and I need a new director.
Right now, I’m practicing:
Mindful breathing
Vagal nerve stimulation (more on that soon)
Singing my heart out in the car
Crying when I need to (often also in the car)
Taking a pause before reacting—breathe and receive
It’s not fancy. It’s not perfect. But it’s a start.
🐾 One Step at a Time
I’m also learning to rethink movement—not as punishment, but as reconnection.
I don’t like sweating. I don’t like feeling watched. And as a fat person, I’ve never felt safe moving my body publicly. Even as a kid, when I was smaller and stronger, gym class felt like an emotional ambush.
Movement made me feel my body. And that didn’t feel safe. So I avoided it—unless it was joyful: swimming, roller skating, biking, horseback riding.
Now, I’m starting with:
Short daily walks with Jose
Moving more around the house
Getting up regularly from my desk at work
Maybe (eventually) reincorporating joyful movement
But for now? We walk. Slowly. Daily-ish. Imperfectly.
✨ What’s Helping (and What’s Not)
📚 Books
These are the books that helped me lower the bar (in a good way) and start treating myself like a person—not a project.
Atomic Habits by James Clear
Tiny changes, big impact. Ideal for nervous system-friendly routines and breaking shame-based cycles.
→ [Bookshop.org link]How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind by Dana K. White
For when cleaning feels impossible and you’re one pile away from losing it. This book constantly reminds me it’s okay to start messy.
→ [Bookshop.org link]Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff
A research-backed guide to being less of a jerk to yourself. Not fluff—real strategies that are helping rewire my inner critic.
→ [Bookshop.org link]Emotional Agility by Susan David, PhD
Learn to feel your feelings without getting stuck in them. Especially helpful if you’ve been living in autopilot, perfectionism, or avoidance.
→ [Bookshop.org link]
🛠 Tools
My marble jar progress tracker (more on this soon)
The Finch app (cute birb, virtual friends, and self-care quests? Yes, please.)
Grounding practices
💭 What I’ve Let Go Of
(…or am still un-gripping with claw marks, depending on the day.)
All-or-nothing thinking
Healing doesn’t happen in clean lines. Halfway is still forward.Aesthetic morning routines
I’m not trying to be that girl. I’m just trying to take my meds and not hate the morning.Shame spirals
They still show up, but I don’t hand them the mic anymore. Sometimes I even laugh instead of unravel.The idea that healing has to look good
Spoiler: It doesn’t. It looks like crying after work and then writing about it.The belief that I have to earn rest
I’m learning to sit down before I collapse. Still working on the “without guilt” part.
🌿 Wrap-Up Thought
This isn’t a glow-up.
It’s me, lying on the floor, eating string cheese, and trying not to spiral—one regulated breath and begrudging sip of water at a time. Reassuring Goblin that Mom’s okay and does not, in fact, need a tiny dog nurse.
I’m not chasing better.
I’m chasing okay-er. More often. In ways that don’t set my nervous system on fire.
And honestly? That’s enough for now.
🍽️ Leftovers from the Shame Buffet: Journal Prompt
Because we all have emotional leftovers we didn’t ask for.
What would “halfway healed” look like for me today?
Not perfect. Not fixed. Just slightly more okay than I was before.
Write freely. No filters, no grammar police, no pressure to make it profound.
You’re allowed to be messy. You’re allowed to be mid-process. That’s still healing.
🍫 Emergency Snack Pack: Grounding Visualization
For when your brain is spiraling and you need to teleport out of panic.
✨ The Safe Snack Spot
Close your eyes and imagine a small, cozy room—or maybe a blanket fort—stocked with all your favorite snacks, calming sounds, and safe feelings.
There’s warm lighting. A soft chair or couch. The perfect beverage. No expectations. No pressure. Just comfort.
Now imagine:
You sit down. The seat hugs your body.
You can hear something gentle—crackling fire, lo-fi beats, or silence.
You reach for your favorite snack, and it tastes exactly right.
Nothing is urgent. You are allowed to be here.
Linger in this space for 60 seconds or more. Then open your eyes. Move one part of your body. Say (out loud or in your head):
“I can come back to this space any time.”
Feeding the Fire (Not the Shame)
I haven’t written in two weeks.
Not because I don’t have anything to say—but because the old perfectionist goblins crawled in through the cracks again. The ones that say: "If this isn’t perfect, don’t bother." "If this won’t perform, what’s the point?" "If you’re not making progress, you’re failing."
It’s wild how quickly that narrative turns healing into a performance. How quickly the fire in your belly becomes a burn instead of a spark.
So I’m here. Writing again. But not for an audience. For me. For the quiet part of me that still hates herself—and the louder part of me that wants to understand why. Oh, and the little Heather inside that’s jumping up and down screaming, “I just want to be loved for who I am!”
Where the Hatred Hides
Self-hatred doesn’t always sound like "I hate myself."
Sometimes it sounds like:
"Why can’t I just get it together?"
"No one else needs this much time or rest."
"I’m such a mess."
"This is embarrassing."
It dresses itself up as discipline. As accountability. As realism. But it’s not. It’s fear. Shame. Inheritance.
Because I wasn’t born hating myself. None of us were. That part got built over time. Layered on by caregivers who meant well but modeled conditional love. By a culture that treats productivity as proof of worth. By a society that sees fatness as failure, softness as weakness, sensitivity as something to grow out of.
And eventually, those outside voices became my own. Internalized. Inescapable. Familiar.
What It Costs
Self-hatred isn’t passive. It’s expensive.
It drains my energy, my clarity, my momentum.
It shows up as procrastination, but it’s not laziness. It’s protection.
If I hate myself first, maybe the world can’t hurt me as badly. Maybe failure will sting less if I never expected success to begin with. Maybe shame will feel like home if I keep choosing it.
But I’m tired of that logic. It’s not keeping me safe. It’s keeping me small. It’s causing me to self-abandon, and self-sabotage.
Revelation: An ADHD Podcast, a THC Drink, and a Truth Bomb
I’m here because I had a revelation today. Jose and I were on the couch watching a bit of the Late Bloomers Podcast (Youtube: ADHD Love)—if you need healing, check them out—but be prepared, you might need tissues, or a journal, or a pillow to scream into! Especially the episode we watched today—STOP HATING YOURSELF: Why your worst enemy might live in your own head.
Let me tell you. I followed my mother right down that path of self-hatred, and it’s so engrained that every time my husband has brought it up to me over the course of our 7 years together, I’ve told him, “I don’t internalize the mean things I say to myself.”
So today, during the episode, we’re talking about him asking me why I’d asked him a question, and if I could have stopped and thought about how it would impact him before I asked the question, because it’s the kind of thing he’s asked me before and I’ve reacted poorly to.
This gave me a pause, which is new—because Heather doesn’t pause, Heather reacts—quickly, and defensively. But I stopped and really thought about his request.
I realized that this is something I regularly do with Jose. Ask him to consider changing his tone, his body language, the words he’s using, the topic he’s broaching, etc. Because I read his curiosity and his active listening as anger, or irritation, or frustration. And if he’s irritated, or frustrated—it’s always about me, or something I’ve done.
I said, you know, I haven’t been fair to you—I’ve asked you for a lot of accommodations because of my poor mental health, my emotional dysregulation, my frazzled nervous system, my traumatic past, etc.—and I never really thought about just how difficult that must be. That it’s not fair—that I’ve asked you to teach me how to be a better communicator—and then when I feel triggered—I say, “you’re doing it wrong.” Or cry and run away. Or scream and run away.
Which really wasn’t the point of the story, but I digress.
Anyhow, we started talking about how much progress I’ve made in the last 6 months, in being able to process my emotions, and talk about things longer without hitting a trigger and shutting down. And I said, “yeah, but I’m high right now.” And he points at the screen, where Rich and Rox are talking about all the ways in which self-hatred shows up, and says something to the effect of, there you go—belittling the growth you’ve made.
And he was right. I do that kind of thing—I apologize all of the time, almost automatically, for minor inconveniences to other people. People pleasing? Please! I’m the queen of fawning. Bambi has nothing on me. Over-explaining or feeling that I have to justify myself? How exactly have I never realized that I’ve spent 45 years on this earth apologizing for my entire existence?
I may have laid down and cried while watching the rest of that episode. And Jose may or may not have made me another THC drink.
What I'm Trying Instead
I’m not forcing myself to love every part of me yet. That doesn’t feel honest. But I can try this:
I can sit with the part of me that hates myself without rushing to silence her.
I can listen, gently, and ask: "What are you trying to protect me from?"
I can notice when I’m slipping into shame and offer myself curiosity instead.
And when I can’t offer kindness, I can at least offer a pause. A breath. A moment of not making it worse.
The Fire in My Belly
It’s back. That spark. The part of me that wants to keep going. Not perfectly, not constantly, but honestly.
I’m not backsliding. I’m recalibrating.
And if I can write this? Then I’m not stuck. I’m still moving. Still healing.
The part of me that hates myself may not go away overnight. But she’s not in charge anymore.
I’m here. On the horse. Holding the reins.
Let’s ride.
A Gentle Close
If any part of this hit home, you’re not alone. Maybe you’ve spent years blaming your body, belittling your progress, or bending yourself into shapes that made others more comfortable. Maybe you're only just now noticing the sound of your own inner critic—and realizing she sounds a lot like someone you grew up with.
You don’t need to fix it all today. But you can get curious.
Leftovers from the Shame Buffet (a.k.a. Journal Prompt):
"What’s one way I’ve mistaken protection for self-hatred? What was my body or mind trying to keep me safe from?"
Write for five minutes. No editing. No censoring. Just curiosity.
Emergency Snack Pack for When You’re Spiraling:
5-4-3-2-1 Sensory Reset (with a twist):
5 things you can see that feel safe, soft, or soothing
4 things you can touch that remind you you're allowed to take up space
3 things you can hear that calm you (or add a song that helps)
2 things you can smell that feel grounding or familiar
1 thing you’re proud of for surviving—even if it’s just today
Take a breath after each one. Let your body catch up with your truth.
You're not behind. You're becoming.
🍪 Welcome to Snack Sized Healing
It all begins with an idea.
How I’m healing a heaping buffet of trauma - one snack sized step at a time.
Hi, I’m Heather—and this isn’t a comeback story. Not yet.
After years of abandoning myself - trying to starve, shrink, and perfect myself in a myriad of ways - after powering through and ignoring my own wants and needs just to be liked, or at least not disliked - I have had enough. This is my attempt to come back home to my body—and to myself. Not for a before-and-after photo. Not to impress my inner critic. Not for anyone else's approval. But because my body is tired, my nervous system is fried, and frankly? I don’t even know if I’ve ever really, truly felt at home in my own body. I am hungry for healing and to get to know the real Heather.
Snack Sized Healing is the result of years of therapy (still ongoing, of course), reading, and lived experience recovering from an eating disorder. It’s part blog, part self-led science experiment, part love letter to every part of me that’s still healing. The premise is simple: what if I stop waiting to be “fixed” and start taking bite-sized steps towards the person I want to be instead?
So here’s what to expect:
A menu of the tools I’m using that are designed to help me re-regulate my nervous system,
Snarky commentary on diet culture, grief, trauma, and the impossible pressure to heal gracefully,
And honest reflections on what it means to actually take care of myself when life doesn’t stop falling apart.
I’ll be tracking tiny habits—like drinking water, taking my meds, and going for short daily walks with my husband Jose. I’ll share what’s helping—and what’s just giving ✨wellness influencer✨ energy without delivering real results.
If you’re here for curated vulnerability, radical permission to rest, and healing that doesn’t look cute on a vision board… welcome. Pull up a chair and let’s have a snack.
P.S. You can expect posts to be equal parts science, sass, and self-reflection. Sometimes they’ll be deep. Sometimes just a snack!