I Spent 30 Years Searching for Purpose – Until I Realized I Was Actually Searching for Connection

And some people thought I was looking for fame and likes….

For most of my life, I believed I was searching for purpose.

I tried to figure out what I was meant to do, what I should build, what kind of life would make sense of everything I had experienced. Did at least 119 personality tests, studied astrology since 10 years old, then came in numerology, hand reading, ikigai, human design, ect. ect…. I not only studied myself, no, I learned the skills to do it for other people to help them on their journey….

But recently, I realized something surprising.

I wasn’t searching for purpose.

I was searching for connection.

Real connection.

The kind built on loyalty, honesty, communication, and trust.

And when you grow up without those things, you often spend decades trying to understand what is wrong with you, when in reality you were simply missing the foundation that healthy relationships create.

Growing Up Without the Right Mirrors

The people we grow up around become our mirrors.

They teach us what love looks like.
What loyalty looks like.
What honesty looks like.

But if those mirrors are cracked, distorted, or unreliable, something else happens.

You start believing:

You are too much.
You are not enough.
You must work harder to deserve connection.
Or that connection itself is unsafe.

So instead of learning how to build healthy relationships, I learned how to survive unhealthy ones.

And survival can look like strength from the outside.

But inside, it felt like confusion, exhaustion, and loneliness.

Living With Pain I Couldn’t Explain

For many years, my body carried pain that no one could explain.

–> Chronic pain.
Since 10 years old I have a kind of bobble next to my heart, it is not visible, but I feel it.

–> Emotional overwhelm.I was always told I reacted in an inconvinent way to the bullying and the hitting and the stealing my stuff, not recognizing my feelings to what happened.

–> Morning states that felt heavy and impossible to understand.
At the time, I didn’t know these were emotional flashbacks. Standing up on my feet before my eyes were open. Teeth grinding, and tensed muscles as if I ran a marathon.

I didn’t know about Load reactions, looking like complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD).

I simply thought something was wrong with me.

So I kept doing what many people do:

I kept trying to be good.
Responsible.
Capable.
Productive.

I did my best to build a life anyway.

The Moment Everything Started Making Sense

In 2019 I learned about Load Reactions and in 2021 I learned about CPTSD.

Decades of confusion started forming a pattern.

The pain.
The reactions.
The relationship dynamics.
The constant search for something that felt safe. I could suddenly name a fear, I never thought existed in my life, because growing up in Denmark we learn about fake peace.

For the first time, my experiences had a framework.

And that changed everything.

Healing Did Not Happen In One Way

Healing rarely comes from just one method.

For me, it happened through several paths:

learning about trauma
working with body-mind therapy
supporting my nervous system with oils and gemstones
moving far away from unhealthy environments
and most importantly…

changing the words in my mind. (a way do it, is by using affirmations)

Because the brain listens to the language we use about ourselves.

When the inner dialogue changes, the nervous system slowly follows.

Rewiring the Mind Is Possible

Something surprising began to happen.

My chronic pain disappeared.

The emotional flashbacks became weaker. And are now almost gone.

The constant internal stress slowly quieted.

Not overnight.

But gradually.

Today they are almost gone.

This is something many people are never told:

Patterns created in survival can be reversed.

The brain can rewire.
The body can relax again.
New relationships can be built.

The Power of a Foundational Identity

One of the things that helped me most was developing what I call a Foundational Identity Framework inside my Life Map Method.

Instead of defining myself by:

past relationships
trauma responses
other people’s expectations

I began defining myself by who I choose to be and what theory told me I was.

Identity is not only what happened to you.

Your identity is how you choose to operate moving forward.

This shift is powerful.

Because it means the past no longer decides the future.

Leaving Old Environments Matters

Another truth that helped my healing:

Sometimes the biggest step forward is simply distance.

Moving away from environments where unhealthy dynamics were normal gave my nervous system space to reset.

When you are no longer surrounded by the patterns that shaped you, your brain finally gets room to build new ones.

Building a Life From Clarity Instead of Survival

Today, my life is not defined by the patterns I grew up with.

I create.

I build businesses.

I help others understand themselves.

And most importantly:

I know that connection can be created intentionally.

Healthy relationships are not something reserved for the lucky.

They are something you learn to recognize and build.

If You Recognize Yourself In This Story

Maybe you have spent years feeling like something is wrong with you…

Maybe your body carries pain you cannot explain…

Maybe relationships have always felt confusing or exhausting…

Please know this:

You are not a broken person, something inside you broke, maybe even before you could speak, but you can repair it and get better.

Some of us have been trying to build a life without the emotional foundations most people take for granted.

And if that is the case, there is good news.

Those foundations can be built later.

The brain can learn new patterns.
The nervous system can calm.
Healthy relationships can become possible.

And a meaningful life can still be created.

Even after decades of searching.

Your past does not disqualify you from a beautiful future.

Sometimes it is the very path that teaches you how to build one.

Thank you for reading. And feel welcome to ask any questions for your sake.

Piece 4 Love is for you, to make your life more beautiful and easy to live.

<3 Anna

Ps. and Love yourself more =)

The most Confident person I know

Daily writing prompt

Who is the most confident person you know?

View all responses

Is my son, he knows best, he sometimes don’t want to go certain places and since he was little he did it and saved me from tons of transport, because often the days he didn’t want to go, was because the public transportation was shut down in the directions we had to go.

He also predicted other things, and I have realized that evertime I listen to him his confidence in himself grows, and that is a wonderful thing to see.

He is also good at saying sorry when he sometomes crosses the line, which happens to everybody.

And you? Who are the most confident person you know ?

What Movies Did I watched more than 5 times?

Daily writing prompt

What movies or TV series have you watched more than 5 times?

View all responses

Answering to this daily prompt from WordPress,,,

None, I have seen non movies or tv series more than 5 times.

I have seen Pulp Fiction 3 times

The lord of the rings 3 times

and Pretty Woman 3 times. I’ll tell you if I see one of them more than 5 times.

Funny to know what a psychologer could get out of this.

Have you seen any film or series mores than 5 times ? I am curious.

Have a lovely weekend and love yourself more.

Anna

How to get through and beyond healing feelings, here I show you my journey:

From Silence to Self-Healing: My Journey Through Invisible Violence

Two days ago the month of Domestic Violence Awareness ended.
Abuse is also violence, even if you are not getting hit.

And I have lived with both kinds of violence. Emotional and physical. And why not also let me have experienced SA from a family member.

It pretty much ruined my possibilities to create a traditional, predictable life pattern.

But since I didn’t know it, and I didn’t get any emotional support or guidance from what was supposed to be my inner circle, my life path ended up being a reaction to the abuse, Until the day I learned about load reactions caused by adverse communication and experiences.

The Fatal Effects of Invisible Violence

What many people don’t realize is that emotional and psychological violence can be just as deadly as physical harm, only it kills slowly, through the brain and nervous system.

When we are exposed to constant stress, fear, or humiliation, our body enters a state of chronic survival.
The brain rewires itself to stay alert, not to stay alive. And the same system that was meant to protect us starts turning against us.

The amygdala (the brain’s alarm center) becomes overactive, every sound, tone, or look feels dangerous.
The hippocampus, which is supposed to record time and memory, gets damaged, making it hard to separate then from now.
The prefrontal cortex, responsible for planning, empathy, and focus, goes offline, so even daily life starts to feel impossible.

These neurological changes can lead to anxiety, chronic fatigue, autoimmune conditions, memory loss, or emotional numbing. In short, our biology adapts to pain.

That’s why people living in long-term emotional abuse often don’t even realize how deeply it has affected their brain, body, and capacity to function. Until something finally breaks.

I got cured before the doctors managed to give me a diagnosis.
In 2021 I discovered the mental state CPTSD. I could relate to the symptoms, since maybe 9-10 years old, on and off, and so in fall 2021 that’s when my healing journey started.

Here’s how it went, in simple bullet points:

In 2018 I was reading Jesper Juul’s book Your Competent Child, and discovered the term load reactions.
In 2021 I learned about The Crappy Childhood Fairy and Tim Fletcher on YouTube talked about ACE’s and CPTSD, and I began to recognize myself.
I read about how feelings create your body and began using oils and gemstones to release, get support, stay grounded and open up.
In 2022 I stumbled upon the Workout Witch on TikTok. She talked about how CPTSD and chronic pain are really good friends, and she showed where the body gets stuck.
I kept working with my mind every day through guided affirmations and frequencies.
I went to a life and body specialist and showed him the video. He fixed my chronic pains. In one session. Pains I had lived with for 15 years without any doctor being able to help me.
But my brain couldn’t keep up. And in 2024 again, on TikTok, I saw a video about the brain and realized my brain paths were damaged.
In 2024 I started taking curcumin drops, and from the first sip I could feel a change in my brain – first in the right side behind the ear, and later in the upper left side.
And I also started group trauma therapy at the Danish Centre for Integreret Stress og Traumeterapi

I still walked into bad relationships and needed to move. So I left the capital I had lived in for 47 years and moved to the countryside with my 6 yo son.

Now, after making sure my son could grow up in peace, I have, since August 2025, finished my academic work about the missing link in rhetoric: adverse communication and all its mental consequences. From emotional shocks to functional freeze, and much more academic insight.

I have also opened Calledda Studio, where you can get all the work material I used myself during this journey. The same material I have also used to help CEOs, sportspeople, artists, and people who thought they had no future.

And together with my best friend Bitten, I opened a Danish webshop called Oils and Crystals, because healing the mind also means healing the frequency of your body.

The most important learning though, is that in order to heal from these reactions you need an inner circle who supports you, lifts you, and they are witnesses to your journey. This is where the real healing takes place.

And soon I will write about how I did that, because it was not that easy, and I am not at alle finished yet. But I am getting there.

One of the thins that brought me long the way, was tracking my frequency and I still do that, everyday. Here is the link to my free guide and template on how to do it.

See you soon, take care of yourself and love yourself more

Loosing Passion and Recreating it

I lost my passions, and there are multiple psychological, social, and biological explanations for why this happens. Passion is not static; it fluctuates based on internal and external factors. Here’s a structured overview of what happened to me, my personal story I will bring another post, but for now the facts so nobody is stuck for so long as I was:

1. Why passion can fade

a) Psychological factors

Burnout: Chronic stress, overwork, or repeated failures can lead to emotional exhaustion, reducing motivation and interest in formerly loved activities.
Disillusionment: When reality doesn’t meet expectations, or goals seem unattainable, enthusiasm can wane.
Loss of meaning: If the activity no longer feels aligned with personal values, passion fades.

b) Social/environmental factors

External pressures: Family, societal expectations, or financial constraints may push someone to compromise their passion.
Lack of support: Without encouragement, recognition, or mentorship, motivation can diminish.
Negative feedback or criticism: Repeated discouragement can erode confidence and enjoyment.

c) Biological/neurochemical factors

Neuroplasticity: Brain circuits associated with reward and motivation can change over time; if reinforcement decreases, interest fades.
Mental health: Depression, anxiety, or other disorders can blunt emotional response, making previously enjoyable activities feel meaningless.

d) Developmental and life stage factors

People naturally evolve. What was once a driving passion might no longer fit their identity, values, or life priorities.

Summary:

Passion is dynamic. It can fade due to:

Mismatched personal values
Burnout or stress
Lack of motivation or support
Life changes or developmental shifts

The dualistic model of passion and self-determination theory are central frameworks for understanding these processes.

RECREATING YOUR PASSIONS

Losing your passions can feel disorienting, like losing a part of your identity. Recreating them isn’t about forcing yourself to feel a spark immediately, it’s more like gently rediscovering what resonates with you. Here’s a structured approach:

1. Reflect on Your Past

Ask yourself: What did I enjoy before, even in small ways?
Look for patterns: Certain activities, ideas, or types of experiences may have repeatedly excited you.

2. Experiment Without Pressure

Try new things or revisit old hobbies, even casually.
Treat it like exploring, not performing. Small steps are key. Passion often grows from curiosity, not obligation.

3. Reconnect With Your Values

Passion often stems from what matters to you.
Write down your core values or what you care about deeply. Then look for activities aligned with them.

4. Pay Attention to Energy, Not Just Enjoyment

Notice what makes you feel alive, engaged, or absorbed.
Sometimes passion comes from flow. When time disappears while you’re fully immersed.

5. Surround Yourself With Inspiration

Engage with people, books, podcasts, or communities that embody curiosity, creativity, or energy you admire.
Inspiration often awakens dormant passions.

6. Be Patient With Yourself

Losing passion doesn’t mean it’s gone forever.
Allow yourself to explore without judgment. Passions often re-emerge gradually when conditions are right.

Tip: Keep a small journal of moments that spark interest or excitement. Over time, you’ll start to see threads that could grow into meaningful passions again.

I lost my passion many times and recreated them again.

If you want to see how you can do it too

Check this out

2. Theoretical work you can explore

a) Passion theories

Vallerand et al. (2003) – “The Dualistic Model of Passion”
- Differentiates between harmonious passion (flexible, integrated into life) and obsessive passion (rigid, controlling). Loss of passion often occurs when obsessive passion leads to burnout or conflict.
- Reference: Vallerand, R.J., et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(4), 756–767.

b) Motivation theories

Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000):
- Intrinsic motivation thrives when basic psychological needs are met: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Lack of fulfillment in any of these can dampen passion.
- Reference: Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior.
Expectancy-Value Theory (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002):
- Passion decreases when a person believes effort won’t lead to success or the activity loses subjective value.

c) Burnout and stress models

Maslach Burnout Inventory & theory (Maslach & Leiter, 1997):
- Passion can fade due to emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment.

Destructive Criticism – what is it – how to handle it

This little article blog is part of a series where I describe what adverse/unfavorable communication can do to you and your child. The first one is destructive criticism.

Destructive criticism is feedback that aims to hurt, belittle, or discourage rather than help you improve. Unlike constructive criticism, which focuses on solutions or growth, destructive criticism attacks your character, effort, or worth, often without offering anything useful.

Examples of destructive criticism:

“You’ll never be good at this.”
“That idea is stupid.”
“You always mess things up.”

It often comes from people who are angry, insecure, jealous, or unaware of how their words affect others.

How to Handle Destructive Criticism

Pause before reacting
Don’t respond impulsively. Take a deep breath, count to 10, or step away if needed. This helps you regain emotional balance.
Separate emotion from information
Ask yourself: “Is there any useful truth here?”
If yes – keep the lesson.
If not – discard it. You don’t have to accept every opinion as truth.
Consider the source
Criticism from someone who’s habitually negative or uninformed says more about them than about you. Don’t give equal weight to every voice.
Set boundaries
If someone constantly criticizes destructively, say something like: “I’m open to feedback, but I need it to be respectful and specific.”
Or simply limit your exposure to that person.
Reaffirm your self-worth
Remind yourself of your progress, values, and goals. Destructive criticism often targets confidence—protect yours intentionally.
Seek supportive perspectives
Talk with someone you trust who can give you honest, balanced feedback. They can help you see whether the criticism has any merit.
Use it as fuel (if possible)
Sometimes, the best response is quiet growth. Let your improvement speak louder than their negativity.

Sharing this with you, I wish I knew this when I was a little girl because it made me really anxious. Today I am 48 I can detect it and I can stop it and not let it in.

I hope you can too if you are exposed to it.

Once I lived a life based on other peoples opinions without even knowing it. And that brought a lot of trouble and I felt confused and scattered. But when I realized about unfavorable communication, I started detecting how I felt after being in some kind of contact with people and activitities.

And I realized that when I tracked my energy , that people who normally criticized me, now don’t even call. And that finally made me grow in peace. You find it by clicking the image.

Take care of yourself and what you listen to.

And love yourself more everyday.

Xx Anna

What happens to your life when you don’t know your soup? (incl. how to detect trauma and their consequences and how to rearrange your brain again)

Your soup is your life with all its ingredients, when you don’t know your soup, you don’t know how the soup taste before eating it, and maybe you don’t like it, maybe you even get sick from it.

The same goes with life, if you go into adulthood without knowing the ingredients of your childhood, maybe you think you know them, but if you don’t know the consequences (the taste of each ingredient) maybe you end in a life in chaos, diseases and a lot of changes.

And of course I can only tell because I literally lived the situation.

SPILLING THE SOUP

And the only reason why I can write about it now is simply because I had to spill all the childhood soup myself, and look everything through in order to understand that the damage in my brain was made out of really really bad ingredients, such as gaslighting, devaluation, ACE’s and the consequences.

What I did about it, .. well when I didn’t know I lived with it and managed my life by living a certain routine and disciplin. The thing is though, due to the damage I kept going into bad relationships. So even if I had all possibilities, and started of a lot of things, I was never satisfied and my bad conditioning left me often alone with problems created by other people.

ONE BOOK, ONE WORD CHANGED MY VIEW ON MY LIFE

For too long I lived without knowing what was going on, until I became a mom. .. and then a single mum. One word in one book opened my mind and my heart to a rough fact…ACE’s – Your Competent Child by Jesper Juul. The word is stress reaction / in Danish it is belastningsreaktion .. belastnings means load, so I would re-translate from google and thus call it stress load reaction.

And no matter what symptoms I had … it always came back to the fact that I had experienced severe emotional neglect and many other ACE’s without getting help or support from anybody.

I decided before going to the doctor and talk about a diagnosis that I wanted to get rid of all my reactions, that was in 2019,,, today we are talking 2025 and this is what happened from the day I started

✨ My allergies are 50% (before I could eat 27 kinds of food without getting in trouble, now I can eat many many more)

✨ My chronic unexplainable pain in arms and fingers are gone

✨ My sudden panic attacks (symptoms of cptsd) are gone

✨ I have total control of my time and my inner state of being.

It required a lot of work, and in the beginning I was really reluctant. But here is what happened.

✨ 2020 I started using essential oils (geranium and peppermint for start)

✨ 2022 I dared go to a body all mind therapist (I was afraid of people touching me, men and women equally)

✨ 2022 I figure out that cptsd and chronic pains are connected

✨ 2023 the pain disappears after 1 session with focus on cptsd, (ill try to find the video from tiktok where a lady explains it)

✨ 2024, I can suddenly eat nuts and almonds and dates, which I couldn’t for more than 15 years.

✨ 2025, I can pursue the career I tried so hard to get for so many years without good results, and now I see it all coming together.

I did one thing everyday, I raised my frequency. In any way that fitted the day. It could be the essential oils, it could be the crystals and gemstones, it could be movement, it could be meditation, affirmations on repeat on youtube.

But I did it everyday. In some way or another.

Then I also did something else. From my experience as a Security Representative I knew that journaling is a big part of documenting if a person felt harassed in the company. But not any type of journaling, it is more like evidence. You write everyday what happened.

And then I transformed this kind of journaling into my own frequency tracker. So I for my own sake could see what was good and bad for me during a day. And then I realized that people I trusted actually played with my time and downgraded my need for help in the village.

The thing is I have a child by my side at this time, and I knew that he would be affected by bad experiences too. And when I realised what was going on with people whom I deeply trusted, I needed to change. I did. And you can see my journey, what it did to my health to stay away from people who keeps your unique talents and their developments down.

And I share this with you, so if you are or know someone who are in a bad soup, Send them this frequency tracker template that I’ve made.

It’s free it’s easy and it lasts forever, because you just use it in your own diary.

With Love

Anna

The city of the future…. – answer to prompt

How would you design the city of the future?

Sorry for the impulsive break… living in a big city is equal a lot of things to do and people to take in regard.

Being highly sensitive or … becoming highly sensitive to all the human-made noises and to people too…

I am born and raised in a capital. With all its good and bad. .

A city of the future is less noisy… and no tall buildings is being build…

Fruit plants everywhere. More green and more natural playgrounds.

At the writing moment time is 4.53 and a BIG nousy truck is passing my building. . I live on a small road. And actually there is not space for a truck like this. But yet the driver manages to get through.

I don’t belive we can get rid of all big trucks and cars, but I definitely think more and more people will take their bikes due to difficulties in finding parking.

I also think that people will buy more from people who support people.

What do you think ?