Born Tired: Where Survival Meets Healing

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Eirene: I grew up with a mother who had schizophrenia. I didn't know that word until I was older. As a child, I didn't understand illness or diagnosis. I only understood that reality could shift without warning that what felt true one moment could feel dangerous the next. I learned to watch closely, to listen for changes because safety depended on it.

I learned how to read what wasn't being said, because when reality isn't stable, attention becomes protection. And somewhere along the way that fear turned inward. I started paying attention to my own thoughts, my own reactions, wondering which ones were normal and which ones might be signs.

I didn't just notice anxiety, I questioned it. I didn't just feel overwhelmed. I monitored it. Every strong emotion came with a follow up question. Is this a response to what's happening or is this something else? I didn't [00:01:00] have language for what I was carrying, only the sense that my mind needed supervision, that it wasn't something I could fully trust without keeping an eye on it.

And when you grow up like that, fear feels practical. It feels responsible. It feels like staying ahead of something you don't know how to name yet. I was afraid that one day I would lose my sense of what was real. In small moments, in thoughts I couldn't quite follow. In a shift I wouldn't notice until it was already too late. That fear shaped how I listened, how I've spoken, and how much I trusted myself.

This is Born Tired, Where Survival Meets Healing. A podcast for those of us who grew up in survival mode but are ready to heal and speak our truth. I'm Eirene, a cycle breaker, learning what peace feels like after years of survival. Every episode is an invitation to rest inside your truth, to feel seen, and to remember you are never alone. This is what it sounds like when silence [00:02:00] finally breaks.

Before we begin, I want to share a gentle reminder. This episode includes stories and reflections about childhood trauma, and abuse. Please listen in a way that feels safe for you. If at any point you need to pause or step away, honor that. Your wellbeing matters more than finishing the episode. You are not alone. Take care of yourself while you listen.

There's a kind of fear that doesn't come from being hurt directly. It comes from watching someone you love slowly disappear while their body is still right in front of you. My mother lived with schizophrenia, so did two of her siblings, but I didn't actually know the word schizophrenia until I was 23 years old. Before that, no one ever named it. In my family and in our culture, anyone with mental illness was simply described as someone que sufre de los nervios, which in English means someone who suffers from the nerves. That language blurred everything.

[00:03:00] It kept me from understanding what I was actually witnessing. It kept me from having words for the fear I felt living inside that house. I knew something wasn't right, but I didn't know what it was. And when something doesn't have a name, your mind fills in the blanks.

So instead of clarity, I carried uncertainty. Instead of understanding, I carried fear. I watched episodes unfold without context. I absorbed responsibility without explanation. And I internalized the idea that reality itself was fragile, that it could shift at any moment, without warning. When I finally learned the word schizophrenia, it didn't bring relief.

It brought confirmation. And with that came a new fear that this wasn't something I had lived alongside. It was something I might carry too. I understood enough to know mental illness could be genetic. I understood that trauma could trigger it, and I had more trauma than I could name. [00:04:00] Every time anxiety took over my body, every time I disassociated, every time my thoughts spiraled, there was a voice in the back of my mind asking, is this it?

Is this the moment I lose my grip on reality. And that fear wasn't something I carried quietly. My father made sure it stayed close to the surface. During his rages, he would throw it in my face, sarcastically, like a weapon he knew would reach my deepest fears.

"You're gonna go crazy like your mother. Your kids are gonna go crazy too". He said it casually, like a joke, like a certainty. And every time he said it, something tightened inside of me because he wasn't just insulting me, he was reinforcing my worst fear. The fear that my mind wasn't safe, the fear that no matter how hard I tried, I wouldn't be able to protect my children from what lived in our bloodline.[00:05:00]

Those words followed me into adulthood, into motherhood, into moments of stress, exhaustion, and overwhelm. Every hard day became a question, is this normal or is this the beginning?

I wasn't just managing trauma. I was monitoring my sanity. One night, stands out more than the rest. It was late. She was fully dressed in one of the outfits that she saved for special occasions, as if she was going somewhere important. Her makeup was done, her hair was fixed. She looked purposeful. She told us the Virgin Mary was calling her that she needed to go to the roof of our apartment building.

I was a teenager and far too young to be responsible for that moment. I remember my heart racing, my body freezing, trying to sound calm, while everything inside me was screaming. I didn't understand her illness. I tried to reason with her. I told her the Virgin Mary wasn't on the roof. I wouldn't let her leave [00:06:00] the apartment.

I remember thinking if I say the wrong thing, she might disappear forever. Eventually, she didn't go. But the damage had already been done because the next day I overheard her telling my godmother how hurt she was, how betrayed she felt I didn't believe her. She said it made her wanna kill herself, that I made her want to die.

I carried that for years, not just the fear, the responsibility. I learned early that my role wasn't to be a child. It was to stabilize, to protect, to manage. And in her eyes. I wasn't someone who needed nurturing. I was strong, independent, capable. I was her protector. And when a child is seen as strong, their needs disappear.

My mother never really mothered me. There was no softness. No emotional attunement. She never called me on my birthday after I left to the Navy. She never called on [00:07:00] my children's birthdays either. No card, no small gestures, no moments that said, I see you. I understand now that her illness played a role in that absence.

I hold compassion for what schizophrenia took from her. But compassion doesn't erase impact because there was a kind of concern she was capable of. I saw it just not directed toward me. There was a softness she offered my sister, a protectiveness, a worry. And as a child, I didn't have the language for that difference. Only a quiet understanding that I wasn't allowed to need.

She did send me letters when I was in bootcamp. I remember opening them, hoping for something maternal, hoping for warmth, hoping for pride, hoping for reassurance. But most of what filled those pages was about my father, how he was calmer now, how he wasn't drinking, how things were better. I recently reread those letters, [00:08:00] and they feel like they were written in my father's voice, not in tone, but in focus.

They centered him, his improvement, his stability, his narrative. Even in a season that was supposed to be about me, the emotional gravity shifted to him. And I think that's what hurt the most. It wasn't just that something was missing, it was that I never felt chosen, even in her reaching out, I wasn't fully centered, and that leaves a different kind of imprint.

So I learned I was not allowed to need. My father understood that dynamic perfectly. He used my mother's illness to control me, to pull me back in, to demand loyalty. If I set boundaries, I was cruel. If I pulled away, I was abandoning her. If I protected myself, I was selfish. Love turned into obligation, concern turned into a leash.

And underneath it all lived a constant fear. [00:09:00] If I leave, she will fall apart. If I speak, she will break. If I live my life, I will be responsible for the consequences. I was conditioned to believe that fear was love, that vigilance was care, and that silence was protection.

But what it really did was teach me to disappear, to doubt my reality, to question my instincts, to fear my own mind. I didn't just fear becoming my father. I feared becoming my mother. I feared losing grip on reality. I feared being misunderstood. I feared being told that my memories weren't real. And maybe that's why truth has always mattered so much to me because when you grow up watching reality bend, you cling to truth like a lifeline.

But holding onto truth comes with a cost. It brought grief. Grief for the teenager who carried responsibilities she never should have held. [00:10:00] Grief for the fear that lived in my body for decades. Grief for the part of me that learned silence was a form of protection.

When I finally learned my mother's diagnosis. There was another detail that stayed with me. She was 33 when she had her first episode. That number lodged itself in my mind. It stopped being just an age. It became a deadline. Somewhere inside me I made a quiet deal with myself.

If I can make it to 34 without schizophrenia, I would be okay. I didn't say that out loud. I didn't even fully admit it to myself, but I lived as if 33 was something I had to survive. Every anxious thought, every spiral, every moment of overwhelm, I counted them against that number. As my 33rd year approached, I watched myself even more closely waiting for proof that my mind was still mine.

And then my [00:11:00] 34th birthday came. Nothing dramatic happened, just the realization I was still here. The relief arrived as an exhale, as my body finally releasing something. It had been holding for years. That fear had been keeping time, and time had kept moving anyway. Living with that kind of fear changes how you relate to yourself. When you learn early, that reality can shift without warning you don't just become observant. Your body learns that stability is conditional, that it could disappear without explanation. What followed me into adulthood with self-monitoring, a constant internal checking, am I okay right now?

Does this reaction make sense? Is this stress or is this something else? I learned to treat my own mind like a potential liability, something to keep under watch. Not because I didn't trust myself, but because I was taught that minds could become unsafe places to live. That [00:12:00] fear hides inside responsibility, inside composure, inside being the one who holds everything together from the outside, I look capable, grounded, reliable.

On the inside, I was assessing, measuring, comparing, trying to figure out where the line was between a normal human response and something more ominous. There was another layer to this fear that took longer to recognize. It wasn't just about trusting my own mind, it was about what my fear could do if I wasn't aware of it. When you grow up inside instability, your nervous system learns to anticipate danger, and if you're not careful, that vigilance can spill outward. I became very aware that the fear I carried, the constant internal checking. The quiet monitoring, that assumption that something could shift at any moment didn't belong to my children. They didn't grow up inside the house I did. They weren't responsible for stabilizing anyone. They [00:13:00] weren't waiting for reality to bend, and I didn't want my history to become their inheritance.

So part of my healing wasn't just learning to trust myself. It was learning to pause before projecting. To ask, is this my fear? Or is this something actually happening right now? There were moments when anxiety would rise and I could feel the urge to control, to overprotect, to tighten, but fear doesn't need to be passed down to prove it existed.

Breaking cycles sometimes looks quiet. It looks like taking a breath before reacting. It looks like choosing calm when your body wants to brace. It looks like letting your children experience the world without placing your history on their shoulders. I don't need to eliminate the fear to be a good mother.

I just need to recognize when it's mine and not hand it to them. And that awareness didn't appear overnight. It came from understanding where the [00:14:00] fear began, because before I could stop passing it down, I had to understand how deeply it had shaped me. That's the part people don't always understand about growing up around serious mental illness.

The fear isn't about what you witness. It's about what you internalize. It's about learning that your inner world might not be a place you can fully trust, that your thoughts might someday turn against you.

That your perceptions could be questioned, not by others, but by yourself. When you live like that long enough, you start shrinking your life around what feels manageable. You choose predictability. You avoid risk that might shake your sense of control. You stay within emotional parameters that feel safe, not because you don't want more, but because more feels dangerous.

Expansion feels like instability and laid on top of all that was the way the fear was used against me, how it was named [00:15:00] out loud repeated, thrown back at me as a threat. Those words didn't just hurt. They confirmed something I was already afraid of.

They took an unspoken fear and gave it a voice. And once fear is spoken like that, it's harder to ignore. Harder to dismiss. Harder to separate from your sense of self. So I learned to be careful with my emotions, with my reactions, with my needs. I learned to flatten myself, to keep everything inside narrow margins because the cost of losing control felt unbearable. The idea that I could become the very thing I feared, misunderstood, unstable, dismissed. What I didn't understand for a long time was, that this was conditioning, it was survival. My body learned to protect me by staying small, alert, contained.

And for a long time that strategy worked. It kept me functional, it kept me responsible, it kept me alive. But survival has limits because when you're [00:16:00] always monitoring yourself, you're never fully living inside the moment. And over time, that erodes trust, not just in others, but in your own inner experience.

You start second guessing your feelings. You downplay your distress, you minimize your exhaustion. You override your instincts in favor of what seems acceptable and controlled. That's the quiet grief of this kind of upbringing. The ability to feel without fear, to react, without analysis, to exist inside your own mind, without suspicion.

It took me a long time to learn that fear doesn't mean truth, that anxiety isn't prophecy, that stress doesn't equal collapse. My nervous system learned a story early on, that instability was inevitable, that losing yourself was a matter of time. But stories learned in childhood aren't always accurate. They're often [00:17:00] protective and outdated, often shaped by environments we are no longer living in. Learning that didn't erase the fear, but it softened it's authority.

Because fear can be loud without being right, and vigilance can feel necessary even after the danger has passed. Understanding that has been part of my healing. Not trying to eliminate fear, but learning how to relate to it differently. To recognize it as information, as a memory and not a destiny.

I'm still unlearning the habit of watching myself from a distance, still learning that my mind doesn't need to be managed into submission. It needs to be met with care, with trust, and with patience. It's about noticing where the fear came from and how deeply it shaped me. It's about understanding that fear made sense and that I don't have to live under its rule forever.

I used to think healing meant finally feeling unafraid, but that wasn't [00:18:00] realistic. What healing has actually asked of me is something else. Learning how to live without letting fear lead every decision, because fear was never random. It had a history and it had reasons. It learned its job early. Stay aware, stay prepared.

Don't get caught off guard. That job kept me functioning. It helped me navigate chaos. It helped me endure what I shouldn't have had to endure. So I don't try to get rid of it. I try to understand it. I try to notice when it's speaking from the past instead of responding to the present because the present looks different now. I'm not a child inside someone else's crisis. I'm not responsible for stabilizing anyone else's reality. I'm not required to disappear to keep things intact. When fear arrives now I don't immediately assume it's a warning. Sometimes it's just a memory. Sometimes it's my nervous system replaying an old [00:19:00] lesson. Sometimes it's my body asking for rest. Learning the difference has taken time. It's meant practicing trust in small, ordinary ways. Letting myself feel without immediately analyzing, letting emotions pass without treating them like evidence.

Letting my mind exist without constantly checking it for signs of danger. That's been the biggest shift for me. Moving from surveillance, to finally trusting myself, from watching myself from a distance to actually being here.

Because my mind is not an enemy. It's a place shaped by experience, by fear and by survival, but also by resilience. It has held a lot. It has adapted. It has learned, and it's allowed to soften now. I don't need certainty to live. I don't need constant proof that I'm okay. I need presence. I need compassion. I need room to exist. It's about letting the present have [00:20:00] more authority, about allowing myself to live as someone who survived and not as someone who's still waiting for everything to fall apart.

There's something that happens when a story like this is spoken out loud. It creates space between who you were then and who you are now. And space matters, because space is where choice begins to exist. It gives you room to notice what your body is doing as you listen, room to recognize familiar patterns without needing to judge them, room to feel whatever surfaced for you today without rushing it away. And from that space, something else becomes possible. The ability to stay present without immediately bracing for what comes next. That may not feel dramatic. But for those of us who grew up surviving, that shift is everything because fear loses its power when you're anchored to the present.

If this episode resonated with you, please share with someone who [00:21:00] might need it and take a moment to leave a review wherever you listen. Your review helps more people find the podcast and reminds others that they're not alone. Don't forget to subscribe or follow the show so you never miss an episode. You can also join me on substack, where I share weekly reflections and gentle reminders to help you feel less alone on your healing journey. You'll find the link in the show notes if you'd like to connect beyond the podcast. You can find me on Instagram at Born Tired Podcast. I'd love to hear what resonated with you. And if you'd like to support the podcast, there's a link there to buy me a coffee. Thank you for being here, for listening with an open heart. Most of all, remember this, your story matters, your voice matters, and you are not alone.

This episode was written and narrated by Eirene Torres. Audio production by Carlos Torres. Original music composed by Carlos [00:22:00] Torres.