About Conscious Content

Where This Started

I drank every day for nearly eight years. Not casually or occasionally. Every single day. And through most of it, I was high-functioning. I showed up to work, made sure the job got done. Even when I came in late, even when I was falling apart internally. Because the work impacted something outside of me, and I had made a decision early on that if I was going to be destructive to myself, I was going to make absolutely sure it didn't touch the people around me. They didn't deserve lackluster treatment just because I was treating myself that way.

My family could see it though. They knew I was struggling and presented me with an opportunity to seek treatment. I decided it was either that, or my parents would have to bury their son. So I took it. I went to a domiciliary for veterans - Prior Service. Army. -, where they provided medication for weaning, social workers that taught coping mechanisms, inner work, anger management, and structured accountability. Somewhere in that process, I learned something that changed the entire trajectory of my life: how to take personal inventory.

What I Found

The hardest thing I saw when I looked honestly at myself was that I was responsible for everything that led me there. Drinking didn't control my actions or the mistakes I made along the way. I chose to do those things. The alcohol lowered my self-constraint, sure, but the desires were already there. If I wanted to do those things anyway, sober or not, it meant that I was a person who was genuinely poor in character. That I was not being a decent human being. And I had to sit with that without looking away from it.

And it worked. Not overnight, but cumulatively, I rebuilt my identity. I realigned my intentions to match the version of myself I actually wanted to become. The professionals who guided each of us there are heaven sent, and I am not the same person that I was before I walked through those doors.

How It Became This

Through recovery, a curiosity emerged that I couldn't let go of. I wanted to understand why those experiences - of the past that perpetuated self neglect - affected me the way that they did. Not just the surface-level story, but the actual mechanisms. The neuroscience. The behavioral patterns. What systems are internally involved when someone self-sabotages, dissociates, ruminates, or shuts down entirely?

I started studying, and what I found is that while our experiences are significantly different in many ways, the impact they have on us can be remarkably similar. The same psychological patterns kept showing up in my own life, in the people around me, and in many vulnerable discussions I had shared with those who expressed what they were going through in confidence.

Conscious Content didn't start as what it is today. Originally it was about sharing stories of personal struggle, the kinds of things people often think about but barely talk about. I wanted to create a safe place for honest conversation about those experiences. But through the process of creating, I found a deeper purpose. I pivoted from just talking about experiences to being more and more curious about how those experiences actually affect us psychologically, and what mechanisms are internally involved that influence them so deeply that they become embedded within our personalities.

Why the Apparel

The clothing say things like "Overstimulated" and "Dissociating." They are meant to name the state you are currently in. An unspoken boundary that clearly should be respected, without having to explain to another person what is going on.

In a world that is conquered by the digital space, there is so much activity, news, notifications, alerts, alarms, information, and noise flooding our minds on a daily basis. I truly believe that we were not meant to be this stimulated. So I put these together as symbols of that mental and emotional state.