I used to think I knew what discipline was.

I grew up with it. Every morning as a kid, I laced up my shoes and hit the track with my dad before at 5:00 am. By 13, I was already working. By 16, I was juggling three jobs while going to high school full time. And by 28, I was the breadwinner, training six days a week as an amateur Muay Thai boxer, featured in glamour magazines. My life looked polished and powerful from the outside.

Discipline, to me, was waking up at the crack of dawn.
It was dieting like a bird.
It was pushing my body to its absolute limits, breaking past thresholds of pain.

And to most people, that’s exactly what discipline looks like.
I thought so too…

But I didn’t really meet discipline—real discipline—until psychiatric drugs hijacked my brain, body, and spirit.

The Discipline of Survival

Discipline wasn’t in my gym bag anymore.
It wasn’t in early morning runs or the endorphin rush of a sparring session.

It was in the hell of withdrawal, when every second my nervous system screamed at me to die.

• “Drown yourself in the pool.”
  
  
• “Turn the car on in the garage and close the door.”
  
  
• “Tie your shoelace into a noose.”
  

They were relentless, every waking moment, every night I begged for sleep that rarely came.

Looking back now, I don’t know how I survived the worst of it. I don’t remember heroics or rituals. What I remember is the tiniest thread—something I gripped with nothing more than the corner of a fingernail.

That was discipline.

Certainly not glamorous. Just brutal survival.

The Discipline of “Not Doing”

When your body is broken open by psychiatric drug harm, discipline shifts. It stops being about action, hustle, or grind. It becomes the discipline of restraint.

• Don’t walk off, even when every part of you wants to..
  
  
• Don’t give in to the thoughts that promise relief in death.
  
  

It’s not about doing more—it’s about staying.
About not walking off when your system begs for escape.
About breathing through another second when it feels impossible.

That is the greatest discipline I’ve ever known.

Warriors in Disguise

I’ve met countless psychiatric drug warriors along this path. And every single one embodies a level of discipline and strength that the world doesn’t see (and we don’t see)…

There are no medals for this. No podiums. No applause.
But you’re still here.

And that makes you the champs of all champs… the heavyweight in a fight no one else could see — and you’re still standing.

Because there is no illness like psychiatric drug harm. There is no test of endurance like living through it. And there is no discipline greater than the discipline of staying alive when everything in you is begging to leave.

A New Definition

I used to believe discipline was found in the ring, under the lights, in the mirror of a magazine spread.

Now I know discipline is found in the dark—when no one is watching, when no one is celebrating, when the only victory is that you are still here…

So hats off to every warrior still holding on, even by a thread.
You carry the most revered kind of discipline that exists.

And that’s something the world needs to start honoring.

‍

One Love, 

Malissa