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Checking in today.

I've been off the forum for a while now just dealing with getting my house in order. My grandson's car racing is keeping the whole family busy while I'm working to organize my house after decades of gathering clutter and losing track of who I am and what I want in life.

Clearing 40 years of clutter is emotionally difficult. In order to let go of thousands of items, I have to go through the emotions of loss over and over and over again. The pre-internet world was one of socializing and being close to neighbors and workmates. But the world we live in now is lonely and isolated. And every box I open reminds me of that.

I've always been affected by trauma, and I've always been unsure of myself, easily depressed and anxiety-ridden, but during my younger days I was also a socialite. In an effort to keep myself feeling valued, I put myself on stages, performing comedy and singing and officiating weddings and attending events and going out with friends and supporting my childrens' sporting events, and trying to start little in-home businesses. I was overachieving to try and make up for my lack of self-worth. I lived the life of someone who was trying to matter, but never felt like I could. No matter what mountain I climbed, I'd always see another mountain on the other side. Nothing ever satisfied my need to feel like I had the right to live on this earth with you all. But now, I live in a quiet, isolated world, and every box I open (And there are hundreds of boxes), I find things that once held value but no longer does. It's an emotional roller coaster to be doing this. And after working for weeks clearing clutter, organizing drawers, shredding thousands of old documents, I'm looking around and the house is still cluttered. It feels endless.

There's a little sense of accomplishment when a single desktop or drawer is finally organized, but then the next drawer or box or shelf just feels like I'm sinking back into the emotional clutter all over again.

I'm glad I'm finally taking this on, and it's giving me a lot of fodder for the healing mill. I guess we can't really heal if we don't have something to heal from. And all these boxes and documents and expired supplies are giving me a way to let go of the past. I live by the rule of "as above, so below" meaning that I have noticed that what happens inside me is symbiotically happening outside of me simultaneously. Letting go of the past is best done physically while it's happening emotionally. As I let go of my childrens's old toys and all our old medical files and jewelry that we'd all given to each other decades ago, I'm simultaneously letting go of my emotional connection to the past. As little boxes of items leave the house, I feel a little bit of release from my emotional attachments. It's like all those old sayings of "getting it off my chest" or "Feeling lighter". I can't believe how much past I've been hanging onto both emotionally and physically. I hope I can keep up the momentum, because at the speed I'm going now, it could take a year or more to finish decluttering this big old house. As difficult as the past was, this house used to be teaming with life. OUr children lived here, Coco's mom lived here with us for 14 years. There were always extra children sleeping on the floor in the TV room on Saturday mornings with our sons. It's just Coco and me now. And I have to find my peace with all that.

They say Change is the only constant, and I'm finding it to be true. The pre-internet society is gone. Our stores and roller rinks and dance clubs and bowling allies are all closing down because people socialize by text now. It's difficult for me to deal with. Isolation is one of our biggest problems as CPTSD survivors, and the world is now making isolation too easy for us. I sometimes feel like I haven't used my voice in days. I hide in my house just like everyone else does. I'm so grateful to have one of my two grandsons forcing the family out to the race track every weekend. The other boy, he lives in his bedroom with headphones on playing video games with the voices of other kids also hiding in their bedrooms. So it's a very big job this little guy has taken on to get his Papa and Gramma Coco out of our own home and out into the world again with him. For that I owe him a debt of gratitude.

I'll try to be on the forum again some more. But for now, I have to get ready for grandson's big day. He's been chosen as one of the little drivers who gets to drive on the big track today for the first time. His usual track is very small and is only for 5–14-year-olds. But today, they created a special event for 15 of the little drivers to drive their little cars on the big raceway and he is insistent that his grandparents be there to witness his big event. we won't see much of him because we'll be up in the stands with his other grandparents and aunts and uncles, but he'll know we're there, and that's his contribution to our social life. If it weren't for this event, we'd both stay in the house today just going through boxes again...alone.

I'm using his need for us to participate as a tool to help try and get myself out of the house again. I realize that I've spent my life feeling forced to experience life, and I've become too focused on my own personal inner self. I have become a Human-Having. I want to start valuing experience rather than my house and possessions. I want to go back to becoming a Human-BEING rather than a human-DOING or a human-HAVING. Or a human-HIDING.

The trick, for me, is going to be in feeling like I'm doing this for myself and not focusing on who is watching me. Even when I was a socialite it was all about image. I was more worried about what people saw me doing than I was about enjoying just doing it. Even now, when I ride my bike alone, I'm constantly looking around to see who's watching me. Am I pedalling correctly? Am I going fast enough to look like I'm having fun? HOLY MOLY! This has been so stressful, always watching to see who is judging me. I've spent my life working harder to look like I"m having a good time, rather than just letting myself HAVE a good time.

That made having fun into a stressful chore. I just want to relax and enjoy something without worrying about whether I'm enjoying it properly. My therapist once said I worry too much about "doing it right" and not about just enjoying it. (It being, anything I do). He has CPTSD also. He jokes with me that he and I are going to be on our deathbeds one day apologizing to the nurses for not dying properly.

I just want to breathe deeply and enjoy something for the experience of doing it without feeling like I have to write a summary report later proving I enjoyed it properly.

I have to get going. The racetrack is a busy place and we need to get ready to go.

In Love and Light and Compassion for all,
Papa Coco

I'm having thoughts that hit me this morning about how to handle my various trauma responses. 

I've been looking at the anxiety of abandonment as a problem. Today I realized that there are some of my anxieties that are connected to each other, like hybrids. A hybrid is something that's one thing AND another thing. The two things become one thing, like, there are electric cars and gas powered cars. But there are also hybrid cars that are both electric and gasoline.

Well, I realized this morning that the fear of abandonment is what's driven me into so much fear all my life, but that my fear of abandonment is a hybrid part of fear of being abandoned AND fear of being betrayed.

My fear of being betrayed makes me actually abandon people myself.

In 5th grade, my best friend suddenly wanted me to kiss him, and when I didn't, HE called ME gay, which in 1970 in a church school was the most shameful thing any boy could be called. It is still a difficult label to deal with in the world, but it was nearly a death sentence in 1970 Christian America. So, I was labeled and given the nickname "homo" which I never knew how to stop all the other people in that school from calling me for the remainder of my childhood. Meanwhile, at home, in my family, betrayal was just another thing to do every day of the week. My family would tell me things and make me believe them and then ridicule me in public for having believed what they'd told me. Or they'd instruct me to do something, and after I'd done it, they'd say I shouldn't have done that. In the end, my own sister wanted my share of the family inheritance so she tried to get me to kill myself so she could have my share... Betrayal. I can't just say I need help connecting with people if I don't also address the fear that getting close to people can be horrifically dangerous.

All these years in therapy I've been working to remedy my fear of abandonment, without even realizing that I can't connect with others because I fear they're going to betray me eventually anyway. So how can I find healing from my fear that nobody will connect with me, when deep down in the internal wiring, I'm the one who is blocking connection by being sure that being loved by someone will lead to the pain of betrayal anyway? My therapist says I was raised in a no-win scenario, where I was forced to trust people and then ridiculed for trusting them. I'm starting to truly grasp the truth in what he's been saying all along.

I don't know yet where this new epiphany will take me, but it sure helps to dig down and find the hidden little chains that are keeping me stuck to past anxieties.

DesertFlower,

I am laughing so hard right now at your response. SO beautiful!  P.T.U.N! 

Your brief response has cheered me up in a big way. I'll be smirking about our new acronyms now all day. From one P.T.U.M to one P.T.U.N., I hope we both have a more pleasant day today.

Take care, my friend,

[Journal Entry for today]

Journal Entry for today (Note: Two posts here. One above and this one here)

As mentioned above, I can feel the helplessness that bullies are running our world now, and that, even as they take and take and take, all I can do is move into a more spiritual sense of constant prayer for Love and Acceptance. SOME of my fears and EFs are legitimate because bullies really truly are taking my life away from me one hateful law at a time. But also, a great deal of my anxiety comes through EFs from having been raised in bullyish institutions. The present is reminding me of the past for a one-two punch and double the emotional duress. Having all my rights stripped away from me today feels just like it did in my childhood. That's where CPTSD is making my EFs worse than they need to be. I can't do much to stop my terror at losing our freedom, but I CAN continue to give my childhood EFs over and disconnect them from my memories.

The "real world" isn't making sense to me anymore, so I'm a parttime Urban Monk now (LOL). For a few hours a day, in prayer and meditation and in the books written by these experienced trauma therapists, I'm finding myself a little bit better each day at disconnecting my emotions from my memories. I'm getting much quicker at recognizing a trauma EF versus a real-life threat. And, as I practice allowing my emotions to talk to me, and I give my fears the love I wanted someone to give me the first time I felt them, the more I'm feeling able to handle the REAL threats in life without the Trauma attachment making the anxiety exponentially worse.

Coco had her hands full with me today. Every year I pay all of our taxes on our home, cars, and whatever else during the first week of April. My strategy is to get it all done at once and off my mind. Today I did it all while also updating all our car insurance paperwork. Long-story-short I got really confused with too many papers being handled at once. I started angrily yelling at my printer because it wouldn't scan properly. All my license tabs for my car's license plates came in the mail on the same day. My wife and I both drive Jeeps. Different years, different models, but when I got done tagging them with these expensive license tags, I realized I'd mixed them up and put mine on her Jeep and hers on mine. Panic just sent me into outerspace. I was angry, ashamed of myself for being angry, frustrated at my own stupidity for mixing up the tabs, and feeling afraid that my wife was going to be angry with me for my behaviors. The license bureaus are so busy they wouldn't answer their phones. Embarrassed, I had to get Coco out of what she was doing so we could drive into town to find out how to fix it. The fix was simple, but not until after I had burned up about 3 of my 9 lives. She took me out to lunch later to try to get me to calm down. While waiting for our food, I literally thanked her for loving me even in my skyrocketing anxiety episodes. She smiled calmly and said, "You're worth it."

Man, I got lucky when I met her 42 years ago.

I'm not immune to EFs. Probably never will be. But I'm getting through them faster now. Coco loves me and calms me down now in ways she couldn't have a year ago. I'd have been a ranting maniac and then a depressed sad sack for days if today had happened last year.

More and more, real life is confusing me. I'm contemplating having a doctor somewhere test me to see if I'm getting dementia or something. My therapist believes it is the state of the world along with me having to deal with so much pain and loss lately that he keeps saying, "You're just processing too much right now."

I see him tomorrow. I'll tell him the story of putting the wrong tabs on the wrong cars to see if he still believes I don't need to worry about my mental acuity.

CPTSD is a monster, but there are some truly good people trying to help us right now. I won't stop pursuing them. I read their books. I listen to their podcasts. I stay on this forum because it helps. It truly helps to reach out to kindred souls and feel the connection with my peers.

I'm getting a tad better because I'm finding connections with others who share in my burdens.

I can't do this alone. I just can't. I owe my gentle movement toward peace to the people who reach back when I reach out.

Thank you everyone.

Papa Coco: P.T.U.M. (Part Time Urban Monk) (with CPTSD).

[StartingHealing,]

StartingHealing,
I couldn't agree more about our modern life. I truly believe that we have created a culture that is totally unmanageable. I've started pretending I'm ready to give away all my possessions and join a monastary where I can live completely disconnected from all of it. Of course I have NO intention of acting on it. But today, I did tell my wife that I'm declaring myself to be a Part-Time Urban Monk. LOL. It's a comical comment, but it has a serious intent. I am rapidly losing interest in my possessions and clutter and chaos. I'm not planning to go into a monastery, but I'm now practicing a couple of hours a day doing what Monks typically do: which is Pray for peace, meditate for wisdom, study spiritual truth for emotional stability, and perform social service anyway I can. Helping friends, perhaps volunteering, or just being kind to everyone I meet on the streets and in the markets. It's making me feel less like a victim of the new world.

It's no secret that the US is falling victim to its own shame, but as the world crumbles around me, I'm moving my heart to Love and compassion. Those two things cannot be taken away from me if I value them strongly enough.

I've been telling friends that I don't want to hear the news. I don't listen, read, or watch any news anymore, because it robs me of sleep. Up until this last week, I would get frustrated at friends who would hear me tell them that I want to stay blind to it, only to have them start telling me what I have been trying to not hear. But last week, when a neighbor did that to me, told me all sorts of news items about how bad things are getting, it hit me that if I want to be a compassionate friend, that I need to lovingly let them express their terror to me, their friend. I grew up with secret stresses that nobody would let me talk to them about. My mother told me "don't bring your little school yard problems home for me to deal with". 4 suicide attempts later, I realized that all I'd needed was for someone to listen to my side of the story. So when a neighbor unintentionally unloads their terror onto me, I can love them and let them do so. My new policy, as of last Friday night, is to do my best to focus on my Monkish prayers for peace while still compassionately letting people be heard by me, their friend.

I can balance this. I can stay off the news, and I can still let them tell me what their greatest fears are. I'll hear what I don't want to hear, but in so doing, I'm helping carry a burden they can't find a way to let go of themselves. I don't have to respond by joining into their anger, but I can respond by letting them know that I'm as afraid as they are, and that I'm more concerned with comforting their pain than I am with the news stories of the day. I've learned that no matter what horrible situation a person finds themselves in, if we can find a sense of purpose, even in famine, and war, and imprisonment, that our sense of purpose can carry us through the pain of the situation. My sense of purpose is now to comfort my fellow humans in their fears of what is coming.

DesertFlower,
I have heard stories like that all my life, about how people casually blame women for being raped and targeted. I just can't believe people still do that, but they do. My daughter In Law once told me that she wished she could dress up to look pretty and go out with her friends to enjoy a nice night off, but if she does, too many ugly old men target her and ruin her night with lewd comments and very, VERY unwelcome invitations. It simply isn't fair, and it shows how far from reality too many people have gone. Why can't a young lady go out with her friends for a dinner and a few drinks without people saying, "She was asking for it"?

I am as disgusted by it as you are, but I do admit that I've walked a few miles in those shoes, which means I have an empathetic connection to the same type of disgust. In my teens I worked as a busboy in a lounge restaurant. More often than I can count, old men tried talking me into coming home with them after closing. I have always had a genuine smile and an interest in anyone who wants to talk with me. I guess that meant I was inviting them to tromp my boundaries also. And then, as a young adult, I had to quit using public gyms because too many times, I'd get phone numbers stuffed into my pockets, or invitations to go "skinny dipping" with other gym members.  It infuriated me that I couldn't just be a teenage boy with a job and a gym membership, but I also had to be a target for these old guys who had NO boundaries they wouldn't cross.

The more I learn about trauma disorders and how many people find their solace in addictions, sex addictions, drug, alcohol, even a desperate need for wealth and status, the more I see that this is how people hide from their own pain.

It's easier to blame victims than it is to stand up and admit that the bullies are the problem: NOT the victims. And what you said in today's post is that the politician in your country who said that IS A BULLY! And he bullied your entire country with that unconscionable declaration that women just need to stop letting men rape them.  We have those same lost, insensitive, selfish, narcissistic bullies running our country also. I do remember a year or two ago a high ranking official said that women can get raped and they won't get pregnant if they just don't want to.

We have a standup comedian here who lost my following when he said of 12 year old boys who get seduced by their 6th grade teachers, that we need to stop punishing the teachers because "boys want sex, so it's a fringe benefit." My God, How can people become so jaded?

Chart
:  Right back atcha! Thanks for the hug. They actually help.

L2N,

Your heartfelt and sincere posts draw me in every time. I feel, or have felt, every word of your recent posts in my own life also.  When I read your letters, I don't just understand the words, I feel them. Empathy does that. We empathize when we have walked in the shoes of another. And empathy is one of the most beautiful feelings in my life. Love, connection, forgiveness, empathy...these are the feelings that I live for, and BTW, those aren't poetic words. I live for connection. I am still alive today only because of connection. I've been rescued from suicide about 4 times now, at ages 12, 20, 20 again, and 50. Each suicide attempt came during a feeling that nobody was connected with me, nobody cared about me, and the pain from being alone in a crowded world was literally unbearable.

Today's post drew me in mostly from your contemplations on Hope.

Speaking only for myself, hope, like anything, can heal me or kill me, depending on how I use it. It kept me going for a long time, but it never brought me out of the pain. In fact, in my life, it eventually caused a lot of my pain because the thing I'd hoped for from birth just never, ever, ever materialized.

In 2010, after our baby sister's suicide, my huge Catholic family totally unraveled. We had finally come to a long-needed war that irreparably tore the entire clan apart once and for all. (I am quoted as saying "my family finally became so ugly that even I couldn't love them anymore"). My eldest sister and I both ostracized at the same time (actually I left first. A few years later she left also. I never knew my eldest sister because she was married and gone from the west coast when I was only a small child. We've recently reconnected, but neither of us are back in the family, nor do we even know if any of them are still alive or not). Our littlest sister had been one of the people who'd saved me from suicide in my childhood (1972). But by 2008, they'd driven her to suicide, and I wasn't able to save her the way she'd saved me. As with the death of your lifelong friend, my life changed course at the death of my beautiful little sister. Knowing it was the family that did it to her opened my eyes to realize they were at the root of my own suicides also.

In 2010. I cursed hope. It had driven me deeper into the jungles of hopelessness by failing to help me dig up and out of the loneliness of my life. I started looking for any way to lift myself up from despair without following my beautiful sister into the darkness. I found a quote that changed me profoundly.

"Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man."
― Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Sometimes, when we are so out of balance that we aren't even surviving, we suddenly overcorrect. We swing the pendulum too far the other way. If we do this on a bicycle, obviously we trade one problem for the opposite. Overcorrecting leads to an unrecoverable wobble and finally a mouthful of gravel in a twisted mess of flesh and chrome.  --But then, we learn, and we never overcorrect with the handlebars again. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

I think that's what I did. I over corrected. Nietzsche's life was a struggle from birth. He had proven to have insights into the human psyche that are still studied in psychology today, but at the same time he was riddled with health problems that not only didn't get better but progressed insidiously until his death. His hope for healing was unrealized. He was, in some ways, a fellow tortured soul. Perhaps more so than us. But his words of despair hit me in the heart and changed my view of life forever.

At first, I felt a huge relief. I saw that it was my hope that had kept me voluntarily tied to the deck of my family's sinking ship. My misuse of hope was from being raised in incurable pain. As a child I was helpless to defend against the jealousies and criticisms of my family and church. Since I felt helpless, hope was my only strategy for healing. Helplessness drove me to use hope too strongly. Hope had me sitting in wait for that ultimate apology from my abusers for what they'd done to my little sister and I. We were the late in life babies. My two next-elder siblings (#'s 2 and 3 of 5 --I'm #4) were much older than sis (#5) and I. Their abusive ways of treating us, coupled with the abuse the two of us had suffered in Catholic school, set us apart from the "real family" while it bonded us to each other like soldiers in a foxhole. (She's been gone since 2008, and I still cry when I try to talk about her). I know I'm not alone in feeling trapped in hope. I think this is what drive many people to say, "hope is all we have left". Hope can be driven by helplessness. When we have no other avenue, hope itself becomes the last hope.

I think that, for me, I have to realize that hope itself wasn't bad, but that when the day came that I could stand on my own, I had simply forgotten to stop relying solely on it like it was all I had left in the world.


TODAY: I'm trying to find the proper use for hope. It has a purpose, and I'm not good at truly recognizing what that purpose is. I relied on it solely to fix my pain, and obviously that's not what it was meant for.

I vilified it after sister's suicide. I walked away from it. I scorned it. I blamed it for my stalled lack of self-confidence to fix my own problems. I had wasted my life overdoing my hope for change to happen while the world around me went out and forged their own change. Hope didn't save her and it wasn't saving me. I had mistaken it for having a power it doesn't have, while somehow not truly learning what it's true power actually is.

I don't mean to be hijacking your journal. I just wanted to share with you that your words around hope touched me, and I wanted to share with you why they touched me. It's easy to say "I resonate" but the words "I resonate" mean more when I share with you why I resonate.

I guess, in what sounds like a lighthearted joke, but it's a serious comment, "I hope I can find the proper way to use hope" so it drives healing, rather than prolongs my agony.

I think that I am healing. I feel much more stable and able to let go of the pain of my past now. I know I can't change the past, but the books I'm reading now are teaching me how to heal the emotional pain of the unchangeable past.

But, I am truly working to find the real purpose and best use for hope in my own life.

As is my custom, I apologize for writing such a long response, and for possibly adding my own drama to your trauma. If I missed the mark here, by adding too much of my own feelings to yours, I apologize. You've sparked me to take a look at hope again, and I wanted to share with you that your posts are typically quite helpful to me.

Sincerely, and from the heart,

PC

Hi StartingHealing,

I like to share what I learn. I don't push it on anyone, but I figure if I share my experiences, positive, neutral or negative, perhaps others will find my reports helpful in their own lives also, and it would be wrong for me to not share what I learn with my peers. In the three levels of survival instincts, 1) Personal, 2) Tribal/national/family, and 3) Species, I think that my own personal need to share with people who have similar issues as mine must be an instinctual need to help my own peer group (level 2) survive in a world of pitfalls and beartraps. To me, it's my wiring and I can't seem to stop sharing.

At times, I look in the mirror and ask myself why I can't just shut up and keep my experiences to myself. I think, "I talk too much. I must be annoying to people", but before I go two steps, I suddenly feel an insatiable, organic urge to share what I'm learning with peers who might find it helpful. I guess there's shame involved also. I've been vilified and blamed and scapegoated for things I did and for things I didn't do. My family would routinely blame ME for their mistakes for not somehow warning them not to do stupid things. No matter who fell in my big Catholic family, somehow it was my fault for their injuries. If I was there, it was my fault they fell. If I wasn't there, then it was my fault for not catching them. My therapist routinely reminds me that I grew up in a no-win scenario, vilified at home and at Catholic school, and always for the purpose of shifting their blame onto a naive stooge (me).

It sux to be the villain in other people's stories. That's actually what has been the underlying cause of most of my past suicide attempts.

I hope to hear more about your hypnosis experiences. As you begin to realize if or how it works, I'm open to hearing about it. I'm interested in possibly finding a good hypnotherapist also. I just want to hear that it was helpful for trauma release before I go through the exercise of finding one, and then investing my trust, time and money. My past hypnosis experiences have been a mixed bag of not at all helpful, up to somewhat helpful, but I've never really found a truly qualified practitioner. Mostly it was people who said they could help me quit smoking, only to realize it didn't.

L2N

You are very articulate. The way you describe what you go through is clear and easy to connect with.

I understand what you're saying. I'm grateful that you know that people really do love you, and that people (like me) really can see you and can feel your need for connection. I am also glad that you are aware that the problem is internal, and by how you describe it, I would agree that you seem to have a strong understanding of where it came from and why it haunts you. 

I have been trying to define what "cured" means in own life, and your posts are sort of helping me to find the answer. Today I realize that I don't need to feel like life has no problems. I don't need an easy life, and I don't even need to never feel threatened again. What I NEED is to gain the ability to feel the love that comes my way. I think that's what I'm learning here right now, thanks in large part to your posts on the subject.

Ever since you joined the forum, I think my loneliness has sensed the similarity with yours. Birds of a feather recognize each other in a crowd, I guess.

I assume you talk with your therapist about this. In my case, I wasn't aware of myself enough to know why I felt generically "bad" when I started therapy. It wasn't until one session about 5 years ago, when I told my therapist how I was feeling, and he said, "That sounds so lonely." It hit me like a flash of light. I'd never considered that the hollowness and inability to connect with the people I loved was called "loneliness" but that is exactly what it is. Once I identified my generic unhappiness as loneliness, I started working with my therapist to tackle it, and we are starting to make some progress. Finally.

I'm starting to feel a tad bit better at allowing myself to accept people's love. I have a long way to go, but for now, I just like sharing with you that loneliness and difficulty in accepting love are my own personal struggles also. And some days are better than others.

It seems we both know that we're loved and lovable, but we struggle to feel it. So, that's our shared challenge: to feel the love we haven't yet developed the skills to accept.

We both may feel lonely, but we are doing it in the same lifeboat together.

Blue Sky,

It's so great to have you back, stronger than ever. 2024 sounds like it was a novel unto itself. I'm very glad you survived it AND came out of it stronger than ever.

Your post is inspiring. I can feel the cheerfulness in your written voice, and it makes me feel a little cheerful too.

Good idea to change the title from "Blue's blues". That title was appropriate in 2023, but after rising up stronger in 2024, "Blue Sky Blooming" feels more appropriate to who you are now.

And congratulations on finding a new company that you more enjoy working with.

Happy 2025!!!! 

L2N

I couldn't agree more with everything you wrote here today. There is barrage of techniques emerging, and most of them only provide temporary relief.

I see you as a person with a deep and open heart. I can sort of feel your search for connection, which gives me a sense of closeness with your writing. Your heart is open. That is so obvious to me. I see you as an innocent soul with a wide-open heart just simply asking for connection with other souls, and I can't help but find that beautiful.

After trying to get help from 7 different therapists over 45 years and finally finding the one who doesn't rely on strategies and techniques, but who prepares himself before each client, and connects, heart-to-heart with each of us as we enter into our hour with him, I'm able to see that I'm finally, actually moving toward healing from my traumas. I'm not "healed," and may never be completely healed, but I'm so much more stable and in control, even during EFs, today than I was even just a few months ago, and certainly more so than a year ago. My pain was in how lonely I always felt, even when with loved ones. I don't feel lonely anymore. I feel like people really can see me now. I have to credit my therapist for this by his showing me what it feels like to be respected and seen, at the heart level, not just the intellect and emotions. When I'm in his office, I feel like he truly wants me to be there. He's more like a friend first who just happens to also be a highly skilled therapist, and it takes BOTH of those angles to reach into me and help fill the loneliness.

7 previous therapists, even the kind ones, were not really connected with me. Some were kind and polite, but nobody really made me feel like I was as important as they were. I was the patient, and they were across the room as the doctor. No matter what they helped me with, the benefits were temporary. Within a year of them "curing me" with their book-learned tricks and techniques, all my problems returned, but just a little more serious than when they'd left. I'd connected only intellectually with them. The problem is that my intellect is already fine. It's my heart that is reaching out to the crowded world in search of connection. So, any therapist who wants to help a trauma survivor, has to connect with the heart. The heart is the opening to our damage. When my current therapist connects with me and guides me into a feeling of being important to him, I start to find my way out of the emotional and heady chaos that has defined me for 6 decades.

What he does was taught to him by someone somewhere, and I believe he now teaches a bit of it to other therapists as well.

After a deep search on Amazon, I just took delivery of a book called Relational and Body-Centered Practices for Healing Trauma, 2nd edition, by Dr. Sharon Stanley, PhD. I've never heard of her, but the book looked like it spoke to what I find to work, and lucky for me, the second edition came out just last week, so I've gotten her most updated information. In the rapidly evolving landscape of trauma, and Trauma Informed Care (TIC), her book, released a week ago, is about as up-to-date as it could possibly be. (As the old TV commercials used to say "The only fish that's fresher is still swimming in the sea"). TIC is evolving quickly, so the fresher the information, the better.

I just finished the long introduction and will start chapter one tonight or tomorrow. I can't believe how lucky I am to have stumbled onto her work. The book appears to be written more to teach therapists how to put down their textbook tricks and gimmicks, and truly connect, empathetically, with their clients. I can't be certain, but I think my therapist might have learned what he does from the same people she learned it from. I'm going to show him the book and ask him that next week when I see him again. so far, everything she's saying about a therapist being more of an empathetic person than an intellectual doctor is tracking exactly with my experience with my therapist. I will be surprised if he says he hasn't at least heard of her books.

The thing he's been giving me with his approach is a feeling that I'm as welcome in the game as everyone else is.

I've long believed that the most insidious cause of my CPTSD was the crushing loneliness from feeling unprotected, unwanted and unwelcome on the earth right from birth. My need to be connected with the people around me was treated like a joke, and I have always felt like I've been standing on the side of the road with my arms open just hoping someone would finally love me.

I think that what's helping me to feel less in my head, and more in my heart, and connected with others is that my current therapist cares more about me being a person than me being a patient.

I've told him that I worry he'll retire. His response is, "Why would I retire when I love what I do so much?"

I just had a thought: As a boy I had two favorite celebrity heroes. Victor Borge and Red Skelton. As a small boy of only about 6 or 7 years of age, I would watch them on TV and listen to their jokes, and I could just tell that they truly loved their audiences. Borge, especially, was extremely talented as both a pianist and a comedian. But what made me want to go into comedy myself was his and Skelton's obvious love for the people who came to enjoy an hour with them. I think that might be what I see in my therapist's demeanor. He loves his patients the way Borge and Skelton appeared to love their audiences. And I really, really respond to people who can squeeze in through my loneliness and who will open their hearts to share an hour with me.

I think, next session, I'm going to tell my therapist how he makes me feel the way Borge and Skelton did. If I were younger, and just a little more stable, my therapist might have motivated me to become one myself. It's a little late for me to go to college for that, AND I'm still not certain I could do the job. I still have a few too many ghosts walking the halls of my haunted brain.

On my public email, my signature block reads, "The shortest distance between two people is a smile" --Victor Borge, 1909-2000. L2N, if you could see my face right now, you'd see that smile. You're not actually alone. You may feel alone, but that's just trauma playing its tricks on you.

PC.

Thanks to all of you for the support.

It appears most of us here at home are doing pretty well with this latest loss. Death happens, and I seem to be getting used to it. The grieving is already starting to release its grip on me.

I have a little downtime today and have made the conscious decision to try disconnecting from all the things I do to keep from being alone with myself.

I've become that guy who has to have stimulation going every second of the day. Even when I'm in a quiet place like the beach, I clutter the silence with outside stimulation. I have lost myself in the noise of constant music in my ears, or having the TV on, or even just playing solitaire on my cell phone to keep from being alone with no outside (intrusive) stimulation. I don't even eat in silence. I turn the TV on at lunch time and eat on the sofa. When I'm done eating I barely remember what I ate. I don't even savor the food I'm eating anymore.

I now see why people go camping in the woods, or fishing on quiet lakes, or even just going for day hikes without being connected to anything but nature. I realize that I miss it terribly.  When the world goes quiet, and I don't fill the void with music, tv, puzzles, housework, or solitaire, time slows down. The silence itself becomes the music that fills me with natural nothingness. I've lost that. I want it back. Most of my best memories from childhood were those times when I just laid in the sunlight and let it warm me. Our cat does that. In the summer she lays on the ceramic tiles of her little patio that I made for her and suns herself for hours. Coco and I chuckle when we see it, but not-so-deep down I'm more envious than anything. As a younger man, I used to like to rent apartments that had outdoor pools where I would lay in the sun like my cat does for hours at a time just being with my thoughts and enjoying the warmth. Never really falling asleep but just letting the muscles relax while listening to the sounds around me and feeling the sun. I miss that. Not the pool, just the being with myself. Content. Sunning. Listening to the world's motion. So peaceful.

I will start my disconnection from stimulation in small doses. I will take short walks without my earbuds playing music or audible books. I will stop playing solitaire when things get quiet.  I'm SO GLAD I disconnected from social media a year ago. That's an addiction that takes serious work to break.

There was a time when I would intentionally separate myself from my cellphone, but there were too many instances that came up when someone needed to talk with me and I didn't have my phone on me. I didn't get their text or phone call until the next day. That became a problem, so I had to start keeping my phone on me 24x7. With kids and grandkids who live on their phones, then I need to be near mine too if I want to be available at all. Now I feel like I need to have that cursed device on me all the time. And now that it's always a fingertip away, I fall into the trap of looking at it all the time. Also, it has apps in it that I use to check surveillance cameras and my glucose monitoring. With the glucose monitors, you have to always be within a few feet of the phone, or the ongoing measurements don't record.

It's a trap. It seems like all our cool inventions are more like ropes that are used to tie us down tighter and tighter to the chaos of the world.

I miss the quiet of the pre-computer age.

I pray for peace in the chaos. So, therefore I need to do my part now and stop voluntarily connecting to the chaos.

There was a time when being alone was frightening, but with the therapy and releasing that I've been doing, I'm starting to find times when peace doesn't bring up the ghosts of the past so boldly anymore. I am starting to feel moments during the day where I'm not so afraid of my past anymore.

Today will be a good day, especially if I can find myself enjoying a few moments of quiet stillness.

One step at a time.

Slow down, you move too fast
You got to make the morning last
Just kicking down the cobblestones
Looking for fun and feeling groovy

--Simon and Garfunkle.

StartingHealing,

I'm really glad you share your experiences with the various trauma treatments that you continue to explore. Reading the reports of my peers here, is very helpful to me. We don't have to be an expert to share our experiences with one another. It's like we are each a beggar, telling the other beggars where we found food.

The only TRUE way to be certain you never catch a fish, is to never go fishing. And when I read your posts, I see a peer who is also truly rooting around in the world in search of the morsels of healing that might be hidden in plain sight. In the spirit of peer support, as we share our experiences with one another, we expose the treatments and we all benefit.

I have led a similar life. I'm never okay being damaged. I'm finally able to stop apologizing to my wife for spending our money and time on my various therapy attempts. She has NEVER criticized me for this, in fact she sometimes thanks me for diligently pursuing healing. But my trauma tells me to apologize for it anyway. At least it did up to recently, when I've learned that I'm doing what's best for both of us.

I'm so grateful that this forum is free of charge and accessible anywhere I have internet because it fills in for me when I can't afford or access treatments that I hope will help.

I once learned that our brains attach to people differently depending on who they are in our hierarchy. I respect and get benefit from my professional therapist with one part of my brain. He teaches. I learn. It works. But it's a different part of the brain entirely that connects me to peers. Peers connect and share and comfort and support on an equal plane. I learn from authority in one part of my brain, and I learn the glory of support and comradery from peers in a different part of my brain. My therapist gives me knowledge. My peers give me the experience of not being alone with this. I need BOTH of these things. It's important that we connect with peers AND that we find authorities, whether in therapists, teachers, experts, books, podcasts, blogs, documentaries, etc.  I love this forum for giving me peers I can relate to so well, and I love my therapist for how he speaks from a position of authority on healing and trauma.

Today it became starkly obvious to me that I adapt quickly to what I'm reading or learning at any given time. It makes me feel like I'm a different person each day. I read a lot of books that explain how physical and spiritual realities blend. Levine's books, which I'm reading now, are teaching me how physical and emotional realities mix. I realized this morning that I'm not praying quite as much as I did last week while I was all up in the books about spirituality. Now I'm really into the psychology again of how and specifically why our pasts continue to ravage our present moments.  This is okay. When we're in a college program, we think the world is made of numbers while we're in math classes. We think the world is made of fruit bowls and forests when we're in an art class. We think the world is made of horrors while learning about the dark ages, or wars and tortures. All of the courses deserve their turn at the front for long enough time to teach us, and to allow the knowledge to sink in and become part of our global, multidimensional perception of the world.

When I read your comments about how memories are EF'ing you right now, I imagine that somehow, the past has something it wants to say to you, and it's come up to the front of the room to get your attention. During EF's the possible healing is greatly increased. I don't learn when I'm happy and satisfied in life. I learn when I'm in need of learning and while I'm open to it. My therapist often says "Good!" when I come in during an EF. He says, "We can do some good work today."

I hope that whatever your past has woken up for these last few weeks helps you to move a few more steps away from the traumas of your own past.

We're all in this together, and we're stronger when we share together. Thank you for your open sharing.

PC.

[fLight]

Chart and StartingHealing,

Thank you for the supportive responses. I know that shame is a huge part of CPTSD in a lot of people, not just me. And when friends jump in and help work through it, well, that just feels amazing. To feel supported is why a lot of us joined this forum, and for me, this forum did not disappoint. I feel support from so many people and I enjoy lending my own support to others in return. I like to think of it as I have two hands; one for giving and the other for receiving, and love flows when both hands are doing their jobs at the same time.

Journal Entry for March 25

In my focus on shame itself, I'm becoming more able to see under the hood of what shame is, why it exists, and how it was able to achieve a lifelong grip on my nervous system. On Saturday, I got to see how being restrained as a child is playing out in my life today as we were headed to the bowling alley for a grandson's birthday party. It's a local bowling alley, so I had a hundred different routes I could take to get there. I chose the fastest route, which includes 5 miles on the freeway. I didn't realize that Saturday traffic has gotten as thick as it has. As soon as we were committed to the onramp, unable to turn back and stick to sideroads, we saw that the 4 lanes of the freeway were now a parking lot. Movement was happening, but not much faster than walking speed. I told my usual two traffic jokes: 1) "Honey, if you're in a hurry you can walk from here and I'll meet you there when I can." and 2) "I hope we don't get a parking ticket for sitting here too long." But all joking aside, I felt the anxiety in a much more obvious way than ever.

Because of the books I've been reading by Peter Levine, I was aware enough of what restraint and entrapment do to me, to recognize that my heart and throat and shoulders tightened, and all my organs felt like they were vibrating in terror. As you may have noticed through my past writings, I have an unnatural anxiety around traffic. Nobody likes being stuck in traffic, but being stuck in traffic makes me feel terror. Horror. My fingers grip the steering wheel. My arms stiffen. My driving foot begins to shake uncontrollably, and I begin to drive aggressively. I have to own powerful cars because if I'm in an underpowered car I feel even more trapped. I floorboard it to get around people. Many times, I could have been ticketed for aggressive driving, even though I feel like I'm not being aggressive. I'm not in fight mode, I'm in fLight-mode, desperately trying to escape in a panic as though my life depends on it. Up to now, I have routinely planned my entire life around traffic and crowds as best I can.

Because I've been studying Levine's work, I was able to see that my unnaturally over-exaggerated terror of being stuck in traffic, or trapped in a crowded room, is a monster that has burrowed its tentacles into every aspect of my life. For me, traffic is not an inconvenience, it's another experience of being restrained and helpless. The terror I feel in crowds or in traffic is the same terror I felt as a child being held down and abused. (PS: It didn't happen often to me. Only a few times when I was about 7 years old, but in the world of trauma, it only takes one near-death event to create PTSD). Restraining a mammal flips all the survival switches in that person's mammalian brain. You cannot fight or flee while restrained. You can't "go down fighting". All you can do is retreat into your brain and hope in helpless abandon that the predator doesn't kill you. When they don't kill you, the damage is now done. The brain knows that being trapped is always possible and it remembers what it felt like to succumb to the reality that total 100% helplessness is always possible.

Why I feel forgiven now

My fear of being trapped without an ability to fight or flee, has been a source of massive shame. I have lived mostly in the shame of how I react to non-life-threatening things like traffic, and more specifically, I'm very ashamed when my normally calm and polite driving becomes aggressive when I'm in a life-threatening panic. I'm ashamed of my obsession with cameras, alarms, locks, insurances, stored emergency supplies, etc. I'm embarrassed/ashamed of how much time and money and energy I spend trying to feel safe and never accomplishing a feeling of safety. So I try harder to make sure nobody ever traps me again. Ever. But it's a treadmill to run on and get nowhere. I keep buying more cameras and more alarms and more insurance, but that feeling of being unprotected just keeps coming at me like from an eternally gushing firehose aimed right at me.

The reason I keep saying "I feel forgiven" is because I now recognize how all of my embarrassing reactions to normal daily stress are rooted in how my own survival instincts were abused and stripped away from me. Somehow, truly knowing WHY I act like a nervous Ned, helps me feel forgiven for it all. Learning the mammalian function of how I am the product of a traumatic childhood, is releasing me of feeling like I'm the * who can't handle life because, as the Catholics always said, I "chose" to be a nervous wreck. Another fact I put in all my novels is how the Catholics who abused me never said, "Oh you made a mistake because you're young. Let me help you learn". Instead, they would scowl and grab my arm or earlobe, or the short hairs on my neck, sometimes nearly bruising me, and say, "What made you think THAT was a good idea?" Of course I had no way of knowing that the reason I didn't know how to fly a 747 from birth wasn't my fault. Their treatment of me not knowing how to do advanced math on the day I was born was THEIR bad. Not mine. To me, the only answer I could come up with at age 6 for "What made you think THAT was a good idea?" was because I was obviously stupid. They used the words ALL THE TIME: "SHAME ON YOU!"

So, what Levine has finally been able to get through my thick skull is that I truly am not shameful in wanting to survive. I think his books are proving to my deeper inner subconscious mind that all the embarrassing reactions I have to life are not because I'm stupid, but because my survival instincts were stripped away and I've been forever stuck in the loops that ABUSE PUT ME IN. All my embarrassing behaviors are the result of what I was created to do: Survive. And for once in my life, I finally feel like that's okay. I'm not a bad guy. I'm earnestly just trying to feel safe in a world where safety is an illusion.

The trick now is to hold onto this feeling of forgiveness indefinitely.

On a quick journal note: We lost another kid. The boy (J) who'd grown up with our two sons from age 3 to 37 died suddenly of a Deep Vein Thrombosis last week. A blood clot broke loose in his leg and was pumped into the heart which killed him instantly. We are delicately watching our younger son in case the distress of losing J brings him to another bipolar episode. Our poor son has a gift that he feels is an affliction. The day before J died, our son texted us saying, "I feel it again. Something bad is about to happen and I don't know what, so I'm just warning everyone to be on the watch for an earthquake or a death or something."  He actually feels death before it happens often. This contributes to his imbalance. He does not like being warned. He calls it a curse. And it often goes in conjunction with his bipolar episodes.

So far I think we're okay.

J's mom is not a fan of funerals, and neither are we. We've been in too many funerals where the true evil in family members bubbles up. My evil sister made such a disgusting narcissistic fool out of herself at my mother's funeral in 2009 that I have never been to a funeral since. J's mom was raised very similarly to me, and her family has all the same players in it that mine does, so she isn't ready to subject herself to another disgusting family event. J's life was not going well. Her Catholic family likes to judge just like mine did, so with J being gone after bouts with drugs and homelessness, just opens her up to being treated like she deserved to lose her son, so she's going to wait until warmer weather and she's going to have a celebration of life rather than a disgusting, family feud of a funeral.

On a side note: What I'm learning about myself is teaching me about others too. It turns out we are all mammals with mammalian brains and nervous systems. I am far more acutely aware now that non-narcissistic people who are judgmental and cruel are just as damaged as I am. It's not their fault any more than my anxieties are mine. True narcissism is born into about 4% of all people, but the rest of us who are beaten and abused into becoming mean or judgmental are more the product of our own past abuse. I see it for real now, that except for narcissists, we are all more forgiven than we realize. I choose to not let my family abuse me anymore, but only one member of my entire family is a true naturally born narcissist, so I can forgive the rest of them, while continuing to stay estranged from them just for my own health. Like I often say, "You don't have to hate alligators to know not to swim in their pond with them." It's like that thing people say, "You be you and I'll be me." We just don't have to be together.

Perhaps as I continue to study and evolve from the books and treatments I'm absorbing, I'll one day even find myself able to forgive narcissists. For now, that's not yet happening. I still think my sister is an actual witch---and is deadly dangerous. Everyone else in my family are just damaged goods interacting with other damaged goods and doing so in damaged ways; judgementalism, criticism, conditional love, selfishness, finger-pointing. All the usual sins of human life.

As they say, Hurt people hurt people.

[I'm having deep reactions to Pete Levine's books]

I'm having deep reactions to Pete Levine's books

I feel like my understanding of how I became who I became is very alive right now. Really awake. Levine is giving me the information that's turning cold, tired information into warm, living thoughts and feelings.

Actually I feel like an accident victim. When a person is lying on the ground after an accident, they are no longer concerned with the shopping list, or the price of eggs, or who is winning what election where. When lying on the ground, the greater world vanishes. The only focus is on the moment, and the hope that help is on its way. That's how I feel right now. Like I'm hyper focused on the present moment and my injuries. It feels heavy, but it also feels better than the normal sense of numbness and apathetic acceptance for how I've lived my life.

I read Trauma and Memory once and listened to the audiobook twice. I think I got everything he was saying. So I downloaded another of his books and have so far listened to more than half of it just since yesterday so far.

These books are pulling me into a deep emotional state of grief. (in a good way). (I hope this makes sense, but grief feels alive. People who don't grieve live disconnected to feelings). I'm at the edge of tears. I feel like Levine not only knows what I go through, but he truly grasps why I'm going through it. As a child, when we cry out for help and nobody comes, it traumatizes us. As an adult, reading Levine's books now, after having cried out for help 60 years ago, I feel like Levine has finally answered the call, and I feel really emotionally engaged. I can't tell if I'm happy or sad, but tears for some reason keep slipping down my face.

This book, In An Unspoken Voice by Peter Levine, is BLOWING ME AWAY with what feels like the answers I've been looking for my whole life. This book was written apparently before the term Complex PTSD was ever coined, but everything he says is like the intelligence behind Pete Walker's book. Levine's book is a lot more scientific, and he is blowing my mind with how well he's describing how and why I became who I became.

In this book, Levine says that children who were restrained while being abused have a lot more serious residual unresolved trauma than those who were not restrained. I was restrained. Everything he's saying is touching me so deep I'm ready to cry. This feels like someone has finally pulled the fire alarm and my rescue is finally now coming. This mammalian reaction of becoming far, FAR more traumatized through restraints includes children who were restrained by dentists and doctors during medical procedures. Restraining a mammal activates the deepest, most raw sense of helplessness in the conscious experience. He explains the Freeze response as a "going immobile" to either die in peace or watch for a chance to escape and run. He explains these things in a way that truly makes me see that I can't fix this myself. I am almost in tears reading (actually listening to the audio file of the said book). I will never be a man who wasn't abused as a boy, but the most I think I can hope for is to try, try, try to find some daily peace from the embedded guilt and shame that has defined my entire life so far.

In his books, Levine describes the damage from restraints as being given the experience of 100% helplessness. (OMG! He's talking about ME!) Our survival instincts are to fight or flee. When we can do neither we go immobile. We freeze and dissociate. If I were to get into a fist fight with another person, even if I lose the fight my body and soul know that I fought back. I had power. It may not have been enough power to win, but I held my own. What some people say is "At least I went down fighting." That's significantly better than being restrained and ignored. Instead of being able to say with pride, "I went down fighting" the restrained victim can only say to themselves, "I was helpless. There was nothing I could do. And nobody would help me." That message, because it was given during experience, becomes the root of the follow-on years of repeating the shame over and over again in what I call, the looping walk of unresolved past ghosts wandering and repeating the emotions of helplessness and freeze through the halls of my inner haunted mansion. When restrained we can't fight back or flee and when ignored we can't even scream out and get help from our fellow man. Our bodies have now experienced 100% helplessness. THAT brings the shame that our bodies remember we didn't fight back, and it brings the freeze response, which Levine calls the Immobilization of our awareness so we can either die in peace, or watch for a moment where an escape might become an opportunity.

I live with so much shame of being the broken person that I am. I still feel horrific shame for all the money I've spent on trying to find happiness in new cars and tools and toys, and for all the money I've given away under duress for fear that if I don't give my money to others I'll be punished. I feel stupid for spending so much energy and money on cameras and locks and alarms and backup generators and all the expensive crapola I do to try and feel safe in a body that can't feel safe. I am on the treadmill of running toward a sense of safety that I'll never achieve. I feel ashamed of every addiction I've had to fight off. I feel horrific shame at my inability to stop isolating. I have the most amazing, awesome, beautiful wife of 42 years and still I hide alone as often as I can. Levine talks to great lengths about how helplessness at age 6 and 7 is still haunting me today, and how much chronic and constant shame people like me live with. His book is a message to me that the shame I feel is trauma and it's normal and It isn't real shame. I didn't do anything wrong. I can't rewire my mammalian response to being attacked, but today I can say with clarity "I, at the very least, want to stop feeling ashamed of feeling ashamed."

He mentions in an early chapter that we shouldn't call it PTSD but PTSI. D is for disorder. I would be for injury. Having a broken arm is not called Broken Arm Disorder. It's called an arm injury. Why does having my healthy brain damaged by bullies have to be called a disorder? CLEARLY it's injury from attack, JUST LIKE a broken bone or stab wound, neither of which are called "disorders". Not a disorder. Maybe we could keep the D but change the word it refers to Damage. Complex Post Traumatic Stress Damage.

Anyway, for me, today is all about shame. The shame that I have lived with all day and all night for 60 years. The more I learn about the science of CPTSD, the more my intellect knows I have nothing to be ashamed of, but holy moly, I can't seem to convince my heart that I have no reason to be ashamed of who I am.  It makes so much sense when I look at it this way: I once cried out to my people for help and nobody helped. I was restrained, which takes away 100% of all sense of ability to protect myself. I cried out for help, which is what we are designed to do, but nobody came. It makes perfect sense to me why I feel slightly better being alone and isolated from the society that let me down and proved physically that they are not on my side.

I'm not going to say "I want to be cured" again. I'm finally starting to realize that I really need to focus on being okay with being damaged. There is no cure. The trick is to be okay with what just is. It's when we want something we can't have that we suffer. Wanting a cure where there is no cure just prolongs my suffering.


I'm feeling really kind of weak at the moment, but glad, at the same time, that this realization is hitting me so hard. It feels like I'm getting connected with the real truth. I think the part I like most about it is that if I can truly grasp that this was damage done because of restrained abuse, that at least I can say it isn't my fault that I'm a mess who can't handle money or who hides in a run down little cabin on a beach where nobody knows me. I have been so ashamed all my life for being broken. I don't know if I can truly heal from the shame, or if simple awareness and daily struggles to remember I don't need to feel ashamed is the best I'll be able to accomplish.

For the moment, I feel very much alive. Sad. But alive. Like in during a time of grief, I feel like my world view has shrunk to the 10 feet around me. Like the rest of the world just lost all its meaning and my entire body and brain are focused only on the present feeling of loss and change.

I don't feel a need to run my hands under icy water, because I feel very much alive right now. I think that what I read yesterday about how any child who is restrained and harmed like I was would be as damaged (or more damaged) than I am. For the moment...I wish I could say "from this moment on", but I only know that "for the next 5 minutes or so", I hope to at least feel forgiven. Forgiven.

I realize today, in the rawest way I've ever felt it, that all I want in life is to feel forgiven.

I live in regret for things I have no need to regret. I see only my sins when I look back. I feel ashamed and I just want, more than anything right now, to feel forgiven for every stupid thing I became after that abuse. Shame is the feeling of being unforgiven. Unforgiven for becoming a hot mess after an attack. This is today's great challenge. Knowing this was trauma is one thing. FEELING the forgiveness for being damaged is a whole different story.
 
In Love and Light, Papa Coco:

Here's the song that speaks to me today so deeply that I wish I had written it myself.

Wannabe
By Taylor Kingman

I wannabe strong
That time I proved I was right, I was wrong
That time we talked all night, man I was drunk
Last time I came, babe, I was gone
I wannabe strong

I wannabe kind
I wannabe all open windows and warm apple pie
I wannabe slowly blowing breezes in the sweet by and by
I wannabe arms open wide and baby it's alright
I wanna be kind

I wanna be wise
I've sat stoned until sunrise, and I bet I looked divine
And I've cowered with conviction, and I bet I looked wild and sly
And I've talked too long too loud, and I bet I look proud and right
But I wannabe wise

I wannabe clear
I wanna wear out my wanderin' and I wanna be here
I wanna sober up and let sleep be the vintage of my ears
I wanna wake in my walking through the valley of voyeurs and mirrors
I wanna be clear

I wanna be true
The blossoms of love are blighted with fear in the roots
And that moment was honest, untouched by the next moment's truth
And I'm sorry for all I've taken and I'm sorry for all I've let loose
I wanna be true

I wanna be forgiven
For giving up on everything I knew
I wanna be true

I finally started reading some of Peter Levine's books. He invented Somatic Experiencing. I tried reading his books a few years ago but they seemed rediculous. But now, reading them is a whole different story. I think I wasn't ready for him back then, but I'm ready for him now that I understand the difference between hearing words versus experiencing events. Somatic Experiencing brings the past back to life and allows us to fix it.

I can now see where my therapist got his skills. He's never told me that it's called somatic experiencing. He just does it. And I respond very well to it.

Levine lives by the rule that for people with trauma disorders, the past is more real than the present. The past is real. It is made up of real things that reach into the present and pester us, like EFs, sleeplessness, isolation, fear, depression, anxiety, digestive issues, inflammation, etc., etc., etc.

For me to realize that the past is still real, gives me a feeling of hope. I started reading his book, Trauma and Memory on Sunday and by today I already feel like the past is opening up for me to explore. Normally, the past would feel intrusive on the present, but today, this connection to the past feels like I've been given a back stage pass, or access to holy ground. A lot of authors say that we can change the past, and up until now I thought those were just poetic words, but after reading how Somatic Experiencing works, I realize that the past is still real, and I still have a chance to heal it.

A lot of stories are told of apparitions (ghosts) who wander the halls of a house or hospital. Many times, it's reported that these ghosts are stuck in a loop, where every night, they repeat the same walk down the halls in search of something that wasn't resolved in their past. That's how I see my past. I am stuck in some loops that make me repeat self-abuse and addictive behaviors. I have no reason to be afraid of my neighbors and yet I continue to believe they are judging me and laughing at me behind my back. I know it's not happening in present reality, but it IS happening in my past, which is still alive in my head and heart and emotions. My past ghosts are still wandering my head searching to resolve what wasn't resolved. In Somatic Experiencing, I can experience things again, and have my therapist help me resolve them once and for all. A good therapist will know how to set up a physical scenario, usually using a pillow in my therapist's office, where my muscles get a chance to push off an abuser or grab onto something that was taken from me in the past. By making sure I'm emotionally in the past while giving my body a chance to finally defend itself, it helps that ghost find the resolve it didn't find when the original abuse took place.

I have a lot of problems with self-defense. I tend to move very slowly while fighting in Tae Kwon Do or the self-defense classes I've taken. I have strong slow-twitch muscles and very weak fast-twitch muscles. I'm strong but not agile. I believe in my heart of hearts that I'm too weak and slow to ever protect myself if violence ever befalls me, so therefore I have made this belief from my past into a current day reality. No doubt this belief keeps me afraid of everyone, and it is rooted in having been taught that I'm too stupid, too weak, and too worthless to be able to defend myself. In somatic experiencing, I would need to feel that sense of helplessness and let it connect me with the child in me who is being taught that I'm weak, only with the aid of a pillow or something that mimics the feel of a person, I can push away my abusers now. I was too small to push my abusers off of me in 1967, but I'm big enough now to do it, so if my therapist will indulge in some roleplay exercises, I can push that pillow off me next time. My understanding of how this benefits me is two-fold. 1) My body and brain get to work together to feel that pushing an abuser away is possible, and 2) My past "ghosts" of believing I'm too slow and weak and stupid to defend myself will be set free from their wandering loop in the hallways of my brain.

At least that's what I gleaned from Levine's book. It's affecting me pretty deeply. Changing my paradigm from believing the past is done and unchangeable, to seeing it as still in play and still able to be healed, is connecting me to the past in a happy way right now. Like I said above, I feel like I've been given a backstage pass to the holy ground of the past and that the past is still malleable and still able to be worked with. That's a sensation of empowerment.