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I'm looking at others and envying how they can have a "normal" full-time job, handling lots of business and people every day. I can't do what they can do, and I envy the success, recognition, and (the imagined) self-confidence that they have. Good news is that recently, I finally understood that I am in my situation because I get triggered each time I am in contact with people - self-doubt, judgment, hypervigilance, etc. So, at least I know why I am where I am. I am less frustrated. And now, I'm in the phase of feeling damaged - and because I was damaged in my early relationships, I cannot become the person I wish to be.

Sure, I imagine that many of these "normal"-looking "successful" people are probably damaged too and are damaging others along the way, unconsciously transmitting their traumas. At one point, I might be appeased by that thought. But right now I feel angry  because of the injustice of having been damaged.

https://www.embodiedtrauma.com/schedule

There are some great names talking about a wide range of topics.

These sessions sound real intriguing:
Ariel Giaretto  - Pleasure Reactivated— Embodiment Basics for the Most Body Phobic
Raymond Castellino - Pre and Perinatal Trauma
Laurence Heller - Shame and Developmental Trauma
Karine Bell - Healing Lineages: Breaking Cycles of Developmental Trauma in Our Families

See you there!

I have grappled for years around loneliness. Like many of us on this forum, loneliness has been a very faithful true friend of mine for many years. Reading the posts on this forum, I have the feeling that some of the authors and their writings that I have found useful may also be of help to others. Here I share some of them, and may they serve as a cooling balm at times of need.

John O'Donohue was an Irish priest who was a contemplative and was heavily influenced by Celtic spirituality. My favorite book is "To Bless the Space Between Us". It's filled with, what he called blessings, or short poems that I have found to be sources of strength and inspiration. I start every day with the Blessing of Solitude:

https://soulgatherings.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/a-blessing-of-solitude/
https://amiracarluccio.com/2019/06/29/poems-for-loneliness-by-john-odonohue/?like_comment=14575

From his book "Eternal Echoes":

Each one of us is alone in the world. It takes great courage to meet the full force of your aloneness. Most of the activity in society is subconsciously designed to quell the voice crying in the wilderness within you. The mystic Thomas a Kempis said that when you go out into the world, you return having lost some of yourself. Until you learn to inhabit your aloneness, the lonely distraction and noise of society will seduce you into false belonging, with which you will only become empty and weary. When you face your aloneness, something begins to happen. Gradually, the sense of bleakness changes into a sense of true belonging. This is a slow and open-ended transition but it is utterly vital in order to come into rhythm with your own individuality. In a sense this is the endless task of finding your true home within your life. It is not narcissistic, for as soon as you rest in the house of your own heart, doors and windows begin to open outwards to the world. No longer on the run from your aloneness, your connections with others become real and creative. You no longer need to covertly scrape affirmation from others or from projects outside yourself. This is slow work; it takes years to bring your mind home.


Then, there are these words from my great friend Tom Yeomans; words that made me feel seen for the first time many years ago, and still ring true today:
https://www.aap-psychosynthesis.org/resources/Pictures/Articles/Thomas%20Yeomans/OCN3-Levels-of-Loneliness.pdf

I've been searching on the forum for discussions about Goodbyes. Hope67 and several others seem to have put quite a bit of thought into the place of goodbyes in their lives. So, I was hoping maybe some of you could share some of your more recent thinking and experiences on this.

I can't do goodbyes. I hate them. I dread them. I do them so clumsily. I close off my feelings - tears mainly of relief or sadness, pretend to be stoic or hopeful, feel embarrassed, making the others feel uncomfortable. And I try to get it over and done with as quickly as possible and then I try to blank out the whole experience. It's uncomfortable, but I'm worried that I'm setting a really bad example for the kids who I am saying goodbye to.

I just listened to 3 Jungian analysts talking about Partings and Farewells:

http://www.thisjungianlife.com/episode-088-partings-farewells/

They said, "Conscious parting honors meaning and connection. It allows us to honor the spring and summer of growth, celebrate autumn's harvest, and accept the quietude of winter. Ideally, we can embrace the depth of feeling in a farewell and fall upon it willingly and with grace."

Hmmm, I'd like that too. But, maybe, like Hope67 said in a post from a couple of years back, this type of graceful parting is only possible for people who don't have fear of abandonment? If each goodbye triggers flashbacks of abandonment or even just the fear of abandonment, then maybe it's not possible to part gracefully? So maybe, if we could work on the fear of abandonment, then the "problem" of goodbyes would dissolve naturally and goodbyes will come more easily and gracefully?

Thoughts?

I just need someone to not look me in the eye or yawn when listening to me to imagine that I am uninteresting and totally worthless in this world. Definitely flashing back to when my mum told me that she would be wearing a diamond ring up to her little toe if I weren't here.

Needless to say it happens a lot on an everyday basis. Any tricks anyone can share?

Matt Licata is a psychotherapist. He doesn't necessarily focus on trauma but in his poetic writings, he leads the reader to take a very gentle and compassionate stance about one's brokenness. Here's his blog: http://alovinghealingspace.blogspot.com/, and I get regular feeds from him on Facebook: https://www.mattlicataphd.com/. He also runs an online community at https://www.befriendingyourself.com/

Here's a sampler of his writing that has really touched me:

The commitment is to envision our lives in a new way, befriend ourselves and our experience, and no longer abandon ourselves in times of intensity, confusion, and challenge. To discover firsthand the rarity of having a human body, a sometimes-broken heart, and a miraculous, sensitive nervous system.

To apprehend the breathtaking reality of a sunset fully experienced, just how astounding it is to have the capacity to listen, feel, sense, weep, fail, and succeed. To fall to the ground and get back up, only to fall again and behold the mercy of that cycle once again.

Root yourself in the integrity of direct, primary experience, even when that experience is of confusion, doubt, hopelessness, and fear. To somehow trust even in your inability to trust, accept that part of you that cannot accept what's happening, and forgive that part of you that just cannot forgive. To be an unconditional friend to yourself, a friend of the breath, who will end the trance of self-abandonment.

In this revisioning, pain is something we enter consciously, as a curious traveler of the unknown, committed to participate and behold in more and more subtlety and depth the entire range of human experience as it unfolds here.

Not a life that always feels safe, peaceful, and confirms to our most deeply conditioned hopes and fears. But one rooted in creation and destruction, dark and light, vast enough to hold it all, to use everything here as a way to penetrate the miracle and connect more deeply with others, helping them (and ourselves) in ever more creative ways.

I'm in a professional situation where every morning I wake up, I check my email to see if I have work today. If I have, then the next 72 hours will become a crazy whirlwind during which I wouldn't have time to think about even eating or sleeping. If there isn't, then, immediately, predictably, invariably, I get triggered. I feel unloved, unwanted, incompetent. I start to make movies about becoming a bag lady living underneath a bridge (a threat that was thrown at me often as a kid), or being a destitute and desperate old person, or worse still, having to run around now to secure a job (the idea of interviews, being judged and being rejected throws me into absolute panic)!

I've tried to tell myself that this regular, predictable occurrence is an excellent opportunity to practice recognizing and working with this trigger. Part of me is less gentle: it tells me that these triggers are mole hills, and I am a loser making mountains out of them.

I'm exhausted to have to go through this roller coaster ride every day. This morning is only the second day in a row that I haven't received work. It already feels like Groundhog Day. 

Thomas Huebl is a spiritual teacher. His spiritual or meditation work doesn't really resonate with me. But recently I discovered his work on collective and multigenerational trauma, and I have found it very unique and insightful. He takes a very kind, compassionate stance towards all our difficulties, past and present, and sees trauma as a healthy response to a frightening (and frightened) world. He believes in the natural healing intelligence of the body. He has worked with groups in Israel, Germany, and other countries on traumas from war. But he's also very fluent on the latest medical theories about personal trauma.

Recently, he held a Collective Trauma Online Summit with Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Dan Siegel and more:
https://thomashuebl.com/collective-trauma-online-summit/

There are a lot of his videos on YouTube. This is a good short (6 min) one to start:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO2LndIgmtQ

He said, "It is so important that we reframe weaknesses. When our nervous system can shut down because something overwhelming happens, and save the rest and let it function, that is super-intelligent! When we feel blocked, something is working in order to block fear, for example. Everything we see as difficulty is actually a childhood heroe. When something is not functioning, always something else functions very well in order for it not to function. "

Yesterday, he spoke at Harvard Medical School, "we are so used to [the way the world works] we call them normal because they existed before we were born... I would say, no, no, that's not the way the world is that's the way how a hurt world is."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mExBoPftp8I&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR0OvqyhZPSdkOy3e3f38jpZzm_zMahKwZBqO2pXJOZZPEqYS65VLzklcWc

I'm still new to this. I find it so hard to recognize triggers and flashbacks.

I need to say "no" to a work commitment that I had made a long time ago. I am convinced that my colleague will hate me for that. I feel threatened, in danger, because I feel I am going to lose his "love" (definitely has the ring of the fear of losing my mother's love if I displeased her). I'm constantly obsessing to find a way out of this "dangerous" situation. How can I keep this commitment? How can I keep the love?

I've been trying to use Pete Walker's list to identify flashbacks but I'm still unclear if this is one or not. For example, my emotional reactions seem relatively minor, but they are constant and obsessive - they wouldn't let me go. I don't necessarily feel small or helpless, but I do feel that I'm worthless compared to my colleague. I have noticed that my inner critic has become more active. And yes, I do want to eat, watch TV to get these unpleasant obsessive thoughts out of my mind, which seems "normal" to me (probably because I've had these reactions all my life). I don't shake. My heart is not beating faster. I don't seem to have any physiological symptoms.

How do I know if I am having a flashback?

Carolyn Spring is a survivor who now writes and provides training "for both dissociative survivors and professionals working with them". She offers online training courses, and there's a lot of free stuff on her website too. I learned a lot about trauma recovery from her blog, the newsletters that can be downloaded from her website and her videos. Could also be a useful resource for people living in the UK:

https://www.carolynspring.com/