Messages

 

Hi ah

Thanks for your input. I appreciate it. I think what she meant is that we develop resentments during our trauma, hold onto them and them release them inappropriately.

They don't feel like typical conscious resentments, I have to say. When I experience these episodes they're more dissociative than anything else.

C-PTSD is definitely both physiological and psychological. I too don't know where the line is. Depending on what professional you speak to they will each put more importance on one than the other, according to their training and their desired outcome for you. I do know that I experience both, they influence each other and that I have to work both.

Quiet, meditation or critical analysis will help me feel better, just as a quick run will.

Thank you for sharing your personal insights. It helps!

Distress tolerance. Find different things that work for different situations.

I have my private phone. I do not even know the number thereof so no one else could. No calls. Ever

Then I have my public phone. My misery phone. I never answer it. I leave it alone. My voicemail redirects callers to send a text message if necessary. I check once a day.

It's a bit extreme but it helps keep anxiety down.

Good luck. Be safe. LTLTR

Good day

For a long period of time I was constantly enraged. I had the presence of mind to direct it towards the pursuit of Justice rather than just blindly lashing out (once or twice admittedly).

I became a regular at police station bringing in street criminals.

I recently spoke with a trauma counsellor. Part of the issue is purely physiological - we are constantly in a state of fear and our PNS is always-on.

I was familiar with this but she had another angle that was new to me. As we're exposed to the experiences that develop our c-PTSD, we develop resentments: why me; not my fault... These resentments become unconscious and influence our Primary Motor Complex lower cortical responces. This in turn keeps the PNS red lining.

Serenity. LTLTR

It wasn't your fault.

No, definitely NOT your fault.

You are the survivor of a very vicious practice being perpetrated across the globe by evil people. These people in their own right are very sick and global organizations are working tirelessly to eradicate this practice.

But you need some professional help dealing with your emotional adaptation to this incident.

Perhaps there are people on the forum that can provide you with links to local and global organizations that focus on survivor recovery.

The murder of your friend was not your fault. You are only responsible for how you move forward, recover and thrive.

Peace. LTLTR

Demons and Angels.

It is the demon of addiction and it's using your Doubt as a doorway in to your thoughts and fears.

Ask for an Angel to guard you. They will.

LTLTR

What a beautiful thunderstorm we had last night. Rolling in from the ocean, water beat heavily down on our little retreat. But it was such a relief from the mid-thirties centigrade oppressive heat that has been sitting over us for weeks.

I sat on the edge of the porch and got completely drenched.. I loved it.

Then the lightning started up, crackling all around the porch, lighting up the forest and the mountain top towering over us.

The Littles started screaming at the lightning so I had to go inside and soothe them while the storm raged overhead.

It was magnificent! Nature!

The supernatural does exist...it is the natural that we have not explained yet. Over the millennia we have gained and lost much knowledge about the natural. It is by the impetus of people's desire to understand the world that we discover and understand nature.

It takes an attitude of open-mindedness and an engagement in direct experimentation to further our understanding of nature.

As you've witnessed, the rewards are self-evident. Thank you for sharing your personal experiences with us.

LTLTR

Hi Kat

I have a relationship with religion - none at all.

I also have a relationship with Spirituality.

we are not Human Beings having the occasional Spiritual insight and growth.
We are Spiritual Beings having a Human experience.

We veil ourselves in suffering and confusion. Your True Nature is bright and clear.

Some people find Church/Religion very beneficial. I prefer to commune privately with God.

LTLTR

Eyessofblue

It has been awhile. How are you now? December and January were terrible for me.

You deserve a better life for yourself. It comes slowly, day by day, sober day by day.

We are all human. We make mistakes and we hurt. But we have the ability to heal ourselves, moment by moment.

Alcohol cannot cure your, or anyone's CPTSD. Be compassionate with yourself.

Take care. LTLTR

Hi Eyesofblue

You've written some wonderful, creative and deeply compassionate posts.

Thank you.

The pain Just highlights the joy. Where you feel the pain most, is where you start the by healing. The subconscious can only talk to the consciousness via Feelings and emotions.

When the boys and I ran, I started to crave the addictions I'd left behind 25 years. So. Clean and sober for 25 years I started going back to AA and  NA meetings.

It's different for me but people help when you show them your pain.

LTLTR

Hope

Just your reactions now indicate that it was a problem for you. If it was a problem it was abuse - intentional or not.

Young children are discovering their bodies and they have a very different relationship to their bodies than adults do. They are also incapable of understanding their boundaries and reactions, cannot verbalise what they are feeling, and for the most part are ignored.

The subconscious communicates with the conscious via feelings - it's one of the languages of the subconscious. If you feel it, it's a message.

I was medically trained before I had children. Due to medico-legal constraints, consent was always required before treating, touching a patient or performing any procedure.

Personally, I ask my children for their permission before I change them, bathe them, even feed them. If it needs to be done, we will discuss it, I will put their minds at ease and we have consent...real consent.

A great deal more care needs to be paid to the psychological effects of adults' actions - directly and indirectly - on children.

Your thinking is sound. LTLTR

Hi

Two powerful brain chemical systems work together to paralyze skeletal muscles during rapid eye movement (REM).

In a series of experiments, University of Toronto neuroscientists Patricia L. Brooks and John H. Peever, PhD, found that the neurotransmitters gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glycine caused REM sleep paralysis in rats by "switching off" the specialized cells in the brain that allow muscles to be active.

When this REM paralysis is incomplete or absent in a person it is termed REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD). People thrash around in their sleep. Not to worry you but it can develop into more serious, neurological, degenerative conditions.

Keep a sleep journal. You and your SO can both fill it in: time to sleep; duration of sleep; number of wakings; time of rising; apneic episodes; apparent nightmares; periods of thrashing; feeling on waking; etc. Be as detailed as possible.

I developed chronic insomnia a few years ago. I kept a sleep journal, put a sleep monitoring app on my phone and after a few weeks of 2-3 hours interrupted sleep, I gave it to my GP. He took one look at it and prescribed sleeping tablets. He said the lack of sleep would kill me faster than any side effects of prescription sleeping tablets.

It's still my single vice and I still only get 4 hours before I start waking again but it's the only way I'm still - debatably - sane.

LTLTR

@Biancalap: it all comes down to FEAR!

The smoke alarm analogy is great. One of my wife's Alter personalities was fear based. Every time it was triggered she became completely irrational, even to the point of panic attacks, status asthmatic, and respiratory arrest. I intubated her twice.

When I was a kid the family would go down to the coast for our seasonal holidays. We were fearless: running in and out of the waves; splashing through the rock pools; etc. Everything was fun.

I take my kids for a walk to the beach now and I am terrified something will happen to them. I need 3 pairs of eyes. I stand there hawk-eyed watching out for them. I should be enjoying them having fun but I'm afraid.

Mindfulness, nonjudgmental responses and slow reconditioning... Apparently that's going to help.

LTLTR.

@Blueberry: 'I am small, I'm hiding.' That's freeze. Same thing happens to the parasympathetic nervous system PNS. it's still trauma and the body's internal responses still stack up against you in the long run and damage you systemically.

Add to that the habituated demand to suppress your emotions through the repeated instruction to 'be quiet' and you have no way of letting your body return to a healthy homeostasis.

One thing I did notice, in Corporate, LE, Paramedic, MA, etc. is that actions always speak louder than words. 9/10 when we feel that we should have stood up for ourselves, and we feel like we let ourselves down because we didn't, well, most of those times we didn't need to: our overall actions - and those of the oppressor - ultimately speak for themselves.

'It all comes out in the wash'. Even when we don't think so.

When we examine our True Nature, either through mindfulness as Three Roses mentions, meditation, psychotherapy, or event reconstruction and direct intellectual evaluation of our actions, we find that we start to act in alignment with this Nature and our responses are always appropriate.

Of course, C- PTSD is a bit of a challenge to that. 

LTLTR