The tipping point…

[NarcKiddo]

That is so heart-warming, Chart. I'm glad your son came home from school. Obviously not glad he was sick but since you say he was not "that" sick then maybe there was just a little pull on the invisible web of the universe that made him come home just when you needed him to.

 

[Armee]

 

Stunning. Beautiful.

[Desert Flower]

Yes, what the rest said Chart! Beautiful indeed. 

[TheBigBlue]

  💛 💛 💛 💛 💛

[blue_sky]

"THIS SH*T ENDS HERE! THERE WILL BE NO MORE ABANDONMENT TRAUMA IN THIS %#!&-ing family... I gave simple solid honest value to my daughter, both my kids... My dear good children: I see you, I recognize your difficulties. You are valid, you are worthy and though it needs no proof, the love I feel for you makes it all true."

Chart I have told you this during our zoom calls as well. Your kids are super lucky to have a superDAD like you! People always talk about superMOMs and compare mums to wonderwoman. You, Chart, my friend, are a HERO.

  

[dollyvee]

Like NK said, what geese bonding time to share with your kids 

Geese = great

[Chart]

Marcine, SanMagic, SenseOrgan, NarcKiddo, Armee, DesertFlower, TheBigBlue, BlueSky, Dollyvee!!!
Good lord, thank you! I feel like my thanks are so insufficient. But, lordy, your presence, it helps so much. I still feel like a fraud, but I know the inner critic does fraud really well... so I just try to ignore the IC as much as I can. It's such a struggle for me to receive. I can give. Was trained to give. Was trained to climb up on that cross and give until my last breath, but receiving is a million times harder. I breath, I relax, it's okay. Might never go away... completely. It is such a funny feeling... people always say "Trust your feelings"... sadly, with Cptsd, it's just not possible, so many of my "feelings" are just dead-wrong.
Thank you all again soo much.
 

[TheBigBlue]

 

[sanmagic7]

chart, your thanks are profoundly and gently received because a lot of us know how very difficult it is to take in the good stuff.  we know, with bells on, how to take in the bad - lots of practice with that.  here, amazingly enough, there are a bunch of honest, caring people who, as far as i've known, do not lie when they give out compliments.  for me, it's been part of the reprogramming, getting pos. stuff over and over until it finally finds its way to sinking in, even if only an inch at first, but eventually all the way to the heart, cells, and soul. 

we wouldn't say these things if we didn't mean it.  with our experiences, we know what pos., healthy parenting looks like, and i, for one, absolutely want to celebrate it.  you deserve it, chart.  i hope you can begin taking it in as real.  this is what we all wish we had.  love and hugs

[Chart]

Thank you TheBigBlue!

here, amazingly enough, there are a bunch of honest, caring people who, as far as i've known, do not lie when they give out compliments.  for me, it's been part of the reprogramming, getting pos. stuff over and over until it finally finds its way to sinking in, even if only an inch at first, but eventually all the way to the heart, cells, and soul. 

we wouldn't say these things if we didn't mean it.  with our experiences, we know what pos., healthy parenting looks like, and i, for one, absolutely want to celebrate it.  you deserve it, chart.  i hope you can begin taking it in as real.  this is what we all wish we had. 

Thank you, San!
Yes, it's always funny to hear things that you know cognitively, yet still have not integrated to the deeper levels because of Trauma. It takes the time it takes, I guess. But it does helps so much when positive messages get repeated. I need to hear these things, despite the side of me that "knows" it "knows"...
Thank you
 

[Chart]

So I'm coming to realize that coming out of the EF is, for me, a period of incredible insights and revelations. I just walked my daughter to a "play-date" afternoon with one of her friends. As I was walking back I passed through the Parc de l'Archevêché (in case you want to google it :-) AND! I had the memories of two years ago when I met with my ex-g for the last time, where she told me she had met someone new, where she drove the long-sword of my trauma to the very hilt of my attachment wound. It was a meeting from which I literally ran for my life. In my car I began screaming at the top of my lungs to keep my sanity, to keep myself from accelerating, to find a new pain, any new torture that would keep me from feeling what was actually inside me... that's the park I walked through. I have been back there, tempting chance and EFs and deep pain. I have entered and breathed and called my support group on the phone to distract me, aid me, help me through that place, which is and always will remain an enormous risk.

I walked across the gardin, classic French style, everything orderly, rectilinear, hedges perfect squares, trees clipped into boxes, bushes cut into pointed cones... I stared at the pointed cone... it was the object of nightmare I had dreamed of as a child. It was the figure of the moment when I did something so horrible, I have been running from it my entire life. It happened when I was one... maybe two years-old... It was the sacrifice of my spirit, in order to survive.

I stared at that tree like the Christmas trees in Charlie Brown's Christmas special. You whack it and it rings hollow metal...

Things come, it's all there, the mind of the baby, is still in me. I'm totally amazed... Pain IS healing. We are all trying to heal so as to reduce pain... but I now believe, Pain is the catalyst to heal. Pain IS healing. Maybe this is old news for most, but for me it is a revelation. The Pain in my shoulder, the Pain in my body, the Pain in my soul... the PAIN IS HEALING. When I am in pain, I am healing. When I abandon myself by lying in bed, I am healing. When I decide to stay inside, I am healing. When I avoid a party because I am too scared, I am healing. I have always looked down on myself, always judged myself for the things "I didn't do". But I think now that all those things I didn't do, were part of healing. I'm not "worse" or behind in my "healing schedule" because I didn't do those things. I'm very simply VERY MUCH CLOSER to doing those things because I "healed" in the past.

The proof?

I can do MORE today than I could in the past. I feel less pain in my shoulder than last month. Could I have done things to have "sped it all up"? Almost certainly not. Or I could have amputated my arm altogether... that would have gotten rid of the pain for sure... But I want to keep my arm. I want to continue living.

Two years ago, in the Parc de l'Archevêché I was provided with the opportunity of my life... to feel in it's near entirety the full sum of pain I experienced when I was one year old... I was blessed with it's return... because this wound wants to heal... an it's going to heal... and to heal I have to hug it close to me, know it, get inside it as it is inside of me, I have to love this gift no mater how excruciating it seems. A psychic wound is timeless. It lives on as if time never moved forward, that's why I'm still suffering from it today. But as such, the wound is fresh, the intervention can happen in real-time at the instant it happens. Like the paramedics awaiting you the bottom of the cliff you just drove over. Every time I have an EF and re-plunge into that Pain, I can instantly go to my own aid. I can be my own Jesus and lay hands upon myself... Self-Savior... auto-salvation...

I want to change how I feel about the next EF. (Not least of which I KNOW it's gonna come... ("I ain't dead yet!" said my grandma :-) I want to walk right up to the thing and shake its hand... "Hello EF, where do we go today? What do I need to see? What do I need to understand? Is it possible to go deeper? How many levels of the Soul exist? Infinite, you say? Ok, lead on, I will follow, though the valley be black as death, I'll follow you. I know where you lead me now... you lead me to myself, and there, in my own arms, I will know a love that encompasses the universe. I will melt entirely with that Love and therewith know my self.

[Chart]

"Prediction errors aren't problems. They're a normal part of the operating instructions of your brain as it takes in sensory input. Without prediction error, life would be a yawning bore. Nothing would be surprising or novel, and therefore your brain would never learn anything new. Most of the time, at least when you are an adult, your predictions aren't too far off-base. If they were, you would go through life feeling constantly startled, uncertain... or hallucinating."
-Lisa Feldman Barrett, p. 62, How Emotions are Made

Two things: One, Lisa Feldman Barrett clearly doesn't have the faintest clue what the experience of developmental trauma is like for adult survivors... And two, developmental trauma has apparently provided my brain with the most excruciating opportunity to experience and understand the most extreme limits of the concept of Error Prediction.

I don't know whether to celebrate... or cry...
 

[Chart]

So I asked ChatGPT the following question: Please explain how prediction error relates to trauma, CPTSD, and nervous system dysregulation.

Response:
1. Prediction error: the brain's basic job
At its simplest: The brain is constantly predicting what will happen next.
Prediction error = what actually happens − what was expected.

If prediction error is small → nervous system stays regulated

If prediction error is large or repeated → nervous system adapts

In a healthy environment: The brain updates its models

Safety predictions become more accurate

The system stays flexible

2. Trauma = extreme, uncontrollable prediction error

Trauma is not defined by the event itself, but by this:
An overwhelming prediction error that cannot be resolved or escaped.

Examples:

You predict safety → danger happens

You predict care → neglect or harm happens

You predict "this will end" → it doesn't

Critically:

The nervous system cannot update the model

Because updating would require safety during learning, which is absent

📌 The result is protective overlearning, not learning in the healthy sense.

[Chart]

Now what strikes me is the statement, "In a healthy environment: The brain updates its models"

For me, this makes a clear distinction between "healthy" and "unhealthy". These are EXTERIOR conditions, outside of the control of the individual (note, they may also be outside the control of the person inflicting the conditions, environment or behavior, which is not so say this person is not responsible, only an explanation for why the pattern seems to repeat over generations...)

As Shakespeare said, "Therin lies the rub..." It is VERY VERY difficult to "explain" what is an "unhealthy environment" because everyone seem to think they know already... And no one likes being told something they are pretty sure they know already... The brain doesn't want to waste energy learning something it has already learned... or thinks it has learned...

Here, on the Forum, we don't have to jump that hurdle. When we talk about an "unhealthy environment/circumstance/person" it is understood. This is a shocking situation, especially at the beginning. But even later, it remains very hard for me to "reverse" my mental prediction error as it is presented to me by other Forum members. I just have to keep banging away at it.

(BTW, I hope I don't sound like I'm giving a lesson here, I think everyone already knows pretty much everything I'm talking about here... I'm just writing all this out for my own clarity. When my brain seems to be functioning relatively well, I find it a good opportunity to take advantage and put it in words for myself... I've had a heck of time really getting the concept of "prediction error", it just never made sense to me. Anyway...)

Thank you all, especially if you made it this far :-)
 

[Chart]

I've been reading and re-reading the ChatGPT info. If you have the wherewithal, I strongly suggest putting the following question into ChatGPT: Please explain how prediction error relates to trauma, CPTSD, and nervous system dysregulation.

I'm finding the explanation extremely clear, thus very coherent and, for me and my own needs, organized. Especially the explanation as to "why" trauma is stored in the body and talk-therapy is limited in affecting deep change...

And now I'll stop :-)