Papa Coco's Recovery Journal

[Papa Coco]

Journal Entry: Tuesday, August 16, 2022

I JUST got off the phone with my T. We zoom now because of COVID. This was a very rare session where I found myself bawling on camera. We were working on my comment that I value him as much as anyone in my life, and that he's one of the people I love and trust the most, but STILL I wouldn't allow him to help me if he wasn't getting paid. I told him, "I accept your help because I pay you. If I wasn't paying you, I wouldn't let you help me." Luckily he's a professional who didn't take it personally, but we were exploring the reasons I can't ask for help. It's not male pride. It's not a control issue. For many years I've believed it was because I was raised by sociopaths who would never help me, and if they ever DID help me, it was because they were grooming me to take something from me. It's like they would offer me a piece of candy, and later I'd find out I owed them a steak dinner every night for a month. 

But today was different. He had me, once again, explain how I was abused at school when I was 10. My best friend, (who I now know was a sociopath in the making), tried to move our friendship into a sexual one. I was 10, he was 11, and I was not gay. So I just didn't respond the way he wanted me to. I didn't want to change our friendship from what it was to whatever he wanted it to be, BUT I didn't care. I still thought we were friends. Unfortunately, to him, it mattered. Just for not accepting his ring, He slapped me hard across the face and began a rumor that I was the one who was gay. This was 1970 in a religious school. Being called gay was almost a death sentence. I spent the next 4 years, from ages 10-14 totally isolated and humiliated every single day by all the students AND many of the teachers for being gay...even though I wasn't gay. But in 1970 I didn't know what gay meant, so I didn't know how to defend myself against the label. I just internalized the reality that, somehow, everyone on earth could plainly see that I was a disease on the planet.

(Today I'm a fierce supporter of LGBTQ rights and have a lot of friends that fit all the descriptions of LGBTQ, because as an empathetic person I feel pretty sure I know what it feels like to have been treated so unfairly by this sick, homophobic world.)

Asking for help at home made it worse. I tried twice, once at 11 and again at age 12, to get my mom to believe me that I was being beaten up and humiliated every day. I NEVER told her I was being called gay and that my nickname was "homo" because I honestly believed that if she had found out about that, she would do what my friend had done and would turn my family into the same abusive culture as my school had been turned into. The fear of total annihilation and abandonment was playing itself out in my battered little head.  I just told her I had no friends and was being beaten up and stolen from and laughed at, and she would say, "No you aren't."  She would even say "whatever's happening to you there will be worse in any other school."

She went on to warn me that I had better never stand up for myself because the last thing she needed was to be dragged into the school and embarrassed for me fighting. She coached me to "just ignore them" and to not bring these little school yard problems home for her to deal with. She left me there in that hellhole. No matter who I asked for help, I was told it was all my fault and I deserved what was being done to me.

Today, my T was able to help me realize that the reason I cannot ask anyone, even the people who love me the most, for help with anything; from a ride to helping lift a box into my pickup, is because I fear that by asking for help, I will start the world to hating me and beating on me, and lying about me, and humiliating me all over again. Trauma in my brain has linked the notion of asking for help with the memories of being beaten, lied about and annihilated, even by the people who love me the most.  As I realized that, I felt a cloud of pain rise up from my torso into my face. I started sobbing uncontrollably. The idea that the loneliness was still in there was a new revelation. I couldn't even believe I was crying. It was a total shock to me. That cloud of loneliness just hurt...so...bad.

My point is that loneliness and annihilation are what make up my greatest fear. It's left-over trauma from a bad, bad time that's gone now, but its scars are still there. Adding the fear of being attacked again makes it worse. I JUST NOW found out that all the loneliness from all that abuse has been dormant in my gut for 52 years and it's finally, FINALLY beginning to find a way to show itself to me. I knew I felt alone in a crowded world, but I really didn't respect how deep the scars of that loneliness were hiding in me.

Bringing these stories to the forum, AND reading the stories from other members of the forum does one very important thing for me: It diffuses that sense of utter loneliness. I'm not alone with my loneliness. I wish we could do more for each other, but I swear, just knowing we're not alone with our traumas is really a wonderful thing we can do for each other.

Any time I sign a book for someone, I write "We're stronger together", then I sign my name. I believe it. I live it. I can handle a lot more abuse if I know I'm not alone with it.

[sanmagic7]

our trauma brains give us the most terrible messages at times, PC.  they maximize our weaknesses into faults, and minimize our strengths into weaknesses.  i'm glad you're finding some bit of comfort, and hopefully truths, here on the forum.  i know it's been a lifesaver for me.  you are appreciated, too.  love and a hug filled w/ finding your truth.

[Papa Coco]

Journal Entry: Wednesday, August 17, 2022

I joined OOTS one year ago today on August 17, 2021. Today is my one-year anniversary on the forum.

I often say that I don't measure my emotional progress by the day, but by the year, and this year I feel so much more connected to life than I did a year ago.

I still have trauma. I still have depression. I still have sleepless nights. But I don't feel like I'm treading water all alone in the ocean anymore. Now I feel like I'm in a lifeboat with a half-dozen other people who are floating in the same ocean. I'm not alone anymore.

Thank you to you all, the good people on this forum who have given me a place to ask for help, to share my feelings, and to share in your feelings with you.

Giving with one hand while receiving with the other connects us fully to the circle of our community.

We are stronger together, and by seeing how much better I feel today, than I did 1 year ago today proves my theory: That I can handle a world full of bullies better if I'm not standing totally alone.

[paul72]

Happy 1-year anniversary Papa   
Hope you have a fantastic day!!

[woodsgnome]

There's the familiar saying: "one step at a time". I'm intrigued by your calculation of "one year at a time".

Then again, none of this is so much about accumulations of time or possessions or any of the other material measurements we use. It's about survival, quality of life, and inspiration to somehow continue the journey.

Thanks for your contributions to all of this. With your insightful inputs, this lifeboat is made stronger for the rest of the trip.

[rainydiary]

Glad you are here and have had opportunity to reflect.

[Armee]

 

Happy one year anniversary here on OOTS. I'm so glad you're here and I learn a lot from what you write and share.

It's worse to ask for help and be abused and humiliated than to never ask for help.  It makes sense that that thought stuck in your brain given all you went through. It sure is hard to update the old operating system with new information isn't it? I'm starting to find it easier to ask for help, though not when things are really bad because then the old thoughts and feelings are too strong.

I also choke up now too when I try to tell my T about what that relationship feels like. I really respect that you were able to cry today. It would be really frustrating to have people try to blame the difficulty crying  on toxic masculinity when it is so much deeper than that and embedded in trauma.

[Papa Coco]

Thanks Armee,

Ever since my T appointment on Tuesday, I've felt really close to my loneliness.  It sounds like you have a deep understanding of the same feeling. No matter how many people surround me, love me, want to help me, at the end of the day I feel utterly alone on the earth again. It's trauma. Thank goodness we're learning from each other that most of us with abusive pasts feel many of the same kinds of loneliness. Knowing others feel it to, helps me put the loneliness into perspective. It's not real. It's TRAUMA!  Knowing that helps me get through it.  Like you say, it sure is hard to update the old operating system. For me it's impossible. I can't erase the past and I can't completely wipe it from the core programming, BUT I can bombard my brain with counter-balanced information. We can keep learning, keep sharing, keep loading our brains with the truth that we are not alone. The old programming is still there, but so is the new programming. The more we focus on the fact that the old programming is TRAUMA, the more we can find ways to focus on the fact that the loneliness is not real...it's just an emotional response to someone else's long-past abuse.

Your feedback is always so comforting to me. You seem to have a way of finding the right words that make it all the way into my brain. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being active on this forum. 

[rainydiary]

I appreciate you sharing about your journey and experience with loneliness. 

[Papa Coco]

Journal Update: August 19, 2022

I called this morning and made an appointment for another Ketamine Infusion for mid-September. They had an open spot tomorrow, but I'm supposed to be relocated to the beach with my family right now. I'm not planning to return to the city until mid-September, so I had to put my Ketamine out three weeks. I hope I didn't make a mistake. I'm getting so depressed I can hardly think straight anymore. My son's illnesses, my grandson's emotional problems at school, my wife's stress...all these things are making me feel so weighted down with worry I can't find happiness anywhere.

Life feels really insane right now. Like the earth is in a cloud of nasty energy.

I've been having car problems, garage door problems, Electrical problems, scammers and thieves pounding down my doors via email, text and phone. I feel like I'm under attack from a hundred different directions.

So because of my car problems, I'm very late getting down to the beach to meet my wife, kids and grandkids for a street festival we're all going to tomorrow. I just got the vehicle back a few minutes ago, after 8 weeks of waiting for parts, but I can't leave the city now until rush hour traffic dies down: it'll probably be about 7 pm tonight before I can even leave.

I'm in a terrible mood, so all my little first-world problems feel much bigger than they are.

I feel pretty sure that the worsening depression I'm feeling now is biology. After nearly 6 decades of trying to rise above abuse, I somehow rewired my brain to see that depression has become my baseline core emotion. So now when I drop my guard, depression is where I go automatically. I feel like I've spent 60 years as a workaholic, balancing crushing depression with skyrocketing anxiety. Like I'm on a teeter-totter, taking turns being either depressed or manic. The two emotions were both miserable, but they balanced each other out. Now that I'm forcibly retired, the anxiety is gone and all that's left is the crushing depression. No relief. I don't even have to have a legitimate current reason for being depressed. But as the last Ketamine infusion of June fades into the past my depression is, once again, swelling, unchecked and overpowering my brain's ability to just be happy.

It's true that I still feel better today than I did a year ago, but I think that what's happening now is that as I put more and more time between me and workaholism, that I'm starting to really grasp something I've never had to face straight on before. So it's like I've made two steps forward, and now I just have to take only one step back and address something I have needed to address for a long time. Depression without the anxiety.

For many years, my T has been telling me I'm lonelier than I give myself credit for. He's also tried to tell me that the sexual abuse I endured at 7 years of age, did more damage to my depression than I ever realized. I'm beginning to think that my decades of being a workaholic were hiding me from the full depths of my depression. I knew it was there, but I minimized its intensity in my own mind. Now that I have no workaholic distractions from feeling lonely, untrusting, confused, helpless and depressed, I'm finally starting to feel the full lifelong effects of what sexual abuse really does to males like me. My tricks to minimize the pain and fear by bombarding myself with too much work to keep up with are no longer. As I face what I've been through, I see the monster that haunts me is much larger than I used to believe it was.

I used to go out and help other survivors, and that made me feel better about my own suffering, but now, I don't think I could help another survivor without it dragging me under in my own suffering. I think it's time to pay the piper and completely and totally address the sadness and loneliness that has been hiding within me. I knew I felt these things, but I never realized how profoundly they've become a part of me.

[Armee]

Ah Papa Coco. The kind of abuse you endured and the added abuse and bullying on top of it. That leaves a nasty scar. The depression...that's a symptom not your core though. It's not a weakness and I don't think you're running from the depression but it has to take so much time to be able to truly approach what happened. It feels like the anxiety was there to mask the depression and the depression is there to shield you from the full brunt of the trauma. You're slowly scratching away the layers of shielding. Scratch a little, step back and adjust, and scratch a little more off when you reach steady there.

Much in the world sucks right now.  Your own family...the ones you love and worry about...you boost them up even if you don't feel like you do. I guarantee you are their rock.

[rainydiary]

Papa Coco, I appreciate you sharing about your experiences.  Much of what you say about work and anxiety and depression and feeling bombarded from many angles resonates.  I hope that you have safe travels when you are able to go and that you find relief even for a moment.

[Papa Coco]

Armee and Rainy,

Thanks so much.  I really like the thought that this depression isn't my core...but a very strong residual effect that I just haven't really addressed fully yet. Taking full responsibility for everything is one of my Fawning traits. I always believe everything bad is my fault.

I remember many, many years ago when I read up on PTSD. My dad, a WWII veteran who lost his arm in a long, traumatic battle in the South Pacific, retired from his factory job in 1984. The term PTSD hadn't been coined yet. I think it was still called shell shock in the 1980s. Or battle fatigue, or something like that. The phenomenon of the 1980s was that a lot of strong, WWII Veterans were retiring, and for the first time in their lives, were falling apart in crying fits and severe depression because the war was suddenly coming back to them. The theory was that in the late 1940s they had come back from the war as 22-year-old boys, on a hero's welcome, and then immediately started working in abundant, lucrative jobs, marrying, having their first babies, etc, during the seemingly unstoppable post-war economy that just kept getting stronger and stronger every year from 1947 into the early 1980s. Then, in the early 1980s all these boys, now men, started retiring with big pensions and a "cushy" life, and all the time in the world to...to...well, unfortunately to start remembering the traumas they didn't know they had. That's when the full shock of their teen years on the battle fields finally had no more distractions and began to take front-and-center in their brains.

Now, decades later, I'm seeing that my own retirement has kind of done to me a version of what their retirements did to them. I can't hide my past in a busy, fast-moving, important present anymore. I now have more time than I have responsibilities, and that little boy who, from 1967 to 1974, no one ever believed is staring at me in the mirror every morning still wanting to be heard and rescued.

I'll be heading out on the highway in about a half hour. WAZE says traffic is still gnarly, but it's considerably better than it was during the midday. My wife drove down yesterday and got stuck behind a bad accident that left her sitting in the 90-degree heat with no AC for 2 hours. My son drove his family down during midday today and it took 2 extra hours, and he says he had two close calls with aggressive semi-trucks.  I'll be extra cautious tonight. It could be the long, long heat spell that's turning people into raging maniacs. Very few homes in Seattle have AC. We've never needed it before, but times, they are changing, and people are hot and frustrated and not taking to the climate changes very well.

[Armee]

I hear you Papa C.

Drive safe and give the maniacs on the road as wide as berth as possible.

[dollyvee]

Hi PC,

Reading about your experiences snd reactions to your family's silent treatment brought up many feelings and memories in me that I forgot. Being in that place of what did I do wrong, and it's like your body/mind just runs everywhere at once, looking for the "right" answer but there is no right answer.

Also really relate to what you said about asking for help. How can we ask for help when people can't be trusted and there's alway's a catch?

Sending you support with all the stresses right now.

Thanks for sharing,
dolly