Papa Coco's Recovery Journal

[Armee]

Sending all the love your way while you hunker down. It's OK to take a break. You always give so much of yourself to each reply and that's hard to keep up.  I'll keep my fingers crossed for a successful infusion that brings at least several weeks of relief.

[Papa Coco]

Thank you my friend.

[sanmagic7]

hey, PC, i'm glad you're doing what 's best for you.  i can so relate to the idea of not wanting to post replies to others, have often deleted what i've written cuz i've gone too far or become preachy or just rambled off topic.  i hope you get some relief w/ your infusion.  best to you w/ that.  love and hugs 

[Papa Coco]

Thank you San!

[natureluvr]

Papa Coco you have a really big heart, just from what I have read of your posts on here, and how you have responded in my thread.  My theory is that those of us who have suffered deeply on an emotional level have high levels of empathy, and we also suffer with the world when the world and the living things in it are suffering.  So many people become cold and calloused to protect themselves.  But there are some of us who stay tender hearted, and the sufferings of others hurts us. 

Take care, and I hope you are doing OK.  Sending thoughts and prayers your way.

[Papa Coco]

Thank you Natureluvr,

Your thoughtful words are a big help for me. And I resonate with your theory. I believe empathy is the greatest healing power known to man, and, like you, I believe that those of us who were born with empathetic natures are tapped into that healing power.

I'll follow your lead and let this response guide me to today's Journal Entry:

Journal Entry for Wednesday, March 29, 2023

When we study the natural world, we notice that animals and plants live out their lives according to their specific species' natures. A bee acts like a bee because it's a bee. A bee creates life by pollinating and spreading seeds. Bees are critical to keeping the world alive. A locust acts like a locust because it's a locust. Locusts travel in swarms and destroy fields of food for no reason other than that's just what locusts' natures makes them do. Bees have no choice but to spread life. Locusts have no choice but to spread destruction.

Humans are likely the ONLY creatures who get to decide whether we spread life or destroy it. Most of us seem to have a choice as to which nature we wish to serve. Albeit, we are each born with our own individual prewired nature which starts us each out somewhere between empath and sociopath. So some outlier people are born to be especially evil and some to be especially good. But on an average, most of us are born in a safe space somewhere between these two polar opposites, and most of us do have a choice whether to spread life or to spread destruction. We humans are the only species that can choose whether to be bees or locusts, or to be nails versus hammers.

My heart belongs to those of us who have chosen to be the nails rather than the hammers. Hammers pound nails, but nails hold the house together. I love people who were bullied and chose to NOT become bullies themselves, but who internalized the trauma and became emotionally bonded with other victims. While it can be incredibly painful at times to spend our lives feeling the effects of the trauma, we are also able to help each other in ways that the hammers can't do. We reach out and offer to hold each other up and help rather than hurt each other. We choose to be bees, not locusts. Becoming a selfish locust is easier than becoming a life-giving bee. Each day, we awaken and choose the high road. We keep this world from imploding under the weight of the unbearable greed and lust of those who were too weak to choose good over evil.

What I love most about this forum is that it attracts us bees. We help each other through words and hug emojis that I can actually feel. Maybe not as fun as a real hug or a real smile, but the kind words I receive from other "bees" and these hug and smile emojis are enough to help get me through the day each day because I can feel the sentiment behind them.

Before joining this forum, I didn't know there were so many people in the world who are like me in that respect.

As a boy, being treated like a disease in my catholic school because I was kind and quiet and obedient, while most of the nuns and priests and teachers and other children were judgmental and cruel, I would dissociate into my head and imagine getting into a boat and getting lost at sea, then being washed up onto an island where I found an entire colony of people who were just like me. These people wouldn't make fun of me. They wouldn't call me stupid and ugly and weak or make me fight for my survival every day. I could trust them. I could feel accepted. That fantasy would help me fall asleep at night. But I believed it was a fantasy. I believed I was the only person alive who was as unwelcome on the earth as I was. But then a miracle happened. Today, I feel like this forum is that island which has popped out of my imagination and is now real. I found my island and I'm now able to be myself without having to feel ashamed of it.

So, that's why I so appreciate the kind words that I receive from yourself and so many others on this forum. It's also why I appreciate that I can give kindness to others and not be called a "bleeding heart" or a "tree hugger" or "feminine" because I'm a man with a nurturing spirit. I can be me.

I like that old analogy that we were born with two hands. One to give with and the other to receive with. And that as long as we're giving love with one hand and receiving love with the other, we're allowing love to flow through us. For me, and likely for a lot of people on this forum, it's easier for us to give love than to receive it. I've spent decades working on learning how to receive love. As a child, those who showed me kindness usually were grooming me to take something from me, or set me up for a humiliating prank. So love was a dangerous thing to accept back then. That's why I say that I'm so grateful for the kind words people give to me today. For the first time in my long life, I'm able to feel the kindness that's coming my way. And I so appreciate the support I get from all the people on this forum.

So to all of you who trust enough to share your stories openly with the rest of us, and who appreciate my responses, and who reciprocate in any way you can, I'm just grateful for you all.

I know that a lot of people read more posts than we respond to, but not because we don't want to. Often, for each of us, we don't know what to say all the time. Or we're in a Flashback mode and are temporarily muted by our own traumas. I take breaks that can last days or weeks. One I tool last year lasted for months. I just...didn't know what to say so I took a break. But I returned when I could, and I know that happens to most of us on this forum too. So I know that for every kind response given, ten more are in the shadows just unable to respond due to the reality of our personal trauma cycles.

Anyway. I ramble. Tomorrow is a Ketamine Infusion. For me, they help. I'm sliding back into my feelings of shame and feeling unforgivable for any unkind thing I've ever said or done. That's my cue to get help. Luckily, the time between infusions is getting longer. I hope that I'm slowly rewiring my neural pathways, and that a day will come when my new pathways will bond so tightly that they become the new baseline for my shame responses and one day I won't need the infusions anymore. Like they say, neurons that fire together, wire together...eventually...as long as we persist and work with them until they permanently settle into place.

[Papa Coco]

Journal Entry for Saturday, April 1st, 2023

I think I just figured out today that happiness is not tied to any other emotion.

My therapist started me down this road on Monday. I was ruminating again on that feeling of utter and complete loneliness that has haunted me for 60 years. I told him that no matter what I do, I can't stop feeling lonely, so I can't find happiness. He said, "I think that for your whole life, you've blended your state of loneliness in with your state of happiness, like they're the same thing." He explained that I can separate the two states of mind so as to feel pain, or loss, or fear, while still acknowledging that I can be happy.

I've tumbled this idea around in my head for a week now, and today, I think I finally understand what he meant.

I have to remember what happiness even is. It's not elation. Or laughing. Or even smiling. It can't be found outside of myself. A person can be miserable at Disneyland.

True happiness, to me, would be an intrinsic sense of satisfaction with who I am, regardless of what's happening extrinsically around me.

It's no wonder I struggle to find happiness when I keep thinking it's tied directly to my loneliness.

I think of a child wearing a cast on a broken ankle, feeling the pain of the break, and the itchiness of the cast, but laughing joyfully on a swing set with friends. The child is in pain, but happy at the same time.

I think, maybe, my painful, broken heart is like that child's foot in the cast. Sure it hurts. It doesn't mean I can't smile and laugh and play also.

I'm making this my theme for the week. I'm going to experiment with choosing to feel satisfied with myself, even while I'm feeling sadness and fear and confusion over the state of my family and my world and myself.

Chronic loneliness and a sense of not belonging is part and parcel with C-PTSD in many of us. But as long as I keep my belief that I can't find happiness because it's tied to those difficult issues, I don't stand a chance at finding that sense of self-satisfaction.

I hope to find that I can move forward in my healing by deciding I can be happy on the inside even when I'm feeling lonely and afraid. Disconnect them. Accept the loneliness as part of my life and then move on and love myself anyway.

[rainydiary]

I appreciate you sharing this reflection PC.  Reading your words and those of others on loneliness makes me feel less lonely as I'm not the only one. 

[sanmagic7]

hey, PC, i've struggled w/ feeling happy most of my life (but now i know it's another feeling i haven't been able to feel).  at one point, i was married, my own house, 2 D's, and i remember standing in my living room, asking myself why i didn't feel happy.  i had the 'american dream', so to speak, so why?

i can remember feeling content and satisfied on 2 occasions, and i felt joy when my D1 took her first step, but only w/in the past year did i feel about a minute's worth of happy for living w/ my wonderful D, and this was in the midst of all kinds of crapola going down.  it was a surprise, albeit a good one, and i'll never forget it.

what i've learned about myself is that human feelings were consistently not allowed, that i was consistently dehumanized from babyhood on.  i could feel glad, could smile a lot, make jokes, be funny, but that underlying feeling of happiness eluded me, as did most of my normal emotions.  i think what your T said is interesting.  the idea that one specific emotion does not necessarily connect w/ a state of being.  pretty profound.  love and hugs

[Armee]

I really like that thought Papa Coco. That happiness gets to coexist alongside any other emotion. You can be both happy and angry, happy and sad, etc. This has been a big source of confusion for me, in my recovery too. Because my life is exactly as I want it and I am full of gratitude and happiness for it, and yet I walk around and behave as if I am terminally depressed, but I am not, not at all. But both seem to be true, just in my case the depression is an expression being offered up from the past and playing through my body. So this interplay between the two is very interesting to me. I hope it offers a sense of peace and gives you permission to feel happy. I can feel underneath the trauma how joyful you are.

[Mandox]

Hello,
Well done for your journal.  Just wanted to say, I don't think any of us should be apologising for ourselves, for being ourselves, for writing long posts (although, maybe it's helpful for us to try to boil things down to the essentials ?) Unless we have set out to deliberately hurt someone, there's really very little need.  I like to think of our emotions as like the weather.  That's to say, the weather can be many things at any time, is not always predictable and we are not always wearing the right clothes.  If we can just accept ourselves, our moods, our feelings as we do the weather and just let the clouds drift by till the sun comes around again as it surely will, sometimes the day can be a little easier.  I think people are many things, not just a person with one dimension, but with many.  You are not your feelings or emotions.  When we feel ill, we should not think that we are the illness.  It is not who we are.  We feel bad, but we are not.  Oh, that's pretty brave doing stand-up.  I've done some acting and am singing - I get totally * scared every time and think it's my risk-taker that makes me do it, setting my self up for failure and being rubbish......  but it's also a good way to lose ya self, ha ? 

[Papa Coco]

Thank you Rainy, San, Armee and Mandox for the corroborative support. I'm sorry that you know the struggle to feel happy also.

I feel like saying to everyone to be careful of my epiphanies. None of them seem to last more than a few days. Some of them feel like genius thoughts, but within a few days I retract back to my depressed, confused self again.

I've been quiet lately because I've been with my grandsons on spring break. Coco and I took them to the beach for a week. They had a blast. So did we. But the 9 year old is getting interested in soccer now. He brought his soccer ball with on the trip. The weather was mostly wet, cold and windy all week, but on Friday we got a break in the weather, which offered a chance to get down to the sandy beach, where he marked off two goals so he and I could play soccer. I thought it would be fun, but whoa. I'm old, fat, lazy, depressed, and have bad arthritis in both knees. That was only the smaller half of why I didn't have fun playing soccer. The bigger half was the EF it triggered.

I was an amazingly strong boy. Using only shovels, a wheel barrow, two axes and one chainsaw, my dad and I dug roads into the hillsides, and logged trees to sell as firewood from the time I was 9 until I was 16. As small and skinny and shy as I was, my core strength was impressive on any scale. A few boys tried beating me up on the playground at religious school, but to their chagrin, they couldn't get me down to the ground no matter how hard they tried. That being said, I had NO sports skills. Even though I was strong, I also had some physical limitations from birth that left me uncoordinated and "clumsy" on the ball field or court. I only have slow-twitch muscle action. I don't seem to have any fast-twitch muscles, meaning I can't move quickly as is needed in every sport I know of. My self-worth was in the toilet, because that's how the church and my family kept me as their servant for most of my life. In order to try and use self-abusing humor to stave off the critical abuse by the bullies, I impulsively laughed during sports. I was trying to force myself to appear as if I was having fun, but it backfired. Self-abusing laughter on a ball field only made me look stupider.

On the beach on Friday I felt that same thing. I was laughing and making excuses. This nine-year-old has some soccer skills and I have no sports skills of any kind. I wasn't letting him win—he was beating me on his own merit. Thankfully, this little guy is the sweetest, kindest, funniest, coolest little dude I have probably ever met personally. When I made an excuse why I couldn't play anymore, he just said, "Okay." We kicked the ball back and forth for a few minutes, and then did other beach stuff in the sand for an hour or so. But while that ball was on the sand, I literally felt myself trying to find a way to hide from him so he wouldn't kick it to me again.

Why did I tell this story? Because no matter how many epiphanous moments I have, no matter how many thousands of dollars I spend annually on therapists, Ketamine Infusions, books, apps, vitamins, treatments, acupuncture, hypnotherapy, and any other new fad that comes along, when real life happens I baseline right back to being the humiliated, bully-bait that I have always been.

I was born with a funny, comical, cheerful, kind disposition, but all that means so little against the traumas that I just...can't...seem...to...get...past.

Happiness, as I say, isn't a giddy feeling of joy, it's a sense of feeling safe and comfortable in our own skin. If I feel validated and free to be me, that's what I call happiness.

There was a lot of joy in my life. So many happy years. I bring the sadder times to this forum because it's the topic that drove me here in the first place. I didn't join to talk about my happy times, I joined to find support with the other half of my experience. But I can say there really were a lot of happy times. My comical nature just might be the only reason I've survived all the other crapola life threw at me.

I made a commitment to make 2023 a year where I never leave a post hanging in despair, but to always make sure that no matter how good or bad I'm feeling, I will always end my posts on a positive note. So, I'm not sad that I spent Friday living in my abused self as my awesome little grandson wiped the beach with me in a soccer match. I'm glad that, for some reason, I wasn't drawn fully into the EF. My body and brain fell deep into the EF but only during the event. I seemed to know that the EF was a learning experience. I saw it happen, and felt it, but as soon as my grandson stopped playing soccer with me, the EF ended. That's a huge step forward for me. I guess it shows that while I'm still struggling to find long-term happiness (safety and confidence to be myself), I'm finally becoming able to not let the EFs drag me through the mud for weeks on end after a single soccer game.

I'm calling this a win. My therapist would say that I successfully witnessed the EF, rather than participated in it. That's a win.

My grandson never said ONE single negative thing to me. He didn't care that I looked like a fat slob missing the ball and not making one single point. He just enjoyed playing with his papa. I'm  so glad I didn't fall into a long, quiet spell like I used to after feeling this humiliation. Like I say, I'm calling this a win.

[Armee]

I'll say more later. For now a  big

Perhaps the EFs can be viewed as guideposts too, to know what needs looking at when you have the strength.

I don't want to veer into advice either but I'm also wondering if perhaps emdr might help? It's helped a lot of people. I'm one with the particular oddities of my brain that emdr is not such a clear cut path to relief but its still helping. It's like slowing down the processing enough to do it the justice it deserves. I can see the potential for it to help a lot if I didn't have the limitations I have.

[rainydiary]

I resonate with having epiphanies that later feel like they slip through my fingers and feeling like I am the same no matter how much changes or grows.  I appreciate you sharing as it helps me realize I'm not alone.

[sanmagic7]

PC, when i asked my T about returning thoughts and feelings that harsh my own sense of well-being - one day things are ok, the next intrusive thoughts take over again - she told me 'you have c-ptsd.' that helped put the frustration to the side for a time, and when i continue to struggle i can conjure up those words and bring some peace to my mind.  it's trauma brain, and until we can resolve some of those issues, we'll continue to battle this beast.  it's a difficult thing to accomplish, and at my age i don't have much hope about it, but my T does, so i ride her coattails on it.  as has been said here before, 'this, too, shall pass'.  keep up the good fight, ok?  we're fighting alongside you.  love and hugs