Papa Coco's Recovery Journal

[sanmagic7]

thanks for sharing everything as you do, PC.  you are such a big part of this community - and happy 1-yr. anniversary!  so glad you can see positivity after a year.  it speaks to your determination and perseverance to keep moving ahead.  all these realizations of yours - wow!  as painful as it may be, i'm glad for you to be able to address your innermost thoughts and feelings.  keep up the good work!   love and hugs

[Hope67]

Hi Papa Coco,
Also wanted to send you a Happy Anniversary wish, and hope that you have a weekend with some nice things in it.   
Hope 

[Papa Coco]

Journal Entry for August 31, 2022,

Thanks everyone for the well-wishes on my 1-year anniversary on this site. I can now start using this forum as a way to track my moods throughout the year. I struggle with anniversary stress at least three times per year, but I've never tracked the exact timing of the stressors.

Beginning at around Thanksgiving, I'll have my most volatile stressor. That's when I was molested when I was seven. The attacks were connected to the holidays, so even today, 55 years later, I still feel "crazy" from Thanksgiving to New Years Day. Sometimes, during the Holidays, I can't even remember what year it is: 2022, or 1967. They feel the same.

Then in February-March, I go into serious depression. That marks the time when I was ten years old, and my very best friend tried to turn our friendship into a sexual relationship. But I wasn't gay, so I didn't react how he'd hoped I would. I wasn't mean to him, I just didn't want to do what he wanted to do, so he smacked me across the face and began a fierce campaign to prove I was gay and he wasn't. That was a church-based school, so being accused of being gay was almost a death sentence, and they all made sure I knew that even God hated me for being what they all said I was, but I didn't understand what that was. At 10, I really didn't know what gay meant. (Today I'm an avid supporter of the LGBTQ community, because I believe I've walked a hundred miles in their shoes, and I really feel the pain that they're subject to in our sick, sick, sick society). All I knew back then was that  I apparently was this thing, and I didn't deserve to be alive because of it. The years of mob-bullying turned me into a recluse, who lived 24 hours a day in my imagination where I could hide from the reality of what these nasty people were doing to me for the next several years. So I believe that when Feb/Mar rolls around and my depression pops up and takes me down, that it's related to the infamous day I didn't accept my friend's promise ring.

Then I get depressed again in August. I'm assuming it's because summer vacation from school is ending and the stress of being sent back to school to be beaten on, lied about, stolen from, harassed and rejected by everyone, even many of the adult teachers, puts me into a sad, helpless mood. I assume it's why I joined this forum last year during mid-August, and why I'm so active on the site again this year at the same time. It will be fun to track my own posts year over year to see if I'm any better each year.

So today, Wednesday, August 31, 2022 I'm feeling better than I have in a while. Heat intolerance has locked me indoors in the AC for many week. But I'm at the beach for a few weeks now and the weather has blessed me with several 62 degree Fahrenheit days in a row, so now I'm outside doing projects, thinning the overgrown shrubbery, and repairing the porch, and clearing old rodent-destroyed insulation from the crawlspace, and a few other critical things that I can't afford to have contractors do for me.

I had a Therapy appointment yesterday. I told my therapist all about these projects. I told him I can still feel the depression at the core of my soul, but it's temporarily distracted with the successes of the past few days. He disagreed. He said that depression is not "at the core" of my being. He said that when I'm feeling good about myself (every now and then for a few days here and there) it's because I'm more connected to the present and the projects I'm doing as a 62-year-old man.

But when I'm not able to do any projects, I begin to feel attached to my young, lost, broken-hearted self again. I think of it as sinking into depression, but my therapist sees it as the mirror between my abused child self and my competent adult self starts to thin, and I start to reconnect with the lost, broken hearted, confused, abused little boy who's still waiting for someone to tell me they love me and that I'm not a disease that needs to be ignored.

This sent us down the bunny trail of me telling him how I spent my entire adult life unable to say the words "I'm a man." No part of me ever believed I was anything but an unworthy, worthless servant—a house pet. Calling myself a man would have sent my NPD family into a laughing fit, humiliating me into remaining as their obedient scapegoat again. Not a man... just an ugly little body with a partial soul that even God hated.

My therapist suggests that I need to be more aware of how my young self interacts with my elder self rather than doing this switching back and forth that I do between the two people. I fully occupy my competent adult self while doing projects. But then I fully occupy my lost little inner child self when I'm not doing projects. Like I'm two people who don't talk to each other.

I need to integrate those two pieces of myself so I am both people all the time. As I'm doing my projects, I need to really focus on my tween self, who's still living in my heart and brain, still waiting to be told I'm loved and trusted and allowed to be who I want to be. My therapist says that I need to love that boy and stop feeling like his presence in my life is a problem that needs to be cured. He also says that when the projects go well, like when the new steps are done and look fantastic, that I need to connect with the inner boy and celebrate with him, to prove to myself that young me and elder me are completely connected all the time. I need to do my projects together with the lost boy and the competent man sharing the space simultaneously.

I tend to ignore my adult successes and dwell on my childhood failures. It's like when I do something great, I only feel good about it until the next morning, when I return to feeling like I'm that ignored child who still wants to be loved and trusted, but can't do anything right and who needs to be ashamed of being who I am all over again.

For today I'm feeling pretty good, but that's because I've gotten some projects going. As soon as they're done, I'll likely become my ignored child again. The goal, for me, is to consciously connect with the child more often in both the good times and the bad. My therapist says to say the words to him, "I'm with you, I'm for you, I'm in you and you're in me." He said we need to celebrate our successes together and we need to love each other when we feel like a failure too. It's all about integrating, not curing.  I'll never be able to go back and fix the things that were done to me, so I'll never get the closure I always wish I could have gotten. My childhood never ended. It's still alive in my trauma-brain. But if I can learn to connect the child with the old man, maybe I can stop vacillating between being happy when busy to being depressed when not busy.

It's slow progress, but it's progress. I'll take it.

[paul72]

Hi Papa Coco
I appreciate you sharing this.

I'm so sorry for your abuse and for how your friend treated you, and for all the years of bullying and pain that followed.
I can so relate to a lot of what you've said...though I was never sexually assaulted. (I say that with some hesitation.)
But, I was 48 when I was finally able to say "I am a good person", and I'm sure my FOO would laugh at that as well.

When you say you are a man, I would only add that you are also a very good man.
I have no friends, for a variety of reasons I am sure. But I sure wish for a male friend who was open, honest, kind, calm like you... those are incredible gifts you have.
Congratulations on working on your projects. Something I've tried (forgive me if unhelpful) to help with my IC is when doing a project, is set myself up for how my young self would do it.
ie play my favourite music from that time, maybe even a childish drink or snack. Young me has more energy as well so that could be a unexpected benefit too

I hope you have a great day and, like you say, feel good about your progress

[sanmagic7]

it does sound like progress, PC, and progress, even in small steps, moves us closer to health and well-being.  keep up the good work.  i think integrating parts can be slow, even tedious, but i believe there's a lot of value in doing so.  best to you with this.  love and hugs

[Papa Coco]

Hey Phil,

Thanks for the kind words. I know what you mean about wishing you had a male friend you could be totally honest with. I've spent my life believing such a man didn't exist. I was raised with John Wayne movies. I HATE John Wayne. He gave my parents' generation permission to be cold, heartless, tough-guys who make sarcastic insults at any man who dared tell the truth from his heart.  Anytime you want to connect mano-a-mano, feel free to send me a private message. I'm always open for making new friends.

I'm 62 and retired now (forcibly...my job of 42 years was outsourced to the lowest bidder). I'm aware now that I don't have many friends anymore either.

I have to say though that in my 50s I learned something pretty amazing. For 42 years I worked in the world's largest building with 40,000 friends, and I'd been there since a month past my 18th birthday. After a while I knew hundreds of people by name. But I'd never met a man who could be open and honest with me. Women found me non-threatening, so they made friends with me quickly and often opened up with me. But men, not so much. With men friends I had to be stupid and tough. Indestructible and without emotion. I had to talk cars and sports and lawn mowing tips. It was fine. That's how the world worked, and I had friends to drink beer with and tell jokes to. All was well in the "real world." All my deep suffering was a secret from everyone but my wife and my therapist.

Then, when I was 48, my little sister took her own life. That was the fuse that blew my big, huge catholic family apart. The next two years were absolute he11 as I dealt with having to face my dragons. I believe that if we don't face our dragons, then one day our dragons will finally face us. My family's complete destruction was my dragon forcing me to realize what monsters they'd always been. At 50, to save my own life, I estranged at100% No Contact with anyone I'm related to and with anyone who ever knew my family. Being cut loose from them did an amazing thing for me. It compelled me to begin to write a tell-all novel about a boy who'd lived through what I lived through.

At work, by my mid 50s, I finally started opening up with the people I'd worked with for years, telling them that I was writing a novel. Now, mind you, I was a workaholic corporate educator by day, but by night I was a community volunteer advocate for victims of sexual assault, then I was a wedding singer. Then a standup comedian, and an occasional guest speaker at professional development seminars. All my peers knew all this stuff. So when I finally told them I was writing a novel, they excitedly asked what it was about. I began telling my peers of 30+ years that I have been rescued at the last second from suicide three times during the years they've known me. I've been in therapy for suicidal depression since I was 21. I put myself through Alcohol Rehab, that my family of origin was a nest of monsters so horrible that I was forced to estrange from, and that I was abused a dozen different ways by religious people. Hearing these hidden truths about a man they thought had the world by the tail did positive things for them.

My peers, who also appeared to have the world by the tail, would almost always say the same thing: "I never would have expected to hear these things about you. you're so happy all the time."  Then...and this is to my point for this whole posting, THEN they would say "Can I tell you what happened to me?" and "I've never told anyone this before".  Then they would open up, with a pinkishly blushing face, to tell me the horror stories of their own childhoods.

My point is that for me, when I finally found a way to open up to other men, without sounding needy, but just explaining why I'm writing the novel I'm writing, THEY FELT safe enough to open up to me, and I could tell they always felt a great sense of relief that they had another man to talk to about some secret past they thought they were stuck with for life.

Over the past 10 years I've become more and more open about my life, and as I do it, in a positive, matter-of-fact way just as a common conversation, the more people open up around me too. 

I've coined another saying that I use all the time now: There are more novels walking on the sidewalks than there are in the bookstores.

My experience has made me to believe that there are not very many people, anywhere, who are having a trouble-free life. Once you really, really get to open the people up around you, you find out how much pain there really is in the world. That makes me feel less like I'm an isolated case of someone who had to spend his life hiding the truth about who I really am, and it also gives more people around me, especially men who've never felt safe opening up, to feel the same way I do.

I also feel like I'm doing people a disservice by pretending my life is better than it is. People compare themselves to their peers. That's how we know if we're good or bad, or tall or short, or funny, or likeable. We all do it. So when people compare themselves to my happy persona they feel like they are alone with their secrets. But when those same people discover that there is a terrified, lonely, suicidal, betrayed little boy hiding deep within me, they feel like they aren't the only sufferers.

In summary, I was not always this open. But I found a way to tell my story without sounding like I'm asking for pity, and I discovered that other men needed me to do that, so they could open up too.

[Armee]

I agree with your T, about your core and being connected to the present.

[Papa Coco]

Journal Entry, Sunday, September 4, 2022

Today I read an article referred by Hope67. The article was just another of the late-breaking research that's teaching me things about myself I hadn't yet grasped. I've been in Therapy for 41 years. I've been with a very good, loving, trustworthy, DBT therapist for around 20 years. I've learned so much about C-PTSD that I sometimes think there couldn't be more to learn. But today's research, and today's psychologists and neurologists are learning more about C-PSTD each year than in all of history put together.

I'm humbled again. And I'm crazy again. Today's article on Incest and how victims of it tend to minimize it because they want to love and respect the person who'd hurt them, sent me into a strange dissociation. I had to stop reading the article halfway through because I was dissociating so badly, I couldn't read English anymore. It was just gibberish: black marks on a white background.  I took an hour break and went back to try and finish the article, only to find that I was now blind in the center of both eyes. I've NEVER experienced this before. But for about an hour I appeared to have a gray shaded line in the very center of both eyes that didn't allow me to focus on words or anything else. I could still see peripherally, so I was able to go work on a jigsaw puzzle by sort of focusing my attention on the edges around the shaded line in my sight. Once, years ago, a man I worked with said he had "photo migraines" which were painless episodes of blindness, only in the center of his field of vision. I haven't yet gone to WebMD to see if that's a real thing or not, but what happened to me today reminded me of his situation 30 years ago.  I took a couple of aspirin, just in case this was some kind of odd migraine. For some reason it only lasted an hour and now I'm kind of okay again.

Physically I feel kind of weak, like the life force is draining out of me, which is allowing my numb, human body to move around without my soul attached. I'm cooking stuffed jalapenos right now as a distraction. The aroma of the oven is starting to fill the air, which is grounding me a little bit, but not completely.

I've known for decades that the people I trust the least are the people who love me the most. I'm so aware of how much pain betrayal causes that I protect myself incessantly from people who say they like or love me. I handle it pretty good. I have a good, strong, loving relationship with my wife of 40 years, but at times, I start to wish she'd just betray me somehow so I could get it over with. Same with my son. My daughter-in-law, grandsons and all my friends. Sometimes I just want them to be found saying horrible things about me. I asked my T why I do that, and he said that it's simply because a big part of me knows no one really loves me, and I just want my loved ones to get it over with so I can stop waiting for the inevitable betrayal.

Now, after reading today's, well-written article, I can see into a deeper level, at how damaged I really am.  I'm struggling to stay in my body today, but I'm not in pain. I'm just feeling like my soul has vacated my flesh and I'm just walking around doing laundry and cooking because my body knows how to do that without my brain engaged.  I'm glad I read the article. Even when I learn things I don't want to know, I'm always glad to learn them. The mystery of why I am who I am becomes less and less of a mystery with each painful thing I learn about myself through the research of professionals.

[Armee]

Wow Papa C it's amazing what our bodies and minds can do to protect us. I'm sorry I floated that post back up. I found it when I was going to post there but backed out.

It makes sense we expect people to be bad, but we know too there qre truly good people out there who will not hurt us. Not being able to trust that really sucks.

[sanmagic7]

i agree w/ armee about how our brains take care of us in the midst of traumatic anythings.  waiting for the betrayal, yep, been there.  my T told me it's cuz that's what i've known, and it takes time and caring people around me for a while to be able to begin letting loose of that feeling.  i've lived w/ my D for nearly 5 years, and the feeling has diminished, but i can feel it wanting to creep up again every so often.  it just sucks.  love and a hug filled w/ gentle kindness for you, cuz you deserve that.

[Papa Coco]

Thank you, San and Armee,

Your feedback means a lot to me. It proves someone is hearing me. I'm feeling heard.

Today I'm feeling a bit more connected to my body, but my vision remains slightly blurred like I'm not wearing my glasses, which I AM wearing.

Journal Entry: Monday, September 05, 2022 (Labor Day Holiday in the US).

EFs don't scare me anymore. They surprise me. They intrigue me. Yesterday's sudden onset of blindness confused me. In fact, it terrified me at first, because I thought it was a physical illness coming on. But as soon as I decided it was trauma response, I lost all fear of it. Blindness that stops me from reading an article is a new thing for me.

EFs force me to take special care of myself during them. But they don't frighten me anymore. I now know why I have them. I know they are temporary. And I now know how to take care of myself until they pass.

First: Once I recognize that I'm having a trauma-induced Emotional Flashback, I give myself permission to just have it. I allow it. I no longer fight it. It's trying to help me, so I talk to it. I thank it for protecting me. Then I begin to do little things to ground my spirit back into my body by use of physical stimulation: I cook aromatic meals; I walk into the icy Pacific Ocean with my pant legs rolled up to my knees; I sit on the patio in a rainstorm so I can feel the rain and wind on my face; I run my hands under cold water; I crank up the music; I light a campfire so I can feel the heat and see the sparks; I used to have a hot tub, (and would love to have one again), because soaking in the jets of hot water helped bring me back into my body. I also used to always have a pet in the house. A dog or a cat. They could be comforting to pet and play with. But I no longer have pets.

These physical anchors in reality work now. They didn't used to, but that was because I used to be so emotionally afraid of the EFs. I feared they were permanent, and that they meant I was irreparably damaged. I used to be ashamed of them. What kind of a man can't handle stress? Right? I used to believe they were proof I was mentally ill. Weak. Stupid. I feared my family was right all those years that I'm too weak and stupid to handle my life without their criticism, humiliation, and control. I was unable to see reality through the pain and I tried hard to hide that from my peers and family.

But my DBT therapist has worked tirelessly with me for nearly 20 years to help me lose my fear of my Trauma reactions. He teaches me to be thankful to my brain for trying so hard to protect me from my past. Integrating my trauma side with my realist side is working well to make me feel about half as disconnected as I used to. And now, the disconnection doesn't scare me. It's like a flu. I just need to take care of myself during the EF whether it lasts an hour or a week. I now know that one morning I'll wake up and it'll be gone. Part of the fear of the EFs was feeling like I couldn't control them. Well, I can't control the flu either, but I know how to get through it with self-care. Same now with the EFs. They come and go. And I take special care of myself when I'm in them. Then they pass. Until another comes at me at another time.

Yesterday's experience was just a strange one for me. Going blind in the center of my eye so I couldn't read the rest of the article was a new thing. Oh well. It passed in only a matter of a few hours. Today I just have a tiny bit of blurred vision, but it'll pass too. Now that I believe the blindness was a Trauma reaction, and not the onset of physical blindness, I'm not afraid of it.

[Armee]

This is exactly right on Papa Coco. Accepting instead of fighting or feeling shame about the EFs is the key to getting through them. It took me a long time to learn that. Used to tick me off when T would suggest I should accept dissociation or whatever weird symptom.

I have never gotten blindness before from one but my vision goes very very blurry, like yours. I think it makes it easier to dissociate...don't take it in, don't see it.

[rainydiary]

I appreciate your reflection on seeing an EF as opportunity to take care oneself as well as approaching with curiosity.

[Papa Coco]

Journal Entry: Monday, September 12, 2022

It's 2:00 AM and sleep is too torturous for me tonight. For whatever reason the nightmares were too horrible to bear. I have the flu...or at least a bad cold. Sore muscles, nausea, loss of appetite, Headache. I am miserable.  two days now. My COVID test came back negative. It's normal. Every year I always get sick in September. Weather changes, etc.

I'm also struggling with a plethora of problems from cars to houses to electronics. And to top it off, my wife and I came upon a horrific car crash on our way home from the beach at 11 PM Friday night. 6-8 cars strewn across the highway. The lane we were in was blocked. As the abnormally overly aggressive traffic of the night was slowing, I had to merge us over two lanes to get around the core of the crash. It had just happened. People were just getting out of their damaged cars and running toward a burning SUV with cell phones at their ears. As we slowly crept past, and just a few feet away from the burning SUV, we could see that it had been knocked onto its side, and then slammed into by a full-sized pickup truck, probably at full speed, crushing the top and igniting the fire. We were helpless. My Jeep had broken down at the beach, and my wife had come to get me in our old truck. My Jeep has fire extinguishers in it, my old truck does not (BUT IT WILL NOW!!!)

We slowly crept past the burning SUV knowing that everyone inside was either dead or dying and we couldn't do ANYTHING to help. There were at least a dozen people already there and I had NO fire extinguisher.

THEN we spent Saturday, still dealing with the vision of the burning SUV in our heads and dealing with the fact that the wildfires are threatening our sons' towns. All of us live in Snohomish County, who has a very robust Emergency Management System. At midday, all our cell phones started screeching a horrible sound. Emergency Evacuation Notices had gone out to everyone in the county. The message was to "leave NOW! GO! Do not delay. Turn on headlights, leave note on front door indicating your location!"  We knew it wasn't meant for us, as we're deep within the city limits and there are no fires near us, just a lot of smoke and ash and eerie orange skies. But both of our sons live up in the mountains and are both in the evacuation zones. They live in towns that are on Hwy 2, which is a two-lane highway that is always badly backed up, even on a good day. We knew that if they waited to the last minute to evacuate, that they'd be in gridlock for hours. A half hour later, the phones started screeching again. The Emergency Management System was retracting the earlier message, saying it was only for the town my oldest son lives in, but a glitch sent it to every city in the county. I texted our oldest son, (S1) who hates us because we don't vote for Trump and got an angry message back from him. Our other son (S2) has a wife and two children. His wife's family lives all over in those same mountains. He and his family were holding off evacuating because they are only at level 1, which means they are to be on watch. So, they're on watch. We're on watch. Our oldest son, S1, (who is both schizophrenic AND on the autism spectrum...Oh, AND is a conspiracy theorist/angry trump supporter) hates us and thinks we're stupid for caring about him...

It was stress, stress, stress, stress all weekend long.  Now I can't sleep. I woke up at 2:00 AM with horrible images in my head about people dying and suffering in horrific ways and I was completely unable to help them. The images just keep coming. Every time I close my eyes, new images of intense suffering. It's like being in h3II.

I blame the combination of having a bad cold, being on all kinds of over the counter cold medications, and still in the natural state of trauma from that car accident, and the guilt I feel that I didn't prepare my truck with a fire extinguisher, and the stress of my two sons, one who loves us, and the other who hates us, and the fact that my wife and I can hardly breathe now because of the bad, bad, bad air quality... It's too much all at once.

My wife found an article about the car accident. All the occupants of the SUV perished and one of the many drivers we saw in the tangled mess went to jail for manslaughter because of road rage. I end up feeling great sorrow for the victims of the road rage, but also the assailant. The stress on the freeway that night was the worst I'd come across. Sometimes a person just gets frustrated and makes ONE stupid move out of a short fit of rage, and now that person has to live the rest of his/her life with the guilt of what they'd done...and probably in a prison cell. I know nothing about who did it, nor how they did it, so I don't know if they were a bad person who deserves prison, or a good person who wishes they were dead now. But me being me, I'm choosing to feel bad for all of them: the victims and the perpetrator.

I make that drive up and down I-5 all the time. We go back and forth to the beach many, many times a year, and this night was by far the most aggressive night I've ever driven it. In order to keep from being rear-ended, I had to go 10-15 MPH over the speed limit, and still people were passing us at speeds, easily in the 90 MPH to 100 MPH range if not even faster. It had been going on like that for an hour when we came upon the crash. Road rage, excessive speed, and an oddly heavy traffic for nearly midnight, made for a stressful end to a nice day at the beach.

I'm not sure what to do now. I can only watch so much TV before I can't stand it anymore. I can't go back to bed. I don't want to start seeing those images again. I don't respond well to sleep aids. They really don't work well for me. Sometimes I think sleeping pills actually make me unable to sleep at all.  So here I am, writing my daily journal hours before the day even begins.  To add to this car accident, it brings up memories of all the car accidents I've witnessed in my life.

Stress. GADS this is awful!  Just awful. I can't close my eyes or I see pain and suffering and I feel helpless to fix any of it for anyone. Thankfully I have My biweekly therapy appointment tomorrow and my next Ketamine Infusion scheduled for Wednesday. That's only two days away. But I sure hope I can find a way to get some sleep before that.

For anyone else who is in a fire zone, I know Kizzie, you're dealing with it, I'm here to tell you, I'm right in it with you and I know how stressful this is!!! It's h3II on earth!!!!

[rainydiary]

PC, I hope you are able to find some healing from the illness and relief from the images and stress.