Papa Coco's Recovery Journal

[Papa Coco]

Hope, thank you for the hug!

I am excited to go to hypnosis again tomorrow. It's the Monday 3 of 4.

I've been doing the Morning Papers, which is at the root of The Artist's Way. Each morning I make sure to write my three pages of stream of thought. My GOODNESS, this is a powerful, powerful tool. I learn something amazing about myself every single morning. If you haven't done the Morning Papers yet, I recommend that everyone should at least try it for a week to see if it moves you as powerfully as they are moving me.

My artistic flow is accelerating rapidly through these papers.

Here's a hug back in return!   

[dollyvee]

Hi PC,

That's an interesting thought about shame. I can definitely see patterns repeating in my family that are legacy burdens and likely have to do with self worth etc.

I read this this morning and was going to post it in my journal as I'm trying to work out my connection to my (healthy) ancestors and lineage, but perhaps it resonated here with what you wrote as well.

"While of course our blood ancestry is a real thing and must be given its due, unless you descend from an immediate line of openhearted humans with intact forms of origination as a way of life, dependence on Ancestors for an identity will usually be the den of a lot of doctored and unmetabolized grief, hidden behind nonsense and still more intentional habitual Amnesia and mental lockdown. For in all probability, your ancestors for the last millennia or so were suffering just as much from a lack of origins as yourself. These are the "recent" ancestors.

Martín articulated the need for most modern people to reach further back along our bloodlines in order to contact ancestors who lived before the cultural disruption and colonialism that have led to our dissociation from the natural world. Speaking about these earlier ancestors, he continued, "The real, real 'old' ones are the indigenous ones, and they are not going to be tribalist, because they are in the story of all mythic things and have merged into the submolecular awareness in the sap and bloodstream of all living things that feed the present and do not value small-thinking isolationist ancestral prejudice."

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ancestral-Medicine-Rituals-Personal-Healing/dp/B07VCVCD92/ref=sr_1_1?crid=37WX2FFUNQGGN&keywords=ancestral+medicine+by+daniel+foor&qid=1696934712&sprefix=ancestrral+medicine%2Caps%2C507&sr=8-1

And there's an audio book!

Sending you support,
dolly 

[Papa Coco]

Hi Dolly, thanks for the book referral. I'm starting to really like audio books.

Ancestry is an interesting topic around me. My mother had a solid rule that no one in the family was allowed to do a genealogy of our family. She never explained why and, to this day, I have never even considered doing so.

However, I did have some interesting experiences with ancestry. My dad's parents were gone long before I was born. They were immigrants from Norway, settled in the North woods of Minnesota U.S. Nobody ever talked about them. Occassionally, for a few seconds, someone would say tiny things about my grandfather, but it was when they were arguing over whether he had hair or was bald, or whether he'd ever learned to speak English. Mom was a fiercely jealous person, who only valued her parents and two siblings. She hated Dad's family, and I never was told anything about them at all.

One day, I joined into a medium circle. A medium whom I had met at a bookstore was holding a "messages from beyond" circle at a friend's house. I attended. He looked at me and said that my grandmother "Anna" was coming through wanting me to know she watches over me. The only grandmother I knew of was my mother's mother, also gone before I was born, but I'd heard THOUSANDs of stories about her. Her name was Rose. I figured it was her, and that maybe Anna was short for Rosann or something. This was back when I was still talking to my family. I told my sister about it, and said, "It must me short for Gramma Rose's full name." This sister said, "No. Dad's mom was named Anna."

When the psychic was still sharing that she was connecting with him, I asked what her message was, and he said, "no message. She just wanted you to know she watches out for you."

As the years have passed I can see that my dad's family wasn't as evil as Mom had told me they were. That there really may have been some love there. Mom always made me feel like my dad's family was just cold and empty and cruel. But now I'm wondering, what were they really like? Without my jealous mother's interpretation standing between myself and the truth, were they really cold and cruel? Or was she just making sure no one put them before her own parents?

Maybe I should download that book you're referring me to, so I can start to wade through my own ancestry and see what I can discover about myself through my own family.

[dollyvee]

I'm sorry that your nmom isolated you like that. You should be able to research and connect to your loving/healed family be they living or dead without her approval or interference. Maybe they saw your nmom for who she was and she tried to demonize them in return. What a loving message tho, that she is there watching over you 

[Papa Coco]

Recovery Journal Entry for Friday, October 13, 2023

Yesterday, Coco left for the beach at around 10 AM. When we're together, we spend most of our time together. We're like two little kids that always have to be with each other. So I tend to think "I can't organize the garage, or build a fence, or write a book, or use the forum while she's here." I tend to use these beach trips, or when she's working longer hours, as my windows for to get things done. I feel cluttered when she's with me. It's not her fault, my family made me feel like they were the block against anything I wanted. They'd block me. They'd lie to me. They'd tell me I wasn't smart enough or talented enough or honest enough to do anything I wanted, but that it was my job to take care of them. Their moods were my responsibility. As I grew older, I had been bullied to the point that I'd learned to just always give them my money, my evenings, my resources, my attention. So, remnants of that sense of my family blocking me from doing anything for myself got transferred to my marriage. My wife is a beautiful person who never judges me. This sense of feeling trapped when she's around is all me. It has no bearing on who she is.

So yesterday, with Coco leaving for three days and two nights to the beach I figured I could organize the garage and declutter it at the same time. What an emotionally triggering mess that was. My garage is filled with tools and toys and parts for all sorts of my old values. The emotional stress was so bad that on several occasions I had to stop working, sit down, bury my head into my hands and ask the spiritual realm for help. Ever since starting this last round with hypnosis, I seem to have connected with a guide who I am now able to access almost instantly. When I ask him for answers, he responds immediately.

So, I asked why decluttering was so hard for me. His answer was that my physical clutter is the result of my spiritual clutter. I'm a jack of all trades, master at none. My guide said "...On earth as it is in heaven." He then showed me that my physical disorganized, jack of all trades physical clutter is the result of my spiritual clutter, and that most of my disorganized spiritual clutter is because I was raised to be responsible for everyone's happiness but my own. I, therefor needed to have all the tools I might ever use to handle THEIR crisis's for them.

I was raised to be "CinderFella". I was praised and loved only when I gave all my time and energy to my family. I was shunned, humiliated, and aggressively ignored if I ever wanted anything for myself. I grew up feeling responsible for other people's stuff, and ashamed of having needs or passions of my own. So spiritually, I am still hanging on to my belief that I have to be tooled up and ready, at any given moment, to do whatever a friend or peer tells me they need me to do. I can build a house if they need me to. I can build them a car from junkyard parts, I've done it several times. I can build furniture, cabinetry, landscaping. If needed, I can sing at their weddings, I can perform on stage. I've learned enough Sign Language and Spanish to not be proficient, but to be functionally able to help people who need interpreters. I have been talked into marrying a dozen different couples (as an internet minister). I can write books and blogs, and even though I'm not a hypnotherapist, I have taken some classes on it and am surprisingly good at doing it.

Why do I have all these partial talents? For most of them I have no passion. For a few I think I might have passion, but I'm not sure I know what passion feels like anymore. I worked my tail off to learn these skills and these languages, not from passion, but because I was told I HAD to. I HAD to be ready to give people anything they need. I keep two fire extinguishers in all three of my vehicles. I keep two injection needles of Narcan in every vehicle and in both homes in case I ever come across someone in a fentanyl crisis. I also have front and rear dash cams in all of the vehicles, so I can be ready to give evidence to the police or insurance companies if I see anything. I am a city CERT volunteer, ready to help the fire department and police in the event of any catastrophic event; such as an earthquake or massive fire.

I don't do any of this out of passion but out of a sense of crushing duty to my role as being responsible for everyone's health and wellbeing. I'm always tooled up and ready to do things that aren't mine to have to do. I've lost myself in these responsibilities. My soul is cluttered with other people's stuff, and it's disorganized from a total lack of passion on my part.

I can do a hundred things adequately but not perfectly. Only one of them is what will make me feel whole and happy and productive—but I've lost sight of what that one was supposed to carry me. And if I'd have kept my focus on whatever my passion was, I'd be very good at just those one or two passions now. Instead, I'm barely adequate at a hundred impassionate things.

How do I figure out which one to focus on and which 99 to get rid of?

Spiritual clutter = physical clutter. The clutter in my garage is the clutter in my sense of duty. The disorganized mess that my clutter is in, is my lack of passion. If I really had passion for woodworking, my garage would be organized to do woodworking. But my clutter is scattered all over the house because I have no focus. No passion. No desire to organize one thing because I feel like I have to figure out how to organize all 100 things in one very small garage. I lose everything I bring home now because my home is in such a mess. When I DO try to build something, I spend most of my time in frustration, unable to find my tools in the mess. This lack of physical organization is a lack of physical AND spiritual focus, which is from a lack of physical and spiritual passion.

My garage is not the problem, it's the end result of thinking I have to be ready to help anyone, anywhere with anything. What personal passion I've ever been led to feel has been replaced by a sense of duty to everyone else.

What my guide showed me yesterday was: On earth as it is in Heaven, which means that I'm cluttered physically because I am cluttered spiritually. I'm disorganized spiritually. I'm a jack of all trades, master at NONE spiritually. That's why I'm manifesting this same clutter physically. As above, so below. I asked my guide what I can do about it, and he recommended prayer. The awareness that I believe I'm fully responsible for all the spiritual pain and healing in the world is a misdirected knowing that I have to overcome, but it has spiritual roots, so it requires spiritual healing, which can usually only be done through prayer. Prayer is really where I need to focus.

I think that the new awareness of my belief (that I have to take on the weight of the world) is the first and most critical step in my healing. As I settle into knowing this about myself--as I digest this new information--I think that asking for supernatural support is appropriate. Like "let go and let god" means I have to actually let go of my grip on believing that I have to know how to fix anything because I'm responsible for everyone's happiness. Let go and leg god is not just words, letting go is an act. I have to let go of my spiritual clutter. I have too many directions I could go, but most of them are directions that people told me I had to be responsible for. I need to let go of my dad's energy, my mom's energy, my sociopathic sister's energy, my mentally challenged brother's energy, etc. I have to narrow down which spiritual talent is really mine, and which of the rest of the other 99 were shoved onto me, and that I should let go of.

Once I find my way through this spiritual (trauma) clutter, my garage will clean itself. I'll see, with laser clarity, which tools to sell or give away and which to keep, because I'll finally be able to see what energy in this world is really mine to work with, and which is someone else's energy that I need to give back to them.

I'm grateful for having heard these words from my guide yesterday. I now have a more specific target for my meditation time: Focus on all my half-baked skills to see which one brings up my passion. Then, through prayer and meditation, I can let go of the other 99 half-baked skills, trim down my garage and my soul, and start moving forward in MY direction: Not my family's many schizophrenic directions. But MY single, passionate direction!

[NarcKiddo]

Papa C, that was an exhausting read! I do not mean that to be critical but just reading about all that clutter really illustrates just what a heavy load of stuff you have. I'm glad you now have a target, so that you can start to work out what YOU need and want.

I am all too familiar with the concept of having to be ready to step up if my mother says "XYZ has happened. What do I do?" Google has been both a blessing and a curse. I don't have to physically learn the information any more, just in case, but boy do I spend a ton of time on Google if I think I am going to be called upon. The sad thing is that she doesn't even want the information. Not really. She just wants me to be spending my time on what she says she wants.

It sounds like you are going to make good use of your three days. And even if you don't get rid of a single item I bet you will have made good progress in identifying what needs to be done. And then, like you say. your garage will clean itself.

[Papa Coco]

Narckiddo,

Thanks for reading it. I know I write too much, and too long. I am trying to cut back. I'm not responding to everyone anymore, as I realize I need to stop being so "involved" in everyone's stuff.  I think that in the past I've overwhelmed some other members with my tenacious writing. So I'm putting my wordy stuff in my own personal recovery journals and not responding to the bulk of the other threads. I need to pull back and not be such a constant presence.

I guess the short of it is that we handle our trauma by feeling responsible to everyone but ourselves. Our lives go into clutter and confusion because there's a war going on with our IFS parts, where we argue within ourselves as to who is important. I suspect that a lot of people on this forum would not have any idea how to answer the question: What do you want to be when you grow up?  Our own passions were belittled, and we were given responsibility for our narcissistic elders instead. So we struggle now as our parts try to focus back on who we would be today had we been allowed to be ourselves when we were starting out.

[dollyvee]

Our own passions were belittled, and we were given responsibility for our narcissistic elders instead. So we struggle now as our parts try to focus back on who we would be today had we been allowed to be ourselves when we were starting out.

Yep yep yep or, like me, we pursue what we think we want to , but then are still side tracked by our family's what ifs, and very much playing into that internal struggle.

I feel too, that there's a lot of stuff I need to take on, and it's been a slow process of realizing what is happening. Oh, that person is upset, I will try and help them feel better without stopping to consider if that is my "job." Here, I guess, is where the lines become blurred. But if I don't try to help that person, or offer empathy/sympathy etc, then I must be a bad person? Who doesn't do those things? Just like with family, according to all the outside perspectives, but they're just doing that because they love you, and you need to give this "love" back in families. So, there's all the guilt and loyalty bound up in this.

Our sense of Self does get cluttered because we were never allowed to have one in the first place. I too, am working on putting up boundaries with this kind of energetic clutter right now.

Also, just sent you a quick DM about something.

Sending you support,
dolly

[StartingHealing]

PapaCoco,

I relate to a lot of what you have expressed. I too have had lots of physical clutter and there are times where I get a itch and I have to clean the physical. I do not know if that is helping the spiritual clutter or not.  Based on the energy before I clean, and then the energy after I suspect that I am clearing the spiritual clutter at the same time.

I to have many skills, some that are alright, some that it was from others, with growing up on a family farm having multiple skills was a have to.  Unfortunately my artistic side wasn't on the agenda to be supported. There is anger from that.

I'm very happy that you have access to a guide that is there for you like that.  That would be very comforting to me.

Surprising on how connection to others (in a healthy way) and connection to Spirit is the key, I feel, to heal.

Wishing you all the best

[Hope67]

Hi PapaCoco,
Was thinking about you, and just read what you wrote here.  I appreciate everything you've said to me in the past, and wanted you to know that.

I related to what you said about how the different parts can argue amongst themselves, and the difficulty of knowing what to say if someone asked 'What do you want to be when you grow up.'

Hope 

[Papa Coco]

Dolly, I resonate with your feeling that if someone needs help, it feels like we are responsible to help them. That old saying "live and let live" used to feel cold to me. Like it doesn't compute. "Live and help others live" felt more like how I was raised. It's tiring. People need to learn their own lessons, and when I help too much, I take their lesson away from them.

StartingHealing, Yes. I too feel anger in that my own artistic self-expression was laughed at and called a waste of time. My brother was an artist. They praised him for his talent. Then I came along 8 years later only to find out that my art was a curse and that I needed to grow up to be a factory worker because the factory was important and I wasn't. I have felt a great deal of frustration and anger over that too.
 
Hope, Thank you for the nice reassurance that my posts aren't too off-the-wall. Your words are comforting for me. Thank you, Hope.

I've been struggling with posts lately because I'm feeling good this year. It's the first Autumn that I've felt good.  What happened was that from late September through mid-October I attended 4 weekly hypnosis sessions with a group of 3 other Complex-PTSD clients and one hypnotherapist. My hypnotherapist was a Trauma Counselor until she had a Near Death Experience (NDE) about 12 years ago, and when she returned from the "dead" she was a changed person. She left her practice and chose to become more of a spiritual helper than a clinical psychologist. She uses hypnosis along with long conversation to help her clients start to feel good about life again.  It works really well for me.

But it has a spiritual twist to it, so I can't really go on and on about it here on the forum.

So for today's Recovery Journal entry, I'm just going to say that I'm feeling better than I've felt probably ever. I don't have a giddy, manic high of happiness, but I am living in a constant, chronic sense of gratitude right now. Not for being alive on the earth while our politicians and corporate billionaires are destroying it with their selfish needs for power and corruption, but a sense of unwavering gratitude just to be a spiritual being. So, where AA teaches to trust a higher power, I think that's what I'm doing here with PTSD. Instead of Alcohol, my addiction right now is the trauma-drama life I've been living for 63 years and counting. I'm discovering that handling life while feeling connected to a higher power is as helpful for my trauma disorders as it was for my sobriety when I was quitting drinking with AA. It seems that the methods used by AA tend to work with quite a few of life's stressors.

My current top priority is learning how to keep this feeling going. I hope it's a lifechanging moment, but if it's not, and if my trusting a higher power is only bringing temporary relief, well then, I'll try to keep it going for as long as possible before I sink back into feeling the way I feel normally. Autumn is usually my craziest time of the year. Memories of the school bullying and the SA that happened during the holidays oh so long ago might return. And I want to try to enjoy at least one year feeling separated from the stressors.

[Armee]

 

I'm so happy you are feeling great Papa Coco!

Your happiness brings me happiness.

[NarcKiddo]

It's lovely that you are feeling good this year. And that you have told us. When most people around us are struggling in one way or another it can feel insensitive to celebrate feeling good oneself. But my therapy and my reading has been saying to me that it is perfectly OK to be happy oneself while still empathising with those who are not. Being authentic is the best way.

 

[dollyvee]

Hi Papa Coco,

That's great you found some space with those things. What a long way you've come 

I'm reading something at the moment where she talks about keeping the "power" of something means not talking about it. This is in relation to letting negative beliefs go, but maybe it fits for those of us who were never allowed to have positive things of our own.

"At this point do not share what you are releasing. Many of us have the habit of breaking the power of the moment by talking about it. You want the power to build up inside you so you are really ready to let it go."

Sending you support,
dolly

[Larry]

Thank you for sharing your experience papa c,   i appreciate you,  and hope you have a great day