Papa Coco's Recovery Journal

[dollyvee]

Hi PC,

I'm sorry things are so tough for you right now  For what it's worth, I don't think you were pretending that the hypnosis was helping you from the trauma. To me, there's different layers of processing that come up. Maybe the hypnosis helped you have some space so that you could get in touch, or realize, that that seven year old boy was there and what it feels like he has to go through all the time, and that there is the adult you now who can do all those things to protect him (the smoke alarms, etc etc) if you need to. You have grown into a fully functional adult who can protect him in ways the seven year old couldn't. Maybe he will give you some space once he starts to realize this, if only a little bit at a time. So, it's like the next step in healing even though it might feel like a setback.

What you said about the compulsion to tell your story is interesting too. I remember coming across an IFS talk by an IFS therapist on youtube and he talks about the "storyteller," and how it's a blended part. To me, it's also a way of connecting with people where someone might not have had that before.

I don't know if it's useful but this is it here. He might have some other videos on it as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BchqogbVfns

Sending you support and a hug 
dolly

[Papa Coco]

Armee,Thank you for the tip on the book. I downloaded it today on Kindle and am already nearing chapter three. My first worry was that it might be focused on women who were SA'd by men, and everyone else can just fit ourselves into the female mold, but as I read even the first chapter my fears were put to rest. So far so good. I was SAd by men, but also had a lot of non-physical sexual abuse by women, from ages 5 to 50. I like the book. I'm looking forward to learning more of the details around the effects of CSA on my adult life.

Dolly, the video is interesting. I hadn't ever thought about how various parts participate during the telling of a single story. It makes clear sense.

When I was writing my novels, I often found myself stuck with what the next step should be, or what is missing to make some of my chapters feel flat. So I would go for a drive or a walk and I'd start talking to my characters. They would often tell me what to write, or which direction to take the story. While watching this youtube video on storytelling by our parts, I started to think, Hmm. Maybe that's what was happening with me in the car. I was accessing my parts and calling them characters. Perhaps each character is, in fact, modeled after one or some of my own IFS parts.

One of my favorite twists in the books happened when I was planning to continue writing about how the secret abuse would remain a secret, as it did for me, until my character grew up and got old. One day, in the car, I asked my main character, Kyle, "What do you wish would happen next?" Without hesitation, he said to me, "I want to be caught."  I asked for clarification, and between himself and I, we decided to write one more entire section, which would include multiple chapters, and would tie off the story beautifully. I went to the computer and started writing the final section. That section starts with a page that just says, "When you don't face your dragons, your dragons face you." The next several chapters, Kyle's pedophile doctor was caught. Photos were found. Kyle's abuse was made public. His mother saw the photos. His father became quiet. His evil sister (who is modeled after my own evil sister), took full advantage to make him squirm even more. It led to Kyle's exit from the family at 17 1/2 years of age. It capped the story perfectly, and gave it an ending that sticks in the minds of the readers. The reason I'm telling this story to you, about how I wrote the book, is because my characters, who are likely modeled after my own IFS Parts, ACTUALLY speak to me. They give me information that brings important healing information to my conscious mind. 

Writing is a powerful, powerful healing tool for trauma survivors. Like Flannery O'Connor said, "I write to discover what I know." And I now know exactly what was meant by that quote.

There's so much richness in all the information that's bubbling up for us all via Youtube, books, blogs, podcasts, and documentaries. Thank  GOD people are finally talking about this stuff.

Talking WITH (not to, but with) our parts opens up information that can't be discovered any other way. All this work with IFS parts is at the core of the largest percentage of my own healing journey. Learning of the parts, meeting them. Listening to them. Proving I see them and hear them is bringing more healing to me than anything else I've done yet.

[NarcKiddo]

That's really interesting Papa C. I have written several novels. They do not attempt to tell my story. At the time I started writing fiction I had only the haziest idea that there was something wrong in my FOO and did not really know what it was. I now realise all my stories are infested with narcs, which stands to reason and is helpful for me when I revise them to see why I am getting stuck in places.

But, although I do not speak directly with my characters, I am very familiar with the concept of them simply refusing to allow the story to go in the direction I had planned. My first novel was supposed to have a happy ending when our hero got the girl. Only he had realised, where I had not, that this would be no happy ending. The girl was a massive problem from which he would have to extricate himself. Two novels, condensed into one, later and I found the right ending. I think...

[Papa Coco]

NarcKiddo,

I'm sure you've heard the old saying that every novel is about the author. I sort of think that even if the author isn't telling their own story, the characters are real written representations of living pieces of the author's real world. Cheesy books and movies are filled with shallow, one-dimensional characters. But authors who are artists, fill their books with real people under different names. Even if the storyline is all made up in our heads, our characters are real people and the way these characters interact are believable. I like to think that, written between the lines of every truly good novel, is the author's true story.

I've been writing stories in my head since I was very young. It's how I created worlds that I could safely exist in. Every day after being abused at school, I'd come home and hide away with my toy cars and Legos. I'd build a setting or a town, and then move the little cars around pretending each one represented the people who'd made me feel isolated that day. The stories had beginnings, middles and ends.  When I walked away from my FOO, at age 50, I finally found the freedom to take the stories out of my head and put them onto paper. The names and cities and churches and doctors' offices were all fictional, but they led my characters to who I am now. (or who I was when I wrote them).

I've noticed that on this forum, and everywhere else where I interact with traumatized souls, that we all have various different backstories. We all came from very different places with very different family histories, and yet, somehow, we all ended up in the same place, dealing with shockingly similar symptoms, reactions, fears and triggers.

I tend to believe that there are more novels walking the sidewalks than there are on the bookstore shelves. Each of us has a cast of characters living in our heads. Whether we are writers, or singers, or photographers, or painters, or any other creative release of our tension, the characters that live within us might as well be as real as if they lived next door in a real house.

[sanmagic7]

 

[Papa Coco]

Journal Entry for Sunday, December 10, 2023

I've been listening to the audiobook The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. It's triggering but it's also enlightening. I'm listening through it for the second time now. It's amazing how much research he, and other trauma-wise experts, have done and what they've discovered. For me, I'm handling being triggered so far, and I can only listen for a while before I become so irritable that I shouldn't be around other people until I recover my sense of peace.

He has described my personality perfectly as a person who endured sa and loneliness from a very young age. I'm not sure yet why I feel the irritability from listening to him describe a world where childhood trauma defines our adult lives so well. I suspect, for now, that the irritability is coming from the fact that nobody can fix what was done. On one hand, it's changing me into a much, much more forgiving person, because I can see so clearly that "bad" people are mostly trauma victims who aren't getting the help they need. On the other hand, I'm super frustrated that I wouldn't be suffering so much as an adult if someone had just given a darn about me when I was younger.

A takeaway from this book is that, by and large, one of the biggest reasons we struggle with residual trauma disorders is because when our abuse was happening, nobody was on our side to protect us. We are wired to be connected with our tribes. But many of us are then raised to be abused by those same tribes. Our reptilian brain is wired so that we know to cry for help, but then the world doesn't respond as it's supposed to. So, we also learn that our help isn't coming. Our reptilian brain knows one thing, and our conscious brain knows the opposite. So fracturing happens. Our amygdala's wiring fractures. Permanent PTSD is the result.

Learning the science behind how I came to be this mess of a man is actually helpful. It's frustrating, but it's helpful. The one thing that would have saved me from a life of fear and depression and suicidality would have easily been cured from the beginning if my cries for help would have brought help.

The futility of having been in a long-term situation that had no solution is what did the damage. In one chapter, van der Kolk tells of a couple who he treated after the largest car accident in Canadian history, where some 80+ cars and semis drove into a surprise fog bank. The couple's car was pinned under a semi with another car. The driver of the other car burned to death in front of them. During brain scans later, the husband was triggered with overwhelming feelings of fear. He didn't just "remember" the accident the way a person might remember a movie they watched; he remembered it by reliving it as if it were happening right now. He reported that he was overwhelmed with emotions while reliving the accident. Meanwhile the wife's brain showed the exact same evidence that she was also reliving the accident. However, she reported that she felt nothing. Which was how she felt during the accident. While trapped in the car, she was numb. No emotion. No feeling. No fear. No nothing. Why were these two people affected so differently? He then explains that the husband was raised in a supportive home, so he was able to connect with his feelings. His childhood happened how it was supposed to. When he was in pain or fear, he'd cry for help and someone would help. So his brain was wired more like how it's supposed to be wired. The wife, on the other hand, was raised by screaming villains who she had learned, as a child, to tune out. She would go numb when she was being abused because whenever she cried out for help as a child, no one helped. Her amygdala wired itself to expect nobody to help, and learned to numb her because her brain is no longer able to connect with her feelings. PTSD. Fracturing. So when the two people witnessed the exact same trauma, they had two different traumatic responses. Her fight/flight/freeze response numbed her because she has no brain connection to her feelings. His enraged his emotions because his brain is healthily connected to his feelings. It's all about how we were abused, and how our abuse taught us to endure further traumas. And those of us who had no support as children, are far more triggered than those who endured the same traumas but had someone on their side.  This is the reason I like to say "We're stronger together." Because feeling isolated with our pain broke our connection to our feelings and left us with a toolbox filled with tools to endure in solitude.

This just shines a huge spotlight on my constant sense that I shouldn't feel so lonely in a crowded world--but I do. Why am I lonely in a crowd? Because I was lonely in my family as a child, while my brain was wiring itself for its survival in this world. I learned, as a child, that no amount of praying or hope can stop the abuse. So my amygdala went to plan B, and wired itself to trust no one and to find my own way out of any uncomfortable situation, even if it means giving up my own comfort to flee from perceived danger, rather than trust that others will support me.

This book is helping me with my therapy also. My therapist is a DBT, not a CBT. All the CBTs I've had only added to the fracturing by trying to teach me that I shouldn't feel like I do, so all I have to do is stop feeling like I do. DBT is specifically designed to help those of us who are not attached to our feelings, find that attachment and slowly, methodically, rejoin our IFS parts together as if we had been supported when we were being hurt as children. In my own personal opinion: to put it simply, CBT talks to the brain. DBT talks to the heart. The heart is where the healing happens. Van der Kolk says that trying to do CBT on a traumatized brain is like knowing the musician is ill, so the CBT tries to fix the piano. It won't work. The illness is in the creative source, not the instrument.

I am so very glad I'm finally reading/listening to this book. People have been recommending it for years and I'm finally doing it. It's changing me. The irritability is also likely because my wiring is changing. Change causes irritation in anyone. Even good change comes with a period of irritability as the wiring changes in our brains. I want to keep learning the actual science behind why my brain rewired itself, so I'm going to keep listening to this book until I'm finally bored with it. I usually read good books up to 5 times before I feel like I finally know everything it was saying. Repetition is critical in learning. And every time I rerun the book, I learn more than the times before it. Adult learners retain only about 15% of what is learned. So 5 to 7 times through the book should cover the whole enchilada in my brain.

I'm trying to learn to write less and write shorter, so I'll stop here.

[StartingHealing]

Papa Coco,

The body keeps score is a book that I'll need to revisit again.  For me it gave me validation that what I am going through, my responses to events in my childhood and how that set me up for a relationship with a personality disordered individual, was not beyond the pale.  That my responses, my brain wiring, etc. were typical for a person during the various life stages.  In a way, to me it was very comforting.  Admittedly for quite some time I had the self concept that I was a singularity, that I was a-typical for the fecal matter that I went through. The emotional impact was such that the first read though took several days because I would get to a particular passage that would resonate and boom, ugly cry. 

I also garnered a large amount of hope from it as well with the reports of individuals that healed / are healing.  The evidence that yes indeed, that end state is probable was such a revelation to me.  The idea that I don't have to be this wounded soul, this misshapen morass of a being, the so called wounded healer archetype.  He77 yeah!  I'm in.   

There will be "work" involved. There will be spiritual growth.  There will be all the things that happen in healing. So be it.  I don't rightly know what being healed is going to be like, or look like, and that's ok.  I don't need to know because Spirit does.

Wishing you all the best PC.  Blessings.

[Papa Coco]

StartingHealing,

Those are some good thoughts about hope. I would say that I've spent a few years feeling a total loss of hope. I even started to hate hope. I had started quoting Friedrich Nietzsche, who said "Hope in reality is the greatest of all evils for it prolongs the torment of man." I never researched what he meant specifically by that exactly, nor have I researched the context of this single statement, but my lost, exhausted, anxiety-ridden brain saw the words hope, evil and prolongs torment and made it my mantra for a while. Hope, to me, was dashed when I realized I couldn't break free from the trauma disorders. I'd been convinced that I was, as you say, "a-typical" as a victim of my own inability to be included in the fun and futures that "everyone else" was privy to. The books we're reading now, (Thank goodness that experts are writing these books), are restoring my ability to feel a little bit of hope that there might be a place for me on this planet.  It feels good.

[StartingHealing]

PC

While each of us is unique there are enough similarities between us that folks on the parallel path can and does inform our path.  I feel that the concept that we are a-typical is something that screws us up.  Somewhere along the way, I grabbed the brass ring that I'm not a-typical.  For me that is comforting.  Perhaps that is odd according to the current mind viruses that are running rampant in modern society. What are they?  Have we been infected with them?  I know that it's really easy to go along with the crowd.  Let's face it, any time that one of us brings up any type of truth, we get labelled as a conspiracy theorist.  Even when time proves us right.

We are a social animal.  A single individuals survival, eons ago, was dependent on the other members of our tribe, and he77 even now, we are still dependent on others but we don't "see" them in IRL.  Farmers, ranchers, mechanics, the folks that keep the modern infrastructure in operational state. 

Wishing you all the best PC.  Blessings to you

[sanmagic7]

hope you're doing well, pc. love and hugs

[dollyvee]

Hi PC,

"Learning the science behind how I came to be this mess of a man is actually helpful. It's frustrating, but it's helpful. The one thing that would have saved me from a life of fear and depression and suicidality would have easily been cured from the beginning if my cries for help would have brought help."

I'm sorry you've had to go through so much pain to get to where you are 

"The irritability is also likely because my wiring is changing. Change causes irritation in anyone."

This is just my two cents but I think you probably need to feel that irritability and it's probably and amalgamation of emotions that have been long buried that the book is bringing up. Why shouldn't you be allowed to be irritable? Over the holidays I watched a movie that I've probably seen before, but it really struck me this time. Sarah Jessica Parker goes to meet her bf's family for the first time, and she is the opposite of their dynamic: uptight, preoccupied with proprietary, and always saying the wrong thing. However, she means well, and other people can see this, even if they give her a hard time and might not like her. What got me about the movie I think, was that she could be herself with all these "flaws," and there was still someone that cared for her despite all of that. She got to be seen for who she was and accepted, even when she tried to be "perfect" and failed. Hoping you get some space to deal with the things you are going through right now.

Happy New Year 
dolly

[Papa Coco]

Hi, I've been off the forum for a few weeks. Just trying to get through the Holidays. I'm back now.

I'm doing pretty good. Thanks for checking in with me, SH, San, Dolly, and all,

I'm hitting the books hard. I have three going at once now and have three more in the mail today from Amazon. The Artist's Way has some awesome affirmations in it that I put on a continuous loop in my audio files and let them play over the house stereo system (Or through my earbuds when needed) over and over for a couple of hours each day, and those affirmations around my freedom to be creative are really helping.

However, they are contributing to the irritability that comes when someone challenges my core beliefs. I'm managing that irritability though. The anger is a sign that it's working. That's how I'm getting through this and how I'm actually changing some of my inner dialogues. I'm believing now: "If it doesn't irritate, it isn't doing its job."

For years now I've described my propensity to stay in my torture by saying I'm comfortably uncomfortable in living with my traumas. It sort of describes my relationship with the demons I know. What these books are doing is making me UNcomfortably UNcomfortable in what I brought with me from my past. The reality of their positive message angers me that I have lost so much time by living tied to the negative voices.

Another thought I have is around IFS. I think that by challenging my negative voices, which are all meant to help protect me from being abused by nasty people, these books are making some of my IFS parts really angry. My negative inner dialogue is given to me as a gift by some of my IFS Parts who remember having been abused in the past for feeling good about myself. In order to keep me from being humiliated again, they're giving me the negative thoughts that will stop me from putting myself "out there" for ridicule. It could be THOSE IFS parts who are so angry. Filling my head with dangerous positivity threatens everything they stand for. So I am going to kindly try to reach my IFS parts and ask them how I can help them let go of this negativity.

For me, The Artist's Way is not a book that's teaching me how to be a painter or a potter. To me, I just want to unleash my stifled sense of artistic creativity so I can do whatever I do with an artistic flair. I'm starting to believe that artistic energy is in my heart, but PTSD has forced me to live in my head for 60+ years. It's time to let the heart have some control of me for a few years before I die. That's the only thing I have on my bucket list: Let the heart loose and let whatever I do have an artistic flair to it.

The ultimate goal is; I want to have positive voices burned into my conscious mind that will help overpower the negative voices that I've become far too comfortable with for far too long. This feeling of irritation is when changes can happen. My theory is that if I'll stay with it, and not back down or fall back to my comfort zone of discomfort, then I hope to move to the last level: Comfortably comfortable in who I am TODAY. (I'll keep you all informed as to whether this works or not).

Meanwhile, I'm trying to stop moping around by forcing myself to learn how to bake and smoke meats. Baking and cooking might be activities that will benefit from a freer creative spirit, right? I'm making all my bread fresh now and am even buying quality meats to put in the meat grinder so I can make my own ground meats and KNOW WHAT'S IN THEM. it's fun and keeps me active during the day. When I get lazy and sit around the house, my thinker goes its own direction and leads me to places I don't need to be.

As the Holiday season falls behind us, I sincerely hope more of us are feeling the relief. I sure am. Gads. The end of Holiday season is such a relief every year.

[dollyvee]

It's funny PC, I wrote down something today from the JB book that really stood out for me and maybe for you too. He quotes, "I cannot rid myself of my demons without risking that my angels flee along with them."

I think that sounds like a very good idea to reach out to your IFS parts and see if they will step back a bit. They probably are, as you suggested, trying to do their best to help you.

 

[Armee]

I'm so glad you made it through the holidays. 

That book sounds really interesting. I'm doing a lot of exploring a similar thing. It's weird sometimes I can be that person. And sometimes I completely have no contact with that part of me and it feels foreign. Working on it though and might give that book a read. Thanks for mentioning it!

Mmm fresh bread! Have a favorite recipe?

[NarcKiddo]

Baking is a lovely thing to do. I used to do baking with my Gran (closest person to a proper mother) and enjoyed it. Never made bread with her but have done since and really enjoy it. I rarely bake these days as we don't eat much in the way of bread and cakes.

Your comments about the irritation are interesting. I've often found that the books which have the most benefit to me can be uncomfortable or get me questioning my own self. I've self-diagnosed with a raging personality disorder after reading Christine Lawson's book about the Borderline Mother and my T had to talk sense into me. But That wasn't the fault of the book, it was my reaction to it. I think it is great that you are challenging your negativity. I don't think there is anything wrong with having some protective negativity, especially when having to deal with awful people, but it surely must be a bad thing to excess and when not/no longer required.