Papa Coco's Recovery Journal

[Armee]

 

Ah Papa C.

I'm here with you. Whether you botched the interview or not, you are worthwhile. Loved. Very valuable. Just being your own traumatized self. I love you just as you are.

You likely did not botch the interview but were exactly as you are and should be. That is real. Honest. True. I know when I did the podcast interview for the SASS podcast I could not sleep for weeks even after the interview waiting for it to air. I thought for sure I sounded like a raving lunatic, messed everything up for the host. I couldn't breathe. Everything hurt. I was horrified. I felt so ashamed. It actually turned out good. Yes I sounded distressed. But that is real. And for whoever is out there listening someone needs to hear it like it is. Dissociated, manic, whatever it is. Someone needed to hear that. 

And for the hopelessness...I'm going to put out there...you have some mighty big traumas there that haven't really had their chance to process and be healed. It's not fast or easy but there's work there that needs to be done, isn't there? Maybe hope is not gone and you are just working up the courage to face those very dark spots in your mind. Rightfully dark. Not because you are defective but because bad people did very bad painful damaging things to little you. I have hope for you. I really do. 

I hope you can get access to the private journals section from Kizzie and pop on over and say hi. Tomorrow I am going to post a very positive success and I'd love for you to read it. 

[Bermuda]

Sorry I am late PapaCoco, I read your text, and you already know this but I am team write it out. Write it allll the way out. There is catharsis in letting it go, even if others might not have the energy themselves to take it on. Writing it is letting it go.

You're totally right, and it didn't read at all to me as dark. I haven't read anyone elses replies, just so you know, but I am constantly reminding myself that trying to control and dictate CPTSD does not work. It never works. It will never work. It drives me insane. (Not in a cute kind of ironic use of the word.) The more I try, the worse the outcomes are, and any bit of relief I feel through control causes a darker worse spiral after the fact.

I understand your feeling of letting people down, being a burden, but imagine you had any other illness that affected you to the same degree... If anyone blamed you for lack of gainful employment or your home being untidy, they would be acting shamefully, not you, and everyone would see it that way. It would be shocking and people would come to your defense. Sometimes I have to force myself to think of myself as someone who is sick, because I am. Invisible illnesses exist all around us, and in some ways taking back my feelings is like an act of rebellion. Here I am, and I am sick. Call me out then and demonstrate your character! This is just my pep-talk, I don't actually speak to people that way. Sometimes we have to focus on yourselves, because we just don't have the capacity to be everything everyone else wants. All you have is you, and of course us here too.

You're helpful, considerate, compassionate, kind, very good at peopling, and pretty great even when you are struggling in the ways that I know you are. I can't say that for everyone out there. Some people will not understand, but that's on them.

[Papa Coco]

Little2Nothing, No need to apologize. I was complimenting the poem. My version of shivers is a good thing. Chills. Some sort of healing energy moved through me deeply, and I got shivers.  I'm honored to have been able to read it and reread it. Your poem didn't trigger me, it impressed me. I was moved by it. I have such strong emotions, and during these times of depression, those emotions need to be touched. Your poem didn't trigger me. It touched me. I like it. Your poem was beautiful in its ability to invoke feelings. I was not triggered. I was grateful to have read it and for how it moved me. When I'm in the depths of my  emotional flashbacks (EFs), I gravitate toward deep feelings. I watch movies about trauma (Like Manchester by the Sea, or The Perks of Being a Wallflower) because they sort of soothe me.  Whenever I get shivers, it's a sign of deep connection.

Armee, your story of how you felt after your Podcast interview sounds very much like what I'm going through right now. Thank you for sharing that bit of intel. It helps. Once again, I'm not the only person who punishes myself for being who I am. And yes, about the hopelessness. Being permanently healed from a lifelong trauma is actually pretty easy. I've done it hundreds of times. (That's a joke. Jokes help me deal with heavy situations). But the point is that I guess moving forward in our healing is like being pulled up the hill with a bungee that keeps bouncing us backward. Three steps forward Two steps back. Repeat.

Bermuda, Writing is something I'm compelled to do. I bring this quote up a lot. "I write to discover what I know" (Flannery O'Connor).  It is true for me. Writing organizes my thoughts and makes them work together to make a whole story. And I am currently working very hard at living the truth that this is illness. I have been calling it a mental illness, but that's kind of harsh. It's more like mental damage. A dent in the brain, rather than a chemical illness. But still, in my own mind I classify my inability to regulate moods a mental illness. I've said it for a decade, but I haven't lived it. I like what you say about being as open to this being an illness  as if it were a disease of the body, like cancer or a gimp leg.

I had a burst of energy last night when I had a sudden urge to go back on my earlier decision, and maybe enroll into a college program for a Masters of Social Work, MSW. Whenever I think about being an MSW, I first think it means I have to work one-on-one with patients, which I always worry will trigger my own problems. I once spent a few years as a Sexual Assault Victim's Advocate. It was the 1980s and 1990s, so there were no electronic methods of interaction. It was face to face. After a few years I found myself crying myself to sleep every night at the grotesque numbers of how many people are suffering so much. I had to quit the position to save myself. I worry that would happen if I became an actual accredited helper. But I am a thousand miles away from being as broken as I was then, AND when I look for jobs on the internet, I see a growing number of very diverse jobs, teaching positions, leadership roles, writers, course developers, etc, etc, etc that require an MSW. It would only take two years for me to accomplish the degree (if I can get enrolled). And I don't have to become a therapist. There are a myriad of other options that would open up before me with an MSW.

I'm only in the first few hours of having this thought swirling around in my head, so I don't know if by tonight or tomorrow or next summer I have stopped thinking about it.

I once googled "Why do I share too much?" I got a lot of hits. I pretty much share too much because that's what living a life of loneliness and trauma compels me to do. If I tell everyone every thought, then I'm not at risk of being found out later and laughed at or called a liar. My family always called me a liar. They seldom believed anything I said, so I learned to hide inside my head. My entire childhood became a box of secrets that I believed would kill me if they got out. I describe my younger life as having lived it locked inside a cage with a sleeping monster. My only hope of survival was not letting anyone wake that monster up while I was locked in the cage with it. From age 7 on up I believed my life depended on keeping quiet. Now that I feel like I'm out of the cage, anything I don't share with others feels like I'm back in that cage. I'm going to invoke Bermuda's suggestion and say, I share too much because I can't stop myself. It's my version of an illness that I have, whether the world accepts it or not. "I am what I am and that's all I am." (Popeye the Sailor Man)

Will I pursue this crazy notion of putting myself through the trauma of two more years of school? Only time will tell. I am many people inside this one body. I and my many parts overthink everything. We run scenarios in my head to try and predict every risk that might happen if we do anything. Sometimes that protects me, other times it holds me back. This may be a trick of my mind, going manic to get out of the depression. Or it might be something I owe it to myself to consider for real.

But what I noticed, is that the idea of having an MSW and being able to explore some of the jobs I see that require it, gives me an energy I don't normally feel. I'm old enough to make personal choices for what to do with my time and money, and young enough to still work for another 15-20 years if I'll keep myself healthy, eat right, exercise, and feel that I have a purpose. Finding a job to pay the bills makes me sad. Finding a career that gives me energy excites me. If I can't feel like I have a purpose, I don't see myself aging at all. Being retired is boring. I'm not taking care of myself. I'm putting myself at risk of an early departure. Being needed is energizing. Life-extending.

I can't predict if this is a real notion or a passing hair-brained idea to pull me up out of a depression. But for the duration of this one day, I'm at least in the mood to research schools and programs. It's either that or sit in front of the TV again today.

[Little2Nothing]

Thanks Papa Coco for letting me know the poem touched you. I know how much I suffer when I have been triggered and I felt bad thinking my poem had done that to you. I am very relieved that that is not the case. 

[Bermuda]

You sound so much like me right now. All of it. I don't know what's right or a whim or if a whim is even right, but if you do find an MSW course that strikes a cord, you have my support. When I first started sociology I was overwhelmed with how little people cared, and the discussions was whether wheelchair access was important... Soul crushing to be around such conversations. I think whether something is hard, or whether it is triggering, is not really a good reason not to pursue something though, and you have us.

[Papa Coco]

I'm researching school programs. I'm tossing and turning in bed again. My schooling was so abusive that I tend to carry the ghosts of that abuse into adult college situations too. For me, deciding to go back to college is akin to deciding to go back to living in a cage with a sleeping monster who will kill me if anyone wakes it up. I LOVE learning. I LOVE psychology courses, but when I have to count on my teacher being qualified, (So many of them are not good teachers), I go into absolute agony. I got my bachelor's degree from a college that was partially online and partially in the classroom. I very much prefer classroom classes, but the convenience of online is worth dealing with also. But so many of the online courses I took were hosted by "learning facilitators" who were fickle, disorganized, and unable to answer simple questions. I got so f****g angry at those incompetent "learning facilitators" because it reminded me of the humiliation and helplessness I felt as a catholic school child. When I was in catholic school only my body was in the classroom. My brain was living in a chronic state of dissociated daydreaming and my heart was in prison just trying not to get "shanked" in the yard. I was a bunny in a cage filled with snakes. Nervous and terrified for my life all day long. When I would approach teachers to ask for help, they already decided I wasn't worth the effort, so they'd just blow me off and let me deal with my little problems on my own. My parents didn't give a darn about school. My report cards were one point above failing in every class, and my parents couldn't have cared less if they'd tried. Nobody helped me learn. When I'm in college today, if a teacher isn't a compassionate and aware person, I become that little boy again: Daydreaming instead of learning. Angry and terrified instead of embracing the knowledge.

This is why making this decision is so difficult for me.

I'm at a turning point I can't ignore. I have a premonition that I'm going to die before Christmas 2024. I come from a bloodline of people who die when they want to. My maternal grandfather, who never wanted to be cared for, died of natural causes on the very month that his life's savings ran dry. His daughter, my mother, vowed to not live to Mother's Day 2009 because she was so distraught at my little sister's death in June of 2008. My mother vowed and vowed, "I don't want to live to Mother's Day without her." Three weeks before Mother's Day, her kidneys began to fail. In those short three weeks, she went from healthy to hospice and died of natural causes MINUTES before midnight on the eve of Mother's Day. I feel certain that I have the same ability to will myself into dying of natural causes by not seeing a reason to live.

I have consulted with a couple of different professionals about this and have come to the conclusion that I've given up my desire to live in this evil, narcissistic world. All my hopes and dreams are gone. I have no future. I am retired and I'm bored and my money is draining faster than I thought it would. I'm going broke. I'm getting weaker physically.  The professionals have agreed that if I don't do something now, that I will do as my mother and her father did, and I'll create my own physical end. I'm told it will be my heart that fails if I don't find a reason to live.

Meanwhile I'm reading a book or two on how to age properly and how to live to be 100. The general rule of people who live healthier and longer is that they are most often people who feel like they have a purpose and they are actively working in that purpose.

When I look for jobs online, the only ones that excite me are the ones that are helping trauma survivors in various different capacities. In order to spend the next 20 years of my "golden years" working at something I love, I can't just go get a job driving a bus or working in a grocery store. I need something that makes me want to live through the night so I can get up in the morning and get back to work where I feel valued and potent.

I just wish I could get past the terror of going back to college so I can qualify for something other than unhappy jobs that "pay the bills".

[Armee]

 

You'd be an excellent social worker. 

I hope you can find a program that feels supportive and not gaslighting.

[Little2Nothing]

Papa Coco, it is obvious that you have a heart for people. Pursue your education and do what would give you purpose. I am new here and you have been a great blessing to me and I thank you for that.

[StartingHealing]

Papa Coco,

Ahhh, you have been through the wringer of late haven't you?  Sending you all the best.  IDK if this will be of help to you or not.  I hope it will.  For me and learning, I love to learn, I love the realizations, the epiphanies that come about as the new knowledge gets integrated, and yes there are many who pro-port themselves as "teachers" but they are not.  there is a spectrum I think of instruction, and the best teachers are the ones that have so thoroughly digested it that they can explain it to a 4 year old.  On the other hand, I'll be dam-ed if I will allow anyone to prevent me from learning.  Now with the internet it's sooooo easy to find "good" resources.  Whether the person putting out the info has a "degree" or not.  In my case I didn't have a "degree" in power-sports mechanics, had some training, had lots of experience, and that was sufficient for me to be an instructor, teaching others to be a mechanic, not just a parts changer.   There is a difference tween the 2. 

A lot of learning in my opinion comes down to the acceptance of the teachers opinion and perceived competence in a particular area of expertise. There is a whole lot of variables to that as well.  I've had the misfortune of having the experiences where the teach had 3rd party credentials out the yin-yang , yet was not competent at all.  I did learn in spite of the teach. 

I do believe that you and I are similar in that come he77 or high water we are going to learn.  finding the right sources is the critical part I figure.

PC sending you all the best in this.

[NarcKiddo]

I hope you can find a good course and teacher and pursue what matters to you. And please remember that you matter, too. There are many people who really value your contribution to their lives. I am one of them.

 

[Papa Coco]

Gads, I just love you people.

Thank you for the responses.

Yesterday brought some peace to my panic. I have a hair trigger on the panic button. It would have killed me long ago if I didn't also have a quick tendency to seek help while I'm in panic mode. As a child I was alone with my terror. But after I turned about 21 or so, I learned to cry out for help. When I flounder, I cry out for help. When I cry out for help, I usually get it.

Yesterday I met with my finance counselor, AND the hypnotherapist who did good work with me in 2023. My finance guy helped me build a plan that will sustain us financially until I am ready to go out and get meaningful, (paying) work. The panic button on my finances is now set back to neutral. (It's never "off" but it can go into "sleep mode"). Shortly after that meeting, the hypnotherapist contacted me back and told me that she helps newly retired people a lot, with this very same issue. She believes she can help me to calm down and discover my true desires. I do believe I need to find meaningful work. I don't travel, or golf, or fish. So retirement is boooooooring. And boredom shortens a life. Being busy with activities that I enjoy extends life. She says she can help. I set up an appointment for next week.  After the two meetings with these two responders to my panic button, I felt energetic. I fixed the flat tire on my bike and rode it! I ACTUALLY RODE MY BIKE!  First time in close to 8 months. It felt amazing to have the panic button put back to sleep mode.

Yesterday, a cherished friend to me said that she can't create if there are no predetermined requirements. I nearly fell out of my seat. I'm exactly the same way. When I try to pick a career, I see too many choices. I ask for help all the time, because I feel like I need someone to point me into a direction. Once I know the requirements, I can create. I can write college papers if the topic is defined for me. But for me to write a book, I can't even get started if someone doesn't tell me what to write it about. 

I'm going to start learning about NARM and "agency". I suspect Agency is a sense of knowing who I am, what I stand for, what my actual limitations really are, (versus the trauma limitations that I mistakenly believe are real).

Today I'm going to research NARM and Agency. I see my Therapist on Tuesday so we can discuss my career confusion, and then I'll see the hypnotherapist on Thursday for the same reason.

Even though I'm quick to panic, I'm also quick to cry out for help. If I am left to my own thoughts, I can't see anything good in this world at all. I NEED the people around me to remind me that there is always hope and that I am not in as much danger as I always think I am.

Dam that hypervigilance. Dam that Hyper Arousal. Dam that quick-to-panic button that keeps getting pushed. Dam this struggle with a lack of agency. Dam, dam, DAM!

But also: Blessed are those who respond when I cry out for help. That includes you all on this forum, and my therapist, and my hypnotherapist, and my financial advisor. You are critical in helping me shut off the panic switch every time I push it. Left to flail in my own panic, I head for the ledge. When people step in to help with just a few rational words, they are always able to talk me off the ledge.

I freaking LOVE you people.

Thanks for responding to my panic button. This is no small thing. I mean it. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!

[Armee]

 

[dollyvee]

Hi PC,

I think it's so great that adult PC has come in and found resources to address your concerns, and not just address, but successfully manage your life. You took the the steps in getting things done where you never had that help as a child. There are people, and resources, to help now.  I don't mean to sound condescending, but you did that.

I'm just catching up on your journal and your ideas about school/education made me reflect on my own experiences. I wonder if your experience of education would be different this time because it's for something you really want? If not, you also have the option to leave, or switch institutions (as well as maybe visiting/sitting in on some classes to see if it's a good fit) if it doesn't feel right. It's also doesn't mean it's a failure, just that it might take some time to find the thing that works. I guess too, that going through it might help confront those past experiences in a new way, with new tools to handle them now. Sometimes too, I think it's about the steps to get somewhere and not just the destination.

I also hear you about the burden of responsibility (or connection) in working with people in that capacity, but I guess the line becomes what is helping others, and what is still trying to fix all that you couldn't fix in your family growing up? I think it's great that you found something you feel passionate about, and why not explore it? Adult PC has already managed finances, why not see about the thing that interests you?

NARM has some interesting facets and I'm beginning to see how it can be useful after reading some of the Practical Guide to Healing Developmental Trauma. It's a different way of engaging clients where they focus on their intentions at the beginning of each session through a contracting process. I feel like already the dynamics shift and it's about the client finding their own resources around completing (don't know if it's the right word) their intention, with the therapist helping to facilitate and explore what might be getting in their way (in terms of what's going on in their internal world). It's not goal-oriented (ie the therapist helping me complete a project), or behavioural (ie I don't want to feel anxiety, or I want to be less anxious), but about the internal dynamics behind why I might not be completing that project, or why I might be feelings anxious. I need to read more and see how it develops, but I feel like this shift might be helpful.

Sending you support,
dolly

[Larry]

 

[Papa Coco]

Journal Entry: Wednesday, February 28, 2024

As I meet more people who are like us, family members bonded by the same struggle, I see survivors of a war.

We struggle, not because we're broken, but because we are wise enough to see that peace is possible but difficult to find. We're not broken, we're frustrated. We're peaceful souls living in a war zone. We are not the ones who are wrong. We're the ones who are struggling to make sense of how those who have the power are corrupted by it. Our parents and relatives and churches and schools had power over us when we were children, and they perverted that power into abuse.

We are the awakened souls who have lived through someone else's chaos, and still chose the path of compassion. Not everyone makes that choice. Some of our siblings and friends chose to continue the abuse onto others. They've chosen to recycle the karmic treadmill of generational abuse. They joined the wrong side of this struggle. They became part of the continuation of the problem.

We have chosen to break the karmic cycle. To painstakingly step off the abuser>victim>abuser>victim treadmill.

I know that veteran soldiers who once fought for peace have a tendency to bond with each other in ways I can only imagine. But I think I can at least understand how it feels to bond with fellow soldiers as I bond with the people on this forum and any friends I have that have lived with trauma triggers for their entire lives.

In a book I wrote, I devoted an entire chapter to a conversation between my abused character who had CPTSD and a war veteran with PTSD. The older war veteran worked to convince the young abuse victim that their wars may have been different, but they were each led to the same bizarre conversation in a truck in a rainstorm. Both trying to survive what they couldn't accept. Both struggling in the same confusion. Both suffering the same symptoms. The youngster felt it wasn't right to compare his problems with a war veteran's problems, but the war veteran wouldn't let him get away with it. Different war > Same results > Same need for support and healing.

I respect war veterans whose violent past didn't turn them into violent haters, but burrowed into their minds and hearts as some indigestible energy that haunts them because they are good people who are still trying to come to terms with violence that they just couldn't accept. If I can respect war veterans who try to find peace, how can I not carry that same respect over to the beautiful souls on this forum, and out in the world, who suffer, not because they're bad people, but because they're good people who need the same healing?

I hold fast to my opinion that we are the salt of the earth. If world peace is possible, it will be because of the grassroots efforts that we, the CPTSD struggling homeland war veterans who sill can't accept the violence and narcissism of this world, are bringing out into the open. As we grow in numbers and hold fast to our hope of bringing peace back into our lives and into the lives of our brethren, we are the force that is fighting for the peace that we know is possible.

I have great respect for my peers on this forum, and this is the reason why. We're the good that's just now learning how to stand up and be counted.

I believe all life is connected. So, as we heal ourselves and those closest to us, we are bringing healing into the collective consciousness of all human life. We're the medication that's being introduced into a violent world. We don't have to do anything that we aren't capable of. All we have to do is accept that we are not wrong. Accept any healing that comes our way. When we heal ourselves, we heal the world.