Papa Coco's Recovery Journal

[Papa Coco]

I finally started reading some of Peter Levine's books. He invented Somatic Experiencing. I tried reading his books a few years ago but they seemed rediculous. But now, reading them is a whole different story. I think I wasn't ready for him back then, but I'm ready for him now that I understand the difference between hearing words versus experiencing events. Somatic Experiencing brings the past back to life and allows us to fix it.

I can now see where my therapist got his skills. He's never told me that it's called somatic experiencing. He just does it. And I respond very well to it.

Levine lives by the rule that for people with trauma disorders, the past is more real than the present. The past is real. It is made up of real things that reach into the present and pester us, like EFs, sleeplessness, isolation, fear, depression, anxiety, digestive issues, inflammation, etc., etc., etc.

For me to realize that the past is still real, gives me a feeling of hope. I started reading his book, Trauma and Memory on Sunday and by today I already feel like the past is opening up for me to explore. Normally, the past would feel intrusive on the present, but today, this connection to the past feels like I've been given a back stage pass, or access to holy ground. A lot of authors say that we can change the past, and up until now I thought those were just poetic words, but after reading how Somatic Experiencing works, I realize that the past is still real, and I still have a chance to heal it.

A lot of stories are told of apparitions (ghosts) who wander the halls of a house or hospital. Many times, it's reported that these ghosts are stuck in a loop, where every night, they repeat the same walk down the halls in search of something that wasn't resolved in their past. That's how I see my past. I am stuck in some loops that make me repeat self-abuse and addictive behaviors. I have no reason to be afraid of my neighbors and yet I continue to believe they are judging me and laughing at me behind my back. I know it's not happening in present reality, but it IS happening in my past, which is still alive in my head and heart and emotions. My past ghosts are still wandering my head searching to resolve what wasn't resolved. In Somatic Experiencing, I can experience things again, and have my therapist help me resolve them once and for all. A good therapist will know how to set up a physical scenario, usually using a pillow in my therapist's office, where my muscles get a chance to push off an abuser or grab onto something that was taken from me in the past. By making sure I'm emotionally in the past while giving my body a chance to finally defend itself, it helps that ghost find the resolve it didn't find when the original abuse took place.

I have a lot of problems with self-defense. I tend to move very slowly while fighting in Tae Kwon Do or the self-defense classes I've taken. I have strong slow-twitch muscles and very weak fast-twitch muscles. I'm strong but not agile. I believe in my heart of hearts that I'm too weak and slow to ever protect myself if violence ever befalls me, so therefore I have made this belief from my past into a current day reality. No doubt this belief keeps me afraid of everyone, and it is rooted in having been taught that I'm too stupid, too weak, and too worthless to be able to defend myself. In somatic experiencing, I would need to feel that sense of helplessness and let it connect me with the child in me who is being taught that I'm weak, only with the aid of a pillow or something that mimics the feel of a person, I can push away my abusers now. I was too small to push my abusers off of me in 1967, but I'm big enough now to do it, so if my therapist will indulge in some roleplay exercises, I can push that pillow off me next time. My understanding of how this benefits me is two-fold. 1) My body and brain get to work together to feel that pushing an abuser away is possible, and 2) My past "ghosts" of believing I'm too slow and weak and stupid to defend myself will be set free from their wandering loop in the hallways of my brain.

At least that's what I gleaned from Levine's book. It's affecting me pretty deeply. Changing my paradigm from believing the past is done and unchangeable, to seeing it as still in play and still able to be healed, is connecting me to the past in a happy way right now. Like I said above, I feel like I've been given a backstage pass to the holy ground of the past and that the past is still malleable and still able to be worked with. That's a sensation of empowerment.

[SenseOrgan]

Wonderful description of your progress PC. It's not a term that's used anymore, I believe, but I still like "muscle memory".

...A lot of authors say that we can change the past, and up until now I thought those were just poetic words, but after reading how Somatic Experiencing works, I realize that the past is still real, and I still have a chance to heal it...

One of my teachers says the past is a story that is believed now. There are only thoughts and sensations in this moment. How we relate to those is about as empowering as it gets. Easier said than done when the excrements hit the fan, but still. I'm happy for you that you have such a great therapist. Them not mentioning SE but just putting it into practice has a poetic flavor to it to me. Like secretly sneaking in healing  

[Chart]

Irene Lyon's work stems directly out of Peter Levine's techniques. I'm ready to go full steam ahead in this area... but Life has put waaaay too much on my plate at the present moment... I'm extremely happy you're practicing and relating your experiences. You always save me huge amounts of time with your reflections! :-)
Thank you
 

[Papa Coco]

I'm having deep reactions to Pete Levine's books

I feel like my understanding of how I became who I became is very alive right now. Really awake. Levine is giving me the information that's turning cold, tired information into warm, living thoughts and feelings.

Actually I feel like an accident victim. When a person is lying on the ground after an accident, they are no longer concerned with the shopping list, or the price of eggs, or who is winning what election where. When lying on the ground, the greater world vanishes. The only focus is on the moment, and the hope that help is on its way. That's how I feel right now. Like I'm hyper focused on the present moment and my injuries. It feels heavy, but it also feels better than the normal sense of numbness and apathetic acceptance for how I've lived my life.

I read Trauma and Memory once and listened to the audiobook twice. I think I got everything he was saying. So I downloaded another of his books and have so far listened to more than half of it just since yesterday so far.

These books are pulling me into a deep emotional state of grief. (in a good way). (I hope this makes sense, but grief feels alive. People who don't grieve live disconnected to feelings). I'm at the edge of tears. I feel like Levine not only knows what I go through, but he truly grasps why I'm going through it. As a child, when we cry out for help and nobody comes, it traumatizes us. As an adult, reading Levine's books now, after having cried out for help 60 years ago, I feel like Levine has finally answered the call, and I feel really emotionally engaged. I can't tell if I'm happy or sad, but tears for some reason keep slipping down my face.

This book, In An Unspoken Voice by Peter Levine, is BLOWING ME AWAY with what feels like the answers I've been looking for my whole life. This book was written apparently before the term Complex PTSD was ever coined, but everything he says is like the intelligence behind Pete Walker's book. Levine's book is a lot more scientific, and he is blowing my mind with how well he's describing how and why I became who I became.

In this book, Levine says that children who were restrained while being abused have a lot more serious residual unresolved trauma than those who were not restrained. I was restrained. Everything he's saying is touching me so deep I'm ready to cry. This feels like someone has finally pulled the fire alarm and my rescue is finally now coming. This mammalian reaction of becoming far, FAR more traumatized through restraints includes children who were restrained by dentists and doctors during medical procedures. Restraining a mammal activates the deepest, most raw sense of helplessness in the conscious experience. He explains the Freeze response as a "going immobile" to either die in peace or watch for a chance to escape and run. He explains these things in a way that truly makes me see that I can't fix this myself. I am almost in tears reading (actually listening to the audio file of the said book). I will never be a man who wasn't abused as a boy, but the most I think I can hope for is to try, try, try to find some daily peace from the embedded guilt and shame that has defined my entire life so far.

In his books, Levine describes the damage from restraints as being given the experience of 100% helplessness. (OMG! He's talking about ME!) Our survival instincts are to fight or flee. When we can do neither we go immobile. We freeze and dissociate. If I were to get into a fist fight with another person, even if I lose the fight my body and soul know that I fought back. I had power. It may not have been enough power to win, but I held my own. What some people say is "At least I went down fighting." That's significantly better than being restrained and ignored. Instead of being able to say with pride, "I went down fighting" the restrained victim can only say to themselves, "I was helpless. There was nothing I could do. And nobody would help me." That message, because it was given during experience, becomes the root of the follow-on years of repeating the shame over and over again in what I call, the looping walk of unresolved past ghosts wandering and repeating the emotions of helplessness and freeze through the halls of my inner haunted mansion. When restrained we can't fight back or flee and when ignored we can't even scream out and get help from our fellow man. Our bodies have now experienced 100% helplessness. THAT brings the shame that our bodies remember we didn't fight back, and it brings the freeze response, which Levine calls the Immobilization of our awareness so we can either die in peace, or watch for a moment where an escape might become an opportunity.

I live with so much shame of being the broken person that I am. I still feel horrific shame for all the money I've spent on trying to find happiness in new cars and tools and toys, and for all the money I've given away under duress for fear that if I don't give my money to others I'll be punished. I feel stupid for spending so much energy and money on cameras and locks and alarms and backup generators and all the expensive crapola I do to try and feel safe in a body that can't feel safe. I am on the treadmill of running toward a sense of safety that I'll never achieve. I feel ashamed of every addiction I've had to fight off. I feel horrific shame at my inability to stop isolating. I have the most amazing, awesome, beautiful wife of 42 years and still I hide alone as often as I can. Levine talks to great lengths about how helplessness at age 6 and 7 is still haunting me today, and how much chronic and constant shame people like me live with. His book is a message to me that the shame I feel is trauma and it's normal and It isn't real shame. I didn't do anything wrong. I can't rewire my mammalian response to being attacked, but today I can say with clarity "I, at the very least, want to stop feeling ashamed of feeling ashamed."

He mentions in an early chapter that we shouldn't call it PTSD but PTSI. D is for disorder. I would be for injury. Having a broken arm is not called Broken Arm Disorder. It's called an arm injury. Why does having my healthy brain damaged by bullies have to be called a disorder? CLEARLY it's injury from attack, JUST LIKE a broken bone or stab wound, neither of which are called "disorders". Not a disorder. Maybe we could keep the D but change the word it refers to Damage. Complex Post Traumatic Stress Damage.

Anyway, for me, today is all about shame. The shame that I have lived with all day and all night for 60 years. The more I learn about the science of CPTSD, the more my intellect knows I have nothing to be ashamed of, but holy moly, I can't seem to convince my heart that I have no reason to be ashamed of who I am.  It makes so much sense when I look at it this way: I once cried out to my people for help and nobody helped. I was restrained, which takes away 100% of all sense of ability to protect myself. I cried out for help, which is what we are designed to do, but nobody came. It makes perfect sense to me why I feel slightly better being alone and isolated from the society that let me down and proved physically that they are not on my side.

I'm not going to say "I want to be cured" again. I'm finally starting to realize that I really need to focus on being okay with being damaged. There is no cure. The trick is to be okay with what just is. It's when we want something we can't have that we suffer. Wanting a cure where there is no cure just prolongs my suffering.


I'm feeling really kind of weak at the moment, but glad, at the same time, that this realization is hitting me so hard. It feels like I'm getting connected with the real truth. I think the part I like most about it is that if I can truly grasp that this was damage done because of restrained abuse, that at least I can say it isn't my fault that I'm a mess who can't handle money or who hides in a run down little cabin on a beach where nobody knows me. I have been so ashamed all my life for being broken. I don't know if I can truly heal from the shame, or if simple awareness and daily struggles to remember I don't need to feel ashamed is the best I'll be able to accomplish.

For the moment, I feel very much alive. Sad. But alive. Like in during a time of grief, I feel like my world view has shrunk to the 10 feet around me. Like the rest of the world just lost all its meaning and my entire body and brain are focused only on the present feeling of loss and change.

I don't feel a need to run my hands under icy water, because I feel very much alive right now. I think that what I read yesterday about how any child who is restrained and harmed like I was would be as damaged (or more damaged) than I am. For the moment...I wish I could say "from this moment on", but I only know that "for the next 5 minutes or so", I hope to at least feel forgiven. Forgiven.

I realize today, in the rawest way I've ever felt it, that all I want in life is to feel forgiven.

I live in regret for things I have no need to regret. I see only my sins when I look back. I feel ashamed and I just want, more than anything right now, to feel forgiven for every stupid thing I became after that abuse. Shame is the feeling of being unforgiven. Unforgiven for becoming a hot mess after an attack. This is today's great challenge. Knowing this was trauma is one thing. FEELING the forgiveness for being damaged is a whole different story.
 
In Love and Light, Papa Coco:

Here's the song that speaks to me today so deeply that I wish I had written it myself.

Wannabe
By Taylor Kingman

I wannabe strong
That time I proved I was right, I was wrong
That time we talked all night, man I was drunk
Last time I came, babe, I was gone
I wannabe strong

I wannabe kind
I wannabe all open windows and warm apple pie
I wannabe slowly blowing breezes in the sweet by and by
I wannabe arms open wide and baby it's alright
I wanna be kind

I wanna be wise
I've sat stoned until sunrise, and I bet I looked divine
And I've cowered with conviction, and I bet I looked wild and sly
And I've talked too long too loud, and I bet I look proud and right
But I wannabe wise

I wannabe clear
I wanna wear out my wanderin' and I wanna be here
I wanna sober up and let sleep be the vintage of my ears
I wanna wake in my walking through the valley of voyeurs and mirrors
I wanna be clear

I wanna be true
The blossoms of love are blighted with fear in the roots
And that moment was honest, untouched by the next moment's truth
And I'm sorry for all I've taken and I'm sorry for all I've let loose
I wanna be true

I wanna be forgiven
For giving up on everything I knew
I wanna be true

[Chart]

PapaCoco,
That attack was not your fault. Though you could in no way know that at such an innocent age.

I forgive you the feeling you understandably got wrong at the time... and until the present day... a responsibility that was never yours... a shame someone dumped over you to lighten their own unfathomable sickness.

I forgive you the everything you experienced... of which nothing was yours.

And then the forgiveness turned to love.

[StartingHealing]

PC

Sending you all the best.  Injury is a good way to define it imo.  Shame is the most damaging thing.  Shame of attempting to live up to impossible standards that even adults couldn't meet, shame being used to control, to me the most toxic is when we shame ourselves for events outside our control, beyond our capability.  To retroactively shame ourselves for actions taken when all we were trying to do was survive and find some measure of relief from the internal chaos and pain.  All those actions are a symptom not the cause.  We were forced to take on mental and emotional responsibilities not our own.

Self-forgiveness is rough because we don't believe we are worthy.  Yet we are.  Nothing you experienced as a child was your fault my friend.  Please give yourself the grace of that. 

[Papa Coco]

Chart and StartingHealing,

Thank you for the supportive responses. I know that shame is a huge part of CPTSD in a lot of people, not just me. And when friends jump in and help work through it, well, that just feels amazing. To feel supported is why a lot of us joined this forum, and for me, this forum did not disappoint. I feel support from so many people and I enjoy lending my own support to others in return. I like to think of it as I have two hands; one for giving and the other for receiving, and love flows when both hands are doing their jobs at the same time.

Journal Entry for March 25

In my focus on shame itself, I'm becoming more able to see under the hood of what shame is, why it exists, and how it was able to achieve a lifelong grip on my nervous system. On Saturday, I got to see how being restrained as a child is playing out in my life today as we were headed to the bowling alley for a grandson's birthday party. It's a local bowling alley, so I had a hundred different routes I could take to get there. I chose the fastest route, which includes 5 miles on the freeway. I didn't realize that Saturday traffic has gotten as thick as it has. As soon as we were committed to the onramp, unable to turn back and stick to sideroads, we saw that the 4 lanes of the freeway were now a parking lot. Movement was happening, but not much faster than walking speed. I told my usual two traffic jokes: 1) "Honey, if you're in a hurry you can walk from here and I'll meet you there when I can." and 2) "I hope we don't get a parking ticket for sitting here too long." But all joking aside, I felt the anxiety in a much more obvious way than ever.

Because of the books I've been reading by Peter Levine, I was aware enough of what restraint and entrapment do to me, to recognize that my heart and throat and shoulders tightened, and all my organs felt like they were vibrating in terror. As you may have noticed through my past writings, I have an unnatural anxiety around traffic. Nobody likes being stuck in traffic, but being stuck in traffic makes me feel terror. Horror. My fingers grip the steering wheel. My arms stiffen. My driving foot begins to shake uncontrollably, and I begin to drive aggressively. I have to own powerful cars because if I'm in an underpowered car I feel even more trapped. I floorboard it to get around people. Many times, I could have been ticketed for aggressive driving, even though I feel like I'm not being aggressive. I'm not in fight mode, I'm in fLight-mode, desperately trying to escape in a panic as though my life depends on it. Up to now, I have routinely planned my entire life around traffic and crowds as best I can.

Because I've been studying Levine's work, I was able to see that my unnaturally over-exaggerated terror of being stuck in traffic, or trapped in a crowded room, is a monster that has burrowed its tentacles into every aspect of my life. For me, traffic is not an inconvenience, it's another experience of being restrained and helpless. The terror I feel in crowds or in traffic is the same terror I felt as a child being held down and abused. (PS: It didn't happen often to me. Only a few times when I was about 7 years old, but in the world of trauma, it only takes one near-death event to create PTSD). Restraining a mammal flips all the survival switches in that person's mammalian brain. You cannot fight or flee while restrained. You can't "go down fighting". All you can do is retreat into your brain and hope in helpless abandon that the predator doesn't kill you. When they don't kill you, the damage is now done. The brain knows that being trapped is always possible and it remembers what it felt like to succumb to the reality that total 100% helplessness is always possible.

Why I feel forgiven now

My fear of being trapped without an ability to fight or flee, has been a source of massive shame. I have lived mostly in the shame of how I react to non-life-threatening things like traffic, and more specifically, I'm very ashamed when my normally calm and polite driving becomes aggressive when I'm in a life-threatening panic. I'm ashamed of my obsession with cameras, alarms, locks, insurances, stored emergency supplies, etc. I'm embarrassed/ashamed of how much time and money and energy I spend trying to feel safe and never accomplishing a feeling of safety. So I try harder to make sure nobody ever traps me again. Ever. But it's a treadmill to run on and get nowhere. I keep buying more cameras and more alarms and more insurance, but that feeling of being unprotected just keeps coming at me like from an eternally gushing firehose aimed right at me.

The reason I keep saying "I feel forgiven" is because I now recognize how all of my embarrassing reactions to normal daily stress are rooted in how my own survival instincts were abused and stripped away from me. Somehow, truly knowing WHY I act like a nervous Ned, helps me feel forgiven for it all. Learning the mammalian function of how I am the product of a traumatic childhood, is releasing me of feeling like I'm the * who can't handle life because, as the Catholics always said, I "chose" to be a nervous wreck. Another fact I put in all my novels is how the Catholics who abused me never said, "Oh you made a mistake because you're young. Let me help you learn". Instead, they would scowl and grab my arm or earlobe, or the short hairs on my neck, sometimes nearly bruising me, and say, "What made you think THAT was a good idea?" Of course I had no way of knowing that the reason I didn't know how to fly a 747 from birth wasn't my fault. Their treatment of me not knowing how to do advanced math on the day I was born was THEIR bad. Not mine. To me, the only answer I could come up with at age 6 for "What made you think THAT was a good idea?" was because I was obviously stupid. They used the words ALL THE TIME: "SHAME ON YOU!"

So, what Levine has finally been able to get through my thick skull is that I truly am not shameful in wanting to survive. I think his books are proving to my deeper inner subconscious mind that all the embarrassing reactions I have to life are not because I'm stupid, but because my survival instincts were stripped away and I've been forever stuck in the loops that ABUSE PUT ME IN. All my embarrassing behaviors are the result of what I was created to do: Survive. And for once in my life, I finally feel like that's okay. I'm not a bad guy. I'm earnestly just trying to feel safe in a world where safety is an illusion.

The trick now is to hold onto this feeling of forgiveness indefinitely.

On a quick journal note: We lost another kid. The boy (J) who'd grown up with our two sons from age 3 to 37 died suddenly of a Deep Vein Thrombosis last week. A blood clot broke loose in his leg and was pumped into the heart which killed him instantly. We are delicately watching our younger son in case the distress of losing J brings him to another bipolar episode. Our poor son has a gift that he feels is an affliction. The day before J died, our son texted us saying, "I feel it again. Something bad is about to happen and I don't know what, so I'm just warning everyone to be on the watch for an earthquake or a death or something."  He actually feels death before it happens often. This contributes to his imbalance. He does not like being warned. He calls it a curse. And it often goes in conjunction with his bipolar episodes.

So far I think we're okay.

J's mom is not a fan of funerals, and neither are we. We've been in too many funerals where the true evil in family members bubbles up. My evil sister made such a disgusting narcissistic fool out of herself at my mother's funeral in 2009 that I have never been to a funeral since. J's mom was raised very similarly to me, and her family has all the same players in it that mine does, so she isn't ready to subject herself to another disgusting family event. J's life was not going well. Her Catholic family likes to judge just like mine did, so with J being gone after bouts with drugs and homelessness, just opens her up to being treated like she deserved to lose her son, so she's going to wait until warmer weather and she's going to have a celebration of life rather than a disgusting, family feud of a funeral.

On a side note: What I'm learning about myself is teaching me about others too. It turns out we are all mammals with mammalian brains and nervous systems. I am far more acutely aware now that non-narcissistic people who are judgmental and cruel are just as damaged as I am. It's not their fault any more than my anxieties are mine. True narcissism is born into about 4% of all people, but the rest of us who are beaten and abused into becoming mean or judgmental are more the product of our own past abuse. I see it for real now, that except for narcissists, we are all more forgiven than we realize. I choose to not let my family abuse me anymore, but only one member of my entire family is a true naturally born narcissist, so I can forgive the rest of them, while continuing to stay estranged from them just for my own health. Like I often say, "You don't have to hate alligators to know not to swim in their pond with them." It's like that thing people say, "You be you and I'll be me." We just don't have to be together.

Perhaps as I continue to study and evolve from the books and treatments I'm absorbing, I'll one day even find myself able to forgive narcissists. For now, that's not yet happening. I still think my sister is an actual witch---and is deadly dangerous. Everyone else in my family are just damaged goods interacting with other damaged goods and doing so in damaged ways; judgementalism, criticism, conditional love, selfishness, finger-pointing. All the usual sins of human life.

As they say, Hurt people hurt people.

[NarcKiddo]

I am so sorry to hear about J and I hope your son weathers this horrible time without getting another episode.

 

[Kizzie]

I too am really sorry to hear about the death of J and hope your son gets through the loss in as healthy a way as possible.   

[Blueberry]

I'm sorry too PapaCoco

[WabiSabi]

 

[Papa Coco]

Thanks to all of you for the support.

It appears most of us here at home are doing pretty well with this latest loss. Death happens, and I seem to be getting used to it. The grieving is already starting to release its grip on me.

I have a little downtime today and have made the conscious decision to try disconnecting from all the things I do to keep from being alone with myself.

I've become that guy who has to have stimulation going every second of the day. Even when I'm in a quiet place like the beach, I clutter the silence with outside stimulation. I have lost myself in the noise of constant music in my ears, or having the TV on, or even just playing solitaire on my cell phone to keep from being alone with no outside (intrusive) stimulation. I don't even eat in silence. I turn the TV on at lunch time and eat on the sofa. When I'm done eating I barely remember what I ate. I don't even savor the food I'm eating anymore.

I now see why people go camping in the woods, or fishing on quiet lakes, or even just going for day hikes without being connected to anything but nature. I realize that I miss it terribly.  When the world goes quiet, and I don't fill the void with music, tv, puzzles, housework, or solitaire, time slows down. The silence itself becomes the music that fills me with natural nothingness. I've lost that. I want it back. Most of my best memories from childhood were those times when I just laid in the sunlight and let it warm me. Our cat does that. In the summer she lays on the ceramic tiles of her little patio that I made for her and suns herself for hours. Coco and I chuckle when we see it, but not-so-deep down I'm more envious than anything. As a younger man, I used to like to rent apartments that had outdoor pools where I would lay in the sun like my cat does for hours at a time just being with my thoughts and enjoying the warmth. Never really falling asleep but just letting the muscles relax while listening to the sounds around me and feeling the sun. I miss that. Not the pool, just the being with myself. Content. Sunning. Listening to the world's motion. So peaceful.

I will start my disconnection from stimulation in small doses. I will take short walks without my earbuds playing music or audible books. I will stop playing solitaire when things get quiet.  I'm SO GLAD I disconnected from social media a year ago. That's an addiction that takes serious work to break.

There was a time when I would intentionally separate myself from my cellphone, but there were too many instances that came up when someone needed to talk with me and I didn't have my phone on me. I didn't get their text or phone call until the next day. That became a problem, so I had to start keeping my phone on me 24x7. With kids and grandkids who live on their phones, then I need to be near mine too if I want to be available at all. Now I feel like I need to have that cursed device on me all the time. And now that it's always a fingertip away, I fall into the trap of looking at it all the time. Also, it has apps in it that I use to check surveillance cameras and my glucose monitoring. With the glucose monitors, you have to always be within a few feet of the phone, or the ongoing measurements don't record.

It's a trap. It seems like all our cool inventions are more like ropes that are used to tie us down tighter and tighter to the chaos of the world.

I miss the quiet of the pre-computer age.

I pray for peace in the chaos. So, therefore I need to do my part now and stop voluntarily connecting to the chaos.

There was a time when being alone was frightening, but with the therapy and releasing that I've been doing, I'm starting to find times when peace doesn't bring up the ghosts of the past so boldly anymore. I am starting to feel moments during the day where I'm not so afraid of my past anymore.

Today will be a good day, especially if I can find myself enjoying a few moments of quiet stillness.

One step at a time.

Slow down, you move too fast
You got to make the morning last
Just kicking down the cobblestones
Looking for fun and feeling groovy

--Simon and Garfunkle.

[StartingHealing]

PC

Being able to "see" where the feeling of "not safe" comes from, and getting the non-verbal part to accept that it's not a 'now' thing is powerful stuff.  I think in many ways the current so called "advanced" culture has lost a great deal of wisdom in regards to the human, the mammal.  Living in cities is a situation that is not good for connection, if you think about it, our basic wiring for "tribe" maxes out around 300 folks, any more than that and our wiring gets messed up.  Then you add in the pressures of propaganda.  All the adverts, all the tweaking of the algorithms, click bait, outrage porn, fear porn, etc... Yeesh.  It's almost like it's intentional.  Not saying it is, but maybe intent doesn't matter.  Maybe the effect of increasing atomization of individuals within the social construct isn't good on health by any health metric you wish to use. 

I totally relate to the "not safe" feeling. I honestly don't know where the line is for being prepared for situations that in probability will arise, and pathology.  Do you know what I mean?  The idea that folks shouldn't be ready for disruptions in the usual pattern of life to me is really sketchy. I grew up in a rural area on a dairy farm.  Blizzards happened.  Floods happened.  Wild fires happened. Phone line would go dead. Electrical power would go out. The pump for the water well would burn out. Wasn't in an area that had major earthquakes but they still happened.  Having the tools and the supplies on hand to handle these occurrences was common sense, right?  My question is when did the shift happen to "that's a bunch of nonsense"?  Next question is who benefits from folks being more dependent on the various systems that in all probability will experience a disruption?  It's almost like there is a push in making folks more and more dependent all in the name of profit and power.  Seriously. Think about what's happened in the so called medical fields from the 1950's till now. 

Yep. Social media is a cesspool.  I've deleted all social apps off my phone.  IDK, have been thinking real hard about going to a 'dumb' phone. Basic SMS and calls.  I savvy that being able to be contacted in case of X is a good thing, I also think that can go to far.  In my case I can comfortably shut it off when I sleep.  Well, the family / friends are capable of handling their sh-t.  You know? 

I savvy with the taking time to unplug.  I've fallen out of being regular with it, I've found that walking, no music, no nada, because the walking and the sounds in the environment is enough.  Plus I've learned that for some reason walking also helps with the thinking meat processing of things.  It's basically where EMDR came from.  I can still have my phone on me but it's not the primary focus.  I think sometimes, having the input from outside is a way to not have to deal with the internal things. 

Wishing you and yours all the best.