Papa Coco's Recovery Journal

[AphoticAtramentous]

Hey Papa Coco, I hope you've been doing alright.
Your ketamine experiences sound terrifying indeed, but I hope in the end that they are enlightening. Wanting all the best for you, been missing your company (but don't take that as any pressure to post if you don't feel like it!)

Regards,
Aphotic.

[Larry]

 

[Papa Coco]

Journal Entry for Wednesday, November 13, 2024

I've been off the journal for quite some time now. The world here is very somber since the election. Nobody is really talking much. The grocery store is quiet. People are just walking around like zombies. While the calm is nice, the reason for it is suspicious.

And for me, self-torture is as easy as it's always been. In fact, I can't stop thinking about all the things that are wrong in life. I struggle impossibly with an ability to let go of the past and the people who've led me to where I am now. I try SO HARD to stop thinking about the people who've bullied me. My family. My church. My schools as a kid. And politics. I want to forgive and forget, but my brain won't stop thinking about them.

It always baffles me that we have enough on this planet to all enjoy ourselves. But we don't. I held a job that paid well for 42 years. I didn't like the job. It was a good job. It just wasn't what I'd wanted to do with my life. It was what my parents guided me toward and forced me to apply for. I had money. I had friends. I had health. And I had misery. Why? Why do we have to live in this misery from our pasts, and from sticking our noses into drama. Trauma and drama. Two things that have kept me from fully enjoying a simple life. It's not just me. I know SO MANY PEOPLE who are healthy and intelligent and making money and having friends, but who are just as miserable as if they were starving. Just like me. I was living a good life but struggling to enjoy it. It's midday. We're between rain showers. I could do a quick bike ride or a run to the store to find someone to talk with for a few minutes. But what am I doing? Nothing. I'm sitting in the house. Waiting to die. Why am I doing this to myself? (That's an actual question: I really don't know for sure why I am sitting around bored in a world filled with things to do).

In my morning meditation, where I like to reach out to the spirit world and ask if anyone has any guidance for me, I heard the words, "You get tangled up." As I heard the words, I knew that they meant that I get tangled up in everything I do. I overthink. I over worry. I pause with second thoughts. I try to find every possible outcome so I can prepare for anything. I can't say no to people, so I end up tangled up in their dramas with them far more often than I need to. I get tangled up in my inability to know what I want for myself. Getting untangled is my current project. Stopping, every so often, and asking myself, "Is this what I want to be doing right now?" If the answer is no, then I need to stop doing the things I've gotten tangled up in and I need to release my grip on the leash that holds me in decision paralysis.  So, physically I have NO REASON for not being happy right now. It's all about past pain creating future fears, and allowing myself to get dragged into too many dramas, some mine, some are other people's dramas.

IN the end, that's the part that gets me. Physically we can have good lives. But our brains, our traumas, our wiring, have created in us an unseen force that keeps us from enjoying the simple things of life.

It doesn't matter how dim our global future looks, at this time we don't live in the future. We live in the present moment. Our pasts bring us pain. The future brings us fear. But right here and now we are in the present moment, and right now, I'm in a safe place. I have food in the fridge. I have heat. Winter is coming outside and I'm warm and fed inside. So, why am I so unhappy?

I wish I knew why we are like this. The ancients taught us that we think too much. If we could live in the moment more like the animals do, we'd be more relaxed and authentically ourselves. Animals only stress while they're hiding from hunters. They go right back to enjoying their meal as soon as the danger leaves. Wouldn't that be awesome? But we're not like that. WE COULD BE! But we are not. I'm not like that. I stress over things that might not ever happen. I still feel pain from things that happened 60+ years ago. I worry about tomorrow like my life depends on it. I keep emergency food, water, medication, electricity, propane, power generators, and more, around because I'm so sure I'm going to need them in the future. I'm letting my pain from the past and my fear of the future darken the fun I could be having today. I KNOW I'm doing it, but somehow, I can't find my way out of this emotional cycle of self-torture.

I've told this to the forum many times: I wasn't allowed to want anything during the first decades of my life. I was to want what my family was kind enough to decide to give me, and nothing else. I wasn't even allowed to talk about my future. As a boy, I wanted to be a general contractor and land developer. In my city, anyone who did that when they were my age, is a multimillionaire today. AND I LOVE Working with tools. I love it, I love it, I love it. I feel invincible when I have a firm grip on some good tools. My dad scoffed at me anytime I ever said, "I want to be ___ when I grow up." He did this right up to my 18th birthday. Usually, he'd scoff and say, "You can't do that." Or "You need to be smarter if you want to do that." He literally told me that I wasn't smart enough to do most things. Or he'd just repeat that famous family line that was used on me thousands of times over the years, "You don't want that." Then, ON the morning of my 18th birthday, after 18 solid years of telling me I can't be anything when I grow up, my father stormed into my room and screamed at me: "You're 18 now. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?" I leapt out of bed, put on my clothes, and hit the highway looking for anyone who would hire me. I wasn't allowed to go to college. Dad said, "Anyone who goes to college is just doing it for four more years of free childhood." I wasn't allowed to start my own business, or contract myself out, even though I'd been doing it for years as a teen who would take on any task in the yard for reasonable price. Rather than pursue my own desires to build homes and own my own business, I ended up going to work where he worked. The factory was hiring, and they knew my dad to be a hard worker, so they hired his son in hopes I'd be like Dad. I was. I worked very hard. For 42 years I worked hard at a job I didn't like because I wasn't allowed to want to follow my own heart. Fast-forward to today--I can now make my own decisions, but wait...no...I can't. I have to torture myself by still being unable to know what I want in life. So I'm paralyzed by the decisions. I'm sitting around the house waiting to die while the world is offering all sorts of fun things to do just outside my door. And I can't decide what to do, so I don't do anything. Decision paralysis.

Yep. I'm good at making up ways to torture myself so that I don't enjoy what's right in front of me.

And yes, I know: This is trauma. Trauma is what does this to us. So, on some level I DO know why I torture myself. But on some other level, I still see it and go, "DUDE! The cage isn't locked! You can leave if you want to!"  Or can I?  My son deals with traumas from his childhood too. When people ask why he can't just get past it and go on, he responds with, "When I find out why I can't let go, I'll let you know."

The ancients might have been right about how thinking is our downfall. Ignorance is Bliss. The less we think, the less we stress. If we lived in the moment, and allowed ourselves to be led by our hearts and the wind, we'd all love and care for each other, and we'd all be managing stress very well, enjoying our lives and being happy for more hours a day than being miserable. Even when we don't have much money, we can still go for a walk with a friend. I am 64 and have lived a pretty complicated and fast paced life. I've been on a few fantastic vacations and have had some very big experiences. But when I think about the things that I miss most in life, it's sitting around the campfire with Coco, and my son, his wife, our grandsons, maybe even a friend or neighbor or two. Sipping on hot chocolate, snacking on chips, and talking about every possible topic we can come up with by the firepit in the front lawn of our broken down little beach hut. I don't lament over not going on expensive trips or accomplishing big things. My fond memories are of playing with my sons and my grandsons when they were little. Throwing them in the air onto the couch while they laughed so hard that everyone within earshot laughed with them.

When my sons were boys, around 10 years old or so, there were 26 children in our neighborhood, all roughly the same age. I came home from work one day at 3 PM. Parked the car. Opened the door and had a line of neighborhood children lined up to take turns giving me a hug as I got out of the car. They were all trying so hard to not giggle. The smiles on their faces were unforgettable. These kids thought that was so funny. If I had to choose, I would keep that memory and give up my memories of our two weeks on the Carribean in 2018. For me, 5 minutes in my driveway with two dozen giggling kids is far, far more memorable than a 2 weeklong expensive vacation. In my own personal life, it is true: Connecting with other people means everything to me. I'd rather hug a line of giggling kids than go on vacation somewhere for two weeks. I'll remember the first one far longer than I'll remember the latter.

IN summary: I'm miserable but I know I don't need to be, and yet I know I can't stop it. I'm frustrated that knowing how trauma has messed with me isn't enough to cure it. It's good that I know what CPTSD is now, as it explains most of my medical and emotional downfalls, but DOG GONE IT I'm so tired of being unhappy in a world filled with things I could be doing. I just want to know: What will make me happy?  I like riding bikes. But I don't like riding with other riders. They go too fast or too slow. So I ride alone. And that is sad. I go out and ride for an hour and when I get back home I'm just sad. I rode my bike alone as a kid to escape my family. I would go out after dinner every night and ride for hours so I could avoid being home with my family. Somehow I can't get that lonely boy out of my head. He still lives in me. He still likes his sad bike rides. The only place he felt he had any control. I couldn't ride just anywhere, but I did have a fairly nice sized play area. I could go into the school yards. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest of the US. Mostly it was still all woods when I was growing up. So the school was built deep in the woods and I could ride trails all night long uninterrupted. Other kids were playing ball with other kids. SO I was the only loner out there looking for quiet solitude and nobody telling me what I'm allowed to want.

I'm so frustrated. I want to have fun while I still can, but I can't think of ANY activity that I want to do. I'm trapped in an invisible cage that I can't escape from, even though it's unlocked.

[SenseOrgan]

Papa Coco, this is awfully relatable in more ways than one. It's painful to see how the past has been wired into us. That becomes even more palpable when all the basics are covered and the canvas of life is finally ours to color. Using the concept of invisible wounds is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't cover the invisible straitjacket part of the trauma. It doesn't make sense from a free adult perspective. It does from that of a child who is locked in time.

It's nice to read you also have some very fond memories. It's easy to see why kids like your company. They often still have a very good sense for who is safe and loving. Wishing you much more of that!

 

[Blueberry]

Papa Coco,

What you write is relatable to me too in a lot of ways. Different examples but similar question to myself: "Why are you doing this to yourself?" You have provided some answers actually.

I know of activities I used to like but I can't be bothered anymore. I think the latter is terrible considering how well off I am to be living in a safe country etc and very far from FOO but it is what it is.

I love your memory of giggling kids all lining up to give you a hug! Hope you can lean into that memory and feel some of that love towards yourself.

[StartingHealing]

Hi PC.

I feel you my friend. 

Sending good vibes!

Wishing you all the best

[Chart]

I too wish I knew what to do. Whoever finds the secret technique to re-wire the limbic system PLEASE let us all know... and as quickly as possible.
 

[Papa Coco]

Thank you, Starting Healing, Blueberry and Senseorgan and Chart for the kind words. My gratitude is real. While living in this world, I seldom find places where I can be my authentic self and not be told I should be different. This forum is a place where we accept each other for where we are and what's working or not working in our lives on any given day. Yesterday, my wife told me how she always does a gratitude prayer every morning at the coffee pot. I did not know that about her. It prompted me to tape a note "I am thankful for..." on the coffee pot that I use 5 times a day so as to remind me to do the same. On the top of my list is my wife and kids and grandkids. This forum, and the people I chat with here, is next. I am immeasurably grateful for this place where I can chat with people who accept each other for who we are, as we are. This forum is a safe place to open up. We have a really good thing going here.

Journal Entry for Saturday, November 16, 2024

Two things have changed in my normal baseline physical/emotional daily health.

1) I'm hungry and full at the same time. I can't regulate my appetite so easily right now. For the past week, I've been waking up and not eating breakfast because I am not hungry. This is not good, because I'm Insulin Resistant, which, I'm told, Is the step before Pre-Diabetic, which is the step before Diabetic, which has plagued my mother's side of the family for generations. As I'm eking toward diabetes, fasting is NOT a good practice. But I'm not hungry. THEN, all of a sudden, BAM! I'm starved. Or I've felt a hunger pain so intense it causes a moment of weakness and nausea from the empty stomach. So I make some food, sit down to eat it, and I can only manage to eat a few bites before I feel full again.


2) For a few weeks now I've been living at the very edge of total panic. I can feel a very serious panic attack simmering just beneath my skin. It's getting worse each day. Yesterday I felt that panic almost break out of my shell.

During my latest round of 6 Ketamine Infusions, I started to uncover a panic that has been living deep down in the darkest wells of my nervous system for my whole life. My T says he can feel a scream living down inside me that wants to come up and out. He assures me this is because my brain is starting to feel like I'm ready to see what I've been hiding from for a lifetime. I told him I HATE it when therapists pull that BS move, "just scream into a pillow and you will magically be healed." He told me he hates it when T's do that to him too, BUT that doesn't mean I don't need to scream. He can feel what I'm feeling now: That there is a raging panic attack living dormant deep within me and that if I want to move forward in my healing, I have little choice but to allow it to erupt.

BUT! I'm taking it slow. I'm taking a passive approach to allowing the panic to bubble up in its own time. I'm giving it permission to keep getting closer. I'm not taking the aggressive approach to healing that I usually take. I usually JUMP in at anything I think might ease the pain of the past. This time, the panic is too serious. When it starts, I distract immediately. Change my thought. I feel like I almost got run over by a bus and saved myself at the last second. This looming panic attack is that frightening to me. It's like the panic is a living organism that's dwelling inside me, waiting for its chance to show itself, but it is being respectful of my fears. Maybe this would be a really good thing for my T and I to put to IFS therapy. Maybe the panic has a voice. Maybe it will talk to me if I can get my T to act as the mediator.

I'm terrified of this panic living deep down in me, but maybe between T and I, we can finally release that last precarious grip I have on my mental stability, and the scream will come out. Rather than some CBT Therapist trying to force me to pretend to scream into a pillow, T believes there will come a time soon when I won't be able to stop it. The scream will come out on its own terms. The panic that lives deep down in me is powerful and I'm very afraid of it. So I'm only moving forward as fast as I'm willing to move forward. I am NOT pushing it. I'm letting the panic grow slowly and I'm getting used to knowing it's there. Once I no longer fight against it, maybe it will finally blow its top and I can find the relief that my T believes I'll feel. Then, maybe, I can start eating a normal diet again.

T and I both suspect that the memories I still haven't yet dealt with could be from an extremely young part of myself. Possibly preverbal, which makes identifying the memories much harder to do.

I'm starting to have random memories pop into my head from early childhood. They're insignificant memories. Playing with Legos. Laying on the floor in the stream of sunlight from the living room picture window. These snapshot memories come out of nowhere and surprise me each time. I seem to be connecting more than normal with my childhood. So far, nothing significant, just hints that I'm closer to my origins than I normally am.

[rainydiary]

This came to my mind when I was reading your post:  I wonder if the hunger cues and sense of panic are related.  Like your body and mind are "switching" between modes where you need fuel to be ready to fight or actively survive and where you need to expel everything from your body in order to be able to run or freeze or shutdown to survive.  This is just my wondering and mostly what I'm trying to say is our bodies and minds are doing so much to protect and help us survive that it is amazing and confusing and wild.

[StartingHealing]

Hi PC,

I savvy the hunger / feeling full.  I was like that for quite a while.  It's only now some 2+ years on from the last time I interacted with the former spouse outside of court proceedings, that I'm starting to become acquainted with those sensations again.  Having the emotional load from __________ does mess with the body something fierce.

Preverbal stuff is a bugger to deal with. 

Wishing you all the best

[Papa Coco]

Rainy and SH

Great responses. As I read them I can see clearly a probable correlation between survival stress and appetite. I've known for years that stress messes with digestion and hunger. How did I miss this today? Rainy, I think you are spot on, that regulating digestion and panic are connected. It makes so much sense.

And SH, your post plays into this perfectly. Your relationship with the x was obviously not a happy one. It messed with your body regulation also.

This is good information. Great feedback. I've got something to work with now.

This is why I always say that we are stronger together. As a community, we are smarter than the sum of our parts.
Thanks,

PC

[Papa Coco]

I wonder if empathy is born into us or taught. My guess is both. We are each born with a predesignated capacity for empathy. Then, for those of us who were born with the capacity for empathy, our elders teach us how to use that power and we grow up to be compassionate, caring people. For those who were born minus the ability to feel empathy, they can't learn it no matter who tries to teach them.

I wonder if the sudden explosion in the population of tween and teen murderers, car thieves, etc., is due to the rise in screentime raising our children. Nobody seems to be asking some of these children, "How would you feel if someone did/said that to you?" If nobody ever asks that question, the child may miss their chance to learn while their brain was ready to learn how to be empathetic.

I was born very empathetic. But that wasn't enough. I still needed to learn how to handle empathy. As a boy, whenever I said something mean to my little sister, (We were close, but we were siblings), I could see her face drop. I'd feel terrible immediately and ask for forgiveness. If we had been two kids across town from each other, playing online games instead of living in the same space where we can see each other's reactions, I might have never felt the remorse for the mean things I said as a big brother. I saw what my mean words did to other kids, and I learned how to not say those words. A kid being raised today by TV and social media sees a LOT of selfish, narcissistic interactions, which are considered to be funny in their world. They learn what they are taught just like I learned what I was taught. If they were taught it is good to be mean, they learn to be mean.

Not everyone is smart enough to know how to teach empathy. I can still remember being 6 years old, in the cafeteria of the Catholic school, while our principal, "Sister J" shamed us by yelling, "There are Pagan children in Africa who are starving, so you need to eat everything in your lunch." I first remember wondering why she had to say Pagan. Back then, in our school, Pagan meant "non-Catholic". So, I wondered why Catholic children didn't starve but Pagan children did. Hmm. Secondly, I remember having a huge problem trying to figure out why my eating habits affected the starving, non-Catholic children on the other side of the world.

Okay: Now to my point. I was just perusing my Bing Homepage and reading the headlines that looked interesting, but didn't have anything to do with politics, and I found some headlines about the Russian war. Immediately I felt a very familiar EF wash over me, making me feel horribly responsible again for the millions of good people who are being attacked. I FELT IT! I felt myself feeling responsible for their pain. THIS time, rather than just feeling it and its associated pain, I also remembered Sister J's training that if I didn't eat all of my lunch, I would be hurting the starving Pagan children on the other side of the world in Africa.

I guess that was my "Ah Ha!" moment for the day. I made a connection between a current struggle and a past origin of that struggle. The day that I learned that I have to eat my lunch or I'll starve a child in Africa was not the only time that logic was misused on me. That was the first day in a lifetime of being told I need to pray harder, send more money, be a better person, or others get hurt. It took me a good couple of decades to figure out what Sister J was failing to teach us back then, but as I learned that my family and church's mission was to raise me to feel bad so I'll serve others, I finally figured it out. The old meanie was just trying to shame us into eating more food. More coercive control meant to control us into behaving as we are told for their benefit.

Managing this struggle that I speak of is a massive undertaking. So, now that I know where the early messages of my being responsible for everyone's happiness, all I can say is, "Okay. I see where it started." But knowing that isn't helping me. I have to catch myself going into the shame each time I see pain in someone else's life, and each time, I have to remind myself that I am NOT NOT NOT responsible for the pain in the rest of the world.

It was a good thing that I learn so fast, but learning what I shouldn't learn is a pitfall I have to find a way to navigate. Trauma disorders are all about the pain of the past becoming the fear of the future. In other words, One who's never been burnt isn't afraid of the stove. Our past pains give us our future fears. That's what my trauma story is all about. Every EF I have is from a time when my body remembers pain from the past and converts it to fear of the future. So, for me, the pain of learning that I'm responsible for everyone's well-being has become my fear that more will die in the future and it'll be my fault because I wasn't good enough, kind enough, prayerful enough. I guess I should accept that I'll never be free of this weight, but I'll be wise to always be diligent to diffuse it as soon as it starts from now on. I'm finally grasping that there's no cure for Trauma disorders, but there are plenty of tools and techniques we can use to mitigate it.


I love this forum. I love you all.

I hope for a good week for every one of us.

PC

[Armee]

Rainy- I love that connection you were able to make between fight flight and hunger. Amazing brain you have!

Papa C - our trauma always has some weird thing it is doing to us physically. Almost every ailment I've had is really from the trauma. At the same time that feeling hungry then immediately full or nauseous can also be a signal that there's something physically wrong in the abdomen. If it keeps happening, please check with a doctor? Just to be sure.

That scream is definitely waiting for you to release it. But I can't stand that kind of thing either. My music/somatic therapist wanted me to make an angry growl several weeks ago thinking of times I have been in danger and didn't protect myself. I couldn't make any sound at all. But she made one for me and I carried that sound with me. It helped even though I didn't make it. Maybe even a silent scream would help?

Anyway, I think the time will come that you start to feel that. It's happening slowly for me with anger where I haven't been angry at all this whole time but this past week I've been a ball of rage, kicking chairs and the like. It kind of feels good.

I am sorry that you are feeling all this panic. It's so uncomfortable and when it's real bad not much helps, even the stuff that is supposed to. But if it isn't too too strong...my music T suggested this and it helps as long as it isn't too intense already...she had me make a Playlist of songs that feel good to me. So I listen to that and it does help. As long as the emotions are not too intense already. Something about having something outside myself that is grabbing my attention really helps.

We love you lots, Papa Coco. 

[NarcKiddo]

 

Every bit of it. Especially the final line.

I do admire how you are dealing with this panic. Being curious enough to accept that it is there and consider how best you and your T can work with it so it does not engulf you but is allowed to be released. And I am glad it seems to be respectful of those boundaries and is not just bursting out unbidden. I think that shows you are on the right track. It will be lovely when you (and it?) can be free, especially if you can do that at the right time for you.

[SenseOrgan]

...BUT! I'm taking it slow. I'm taking a passive approach to allowing the panic to bubble up in its own time. I'm giving it permission to keep getting closer. I'm not taking the aggressive approach to healing that I usually take.

This is an incredibly courageous attitude to cultivate in the face of such impending doom. Much respect for how you are approaching this! 

It took me decades to see that my urge to get to the root of it and deal with things once and for all had been part of not getting there where I needed to go. That it's even possible to allow and relate to difficult states differently was a revelation to me, but only when the penny dropped experientially. So I can relate to both the yin and the yang of dealing with trauma. A big hug from Holland for you