Forging New Paths

[NarcKiddo]

Sorry for your loss. I'll be thinking of you as you work through your grief.

[sanmagic7]

i'm with the others on this, blueberry. so sorry for your loss - my heart is with you while you grieve.  love and hugs

[Blueberry]

Thank you Armee, NK and san.

I can't grieve all the time. Instead I slipped into other ways of non-feeling. 

[Hope67]

Hi Blueberry,
My sincere condolences on the death of your friend.   
Hope

[Blueberry]

Thank you Hope 

___________________

These are notes of mine on Decode your Trauma from Alex Howard. https://www.decodeyourtrauma.com/optin1670336523317  I wrote them up on a thread I made under Resources/...../Podcasts, Videos, Documentaries

I didn't want to write my own reactions over there, so putting the notes and my reactions here instead, reactions in [   ]:

Heard of Big T and Small T trauma? Those are out-of-date designations for what are now called Overt and Covert. Covert can be worse in its impact because of not being recognised as trauma by practitioners and others.

We have 3 core emotional needs: boundaries, safety, love.  [Astounded to see boundaries here! Hadn't realised it's an emotional need ] Emotional boundaries could also be defined as 'delineation between self and others', they help us say Yes or No to others and to ourselves. If you have difficulty committing to yourself and following through with what you know to be healthy for yourself, then probably your core emotional need for boundaries was not met in childhood. [Big lightbulb went on here for me! That's why so many things are so difficult for me - from fasting, the 'positive' fasting I intended for Lent, (probably even getting out of bed on a daily basis), not just reading but also implementing what I find in books etc. on healing, just to name a few examples - it's so hard to say YES to myself and to what I know would do me good. It was a question I had last time in inpatient therapy. My T either didn't know or thought it was too early to tell me / suggest. Which is fine, I'm not criticising how careful she is with me. Saying yes to myself over my needs, my progress etc being so difficult could also mean that when I do do it, it throws me back into EFs, despite being good for what I want to change and good for my recovery. That mechanism has happened before too. Then need to find a healthy balance, but my healthy balance is what looks like minute steps on the outside.] 

Love as an emotional need is not achieved by 'knowing' you were loved, it had to be a 'felt' sense of being loved e.g. your parents were interested in you, they were interested in doing things with you that interested you, not just things that interested them. [That would also mean that merely being told you were loved, called 'darling', 'pet' etc wouldn't be enough, it wouldn't give you a felt sense unless those words were embedded in some more of the real stuff. As for those of us who didn't even 'know' we were loved, well... no wonder we have cptsd.]

These 3 core emotional needs are needs, they are not wishes, luxury etc. [This doesn't come as a huge surprise to me the way boundaries are a core emotional need does but it helps me see beyond all those FOO denials of parents can't be perfect     . I also noticed during these videos of Alex Howard's how important it is for me to keep hearing variations of trauma education. It helps restore a bit of my resiliency (which gets eroded due to day-to-day life, memories, Inner Critic...) and it helps me keep going, gives me a bit of reason to keep going, restores a bit of my belief in myself etc. It is NOT a waste of time. I often think I should be on the forum less for my own sake but typing up notes here or reading around old, old posts including my own is something like trauma education. No wonder it helps me. Those activities are far more beneficial than some stuff I do e.g. SH, overeating, lying in bed for days on end!!  NTS: there was that should again ]

When we become more resilient, we feel more but are impacted less, so resiliency doesn't mean we become hardened. [Feel more, impacted less is part of pathway to healing I guess. Window of tolerance expands.]

Our nervous systems normalised what went on during the trauma events, so that way we learned to do what our environment wanted. We tend to continue to recreate the environment we were in.  [Another lightbulb for me: that's why it's so difficult for me to set my apt up and keep it nice, tidy etc!! My parents didn't do that in my childhood much. They were waiting for some future occurence where they would deem setting up as 'worth it'. This 'worth it' didn't happen till I was in my teens, and then only briefly - not long enough to change my emotions and nervous system on this. I presume my nervous system was normalised to 'setting up is dangerous because M doesn't want to set up, the very idea makes her angry or even fills her with rage' so setting up sends me into EFs - frozen, don't DO anything. I made some of that correlation long since but didn't realise the emotional depth to which it goes and why it's so hard to take those steps, and has been with every move I made. And also why getting help setting up is pretty strenuous too and why it can take me years to set up.]

An important pathway to healing is to try and change that environment now. [Known this for a long time, but it's difficult for me to do. NTS: Small steps!! Baby steps count. Baby steps have most chance of sticking and continuing. I hadn't been anticipating how much moving would throw me for a loop and how long it would take me to set up and also to settle into a new place, into household routines etc, but moving did throw me for a loop and it's where I am now. There's reasons behind it; it's not indolence contrary to what ICr in the voice of F is saying and has been for a while and what F did in person in my teen years.]

[NarcKiddo]

Wow. Thank you for this, Blueberry.

So much of this is switching on lightbulbs for me, too.

[Blueberry]

Thanks NK, I'm happy my notes are helpful for someone else

[Papa Coco]

Blueberry,

There is a lot of good information in this journal entry, and so true. Thanks for sharing it. The point that hit me the most was when you said that it's one thing to know we're loved, and another to feel that love. That's a monumental distinction.

[Blueberry]

I'm so impressed with the 5 day course (videos of about 30-50 minutes content each day plus worksheets, which I filled in in my head only) that I'm considering signing up for the 12 week course on re-aligning the nervous system.

I think it might just be the answer as to why I often feel so stuck. I know this is very personal, but I like the way Alex H. presents and speaks. I seem to be able to learn from him. There's some man for instance who does free embodiment seminars (with the hope you'll buy his books or join his non-free seminars) and I just don't like his way of speaking or his attitudes to certain types of people. I wouldn't want to join his course. He likes to be up-front - read: rude, a bit abrasive and -if-you-don't-like-this-then-don't-join-my-course. BB thinks: Thanks for the warning, I won't ;-)

I've also discovered that I do learn better and probably might even practise better or do more homework when I have person-to-person contact, even if via a video online rather than real in-person contact. I've been reading up on stuff for years. But now I tend to drift off a bit and/or I read the books but don't do the exercises. My preferred way of learning might have changed? People, like a couple of voice teachers, had the impression I want or even almost need somebody to work with me directly. I can imagine what inner children might be involved there and why it's difficult for me to keep going with the inbetween steps of practising between lessons. I certainly know that I need to engage with the new material in different ways from how we did in school back in the 70's and 80's. 

The other thing is that Alex H. even mentions this kind of difficulty of keeping going (saying YES to yourself and needs and plans and desires) in conjunction with missing emotional boundaries in childhood.

He also mentioned during the fourth or fifth day how much you need to reset your nervous system in order to really be able to move forward with your healing steps. It seems like if your nervous system hasn't been reset, you have to work far, far harder on trauma processing and you get more EFs to throw your system out of whack.

Of course maybe I'm just succumbing to his arguments for joining his course   Get kind of worried about that when I start making my plans public because of stuff-in-childhood. M announced how gullible I was as a child, for not believing all those family myths about how terrible I was, or for just questioning the odd thing. (Supposedly gullible because I'd heard mbrs of widespread FOO saying slightly different things from nuclear FOO...) But it hurt to hear that word in the tone of voice she used.

[sanmagic7]

blueberry, to my mind, if you think it fits for you, could be helpful, why not sign up?  does re-setting your nervous system make sense to you? do you know what that exactly means? (i'm afraid i don't) i hope he's explained that part to your satisfaction.  the other, more down-to-earth part is finances, if you can afford to lose that money w/o it harming you financially.  i guess i tend to look at things as realistically as possible (when i can) and am passing that on.  hope that's not offensive.

i totally get the idea of being able to relate to one speaker and not another cuz of presence, voice tone, attitude, other intangibles.  go w/ your gut is my unsolicited suggestion.

love and hugs

[Papa Coco]

BB

I'm awake again at 2 AM. This morning, I was thinking about how I have been treated like a gullible fool by so many people. Then I opened this journal entry and saw the same thought referenced in your entry. It always surprises me when I see the entanglement of our collective healing journeys.

I remember, wayyyyyy back in the 1990s, when I was in a factory job, and I told one of my "friends" there that I was exploring another way to try and get over my daily mood swings. I think it was hands-on healing. Reiki, they called it. A little later I overheard a couple of other "friends" laughing and saying, "Have you heard what Jimmy's into now?" Trigger! My own FOO used to just roll their eyes at me because I was trying one more healing technique. But Dog Gone it! THAT's what we HAVE to do to get through this.

When people ask, "Why can't you just let it go?" I now respond with, "When I figure it out, I'll let you know." My former response was "Well, let's see: If 7 college educated therapists, a dozen hypnotherapists, massage therapists, acupuncturists, hundreds of doctors over the years, every mood leveling drug invented so far, and thousands of self-help books don't know why I can't 'just let it go', then how am I supposed to know why I can't 'just let it go'?"

It's been my experience that those of us who keep trying every new technique are the ones who are getting the help we need. It may seem like we only get a teaspoonful of help for every gallon of effort we put into it, but that's a teaspoonful better than giving up and letting this condition erase us altogether.

I agree with San. If it feels good, do it. If it feels wrong, don't. I was once advised: "Follow your heart. It will lead you if you let it." We each respond differently to the various help that is available. And if something feels right for where we are at this moment, then maybe it is just what we need at this moment. And if it feels wrong, then we can put it on the back burner, and try it another day when it does feel right.

[Blueberry]

Thanks san and PC. I do have a good feeling about the course. It was good to write that gullible thing down to help me realise how much that is past FOO stuff, not reality. For me it is a bit of a chunk of money but not more than I have paid for intensive healing retreats of 3-4 days. This would be less intensive but covering a longer period of time and I hope something that would help me get into practice mode. Regular, even daily, practice even if just 5-10 minutes. Anyway, there are fewer healing retreats available than say 5 years ago, also I think steady, regular therapeutic work is the name of the game for me. And if my one-on-one T finally starts up, this program would be something to build on in T.

I do know what he means with re-aligning or re-setting your nervous system but no wherewithal to explain rn. Once my nervous system is at least better aligned, I'd be better able move on with other steps whether EMDR or 'just' sitting with feelings.

Due to my inadequacies with computer, especially internet, I'm still waiting to find out how I could pay w/o asking friends to do the transaction for me. I don't want to do the latter rn because the only friends I could ask are up to their neck in all sorts atm too. So waiting to see what the support team says.

[Papa Coco]

I can feel the excitement in your words around participating in this course.

I'm excited now to hear all about it once you do it.

And I hate paying for things online too. I would rather write a check at the door. That's a technology I'm used to.

[Blueberry]

Actually I didn't get around to going to the bank before I went down with something. It turns out it's not Covid but 'just' raised temperature with sore throat. And tired, so tired. Certainly not well enough to go to the bank, or do any online courses.

Lots of     

But I also check my emails and here on OOTS so as to not get too lonely.

[Armee]