friend break-up

Just had a really disturbing friend break-up where someone I had generally trusted, although I noticed a few warning signs, got offended when I was direct about something I thought was important to discuss and then went on to be extremely, extremely disturbing. I gave some chances for us to talk through it and recover as friends but it just got more and more disturbing, with more and more narcissistic techniques.

I guess the message I should have heard was that the person was hurt or felt upset. I think that's how I'll interpret all of that, since I guess I am getting better at reading emotional code. The message was, "I feel sad, hurt, shocked, surprised, embarrassed, afraid of losing control of the situation and not getting what I want."

It was good to see myself responding differently than I would have in the past: recognizing warning signs which turned out to be true, not getting swayed by the narcissistic techniques to discredit the messenger.

But it was just really really freaky to have those things back in my life again, after spending so much time with that and then thankfully escaping it, and then getting re-trained in my much healthier current relationship.

It's just really difficult to deal with narcissism, even when you know what is going on.

It was so weird to be in a conversation where I was recognizing narcissistic techniques right and left, but I knew that if I started pointing them out the person probably would get more upset. It was weird to be able to see it this time (since I couldn't see it when I was with my ex) but not to be able to do anything about it.

Basically narcs are really really hard to deal with. I'm not strong enough. There are people I just need to avoid. It's a dangerous game. In cases where I can't fully avoid narcs I need to limit my involvement and maintain emotional independence so they do not have a hook into me.

It's just fascinating that people can have emotional issues that end up being so incredibly tricky and damaging.

I guess I have something like past "narc addiction" - where I used to be controlled by them, and I am prone to getting controlled by them, so I am perhaps more susceptible to them than most people, since I tend to be honest, direct, and vulnerable and to share what I am feeling. I tend to be trusting.

- - -

But what it made me realize was that in your life, the absence of certain people can have almost as large an impact as the presence of certain people.

I'm almost as excited to figure things about about a particular person and have them out of my life (I'm trying to use 'them' as a pronoun rather than he and she) as I am to meet a new person and have them in my life, because in both cases there's a wonderful new space/opportunity, something fresh and new and perhaps better.

- - -

The other thing I realize is that the greater mimics the lesser. Time and again, the way people behave in major conflicts or crises mimics how they behave in very minor issues.
I'm getting better at reading people based on small things they do.

I could tell from one of my current boyfriend's first emails to me that he was a considerate, caring, gentle person. I thought, "in another life I'd like to be with that person." It's been true! I read it correctly!

- - -

What else do I learn from this? Basically that emotional health and being good to others is not just the absence of doing bad things, but it's also a practice of learning what works and what feels good to people's nervous systems including your own.

It's a continual practice of seeing others do it, finding examples of people who do it well, reading about it, etc.

- - -

Also, the last thing is that there comes a point in a recovery process where you change so much that there is a break and you feel like someone different. I am feeling that break now.

- - -
I see I am still making mistakes. I'm not perfect. I'm just trying to do better this month, year, etc. than I did the last.

- - -

Not all objects are the same

One of the most important things I've learned in my Lyme journey is that not all instances of a given symptom or behavior are the same!

When someone is hyperventilating, it does not always mean they are having a panic attack! They are not always able to stop it. It could be from chemical poisoning. It could be from a number of things.

When someone yells or is violent, it does not always mean they chose to do it, they have anger problems, or that they should be punished. They could have neurotoxicity and severely lowered irritation thresholds. They might not even be that upset. On another day the same upset might not have even registered with the other person or even with themselves.

We need to be more subtle and see things in CONTEXT of the individual and their case history.

Medicine is getting TERRIBLE, fucking terrible at doing that. There are flowcharts of symptoms and test results to reactions. And there is less and less room to learn about the individual.

- - -

It's a threshold problem, not an anger problem

It's funny, but the reaction I get to the occasional times when I've been angry related to Lyme disease and nervous system assault is perhaps the MAIN thing in my life contributing to chronic low-level anger and shame.
Which then are probably the biggest emotional component contributing to any perpetuation of this behavior.

When are we going to learn as a society that saying "No, you're bad, you can't do that, you're a bad person, we're going to shun and punish you"doesn't really help?

What I'm reacting to is a comment this morning on one of my youtube videos, where someone said, "you assaulted a doctor and screamed in a psych section of an emergency room. the doctor did what she had to do."

Sure I can see how it can seem that way to the doctors. I'm sure they feel self-satisfied like they "did what they had to do," even though I got the sense from them that they felt guilty about it. They seemed shifty and embarrassed and looked at one another when I asked "What did you give me?" They lied to me and did not tell me about the Haldol and said they had given me only Ativan. Little do they know how much they escalated the situation. Had the doctor not CALLED ME CRAZY when I was having a documented reaction to permethrin, I would have gone home feeling reassured that my symptoms were not too dangerous and my insurance would have saved several thousand dollars.

It's like, where is the outrage that the doctors were overlooking a normal medical reaction, that of muscle problems and nausea from permethrin?

I just feel so angry that I had a brush with a system that is "always right," and that most people do not want to question.

Because I happened to have an intense reaction, suddenly everything the doctors did was "right."

let's take a step back: Hyperventilation can be a symptom of chemical poisoning from Permethrin:

http://symptoms.rightdiagnosis.com/cosymptoms/diaphoresis/hyperventilation/tremor-sall.htm

Here is the list of signs of chemical poisoning from permethrin:
http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/c/chemical_poisoning_permethrin/symptoms.htm#symptom_list

What are they going to do the next time someone comes in with neurological symptoms related to chemical poisoning? Call them crazy, agitate them, and drug them even more?

- - -

Basically I have to remember that regardless of what society thinks, I KNOW from my own experience that thresholds for behaviors and such can change drastically based on neurotoxicity.

Many people have not experienced these drastic changes in their thresholds.

It doesn't mean that there's not a component from my emotional state, my habits, my childhood, or patterns.

It just means that the thresholds do change, and at times they are so low that it's unreasonable to expect me to keep all my triggers below the threshold, especially when very minor things (one time, a person asking me to move over in the subway) can exceed the thresholds.

Basically, that's why I haven't had much success from normal emotional control methods. I have wanted to work mainly on the biological side, because I need the thresholds to be high enough that I have some time even to work with things or notice what is happening in order for any other methods to work.

With the Budwig diet and ozone and getting more oxygen and beneficial fatty acids into my brain, I've raised the thresholds a lot! Now I actually can understand what people mean about observing your anger or making choices about it. I didn't have that option before, when I was always inches away from melting down (while dealing with Lyme herxing in the past).

- - -

I guess I am really upset that people have interpreted a biological problem of SEVERELY LOWERED IRRITATION THRESHOLDS to mean that there is something bad about me.

They assume that the thresholds are the same for everyone, since theirs have probably never changed, and they assume I must be doing something really wrong with my emotions if I am getting "that angry."

What's funny is that often when I would scream or throw water or whatever, I wasn't even angry.

I was doing things that made it seem like I was angry, but I wasn't even that upset at all.

It was just that my thresholds were so low that even minor irritation, what you might feel if you were getting a mosquito bite or if you were slightly embarrassed or annoyed, was enough to provoke full-out shrieking (because my nervous system felt attacked by the combination of the endogenous neurotoxicity plus the small amount of additional irritation).

It's actually very rarely that I'm very angry. I can deal with a lot in an easy-going way.

That's an important point to consider.

It hasn't been an anger problem; it's been a threshold problem.

- - -

Having lowered thresholds isn't a character problem. My character and behavior might have been the same all along. The main thing that changed was 1) lowered thresholds and 2) my life has been pretty hard and frustrating with Lyme and I'm chronically a little bit stressed, and that probably lowers my thresholds for irritation from an emotional perspective.

- - -

Interaction of thresholds and triggers

I guess I am just extremely frustrated that people keep blaming me for a symptom that I don't have a lot of control over.

It's easy to point fingers and say "well you were violent" if you have never experienced Lyme rage yourself, but in theory it could happen to anyone.

And forgive me for getting it down to low enough levels where it only happens if I am experiencing severe neurotoxicity, retching, and having involuntary muscle contractions. When it used to happen regularly, it was obvious that it was something unusual. Now that I've increased my threshold through Lyme treatment and healing myself, it only happens on rare occasions when something bad happened to my nervous system AND I was severely triggered, so it can come across as some deep emotional problem, and there's all this shame, because it's rare enough that it seems plausibly to be just emotional, and the "excessively low threshold due to biological states" issue can be ignored much more than before.

Any time when I experience these neurotoxic states again, I forgive myself for the previous times when I've had Lyme rage, because I remember how these brain states make it so likely. They don't make it happen, but they really lower the threshold for how much emotional irritation is needed to provoke a sudden reflexive self-defensive movement.

The best way to understand it is that at times, the level of neurotoxicity makes the threshold so low that normal life events are likely to exceed the threshold. What do I do in that case? Stop going through life?

If my threshold is low, I certainly should avoid being around my boyfriend, going to the ER, doing anything that is likely to trigger me.

It's a matter of the interaction of life events and the nervous system threshold. Sometimes the threshold has been so low that I've screamed in public over minor things like someone singing to themselves.
Lately, my threshold is so high that nothing happens unless 1) something terrible has happened to my nervous system, and 2) I am triggered at the core with something I abhor, like being called crazy or being left suddenly/abandonment triggers.

So there are two ways to work on it:

A) Increasing the threshold, through nutrition and brainwave entrainment and helping the nervous system.

B) Decreasing the triggers, so that the triggers do not exceed the threshold.

- - -

Validation and esteem as the most important factors in psychiatric treatment

I think what people really want and what they keep moving toward or trying to create is a place where they feel safe to express themselves fully in all their goodness and badness and still be accepted and part of the community.

Psychiatry, especially the peer movement, can provide this. It can provide a space where it is ok to talk about suicidal thoughts, where it's ok to hear voices, where it's ok to do the best you know how to manage your life and emotions and nervous system, and it's assumed that you are probably doing the best you know how.
A place where you are given options but what you do is up to you.

It is in this place of safety that people can feel comfortable trying other options. When they feel safe and that the outcome will be ok even if it's unpredictable, people can feel more safe trying a different coping technique instead of the one they normally use.

When people feel respected as they are, that they are good, then they have the life-giving self-esteem that helps to give people more energy an

Validation and esteem and accepting social support are some of the best "foods" for "good" behavior.

People need VALIDATION as a fuel for doing hard things. Change is hard. Validation for what people are already doing right and esteem help them to have the motivation to try change.

- - -

I guess I've found another cause -- violent people.

This is a group that almost everyone sees as the "other."

They seem so far from us, so vile, so evil. Even people with mildly violent behaviors are shunned.

I've realized from being in this group myself that violent people are one of the most discriminated against groups in society. 

This discrimination is justified by the assumption that violence is a choice. 

It is so funny how we discriminate between things that are not choices, which we indulge, and things that are "choices," as though it were possible to tell this from the outside.

However, violence is not always that much of a choice. 

In my case I've come to see that it's a combination of factors. Probably 80% biological/inflammation/disrupted nervous system, 10% my history, and 10% current frustration or mental habits/ruts developed when Lyme rage was worse.

It is so strange to have this huge range of symptoms, and to have one of the symptoms thought to be entirely my fault, and to see how differently people treat this one symptom.

Was my bad memory my choice? Was the intense fatigue my choice? Was 

Because those things felt if anything more my choice than the occasional times when I have yelled or thrown water I was holding or on very rare occasions hit people. 

In all of those cases, things happened before I had an idea of what I was doing, and I was surprised to see what had happened. Does that sound like choice? 

I am just sick of feeling like a bad person, when I am just experiencing a sort of Lyme-related nervous system reflex. 

- - -

Nonviolent communication as a better way to talk about Lyme rage

I had a realization last night.

While dealing with Lyme-related agitation, people have been approaching it in two ways that have not worked at all:
1) You have to stop doing this because it's not acceptable.
For people with bad childhoods, hearing this makes them feel more shame. Shame leads to more violence. Also, so much in my life is unusual already. What is the real motivation to stop doing something just because it's "unacceptable" when I have had to do so many other unacceptable things to survive? (Think of how people in poverty might think the same.) "It's unacceptable" is a terrible motivation.
2) Bad things could happen.
Threats.
3) It's bad for me. You need to stop doing something that's good for you, and make your life harder, because it's bad for me (often someone who has a much easier life than me and a much less inflamed nervous system).

But those responses rely on shame and blame and force.

What ways of talking about Lyme-related violence would be better?

A) Concern for the person experiencing it.
Believe it or not, people committing violence are victims or symptomatic, the same way as people with other "conditions" or symptoms.
It's a symptom that something is wrong, whether with a person's biology, psychosocial environment, or their ability to meet their needs in other ways.

In the case of Lyme rage, it feels terrible. It's harmful to the body. It's likely neurotoxic and probably destroys part of the brain. The effects can last for hours. It feels like it fries the nervous system.

It would be a much more effective way to handle it, to talk to people experiencing Lyme rage and say, "Wow, it seems like this experience is harmful for your body and really unpleasant for you. Let's see if we can decrease the propensity of your nervous system to having it happen, and if we can decrease the occasions that can cause it."

Focus on the well-being of the patient.

B) Ask people what they need. What unmet needs could be related to this last-ditch effort by their bodies to protect themselves?

C) Talk about the impact on others, not as a "should," but just for the person's information. e.g., here's how I feel, it's not your fault, but here is the impact.

Blaming and "shoulds" almost never work. what works is listening to people in a nonviolent way, showing that you are interested in their well-being and they are in a safe place where they can get their needs met, and communicating nonviolently about one's own experience.

- - -

Ugh, hard to get over trauma when people keep blaming me

It has been really hard dealing with the trauma of my interaction with what I'm now seeing as the prison-psychiatric system.

The reason is that people keep saying that because I hit the doctor (people like to call it "assaulted"),

There are many details that they are not considering:

-Why would I be calm for an hour at the ER, and then suddenly start screaming when the doctor came in and said "You don't have scabies, you're just anxious." Maybe it had something to do with what she said? Ya think?
-Drugs were not necessary. When I was held down for about a minute, I calmed down completely and they let me go and I was just sitting there talking with them calmly. They didn't need to do anything else.
-How about waiting at least 15 minutes to see if someone can calm down with non-drug means?

There is something wrong with a system that jumps to drugging people immediately without trying any other options.

Hell, there is something wrong with involuntarily jumping to a really extreme solution without trying less aggressive options.

There should be a range of options for possible escalation:
-Talk with the patient about how they are feeling.
-Turn off the lights and help them to calm down.
-Get a therapist to ask them what's wrong.

I guess the issue is that many people don't want to question the medical and psychiatric system. There's this groupthink that says, "This is what we have to do for the safety of hospital workers."

So we traumatize patients and act against their safety. It's a case where they are a minority and their rights don't matter, because the educated and largely white, neurotypical doctors' rights matter.

- - -

Suffering from an imagined similarity

It's starting to seem to me that a large percentage of the suffering in the world is not about what's actually happening, but about the fear that something that one thinks has happened before is happening again.

We react to the idea and not to what is actually happening. Like the snake/rope story in the Vedanta (which i have not read, but I have heard others talk about this.)

Good Psychiatric Survivor videos

It's so cruel that the main institution that handles people when they are dealing with trauma also traumatizes people.

Ted Chabasinski:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3qulaD-jXQ&feature=youtu.be

Robert Whitaker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTVfcekdoOI&feature=channel&list=UL

- - -

Good decisions as a hedge against randomness

I've been frustrated with the randomness in my life. Random bad stuff happening to me and often spinning out of control because I am susceptible and small changes in my life can destabilize a balance that is fragile in the first place, especially now that I'm working during Lyme treatment.

However, I realized that when bad things have happened to me, there were often many bad decisions that contributed to the eventual bad event. And likewise with good things.

So it makes me comforted to think that if I keep making good decisions, I'll get somewhere, despite randomness.

Random events form a distribution, and then there's what I do with myself. I guess what I do needs to be strong enough to buffer against random events.

At all times, I should be doing enough to soothe myself, eat well, support my immune system, treat Lyme, etc. that 95% chance random events will not hurt me too much.

I guess that's part of the problem. I have been living on the edge, pushing myself to my limit, so that when even small things happen, it's the last straw for me and everything falls apart.

Where can I cut back?

- - -

I realized after posting this that the other thing that helps to buffer is having a cause or a goal.

That also helps.

- - -

Psych branch of the prison system

I've been reading a little about mind freedom and anti-psychiatry.

I guess this was spurred by realizing that my leg was not going to go back to normal without some professional help. My leg really got torn up/scarred/immobilized/muscle-imbalanced by the shot of a neuroleptic. I have some muscles that aren't working, others that are working too much. It's been depressing because I've had similar muscle injuries that, well, never healed. I'm still dealing with chronic shoulder injuries eight months later. I did find a bodyworker who did a lot for my leg (long story) and I will see her a second time this weekend.

But anyway, back to the anti-psychiatry. I guess this is something that's always interested me, but I had never been aware of being an explicit victim of the mental health system, and I stopped taking any psychiatric drugs around the same time that I started coming across anything critical of psychiatry, so it was never particularly "hitting home" for me. It's not a socially polite topic, and there was no real "hook" to draw me in. Maybe I subconsciously "othered" the people who dealt with the abuses of psychiatry, since they seemed like "crazy people," so I was less concerned about them. (Whereas when it comes to circumcision, which I talk about, it is very easy for me to imagine the sense of loss and violation of having had part of your body cut off. Or at least to get very upset about that idea. Perhaps because bodily integrity - having a body that feels more or less the same from day to day and isn't hurt by random things -- is very important to me, since I have sensory processing disorder and anything weird about my body bothers me a LOT.)

But who would have guessed, I now am in the middle of anger about psychiatry, because of a case where people did just about the WORST thing anyone could do to me:
-call me crazy
-provoke Lyme rage/neurotoxin rage while I was susceptible
-harm my body
-"rape" me by holding me down and doing something I did not consent to
-give me psychiatric drugs
-give me a neuroleptic
-while I am extremely sensitive to medication
-put me in a psych ward where I don't have access to my Lyme treatment

Honestly, the worst part is that they harmed my body. My leg and brain were feeling fine before this, and now they don't. Now I have months or years of work ahead of me to get them back to where they were.

I am scared because I don't know whether this will be a 2-month problem that heals pretty well on its own, or one of those other problems that never really heals, or one that I keep having until I finally find the right practitioner who can actually see the same problem I see. I often have a problem where practitioners can't even see the problem that is torturing me. I have to keep looking until I find someone who sees the same thing I see about my body. It's wonderful when I finally found the chiropractor who pointed out the bone strain in my skull before I even showed it to him, and helped to relieve chronic skull pain, or the bodyworker who diagnosed even more muscle imbalances in my leg than I had been aware of. It's great that there are people like this out there.

Anyway.

Back to what I was originally going to share:

http://www.antipsychiatry.org/e-mail.htm#whatsitlike

This is a great description of what it's like being in a psych ward.

Yes, you can get put in there for illogical reasons having to do with liability.
It's terrible, the overlap between police and psychiatry.
Yes, the experience of the psychiatry can be worse than the original problem.
Yes, people can be traumatized by psychiatric "care."


In fact, I would venture to say: It's not really psychiatry. It's a different branch of the prison system.

-One where there are no trials.
-Defendants get no representation and cannot defend themselves. If a doctor gives you a diagnosis, there's not much you can do to argue it.
-People are restrained in other means

Honestly, that's what it is, folks. Psych wards are a hospital branch of the prison system.

They are really not therapeutic because as the person says, you have to submit and do whatever it is you need to do in order to get out.

It is really terrifying. It's hard to relax in there or let loose or express your feelings because if you say the wrong thing you might not get out.

Also, much of what you say and do is recorded and reported on.

- - -

The benefits and drawbacks of forgetting that your life isn't normal

You know how if you are in a net, things can just get worse if you struggle?

I think many of us dealing with hard situations tend to calm down and not test the limits much. We don't want to feel the nets or spiderwebs. If you don't try doing things you couldn't do anyway, you aren't reminded that you can't do them.

The up-side to doing this is that you can believe that your life is fairly normal.

But the down-side to this is that you can believe your life is fairly normal.

That's what I've been doing. I've been acting like it's normal to get exhausted working 25 hours a week, to eat only disgusting healthy food and no packaged food, not to be able to eat out, to have trouble doing social things like going to parties, and to have to spend a lot of time preparing specific foods, taking herbs, etc.

I've been assuming it's normal to get injured frequently, to be highly medication-sensitive, to take a long time to recover from injuries, if I recover at all.

You can get used to it, and getting accustomed to it is in a way adaptive.

However, it's also really depressing to think this is just the way life is. Life didn't used to be so hard. The things that happen to me on a weekly basis now used to happen maybe once a year before I got Lyme. The amount of coping requirements is up. Way up. Hell, it is so high.

There's something different about prolonged coping with small things. It's different than having one major blow and then recovering. Instead it's the tiny accumulation of little assaults, none of which is large enough to get much sympathy or even to help it register with you that "something hard has happened."
They come so frequently that you come to expect them. You don't have time off between them, since they overlap. It's this constant low-level coping with no rest for years.

But back to the maladptive side of adapting:

If you start to assume life just IS this way for you:
-You can lose hope.
-You can feel like you just deserve less than others, or are slated for more suffering.
-You get an ambivalent feeling about life.

Sometimes it IS good to remember life isn't this way for everyone.

Just now, I was thinking, Wow, I used to be able to work 40 hours more easily than I now work 25, and that was even when I had some degree of CFS before getting Lyme.

It's crazy to realize that some people would be able to do things that are totally impossible for me.

What would I do if I could do anything?
Ha.
I'd probably eat those artificially-sweetened yogurts. haha. they aren't good for you but they are delicious. the splenda-sweetened lemon and key lime pie yogurts?
I'd have a driver's license and rent a zip car to go shopping rather than having to wait for buses.
I'd eat far more packaged food, frozen dinners, etc. Cooking for yourself sucks.
I'd go listen to loud music a lot.
Be more social.
Drink alcohol (I seriously can't drink now, it makes me relapse. Weird because while I had Lyme I *could* drink alcohol without problems. It's only now that I'm doing better that I can't.)

It's actually relieving to realize that in some way, those are what I could hope to expect in my society. Lots more relief and things to make life easier and more fun.

That's what I'm missing: fun to balance out the work. My whole life is work, because I have to spend nights and weekends doing treatment and research and working on emotional problems and stuff, and I haven't connected with ways to really enjoy myself here yet. Well, hanging out with my partner is great, but we've both had scabies so we haven't seen much of each other in the past month. Blah.
- - -

Nonduality, hard to trust and accept satisfaction

It seems that the hardest thing is believing that we are free, that things are ok.

So we stay in our prisons.

Wat's the harm in believing? I can take risks. I like risk.

I hear something sometimes,
in the brain entrainment binaural beat tracks
in music tuned to A=432hz (I am converting my favorite songs in audacity now)

I see it in people
I remember feeling it

I know it's there. I know it exists.

In fact, I am pretty sure I know what all of this is. I have felt it, I remember it, I guess.

What I think is really going on, insofar as I can say that since nothing is final, is that basically what we think is life, in the foreground, is actually this interesting thing being played out on this screen that is entirely peaceful.

beneath or behind it all, there is just this quiet peaceful timelessness. it feels like "the end of the story." It has this strong sense of a search coming to the end, the "happily ever after" of a

THAT is the scary thing, really. Happiness. fulfillment. Not having anything to look forward to in the future.

It's a trade: do you want hope or satisfaction?

Hope is a thin comfort. It gets you by. I'm used to living on hope.

It's like formula vs. breast milk. Hope works, but it's not as good as it could be.

This is all such an exciting game. I guess the fun part is, well, if you can figure out what sort of game it might be early enough to enjoy some decades in a body knowing what might be going on.

I've kind of lost my shame because of things that have happened during Lyme disease, so I can talk about this stuff now.

- - -

Some points from Mind Freedom International

Mental health systems need to be voluntary
Give rights to those with psychiatric labels (or rather, respect the rights they already have)
Treatment should equal healing, not punishment
Make consumer/survivor-driven alternatives to traditional mental health systems a priority

- - - -

Great interview on shame and violence

Following up on that last post about shunning.

I've been thinking about how trauma and violence can be related, where people who have experienced acute or systematic trauma might be more likely to be violent.

Here is a really excellent interview on this issue. I highly recommend it.

http://safespaceradio.com/category/domestic-violence/

- - -

Why am I vulnerable to shunning

My boyfriend wants me to write about why I end up feeling so bad when I have a confrontation or when people think I have done something wrong, even if I haven't.

I guess it is that I really don't want to be seen as bad, and I take what others think of me to be the truth, even if I know they are wrong.

It's like all that matters is that others not think I am bad.

This holds me back, where I am afraid to advocate for myself for fear of seeming like I am taking too much.

It's much better if I just advocate for myself and stay firm with what feels fair to me and not get drawn into things that don't feel fair.

- - -

I just feel so bad that the therapist might have thought that I was trying to take a session from her without paying. I would feel like a thief running away without paying.

I also sometimes feel like a thief if I get a lot of work done but people at work aren't sure about how much I am getting done.

What do I think would happen if they thought bad things about me? It would make me a bad person.

I guess in the job situation, it's my responsibility to make sure they know what I am doing. Being straightforward and doing a good job is enough.

What would happen if I were a bad person? My fears would be confirmed. Others would look at me with scorn. I would be chastised and shunned.

- - -

Maybe the issue is that I don't have a strong enough tribe of people whom I know like me to keep me supported when other people might not like me.

Any checkout staff, random people I meet, etc. are my 'tribe' for now, so I feel really scared if they don't like me. (e.g. I don't have a huge social circle outside work, so what people at work think about me really matters to me.).

Also I end up being vulnerable with a number of people or caring about what they think, because I don't have that much regular support in my life anyway.

I guess the thing is to meet more people and have more regular social support, people who see me for how I want to be seen.

- - -

It's Not Your Fault scene from Good Will Hunting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92D15qtI_Gk

I love how you can see how it just takes a while to get it, and it's scary to believe it, like it's too good to be true.

Because many of the after-effects of parental abuse or neglect DO come across as someone's fault.

You go through life with people saying you should do things differently, that you're not behaving right, that you're making bad decisions, that you're over-reacting, that you don't know how to stand up for yourself, that you're too perfectionistic, etc.

It seems like if you're an adult, you're supposed to magically provide anything you didn't get as a kid, even if it is hard to obtain properly especially without a lot of income. People use whatever skills they did get to try to cover for what they don't have but can end up with less-than-optimal solutions.

- - -

The line that gets to me the most is "don't fuck with me," because I know exactly how that feels. and i've said the same thing to people.

It's like, don't you dare hurt me by being sort of there and making me feel safe and then coming in for the blow just as I open up and get vulnerable. Don't you dare put me through another round of getting my hopes up and then getting disappointed.

It means that when you are going through this, you do need to be careful to feel out people before trusting them.

The therapist I saw this morning was not trustworthy and not someone safe for me. When she realized I had no idea I was paying for finding out about the group, she insisted she had told me (she hadn't) and acted weird, and when I said that I wanted to cancel the appointment I had scheduled in the future with her, she tried to convince me that the two were not related, when in fact they were. I saw how she reacted to an unusual situation and she didn't pass the test, and therefore I wasn't going to trust her with my inner feelings.

In contrast, my other therapist passes tests. She shows in many ways that she can handle it when I don't like her, when I go through things, etc.

It is such a relief to be with someone who is like an adult, who is settled enough with themselves that they can be a safe place for you on terms that are good for you, that are not about you taking care of them.

It's funny, when I am negotiating for my job offer, I am almost trying to take care of the company myself. It's just weird. I am the only one looking out for me. I'm in a good position where they probably want to do whatever they can to keep me, so I should really advocate for what will be good for me.

- - - -

Frustrating trying to find developmental trauma help as an adult

I've been increasingly upset because many trauma therapists don't seem to "get" attachment disorder or developmental trauma. They think they do, but then it becomes clear that even with a few hours of watching videos online or just observing the patterns, I know more about it than they do.

I keep getting frustrated by the misattunement.

The techniques for trauma in general are helpful to a point, but sometimes they are not great and can even make the problem worse, if the reactive attachment side is not being addressed properly.

I haven't found anyone yet who seems to understand the severity of it or who seems to offer advice that seems to match what it might take to fix it. I keep having people suggesting these approaches that seem to ignore how hard-wired and immediate and reflexive this problem can be.

I've read articles and books by these people, though, and that has been the most helpful thing.

Most of the real treatment centers for this are for children only. And people who treat it often charge $140+ per session.

This is why I've been thinking about stopping seeing my current therapist, who is so wonderful otherwise. I feel like I need to save my out-of-pocket therapy budget for books, resources, or occasional therapy with people who specialize in this very tricky and very intense disorder. It is hard handling it alone.

The subliminal mp3s like Anger Management and getting over the fear of being alone have been the thing that's helped me the most. Perhaps these are able to work on the subconscious where the problem exists.

The pitfalls:

-If I read too much about it in scholarly books, I tend to identify with it more or to get scared about the physical dangers of separation stress, because then I learn about all the biochemical changes from it.

-If I get trauma therapy, I get frustrated beyond belief that the therapy is "almost" good enough and how I "almost" feel safe, but then the therapists don't get the developmental trauma part (and this just reiterates the theme of the trauma, which is getting some connection and attunement, but not enough -- enough to make you hungry for it but not enough to let you relax. It can be maddening.)

-That is basically what generates the RAD anger: the extreme frustration of getting a little but having it be unpredictable or not quite what you need, so that you get your hopes up and then keep getting them dashed. You think, "Could they just make up their mind and stop tormenting me? Just be one or the other!"

-When I read about it in resources FOR people with RAD, I feel this amazing sense of happiness. Finally there is attunement. Finally someone gets why I do this, how much it scares me, how much I don't want to be like this, how much I just want to be able to have a good relationship without this causing my partner to turn away from me in painful ways.

-I think it's just that I am looking for people who understand, and people who understand but not quite are just extremely frustrating and almost retraumatizing at this point.

-I might be perfectionistic about this, but on the other hand, it's a common theme I see with therapy. Many therapists think they can handle cases they can't handle. It's like a family practice physician thinking he can handle every severe medical problem without referring to a specialist. It's because in therapy, it is less clear when an approach or a set of knowledge is inadequate for a case. Many therapists think "my approach can handle that," when sometimes it can't.

-Also, therapists are in business for themselves many times, rather than being employed by a practice, and so they have an interest in keeping patients. It is harder to refer to a specialist when this means losing some of your business.

-Basically, it is up to individual patients to recognize when they need more specialization than a particular therapist offers.

-Trying to deal with issues that a therapist is not adequately trained in can be as harmful as getting your cancer treated by someone without cancer training. We tend to think that if problems are just "emotional," then they are not serious, but I'm coming to see them as just another type of physical condition. If you can tell you have a serious physical condition or a serious "mental/emotional" condition, it's worth looking for the best care you can find.

-You know that feeling you get when you are with an expert whom you can trust, where you can tell they have enough knowledge and understanding of what's happening, and when what they recommend works better for you than anything you can come up with yourself? That is care worth paying for. Look for that.
And in its absence, treat yourself, because you might be the best you have.

Basically if you are more informed about the situation than a practitioner, don't just trust them because they have training. You might be more informed than they are about your particular condition. I have an easy time doing this with medical conditions but a harder time when it comes to emotional conditions, but I'm coming to see there is very little difference.

-I might keep seeing my current therapist sometimes because she is good at what she does, BUT I will talk about it with her and establish that I'm going to be the expert for my RAD issues since she is not as trained in this.

- - -

Acetyl l-carnitine really helps me

First, I had an amazing visit with my boyfriend.

The subliminal and brainwave mp3s and the Acetyl L-carnitine must really be helping, since it was basically effortless to hang out with him with no problems. He kept saying that it was great to be with someone who was also like an adult. I didn't have any of the problems I'd been having before. 't was just such a fun time.

Secondly, the Acetyl L-carnitine really, really helps.

I just had something happen that typically would have made me sad for hours, and which seemed like it was going to --
I met with a therapist to learn about a trauma group she runs, since I thought it might be a more affordable alternative to the individual therapy I've been attending.

She didn't mention that there was any cost for meeting her. When I started to leave, she said, how will you be paying for this? It's $70.
I said, I didn't realize I was paying anything for this. You didn't mention it.

I felt really surprised and taken advantage of, and I was almost certain she had not mentioned it in the emails. Also I probably would not have gone to see her if I knew it would cost something, since I've been having problems affording out-of-pocket therapy on a low budget while treating Lyme disease.

I felt so upset. I asked if I could give her half instead, and she said how about $40, so I gave her $40, but I felt really upset about it. That $40 would have otherwise bought a lot of groceries or two months of aloe vera juice or whatever.

I guess I've been feeling really angry about what therapy costs for me out of pocket. I've been seeing a really excellent therapist, but it's been costing almost as much as my rent. Now I have basically no savings. I guess I get sucked into it where I feel like something is wrong with me and I need help, and once you are in the habit of seeing a therapist, it gets complicated where it's hard to stop going for financial reasons because so much else is involved.

It's always really bugged me that therapists would expect you to PAY to come see them for a last time to have closure.

Anyway, after losing $40 to this informational session, when I decided not to attend the group anyway, I called my original therapist and said that I just couldn't come anymore for financial reasons. She was actually really considerate about it and suggested that she call me back and go over what we've accomplished, free, on the phone sometime.

It melted my heart, the particular way that she was validating how I felt and looking out for what would be good for me in the long run, and also validating my ability to keep working on my progress without her (she has respected my own abilities).

After that I felt, how can I leave this respectful arrangement, where someone actually looks out for me? It almost made me cry.

I guess in my family my dad and to some extent my mom were looking out for themselves and not thinking about what was good for me. That's why it melts me when my boyfriend thinks about what would be good for me, even if it is uncomfortable for him.

I probably have a tendency to treat others like my parents treated me. I might be like that somewhat with my boyfriend, where I want him to do certain things treatment-wise or with his life because I think it would be good for him. I could work on looking out for what is good for him even when it's not the best thing for me, basically wanting what's good for him for its own sake.

Anyway, I am fascinated by this other way that people can treat one another, and I guess I want to keep seeing this therapist if only to learn about this other possibility. But probably every other week since once a week is not affordable.

I'm a little scared by the intimacy. what will happen when I eventually need to move on? It's a little weird having an intimate connection with a professional person. And she says that in comparison with many of her clients, I hold myself back more.

It's also weird because therapy seems to pick at my scabs. I can be doing fine, then I go to therapy and it stirs things up again.

It definitely is helping me in the long run, where I express myself more and I get sick less and I can talk about things without getting as reactive.

Maybe it would help if I still got help from my dad for therapy, like half what he has been giving me. It helps to have money for therapy and Lyme treatment, since these are just hard to afford on a low budget as a young worker, someone who still qualifies for state health insurance and is within some range of the federal poverty guidelines.

I guess I've been so, so eager to get out from under him and to make him happy that I've been trying to give up treatments that help me, but maybe I should just be more patient. As long as he sees things are moving forward he'll be happy, and I can make the transition to being on my own more slowly. I'm still definitely in a needy phase where I need a lot of treatment, support, special nutrition, etc., and the more I build myself up now (I'm seeing) the better results I get and the more I can handle later on.

I guess it's a model of building yourself up to where you are very strong, and then being able to handle life, rather than throwing yourself into life before you are ready and just trying to survive by force of will and deprivation. I've done the latter most of my life because it was encouraged by my dad.

I also realized from my boyfriend that I seem to have a real problem with confrontation. It makes me realize that in my job, I should really try to advocate for what I truly want, which is a job based not solely on hours but basically on what I accomplish. I should try to show them how that is better for them and how they can still measure my performance.

Anyway, after all of this, I took some acetyl l-carnitine, and I feel so much better. The nervous system pain almost went away and I feel decent and competent and happy.

This stuff (ALCAR) is SO freaking helpful for trauma, for those really intense trigger feelings. Just takes down the intensity and pain level for me. It does disturb my sleep, though, if I take it after noon or so.


- - -

Making attachment challenges smaller rather than expecting myself to be normal immediately

I just had a good insight about the attachment disorder challenges.

I realize that if I am just easier on myself and more accepting of the way that distancing/separation are challenges for me, and if I try to ameliorate the suffering, then I am more likely to stay in good emotional condition where I can retain self-control.

I think what I've been doing is basically trying to become a normal person, as though I didn't have these challenges, as fast as possible by just expecting myself to handle any separation challenge through self-control alone.

But then after more and more of these challenges, where I'm keeping up a good face and denying the pain and stress I'm going through, one challenge at some point breaks my self-control and I crash.

Continual coping really is not a good long-term plan for optimal behavior and self-control. We are able to cope effectively and control ourselves for short periods, but when it goes on for days our ability goes down. There's such a thing as self-control fatigue, documented in research.

So the thing for me to do is to bite off small, manageable chunks of separation/attachment challenge. Like after this phone call, I'm going to sleep with one of his clothing items, just to feel safer, since it did make me scared about our closeness.

- - -
I had a good breakthrough with my boyfriend, where the two of us finally realized that he probably has no idea what the abandonment triggers feel like for me because he hasn't experienced it in this way and does not have PTSD from it.

I said, 'Imagine that you are in a spaceship and you are sent out alone hurtling through space in a solo spaceship, and then all connection to earth and humanity is cut off, the power dies, and you will be alone forever and die in space.'

Even a mild separation or letting him get off the phone after what felt like an argument without making up can feel like that. There's this panicky feeling of, am I throwing myself to my doom if I let this separation happen?

It is really too bad I have baby PTSD. But it helps SO much that between the two of us, at least we have an acknowledgment that it might be more severe than he can understand. That helps so much.

I did have really good emotional control while we were talking. I've been doing really well lately. I think these binaural and subliminal tracks are helping, even if from placebo effect. If it's placebo effect, that would be impressive - that my body knew how to fix itself once given permission to do so.

I really do want to get over this.

Here's an interesting question. If I got over it, then what? I'd probably be closer with my boyfriend and see him more. Maybe that scares me a little bit. Maybe I need to work on feeling really excited about life without attachment disorder, and feeling ok with things that might happen if I didn't have it, in order to feel ok moving on.
- - -

Examining fear of being alone

So now I am listening to the track about "Overcoming the Fear of Being Alone."

It was funny, maybe I was imagining it, but I think this track made me really freak out and start shaking.

I have such an intense primal fear of being alone, probably from when I was a baby. I realized earlier today that I find it very, very easy to sound convincing if I say "I'm a baby," but I don't sound convincing when I say "I'm an adult."

I think I had enough trauma as a baby that I'm still stuck there and part of me thinks I'm still in that state where I'm not competent to do much for others.

Listening to this track I guess I realize that while being alone is very dangerous for babies, it's not dangerous for me in my 20s. (This actually comes as a big surprise for me!)

Has anything bad ever happened to me because of being alone? Well, some social stimulation deprivation, but that's to be expected, just the same as if you didn't eat enough food and felt hungry. But beyond that, there hasn't been anything too dangerous about being alone. I haven't been eaten by wild animals, for example.

- - -

Letting go of the past, binaural/subliminal mp3 tracks

I've been getting a lot out of binaural beat recordings and actually also these binaural+subliminal message mp3 tracks from amazon.

I don't know exactly what's behind the subliminal message tracks (barely audible statements?), but I do sometimes have some new insights or feel totally novel ways after listening to these.

I picked out some that relate to what I know I need to work on, common issues for people with early trauma and reactive attachment disorder:
Letting Go of the Past
Positive Expectations
Anger Management
Start Loving Yourself
Relationships Insecurity and Jealousy

I find that sometimes I am the most resistant to the tracks that I probably most need, like "Letting Go of the Past." It's probably because these are very deep strategies I have and even if I know they are not great, I can be scared to give them up.

Listening to the one "Letting Go of the Past," I had some really novel reactions, thinking in ways I don't know if I have thought before.

My main thought is:
Wow, I didn't get what I wanted as a kid, and my chance is over. I'm never going to get what I wanted as a kid, since I'm not a kid anymore. That's sad that I had that deprivation back then, but also I can give up the pointless effort of trying to fix it.

I don't need to have a condition where "things are not ok until I fix this wrongness and deprivation that happened to me." (Lots of people including me are into that, where they feel like if they just get this next thing or get this extra accomplishment or fix something else in their lives, then maybe finally everything will be ok. It's like a mouse treadmill.)

It's more like, true, I had wrongness and deprivation in the past, and that's ok. I don't have to do any additional activities in my life now because of what happened then. I don't need to get justice, fix it, erase it, prove it wrong, etc. I don't need to wreck the present by trying to change something that can't be changed: the past.

It's also kind of a loss of hope, losing the hope that one day my childhood would be ok. One day I'd assemble all the parts and have a loving Dad, a boyfriend, everything as I wanted it, so that I'd finally feel satisfied. I'm not going to get that. Where many people have happy fulfilling childhood experiences, I am always going to have some holes. I have the particular childhood experiences and memories I have, and they are mine. I'm only going to be able to guess at what it's like to have a different kind of childhood experience, just as others are only able to guess at what it was like for me.

I think it can be hard to let go of the past when you had traumatic situations, because it feels like justice has not been served yet. You're like, wait, we can't go onto the next stage, Mom/Dad -- you haven't paid for, much less acknowledged, what you did at this stage! It's like you don't want your parents to get off relatively free for their crimes simply by escaping into the next time chunk. It can be maddening because when you finally get your finger on what it was they did, they're already several time chunks past it and the statute of limitations has sort of passed. You're left with a vague sense of duty to the early you who knew that something was wrong and this can be very gripping.

But all there is is the present and it does no good to live the present in the service of the past. The past you doesn't exist anymore so she's not going to know if she gets justice or not. Trying to fix the past is like having a bad dream and then spending your life trying to get justice for what happened in the dream.

The past is basically a dream at this point. Everyone will see it differently. It's ok if you feel indignant about it. Chances are there was lots to feel indignant about. But beyond pointing out clear, objective things that happened (confrontation, works better when what your parents did was clear), there's not a lot you can do. Instead, I guess the thing to do is to watch out for yourself better now. Learn the lessons of the past. Instead of trying to fix the past, try to fix the present, and maybe the past won't bother you so much?

I don't know. These are all new thoughts for me (written while listening to the track).

- - -

I also had this feeling of hurtling into my present self, of myself being stretched between now and somewhere far away, and having it recoil and jump into the present, like a Slinky that had been stretched out and then released to come back to where it was.

- - -

"Biology of Kundalini" and supplements

I have to wonder if what people call kundalini has a lot to do with what other people call the trauma process.

There are some interesting points about stress, nervous system exhaustion, and rebuilding on this page:
http://biologyofkundalini.com/article.php?story=ExhaustionPhase

It's interesting. Something I am learning in therapy is that it's possible to rebuild relationships after mis-attunement.

I had never though of applying that to my body, too. It's possible to rebuild after time. All is not lost. It's not a one-way path. Body, you and I can rebuild.

- - -

Asking for as much as you'd like

A lot of my physical tension goes away when I realize that now, it's ok to feel. I realize that much of the diaphragm and abdominal tension I used to have was unnecessary and was related to being afraid to feel.

This reminds me a lot of anorexia treatment, where I was relieved to learn "It's ok to eat." It felt like a utopia being in treatment. It had been hard giving myself permission to eat more than the bare minimum I required (perhaps an analogy for how my dad seemed to want me to take only the minimum amount of time/energy/money from him), but now, every few hours, I had official permission from doctors to eat what felt like a fully ample amount of calories, and it was (to me) delicious food-- actual "real," prepared, normal foods like bagels and cream cheese, etc.

Far from being an unpleasant time for me, it was exciting and relieving and gave me so much optimism about this future where now I knew I could take based on what felt right to me, rather than the bare minimum so as not to upset others.

I think that's the key issue: that difference between feeling like it's ok to take the amount that feels right to you - so that you are listening to your own urges about how much you need - versus feeling so concerned about others (whether you are concerned about them getting by, or them getting mad at you) that you restrict yourself to the minimum you can get by with.

It's the difference between eating at a restaurant buffet with a family, where you can take as much as you like, versus eating at a family gathering where, when you are taking from any of the dishes that might not be ample enough to go around (e.g., a green bean dish), you are thinking about whether there will be enough for other people.

The lesson of the trauma process seems to be, it's ok now to ask for more and feel more emotionally than it used to be, both with your own body and with other people. It's ok to let your body guide you as to how much it wants to feel and ask for, rather than oppressing the body for the sake of not upsetting the apple cart.

I've sort of lost many of my inhibitions about asking for things. It's actually really helping me to protect myself better and to express what I'd like directly rather than being dissatisfied and getting upset about other things.

However it's causing some relationship imbalance because I'm being very free about asking but my boyfriend still doesn't feel free, based on his life situation, and then he gets upset with me for taking more than he takes.

Yesterday he said, "Wait, you think we should just ask for whatever we want, take as much as we want?" which seemed unbelievable.

Lots of people get upset and worried about the idea of asking for as much as you want ... but honestly, asking doesn't hurt anyone. It just provides more information about what you'd like, and helps everyone to work together to see if it's possible to meet everyone's needs. If you don't say what you'd like, other people don't know.

If you ask in kind ways and give people an option to say no, it's not really that bad.

- - -

Being body-directed while relating

I just scrolled through my blog so far and realized that every post seems to advocate a different approach:

-get to where you feel safe to feel (ok if you don't feel every last buried thing)
-say yes to feeling everything
-having a random improvement from reading something
-and finally, trying a trick to reduce the bad feelings

I guess what I get from this is that the trauma process has no definite prescription and it's not the same thing every day.

The body asks for what it wants when it needs it.

- - -
Maybe that's why I've been having a hard time in my relationship while going through this. I've been so body-directed during most of this, where my body tells me "feel this," "do this," "do this other strange thing," and it all moves me forward, but it's very self-centered and about listening to the very sensitive needs of my body. But then my traditional mode of being with people has been to think the whole time I am around them, "What do they need? How can I keep from offending or losing them?" which is totally antithetical to this new way I am learning to be for trauma processes.

Maybe I will get to where I can have good give-and-take with others while still being directed by my body. In fact it probably will improve the quality of my interactions with others, since I'll be more in-tune. I do notice myself being more in-tune already and picking up on others' body language more and tuning into how they are feeling, not because I am in caretaker mode but because I'm feeling my body and I feel my reaction to their body too. (mirror neurons?)

I guess that's the way to go, building the capacity to relate while staying in the body. I might have to take it slow and start with pretty easy tasks, since I simply don't have any practice doing this. I'm back at less than a few years old - level of experience in this.

- - -

Task of trauma therapy: not just feeling through the backlog, but getting to where it's safe to feel

I'm realizing that the goal of trauma therapy, and the necessary accomplishment for the benefits, is NOT just to feel everything you've been disconnected from, not just to feel the stored feelings, but ALSO to get to where you feel that "It is safe to feel."

I'm putting together a "felt sense" that it is ok to feel whatever comes up in my body, between having experiences where I let feelings take over and it was ok, and supportive human connections, and positive feelings (if some of the feelings start to be wonderful, then it makes feeling feelings seem like a better deal).

(I've been having some more amazing physical feelings of bliss and contentment and 'healthiness' than I've had before, it's just amazing. and add that to taking care of myself well from a sensory perspective, using binaural beats, etc. It's possible to feel just far more amazing than I knew.)

This reminds me of that wonderful teacher, Florain Schlosser, who brings the body back into non-duality. Lots of what he says about letting a feeling take over and feeling the nervous system of people around you is very similar to what I'm learning about with trauma and health.

- - -

With trauma therapy, I don't think it's that you need to attack all the repressed feelings and keep probing until every last one is out. It's not that you are done when you have felt every last bad feeling, and in fact, if you do this without building a sense that it is safe to feel in general, then you are certainly not done.

Instead, I think it's that you invest slowly and from many directions in something very wonderful and healthy and valuable, a felt sense and bodily confidence that it is safe to feel.

Many things can contribute to this:
Feeling repressed feelings (shows the body that it is ok to feel these)
Choosing to have people in one's life who will be safe to have feelings around
Not disowning what you know to be real, not hiding from the truth
Learning ways to regulate one's own nervous system, so that if feelings are too much, you can get yourself back to safety
Learning that others have felt and do feel what you feel, you aren't alone with these feelings (reminds me of a great Richard Moss talk on Conscious.tv) - has been a breakthrough for me with trauma therapy
Building a sense that "someone" or "something" is looking out for you or that you are part of something, whether God, "Intelligence," the human community, etc.
Learning how to bounce back and recover after times when you get overwhelmed and block your feeling again or go into familiar patterns of distancing from feelings (just as you learn to recover after arguments in a relationship, when you jump into old protective patterns)

Come to think of it, it's like building a good "relationship" with your body. It takes time to build trust, but having a good relationship can be very healthy and rewarding, whether between you and another person or between you and your body.

- - -

Trauma therapy is not about search and destroy, just as Lyme or cancer treatment is not about getting every last bug or cell; rather it's about building the unity of the organism, the "okayness."

Lyme and cancer treatment seem to be about getting your system to the point where it's ok with having bugs/microorganisms/cancer cells around and it can deal with them.

Trauma therapy seems to be about getting your system to a place where it's ok with negative feelings and it can feel them without getting overwhelmed over over-reacting.

- - -

Feeling feet and arms

After reading a friend's essay about psilocybin and OCD, I started feeling my feet and arms much more, maybe from the feeling of hope and safety the story conveyed, where mushrooms turned out to be a wonderful solution for some of the people interviewed in the story.

Maybe it was the feeling of inter hemispheric peace that got me to start feeling my body more.

It's so exciting to realize, "I have nerves down there in my feet!"

I actually have the capability to feel them!
- - -

Just feel everything

So I am catching on from The Primal Scream that the end goal is for the body to feel that it is safe to feel anything.

Anything that comes up from the past, any stored feelings, any "unacceptable" feelings, etc. '

When you feel a feeling coming, you normally do a "check" to see, is it ok to feel this?
The same way you pick up on what is safe to touch/eat etc. from your parents, you might pick up on what is safe to feel from them, too, and learn their habits (e.g., of not feeling).

I guess you get to a point where when you do that "check," you say, yes, it's ok to feel this.

- - -
I think as kids we might learn some things are not ok to feel, because they might be overwhelming, we might not be able to control ourselves, our parents might abandon us for feeling them, etc.

But as adults with more of a prefrontal cortex, it's more ok to feel. Our brains can handle it better.

That's why I think we develop these patterns of running away from feelings as kids, and then being surprised when we finally let ourselves feel stuff as adults at how it is, well, not as overwhelming or long-lasting as we had expected. Often less painful than going around with repression.

And I guess the point is to respond to your own feelings without fear or depression, to just let them exist, see them as neutral and acceptable.

- - -

The Primal Scream

I'm reading The Primal Scream by Arthur Janov. Seems like some extreme psychotherapy methods (keeping people up all night and all), but most of what he is saying corresponds exactly with my experience so far. Funny to think they knew this back in the sixties (I had thought the whole way trauma works had been elucidated more recently).

He makes a good point that "normal," non-neurotic people don't have very intense feelings as a consequence of regular life events. There is not much to draw from for triggering.

And when people have intense life feelings there is often some "Primal" feeling behind them.

In my case:

When I feel despondent and think, "Nothing I do works out anyway," there is probably some ineffectual baby trying to get its needs met in there.

I'm realizing that behind my intense anger when I think people are messing with me and causing intense frustration of my basic needs, is intense anger at my family, not so much for anything specific or knowing since they had some good parts, but just for their ineffectiveness as parents and for leaving me with so much to deal with, and not coming through on some very basic things parents are supposed to do.

Whenever I say "Fuck. You." to my boyfriend, I mean it for my parents.

It's better to get in touch with this original anger than to keep hurting people who haven't done anything (or at least not much) wrong to me.

Just so. fucking. angry.

It's funny because I guess I identify with my parents. As I get older and deal with some overwhelming life challenges, I have compassion for how they felt overwhelmed. I'm starting to run into some of the same roadblocks that kept them from being their best selves. Most of the things I blame them for, I've done myself (and I haven't even had kids (yet!)).

But I'm very angry at "life" or "the people who are supposed to be there for me" or something for what feels like psychological torture and abuse. Feels like I've just been teased with tiny bits of goodness so I know what I'm missing, and then large periods of aloneness, physical discomfort, sensory processing torture, unsafety, restrictions, strict rules for how I have to live so that I don't injure my body, long-term injuries, etc.

I do have a lot of trauma from having Lyme. It's something where you almost don't want to stop and feel how awful and scary it is until you are out of it, like running a marathon, where you don't want to stop and feel how tired you are.

I'm running into a stressful situation with work, where I'm fucking tired. It's been an exhausting internship. Now I'm supposed to negotiate a contract. There's a lot of client work coming through. It seems like they might just want me as an extra hand on deck to handle the disaster they are having there, but I hate disasters and emergencies at work. It's like my life's mission to prevent these and to handle even high workflows in a calm and peaceful way with plenty of down time.

Whatever I negotiate, I can't end up getting "dicked around." I need to feel good about whatever I agree to. They are probably going to keep paying me so I can keep affording my food and therapeutic stuff (like Aloe Life aloe, etc., fucking expensive Lyme treatment).

I just need to provide for myself well.

I can do SO much more work if I am in control of it myself.

I really don't want to be a peon there who carries out others' orders. I want to have control of the research myself.

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Poor mitochondrial function and ancestral legacy of trauma

Given that Acetyl-L-carnitine seems to help with PTSD and trauma, I wonder if people with poor mitochondrial function are more susceptible to trauma.

(L-carnitine improves mitochondrial function.)

That would seem to correlate with what I observe: These entire family lineages of people with low energy, poor mental health, accumulated trauma, as well as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, autoimmune disease and other problems correlated with Type II Hypothyroidism (low mitochondrial function).

And these people tend to marry, because they have similarly low energy, low self-esteem, low mental health, etc.

It also could help to explain the seeming epidemic of trauma these days. While we have stopped the epidemics of infections with antibiotics (and people no longer die regularly from TB, etc.), we now have a lot of people surviving to reproductive age with poor mitochondria of the type that usually would have made them susceptible to death from infection, and these people are prone to having (and giving) trauma.

Parents' own mental illness and trauma seems to be one of the surest "infecting" sources of trauma for children. I feel like I picked it up almost directly in pristine form from my dad, like I have "exactly what he has," even though I don't know what he is traumatized about.

In an unsanitary world, I probably would have died from childhood infection. But instead I'm an adult with trauma symptoms ... that go down when I take ALCAR. Hm...

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Reliving abandonment trauma with a positive outcome

Alright, so at this point I know I need to create a trauma blog to express what I am going through.

I just can't say enough how intense this is, trauma therapy and the nervous system reorganizing.

It's something like a very long drug trip that never ends, where you never go back to how you were before.

I feel good being able to describe what is happening with adequate analogies. If only I can get an analogy:
1) It finally makes sense to me, and
2) I know that I can pull that out of my hat if I need to explain it to someone else.

Another one I came up with earlier was that these abandonment triggers are like going through drug withdrawal in rehab, but having the drugs you are withdrawing from given back to you and taken from you randomly, so that you oscillate between your nervous system crying out for them and going through physical (HPA axis, digestion, energy, physical symptoms) withdrawal and then what feels like complete relief and euphoria and everything being as it should be again. (Where when you feel that the person is distant and you can't talk to them/be around them it's like drug withdrawal, and when you are in touch with them and things are good between you again it's like being satisfied again.)

The more trauma I process, the more strongly I feel these two poles. The "complex PTSD flashbacks" are so intense and so physical that I worry I might be physically harmed or get sick from them, and sometimes I do develop a sore throat. But as this article states, the feelings are always easier to handle if I just allow them and don't try to make them go away.

It's funny because the past few times when I have gotten back in touch with my partner after a time of crying out and needing them "no matter what" (it feels), I have felt such intense and wonderful physical relief. I felt it again now just thinking about that situation, of not just feeling safe but feeling capable.

It sounds perverse but I feel so capable and great in the world when I can call my partner 20 times when he is in the library and doesn't want to be called and finally he picks up. That is like "Major Success" for a baby. That's what the attachment system evolved to do. I get a very big built-in reward for doing that. My body says, "Good job baby for not giving up, for continuing to cry. You saved yourself from certain death. Here are some wonderful chemicals for your trouble. Keep it up!"

Maybe I can just run through a "positive outcome" for attachment trauma in my mind over and over, where I'm a baby crying in the forest ... or where I'm in "that place" (people with trauma might know what I mean), and then I cry out and reach out and someone or something comes and then All is Right With the World again.

They say that that kind of therapy is useful for survivors of adult trauma: where you relive the event but do something that shows your capability to protect yourself, like using martial arts on an actor who is play-acting your traumatic scene with you.

It's almost too much to imagine reliving that story with a happy ending. That "place out there" has seemed until now way beyond the reach of any human being, somewhere that only existed for me. It's just delicious to imagine that someone else could be with me while I felt it that perhaps if I cried out while I was there, someone would come.

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