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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