24 Jun
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I was challenged to create a bucket list.
Destinations or exotic experiences were not any of my desires.
Seems easy enough, money is no object, a plethora of choices.
This is my bucket list for now.
Hopefully, my desires would multiply and my bucket list would blossom.
Would writing a bucket list be easy for you?
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24 Jun
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“Grief, I’ve learned, is just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”
― Jamie Anderson
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This was a part of a post on a great blog I follow “Don’t Lose Hope”
I had a quick, emotional reaction (triggered). Four or five responses agreed that grief is just love with no place to go.
I am amazed, none of my childhood abuse and the grief that has followed me, has any connection to love.
We feel betrayal’s grief is love?
I feel the opposite, betrayal is closer to hate.
Is your PTSD grief just love with no place to go?
Now I see if we are grieving a friend maybe love with nowhere to go.
If we are grieving a loss, things change.
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24 Jun
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“Buddhas Brain” by Rick Hansen
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“Only we humans worry about the future, regret the past, and blame ourselves for the present.
We get frustrated when we can’t have what we want, and disappointed when what we like ends.
We suffer that we suffer. We get upset about being in pain, angry about dying, sad about waking up sad yet another day.
This kind of suffering—which encompasses most of our unhappiness and dissatisfaction—is constructed by the brain.
It is made up.
Which is ironic, poignant—and supremely hopeful.
For if the brain is the cause of suffering, it can also be its cure.”
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23 Jun
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Meditating for hours upon hours upon hours, intently focusing on my inner world, my crazy thought patterns unfolded.
The thoughts that arrive in my (your) head every day do not resemble a normal (non-abused) person’s thoughts.
Something is missing, why do we feel separate from the common collective, we are trauma outcasts.
It is like another entity lives inside us, fjones619 describes it like this:
“Highly sensitive and vulnerable, that thing that tries to limit my life, keep me from venturing too far from my comfort zone to keep me safe while at the same time makes me unhappy and unfulfilled from living a dull life without any real purpose.”
Do you feel a separate entity inside your PTSD body?
So our thought patterns are filled with abstract fear, a sort of confusing unknown, a danger that comes out of the ether every morning.
Hard to find purpose while fighting imminent danger.
This is a very confusing life for us, hard to have explanations or solutions available.
Real Purpose: I think this is one of our big deficiencies from childhood abuse.
My dad was so abusive he suppressed my true personality.
When I improved the first time, my personality changed from the suppressed introvert to an extrovert, my true me.
My purpose is extremely difficult to find in the middle of PTSD.
At 70, I have no idea who I am supposed to be or how to fit in.
Question: Do you have good memories? Which memories dominate your mind?
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22 Jun
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If we do not heal, do we try to escape PTSD’s invisible prison?
Hell yes.
Whatever works, avoidance, denial, deception, or numbing ourselves.
Some people cut themselves to find relief, some drink, some will do anything for approval, some do drugs, some are paralyzed, and some commit suicide.
It does not matter to them, escape is the ultimate goal.
If you have given up and become a victim life is full-time avoidance, denial, deception, and numbing.
Shocking that I have insight into these feelings.
Hard to be strong all day long against PTSD’s relentless attacks.
We have weak moments, life becomes exhaustive and we feel guilty.
We dust ourselves off and return to our daily battle.
PTSD is a messy disorder for us, it will always be a confusing ordeal of subconscious influence.
Remember, we will take losses but we never give up.
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21 Jun
Normal kids have attachments and some positive events in childhood.
They grow up with enough support and approval to form a positive ego. How much is enough, I have no idea?
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That forms a foundation, experiences to reference when times get tough.
Abused kids have a big void where trust and safety blossom.
Abused kids never felt safe, physically or emotionally.
Our challenge: Find a way to navigate life with little trust and big voids.
Life has always happened too fast for me. As a child, I was always wrong, always a burden, always behind.
My thoughts were about surviving my father not going to the prom or being popular.
Yes, I wanted approval, but that took a backseat to dad.
Complex PTSD never heals completely, we will deal with varying degrees of activation for the rest of our lives.
Actions: I am starting to limit the impact of certain traumas, and a small shift has occurred.
Maybe it is from a decade of intense work or I am exhausted and old.
We do our daily work without negligible results for long periods, hoping improvement is on the way.
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It is what we do, it is how we survive, this daily dedication to improve.
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I am trying to heal, I have not given up, and I am proud of myself.
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20 Jun
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Two excerpts from “Meditation for the Love of it”:
“The work of meditation is to coax the mind into letting go of the perceptions and ideas that keep it stuck, so it can expand and reveal itself as it really is.
As vast creative Awareness. Pure light and ecstasy. An ocean of peace and power. The Self.”
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“One way you know you are experiencing the ego and not the Self is that the ego (ahamkara in Sanskrit) always experiences itself in comparison to others.
The ego never feels fully equal to others: it sees others as higher or lower, as better or worse, as friendly or potentially hostile.
The Self, on the other hand, just is.
The Self sees everything and everyone as equal to itself.”
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19 Jun
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I have learned to keep trying, to keep going when life feels hopeless.
If you endured serious childhood abuse, life has always had a tinge of hopelessness.
We have a choice, give up, deny or never give up, no matter how bad it gets.
I wonder if my father felt powerful beating a helpless child violently and often.
These actions are so against my nature, I try not to harm anyone, especially kids.
Never giving up relies on our ability to play defense when PTSD is active.
I can not react, not panic, and not make any judgments for days until PTSD calms down.
My fear gets muted, my anxiety accepted as harmless, unattached sensations and my thoughts get discounted as worthless creations of trauma.
I may suffer but I do not fear PTSD.
I distract myself, meditate and use my mindfulness skills.
Know that PTSD is like a wave coming in, forceful and damaging until it loses its momentum.
Withstand the force of the wave and it will return to the sea harmlessly.
As much as possible, I have learned to not think, not judge while PTSD is active.
Dissociation fuels PTSD, and ruminating on triggers leads to explosions.
I am not winning the war but I do triumph in some of the battles with PTSD.
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19 Jun
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Would we be covered in scars, have cancer, or look like a Leper?
People would recognize our disorder and empathize.
PTSD seems cloudy to us, a confusing state of Mind we live in.
Our trauma memories are loaded with such fear and anxiety, that we isolate for protection.
Hard to be social and free when we feel danger around us.
PTSD is an entity, he/she lives inside our brain and the cells of our body.
It is difficult to ignore PTSD when he is active.
Hypervigilance, avoidance, triggers firing, intrusive thoughts and panic can not be ignored.
We are a captive audience.
I tried to avoid PTSD and my triggers, I stopped going out.
Isolated alone in my dark garage, I could not escape my mind by changing geography.
My triggers fired without outside stimuli.
We can not escape our mind.
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18 Jun
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“How traumatized parents interact with their children, of course, also influences their development. One of the most powerful nonfiction accounts of growing up with Holocaust survivor parents was Art Spiegelman’s serialized graphic novel Maus; it broke through a cultural barrier, helping others to open up about their suffering. Many psychologists and neuroscientists have examined the traumatized family, finding ever more subtleties, and the story will continue to unfold for decades to come.
An important question is whether epigenetic alterations in stress-related genes, particularly those reflected in the offspring of traumatized parents, are necessarily markers of vulnerability or whether they may reflect a mechanism through which offspring become better equipped to cope with adversity. This is an area we’re actively exploring.
It is tempting to interpret epigenetic inheritance as a story of how trauma results in permanent damage. Epigenetic influences might nonetheless represent the body’s attempts to prepare offspring for challenges similar to those encountered by their parents. As circumstances change, however, the benefits conferred by such alterations may wane or even result in the emergence of novel vulnerabilities. Thus, the survival advantage of this form of intergenerational transmission depends in large part on the environment encountered by the offspring themselves.
Moreover, some of these stress-related and intergenerational changes may be reversible. Several years ago we discovered that combat veterans with PTSD who benefited from cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy showed treatment-induced changes in FKBP5 methylation. The finding confirmed that healing is also reflected in epigenetic change. And Dias and Ressler reconditioned their mice to lose their fear of cherry blossoms; the offspring conceived after this “treatment” did not have the cherry blossom epigenetic alteration, nor did they fear the scent. Preliminary as they are, such findings represent an important frontier in psychiatry and may suggest new avenues for treatment.
The hope is that as we learn more about the ways catastrophic experiences have shaped both those who lived through those horrors and their descendants, we will become better equipped to deal with dangers now and in the future, facing them with resolution and resilience.
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PTSD - A Way Out.com 