PTSD – A Way Out A mindful way to heal

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Life has changed with quarantine and covid.

Dissociation, wearing masks, keeping a six-foot distance, resembles our avoidance symptom, reinforce our isolation tendencies.

This pandemic has caused mental disorders to explode, ask your therapist.

We subconsciously believe others harbor danger, it’s part of our trust issues from childhood abuse.

Now science tells us people could make us sick or kill us.

Besides Covid look at the political climate, divisiveness, violence, rage, the hate.

We carry automatic weapons and execute a man for jogging suspiciously through a neighborhood, that sure does not feel safe.

The woke internet mob attacks and spreads vitriol, we have become an adversarial nation, inching toward civil war.

I do not feel safe in normal times around strangers, but, now my friends have started to conceal carry.

They say they do not feel safe.

I am not that paranoid about needing to pack a heater for the grocery.

I know three women in this small town who carry a pistol in their purse or a small back holster.

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Glad they do not have my symptoms.

I believe we are more isolated now than at any time in our lives.

Complex PTSD sufferers already have a vulnerability towards isolation, an ingrained fear of what the world will do to us next.

In a way, I have a vein of victimhood in me, when it comes to the unknown, the future, it stems from being helpless as a kid, brutally abused and trapped.

I guess abused kids, covet control over all else.

We fear the uncontrolled parts of life, the uncertainty of feeling safe around strangers, the memories of past trauma, and the fear of future damage.

Simple things normal people do without thought, benign activities, can be trigger points or highly anxious events for us.

Childhood abuse and intense fear were partners, always together, a frightful pair.

I have always feared what else is going to happen to me.

Deep down I have never felt safe, at peace.

I can touch inner peace for short periods.

At times life is hopeless, at others things loosen up.

Thoughts?

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Who am I? This quandary is much more complex for abused kids.

I still do not know who I am, there are multiple people inside me.

Is this the Internal Family System on steroids?

Am I the shamed, worthless child, beaten and ruthlessly criticized, or the athletic star, or another one of my damaged personalities?

Our dissociation does not have a psychotic break, creating Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiples), but we have a big dissociation issue.

Even the athletic star’s self-worth is created by performance not intrinsic worthiness.

Every game risks loss without permanent gain, only temporary escape.

Safety and worthiness are fleeting, performance-based, they only last to the next challenge.

Worthiness and safety have never been permanent.

Some of us have never felt at peace, worthy of love, whatever love is.

The problem with these characters, none feels worthy or at peace.

I have no memory as a child of feeling safe or worthy, there is not a solid core or foundation of attachment. My childhood has quicksand as a foundation.

Trust does not flourish inside an abused child, we lack the basic ingredients for being part of a community or being happy.

We isolate, an inner battle of trauma carries on besides normal life, we live a different existence.

Regular life takes a back seat from time to time, PTSD can dominate everything.

My younger days of high-energy distraction with constant work and play are gone.

My body cannot exhaust my PTSD symptoms anymore.

We are the harshest judge of ourselves, we mirror our caregiver’s (abusers) judgments.

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https://steemit.com/funny/@myfinanceteacher/funny-never-give-up-cartoons

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We all have our paths (journeys) specific to our childhoods and personalities.

My strengths may be your weaknesses and vice versa, what works for me may have no impact on you.

We have to ignore judgments about our path from others.

I have been told I have given up and do not desire to heal.

Let it go, keep up your daily actions, there will always be detractors and erroneous judgments.

In blunt terms, they can kiss my ass.

Yes, I have shared that feeling with a few.

Very, very few people have truly understood my journey, my abuse or its impact.

What we do not need is more unwarranted criticism.

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Excerpt from “The Sweet Spot” the pleasures of suffering and the search for meaning:

“In one study, subjects were given experience with a painful electric shock and then asked how much they would pay to avoid getting the shock again.

Then they were kept by themselves for fifteen minutes, with the shock machine in the room.

Even though they said they would pay to avoid the shock, many of the subjects chose to indulge in the pain. (There was a big sex difference here. Two-thirds of the men shocked themselves—usually just once, though one man shocked himself 190 times—while only one-quarter of the women indulged.)

This is yet another source of benign masochism—pain to escape boredom.

One reason why doing nothing is so unpleasant is that our thoughts, unfettered by distraction, take us to uncomfortable places.

Boredom is the opposite of BDSM: instead of escaping from the self, you’re wallowing in it.

We are starting to get a sense here for why boredom is a poor candidate for benign masochism.

Unlike other masochistic pleasures, it doesn’t capture our attention or our interest (indeed, it does the opposite).

It doesn’t lead to escape from the self.

It might set up a contrast with future experience—something interesting is probably more interesting if it was preceded by a period of boredom—but apparently the contrast isn’t so great as to make the choice worthwhile.”

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