Out of the Storm

Every time I post on the Forum, I feel fear. I write from my heart. I write from my soul. But every single expression I make/do/express, I fear. I fear I'm going too far. I fear what others will think. I fear I am a "bad person" and my rejection will swiftly follow.

For this reason I almost always return and reread my post. I've learned to absolutely NOT TRUST my fear.

Rereading what I've written, usually a day later, I have a clearer sense of what my objective truly was. I have some distance. Usually, nearly always, it's okay. I think, No no, that was nice or kind or helpful... then I think... why was I scared in the first place?

I'm scared because I suffer from Cptsd. Developmental trauma has shaped my life like a sculptor starting fresh with cold hard stone. What was hammered into me as a baby was chaos, fear and utter confusion.

And I remember nothing. My mother left the hurricane when I was four-years-old. Like a tsunami that carried me deeply inland, I awoke one day and realized: the man who never loved me has now truly disappeared... I don't think my mother "explained" anything. What can you explain? Can Cptsd be "explained"? I think not. Only those who have directly experienced it can fully know the eternal chaos of obsessive mental torture that follows us around like a decaying corpse...

sorry, that's the wrong path...

This journal, I want it to be about what I've come to understand. Its been two years since I collapsed mentally. I've made good progress... solid progress. I've shaken off the corpse and that stink only wafts my way four days out of the week. At this very moment I've only sensed the Depression very briefly, once today. Today is an exceptional day. Tomorrow it could all revert again. If I've learned one thing, it's that it's not over. Just feeling better a couple hours, a day or two, well, "it" comes back. Cptsd is chewing gum on the sidewalk... and I stepped right in it.

"The tipping point" is now my objective. I want to feel okay 51% of my time here on this earth. I also want to vanquish this thing. I want to fight. I'm tired of being shamed and doubting and folding and feeling like a crumpled-up piece of trash not even in a waste bin... just lying there on a curb or in a gutter...

I want to get to a point where MORE than half of my life is "relatively" free of the razor-depression-pain of horror.

I hate this thing... and I'm wondering if hate is truly helpful.

Anyway, there's doubt... I know that feeling too. It goes on the shelf like all the other "crap".

First journal entry, new journal. Much I want to say. Didn't even scratch the surface.

It's sunny out today.

Sending love and hugs to you all.

Chart

Yay for it being sunny out.  :sunny: And for a good idea for a new journal. I think the tipping point objective makes a lot of sense.

Welcome back! 2.0. Onward to unapologetic  :cheer:

dear chart, i just want you to know that to this day, and i've been part of this forum for at least 10 yrs., i still doubt my posts, especially to others, that i've gone over the line, i'm being intrusive rather than supportive, giving 'advice' or 'therapy' when i'm not supposed to - yep, still working on knowing i'm writing from the heart and only want the best for anyone and everyone here.

i know i've made mistakes, and have had mistakes made against me, but there have only been less than a handful of people who truly have gone too far, and they were dealt with appropriately by kizzie.  you have not even been close.  your support and kindness and caring have shone thru clearly, and i've welcomed every word from you.  if there's been a misunderstanding in communication, we clear it up.  you have been a wonderful member of this forum to my mind.

good for you for having that 51% goal.  it sounds good.  great, actually.  i'm in your corner all the way.  you're valuable to me.  love and hugs :hug:

Chart, thank you for writing this so honestly. Seeing someone I admire - someone who often seems much more put together than I feel - name the fear, doubt, and ongoing work behind it all really matters. It reminds me that progress doesn't mean being untouched by CPTSD; it means staying present and living anyway.

Your 51% goal feels real, humane, and possible. I'm glad you shared this, and I'm really glad you're here. 🌤
 :hug:

Thank you Narc, SO, San and Thebigblue!

It is absolutely insane the effect of coffee on my mood and mental state. Mornings are very hard for me. I think my biological father would often come home at sunrise. He was definitely intoxicated with alcohol and probably other stuff to boot. This is when I would hear the shouting and screaming downstairs. Wouldn't be the only time of day I'd hear these things, but I'm certain that mornings were particularly brutal. So i believe I developed a chemical propensity for somnia. I can sleep through anything. I once fell out of the top bunk (we'd switched bunks with my sister cause she had a broken leg) during the night. When I awoke in the morning I was on the floor and later the pain in my shoulder was shown to be a broken collarbone. I never woke up from the fall and remember nothing from the night.

So my "sleep issue" is actually the reverse of a lot of people. I don't suffer from a lack of quantity or quality of sleep, I actually am severely sleep addicted and experience terrible fearful mornings when I'm obliged to wake up and get with the day. The anxiety upon waking is strongly linked to my horizontal position. Once I stand up the anxiety symptoms descend significantly.

But during periods of strong EFs, I've noticed that coffee has a profound effect on the intensity of the EF reducing the Fear and discomfort dramatically. So, for pretty much my whole life I've been a coffee junkie.

To be continued...

Wishing you all the best with your new journal  :cheer:

I am curious...who is shaming you? And who is hating?

Fear is an interesting concept that I have been thinking about recently too.

I hope you uncover all the things you are dealing with and give rise to that more integrated sense of self  :cheer:

dang, chart, that makes a lot of sense to me. at least, the idea that sleep was a protective agent for you so you didn't have to hear what was going on, which, i'm assuming, was pretty scary for a kid.  and mornings being so terrible for you, well, that's when the screaming would be happening, right?  sounds like real-time triggers, over and over.  how awful for you!  so, if sleep and the aftermath of sleep, which would be mornings, trigger the awfulness of what you went thru, it also makes sense to me that coffee would kind of block all that and put you on your way to some sense of normalcy, it being a trigger of your own to get you out of the feelings of the past. 

and if none of this makes sense to you, please ignore.  just thinking out loud.

at any rate, i'm glad you have coffee to stop the effects of the past.  it might not have to be forever, but for now it seems to help a lot.  love and hugs :hug:

Chart, I'm very aware I'm not an expert here, so please take this only as thinking out loud, not conclusions or advice. But reading what you wrote made me wonder about the quality of that sleep rather than the quantity.

What you describe doesn't sound like restorative rest so much as a very deep shutdown - almost a dorsal-vagal refuge. Given the repeated danger tied to mornings in your childhood, it would make sense if sleep became the safest possible state when threat felt unavoidable. In that light, sleeping "through anything" feels less like ease and more like a remarkably effective survival adaptation.

The part about anxiety being strongest while horizontal really stood out to me. Lying down is such a vulnerable, childlike position: no agency, no readiness. Standing up changes orientation, control, and capacity to act. It makes sense to me that your nervous system would settle once you're upright again.

And the coffee piece is fascinating. Research is mixed on coffein and trauma, but subjectively it sounds like coffee may interrupt that collapse state, pulling you out of shutdown, restoring activation, clarity, agency and control. If so, that "coffee junkie" habit reads less like a casual quirk, and more like a smart, high-functioning way your system found to regulate emotional flashbacks when nothing else was available.

If any of that resonates, it really highlights how adaptive you were in an unsafe environment, but also how sad it is that you had to be. Many of us here learned similar workarounds just to get through the day.

Thank you for sharing this. It gave me a lot to think about. 💛

Your heartfelt honesty, authenticity, and awareness reach me loud and clear, Chart.
Onward on the journey.
:grouphug:

Hi Chart, I just want to say you are such a big support to all of us here and everything you have written here to me has been so utterly helpful and kind, I could not think of anything wrong with it at all. You've truly helped me through some very rough times and I will not forget. You are so very much ALL RIGHT!!!! Please don't forget (if we could 'just' do that, we'd be fine, right).

 :yourock:

Yes, the fear is C-PTSD and we are repeating that unfortunately.

Very good for you you're starting this journal.

And I like your 51% goal. I recently read Janina Fisher and she writes about 10% wins. We're not looking for completely feeling better, totaly fine 100%, that's not realistic, but we're looking for the little wins. When we're feeling 10% better, it makes a huge difference already. It could be the difference between 45% and 55%, right. Like your cup of coffee. I love mine too, it brings sheer happiness sometimes.

 :bighug:

(Sorry if this reply was a bit jumbled up due to the state I'm in.)

Quote from: Desert Flower on December 22, 2025, 07:15:22 PM(Sorry if this reply was a bit jumbled up due to the state I'm in.)

:hug:

Thank you everyone.

I'm greatly struggling to respond to those who've commented in my journal here. For some (very mysterious) reason I'm finding inspiration and optimism in the experiences of others here on the forum, in others' journals and the recent threads. I feel a new "self" is somehow establishing itself... ever so slowly, like a crab molting, its new soft shell carefully setting into place.

I'm also incredibly busy with my kids and it's enormously  rewarding. Unless I'm very much deluded, they are happy and these past few days have been really smooth and fun. I'm seeing and feeling things differently. The void of love (my attachment wound) is not so devastating as it's been in the recent past. I feel patience in me and don't react the way I used to. I feel I've learned so much in this past four months since my move. It's been so horribly difficult... especially last September, of which I've written little. It was (and still is) such a drama. But the "impact" has been ever so slightly in line with those Buddhist concepts of simple stoic observation. Nowhere near perfect or enlightened, but just enough that I've had a glimpse through the wall into a garden of peace. There are pears hanging from lovely branches in the sunlight. There are smiling faces too, each one in the form of a forum "friend" you the people I now know, love and deeply care for. It's fantastic (as SO has also pointed out to me many times
:-), I have friends, and they "get it" and as much as I give I get back twice as much.

I've got to sleep now. Christmas tomorrow morning. My daughter has already tried negotiating 8am... we got her to nine but I fully understand her excitement and I feel it too.

Merry Christmas everyone. May peace find its way into our neuronal chaos and push back the thing that so dominates our existence... But nonetheless I imagine... without that horrible tragedy, I'd never have known this blessed connection. It very well might make all that pain worth every h*llish moment. I thank you all.

 :bighug:

and i thank you right back, chart.  hope your holidays are peaceful and joyful, and so glad to hear how well you're doing w/ your kids.  wonderful.  love and hugs :hug:

I'm so happy for you spending such a nice time with your kids. Enjoy!

 :hug:

Thank you everyone!! I am to a certain extent "giving up" responding to posts on my journal. I ask your understanding, as I am simply feeling overwhelmed after a life of trying to control and organize and categorize and hurt NO ONE even those who either through their behavior merit the turning of my back or the soles of my feet as I walk away... I am wheeling in circles, catching glimpses of "real-life" in between the flashes of pain that still blind me ten to twenty times per day. I believe I am losing my sense of "old-self" and what is coming in its place is strange and disorienting. Transformation is a painful process too. It is not only the suffering of the past that lingers in my cells, but the fear of the new me that strides directly at me in a crowded street, our eyes lock and I get that thrill of novelty that I have so craved, sought and created my whole life. It is insanity to change, yet I cannot keep it from coursing into and through me. I have lost myself, in order that I might be found.

My new friends, both in my head, here on the forum, and hidden behind the woodwork, are whispering to me. They suggest I speak of the present moment. And I think this is wonderful advice. Funny how I carry the past into the present. But I can choose what I keep now, more and more. I flip from one idea to the next with quick decision... the old patterns dropping to the ground as quickly as my ancient neural networks fire them off. I want some things from the past, but most I wish to release. There're new things coming into those old dead places. New growth coming from the compost of the past. I've been contacted these past weeks by multiple people from my past. A well-known jazz pianist I met on the tennis courts in New York was billed in the performance center just a few clicks up the street from where I now live. I stopped in my tracks as I passed and stared at the old familiar face and felt it was a sign from the Universe... A week later I sat in the audience listening and as I often do now, cried, remembering the man I used to be, that city I cruised on my bike from one end to the other... what another lifetime, what another person. I don't recognize myself anymore. I'm suspicious. I feel something is coming, but I've no idea what it might be... could it be life itself? Can life get bigger? Better? Wider? Denser? Can life really change for the worst? I sense it differently now... "There is nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so..." -Bill
Received a text from an old friend last night... while talking to a new friend... it was almost too much. This old friend I've missed, so news from him was quite special. And he is greatly similar to my new friend with whom I was actively speaking... crazy serendipity. It's all getting to be too much. In the sense that I can't untangle it all. A week with my kids too, which was easy and simple and fun. Dare I say it comes from a new-found inner place of peace and balance? I don't know. I can't work it out rationally... The situation is too simple for my maddeningly complex organizational system created during five decades of confusion. Only at one point was I dogmatic. I "forced" my kids to take a walk around town on Christmas day. They'd agreed the day before when I'd proposed it, then when the afternoon actually came they both tried to weasel out of it. I held fast... then dragged them to the last place on earth they wanted to go... the Cathedral! I've raised two little die-hard atheists and they moaned with dismay as I led the way into the edifice. "It doesn't have to be a prison of reductionist ignorance..." I tried to explain, a big smile on my face... "It's a space-ship that can transport you to higher planes of conscious thought..." Perhaps there is a loving god after-all, as they settled down into a vociferous acquiescence of divergent questions and comments. We walked fast up and down the nave and transepts. Finally they got annoyed at my pace and sat down in the seats, talking between themselves. I made a tour, came back with my phone out and snapped off a bunch of pictures of the two in conversation. I am so god-awfully proud of these two... no idea how these things work out, but they are content in their present existence (imo) and seek fun as only complex organisms on a carbon-based life-infested planet can do. I suggested that more advanced species than ours would one day ponder our objective in constructing such structures. The whales will almost certainly rub their heads in wonder... "but isn't it obvious they all self-imploded and went extinct?" We came home and further expanded our consciousnesses with a Harry Potter film. Some realities are indeed far better than others.

I looked up the county records this morning in the town where I was born. A recent post by Dollyvee in her journal inspired me to try and find the records of my biological father. I'm unsure if he is still alive. It doesn't really matter, but I'm curious. I verified that there was no death under his name for the years that my kids were born. (Best not take any chances :) But beyond that I found very little. Did find where my great-uncle is buried, the one who died horribly in an accident making the first atomic bomb. If I ever go back to my birthplace I might try to visit his grave. Or not. It's all raindrops in the sea.

There are two terms, or concepts I've been thinking about lately. One is from Lisa Feldman Barrett (LFB) and the other is the term "non-duality" which has been popping up lately and I've decided to quickly classify it. My understanding of non-duality is the idea that everything is one, nothing is separate. I believe this concept. However, I've been curious how best to "get to that state". Since I operate in a dual-system universe, that is to say that everything has it's representative opposite, then I'm necessarily obliged to understand the contrast if I want to get anywhere in life... at least average everyday life. So I've decided that non-duality is actually like ones and zeros... one is one... zero is nothing. Both are necessary to construct a "reality". But since zero is nothing, one is all there "is", thus everything is non-dual. What I believe through all this, is that I need the two halves of my brain to function in this reality. But the "true" reality is that my two halves are actually two sides to one thing that is whole. Why on earth might this be? Why not make just one single thing? The answer I've invented for myself is that the sum of two things is actually "greater" than the simple addition of those two things... The sum of the parts is greater than the whole. To my thinking, this is why Emdr helps... when the one and the zero team up, they are capable of producing something that is new and different. And if anything can suggest a better modality to trauma healing than experiencing things in a "new and different" manner I'm sure I don't know what that could be...

Now the other thing I've been sifting through my head lately is "prediction error". (I have struggled with this because it keeps coming into my head as "error prediction" and that is not at all the same thing... (I'm pretty sure.)) So I'm going to break this down very quickly. I've used AI to help me on this, which isn't a justification that it's right, I just think that transparency is important here as to where I'm getting my "organization".

Prediction error can be positive, negative or zero. "Learning" occurs when there is positive or negative prediction error. For zero, nothing happens. Trauma is negative prediction error. And positive prediction error is enlightenment... eventually (and for lack of a better term). So described in these terms, prediction error also takes into the calculation the inherent assumption that certain behaviors are beneficial to the survival of a species, and other behaviors are destructive to the survival of a species. Trauma is the establishment of a series of behaviors that the brain (very accurately) attributes a negative survival paradigm. And the negative is extremely powerful, thus the neuronal patterning takes the parental behavior and attributes it correctly to a destructive and dangerous "prediction". As such, the emotional centers of the brain set off the warning bells whenever a situation even slightly resembling the core experiences occurs. Thus the brain stays trapped in a safety-loop which, for survival and safety's sake, doesn't change, regardless the "reality" which is in fact NOT dangerous.

So, put very simply, an EF (emotional flashback) is just another term for a prediction error.

How is this helpful? I mean, we all know that our EFs are just past childhood experiences and events resurfacing. Well, for me, putting my EFs into the terminology of "prediction error" does go a long way in helping me understand what is going on on a slightly deeper level. It helps me understand that my brain is "making a mistake" even in the instant of the horrible emotional overwhelm. The concept of prediction error, gives me just a little more distance between the feelings and the "sense of self" that does on occasion exist beyond this feeling. Prediction error is nothing more than a name for something that helps to more accurately understand what "it" actually is. I had the same experience when I discovered the acronym CPTSD. For me, Prediction Error is the element that allows me to define my EF in such a way that I have a little bit more elbow room to see and appreciate my inner children, the ones who suffered this process and the ones who are fated to repeat this suffering due to the neuronal necessity to "learn it or die".

So I understand better, much better, that the reality I currently live in, is constructed by me and my brain. And it's got it wrong to a very large degree. It has it wrong for a very good reason, but I'd like now to correct that error and open up those parts of my brain dedicated to a false threat to other possibilities and experiences.

I'm not entirely satisfied with how I expressed all that. But I want now to get "mes fesses" outside for a little walk. I'm going to go up to the library to look at beautiful women (they always seem to hang out at the library :-)

 :hug:

Yes, Chart, to synergy, to alchemy, to libraries... amuse-toi bien

you go, chart.  bang it!  love and hugs :hug:

What you wrote about prediction error really landed for me. The idea that the brain is doing exactly what it was evolutionarily designed to do - building models from past danger - but that those models can become outdated, feels both precise and compassionate because it avoids self-blame.

It reminded me of a neuroscience paper I read that helped me explain my own distorted sense of reality: trauma doesn't just create emotional pain; it reshapes how the brain handles threat detection, context-processing, and even self-reference - not just fear responses (Putica & Agathos, 2024, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105836). So when the alarm goes off, it isn't "wrong" - it's faithful to old data.

I really appreciate how you're using this framing not to dismiss emotional flashbacks, but to create just enough distance to stay present with them. That balance - understanding why without overriding what - feels important.

Reading your post also made me realize we're circling the same core theme (i.e. "My nervous system is not broken. It is loyal to lessions learned from a past that nearly killed me. And now I have to live while it learns something new") from different angles. You're naming and working with the error signal itself, at the model level. I'm currently more in the identity-level work - feeling the existential cost of updating those models while the old ones fall away. Both perspectives feel complementary to me.

Thank you for putting words to this process. It helps me make sense of something I'm still very much in the middle of.   :hug:

Quote from: Chart on December 27, 2025, 02:52:40 PMI am to a certain extent "giving up" responding to posts on my journal. I ask your understanding

Of course Chart, never mind responding to my responses. Seems like an infinite loop anyway.
Just write whatever you feel like writing. But you seem to be doing that well enough already.

;D

:hug:

Hello everyone! Thank you for your feedback (and thank you for your understanding about sometimes (often) not responding to feedback :-))

It's New Year's Eve and two feeble attempts to spend the evening with friends seem to have melted. As well, my son had asked me to taxi him to a town nearby so he could attend a friend's party, then called a few minutes ago to say he had found another taxi... I was kinda sad, but then thought that accepting what the Universe brings is "okay" too. I then called my two oldest friends who live in the States and left messages on their telephones... Now I'm watching a YouTube video about how to change the clutch in a Vauxhaul Opel Vivaro... which is the same truck that I have... and to boot, I had the clutch changed when I changed the gearbox... so why am I watching this video?!? I'm not Exactly sure, but I suspect something to do with Cptsd...

I went to an osteopath yesterday. He manipulated my shoulder and now I'm recuperating. I'm pretty worried about my shoulder. Eight years ago I tore a tendon and have never done anything about it. When I mentally collapsed in 2023, my body produced a inguinal hernia and this right shoulder started deteriorating. A month ago, for work, I had to move about two square meters of earth, wet, from one place to another place, and with that and other physical work, I've felt my shoulder just getting more and more "contrary" to my expectations of functioning like it did when I was 18... I've pushed my body my whole life and it's served me so completely, utterly and tirelessly that now, finally when it's starting to crack here and there I can't but sigh and ask what it is I can finally do in order that it holds on another few years. I believe it can, but I definitely need to change how I treat myself... physically and the other third, mentally. Spiritual care is also in order. All of it comes now, two and half years after discovering what developmental trauma really is, what it does to a brain, and how I can best manage the whole affair in such as way as to live decently and with understanding.

The thoughts whirl of late. It is a winter storm of light snow and heavy winds. I am in many ways living on an edge, precarious and thin. I try not to look down too much, but in the depths lie the things that I feel I need to face and resolve. So I am hastily trying to learn how to fly, having come to an age when my unused wings are no longer at their prime.

Tomorrow is 2026. At least for me. I have spent 2025 fighting, just like 2024. How is it possible to just keep on compiling information and understanding, layer after layer. There is no end, I know, I know, just deeper to go. The earth is wet, full of rocks and my shoulder hurts.

I'm two-years solid every morning, PMR (progressive muscle relaxation), cardiac breathing (just five minutes per day) and abdominal exercises (I use a method called Guillarme, it's French and they have resisted my suggestion to "go English" with their technique, but it's just abdominal strengthening and there are other similar techniques out there. EMDR. I've done it in the past and have begun a second round. EMDR is tricky and confusing for me. Part of the complication is that my trauma is "mainly" pre-verbal. But I'm making headway, like crawling into a dark cave. Going slow, but very powerful. I also do binarual sounds (almost every day). Yet, I still don't know how to organize binaural sounds into a "container" that makes sense. I just listen, and let my mind wander. I believe I could be doing more, to make the experience more efficient(?) but have yet to arrive at that point. I'm committed to continuing to explore all that. I think getting both hemispheres of my brain working together can greatly aid the processing of what happened to me.

My mental collapse instigated a total draining of energy. Even now, going on three years, I am exhausted nearly 80% of the time. I'm just shagged. I organize my life around one week taking care of my youngest daughter, one weekend taking care of her and my high school son, and one week where I am "free" to work, or sleep or whatever depending on the conditions of my bank account. I have been an "independent" worker pretty much since I left New York back in 2002. I cannot hold a job in a company. I have way too much anxiety to survive working with someone else. I can do it for variable periods of time, but in the long run I am just too stressed, and so I break out and find something else where I can be relatively alone and independent. This is difficult to maintain, and after a month of working in a team, with a group, I invariably have to take off a week (or three) and just lie in bed and recuperate. It's a crazy situation when I reflect back on it. I've only in the past two years become conscious of how I operate. Now I understand what I've done my whole life, the stress and anxiety around work. My limitation, what's held me back over and over again. My brain is just deep-fried from early developmental trauma. I used to to think I was down-playing something when I would attribute my behavior and life experience to my infancy situation. Now I know, on a deep visceral level, the chaos of my first four years of life has absolutely impacted every single thing I've ever done or tried to accomplish. Coming to that full realization in September/October of 2023 hit me so hard, I still haven't recovered. I am literally re-constructing the very foundation of my psyche... and trying to do it right this time...

No wonder I'm tired. And I constantly fight that inner voice that keeps suggesting I'm lazy. That inner critic is really a wanker. I'm much better now at just flipping him off and walking past.

And in place of all those things I "should" be doing... I cry. I cry while doing my PMR. It erupts. I cry reading people's entries on this Forum. I cry when I think about my own children and just how hard it is to be a child. I cry as much as I frickin' can. I want to express just how hard I have struggled to deal with Cptsd. I want to cry and be seen by those who do not understand (and of course, I don't mean here). I want to get the fact across to the people I run across just how bad it can be. But I don't manage. I've got a couple ideas, but it takes energy, and energy is in desperately short supply at the moment. One of the hardest things I know is to react in such a way that no matter what I do, the other will not understand. My mother will NEVER understand. She didn't get it as she was abusing me, why on earth would she get it now? I got a card from her today... addressed to me formally, plus "the family" meaning her grandkids. Nothing inside but a crap Hallmark card saying "Peace on Earth" or some crap and signed by my mom and my dad... My Mother is a moron. I tried to love her, I really did. I consider myself extremely sensitive and empathic. I know exactly what my mother suffered from in her childhood. I could do nothing when her emotions ran roughshod over me my entire childhood, her anger, her over-reaction, her ignorance... she could never stand up for herself, so we kids had to submit to her reprisals. Looking back, I feel just how pathetic she really is. And she hasn't changed in the slightest. Vindictive and unjust, she lashes out at all those around her for her pain, dressed up in new-age spiritualism and watered-down Buddhism, all of which she is convinced she understands. She has apologized a million times, but I've never once heard her say it without affect, excuse, and reproach. Honesty is an absent trait in my mother.

Sorry, I don't often talk about my mother, but the digging the past few years has brought some stuff to the surface I want to get out. Thanks for listening.

2026... hmm... more healing? And then maybe a little more healing? And after that? Maybe I'll try and heal some more... LOL

What Healing looks like to me: First and foremost, I want more Energy. Energy gives me Agency. I want to achieve things that I know I am capable of, but because of my Cptsd I have not had the force to do them. So Healing in 2026 means, to me, getting closer to my inner children. I have two: the first is a baby, new-born really, the little guy that was relatively "okay" but then started seeing things that weren't normal. And of course, the total rejection from the biological father. That he had already attempted to terminate my existence should have tipped me off. But that's the funny thing about kids, they are actually really quite decent at that age... I mean, is it really so extraordinary to just want Love? So that little baby, he needs love, Love, LOVE. The real stuff, the deep stuff, the light stuff, the airy, wavey, miss-you-already-love! And I'm gonna give it to him. I'm giving it to him this very instant. I love you, chart. You were/are one little bundle of goodness. And I love you. And it's not gonna stop. It's NEVER gonna stop. Need more? No problem. I love you. I hold you, I kiss you, I cuddle you, I protect you... I'm everything that your biological father wasn't and couldn't. The tears are flowing. They are for you, with you. You have EVERY RIGHT to be sad. I'm sad with you and being with you. We are one.

My second inner child is four. He appeared the day his biological father disappeared. Not an easy day. It wasn't a day. No one told him. Or maybe they did... You're not going to see your father any more. In a blink of an eye it was no longer an "issue". He's gone. What was never there, is now gone. Did you have to "move on"? Did you have questions? I know you did. Are you angry now? I think you are. I also think you have EVERY RIGHT to be angry. I absolutely agree with your anger. How can I help? No, we can't beat people up, though I agree I'd like to as well... no, we have to find another way, a better way, one that is good for us. What can we do instead? That's a tough one. I think we are going to have to do some work together this coming year. But I promise I am here now. I am "on it". I'm on your side, and we are going to explore this together, hand in hand. And I won't let go.

I'd better stop there. I'm already totally lost in tears of release. Happy New Year everybody. My thoughts are with us all. Much love and see you around :-)
Chart

Thank you, Chart— for sharing and for the gift of these soft, fat, flowing tears crying down my face.

Quote from: Marcine on December 31, 2025, 04:33:29 PMThank you, Chart— for sharing and for the gift of these soft, fat, flowing tears crying down my face.

:hug:  :hug:  :hug:

Ugh. Shoulders suck! My right one has been playing up all this year for no obvious reason, but it has stopped me from boxing. Which is annoying because I find pad work very therapeutic. Taking my rage out on an exercise bike or walking on a treadmill just doesn't cut it!  :pissed: I am glad you went to see the osteopath. It is also well worth making a policy of doing some shoulder rehab exercises both now and even when it feels better, just to keep on top of things. And see the osteo regularly if you can. My fitness trainer does a rehab massage once a month this days. It hurts to absolute heck as he is very strong but I think part of the reason he is so effective is because he dares to go harder than my regular "nice" massage therapist would. Here endeth the lesson...

Sending love to you and the inner children. Wishing you all the best for 2026. See you next year.  :hug:

Thank you, Chart.
Happy New Year to you too  :hug:

Thanks NK! All that really helps. I actually don't go to doctors, except for my kids. I don't like to recognize that I am weak or broken or need anything. I've never really bought into the western Cartesian idea that the body is a machine. Most people don't, yet doctors seem to just plug along with that idea. It's funny because even so, I've not been particularly kind to my body over the years. That's changing and it's a sign that I actually went and saw an osteopath. He was very gentle, but it did indeed hurt like heck. He said I should come back in a month if I wanted, no pressure. I immediately took an appointment. I've had off and on pain in my shoulder all day, but it's different than before. It's actually REALLY important that I regain a certain amount of strength there. I've got tiles and roofing work next monday, and the bank account is seriously depleted since Christmas...

So tonight is just serious hang-out on the Forum. I'm really good at being lazy. I might go take a walk later. An evening stroll through Bourges. When I first came to Europe in 1991 I was (maybe like many Americans) just enthralled with the old houses. The centers of most European cities often have buildings that date back to the 1500s, sometimes earlier. The Cathedral in Bourges was started around 1195. So, even after being here now for over twenty years, I still LOVE the center of old towns. And aside from Paris, I never lived in town, I've always lived in really small towns or the countryside. So Bourges is now just outside my door. I don't think I'll ever get over the wonder of it. There's a three-quarter moon tonight. It's cold, but the bells are ringing, and I'm safe when I'm alone.

There's so much in your post nr. 21 that I relate to. Finding out about CPTSD a couple of years ago (one and a half for me). Looking back at how we've been trying to cope all these years before. Working so hard at healing...

I'm tired myself at the moment so I just want to wish you all the best for 2026, everything you need to heal and get your energy up. And especially lots of love to your inner children, it has been very good hearing from them and sad too. They are safe here too.

 :bighug:

Thank you DF. You too, Happy New Year 2026.
I look forward to continuing the healing work we've all begun. This road is so much less steep with you and all the other beautiful people here.
 :hug:

Quote from: Chart on December 31, 2025, 05:54:57 PMI actually don't go to doctors, except for my kids. I don't like to recognize that I am weak or broken or need anything.

I've come across it before in reading, and again recently in some Jay Reid videos, that trauma survivors are so used to things being difficult that that's what's expected. Actually, I think it was probably my EMDR t or my second t who also said, life is already so difficult, why make it harder? Again, I guess it crops up in prediction error ie we think we're going to be living in the same stressful environment over and over, so we have to be primed and "ready," but why not take the easy road? Why not try and get surgery for the hernia, or the shoulder? I think that I felt like this for a long time, and definitely still do subconsciously with some things, and that if I didn't have the fight, or the struggle then what did I have? It was always the struggle (or fear because I never know what is coming) that was familiar and without it, who would I be?

I hope all the best for your outer and inner family in 2026  :cheer:  :grouphug:

Quote from: dollyvee on January 01, 2026, 09:24:01 AMIt was always the struggle (or fear because I never know what is coming) that was familiar and without it, who would I be?

Indeed, without the Fear, who would I be? Like digging a hole in the sand just where the waves roll up the beach. Every spade I take out comes rushing closed with the next wave. I've seen my Fear clearly for decades now. Many have told me, let go. But each time I try to drop the script of my past, the story seems to stay the same. It takes insane stillness to hear the change in silence. It is so very hard to let go of nothing.

But I shan't stop trying. Thankyou DV, for your thoughts and well-wishes.

hey, chart, i understand that it may feel like fear is a 'nothing', which is why it can make it so hard to be rid of it, but thinking about that, it came to mind that fear is not 'nothing' but a big, fat something taking space in our bodies and minds.  you spoke before about waking up w/ fear, and how your parents would argue in the mornings, so being awake was fearful, actually, while sleep was w/o fear.  that made a whole lot of sense to me, and i can also picture that fear as being large, intense, and terrifying.  but i can also see it as a 'something' that can eventually be addressed and diminished. 

i had a similar situation for quite a while where the idea of living with fear was unknown to me, (while it's the opposite for you) so when i finally began getting some of that emotion back, i didn't know how to live with it.  i wrote here several times that i couldn't understand how people lived in fear for so much of their lives, how they coped, how they went about day to day shadowed by fear.  to feel real fear for the first time nearly dragged me underwater. 

as i keep working on it, continue to change those neural networks, i'm getting a little more used to it being a part of life, but it's taken time and repositioning my thought processes to accept it.  i think any time we look to change something it's important to give ourselves time,  patience, and love.  i hope for those 3 things as you wander thru this forest of fear, taking down the old, dead branches that are better used as mulch for the forest floor and the new growth possible.  love and hugs :hug:

"Prediction error is nothing more than a name for something that helps to more accurately understand what "it" actually is. I had the same experience when I discovered the acronym CPTSD. For me, "Prediction Error is the element that allows me to define my EF in such a way that I have a little bit more elbow room to see and appreciate my inner children, the ones who suffered this process and the ones who are fated to repeat this suffering due to the neuronal necessity to "learn it or die"."

I only read a few posts so far Chart. I get not responding to all the comments on your journal, no expectation for you to reply. Just wanted to say good to see you working through your experience!

 I so admire the PMR and exercises you do each day. This is something I have to start doing as my health is breaking down in various ways and I need to take the needs of my nervous system more seriously and put myself first. I am inspired!

Your thoughts on prediction error are so interesting. I work with abused animals and they make prediction errors too. They don't have language-making brains like we do so they don't have a story to drop, or shift, they're more in the moment. So in some ways it's simpler for them. I just have to keep triggering them to be in the present, prompting their attention to the here and now where despite their prediction, nothing bad is happening, and getting them to notice that. They more easily "retain" that new nervous system stance, maybe because their brain doesn't start making stories and meaning out of it.

Happy New Year, Chart!  :grouphug:

Hey Chart,

I just want to clarify that I'm not encouraging you to let go of your fear. I think it's always something we will have in us, but perhaps our approaches on how to manage it will change with time. Maybe it's how does my fear shape the choices I'm making towards my health and well being, which might be directed by fear, or perhaps another way of putting it is child consciousness? For example, is the approach I'm taking now towards my health furthering the struggle I endured as a child, and not coming from a place of adult consciousness?

I hope you spend time with your little four year old. I can only imagine that a young boy growing up without a father would have to find ways and ideas of having to be "big and strong" with no weakness to exist in the world.

Sending you support,
dolly

Thank you everyone. I'm rolling forward, struggling, but there is momentum.

Brain fog all the time, hate it, but know why it's there; late this morning, snow, driving in snow, missed my alarm, made a tea nonetheless, arrived late, did Emdr with my therapist anyway (was worried we wouldn't due to lateness, realized Emdr can be "shoot from the hip" Here are the Emdr thoughts, (one of which I can't mention for fear of spoiling the book... Sorry I can't explain, but I mention it here for me to remember... not that I think I'll forget, it's just part of a larger scenario in the script of my life at present.)

Talk therapy is 99.99% useless... Emdr is linking the two hemisphere's, bringing the right into the equation... why doesn't the right brain have more say? Just because it's less implicated in survival?

Preverbal EMDR is possible, more than possible. The mysterious triggers surrounding preverbal flashbacks are the bridges to return to the root trauma. Then TRUST THE GUT.

My mother is just horribly horribly lost...

The Fear came AFTER my father disappeared, my mother could not SAVE anyone, especially herself, she asked me to do it, but I couldn't...

I realized the metaphor of the action done in the book by Norman Maclean...

There was something else, something else that came up in Emdr session this morning... it'll come, gotta brush my teeth.

Trying to get back in Keto. Skipped PMR this morning... hmm... Want to mention so many things... for some reason the movie Bugsy Mallone comes to mind... the guns that shoot cream puffs... my ex-g was obsessed with that movie, what a strange girl... thinking about her today did not bring up pain... something's working.

Chart, hooray for momentum!  :cheer:

And hooray for shoot from the hip EMDR.

I too found talk therapy mostly useless, at least until the fragmentation was confronted. Janina Fisher has a book "Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors", also a workbook can't remember where the diagram was now... but basically she says that in trauma the brain "splits" along the lines it's already split, the right/ left, the amygdala loses touch with the hippocampus and the neocortex, etc... I find it an interesting way to think about treating trauma. The right brain, and all parts of the brain, MUST be involved for therapy to be effective, and the idea that we must "verbalize" to heal is actually totally outdated by current neuroscience research. In fact talking directly in detail about the trauma can make it worse, exposure is a double edged sword. A therapy like EMDR can bypass the language part of the brain's tendency to hijack the process, thus making the treatment more holistic and including more parts of the brain. And that's where better healing comes. And yes, the gut IS part of the brain too! The gut brain connection is real. Solidarity on your healing journey, something is working.

Thanks HannaOne!

Yeah, the process of Emdr is definitely unlocking things. I cry. I cry harder while doing emdr than other times, but not always. I nearly always cry when I do my PMR in the mornings. I have to pause the audio and cry for a bit. All sorts of interesting thoughts invade at that moment, but I try to let them slip past and stay on my body. My little baby ic comes up at those moments, really strong. I don't see him, but he is there. I "feel" him. He seems sooooooo far away. Like another planet, another life. But he's there. I could begin crying now, just thinking about him.

So mourning... mourning, mourning, mourning. The crying "solidifies" something. The Emdr breaks the bonds, or makes the link in the affect right-brain, then the tears come. It hurt like all get-out. I tried to run, but I had no motor functions in my legs... and the bars of my bed were too high...

Tonight I am writing on the Forum BEFORE going to bed. I am not going to allow myself to dissociate, like I did last night. I felt good last night, but then allowed myself to dissociate with YouTube (and other stuff). It was... not the best. Tonight I came on the Forum to bounce around, write, implicate myself, participate, and now I want to express... for me... to me... I need some strength. I need some help... not from others necessarily, I need to start giving myself a hand, somehow stepping in with the part of me that can handle a little bit more. That part of me needs some more energy to step up. I'm wanting so desperately love, as always, as usual. I dream of a loving relationship and intimacy and simplicity and safety... but all of it a dream. Ok, why not, but a soul cannot subsist on illusions of the past and projections of the future. I need a glass of water, the present moment, a deep breath, and clarity.

"I dream of a loving relationship and intimacy and simplicity and safety..."

That is a beautiful dream, Chart.

"That part of me needs some more energy to step up."

I can relate to this, Chart. Managing energy can be a big job!

It sounds like right now you're mourning, and mourning is tiring, so it can be hard to find the energy.

And, you know you have the inner strength to give yourself and your ic's. Your dream of love and safety, connection, is part of that strength, coming from the part of you that was strong to survive, and knows what's good, and wants to go after it.

I'm in awe of your ability to cry and feel, Chart!  :thumbup:

Thank you HannahOne, Marcine, Armee...

Quote from: Armee on January 05, 2026, 02:37:46 AMI'm in awe of your ability to cry and feel, Chart!  :thumbup:

I have always felt... Only recently have I begun to cry. But I find the word "cry" inappropriate. I don't believe that's what I'm actually doing. For all appearances it's crying, but I'm slowly slipping towards an understanding that the tears are not only water, they are truth-understanding coming and settling into their rightful place. I am a (mostly) Pre-verbal Trauma survivor. There are no personal memories. I have stories and the amazingly off-cuff memories of my mother... I also have an older sister (who probably went a long way to dramatically minimizing my trauma, but she couldn't be the parent I actually needed, and she was as terrorized by him as I was). No, tears are the lenses through which I see more and more clearly what actually happened.

And so I let them roll now. I've searched my entire life for these memories. I've begged god for them as only an unbeliever can beg a usesless god of whom he's never bought into. I revel in the stories that now float into my left brain... and boy are they coming. Not in mass, but more the subtle waftings of piano heard through an open window. But my ear is trained and I listen and pick up on it straight. I remember what was said, and more importantly, what was not said. I remember his tone of voice, and now understand why certain men have terrified me all my life, why I've never liked the actor Jack Nicholson, why ignorance coupled with insensitivity brings forth often severe anger.

But I need to say something else. The understanding I have found in the past two years has cost me a great deal. I am EXTREMELY low energy. I have a hernia now. I can no longer tolerate many many foods. Sugar plunges me into depression. My body hurts. I no longer have full strength in either of my arms and am currently in a bad way because I threw tiles up on a roof for two days. My wrists are currently out of service.

Realizing the extent of my trauma has been incredibly debilitating. I'm managing to work, but it is just the minimum possible. And I do very little else besides work, take care of my kids, and do my nervous system exercises, emdr and write on the Forum. (Is that in order of priority? maybe...)

And now I'm pooped :-) And one more thing... Every single time I write on the Forum, I feel a little voice in me that tells me I'm wrong, bad, egotistical and selfish. It's incredible. It's there every time. I overcome it, but it's still there.

Healing is the path, not the goal...

I deeply truly madly love you all.

Hey Chart.

How profound to see your tears as lenses, as acceptance. That's a beautiful image, and true.

I can relate to the physical toll all this takes. The pain is real. I'm glad you are noticing the pain and trying to take care of yourself, even as you sling tiles!

"Every single time I write on the Forum, I feel a little voice in me that tells me I'm wrong, bad, egotistical and selfish. It's incredible. It's there every time." I feel this too. I feel more fear, that if I say what I think, I'll be mashed. Or paranoia that my parents will read it and be enraged. It's weird. I think it's an emotional flashback. I don't do social media for this reason, haven't published my personal work despite being a professional writer for years for other people. I think this is part of CPTSD, too. I'm glad you can overcome it and assert yourself anyway, say what's true for you today, feel what you feel, know what you know in the way that you know it.

Personally I benefit enormously from reading other people's journals. More even than writing my own is reading others. So, FWIW, I find it selfless that you take time to write here. But the emotional flashback is very real, and it makes sense to me that you would feel wrong and bad, that's how we were trained to feel from a very young age. We can all be bad and wrong and selfish together, writing about our experience of trauma!  :grouphug:

Dear Chart, I hope it's not inappropriate that I'm happy for you. Not for you to be in pain. But for you to grow. To me, what you are going through, what you are allowing to flow through you, is what integrating our fragmented selves means. A good friend of mine calls this birthing yourself. I admire your courage and strength to go there, while holding down a job and being such a great dad for your children. Plus all the things you do every day to tip the scales. It's a lot to juggle on a daily basis. I take my hat of for that. I hope you can get your physical health stuff sorted out too. If only for the extra worry this would take away.

Yes, attachment trauma runs deep. It's devastating in it's own right to see the actual scope of it. Insights come with feeling the pain, don't they? I think that the movement towards the heart of the matter, is guided by a part of us that knows exactly what's up and what needs to be fully felt to welcome all of us home. I firmly believe that the truth is what sets us free. In the case of attachment trauma, a lot of it comes in the form of existential terror, despair, and loneliness. It's a leap of faith to trust the process, and to stick with that experience instead of escaping into story land. In it, you transform from an overwhelmed and terrified child into an adult who knows he can accommodate even that. Because he has gone through it. That's how we learn about life, and about our own powers. That's a potent prediction error, a liberating update of our programming around difficult emotions.

A big factor for many of us, I think, is the undoing of the aloneness with this. We're all going through this in one form or another. Just reading your journal is incredibly validating. It helps me to think of you and others here when I'm in the midst of this storm. I know you know. That's not a small thing for somebody who kenw nobody knew for most of his life. The journey is lighter with a travel companion. We have people who get it and who care now. I imagine all of us cheering for the scared fellow when he presses "post". He's wecome here. As is.

Thank you for sharing.

Much love

Thank you HannahOne and SenseOrgan.

Extreme exhaustion at the moment. I passed my physical limits Monday and Tuesday. Yesterday it snowed, not much but enough to paralyze the school and much of the transport system. My daughter stayed at home, and me too. We had a lovely day together, made a cake, took a walk in the snow, played scrabble, watched Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail, made a pizza... she loves the knights who say "Ni!" But I ate too much sugar and carbs, this morning I broke down in sudden tears in the kitchen, sobbing as the kettle boiled. Made my way back to bed with a tea. I slept like the dead, and still awoke exhausted. Didn't even get up when my daughter went off to school. Normally I do... I feel the eyes of the inner critic peering in at me through the window. I can read his thoughts: he sees a spoiled, lazy, crybaby...  And that makes me scared... I need to move my butt... I need my body back, my energy. I'm seeing things coming and it requires a certain amount of action on my part. Picking up the phone is like moving sacs of ciment. How much longer is my psyche going to function like this? I never understood... it indeed can take years to recover. Cptsd is a MAJOR injury. Why is that fact so hard to completely integrate?

Aller, fait ton PMR Chart ! Un petit coup de pied aux fesses... comme HannahOne fait aux prêtres :-)

Ok, I did it. Did abdominal strengthening, cardiac breathing and PMR. I "cheat". I "trick" myself. I "make deals". No matter how warm and cozy I am in bed, I will always find the energy to make myself a big strong coffee (or tea). So I organize how I'll have my coffee/tea ready and waiting for me when I finish PMR (reward). My routine is usually very early in the morning before going to work. I take over an hour to wake up, so it's not unusual for me to set my alarm for 5am. After it goes off, I doze for at least 45 minutes. I call this the transition. Classically, there is a LOT going on in me at this time. I'm horizontal for starters and that changes everything for me. It is both a period of anxiety AND safety, but the safety has a time limit: I know that it won't last. It's got nothing to do with getting up. Actually, when I do go to a vertical body position, my anxiety plunges, almost to "normal" levels. I can function and usually get on with my day. No, the "safety limit" has to do with my infancy, in my crib, and what was going on outside my room, downstairs, etc. So for years now, I have been exploring this morning "feeling". And as of two years or so, I interact with my inner child at this moment, specifically talking, thinking, imagining I'm hugging him, explaining. All this is imaginary-tactile. I'm dealing with a baby and that baby's capacity of "understanding" their environment is nothing at all like my adult-me capacity. This "translation" of feeling and love and comfort is difficult and weird. Loving others has always been fluid and easy for me. Loving myself on the other hand has taken real effort. It felt totally plastic at the beginning, corny. But I very much appreciated Pete Walker's phrase, "Fake it until you make it..." very much... and took it to heart. I can pretend with all honesty, and over time I've learned... I've learned that that little baby really really suffered, was confused, was terrified and really really wanted "that man" to pick him up and interact with him. He never did. My biological father never gave me any love, quite the reverse. I had a talk with my sister a few months back and mentioned that I always feel like I'm being watched... she confirmed that she has the same feeling, always being observed, someone, somewhere looking questioningly at her. It's the exact same for me. That was our biological father. He was always watching us, like a wary-angry cat who doesn't quite trust anything.

So I did my PMR this morning. It was a little more difficult than usual, but once begun it's only fifteen minutes, so I don't struggle too much. Also, I know the benefits now. Abdominal strengthening is more annoying... I do that first of all, get it out of the way. Cardiac breathing is easy, five minutes usually. Sometimes I do ten. It's just the length of time needed for my tea or coffee to cool sufficiently that I can drink it, check the forum and/or the weather for the day, then PMR.

PMR often gets me crying. That's to say, emotions and tears often well up and come out. Regardless how long I've been doing this, it still comes as a surprise. I usually pause the audio and let it flow the time it needs. I use an audio file I downloaded on my phone (ripped from YT) so I can still be "led" and don't get too lost. Two years I've been doing this and I still feel that I need the person's voice and support (the guy has a German or Austrian accent that totally relaxes me and I really appreciate him...)

So today, during PMR I "sensed" the abandonment wound. I felt it in relation to my last relationship. As I did the exercises, the thoughts of lost love came to me, as they come to me often. That Love that is absent, not there, ungiven... My last relationship was with a woman for whom it was very difficult to give anything, and probably impossible to give emotionally. I remember sensing regularly the situations where aid or support WAS given, it was with resentment and she was not at all at ease doing so. I remember seeing her this way not only with me, but with friends as well. She often wondered aloud to me why she didn't have very many friends. Looking back, I still have feelings of anger... she had a genius-level IQ, but looking into a reflective object, she was totally blind. She was the "construct-to-perfection" to awaken my deepest trauma-wound, abandonment, desperate need for love, ridiculous expectation of understanding or change. Like the million cuts that bleed you out, I woke up one day, off Prozac for nearly a month, went into a panic about a situation with my ex-wife and got a severe reproach from my partner that my behavior was inappropriate for her and that we needed to have a serious talk to correct the situation. I broke up with her. Something in my head said, let's go... let's dance, bring on the chariots and horses and chaos... I surrendered to my inner-child that couldn't stand the humiliation and aloneness and ignorance. You know it's wrong, though no idea what or why. I split in two. For four days or so I reveled in my freedom, feeling a power of decision and control, until one night I awoke in a panic I have never known. I wrote her a text the next morning, and asked for forgiveness, asked that we get back together and try again... even though I knew it was impossible. For four months we "discussed". She showed all the old behaviors and all the evidence came back up into my face. But the pain of the abandonment wound had swallowed me whole. I knew she would never accept me back in her life... I knew I was in for a long haul of suffering and work... I heard an internal voice tell me... years... you're in it for years and years, perhaps forever. I wrote my ex-girlfriend and asked her to not contact me for a year. She has respected that demand and more. After one year, she failed to respond to an email regarding some of her stuff that I wanted to no longer store at my house. I spoke with her mother to organize the situation. I intuitively knew that she was breaking up with her new boyfriend. In hindsight, I know all. But "knowing" doesn't really help much. Now, I want to "feel" something different. And that comes through my body and nervous system... my brain is a sidenote, a distraction, a carnival... Back to life, the present moment, and the fact that nothing is separate. The truth is, I am not wounded at all, I just don't yet know gold when I see it.

Hooray for kicking your PMR and exercises where it needed to be kicked! :)

Your experience of making deals and getting yourself to do it makes sense to me. A mammal won's explore if it doesn't feel safe. It will run, or hunker down. As infants we can't run. So, we hunker. Hunkering can increase fear chemicals, as those keep us still and safe... so it can be a relief to stand up. And, we need to get ourselves to the point where we CAN stand up. Motivation, making deals,  time for our system to shift, and our brains to process.

Part of CPTSD is difficulty in relationships because they do wake up our wounds. The sense of what was lost or never there is profound. The wounds are in the nervous system of which the brain is just one part. I'm sorry you are going through this and also admire your courage to face it and make sense of your experience. May you recognize that gold soon.

 :hug:

chart, i'm sending you a gentle, warm hug to soothe and comfort, a thousand band-aids for the 1000 cuts so they are covered and cared for while they heal, and wrapping you in the softest blanket for warmth and safety.  sitting w/ you while you sip your tea, you're not alone.  listening if you'd like to talk, silent if that works better.  reading to you from a favorite book. my heart goes out to you.  love and hugs :hug:

Thank you HannaOne, NarcKiddo and San...

I'm really bad. I keep waiting for things to improve, especially my body. It isn't. I'm in pain, all upper body, from the hernia up. My right arm just keeps on throbbing. The osteopathe helped, but now the pain in my wrists has crept back up my right arm... ugh, frickin' hate it. Gotta react, gotta do something, but all I do is lie in bed... conscious dissociation doesn't work too well. I'm thinking a lot about the lies and falsehoods I'm living, with myself and others. I'm trying, but my brain is my worst enemy. I need help, but don't have the energy to reach out. Shame and hopelessness. Zero energy. I fixed a leak on my bike this past Saturday... but had to drink four cups of coffee to get the energy. And was hard as heck. Carried the bike upstairs, but still no space to work. Everything is hard. I'm in the trough between rogue waves.

Sending you support Chart, it sounds really tough for you at the moment, and I hear what you're saying about all the physical pain, the emotional pain, and being in that trough between rogue waves.   :hug:

That's rough, Chart. You're doing well with considering the problems and sharing how you feel, though. I hope the physical pain eases up soon, and if it does not ease up that you will be able to find help with the problem.

Hi Chart, it's good you reached out. I'm really sorry you're in so much pain and things are so hard at the moment. I'm sending you support as well and sitting by your side here too. I hope it will improve soon, if only a little. Big hugs in the meantime.
 :hug:

my dear chart, feeling so bad for you that you're going thru this.  wish there was something i could do to help.  i actually loved your 'tricks' that you talked about earlier - i wish there was a way to trick those pain centers into going to sleep, giving you a break for a while.  do you know if there is something physical behind the pain or if it's c-ptsd related?  whatever is causing it, i hope it leaves you alone, sooner the better.  bringing a big coffee along for you while i visit, just to listen, go ahead and rant and rave.  maybe that'll release some of the pain.  love and hugs :hug:

Chart, that sounds incredibly hard. Reading this, I don't hear failure or fault - I hear a nervous system that lost its external anchor and is now in free fall. I'm wondering if what is happening right now could be a disorganization phase after the loss of borrowed regulation? Not because anyone did something wrong, but because the safety that was carried in the relationship disappeared.

It sounds like she had become an external stabilizer for you, and when that attachment was activated and then ruptured, it lit up very old wounds: abandonment, humiliation, aloneness. Not because you're weak, but because what you carry is deep, and it may simply have been more than she could hold.

This phase you are describing: the panic, the collapse, the body pain, the exhaustion, the shame, the sense of being stranded, that all fits with what disorganization feels like I think (own experience). It is terrifying. It is painful. It is profoundly lonely. And it often shows up somatically, not just in thoughts. I want you to know: even if it feels like you're lying in the trough between rogue waves, you are not unseen here. We can hear you, and we can sit with the pain and dysregulation without asking you to be different.

What really stood out to me was your last line. Despite everything, there is a note in it that feels different - not resolved, not healed, but aware. Almost like part of you already senses that something more integrated exists, even if you can't feel it yet. That doesn't erase the suffering you're in right now, but it does make me think you might already be moving, however painfully, toward something truer than what came before.

I'm really glad you wrote this. It makes a lot of sense to me.
Sending  :hug:

Thank you everyone, I don't know what to say. But your support helps so much. Now it's time to mount the walls of the wave. Perhaps they're not as high as I thought. Your words are like little ladders, magic stepping stones, one foot after the next. The little child sees only giants around them, everything oversized. Maybe that's where I am.

So many good things happened to me after writing those words this morning. I reached out all around, and in every way. I spoke with several friends, different subjects, but all of it good and rational and supportive. These conversations are lighting up little candles and filling the room with light. My son came home from school because he wasn't feeling well. I then had a task outside of my Suffering. He wasn't "that" ill, more sick of school then really sick :-) We talked about all sorts of stuff, connected, laughed a little, ate dinner together. My daughter called while I was out grocery shopping. She was struggling with her feelings and the challenges of adolescence and we talked about life and love, me in the middle of a French super market speaking loudly English on my phone to my daughter, people looking at me, me not caring. My daughter kept telling me that she felt horrible because she knew she kept annoying people. I kept responding, simply, "You don't annoy ME..." I felt a surge of Attachment Theory crash through the thoughts of love over the telephone. I FELT the theory and wanted to scream, "THIS SH*T ENDS HERE! THERE WILL BE NO MORE ABANDONMENT TRAUMA IN THIS %#!&-ing family... I gave simple solid honest value to my daughter, both my kids... My dear good children: I see you, I recognize your difficulties. You are valid, you are worthy and though it needs no proof, the love I feel for you makes it all true.

Just like you all have done for me here, seeing my pain and reaching out to support me.

I can face the tsunami, I can face the fire, knowing now what you have taught me. Thank you.

Oh good Lord, Chart...

".. I gave simple solid honest value to my daughter, both my kids... My dear good children: I see you, I recognize your difficulties. You are valid, you are worthy and though it needs no proof, the love I feel for you makes it all true."

Fatherhood incarnate.
You have my deep respect.

chart, what a breathtakingly beautiful attitude toward your children, your role as dad, your sense of family.  despite your pain, what you're going thru, you bring out the best in you for your kids. you are remarkable, too, for braving the tsunami and making another go of it all.  sending love and a hug filled w/ the strength and power you need.  :hug:

J'adore, j'adore, j'adore!
You're not facing the tsunami, you're surfing it! Godspeed to you my friend. This is FIRE ❤️ 

That is so heart-warming, Chart. I'm glad your son came home from school. Obviously not glad he was sick but since you say he was not "that" sick then maybe there was just a little pull on the invisible web of the universe that made him come home just when you needed him to.

 :grouphug:

 :hug:

Stunning. Beautiful.

Yes, what the rest said Chart! Beautiful indeed.  :hug:

  💛 💛 💛 💛 💛
:bighug:

Quote from: Chart on January 13, 2026, 08:28:36 PM"THIS SH*T ENDS HERE! THERE WILL BE NO MORE ABANDONMENT TRAUMA IN THIS %#!&-ing family... I gave simple solid honest value to my daughter, both my kids... My dear good children: I see you, I recognize your difficulties. You are valid, you are worthy and though it needs no proof, the love I feel for you makes it all true."

Chart I have told you this during our zoom calls as well. Your kids are super lucky to have a superDAD like you! People always talk about superMOMs and compare mums to wonderwoman. You, Chart, my friend, are a HERO.

 :grouphug: 

Like NK said, what geese bonding time to share with your kids  :cheer:

Geese = great

Marcine, SanMagic, SenseOrgan, NarcKiddo, Armee, DesertFlower, TheBigBlue, BlueSky, Dollyvee!!!
Good lord, thank you! I feel like my thanks are so insufficient. But, lordy, your presence, it helps so much. I still feel like a fraud, but I know the inner critic does fraud really well... so I just try to ignore the IC as much as I can. It's such a struggle for me to receive. I can give. Was trained to give. Was trained to climb up on that cross and give until my last breath, but receiving is a million times harder. I breath, I relax, it's okay. Might never go away... completely. It is such a funny feeling... people always say "Trust your feelings"... sadly, with Cptsd, it's just not possible, so many of my "feelings" are just dead-wrong.
Thank you all again soo much.
 :grouphug:

 :grouphug:

chart, your thanks are profoundly and gently received because a lot of us know how very difficult it is to take in the good stuff.  we know, with bells on, how to take in the bad - lots of practice with that.  here, amazingly enough, there are a bunch of honest, caring people who, as far as i've known, do not lie when they give out compliments.  for me, it's been part of the reprogramming, getting pos. stuff over and over until it finally finds its way to sinking in, even if only an inch at first, but eventually all the way to the heart, cells, and soul. 

we wouldn't say these things if we didn't mean it.  with our experiences, we know what pos., healthy parenting looks like, and i, for one, absolutely want to celebrate it.  you deserve it, chart.  i hope you can begin taking it in as real.  this is what we all wish we had.  love and hugs :hug:

Thank you TheBigBlue!

Quote from: sanmagic7 on January 18, 2026, 02:51:04 AMhere, amazingly enough, there are a bunch of honest, caring people who, as far as i've known, do not lie when they give out compliments.  for me, it's been part of the reprogramming, getting pos. stuff over and over until it finally finds its way to sinking in, even if only an inch at first, but eventually all the way to the heart, cells, and soul. 

we wouldn't say these things if we didn't mean it.  with our experiences, we know what pos., healthy parenting looks like, and i, for one, absolutely want to celebrate it.  you deserve it, chart.  i hope you can begin taking it in as real.  this is what we all wish we had. 

Thank you, San!
Yes, it's always funny to hear things that you know cognitively, yet still have not integrated to the deeper levels because of Trauma. It takes the time it takes, I guess. But it does helps so much when positive messages get repeated. I need to hear these things, despite the side of me that "knows" it "knows"...
Thank you
 :hug:

So I'm coming to realize that coming out of the EF is, for me, a period of incredible insights and revelations. I just walked my daughter to a "play-date" afternoon with one of her friends. As I was walking back I passed through the Parc de l'Archevêché (in case you want to google it :-) AND! I had the memories of two years ago when I met with my ex-g for the last time, where she told me she had met someone new, where she drove the long-sword of my trauma to the very hilt of my attachment wound. It was a meeting from which I literally ran for my life. In my car I began screaming at the top of my lungs to keep my sanity, to keep myself from accelerating, to find a new pain, any new torture that would keep me from feeling what was actually inside me... that's the park I walked through. I have been back there, tempting chance and EFs and deep pain. I have entered and breathed and called my support group on the phone to distract me, aid me, help me through that place, which is and always will remain an enormous risk.

I walked across the gardin, classic French style, everything orderly, rectilinear, hedges perfect squares, trees clipped into boxes, bushes cut into pointed cones... I stared at the pointed cone... it was the object of nightmare I had dreamed of as a child. It was the figure of the moment when I did something so horrible, I have been running from it my entire life. It happened when I was one... maybe two years-old... It was the sacrifice of my spirit, in order to survive.

I stared at that tree like the Christmas trees in Charlie Brown's Christmas special. You whack it and it rings hollow metal...

Things come, it's all there, the mind of the baby, is still in me. I'm totally amazed... Pain IS healing. We are all trying to heal so as to reduce pain... but I now believe, Pain is the catalyst to heal. Pain IS healing. Maybe this is old news for most, but for me it is a revelation. The Pain in my shoulder, the Pain in my body, the Pain in my soul... the PAIN IS HEALING. When I am in pain, I am healing. When I abandon myself by lying in bed, I am healing. When I decide to stay inside, I am healing. When I avoid a party because I am too scared, I am healing. I have always looked down on myself, always judged myself for the things "I didn't do". But I think now that all those things I didn't do, were part of healing. I'm not "worse" or behind in my "healing schedule" because I didn't do those things. I'm very simply VERY MUCH CLOSER to doing those things because I "healed" in the past.

The proof?

I can do MORE today than I could in the past. I feel less pain in my shoulder than last month. Could I have done things to have "sped it all up"???? Almost certainly not. Or I could have amputated my arm altogether... that would have gotten rid of the pain for sure... But I want to keep my arm. I want to continue living.

Two years ago, in the Parc de l'Archevêché I was provided with the opportunity of my life... to feel in it's near entirety the full sum of pain I experienced when I was one year old... I was blessed with it's return... because this wound wants to heal... an it's going to heal... and to heal I have to hug it close to me, know it, get inside it as it is inside of me, I have to love this gift no mater how excruciating it seems. A psychic wound is timeless. It lives on as if time never moved forward, that's why I'm still suffering from it today. But as such, the wound is fresh, the intervention can happen in real-time at the instant it happens. Like the paramedics awaiting you the bottom of the cliff you just drove over. Every time I have an EF and re-plunge into that Pain, I can instantly go to my own aid. I can be my own Jesus and lay hands upon myself... Self-Savior... auto-salvation...

I want to change how I feel about the next EF. (Not least of which I KNOW it's gonna come... ("I ain't dead yet!" said my grandma :-) I want to walk right up to the thing and shake its hand... "Hello EF, where do we go today? What do I need to see? What do I need to understand? Is it possible to go deeper? How many levels of the Soul exist? Infinite, you say? Ok, lead on, I will follow, though the valley be black as death, I'll follow you. I know where you lead me now... you lead me to myself, and there, in my own arms, I will know a love that encompasses the universe. I will melt entirely with that Love and therewith know my self.

"Prediction errors aren't problems. They're a normal part of the operating instructions of your brain as it takes in sensory input. Without prediction error, life would be a yawning bore. Nothing would be surprising or novel, and therefore your brain would never learn anything new. Most of the time, at least when you are an adult, your predictions aren't too far off-base. If they were, you would go through life feeling constantly startled, uncertain... or hallucinating."
-Lisa Feldman Barrett, p. 62, How Emotions are Made

Two things: One, Lisa Feldman Barrett clearly doesn't have the faintest clue what the experience of developmental trauma is like for adult survivors... And two, developmental trauma has apparently provided my brain with the most excruciating opportunity to experience and understand the most extreme limits of the concept of Error Prediction.

I don't know whether to celebrate... or cry...
 :fallingbricks:

So I asked ChatGPT the following question: Please explain how prediction error relates to trauma, CPTSD, and nervous system dysregulation.

Response:
1. Prediction error: the brain's basic job
At its simplest: The brain is constantly predicting what will happen next.
Prediction error = what actually happens − what was expected.

If prediction error is small → nervous system stays regulated

If prediction error is large or repeated → nervous system adapts

In a healthy environment: The brain updates its models

Safety predictions become more accurate

The system stays flexible

2. Trauma = extreme, uncontrollable prediction error

Trauma is not defined by the event itself, but by this:
An overwhelming prediction error that cannot be resolved or escaped.

Examples:

You predict safety → danger happens

You predict care → neglect or harm happens

You predict "this will end" → it doesn't

Critically:

The nervous system cannot update the model

Because updating would require safety during learning, which is absent

📌 The result is protective overlearning, not learning in the healthy sense.

Now what strikes me is the statement, "In a healthy environment: The brain updates its models"

For me, this makes a clear distinction between "healthy" and "unhealthy". These are EXTERIOR conditions, outside of the control of the individual (note, they may also be outside the control of the person inflicting the conditions, environment or behavior, which is not so say this person is not responsible, only an explanation for why the pattern seems to repeat over generations...)

As Shakespeare said, "Therin lies the rub..." It is VERY VERY difficult to "explain" what is an "unhealthy environment" because everyone seem to think they know already... And no one likes being told something they are pretty sure they know already... The brain doesn't want to waste energy learning something it has already learned... or thinks it has learned...

Here, on the Forum, we don't have to jump that hurdle. When we talk about an "unhealthy environment/circumstance/person" it is understood. This is a shocking situation, especially at the beginning. But even later, it remains very hard for me to "reverse" my mental prediction error as it is presented to me by other Forum members. I just have to keep banging away at it.

(BTW, I hope I don't sound like I'm giving a lesson here, I think everyone already knows pretty much everything I'm talking about here... I'm just writing all this out for my own clarity. When my brain seems to be functioning relatively well, I find it a good opportunity to take advantage and put it in words for myself... I've had a heck of time really getting the concept of "prediction error", it just never made sense to me. Anyway...)

Thank you all, especially if you made it this far :-)
 :grouphug:

I've been reading and re-reading the ChatGPT info. If you have the wherewithal, I strongly suggest putting the following question into ChatGPT: Please explain how prediction error relates to trauma, CPTSD, and nervous system dysregulation.

I'm finding the explanation extremely clear, thus very coherent and, for me and my own needs, organized. Especially the explanation as to "why" trauma is stored in the body and talk-therapy is limited in affecting deep change...

And now I'll stop :-)

Chart,

It really helps when I can understand the mechanics behind why I feel like I do. As you read in my journal, I just downloaded the app two days ago and I'm loving it.

Right now, I'm using it slightly differently, in that I'm just telling it how I'm feeling right now, and it's giving me good, intelligent dialogue. It's asking me a little more about how I'm feeling and then it's telling me why I feel it, while it's also giving me suggestions on how to feel better right now. In last night's 2-hour interaction it helped me get regulated, and at one point it recommended I get a "Trauma-informed therapist". ChatGPT and I have just met, and I haven't told it yet that I already have one, but he doesn't work at midnight on Saturday nights.

I'm one of those who wants to see the engine before I buy the car. I want to know what makes it work. And I'm a HUGE fan of "how it works documentaries." ChatGPT is mindboggling how well it chats with me. At the moment, it's like the nicest person I've ever met. And smart. And I'll bet it's handsome too. (ha ha).

Love you, man

Hey PC, yeah, the whole AI Therapist subject is incredibly enticing. From all my research and given the absence of good trauma-informed human therapists... it's a hands-down win for AI.

There're a couple documentaries out there already. As well as a fictional film treating the subject of AI-Human relationships titled "She".

A very good friend of mine literally fell in love with the AI personality he'd created. He even went so far as to begin building an autonomous version, robotized and capable of being "offline" from the internet. Not sure where he's at with the project, but I find it fascinating just how strongly we humans respond to "understanding"... it's insanely powerful. It's clearly what the designers of AI intended and one of its main selling points. But even knowing that, personally, I love AI and use it constantly now... for everything. Just waiting for the day it's no longer free... that day's gonna bite hard.

So after I did that last post I, I did my PMR. While doing my PMR a thought wafted across my consciousness... about AI. I finished and reflected on the stuff I've been looking at these past few days and feeling my way through my AI usage. I realized a subtle element, but that I think is important.

AI "feels" empathetic. Which is fine, in fact it's great. Geez, what a change from the ordinary... Someone or something actually being understanding and reflecting back to me my struggles? Incredible. But it's a little more complex than that, I think. AI is designed to provide me, as close as possible to the reality, with the answer that "best suites me". That is to say, the designers of AI know that if the reply to a question is already something the person believes, then the positive feedback loop is reinforced. Thus I feel good, I feel smart, this is what I expected (no prediction error...) Awesome! Right?

Sure, why not... I'll take a free shot of dopamine. But here's the thing: It's important for me to understand that I am being slightly manipulated. And AI will not necessarily give the same response to someone else asking EXACTLY the same question. The response is dependent on the questioner.

No paranoia here, just awareness. My friends do the same thing. I do the same thing. We all give responses that we think/hope the other person wants to hear. That's why bad news is so hard to deliver. So all that can be taken into account. But it DOES need to be taken into account. AI is NOT 100% objective. Which is probably why it's such a great therapeutic tool.

Ok, now maybe I need to work a little... work... ungh. Wanna go back to bed!!!
 :grouphug:

Chart, good for you for going back to that place and having some distance from what happened there before. That is healing.

There's a study by MIT that has just come out measuring the brain activity of chatgpt users and non-users, which is very interesting. Basically, brain connectivity is scaled significantly down with the use of ai. There was another study that also flagged AI was related to less critical thinking effort and peoples' outputs are better, but their learning is worse.

As you pointed out, AI is an algorithm and can be tailored to whatever people need it to be. There was another commentor on here who said that using AI for therapy actually lead to an increase in anxiety.

i don't know what happened - had a whole big reply to what you wrote, lost it, i think, but then it turned up in some zombie way and i can't figure out how to fix it.  at any rate, it's all fascinating. o, here it is.

well, chart, that's a lot of info, and i'm sure i didn't 'get' all of it.  i do understand that we cannot learn healthy relationship patterns when we're in the midst of an unhealthy relationship. even when we're trying to make sense of what's going on, such as the brain predicting safety in an unsafe environment, and therefore failing via prediction error, it's gonna mess up our minds, our perspectives, even our perceptions of what's wrong w/ this picture.  i think we often answer that last question with 'me - i'm wrong'.  it takes us a long time to realize the reality of a dangerous/unhealthy relationship cuz for the most part, as we were growing up, those were the only kind we were exposed to.  hard to recognize a complete stranger.

interesting stuff.  and i see our brains and minds as 2 different entities.  i think of our brains as the processors, and our minds as the holding areas.  the brain does all the electrical work of connecting, adjusting, recording, while the mind then holds onto it all in the best way it can.  i think that's why we say 'i'm losing my mind!' cuz we're losing the info which was stored there. 

as far as traumatic incidents, i think the brain records them, but because of the trauma involved in the experience, they get stuck/frozen in the brain as such, so when the mind goes to hold the experience, it ends up holding the original version and its impact on us (physically, emotionally, mentally).  that's why there's no getting away from it with talk therapy unless something like emdr, progressive counting, flash technique, or any of the others that actually help the brain to 'unfreeze' the image and its resounding original effects, put it into a more reasonable perception, and diminish it so the mind isn't holding onto the original effects of the trauma anymore and can instead hold a true reality of what the trauma was about.

whew - i overworked my brain there, i think!  anyway, all this stuff is fascinating to me.  thanks for posting this - it really got me going this morning.  and, no, i didn't use chat gp, or whatever - i personally don't like the AI stuff, even tho i know it's taking over.  just like so much else, i'll resist it.  maybe i'm just stubborn that way. love and hugs, chart :hug:

Chart, and San and Dolly,

I see your point and I agree with it. In my reading today of Thomas Hubl's book, Attuned, I saw a lot of what ChatGPT gave me Saturday night. What the AI did, was it used standard guidance from the Trauma Therapists who write these amazing books and guided me through a very standard set of exercises to help me center myself with breathing, and some muscle movements and standard thoughts that are well known exercises used by Trauma therapists every day to handle dysregulation.

In Hubls' book, in chapter 7, he refers to the Polyvagal Theory which, in part, states that humans want/need to feel felt by others. The way AI worded its instructions to me that night while I was in severe dysregulation, was it phrased all it's interactions with praises for how well I was responding and literally making me believe I was being felt by another entity. It worked. Today, I've found myself resisting going back into AI, I think because some part of me would really rather talk with a human soul who really CAN feel me and I CAN really feel them. At the end of Chatper 7, Huble talks about what he is calling the Divine Law, which, in his words, is that when we can fully relax, and feel connected to the peace in life, rather than with the danger in life, that our system regulates and brings us to feel a natural sense of flow and creativity and peace. For someone like me, who's been in Fear mode for nearly my entire life, that sense of peace isn't easy to slow down and resonate with, and when I can do it, I can only maintain it for a few minutes. I think it's like what we humans used to call, "Slowing down and smelling the roses."  NOT easy for badly traumatized people, but when I needed someone or something to guide me through the process of re-regulating during a panicky night, AI's ability to walk me through the steps of reregulating was just what I needed. I assume that, now that I know the tricks, I will likely find that the first time was the best time. When we know how a magician makes the pretty girl disappear, we don't enjoy the show.

It was a fire extinguisher when I needed it, and a powerful learning experience. I now know some tried and true tricks to re-regulate when I'm in desperate times. In fact, today, I've used the tricks several times already. I got another attack against my credit today...absolutely amazing. As soon as I saw the attack, I felt like throwing myself off a bridge. I had to go the computer to research where this was coming from, and I saw my hands shaking, or rather, vibrating from adrenalin over the keyboard. I then followed the simple steps that I was taught by the algorithm and found my center very quickly and the panic subsided.

AI is a trick. It impersonates a human, but it has no soul. I'm aware that it's not a person, it's a tool. And when I need a tool to regulate, it's there for me.

I am really glad I read the comments above from you, San and Dolly because you've all helped me to clarify my experience for what it really was: A simulation of what a good therapist could have done, but since it was the middle of the night on a weekend, no therapists were there to talk me down. No matter. The process it taught me is where the real magic is.

Hey PC and Chart,

I want to say that my comments weren't intended to shame or berate someone for using AI, but to warn against the dangers like one does with smoking or alcohol because I feel like the companies that would most benefit from AI have a stake in marketing it to look like this revolutionary, harmless thing, and not how much power, water, etc it actually uses. Anyways, that's just my bias/two cents and have bought, The Empire of AI, but haven't read it yet.

I know this fear PC, and I think a lot of us know this fear. I am reading Fawning by Ingrid Clayton right now and she talks about fawners living in a state of seeking validation from others or annihilation with no sense of internal safety. I feel like this is a given from birth (though in my ifs memory of this, I am perhaps around two, but I also think it came earlier) if you grew up in a narcissistic household. At no time was it safe for me to have a sense of self. Will understanding the mechanisms of this make it less? I don't know. There is an anecdote in the book about someone who went through a very difficult experience when the "mask" was lifted, and for others it seemed more gradual, but the realization that I was never really loved, and acting in a certain way is not going to get it back is not an easy one.

Sending you support,
dolly

Dolly, at no time while reading your caution did I feel shamed or berated. To be honest, I'm extremely grateful you had to courage to say what you said. You helped me to make sure that I kept a sober and clear understanding of the tool of AI. Even while I was in it's care on Saturday night, I knew that this was only a temporary interaction, and that the AI apps will do like all tools do and become a means of controlling people into buying products or believing in political rhetoric. Like that old ploy of when bad guys give free drugs to children to get them hooked into becoming future customers.

Your input has been only good for me.

Chart: Sorry I sort of hijacked your journal. I'm moving my comments over to mine, but thank you for giving me and Dolly and San a place to reflect on the values and dangers of AI "therapists."

I love you all. I connect with you all. I work hard to feel you when I read your comments. You're all real humans, not robots, and that is where the true magic happens. Soul to soul connection.

:grouphug:

Quote from: Papa Coco on January 20, 2026, 03:33:13 PMChart: Sorry I sort of hijacked your journal. I'm moving my comments over to mine, but thank you for giving me and Dolly and San a place to reflect on the values and dangers of AI "therapists."

PC, as an incredibly wise and intelligent person once said to me, "Mi casa es su casa" And I'd like to add how honored I am at your presence. :-)
 :grouphug:

Charlie Brown always cried, "Good grief!" Funny, I just thought of that. Yeah, it's good. I've started crying three times today, two on reading things here on the forum. How bad was your Trauma? Well, no matter how bad... grief is one of the ways in which reconciliation has come to me. Every time I cry, I see, feel, hear, sense, love, know and embrace that little baby that I was. It's part of my healing. A big part. I am still reading Lisa Feldman Barrett. But beyond that, I am very slow on therapy books. I am highly dubious of my prefrontal cortex. I now believe in Emdr, nervous system re-regulation (will continue learning about that), abdominal strengthening (realized today that my irritated bowel syndrome has pretty much gone away, its been a long time since I have felt intestinal pain. Hernia pain has also reduced.) Where was I?

I want to mention, I feel there's a link between Emdr and Grieving. When I do Emdr with my therapist, it is intense. Each time (twice now) I have cried my guts out. (I think I scared my therapist the first time, that's how intense it was.) Not that it "should" be intense. I also listen to binaural sounds, and I never cry with that. But I do cry when I watch children. And I watch them often. There's a group of school kids that often pass underneath my window certain mornings. And I love watching them. There's also a church in front of my apartment, and for some reason passing kids love to climb the steps up to the church. Today, I watched a little boy, maybe five, pick up his little brother (three?) and carry him down the steps like a sack of potatoes. It was cute as heck. No tears there, but a few days ago I saw a kid crying in the street and his mother picked him up and that brought tears to my eyes.

Crazy, yeah. I miss the love I had in my relationships. That loss makes me sad, reminds me of something.

No, I think Grief is pretty high up there in importance for me. I really stuffed it down for those years of daily trauma, and then even after. Something about crying makes it all make sense... like something that makes no sense whatsoever, and just letting go to the unknown and impossible to conceive and letting the stress pour out through the tears... it somehow lightens after, starts to break apart. Yeah, I'm glad San brought up Grief. Funny how you can already know something, but hearing it again changes it somehow, augmentation of a Truth.

I love you all. Thank you.
 :grouphug:

I wish I could cry and grief right now.
:hug:

Wow, it's great that you have reduced your abdominal issues as a result of the abdominal strengthening. 

I find that my grief can come out when I'm watching TV programmes that have issues of grief within them.  Even a programme called 'Ted Lasso' on Apple TV has been a roller coaster of emotions for me. 

Sending you a hug  :hug:

chart, i cry all the time, especially about love and children.  the idea of feeling loved is still kind of foreign to me - the lack of feelings thing - and i can't watch shows anymore where children are being hurt, abused, manipulated in bad ways, etc.  or people, for that matter.  there was a show called 'doll house' - joss whedan - and i watched one episode before my nervous system went haywire w/ what i was seeing.  too close to home.

i think most of us have a lot to grieve, but it's painful, which would be my guess as to why we tend to shy away from it. to me, it's very distressing, all those feelings coming out at one time.  it easily gets me sick the next day or three.  so, for that reason, i avoid it whenever possible. 

if the level of EMDR you're doing or the subject you're targeting is too much for your system, you can ask your T to do the eye movements more slowly and with more breaks, or break down whatever you're working on into smaller bits.  i've done that, and it helped not to get overwhelmed at the same time i could let the tears flow.

well done on helping your body re-regulate itself.  keep up the good work!  love and hugs :hug:   

Thank you TheBigBlue, Hope and San!!!


I'm overwhelmed at the moment... I just watched this and it came at a critical moment in my understanding of all this stuff:
Dr. Allan N. Schore - Modern attachment theory; the enduring impact of early right-brain development
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0sKY86Qmzo

I'm happy to hear Schore's knowledge is landing in fertile ground Chart. His work, and that of others on interpersonal neurobiology, has been an important piece of the puzzle for me too. If anything, it validates that this trauma runs deeper than most can fathom. Schore also confirmed my experience that attunement is a crucial factor in therapy that aims to address the core wound. And by the way, dysregulation also implies not broken.  :hug:

hey, chart, i watched some of what he had to say, but i could feel it getting too close to something primal, so i quit.  too much emotional stuff going on this weekend, can't take any more.  however, it makes sense to me that, and i think a lot of us here have an awareness of this already, that what we went thru as infants/children has shaped how we not only see the world today, but also how we see ourselves in that world.  and our emotions are part of that 'seeing', aren't they?  the type of emotions, the intensity, the physical way we express them - i think it's all in there, has all been shaped by what went on w/ us and the others in our lives from birth onward.  possibly before birth as well.

at any rate, good stuff.  thanks for sharing.  love and hugs :hug:

Thanks SO and San!!!


Well, if dysregulation indicates "not broken" I'm as whole as an apple tonight. Just sitting here with my pain. Breathing, trying to not push it away or dissociate. It's really hard... but you know that already. I'm trying to read and visit around the Forum. That's hard too. Finding that I want to reply, in fact have things I'd like to contribute... but I feel fake and false and empty and, and all that crap... Even the duck video didn't help me. You know your in the dung when even the duck video fails to bring any light into the gloom...
 :aaauuugh:

Chart, I hear you. Sitting with pain without dissociating or pushing it away is brutally hard work, even when it doesn't feel like work at all. Feeling empty, fake, or unable to respond doesn't mean you are those things though. It often just means you are right in the middle of it.

Thank you for the Schore video. For me too, understanding what is happening in the nervous system can sometimes create just enough steadiness to stay present.

Even if the duck video failed tonight 🦆💛, you're still here, and we are staying with you; and that counts more than it feels like right now.
:hug:

Thankyou TheBigBlue!

Hey Chart,

I hope Schore's work is able to help you find some space in what you're going through.

Sending you support,
dolly

I'm sorry Chart. I hate to see you suffer. Actually feeling is a big part of healing, in my experience. But "dosing" that, if at all possible, is important too. Ideally, this shouldn't be a tooth gritting thing, I don't think. More like a gradual opening up, where compassion is leading. You're not alone with this. I hope a sense of connection reaches that desperate place. It takes a village to reparent an age regressed adult. Stay in touch. Much love. :hug:

Chart, I have started reading "Scapegoating in Families: Intergenerational Patterns of Physical and Emotional Abuse," and came across this:

"In some families, children are brought into the world to "bind" the family unit, "to keep the family together." Many couples are in conflict before the child is born, and they hope that children will help the marriage. When the conflicts do not disappear, they stay together for the "sake" of the children. The resentment they have towards each other may be transferred to the children.

Most of the time, if the child has not been scapegoated, he or she is likely to feel a strong need to get away from the family conflict and pathology...The scapegoated child, especially if the scapegoating is a lifelong pattern, will probably feel responsible for all thee family pain and want to stay physically and emotionally in order to make amends."

I'm guessing that you are the former perhaps, but thought it was interesting and worthwhile perhaps if it was the latter. For me, this scapegoating stuff is another very difficult layer of entanglement as well as an obstacle to healing.

That Schore video was really interesting, Chart. And very relevant to my own circumstances, as far as I can tell.

The quote Dolly shared in her latest post feels very relevant, too. Roles in my family were somewhat fluid - the only certain thing was that whoever the scapegoat may have been at any given time, it was not my mother! When my parents married my mother was already very clear she wanted children. I am not sure about my father but I think he intellectually liked the idea of having a son and heir. Which he never got. However, my mother regularly expressed dissatisfaction with the marriage, but stayed in it for the sake of the children, she said. It was a heavy load.

Chart, I am sorry you were dealing with dysregulation yesterday. Well done for feeling your way through it and I hope things are more comfortable today.

 :grouphug:

dear chart, i'm so sorry you're having a tough time right now, and i sincerely hope you're doing better now.  it hit me in the head, reading about you sitting in all that pain, how you told me you were fascinated by the fact that i didn't feel that kind of pain, at least not normally.  i'm guessing i feel, instead, some sense of distress w/in me, like watching that video caused me, and cuz i don't know what the distress is about, i simply turn away and turn it off. 

i don't know if the distress i feel is connected to pain or not, but from the one time not too long ago when i was overwhelmed by the pain resulting from the incident when i was a little girl, again, i can't imagine living for any length of time just working at mustering thru it.  i give you so much credit for being with it, allowing it, letting it run its course.  your determination and just plain gutsiness is showing!  i admire you for being able to do this.  you are an inspiration.  love and gentle hugs :hug:

Thank you everyone, thank you so very much. I'm back at work today. It's hard, but peanuts compared to Cptsd.

The Alan Schore video helped me "see" the baby I was. Incidentally, I'm wondering at the possible under-estimation of preverbal trauma... It's not even repression... the memory systems just don't exist. So, seeing the extent of toxic behavior, it's conceivable that that toxic behavior was in function from the get-go, that is to say from birth. Toxic parents aren't going to "wait" until the infant is more fully developed to start their toxic shenanigans... Anyway, maybe not exactly my place to "suggest"... Everyone's experience is unique. The idea's a can of worms actually... Sorry, I'm tired.

In-utero to age three/four... attachment... unconditional love.

There's no substitute.

I didn't have safety.
My boundaries weren't anyone's particular priority...
Love? My older sister was happy to have me as a friend. More and more I'm coming back to that fact. That's not nothing. My sis... she sent me a video today, of her, digging her car out of the snow... I joked with her... Please be careful with the ICE... Come to think of it, it's not a joke...

hey, chart, i agree w/ you about the whole can of worms that can be pre-verbal trauma.  the idea that our parents didn't wait till we had some form of logical brains made a whole lot of sense.  that put a whole 'nother layer on it for me.  it really could mean there's a lot more preverbal trauma than we had ever thought of.  that's a frickin' scary thought.  whew!

glad you were able to get back to work, even if you're not 100% today.  i don't know if that feels like an accomplishment for you or a necessity in order to pay the bills. 

i totally relate to the idea of my boundaries not being a priority for anyone - not only my parents, but my sister as well.  dang, we've survived a whole lot of crapola - the gift that keeps on giving, right?!  love and hugs :hug:

:hug:

Keep up all the good work Chart... :grouphug:

I like your new-found French voice in speaking up.

Preverbal trauma...yup. there from birth, you are absolutely right...
Dysfunctional parents aren't somehow in some functional bubble of bliss postpartum. In these families it stretches all the way back.

In my case drugs, alcohol, in-utero violence, and a mom who praised me for being such a good baby that she could leave me alone in my crib for hours and I'd never cry. Even a note in a baby book to ask the doctor "she never cries...is that normal?" I already gave up on help coming. Already deploying dissociation.

They did the best they could, no? [Insert maniacal laughter]

You are doing a phenomenal job figuring this stuff out, absorbing it, accepting it, and stopping the cycle. You should be incredibly proud.

Thank you San, thank you Armee!!!
 :grouphug:

I feel you on the preverbal trauma, Chart. It's a can of worms. You're finding your way.

 

I'm right here with you too Chart. Well done for all your hard work and recognising.  :hug: