Messages

SO,

The loneliness is the deepest pain for me. We're not truly alone, but because of our traumas we feel like we are. And that feeling is what others can't understand, but those of us who feel it, we understand. I know the darkness of the loneliness. I'm very sorry to hear you're feeling so alone, but I'm glad that you are sharing your feelings with the forum. It's always heartwarming to see other OOTS members respond with compassion to any of us who reach out.

I'm alone too. I'm awake all night too. My heart hurts with yours.

PC

[bullied]

San,

That religious abuse is one of the most insidious parts of my life also. My family was very weird. THEY forced me to go to church 6 days a week for 14 years, and THEY put me into Catholic school against my will and ignored my begging them to let me go to a safer public school with my neighborhood friends. And then when I succumbed to the teachings of the church, that same family scolded me for being religious. (Why teach me something you don't want me to know??) Talk about confusing. Then when I walked away from all that religious stuff, THEN they criticized me for becoming atheist and not believing in what they'd taught me. So...I was darned if I did and darned if I didn't. Now I'm crazy.

I've come to understand that they were nothing more than common, run-of-the-mill bullies. And that's what bullies do. They bully. Period. They would bully me regardless of what I was doing. They'd bully me for going to church and they'd bully me for not going to church. If I parted my hair on the right, they told me I should have parted it on the left. So, when I parted it on the left, they told me I should have parted it on the right. They just used anything as a reason to bully me. When you say that your relatives judged you for wearing a dress, I feel like the more accurate phrasing would be they bullied you for any reason they could grab at at the moment. To me, judging and bullying are synonyms.

If you'd have worn pants that same day they would have said the exact same thing, but they'd have said, "oh I haven't seen anyone wear [any color here] in a long time.

I have developed a response that I'm losing control of. When someone says anything like that to me, I automatically start laughing out loud. I worry that one day I'll get beat up for it, but I can't seem to stop it. It's a kneejerk reaction. But if anyone behaves like a bully around me, I suddenly think it's hysterical and I laugh before I can stop myself.

Maybe I've just taken as much bullying as I can handle in my life and there isn't room for any more of it in my psyche

I made a sign once. I should have t-shirts made with this: "The thing I hate most about bullying is that it works."

Personally I respect you more for not being "normal". Normal is not all it's cracked up to be. Normal people don't make history. Normal people don't solve social problems. Normal people follow the herd. Conformity is the only thing they're good at. Lemmings.

Elvis and Einstein weren't normal.

I think being who we are is the greatest gift we can give back to our creator. Even if the world tries to bully it out of us. It's the bullying, judgy, poison tongued conformists who are disappointing their creator.

StartingHealing,

I hope the medication is good for you and the side effects remain minimal. I had a reaction or two to your mention of the doggos. I have never known love like the love I've received from my dogs over the years.  It's the purest love I've come across ever.

A year ago, I experienced one medicated procedure where I spent about 4 or so hours in a state of euphoric bliss. While under, I was 100 percent absorbed in the absoluteness of unconditional love. My mind started flashing the faces of all the people I've ever loved in my life, and my heart felt what I call, 100 percent connection still to every single person I've ever loved. Not 99% connection but 100%. Even those who died decades ago. Deep down within me I am still completely connected to anyone I've ever been connected with.

I believe with all my heart now that the dogs I've had in my life, and even my one cat, are still with me at the 100% level. They are still in my heart as firmly as is physically possible.

I have no doubt that as you walk the trails, your doggos are all walking with you. I don't say that just as a nice thing to say. This isn't a Hallmark Card. I say that because of what I experienced, and I feel like I don't believe they are still with us, but I feel like I KNOW they are still with us.

At the soul level, we're all one, and that includes our furry friends as well. They're with you still. They always will be. I'll bet you feel them from time to time.

SenseOrgan, San and Chart,

I read in one of the recent books (I've been reading a lot from people like Gary Zukav, Pete Levine, David Hawkins, Robert Monroe, and a few others, so I'm not always able to remember which said what, but I remember what they said), that our brains find various different comforts in various different quadrants, and when we find comfort in support from our teachers, it soothes a different part of the brain than when we find comfort in the support from our peers.

I used that little tidbit of knowledge to help myself understand why it is so wonderful to have a therapist AND friends. The therapist comforts one part of my brain, while friends comfort another part, and I get a more rounded sense of belonging through having both.

This forum is one of the most amazing forums I've ever found on any topic. I have Jeeps, so I'm on Jeep forums. I've joined woodworking forums, and I've tried about three other trauma forums, none of which have the soul that this one has.

I am always glad to hear that my inputs are helpful because I always feel helped by the responses from you all also.

What we do for each other is we help that one part of the brain that feels alone on a peer level. I need that as badly as you do, and the kindness and compassion of the people on this forum are just what that part of my brain needs.

SenseOrgan, I'm very glad you joined this forum and that it's helping you in similar ways as it is to San, Chart, and many, many others.

I have a motto I refer to a lot: We're stronger together.  Also, I sometimes say that I can handle a world of bullies if I have at least one trusted friend at my side. It's always amazing to me too that the friend doesn't have to be standing right next to me. It can be someone I share posts with from across the globe, and the magic of the compassion we have for one another transcends the distance.

 

StartingHealing,

You brought up something that I've been thinking about lately too: I was raised to believe that I was not acceptable as I was, so I learned early on to be what I thought people around me wanted me to be. That way I wouldn't be ostracized from society. Now, at age 65 I still don't know how to answer the question, "What do you like?" I don't know. I can't discern between the things I do because I want to do them, from those that I was taught to want. How many of my interests are really me trying to be who think my parents wanted me to be?

This act of becoming our authentic selves is a lot easier said than done, at least for me. I can't become my authentic self when I can't define what that even looks like. If I can't define the target, how will I know when I hit it?

SenseOrgan,

It's beautiful to watch people come to the rescue when one of us reaches out. Reading Chart and San's responses to you, SenseOrgan, is what I call beautiful. I read a lot of different types of books that talk about how to find peace in this chaotic world, and I've recently become very aware that as biological humans, our primary survival instinct is to cry out for help and receive it by our peers. It's also in our natural wiring to come to the aid of one who cries out.

In many stories from OOTS members, we cried out as children, and didn't get the help we were designed to get. It messed us up. We had to find a secondary survival technique, so that's how most of us learned how to run from help rather than accept it. We dissociate or become addictive as we look for other ways to reach out and get the help we yearn for.

When I see any of us calling out for connection, and then see other members rise up and reach back, it literally warms me. I am very sorry to read of the pain that you and many of us still harbor, but at the same time very warmed to witness the caring responses.

After reading your post, I thought I'd check out Hania Rani. Wow. That's a musician who plays from the heart, not the head. That's where I differentiate pianists from artists. She's not just a piano player, she's an artist. Her music is heart driven, not head-driven. I see why you were in tears listening.

I tend to live my life with my feet on the ground and my hands reaching at the stars. I see the heart as the place where we connect. She plays from the heart, and you listen through the heart. So, in a way, I felt like maybe you were feeling the connection through her magical music that you struggle to feel normally in this messy world.

Music can make me cry when I need it to. I have a few favorite heart-felt songs that I go to when I need so badly to reach out and feel like someone is reaching back. Music has a power we can't fully grasp, especially this kind of heart-felt music.

Thank you for sharing her with us. This is good music to listen to on those long evenings when I can't otherwise feel my feet on the ground anymore.

Checking in today.

I've been off the forum for a while now just dealing with getting my house in order. My grandson's car racing is keeping the whole family busy while I'm working to organize my house after decades of gathering clutter and losing track of who I am and what I want in life.

Clearing 40 years of clutter is emotionally difficult. In order to let go of thousands of items, I have to go through the emotions of loss over and over and over again. The pre-internet world was one of socializing and being close to neighbors and workmates. But the world we live in now is lonely and isolated. And every box I open reminds me of that.

I've always been affected by trauma, and I've always been unsure of myself, easily depressed and anxiety-ridden, but during my younger days I was also a socialite. In an effort to keep myself feeling valued, I put myself on stages, performing comedy and singing and officiating weddings and attending events and going out with friends and supporting my childrens' sporting events, and trying to start little in-home businesses. I was overachieving to try and make up for my lack of self-worth. I lived the life of someone who was trying to matter, but never felt like I could. No matter what mountain I climbed, I'd always see another mountain on the other side. Nothing ever satisfied my need to feel like I had the right to live on this earth with you all. But now, I live in a quiet, isolated world, and every box I open (And there are hundreds of boxes), I find things that once held value but no longer does. It's an emotional roller coaster to be doing this. And after working for weeks clearing clutter, organizing drawers, shredding thousands of old documents, I'm looking around and the house is still cluttered. It feels endless.

There's a little sense of accomplishment when a single desktop or drawer is finally organized, but then the next drawer or box or shelf just feels like I'm sinking back into the emotional clutter all over again.

I'm glad I'm finally taking this on, and it's giving me a lot of fodder for the healing mill. I guess we can't really heal if we don't have something to heal from. And all these boxes and documents and expired supplies are giving me a way to let go of the past. I live by the rule of "as above, so below" meaning that I have noticed that what happens inside me is symbiotically happening outside of me simultaneously. Letting go of the past is best done physically while it's happening emotionally. As I let go of my childrens's old toys and all our old medical files and jewelry that we'd all given to each other decades ago, I'm simultaneously letting go of my emotional connection to the past. As little boxes of items leave the house, I feel a little bit of release from my emotional attachments. It's like all those old sayings of "getting it off my chest" or "Feeling lighter". I can't believe how much past I've been hanging onto both emotionally and physically. I hope I can keep up the momentum, because at the speed I'm going now, it could take a year or more to finish decluttering this big old house. As difficult as the past was, this house used to be teaming with life. OUr children lived here, Coco's mom lived here with us for 14 years. There were always extra children sleeping on the floor in the TV room on Saturday mornings with our sons. It's just Coco and me now. And I have to find my peace with all that.

They say Change is the only constant, and I'm finding it to be true. The pre-internet society is gone. Our stores and roller rinks and dance clubs and bowling allies are all closing down because people socialize by text now. It's difficult for me to deal with. Isolation is one of our biggest problems as CPTSD survivors, and the world is now making isolation too easy for us. I sometimes feel like I haven't used my voice in days. I hide in my house just like everyone else does. I'm so grateful to have one of my two grandsons forcing the family out to the race track every weekend. The other boy, he lives in his bedroom with headphones on playing video games with the voices of other kids also hiding in their bedrooms. So it's a very big job this little guy has taken on to get his Papa and Gramma Coco out of our own home and out into the world again with him. For that I owe him a debt of gratitude.

I'll try to be on the forum again some more. But for now, I have to get ready for grandson's big day. He's been chosen as one of the little drivers who gets to drive on the big track today for the first time. His usual track is very small and is only for 5–14-year-olds. But today, they created a special event for 15 of the little drivers to drive their little cars on the big raceway and he is insistent that his grandparents be there to witness his big event. we won't see much of him because we'll be up in the stands with his other grandparents and aunts and uncles, but he'll know we're there, and that's his contribution to our social life. If it weren't for this event, we'd both stay in the house today just going through boxes again...alone.

I'm using his need for us to participate as a tool to help try and get myself out of the house again. I realize that I've spent my life feeling forced to experience life, and I've become too focused on my own personal inner self. I have become a Human-Having. I want to start valuing experience rather than my house and possessions. I want to go back to becoming a Human-BEING rather than a human-DOING or a human-HAVING. Or a human-HIDING.

The trick, for me, is going to be in feeling like I'm doing this for myself and not focusing on who is watching me. Even when I was a socialite it was all about image. I was more worried about what people saw me doing than I was about enjoying just doing it. Even now, when I ride my bike alone, I'm constantly looking around to see who's watching me. Am I pedalling correctly? Am I going fast enough to look like I'm having fun? HOLY MOLY! This has been so stressful, always watching to see who is judging me. I've spent my life working harder to look like I"m having a good time, rather than just letting myself HAVE a good time.

That made having fun into a stressful chore. I just want to relax and enjoy something without worrying about whether I'm enjoying it properly. My therapist once said I worry too much about "doing it right" and not about just enjoying it. (It being, anything I do). He has CPTSD also. He jokes with me that he and I are going to be on our deathbeds one day apologizing to the nurses for not dying properly.

I just want to breathe deeply and enjoy something for the experience of doing it without feeling like I have to write a summary report later proving I enjoyed it properly.

I have to get going. The racetrack is a busy place and we need to get ready to go.

In Love and Light and Compassion for all,
Papa Coco

I'm having thoughts that hit me this morning about how to handle my various trauma responses. 

I've been looking at the anxiety of abandonment as a problem. Today I realized that there are some of my anxieties that are connected to each other, like hybrids. A hybrid is something that's one thing AND another thing. The two things become one thing, like, there are electric cars and gas powered cars. But there are also hybrid cars that are both electric and gasoline.

Well, I realized this morning that the fear of abandonment is what's driven me into so much fear all my life, but that my fear of abandonment is a hybrid part of fear of being abandoned AND fear of being betrayed.

My fear of being betrayed makes me actually abandon people myself.

In 5th grade, my best friend suddenly wanted me to kiss him, and when I didn't, HE called ME gay, which in 1970 in a church school was the most shameful thing any boy could be called. It is still a difficult label to deal with in the world, but it was nearly a death sentence in 1970 Christian America. So, I was labeled and given the nickname "homo" which I never knew how to stop all the other people in that school from calling me for the remainder of my childhood. Meanwhile, at home, in my family, betrayal was just another thing to do every day of the week. My family would tell me things and make me believe them and then ridicule me in public for having believed what they'd told me. Or they'd instruct me to do something, and after I'd done it, they'd say I shouldn't have done that. In the end, my own sister wanted my share of the family inheritance so she tried to get me to kill myself so she could have my share... Betrayal. I can't just say I need help connecting with people if I don't also address the fear that getting close to people can be horrifically dangerous.

All these years in therapy I've been working to remedy my fear of abandonment, without even realizing that I can't connect with others because I fear they're going to betray me eventually anyway. So how can I find healing from my fear that nobody will connect with me, when deep down in the internal wiring, I'm the one who is blocking connection by being sure that being loved by someone will lead to the pain of betrayal anyway? My therapist says I was raised in a no-win scenario, where I was forced to trust people and then ridiculed for trusting them. I'm starting to truly grasp the truth in what he's been saying all along.

I don't know yet where this new epiphany will take me, but it sure helps to dig down and find the hidden little chains that are keeping me stuck to past anxieties.

DesertFlower,

I am laughing so hard right now at your response. SO beautiful!  P.T.U.N! 

Your brief response has cheered me up in a big way. I'll be smirking about our new acronyms now all day. From one P.T.U.M to one P.T.U.N., I hope we both have a more pleasant day today.

Take care, my friend,

[Journal Entry for today]

Journal Entry for today (Note: Two posts here. One above and this one here)

As mentioned above, I can feel the helplessness that bullies are running our world now, and that, even as they take and take and take, all I can do is move into a more spiritual sense of constant prayer for Love and Acceptance. SOME of my fears and EFs are legitimate because bullies really truly are taking my life away from me one hateful law at a time. But also, a great deal of my anxiety comes through EFs from having been raised in bullyish institutions. The present is reminding me of the past for a one-two punch and double the emotional duress. Having all my rights stripped away from me today feels just like it did in my childhood. That's where CPTSD is making my EFs worse than they need to be. I can't do much to stop my terror at losing our freedom, but I CAN continue to give my childhood EFs over and disconnect them from my memories.

The "real world" isn't making sense to me anymore, so I'm a parttime Urban Monk now (LOL). For a few hours a day, in prayer and meditation and in the books written by these experienced trauma therapists, I'm finding myself a little bit better each day at disconnecting my emotions from my memories. I'm getting much quicker at recognizing a trauma EF versus a real-life threat. And, as I practice allowing my emotions to talk to me, and I give my fears the love I wanted someone to give me the first time I felt them, the more I'm feeling able to handle the REAL threats in life without the Trauma attachment making the anxiety exponentially worse.

Coco had her hands full with me today. Every year I pay all of our taxes on our home, cars, and whatever else during the first week of April. My strategy is to get it all done at once and off my mind. Today I did it all while also updating all our car insurance paperwork. Long-story-short I got really confused with too many papers being handled at once. I started angrily yelling at my printer because it wouldn't scan properly. All my license tabs for my car's license plates came in the mail on the same day. My wife and I both drive Jeeps. Different years, different models, but when I got done tagging them with these expensive license tags, I realized I'd mixed them up and put mine on her Jeep and hers on mine. Panic just sent me into outerspace. I was angry, ashamed of myself for being angry, frustrated at my own stupidity for mixing up the tabs, and feeling afraid that my wife was going to be angry with me for my behaviors. The license bureaus are so busy they wouldn't answer their phones. Embarrassed, I had to get Coco out of what she was doing so we could drive into town to find out how to fix it. The fix was simple, but not until after I had burned up about 3 of my 9 lives. She took me out to lunch later to try to get me to calm down. While waiting for our food, I literally thanked her for loving me even in my skyrocketing anxiety episodes. She smiled calmly and said, "You're worth it."

Man, I got lucky when I met her 42 years ago.

I'm not immune to EFs. Probably never will be. But I'm getting through them faster now. Coco loves me and calms me down now in ways she couldn't have a year ago. I'd have been a ranting maniac and then a depressed sad sack for days if today had happened last year.

More and more, real life is confusing me. I'm contemplating having a doctor somewhere test me to see if I'm getting dementia or something. My therapist believes it is the state of the world along with me having to deal with so much pain and loss lately that he keeps saying, "You're just processing too much right now."

I see him tomorrow. I'll tell him the story of putting the wrong tabs on the wrong cars to see if he still believes I don't need to worry about my mental acuity.

CPTSD is a monster, but there are some truly good people trying to help us right now. I won't stop pursuing them. I read their books. I listen to their podcasts. I stay on this forum because it helps. It truly helps to reach out to kindred souls and feel the connection with my peers.

I'm getting a tad better because I'm finding connections with others who share in my burdens.

I can't do this alone. I just can't. I owe my gentle movement toward peace to the people who reach back when I reach out.

Thank you everyone.

Papa Coco: P.T.U.M. (Part Time Urban Monk) (with CPTSD).

[StartingHealing,]

StartingHealing,
I couldn't agree more about our modern life. I truly believe that we have created a culture that is totally unmanageable. I've started pretending I'm ready to give away all my possessions and join a monastary where I can live completely disconnected from all of it. Of course I have NO intention of acting on it. But today, I did tell my wife that I'm declaring myself to be a Part-Time Urban Monk. LOL. It's a comical comment, but it has a serious intent. I am rapidly losing interest in my possessions and clutter and chaos. I'm not planning to go into a monastery, but I'm now practicing a couple of hours a day doing what Monks typically do: which is Pray for peace, meditate for wisdom, study spiritual truth for emotional stability, and perform social service anyway I can. Helping friends, perhaps volunteering, or just being kind to everyone I meet on the streets and in the markets. It's making me feel less like a victim of the new world.

It's no secret that the US is falling victim to its own shame, but as the world crumbles around me, I'm moving my heart to Love and compassion. Those two things cannot be taken away from me if I value them strongly enough.

I've been telling friends that I don't want to hear the news. I don't listen, read, or watch any news anymore, because it robs me of sleep. Up until this last week, I would get frustrated at friends who would hear me tell them that I want to stay blind to it, only to have them start telling me what I have been trying to not hear. But last week, when a neighbor did that to me, told me all sorts of news items about how bad things are getting, it hit me that if I want to be a compassionate friend, that I need to lovingly let them express their terror to me, their friend. I grew up with secret stresses that nobody would let me talk to them about. My mother told me "don't bring your little school yard problems home for me to deal with". 4 suicide attempts later, I realized that all I'd needed was for someone to listen to my side of the story. So when a neighbor unintentionally unloads their terror onto me, I can love them and let them do so. My new policy, as of last Friday night, is to do my best to focus on my Monkish prayers for peace while still compassionately letting people be heard by me, their friend.

I can balance this. I can stay off the news, and I can still let them tell me what their greatest fears are. I'll hear what I don't want to hear, but in so doing, I'm helping carry a burden they can't find a way to let go of themselves. I don't have to respond by joining into their anger, but I can respond by letting them know that I'm as afraid as they are, and that I'm more concerned with comforting their pain than I am with the news stories of the day. I've learned that no matter what horrible situation a person finds themselves in, if we can find a sense of purpose, even in famine, and war, and imprisonment, that our sense of purpose can carry us through the pain of the situation. My sense of purpose is now to comfort my fellow humans in their fears of what is coming.

DesertFlower,
I have heard stories like that all my life, about how people casually blame women for being raped and targeted. I just can't believe people still do that, but they do. My daughter In Law once told me that she wished she could dress up to look pretty and go out with her friends to enjoy a nice night off, but if she does, too many ugly old men target her and ruin her night with lewd comments and very, VERY unwelcome invitations. It simply isn't fair, and it shows how far from reality too many people have gone. Why can't a young lady go out with her friends for a dinner and a few drinks without people saying, "She was asking for it"?

I am as disgusted by it as you are, but I do admit that I've walked a few miles in those shoes, which means I have an empathetic connection to the same type of disgust. In my teens I worked as a busboy in a lounge restaurant. More often than I can count, old men tried talking me into coming home with them after closing. I have always had a genuine smile and an interest in anyone who wants to talk with me. I guess that meant I was inviting them to tromp my boundaries also. And then, as a young adult, I had to quit using public gyms because too many times, I'd get phone numbers stuffed into my pockets, or invitations to go "skinny dipping" with other gym members.  It infuriated me that I couldn't just be a teenage boy with a job and a gym membership, but I also had to be a target for these old guys who had NO boundaries they wouldn't cross.

The more I learn about trauma disorders and how many people find their solace in addictions, sex addictions, drug, alcohol, even a desperate need for wealth and status, the more I see that this is how people hide from their own pain.

It's easier to blame victims than it is to stand up and admit that the bullies are the problem: NOT the victims. And what you said in today's post is that the politician in your country who said that IS A BULLY! And he bullied your entire country with that unconscionable declaration that women just need to stop letting men rape them.  We have those same lost, insensitive, selfish, narcissistic bullies running our country also. I do remember a year or two ago a high ranking official said that women can get raped and they won't get pregnant if they just don't want to.

We have a standup comedian here who lost my following when he said of 12 year old boys who get seduced by their 6th grade teachers, that we need to stop punishing the teachers because "boys want sex, so it's a fringe benefit." My God, How can people become so jaded?

Chart
:  Right back atcha! Thanks for the hug. They actually help.

L2N,

Your heartfelt and sincere posts draw me in every time. I feel, or have felt, every word of your recent posts in my own life also.  When I read your letters, I don't just understand the words, I feel them. Empathy does that. We empathize when we have walked in the shoes of another. And empathy is one of the most beautiful feelings in my life. Love, connection, forgiveness, empathy...these are the feelings that I live for, and BTW, those aren't poetic words. I live for connection. I am still alive today only because of connection. I've been rescued from suicide about 4 times now, at ages 12, 20, 20 again, and 50. Each suicide attempt came during a feeling that nobody was connected with me, nobody cared about me, and the pain from being alone in a crowded world was literally unbearable.

Today's post drew me in mostly from your contemplations on Hope.

Speaking only for myself, hope, like anything, can heal me or kill me, depending on how I use it. It kept me going for a long time, but it never brought me out of the pain. In fact, in my life, it eventually caused a lot of my pain because the thing I'd hoped for from birth just never, ever, ever materialized.

In 2010, after our baby sister's suicide, my huge Catholic family totally unraveled. We had finally come to a long-needed war that irreparably tore the entire clan apart once and for all. (I am quoted as saying "my family finally became so ugly that even I couldn't love them anymore"). My eldest sister and I both ostracized at the same time (actually I left first. A few years later she left also. I never knew my eldest sister because she was married and gone from the west coast when I was only a small child. We've recently reconnected, but neither of us are back in the family, nor do we even know if any of them are still alive or not). Our littlest sister had been one of the people who'd saved me from suicide in my childhood (1972). But by 2008, they'd driven her to suicide, and I wasn't able to save her the way she'd saved me. As with the death of your lifelong friend, my life changed course at the death of my beautiful little sister. Knowing it was the family that did it to her opened my eyes to realize they were at the root of my own suicides also.

In 2010. I cursed hope. It had driven me deeper into the jungles of hopelessness by failing to help me dig up and out of the loneliness of my life. I started looking for any way to lift myself up from despair without following my beautiful sister into the darkness. I found a quote that changed me profoundly.

"Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man."
― Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Sometimes, when we are so out of balance that we aren't even surviving, we suddenly overcorrect. We swing the pendulum too far the other way. If we do this on a bicycle, obviously we trade one problem for the opposite. Overcorrecting leads to an unrecoverable wobble and finally a mouthful of gravel in a twisted mess of flesh and chrome.  --But then, we learn, and we never overcorrect with the handlebars again. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

I think that's what I did. I over corrected. Nietzsche's life was a struggle from birth. He had proven to have insights into the human psyche that are still studied in psychology today, but at the same time he was riddled with health problems that not only didn't get better but progressed insidiously until his death. His hope for healing was unrealized. He was, in some ways, a fellow tortured soul. Perhaps more so than us. But his words of despair hit me in the heart and changed my view of life forever.

At first, I felt a huge relief. I saw that it was my hope that had kept me voluntarily tied to the deck of my family's sinking ship. My misuse of hope was from being raised in incurable pain. As a child I was helpless to defend against the jealousies and criticisms of my family and church. Since I felt helpless, hope was my only strategy for healing. Helplessness drove me to use hope too strongly. Hope had me sitting in wait for that ultimate apology from my abusers for what they'd done to my little sister and I. We were the late in life babies. My two next-elder siblings (#'s 2 and 3 of 5 --I'm #4) were much older than sis (#5) and I. Their abusive ways of treating us, coupled with the abuse the two of us had suffered in Catholic school, set us apart from the "real family" while it bonded us to each other like soldiers in a foxhole. (She's been gone since 2008, and I still cry when I try to talk about her). I know I'm not alone in feeling trapped in hope. I think this is what drive many people to say, "hope is all we have left". Hope can be driven by helplessness. When we have no other avenue, hope itself becomes the last hope.

I think that, for me, I have to realize that hope itself wasn't bad, but that when the day came that I could stand on my own, I had simply forgotten to stop relying solely on it like it was all I had left in the world.


TODAY: I'm trying to find the proper use for hope. It has a purpose, and I'm not good at truly recognizing what that purpose is. I relied on it solely to fix my pain, and obviously that's not what it was meant for.

I vilified it after sister's suicide. I walked away from it. I scorned it. I blamed it for my stalled lack of self-confidence to fix my own problems. I had wasted my life overdoing my hope for change to happen while the world around me went out and forged their own change. Hope didn't save her and it wasn't saving me. I had mistaken it for having a power it doesn't have, while somehow not truly learning what it's true power actually is.

I don't mean to be hijacking your journal. I just wanted to share with you that your words around hope touched me, and I wanted to share with you why they touched me. It's easy to say "I resonate" but the words "I resonate" mean more when I share with you why I resonate.

I guess, in what sounds like a lighthearted joke, but it's a serious comment, "I hope I can find the proper way to use hope" so it drives healing, rather than prolongs my agony.

I think that I am healing. I feel much more stable and able to let go of the pain of my past now. I know I can't change the past, but the books I'm reading now are teaching me how to heal the emotional pain of the unchangeable past.

But, I am truly working to find the real purpose and best use for hope in my own life.

As is my custom, I apologize for writing such a long response, and for possibly adding my own drama to your trauma. If I missed the mark here, by adding too much of my own feelings to yours, I apologize. You've sparked me to take a look at hope again, and I wanted to share with you that your posts are typically quite helpful to me.

Sincerely, and from the heart,

PC

Hi StartingHealing,

I like to share what I learn. I don't push it on anyone, but I figure if I share my experiences, positive, neutral or negative, perhaps others will find my reports helpful in their own lives also, and it would be wrong for me to not share what I learn with my peers. In the three levels of survival instincts, 1) Personal, 2) Tribal/national/family, and 3) Species, I think that my own personal need to share with people who have similar issues as mine must be an instinctual need to help my own peer group (level 2) survive in a world of pitfalls and beartraps. To me, it's my wiring and I can't seem to stop sharing.

At times, I look in the mirror and ask myself why I can't just shut up and keep my experiences to myself. I think, "I talk too much. I must be annoying to people", but before I go two steps, I suddenly feel an insatiable, organic urge to share what I'm learning with peers who might find it helpful. I guess there's shame involved also. I've been vilified and blamed and scapegoated for things I did and for things I didn't do. My family would routinely blame ME for their mistakes for not somehow warning them not to do stupid things. No matter who fell in my big Catholic family, somehow it was my fault for their injuries. If I was there, it was my fault they fell. If I wasn't there, then it was my fault for not catching them. My therapist routinely reminds me that I grew up in a no-win scenario, vilified at home and at Catholic school, and always for the purpose of shifting their blame onto a naive stooge (me).

It sux to be the villain in other people's stories. That's actually what has been the underlying cause of most of my past suicide attempts.

I hope to hear more about your hypnosis experiences. As you begin to realize if or how it works, I'm open to hearing about it. I'm interested in possibly finding a good hypnotherapist also. I just want to hear that it was helpful for trauma release before I go through the exercise of finding one, and then investing my trust, time and money. My past hypnosis experiences have been a mixed bag of not at all helpful, up to somewhat helpful, but I've never really found a truly qualified practitioner. Mostly it was people who said they could help me quit smoking, only to realize it didn't.

L2N

You are very articulate. The way you describe what you go through is clear and easy to connect with.

I understand what you're saying. I'm grateful that you know that people really do love you, and that people (like me) really can see you and can feel your need for connection. I am also glad that you are aware that the problem is internal, and by how you describe it, I would agree that you seem to have a strong understanding of where it came from and why it haunts you. 

I have been trying to define what "cured" means in own life, and your posts are sort of helping me to find the answer. Today I realize that I don't need to feel like life has no problems. I don't need an easy life, and I don't even need to never feel threatened again. What I NEED is to gain the ability to feel the love that comes my way. I think that's what I'm learning here right now, thanks in large part to your posts on the subject.

Ever since you joined the forum, I think my loneliness has sensed the similarity with yours. Birds of a feather recognize each other in a crowd, I guess.

I assume you talk with your therapist about this. In my case, I wasn't aware of myself enough to know why I felt generically "bad" when I started therapy. It wasn't until one session about 5 years ago, when I told my therapist how I was feeling, and he said, "That sounds so lonely." It hit me like a flash of light. I'd never considered that the hollowness and inability to connect with the people I loved was called "loneliness" but that is exactly what it is. Once I identified my generic unhappiness as loneliness, I started working with my therapist to tackle it, and we are starting to make some progress. Finally.

I'm starting to feel a tad bit better at allowing myself to accept people's love. I have a long way to go, but for now, I just like sharing with you that loneliness and difficulty in accepting love are my own personal struggles also. And some days are better than others.

It seems we both know that we're loved and lovable, but we struggle to feel it. So, that's our shared challenge: to feel the love we haven't yet developed the skills to accept.

We both may feel lonely, but we are doing it in the same lifeboat together.

Blue Sky,

It's so great to have you back, stronger than ever. 2024 sounds like it was a novel unto itself. I'm very glad you survived it AND came out of it stronger than ever.

Your post is inspiring. I can feel the cheerfulness in your written voice, and it makes me feel a little cheerful too.

Good idea to change the title from "Blue's blues". That title was appropriate in 2023, but after rising up stronger in 2024, "Blue Sky Blooming" feels more appropriate to who you are now.

And congratulations on finding a new company that you more enjoy working with.

Happy 2025!!!!