Messages

sanmagic7
Wow, those people added insult after injury, probably with the best of intentions. There are a gazillion ways to tell someone to shut up and those sound a lot like it. There is no way to skip to acceptance or forgiveness. Those are hard earned in the case of C-PTSD, or may never emerge from the ashes at all. It is the cherry on top of the healing journey.

Thanks a lot for your support. 

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Toxic shame: someone else's projections absorbed into your sense of self.

Thank you for being here sanmagic7 

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The incident has triggered the whole gamma of emotions that are tied to the abuse. I have felt more indirect layers of it throughout my life. Depression and anxiety are so abstract, that they themselves function as an obscuration of the devastating reality they hint at. How it really feels to be abused by your own parent(s) as an innocent child is more raw. I'm more in touch with that boy than I ever was. I'm more on his side than I ever was. I'm more clear on what has been done to him than I ever was.

And it's fragile. His experience was effectively denied, his truth effectively invalidated, his voice effectively silenced. Little is needed to switch back to that default. Put on the spot, I can't communicate the actual horror. Not even a watered down version of it. It's stored in me as something that is not allowed to exist. Let alone be voiced. I don't even need people to have a fawn response. My experience was pushed back so aggressively and systematically, that existing as a sovereign individual itself is hard. I'm trained to respond to the needs and opinions of others first and foremost. My own come second at best. The world barges in and I respond.

This isn't strictly a psychological issue, which could be fixed with enough willpower and awareness. More like the polyvagal kind of thing. Safety overrules all else. Voicing my own experience and advocating for myself are tied to danger. Not that I can't and won't, but it takes a lot of effort. The more overwhelm I experienced over the years, the more effort that took. And the closer I get to the raw experience of the little boy, the harder it gets to find the words to express what he feels.

I can take the time for it, and write down pages of what I've been through, and be reduced to nothing by just one invalidation if I'd literally voice it to my mother. This is why I used to perfect my story to the most effective and concise message if I needed to get something across. Engaging long enough with the material beforehand, gave me just enough focus to not be obliterated before I made my point.

I feel like I need to speak my mind. In detail. To validate the little boy and to do him justice. I've started listening to Pete Walker's book again to help me find my voice [which is easy with all that resonates so clearly]. It's really hard to listen to, just like last time. There's a real risk of it plunging me into an EF. So I need to dose that too. Besides you guys, I have no friend who really gets C-PTSD. I feel vulnerable because of that. I do not want to have to explain C-PTSD to anyone. Especially not while struggling so hard to speak my mind already. Because having to explain such a complex affliction also evokes the above response. The same goes for the intelligence gap between me and my mother. She used to ridicule me for my intellect and I am still burdened with the task of dumbing down how I think in order to be understood. There are layers of obstacles in place to get heard. Or rather, to be able to stick with the little boy and voice his experience. That should be my main objective here, I think.

I'm supposed to help my mother move stuff out of her house in a month. Right now I'm flooded with emotions, which are pretty * far from wanting to help her out. Things are not black and white though. In recent years my mother has been doing her best to treat me respectfully and she has helped me a lot. I see that and appreciate that. It's the reason we are still in touch. Even though discussing the elephant in the room has not been possible. I feel torn. On a bigger scale by the whole family that has fallen apart. At the core, the biggest driver for that was my mother not facing her own shadow. There can not be any conversation about any of the family issues without addressing that. And there's a big, narcissistic defense around that too.

My mom texted me and I only vaguely saw it was about moving the stuff out of the house. I didn't read it. I don't know how to respond. Tomorrow I'll see my shrink. I'm at least going to speak to him first.

 

[myself]

Hi dollyvee, good to see you again! Thanks for your support. Yes, my mom did respond well. She apologized for disclosing the info. I didn't discuss the content of the cascade that followed for me. Yet. Not a good moment for it. That's a conversation that needs to happen later, which will be a lot more challenging.

sanmagic7
Thanks for your encouragement. Your question is deeper than I can possibly answer here. I remember feeling like my mother had killed me when I was a suicidal teen while I cried every day for years on end. I couldn't pinpoint it, but my heart knew and I grieved endlessly. Basically for decades. I gradually figured out what happened while drowning in heavy emotions. What came up recently isn't really new. Over the years, it seems to edge closer to the pure version of what I have felt as a kid. During triggers like these, I'm suddenly flooded with things I wanted to say as a kid but couldn't because I fawned, imploded, and didn't know what was being done to me. I still have a hard time verbalizing it, especially when I'm not in touch with the raw fury. So the trigger temporarily lifts the dissociation and I get a peek under the hood again.

Years ago I made a little drawing with a sad face with arrows pointing towards him, and a smiling face with arrows pointing away from him. The theme of expressing myself rather than only responding to stuff bombarding me is old and incredibly difficult for me to manifest. This is also about the neurological reality of C-PTSD. Overwhelm is a big factor in my life. It only got worse over the years. There's sensitivities I probably inherited, maximally exacerbated up by the circumstances I started life in. The ramifications are devastating. I grieved all of that and eventually found a lot of peace in being with what is after a complete collapse and some experiences with psychedelics.

For lack of a better word, eventually an encounter with the absolute made it easier to embrace the messy humanness of this existence more fully. I've welcomed horrific experiences, even on the brink of insanity. And I think expressing anger is even more difficult for me. I've worked with anger off and on for a long time, but never as close to what my inner child could never express as recently. Looking back, I think what's deepening is the aspect of not abandoning my inner child myself. So my my care for him becomes stronger than my fawning tendency in the moment I can allow myself to be furious. It's still very fragile, but all things considered this a very good sign. I've been out of the EF today and I feel good about me. 

O gosh Desert Flower, I just read your mother passed away recently.

The guilt you wrote about is so familiar. As is the fight for taking up space. For existing. What if you don't need to be forgiven? What if there is nothing to be forgiven? Like a baby does not need to be forgiven for existing and having needs? Parentification steals your loyalty to yourself and chains it to the needs of another (which becomes all others, like strangers in a line in a super market).

I've done a lot of these exercises like you do in the super market. It helps a great deal. Over time, they corrode deeply ingrained patterns of who you are in relation to others. And how you relate to the internalized critic. The more staying power you develop around those horrible feelings like guilt and shame, the weaker their influence. It feels like imminent death to not act the way you were manipulated with them, and to steer away from what used to provide a sense of safety in that assault. I'd say this is not about losing the feeling of guilt, but about claiming your natural right to exist, as you are. And to get on your own side, where you belong. Awareness of what's happening, when it's happening, is half the job.

It may be a difficult time to take on such a big challenge in the aftermath of your mothers passing. It may also be the perfect moment for it. Only you can know this. In any case, you are not alone in this, as others have also expressed. Good luck. 

Hi sanmagic7, I missed you too! Love and hugs right back at ya 

Hi Hope67, you're back :-) Nice to see you again. 

Hi Desert Flower, thanks so much for your support. I'm happy to see you again. 

Hi Chart, Nice to see you again too! It's wonderful you feel good about you. Imagine that being your natural state... Yes, movement. In some states/situations it matters less what the step is going to be exactly, than taking a step in the first place. Being open to not knowing where you'll end up next is more like living and less like surviving. So yeah, I think also part of outgrowing CPTSD. It's about moving anyway. Without certainty, despite fear, right? Mindfully, but moving nonetheless. Being overly attached to the outcome is a way of not moving. Am I willing to dance to life's melody, whether it's in minor or major key? Can I let life dance me? Happy gardening with your daughter 

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Phew, I gradually ended up in an EF. It's a stark contrast with what I wrote the other day. My mom shared some info about my cousin's whereabouts. Many years ago my controlling sister forbid me to see him unless I vowed not to share any info with her son's father. She went full on parental alienation syndrome, enabled by my mother and everybody else around. Except for me. No civilized, mature communication, only decrees, slander, and ignoring appeals to reason. My cousin lost his father and me, his uncle. I'd been close with my cousin since his birth. I lost my whole family over this and some more traumatic stuff.

Five years later I reconnected with my mother and my other sister. Six years later I went no contact again with that sister. That may very well be forever. Another cousin is involved whom I don't see anymore as a result. All this time my mother didn't share any info about my cousin with me. Because it was presumed I was still in touch with his father. So the other day my mother shared some vague info about my cousin's whereabouts with me. Later she got scared and asked me not to share it with his father (whom I'm not in contact with, which she knows).

This was the incident that slowly started spiraling me out. I told my mother that I make my own decisions and I'm sick and tired of this controlling behavior. Again it was about her fear and placing the responsibility for making that go away on my shoulders. It triggered the trauma of the load I had to carry as a kid. Forced upon me in so many ways. How this abuse determines so much of my life till this day. I wanted to tell her she doesn't have a beginning of an understanding what she's done to me. That she destroyed me to the bone. This entire family drama stems from her not dealing with difficult emotions like an adult and passing it on. It has already scarred the next generation for life too.

She is not that person anymore. And I know it didn't start with her. And at the same time my inner child is still being tortured by how he has been treated. I'm not going to downplay any of that. The last couple of days the abandonment melange took over. I do not want to be dragged under by this and I fully acknowledge the reality of this at the same time. I don't want to do anything stupid, so I've taken some time to let the wave pass. Even though I was invalidated at my last attempt, I do need to give voice to the little one who has been treated so badly by his own mother. I imploded as a response as a kid. So many years and so much effort later, a significant part of me is still stuck there. It's infuriating and devastating. I'm sick and tired of being dragged into this drama over and over. Enough!

[is]

Well. A bit of a hiatus. It doesn't feel quite right to disappear. The past months I've been extremely busy. Life is different than it used to be.

For many years I was spending my days just meditating, exercising, hanging on to my fingertips. Endlessly searching online for ways to connect to people. Searching for one thing that would be a beginning of a path out of perpetual torture. All in solitude.

I just thought about a moment, somewhere in January or February of this year. I had a bit of energy and focus and decided to clean up just a tiny bit in my backyard. That got out of hand completely. That spark reignited a love for growing plants, that has been with me since I was a teen.

I went through * being able to do this in more than one way. And when I finally had a safe enough place with a bit of a garden, I was in such terrible shape that I couldn't garden anymore. It took two years for the spark to happen. I'm enjoying it on so many levels at once. Everything could fail and I'd still have gained so much by this. It's not about the outcome. I didn't even plan any of this.

Not planning comes at a pretty hefty price. I've been constantly playing catchup with the growing season, since I started a little late and I'm learning a lot while at it. No time for much else. My house is a workshop again.

The good part about all of this is that I keep going. I keep going. Very active and efficient one day, very slow and more chaotic the other. I keep ticking off boxes regardless. I have a drive and a bit of energy and focus. I had lost that combo a long time ago. This is a good antidote to overwhelm, despair, helplessness, which certainly still happen. I just don't stick around for long there anymore.

That never was as simple a choice as that may sound. It still isn't. The witness has taken up a significant chunk of my mental real estate, presumably due to meditation. This awareness provides a bit of a gearbox. Sometimes with a bit of a delay, but even extreme states don't linger nearly as long as they used to. It definitively helps that I have other stuff on my mind now too.

Garden stuff. I need to be in my front yard quite often. Yes, this is a trigger. I can be seen there. I still don't always feel comfortable. But I go anyway. I want to garden. And I chat with a neighbor here and there. Exposure. Several times a week. It helps. Not because I'm doing exposure therapy. But because I want to be there more than I am scared. That is the key. There's nothing artificial or forced about this.

The whole thing happens spontaneously. The incident with the Police has woken up a deep sense of guilt/shame. AND the indignation and fury I felt and expressed in the subsequent PSIP session. It still ripples through my system. It has woken up the tiger. This is about what has been done to me as an innocent child. The rage is not different than my love for that little boy. For me. I deserve to be free of this fear/shame/guilt. I deserve to be who I am. It's my birthright. Anxiety keeps me in prison. Parts of me that could be judged and rejected are locked up when I interact with certain people. Conflict of interest. Internal friction. I want these parts to be free. I want my love for them to be bigger than my fear to be ridiculed, rejected, belittled, shamed. This shouldn't be a struggle. There's a tipping point to this and I sometimes go over it. I don't believe in revolution. I'm an evolution kind of guy. Dedication over hurry. I'm slowly working my way up to the point where I stop caring what other people think of me. I want to be unapologetically me. I want that plant to blossom.

I keep taking on tasks. Also outside of gardening. Getting rid of stuff that's been in the way for years and such. And a massive project came along. Way too much. But I'm still going. Still standing. Literally working my way through it while trying to find a new balance in all of this. Still shifting gears, still sleep disordered and C-PTSD'ed. So what? What is, is. On some level I'm happy. Happy that I'm active, meeting more people, showing up more authentic and vulnerable, better boundaried, and so on. So I'm kinda busy. Just wanted to say hi. I'll be back.

Much love to you all. 

I'm sorry Bach. It's really hard to see the ongoing effects of things that happened so long ago. 

sanmagic7
My focus is on Edibles. I must admit that I haven't planned this too much. Basically this gardening surge drove by and I decided to hop on. So my plans are developing as I go. A lot of what I used to know is gone and I'm taking a refresher course sprinkled throughout every day.

Both my front- and backyard are about 216 square feet, so quite tiny. The front yard is quite shady and the backyard a mix of sunny and shady. So I have plenty of variables to play around with. I'm planning to grow mostly tea in the longer run. Before I have enough seedlings and they're big enough to plant out, I'll grow a variety of stuff. Both perennial and annual plants. I don't know all the English names.

But to give you an impression of what I have in mind: lettuce, Asian leafy greens, broad beans, edible bamboo, various berries, runner beans, green beans, zucchini, bell pepper, aubergine, sunflower, lemon balm, mint, chives, leek, green onion, coriander, rosemary, potato, hazelnut, pear, peach, chestnut (yes this is nuts in such a small area, pun intended), Jerusalem artichoke, parsnips, turnip type crops, Indian cress. I'm sad that I have to terminate the oca, which has been doing surprisingly well in my backyard. I can't eat it due to the oxalate and my kidney stone risk (which rules out other things too, like spinach). There's a bunch more I don't know the English name of. I'm also sneaking some things in in places adjacent to my place, which I can harvest as plant nutrients, like comfrey. Think permaculture...

There's one thing I'd like to share about the relaxation practices. I go to bed early, and in this time of year it's still light when I start my winding down routine before I go to bed. I'd been using a sleep mask lately and decided to wear it while doing the PMR and subsequent meditation. This has definitively been beneficial for relaxation during PMR. I had not thought of this, but it's the same principle as we use in PSIP, where the mask helps to go inwards and stay with feelings and physical sensations instead of thought. During PMR, this helps me to stay with the feeling of relaxation I manage to start/pick up. A very nice surprise :-)

Tomorrow I'll start my 5th week of a six week PMR commitment. It looks like it took this long to start getting a bit of a hang of it. Now I'm starting to have a response dr Reitav mentioned in the putting trauma to sleep book. I get these waves of relaxation and a yawn response, followed by a bit of teary eyes. Nothing emotional. Apparently this is a sign of relaxation, which is also what it feels like. To add to DF's response, the breath is a very important part of it, and I'm only just starting to experience it the way it's often promoted for. For me, there's a specific way I breathe which helps me get there. I throw in a pinch of Ujjayi breath, which lands me between efforting to prolong the exhalation and enjoying the "laziness" of the exhale at the same time. It's a delicate balance. I hope this makes sense. 

sanmagic7
Yeah, it's been brutal. No wonder I'd get some fallout of this. Overwhelm seems to be a big part in the SI. Very negative experiences don't necessarily land me there. This one was just way too far beyond my coping skills.

Whether I do this again is totally up to me. For now I've decided I'm at least taking a break. Even without the incident, I think I'd done that.

The growing season has started, and this year I'm finally into gardening again. I've hardly been able to do that for many years due to the state I was in. So much insane stuff has happened in so many years. Just wave after wave of ramming me further into a terrible state. Actually in large part because I wanted to be able to garden, but that's way too much to get into here. It's a big thing for me that I'm feeling my old spark again. BIG. I'm going to kindle that one and take it from there! 

Desert Flower
Thanks so much for sharing that. This is really helpful. I can see myself intuiting my way into this. Slowly is the word that jumps out at me. I'm going to play around with it and add this to my stack of interventions somehow. I did get glimpses of what is pointed at by many people while experimenting with the breath factor during PMR. So at least I have a bit of a reference. I can do very long exhalations, but that's not necessarily the key, it seems. It's rather subtle, whether this generates relaxation or more like the opposite. Yours is just the angle I was looking for. 

Great work Desert Flower! It sounds like a good crisis not wasted  . You're taking good care of yourself, which is especially wonderful after such a big blow. This is what resilience looks like!

I hope you feel comfortable delegating those chores and prioritizing some time for meditation. I imagine this is a hard thing to do for a mom with a big heart, who also struggles with C-PTSD. I am delighted to read the path you are on. I'm right next to you and cheering you on.

Pema is a gift to humanity. She has a special place in my heart. Her "staying power" is palpable. She is a fierce example of the grace and liberation that's in turning towards the places that scare us. Yes to whatever arises in awareness. An open heart, for everything. An ongoing invitation to cultivate wisdom and compassion, on and off the cushion.

The distinction between story and what is actually, physically, emotionally present, is priceless. The story so often is a fighting with what arises in awareness, and turning pain into suffering. Could it be that a history of great suffering, carries within it the gift of this penny to drop?

I've found that there's no greater teacher than daily life, to show where the escape into story happens. Just like in the examples you gave. Part-time monking or nunning has the best of both worlds, I think. Life presents endless opportunities to become aware of our attachments, where life in a monastery could be an escape in itself. 

Such a sweet thing to do for your kid (and to suggest to your mom so many years later). And by the sound of it, this is really helpful to you. Great! And hooray for the do-able sleep without meds. No small thing! 

I have the same thing with heating up at night. It's not easy to get the temp quite right. I sleep under a duvet cover and in the colder parts of autumn and spring have the duvet covering my feet/legs and more if necessary. This is how I regulate the temp at night, because too cold is still possible as well. 
 

Desert Flower
Thanks so much for your support! It's really helpful to me to get your feedback. It's crazy you're always picked out for extra checks. Because you look anxious makes sense in your anxious mind, right? But what kind of person is anxious going though airport security? Usually not the type of person taking big risks smuggling or whatever, I'd think. It may have nothing to do with you personally. This is a real possibility. It could be a statistics thing, or an algorithm working in mysterious ways. We'll never know, I guess.

My first thoughts also went to wondering what it is about me (that's what we do, right?). I can imagine I have looked a bit perplexed or anxious when I entered the street and noticed the police van about 150 feet away. I looked at it for a split second, and then stared a few seconds in front of me, and so forth. Not like a carefree tourist or a local knowing where he was going. It may have been picked up by a camera and flagged by AI, prompting for closer inspection. It's all speculation.

Later I realized that the evening before I walked this street in the opposite direction, there were two vans. They were scanning for potential trouble. And with that mindset or algorithm, you will assess people a certain way. Heck, they may even have hourly quota they work with. Back home, I found out this is a highly patrolled area. So how much is about me and how much is about the one seeing me? These thoughts wouldn't stop the trigger in that situation, I'm certain. It's good to put things in perspective now, I think.

When I was about to go to the airport again, I told myself looking anxious is not a crime. It didn't help me to calm down at that point, but I imagine being unapologetically anxious could, in theory, lead to less worry about how to be perceived and less anxiety as a result. This is about a 10 on the exposure scale though. In my case this taps straight into attachment trauma, which joined a colossal sense of shame, guilt, and fawnery with survival right in my core.

When I feel like I'm being assessed, judged, or even looked at carefully by forces that have the power to do whatever, this sets off terror in my system. One way to invoke that level in the therapy I got here for, is to do sustained eye gazing with the therapist. Thus far we haven't done something that triggering and focused on installing positive experiences in vulnerable connection. Not being triggered so intensely in the situation with the police would pretty much mean I don't need therapy anymore. Being in a foreign country is a big factor for me too, I realize. It adds to the sense of omnipotence I sense the actor I deal with has. A similar thing has happened in different circumstances which nonetheless have the same ingredients to one degree or another. This is a deeply disturbing reminder of the terror that's under the hood and just how fast my system can spiral out under specific conditions.

Do you have a good source for teaching me deep belly breathing perhaps? It's often part of meditations I do, and also PMR. For some reason I often end up more stressed by it. Even to the point I started wondering if I should seek out a teacher to teach me properly. I've done quite a bit with the breath and in the past years I've landed on what I think is Buyteko as taught by Patrick McKeown as a default. What I really miss is something like deep belly breathing that works to calm me down. 

sanmagic7
Thanks for being here! This morning I still felt like never returning there again. It's so sad that I've found this amazing therapy and therapist and triggers of this magnitude are (now) coupled to the place I'd need to go for it. I wonder if I'm truly mad for doing stuff like this. It isn't compatible with my affliction, but I feel like I have to go there because of it. Very little interventions still make sense to me. This was a rare find I waited two years for to be able to start somewhere. It's an impossible position to be in. The price of stress I payed for the last two sessions is insane!

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Tonight was really hard. Hours before I went to bed, I found out that the compost I had put on my front yard over a layer of cardboard to kill the weeds, contains heaps of seeds itself. It sounds crazy, but after what I went through this instantly landed me into suicidal ideation. I was furious that whatever I seem to painstakingly attempt to improve my situation ends in another kick in the teeth. I was totally fed up with life. One blow too many.

When I got up this morning, I was literally sick from the stress from the past days. And utterly depressed. It was really hard to just let it be and wait for it to subside whenever it would. I could barely meditate in this condition. I went real easy on myself and eventually managed to do some light work in the garden. The day is almost over now, and I'm starting to feel quite a lot better. Mood is okay-ish and the stress hangover is gone. I skipped the plan to run this morning because I felt so horrible and expect to get back on track tomorrow. I'm definitively heading in the right direction and feel like picking up on the positive gardening flow I was in before.

Desert Flower, sanmagic7
Thanks BIG time for your support! More response later. Need to offload some more...

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In an effort to minimize exposure to uniforms on the street, I figured out an alternative route to get to the bus stop. From there it would be just one ride, straight to the airport. I got lucky. It was only a three minute walk on a small, uncrowded road.

I was definitely nervous setting foot outside. The bus stop was on a big street. Arriving there increased my tension. In my mind the risk of another encounter was bigger here.

I made sure I was at the right place. I was, and had to wait for the bus. I was afraid a police car would ride by, which could lead to being assessed and treated in a similar fashion. Not knowing quite where and how to look, I spent nine long minutes hanging in there, hoping my rescue vehicle would actually show up.

It did. Right on schedule. The other day I had already gotten a paper ticket. The one I knew how to validate on the bus from experience. Little things like that do provide a tiny bit of calm in the midst of a storm. Something familiar and predictable.

It was great getting on the bus, off the street. That feeling didn't go to deep though. My system still assessed being here, in this city, in this country, as dangerous. I remained on high alert. Even on the bus, and after a long, safe intermezzo in the room.

I kept scanning for police on the street. Meanwhile, being surrounded by people speaking a language I don't understand fed the sense of alienation and unsafety. Soon after, a woman sat next to me. She had a smell of parfume which almost made me grasp for fresh air. It was so strong, I had to turn my head to the other side to stop a sense of suffocation. On top of that, the woman would not shut up. When she finished talking to the guys she knew, she continued on the phone. No quiet, safe space for me on this ride.

Another woman entered, greeting people and walking to the front. She was what I thought she was. Here to check our tickets. Never happened before. A rush of panick quickly lowered in intensity when I noticed her friendly demeaner and found the validated ticket in my pocket. This person was not a threat. It was decided in a split second. I showed the ticket and that was that. It was not even as big of a deal as the off-gassing woman next to me. She stayed the whole ride.

When we were approaching the stop at the airport, I noticed a police car with officers right next to it. My stress levels skyrocketed. Stay calm, act normal, go with the flow. My survival mind was fully in charge. It guided me safely into the airport.

Now another hurdle was coming up. Security check. The toilet, first. I was stressed out by all of this and hoped to catch a glimpse of calm there. Nope. Security folks all around here, off course. I passed several. Big trigger. Hard to not make this into a self fulfilling prophecy by looking overly anxious. I'm not sure how much of this turmoil shows. I hope it's mostly a private torture chamber.

The visit to the toilet hardly helped. I found a seat somewhere and sat there for a couple of minutes, looking on my phone. A pinch of normalcy. Better bite the bullet and get this over with. On to the scanning of my qr to get to the line before the check. All red crosses there. No entrance. There was something going on. Now what? A guy who barely spoke English tried to explain something to me. Then people started going through the gates. I quickly followed suit. It worked just like is should. Few. I got through that.

There was my mind again. Lightning fast. Firmly gripping the wheel. Wait in line. Don't stand out in any way. Normal, normal, normal! What a challenge, in such a panicky state. The check was approaching. I went back and forth between the worst being over or yet to come. Most of the personnel looked allright. Not too grumpy, like the one I encountered last time. It normally is the least favorite part of a trip for me anyway. You just don't know what somebody will decide about you and your luggage and there's no getting around that. At the mercy of... That's the triggering bit. Just like before. Powerless and unavoidable.

When I was almost there, I noticed I was dissociating a bit. I gusss that's what it is. Going somewhere else for a second at a time. Apparently that's the way I do it. At least I was present enough of the time to go along with that mad procedure with the trays on the conveyer belt type thing. The guy in front of me took ages to offload all his stuff into trays. I was done in a few seconds, having thought of the ways to keep this only as long as strictly necessary beforehand.

I wasn't sure to ask the official if I should take off my shoes too. It's something some want you to do and some don't. Either way this could cause more stress or trouble. In a split second I decided to ask, and was relieved I didn't have to take them off this time. Going through the scan was shooting up my nerves this time. Normally nowhere near as much. Meanwhile my stuff was also being scanned. Please no issues with my person or my stuff now. Not today. Not even a friendly extra check. Luckily I was granted that. It was over very quickly.

My state did not follow suit. I remained hyper vigilent. Every uniform, there were many here too, remained highly distressing. It took a long time to find an empty seat. I was overwhelmed by all the noises around me. Constant announcements and alarms going off. People speaking loudly and walking all over. A bad place to calm down after a triggering cascade. Not surprising, that didn't happen.

I could not think straight. Just went with the first thing coming to mind, which was to eat the sandwiches I had taken with me. And listen to some calming music. It wasn't enough. Then I remembered how writing had helped me calm down the other day. I started typing this journal entry. The time flew by. I wasn't even finished when it was time to board. It gave me something to help me gather my focus, even though the stress kept coursing through my veins.

I'm at home sweet home now. Safety has been slowly seeping into my system. This will all be another of those memories very soon. A part is not even protesting anymore. No matter how crazy, this is the ride.

Tomorrow I'll get back to gardening. The weather is gorgeous here.

Thanks for saying that Little2Nothing. It helps to hear your response would've been the same. The friend whom I talked to on the phone afterwards is very supportive, but he doesn't deal with C-PTSD, so the most extreme states and not being able to regulate them is alien to him. He would have been stressed too, but would have been able to shrug it off not long after. I'm still dealing with the impact, two days later.