Recent posts
#1
Recovery Journals / Re: Desert Flower's Recovery J...
Last post by TheBigBlue - Today at 04:27:27 PMDF, reading your post really touched something I have been circling myself lately – especially the part about being told you are "strong" or that you have functioned well, and how that can land as invalidating rather than supportive.
I went through a major collapse over the past two weeks: more than 50 years of enmeshment with the "loving" parent and a borrowed sense of external safety dissolved, leaving me falling without ever having developed internal safety or a stable sense of self. When I asked my therapist where that internal safety was supposed to come from, she said, "from your inner strength." She meant well, but it made things worse. So in the following session, I tried to put words to why this didn't land:
Why "Inner Strength" Does Not Land – A Developmental Mismatch
When I hear "you have great inner strength," (something my CBT T said a lot) my system reacts with anger – not because I reject growth or don't understand the CBT intent, but because in my case, what looked like "strength" was actually over-adaptation. Survival depended on hyper-functioning, vigilance, maintaining harmony, suppressing my own reality and needs to preserve connection – self-erasure through compliance, endurance, silence, and not burdening others. That came at the cost of authenticity, needs, and safety. There was no opportunity to develop an internal self that could hold safety.
So when those same CPTSD adaptations are praised now, it feels like harm is being misnamed as virtue – like being congratulated for what nearly destroyed me. On a nervous-system level, "you have great inner strength" also lands as: you should already have the thing you were never given the chance to develop. That's why it feels invalidating. It also triggers my abandonment wire: if I'm told to "find it in myself" before it exists, I experience it as being left alone with the collapse – one of my core hot wires.
Internal safety isn't something I can simply access, will into existence or derive from the same adaptations that kept me alive. Those survival strategies cannot be the foundation of the future.
What research actually shows – and what finally made sense to me – is that internal safety doesn't originate from willpower, insight, or reframing. It develops relationally, very early in life, through repeated experiences of co-regulation. Through being seen, soothed, and responded to, the nervous system learns that distress can settle and connection is reliable. Even when that opportunity wasn't available in childhood, internal safety can still be built later – but it still forms through relationship, not "strength." It requires attuned presence and co-regulation after collapse, not assumptions that the internal structure already exists. The basis from which real strength eventually grows is the capacity to stay in connection without erasing myself. The fact that my therapist didn't dispute this, but actually thanked me for clarifying it, was gold. It helped stop the terror. I'm not on solid ground yet, but I am much more regulated.
One more thing I wanted to gently flag – please take or leave this as it fits best – regarding the company doctor. I've become cautious there, simply because their role is often structurally aligned with returning people to work as efficiently as possible, and their mandate or training may not be well suited to holding complexity or parts-based realities. That doesn't mean you need to hide or betray yourself – just that discernment about how much to share, and with whom, may protect you from further invalidation.
What you're describing doesn't sound like failure to me. It sounds like a real developmental shift – painful, destabilizing, but also honest. I'm really glad you're letting all parts be here now, even though it makes everything slower and harder. You make a lot of sense to me.
I went through a major collapse over the past two weeks: more than 50 years of enmeshment with the "loving" parent and a borrowed sense of external safety dissolved, leaving me falling without ever having developed internal safety or a stable sense of self. When I asked my therapist where that internal safety was supposed to come from, she said, "from your inner strength." She meant well, but it made things worse. So in the following session, I tried to put words to why this didn't land:
Why "Inner Strength" Does Not Land – A Developmental Mismatch
When I hear "you have great inner strength," (something my CBT T said a lot) my system reacts with anger – not because I reject growth or don't understand the CBT intent, but because in my case, what looked like "strength" was actually over-adaptation. Survival depended on hyper-functioning, vigilance, maintaining harmony, suppressing my own reality and needs to preserve connection – self-erasure through compliance, endurance, silence, and not burdening others. That came at the cost of authenticity, needs, and safety. There was no opportunity to develop an internal self that could hold safety.
So when those same CPTSD adaptations are praised now, it feels like harm is being misnamed as virtue – like being congratulated for what nearly destroyed me. On a nervous-system level, "you have great inner strength" also lands as: you should already have the thing you were never given the chance to develop. That's why it feels invalidating. It also triggers my abandonment wire: if I'm told to "find it in myself" before it exists, I experience it as being left alone with the collapse – one of my core hot wires.
Internal safety isn't something I can simply access, will into existence or derive from the same adaptations that kept me alive. Those survival strategies cannot be the foundation of the future.
What research actually shows – and what finally made sense to me – is that internal safety doesn't originate from willpower, insight, or reframing. It develops relationally, very early in life, through repeated experiences of co-regulation. Through being seen, soothed, and responded to, the nervous system learns that distress can settle and connection is reliable. Even when that opportunity wasn't available in childhood, internal safety can still be built later – but it still forms through relationship, not "strength." It requires attuned presence and co-regulation after collapse, not assumptions that the internal structure already exists. The basis from which real strength eventually grows is the capacity to stay in connection without erasing myself. The fact that my therapist didn't dispute this, but actually thanked me for clarifying it, was gold. It helped stop the terror. I'm not on solid ground yet, but I am much more regulated.
One more thing I wanted to gently flag – please take or leave this as it fits best – regarding the company doctor. I've become cautious there, simply because their role is often structurally aligned with returning people to work as efficiently as possible, and their mandate or training may not be well suited to holding complexity or parts-based realities. That doesn't mean you need to hide or betray yourself – just that discernment about how much to share, and with whom, may protect you from further invalidation.
What you're describing doesn't sound like failure to me. It sounds like a real developmental shift – painful, destabilizing, but also honest. I'm really glad you're letting all parts be here now, even though it makes everything slower and harder. You make a lot of sense to me.
#2
Books & Articles / Re: David Bedrick - The Unsham...
Last post by Desert Flower - Today at 04:16:12 PMThank you SenseOrgan. 
#3
New Members / Re: What's in a Name - Part 3
Last post by Desert Flower - Today at 04:14:48 PMQuote from: SenseOrgan on Today at 04:11:06 PMQuite a few years ago, I made my final attempt to prevent myself from ending my life. I had several experiences with ayahuasca. I owe my life to that, and to the people who were willing to serve it to me. What happened defies words and logic. A profound shift in my sense of identity took place. It wasn't what I was looking for. But it was exactly what I needed. The years that followed were confusing, to say the least. I looked around for clues to where to go from here. One of the shows I ended up listening to was Buddha at the Gas Pump. The host, Rick Archer, sometimes referred to a friend who said he was a sense organ of the infinite [as everyone else]. That resonated with me. This is where my alias comes from. It's multilayered, but I'll leave the rest up to everyone's imagination.
I had been wondering SenseOrgan, about your name, and I love it!
#4
New Members / Re: What's in a Name - Part 3
Last post by SenseOrgan - Today at 04:11:06 PMQuite a few years ago, I made my final attempt to prevent myself from ending my life. I had several experiences with ayahuasca. I owe my life to that, and to the people who were willing to serve it to me. What happened defies words and logic. A profound shift in my sense of identity took place. It wasn't what I was looking for. But it was exactly what I needed. The years that followed were confusing, to say the least. I looked around for clues for where to go from here. One of the shows I ended up listening to was Buddha at the Gas Pump. The host, Rick Archer, sometimes referred to a friend who said he was a sense organ of the infinite [as everyone else]. That resonated with me. This is where my alias comes from. It's multilayered, but I'll leave the rest up to everyone's imagination.
#5
Recovery Journals / Re: Papa Coco's Recovery Journ...
Last post by Desert Flower - Today at 04:05:32 PMWOW Papa Coco, that is another truly wonderful post you put out here. I'm so glad you are doing well. And it's making me so happy to hear you are healing, it's very encouraging and I may have needed to hear this.
I would like to sit on your island of misfits (with or without insurance) with you and all of us, if I may.
I would like to sit on your island of misfits (with or without insurance) with you and all of us, if I may.
#6
Recovery Journals / Re: Papa Coco's Recovery Journ...
Last post by Papa Coco - Today at 03:57:45 PMTheBigBlue, I'm doing pretty good. Thanks for checking in with me. How about you? Are you holding up good now that the Holiday Season is done and put to rest?
---Journal Entry for January 11---
I'm feeling reflective this morning. Taking a quick inventory of how things have been going for the past few years.
January brings, for me, a new beginning as usual. As soon as the Holidays end, the world normalizes again for me.
Looking back on the 2025 Holiday Season, I'd say it was the most stable Autumn in all my memory. The therapies that I've been participating in have been helping me in ways nothing else ever has. I dabble in a lot of them. I do a little EMDR with my therapist, a little IFS therapy, I participate in a wonderful forum with you all, I read and reread and re-reread a robust list of really good books about trauma, brain science, emotion, meditation, high sensitivity and spirituality. All these little things in concert have made a profound difference in my ability to better regulate my moods and to recover more quickly from EFs.
I pursue healing fervently. My therapist comments often that my relentless pursuit of healing has been working. It's a long, slow road to travel, but it's what I call my Journey of a Thousand Steps, and I recognize that each step is as important as every other if I want to keep finding tomorrow to be better than yesterday.
The world itself is certainly not better than it was. My life has a lot of loss and sorrow in it now that it didn't have when I was younger and more social. It's not the world that's improving; it's my ability to stand tall during its storms.
One of the many little things that help me daily now is that little sign I made and put up on my bedroom wall next to my bed; "The Journey IS the destination".
My lifelong propensity is to always focus only on the end product. I push myself and drive myself crazy trying to finish everything I start. I seldom ever just enjoy the journey. Healing from CPTSD is a lifelong journey that really doesn't have a final finish line. I'm finding a little bit of peace in accepting that as long as I'm moving forward on my journey of a thousand steps, then I'm right where I need to be.
There were times when healing was critical. I barely lived through some of the EFs of my past. 4 times I had to be rescued from myself during the decades from childhood to retirement, but the world is providing support now that is helping me. This forum, and the people I'm meeting on it, are one of the supports that never existed until just this last decade.
Having my friends from the forum is the first time I've felt like I'm not the totally alone with my struggles.
I live by a few new rules now. One of the big ones is written in one of the books I read by a doctor who teaches that it isn't the abuse/neglect that traumatizes most people, it's that we had to endure that abuse/neglect alone that gave us C-PTSD. The cure for being alone is to not be alone anymore. And having the forum to share our emotions with each other is me not being alone anymore with my traumas.
Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to convey is that this forum is one of the best parts of my healing journey. It puts people in my life who share in my loneliness. And, like I said, being with people is the opposite of being alone. And being alone was the hardest part of my life. Being alone in a crowd of people who didn't understand me was the most damaging part of my life.
As a child in the 1960s, when TV was just three channels with no ability to record shows, we kids would excitedly make a huge event of watching a few holiday shows each year. One was a Claymation animation called Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer. When Herby the elf who wanted to be a dentist accidentally floated onto the Island of Misfit Toys, I would yearn to find that island in my own life too. I was a misfit. My family taught me I was fragile and helpless and kind of stupid. My friends were critical of my physical limitations, my church/school was teaching me I was a freak of nature and that even God hated me for being such a worthless loser. When Herby would find himself on an island with all these broken toys who all just wanted to be loved, and had found acceptance in each other, I would spend the rest of my life wanting to sail off and try to find that island for myself. It was a place of acceptance. A place where nobody was competing to be one of the cool kids. Nobody was critical. No narcissists even wanted to be there. The damaged toys all cared for each other without anyone making them feel like misfits anymore. I wanted that so bad.
And when I found this forum a few years ago now, I felt like I'd found that island of traumatized souls--misfits who feel like we just don't fit in with the rest of the world--where I could be accepted and cared about, even though I'm not perfect or even able to compete for acceptance and respect. I don't have to prove myself here. I don't have to pretend I'm tough here. I don't have to try to hide my emotional side here. I can be a man who cries here. I can talk about how kindness means more than toughness here. I can be a man who loves kittens here. I don't have to hide my true self to try and keep from being laughed at and criticized for being "too emotional" here. Nobody here EVER asks, "Why can't you just get over it?"
So, I'm starting 2026 with a big note of gratitude for this forum and for anyone anywhere in the world who is becoming a help to people like us. I'm grateful for those therapists who embrace trauma-informed-healing and who have begun to treat us like we're human beings, rather than misfits with medical insurance.
I see the world changing. For trauma healing, I recognize that the world still needs a lot more help, and that healing methods still need to be made more available to more of us, but many of these things are coming. It's a slow train coming. The helpers that we need are learning now how to help us. So we keep the vigil in motion and keep watching and keep looking for the next step in our Journeys of a Thousand Steps and hopefully trauma informed help will reach more and more of us.
I guess nobody ever promised life on earth would be easy. That's certainly been true for me. I've finally started to accept that I can't change the world and make it safer, but I can work to heal my Self so that I'm better at handling the chaos that is the world.
---Journal Entry for January 11---
I'm feeling reflective this morning. Taking a quick inventory of how things have been going for the past few years.
January brings, for me, a new beginning as usual. As soon as the Holidays end, the world normalizes again for me.
Looking back on the 2025 Holiday Season, I'd say it was the most stable Autumn in all my memory. The therapies that I've been participating in have been helping me in ways nothing else ever has. I dabble in a lot of them. I do a little EMDR with my therapist, a little IFS therapy, I participate in a wonderful forum with you all, I read and reread and re-reread a robust list of really good books about trauma, brain science, emotion, meditation, high sensitivity and spirituality. All these little things in concert have made a profound difference in my ability to better regulate my moods and to recover more quickly from EFs.
I pursue healing fervently. My therapist comments often that my relentless pursuit of healing has been working. It's a long, slow road to travel, but it's what I call my Journey of a Thousand Steps, and I recognize that each step is as important as every other if I want to keep finding tomorrow to be better than yesterday.
The world itself is certainly not better than it was. My life has a lot of loss and sorrow in it now that it didn't have when I was younger and more social. It's not the world that's improving; it's my ability to stand tall during its storms.
One of the many little things that help me daily now is that little sign I made and put up on my bedroom wall next to my bed; "The Journey IS the destination".
My lifelong propensity is to always focus only on the end product. I push myself and drive myself crazy trying to finish everything I start. I seldom ever just enjoy the journey. Healing from CPTSD is a lifelong journey that really doesn't have a final finish line. I'm finding a little bit of peace in accepting that as long as I'm moving forward on my journey of a thousand steps, then I'm right where I need to be.
There were times when healing was critical. I barely lived through some of the EFs of my past. 4 times I had to be rescued from myself during the decades from childhood to retirement, but the world is providing support now that is helping me. This forum, and the people I'm meeting on it, are one of the supports that never existed until just this last decade.
Having my friends from the forum is the first time I've felt like I'm not the totally alone with my struggles.
I live by a few new rules now. One of the big ones is written in one of the books I read by a doctor who teaches that it isn't the abuse/neglect that traumatizes most people, it's that we had to endure that abuse/neglect alone that gave us C-PTSD. The cure for being alone is to not be alone anymore. And having the forum to share our emotions with each other is me not being alone anymore with my traumas.
Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to convey is that this forum is one of the best parts of my healing journey. It puts people in my life who share in my loneliness. And, like I said, being with people is the opposite of being alone. And being alone was the hardest part of my life. Being alone in a crowd of people who didn't understand me was the most damaging part of my life.
As a child in the 1960s, when TV was just three channels with no ability to record shows, we kids would excitedly make a huge event of watching a few holiday shows each year. One was a Claymation animation called Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer. When Herby the elf who wanted to be a dentist accidentally floated onto the Island of Misfit Toys, I would yearn to find that island in my own life too. I was a misfit. My family taught me I was fragile and helpless and kind of stupid. My friends were critical of my physical limitations, my church/school was teaching me I was a freak of nature and that even God hated me for being such a worthless loser. When Herby would find himself on an island with all these broken toys who all just wanted to be loved, and had found acceptance in each other, I would spend the rest of my life wanting to sail off and try to find that island for myself. It was a place of acceptance. A place where nobody was competing to be one of the cool kids. Nobody was critical. No narcissists even wanted to be there. The damaged toys all cared for each other without anyone making them feel like misfits anymore. I wanted that so bad.
And when I found this forum a few years ago now, I felt like I'd found that island of traumatized souls--misfits who feel like we just don't fit in with the rest of the world--where I could be accepted and cared about, even though I'm not perfect or even able to compete for acceptance and respect. I don't have to prove myself here. I don't have to pretend I'm tough here. I don't have to try to hide my emotional side here. I can be a man who cries here. I can talk about how kindness means more than toughness here. I can be a man who loves kittens here. I don't have to hide my true self to try and keep from being laughed at and criticized for being "too emotional" here. Nobody here EVER asks, "Why can't you just get over it?"
So, I'm starting 2026 with a big note of gratitude for this forum and for anyone anywhere in the world who is becoming a help to people like us. I'm grateful for those therapists who embrace trauma-informed-healing and who have begun to treat us like we're human beings, rather than misfits with medical insurance.
I see the world changing. For trauma healing, I recognize that the world still needs a lot more help, and that healing methods still need to be made more available to more of us, but many of these things are coming. It's a slow train coming. The helpers that we need are learning now how to help us. So we keep the vigil in motion and keep watching and keep looking for the next step in our Journeys of a Thousand Steps and hopefully trauma informed help will reach more and more of us.
I guess nobody ever promised life on earth would be easy. That's certainly been true for me. I've finally started to accept that I can't change the world and make it safer, but I can work to heal my Self so that I'm better at handling the chaos that is the world.
#7
Please Introduce Yourself Here / Re: Greetings from the storm- ...
Last post by Desert Flower - Today at 03:21:15 PMHello Olly and welcome,
I hope you will find the community here that you need and deserve like all the rest of us.
Favourite reptile YAY, yes, turtle and chameleon. And my image is always of the siamese twin turtle, that has five legs and two heads. Are we in or are we out? Fascinates me.
Reptiles need warmth too don't they. I do wish you a warm welcome.
I hope you will find the community here that you need and deserve like all the rest of us.
Favourite reptile YAY, yes, turtle and chameleon. And my image is always of the siamese twin turtle, that has five legs and two heads. Are we in or are we out? Fascinates me.
Reptiles need warmth too don't they. I do wish you a warm welcome.
#8
Recovery Journals / Re: Desert Flower's Recovery J...
Last post by Desert Flower - Today at 03:02:32 PMThank you too NK. I think actually one of my problems has been that it was usually my keep-on-going part that came to therapy. I'm not sure any of the other parts were ever really there. Keep-on-going did mention them, some of them at least, but they never showed up in full glory so to speak. I think it's a very good sign that your teenage part did show up in your therapy, that she felt enough trust in you and the therapist to do that.
So far, I think I identified 12 parts. I wrote them down. I'm not sure whether they 'count' as alters psychologically, but I am sure they are there. They are more like 'streams of feeling' I enter than persons maybe. I'll leave that up to the doctors to decide. Actually, I am really looking forward to hearing their opinion about this. And I'm not sure they are all distinct parts, some of whom like to work together, or if some of them are actually different sides of a few larger parts. What I do know, is that they are seperated to some extent and that it's awfully hard to willingly switch back to a 'healthier' part. And whenever I feel anyone is trying to make me switch back to a healthy part, I get really angry. That is, an angry part gets triggered.
Like just now, one of my best and dearest friends stopped by. She had actually seen the distress I was in before Christmas. And now I told her that I'm hesitant to go back to work because 'this' has actually been going on for decades and I don't want to hide it anymore. I do not want to start working again under the 'pretense' that with a few months of guidance or whatever, we will be up and running again and everything will be fine again. This is an impression that may have occurred before because I have been in different jobs through the years and it takes the company people a while to figure out there is actually a pattern here. It is not really a pretence either because my keep-on-going part really does feel it is going to get / should be getting better. But this is the process that ignores the other parts, like I said earlier.
So I now told my friend I want to tell the company doctor (that we must see whenever we're on sick leave for a certain period) that this is in fact something that has been going on for decades, that we should not expect to get well and have it over with in six months or whatever. But then my friend started telling me that I am in fact strong, that I did perform well over the years etc. And this is invalidation of the parts that are feeling insecure, scared and angry. They do not want to be put away again behind this facade of keep-on-going. This is exactly what has been going on for all this time but I now want to find a way to function with all these parts participating so to speak, to let all of them be here. But I get the feeling really quickly that most people, including the well meaning ones (maybe especially those), just want to be rid of the scared etc. parts as fast as possible. Which upsets them. So what I think I need to be telling the company doctor is that he is probably talking to the keep-on-going part, but we should not ignore the other parts. I hope he will understand. This might be hard. My friend said it's always the question, in these situations, of how much we should tell. But I just don't want to hide these parts anymore, it does not feel right.
So far, I think I identified 12 parts. I wrote them down. I'm not sure whether they 'count' as alters psychologically, but I am sure they are there. They are more like 'streams of feeling' I enter than persons maybe. I'll leave that up to the doctors to decide. Actually, I am really looking forward to hearing their opinion about this. And I'm not sure they are all distinct parts, some of whom like to work together, or if some of them are actually different sides of a few larger parts. What I do know, is that they are seperated to some extent and that it's awfully hard to willingly switch back to a 'healthier' part. And whenever I feel anyone is trying to make me switch back to a healthy part, I get really angry. That is, an angry part gets triggered.
Like just now, one of my best and dearest friends stopped by. She had actually seen the distress I was in before Christmas. And now I told her that I'm hesitant to go back to work because 'this' has actually been going on for decades and I don't want to hide it anymore. I do not want to start working again under the 'pretense' that with a few months of guidance or whatever, we will be up and running again and everything will be fine again. This is an impression that may have occurred before because I have been in different jobs through the years and it takes the company people a while to figure out there is actually a pattern here. It is not really a pretence either because my keep-on-going part really does feel it is going to get / should be getting better. But this is the process that ignores the other parts, like I said earlier.
So I now told my friend I want to tell the company doctor (that we must see whenever we're on sick leave for a certain period) that this is in fact something that has been going on for decades, that we should not expect to get well and have it over with in six months or whatever. But then my friend started telling me that I am in fact strong, that I did perform well over the years etc. And this is invalidation of the parts that are feeling insecure, scared and angry. They do not want to be put away again behind this facade of keep-on-going. This is exactly what has been going on for all this time but I now want to find a way to function with all these parts participating so to speak, to let all of them be here. But I get the feeling really quickly that most people, including the well meaning ones (maybe especially those), just want to be rid of the scared etc. parts as fast as possible. Which upsets them. So what I think I need to be telling the company doctor is that he is probably talking to the keep-on-going part, but we should not ignore the other parts. I hope he will understand. This might be hard. My friend said it's always the question, in these situations, of how much we should tell. But I just don't want to hide these parts anymore, it does not feel right.
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#10
Books & Articles / Re: David Bedrick - The Unsham...
Last post by TheBigBlue - Today at 12:36:10 PMReading this, I feel it in my body - silent tears running down my face, not from pain alone, but from recognition. Thank you for sharing this.