Recent posts
#81
Recovery Journals / Re: Papa Coco's Recovery Journ...
Last post by Chart - December 11, 2025, 07:47:56 PM
#82
Recovery Journals / Re: starting over
Last post by Desert Flower - December 11, 2025, 07:39:57 PMHej San, me too, I understand. And I'm really sorry you're feeling so bad. It really sucks. And I'm impressed by the way you're coping and handling all of this. It's no mean feat. Hang on. Big big hugs dear San.
#83
General Discussion / Re: (A lot) Truer than "I" tho...
Last post by Chart - December 11, 2025, 07:18:28 PMDF, thank you for sharing this. I was very deeply touched. What popped into my mind (and this might just be me) is that the greatest "love affair" we have perhaps in our lives is that long inexorable awakening as to who we ourselves truly are. The reality of the layers just keeps peeling back and we find ourselves over and over again, going deeper and deeper. Often this is a painful journey. We come to "remember" the unimaginable and the pain seems re-born with all it's intensity and newness, horrible in its conception. But it is necessary (imo), just as bubbles must rise to the surface. I've heard it repeated here over and over and I agree, I would prefer to know the truth than to continue blind never truly knowing who I am or could become. It seems to me that this is indeed what you are doing, embracing the things that are truly happening and seeing them for what they mean. Nothing is be more admirable to my way of perceiving.
#84
Recovery Journals / Re: Marcine’s journaling forwa...
Last post by SenseOrgan - December 11, 2025, 07:08:10 PMYou are very welcome here Marcine! And we're here right next to you, in the same boat, cheering you on. In the modest time that I've been interacting here, I've found this to be an almost ideal place to relate to others authentically without so much terror involved. It's a work in progress, I think for many of us. Interacting here does/can bring up old fears and coping mechanisms. It does for me too. But it's okay. It's safe here. Safe enough. There are a lot of gradients in the level you decide to challenge yourself here. There's a lot of room here to play around with disclosing what and when, for instance, which can help to ease your way into this journaling thing.
There's a lot of dedication to your authenticity shining through your posts. I like it a lot, and I appreciate the rawness of your sharing. Our sport is a pretty complex and messy mix of grieving who we had to become, couldn't be, and "sinking into who we are" later in life. In connection with others. I'm grateful for you to be on this team.
Much love
There's a lot of dedication to your authenticity shining through your posts. I like it a lot, and I appreciate the rawness of your sharing. Our sport is a pretty complex and messy mix of grieving who we had to become, couldn't be, and "sinking into who we are" later in life. In connection with others. I'm grateful for you to be on this team.
Much love
#85
Recovery Journals / Re: Papa Coco's Recovery Journ...
Last post by Papa Coco - December 11, 2025, 06:50:45 PMDecember 11, 2025
I've long believed there to be a strong connection between people with C-PTSD and HSP. HSP is "Highly Sensitive Person". Unlike C-PTSD or ADHD, HSP is not a condition that requires healing or support, it's an attribute that defines our identities, like how tall we are, or what color our skin is. Everyone is born with some level of sensitivity, and about 30% of all humans are more sensitive than the remaining 70%. When a child is born with higher sensitivity, then we can be more easily traumatized by people who torment us for that superpower from the beginning.
I have a confession to make: I sometimes dislike wealthy people because I'm not wealthy like them. I admit to a jealousy there. I liken this to the narcissistic, low sensitive adults who give birth to highly sensitive children and end up hating us because we have something they can't achieve: They can't feel life, love, and joy like we can, and they know it. One of the most prolific attributes of narcissism is jealousy. Narcs are insatiably jealous of anyone who is smarter, prettier or more loved than they are, so they take advantage of their size, and torture us indefinitely while we're small and in their care.
I am one of 5 children and I am also the most sensitive of the 5, and I am also the one they all targeted and belittled and treated like I'm too stupid to handle life. What psychologists call "the identified patient" in the family is the one who everyone automatically blames all their problems on, and I see a correlation between my hightened sensitivity and the abuse they lobbed on me for 50 years until I walked away and changed my phone number. Imagine a family that feels so bad about their own lives that they need someone to shift that hatred onto. Who would they pick? Some insensitive child who doesn't respond to their abuse? Or to the sensitive one who is easy to hurt? Easy to get reactions from? If you want to abuse someone, you want them to feel abused, right? So I was the one who was easiest to abuse because I was the one most easily hurt by abuse. I became the identified patient.
During the past few days I've turned my obsessive need to find agency by learning and reading as many books as I can find on any topic, to the topic of HSP. I went out looking for a book that would teach me some good stuff about HSP. The internet guided me toward a small, easy to read little book called Sensitive, written by Jenn Granneman & Andre Solo. Within only the first two chapters I'm almost in tears as I read the reasons...the actual, scientific reasons...why being HSP is a good thing. It's considered a super power. Most of the world's most influential characters throughout history were HSP.
When a person is born sensitive, and then raised in danger, they hone that sensitivity to become literal superheroes, as we become far, far, far better at noticing details, and linking thoughts, and preparing for trouble, and protecting ourselves from dangers less sensitive people don't even know they need protecting from. We're alert, aware, cautious. We're survivors. We are less apt to follow the crowds off a bridge because we're asking, "why is everyone jumping?" We aren't followers. We're critical thinkers.
Many of us have been lied to by being called "Too sensitive" all our lives. In the story of Jesus, he was tortured and killed for being sensitive and "awakened". Today's low-sensitive people have turned "awakened" into a four-letter swear word, "woke." They criticize and laugh at people who are wiser, kinder, more compassionate, empathetic, and more aware of real life than they are. I see that as another example of how it's just easier to make fun of sensitive people than it is to make fun of numb people.
What's happening within me this day is I'm finding another avenue for self-forgiveness. The more I read into this one book, (and I plan to find more books when I'm done with this one), the more I find an ability to forgive myself for being kinder, more compassionate, and more "sensitive" than the numb blokes that run around bullying people and calling that "manly."
I've long believed there to be a strong connection between people with C-PTSD and HSP. HSP is "Highly Sensitive Person". Unlike C-PTSD or ADHD, HSP is not a condition that requires healing or support, it's an attribute that defines our identities, like how tall we are, or what color our skin is. Everyone is born with some level of sensitivity, and about 30% of all humans are more sensitive than the remaining 70%. When a child is born with higher sensitivity, then we can be more easily traumatized by people who torment us for that superpower from the beginning.
I have a confession to make: I sometimes dislike wealthy people because I'm not wealthy like them. I admit to a jealousy there. I liken this to the narcissistic, low sensitive adults who give birth to highly sensitive children and end up hating us because we have something they can't achieve: They can't feel life, love, and joy like we can, and they know it. One of the most prolific attributes of narcissism is jealousy. Narcs are insatiably jealous of anyone who is smarter, prettier or more loved than they are, so they take advantage of their size, and torture us indefinitely while we're small and in their care.
I am one of 5 children and I am also the most sensitive of the 5, and I am also the one they all targeted and belittled and treated like I'm too stupid to handle life. What psychologists call "the identified patient" in the family is the one who everyone automatically blames all their problems on, and I see a correlation between my hightened sensitivity and the abuse they lobbed on me for 50 years until I walked away and changed my phone number. Imagine a family that feels so bad about their own lives that they need someone to shift that hatred onto. Who would they pick? Some insensitive child who doesn't respond to their abuse? Or to the sensitive one who is easy to hurt? Easy to get reactions from? If you want to abuse someone, you want them to feel abused, right? So I was the one who was easiest to abuse because I was the one most easily hurt by abuse. I became the identified patient.
During the past few days I've turned my obsessive need to find agency by learning and reading as many books as I can find on any topic, to the topic of HSP. I went out looking for a book that would teach me some good stuff about HSP. The internet guided me toward a small, easy to read little book called Sensitive, written by Jenn Granneman & Andre Solo. Within only the first two chapters I'm almost in tears as I read the reasons...the actual, scientific reasons...why being HSP is a good thing. It's considered a super power. Most of the world's most influential characters throughout history were HSP.
When a person is born sensitive, and then raised in danger, they hone that sensitivity to become literal superheroes, as we become far, far, far better at noticing details, and linking thoughts, and preparing for trouble, and protecting ourselves from dangers less sensitive people don't even know they need protecting from. We're alert, aware, cautious. We're survivors. We are less apt to follow the crowds off a bridge because we're asking, "why is everyone jumping?" We aren't followers. We're critical thinkers.
Many of us have been lied to by being called "Too sensitive" all our lives. In the story of Jesus, he was tortured and killed for being sensitive and "awakened". Today's low-sensitive people have turned "awakened" into a four-letter swear word, "woke." They criticize and laugh at people who are wiser, kinder, more compassionate, empathetic, and more aware of real life than they are. I see that as another example of how it's just easier to make fun of sensitive people than it is to make fun of numb people.
What's happening within me this day is I'm finding another avenue for self-forgiveness. The more I read into this one book, (and I plan to find more books when I'm done with this one), the more I find an ability to forgive myself for being kinder, more compassionate, and more "sensitive" than the numb blokes that run around bullying people and calling that "manly."
#86
Recovery Journals / Re: Dalloway´s Recovery Journa...
Last post by SenseOrgan - December 11, 2025, 06:04:42 PMQuote from: Dalloway on October 22, 2025, 06:44:25 PM... Today I had a very profound experience. It was something out of the blue, but it made me very joyous. As if the universe knew that I needed something to keep going. I was lying on the bed, just woke up from a nap, half-asleep, when suddenly my heart filled with immense love. I felt it to my core and it was radiating from inside my body. I started to think of all the people in the world, all the lives on Earth, how far they might be from me in the physical world, and yet how close they are to me, because we are connected. I realized that our lives our interconnected, no matter who we are or what we do. At that moment, the whole world could fit in my heart. And everything I went through and all the things I´m experiencing now and will be in the future, is a part of me, and not just me, but the wider universe. I´m not an island, I´m not alone, I´m part of something lot bigger than my mind can comprehend. It goes through space and time, it started before me and will be here long after I´m gone. I´m not religious, but at that very moment I felt something higher and thought to myself: if there´s some kind of God, it´s nothing but love. I felt so close to nature, I felt that it accepted me, that I could return and be united with it if I wanted to. And the best thing about this experience was that all the love I felt, was radiating from me, from my chest, my whole body, in fact. And that´s when I realized that it´s been inside me all the time, all the love I have in me, it never went away, it was there all along, waiting. And that means that I was never really broken, there is a place inside me that was whole the whole time. That part was never dead and I´m not dead either. I am capable of love, giving and receiving it.
Thank you so much for sharing this Dalloway. I'm so happy for you that you had this experience. It brought tears to my eyes reading it. It resonates deeply with me.
Much love.
#87
Please Introduce Yourself Here / Re: Newly joined
Last post by Chart - December 11, 2025, 06:01:14 PMWestman, So sorry to hear your situation. Sending support and welcome. -Chart
#88
Other / Re: Our Healing Porch Part 8
Last post by Chart - December 11, 2025, 05:57:59 PMQuote from: Armee on December 11, 2025, 05:13:23 AMAn old friend is coming to sit quietly on the porch steps to catch up in comfortable silence.My daughter made cookies and I'm setting them out for whoever wants :-)
#89
Recovery Journals / Re: Ran's journey
Last post by Chart - December 11, 2025, 05:54:36 PMQuote from: Ran on December 11, 2025, 12:42:58 PMI've been chatting with some people and over a long time I felt oh I like to chat with these people. I was feeling warm inside. I don't know why. I don't know them even too well. Just chatting about normal stuff is fun.I agree, Ran, connection is so important for me and helps me regulate. I connected with two people this week and it was very beneficial.
#90
General Discussion / Re: (A lot) Truer than "I" tho...
Last post by Armee - December 11, 2025, 05:41:51 PM It gets better with acceptance and accomodation for where you currently are at. It's a starting point not an ending point and it is trauma, not mental illness. From everything I have heard it is very common to start reliving the trauma when your child becomes the same age you were when it happened. It'll get better and I am so glad you have 2x per week support.