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#81

Recovery Journals / Re: starting over

Last post by Papa Coco - November 26, 2025, 06:49:18 PM

San,

I so understand the bedtime stressors. Bedtime has been difficult for me lately too, so I feel extra compassion for what you're going through.

I'm glad your extra medication helped you sleep soundly once it took effect.

I also feel a lot of truth in what you said about how this is an entanglement of more than one emotion layered on top of each other. 3 marriages makes for 3 times as many traumatic experiences. Dealing with just one emotion is difficult enough, but as we realize that there are a bunch of them all piled up, it helps us to better understand why we're struggling as much as we are. It's more like we're in a tornado and a flood and an earthquake all at the same time.

I'm glad you shared your feelings on this thread so I can feel some of the stress with you, and share that I often feel very similar things to what you are reporting now. I know these online hug emojis are just emojis, but I also know that I can feel them when people pass them to each other, so I just want to send you a nice long emoji hug for today. Here on the OOTS forum, our physical addresses are scattered all over the world, but our hearts are sharing the same space in time and empathy. So, this extra-large emoji hug is from my heart to yours, right here and right now.



PC

#82

Recovery Journals / Re: Healing or Holding On?

Last post by Desert Flower - November 26, 2025, 06:48:59 PM

My mother allowed him to groom and take advantage of me when I was 14/15 and he was 22. She nearly facilitated the whole thing and told that predator to "keep his mouth shut" so he didn't get in any more trouble. Is that considered trafficking?

Yes, in my country it would be, I believe. But it would be very very hard to prove, I'm so sorry to have to add. Especially, when there aren't any credible witnesses (I'm not sure whether there are any in your case.)

This resonates with me tremendously, I've had to let go of the perspective of any of the abuse being prosecuted. It's a really tough one to have to accept. I'm so sorry about this.

Sending you big hugs and cheers for doing so well, anyhow. I hope being here on the forum and feeling the support of the community will help you too, like it is helping me very much. (apologies for the rusty English, I'm tired)

#83

Recovery Journals / Re: Healing or Holding On?

Last post by Desert Flower - November 26, 2025, 06:27:44 PM

The past and the present seemed to be occupying the exact same space in my head for a few moments.

Don't want to be crowding your journal as a busy know-it-all. It just all sounds so terribly familiar. This one too, is what the brain does when traumatic things happen, it's not storing memories the way it should tied to a timeline, which leaves these memories (or what's left of them in our consious brain) sort of free floating.
That's where EMDR comes in I think, re-storing these memories in the right place (without the connection to the tremendous emotional load they carry). Hope I'm making sense, these are just my descriptions of what I remembered. If it's not helpful, just disregard.

#84

Recovery Journals / Re: Papa Coco's Recovery Journ...

Last post by Papa Coco - November 26, 2025, 06:16:35 PM

San and Chart and everyone else who reads these posts,

I've been finding that binaural beats are available in many places. These meditations I'm doing on this app are only one place. I have iTunes, and plenty of binaural beats are available there. Also on YouTube. I'm exploring some of them also now.

I'm reading My Big TOE, by Physicist Thomas Campbell. (TOE stands for Theory Of Everything) He said that in early EKG tests of people during binaural beats that if one ear is being fed 100Hz, and the other is being fed 104 Hz that the difference of 4 Hz is where the healing happens.

There's a great deal of science behind how this effects brain function. I'm no physicist, so I have to take their word for it.

One of the big changes for me is that these Binaural beats have been altering my digestion. I thought I was imagining it at first, but it turns out after some Ai Google searches, that it's well known that Binaural beats do alter digestion by calming the nerves in the Digestive tract. This includes my tummy and below. At first I was experiencing some needs to stay near a bathroom for about 2 weeks, but now I'm settling into a new, more relaxed digestive state, and I'm normalizing to the new vibration.

I guess it makes sense: My dentist uses a sonic cleaner on my nightguards when I visit her. Sound waves clean any bacteria off the plastic without harming the plastic. I guess that even without a physicist, I can see now that sound does affect bacteria, and our digestive systems work by digestive enzymes and bacteria. So, I guess if I can accept that sound cleans my appliances, it can clean my tummy too. Right?


----Holidays and Traumas----


New topic: Thanksgiving in the US tomorrow.  Big trigger for millions of us. Why we do this to ourselves is the mystery. If most people dread Thanksgiving, maybe we are just gluttons for punishment for keeping it going.

Here, we don't know if this will be our last Thanksgiving dinner or not. Our family and friends have mostly died or left the state. There's a sadness there, mixed in with the 64 years of memories of big events on this day. One of our sons was born this week 41 years ago. He's now off grid, dealing with schizophrenia alone, refusing to connect with anyone anywhere ever. He was such a beautiful boy. He's, of course, on our minds constantly. The sadness is deafening at times.

Traumas are still happening. We deal with past traumas all the time, but I sometimes forget that there are still more traumas in the chute awaiting their chance to burst into my life. While the family wars of past years continue to trigger residual traumas, there are some new ones happening now in my old age that have to be dealt with also. Losing our son is one of them. My former best friend from my career died ON Thanksgiving two years ago. Losses just keep building up.

There's a lot of acceptance that needs to happen within me. If I keep thinking that I'll find that happiness that little PC thought I'd have when I grew up, then I'll keep expecting things that aren't coming. (Self-induced torture?) It reminds me of that quote, "Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man." ― Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).
   Nietzsche is said to have been a pretty badly traumatized man who'd lost all hope in his life, and sometimes I feel like I can really resonate with him. But that's a road I can choose to take or not take. I can rely on my own newfound understanding of how micro-moments of peace are found between the familiar moments of pain and focus on those micro-moments instead. I guess the Law of Attraction sort of says that if I focus on what peace I can find that I will attract more peace. I'll become better and better at finding peaceful moments if I'll start looking for them as much as I can.

Baby steps. We don't heal from trauma quickly, but we do make progress if we work at it. I'll take any progress as it comes along.


The Chesire Cat once told Alice in Wonderland that if you don't know where you're going, all roads take you there. I can see in my own life that if I can stop worrying about where I'm going, perhaps I can sit back and enjoy the ride to "wherever this train is going".

I was reading a novel last week about a guy walking Route 66 and was getting frustrated with how long the journey was taking, where the author had the realization that, "The journey IS the destination". Might as well enjoy it. Maybe life will be a lot easier for me to deal with if I'll stop worrying about where I'm going and just enjoy the journey itself. In any given moment, I can take a deep breath and just love the feeling of air going in and coming out. The Traumas of Thanksgiving are there, but between each breath is a microscopic moment of pure peace. I guess I can endure the sadness of the Holidays if I will focus on the peace between each triggered memory.

For any and all of my OOTS friends who are being triggered by the Holiday season this year, I wish you all the peace you can find in the moments between breaths.

We've survived them every year up until now, and we can survive this one too.

To everyone here on the forum and everywhere that someone is working to find peace, my heart is with yours. I pray for inner peace to befall all of us, not just myself.

I believe that through sharing on the Forum and by connecting our own hearts in the ethereal world, we can endure this Holiday season together.

PC

#85

Recovery Journals / Re: Healing or Holding On?

Last post by Desert Flower - November 26, 2025, 06:03:29 PM

Hi Dark.art.girl, I've not been able to read everything you wrote yet, but

literally couldn't even open my mouth to speak.

I just wanted to let you know, in case you don't already, that this is what happens to the brain when something traumatic/overwhelming happens to us and we have no way to flee or fight. The speech center of the brain just shuts down. It helped me tremendously to know this, knowing there's no need to blame ourselves for not speaking up.

And a big thumbs up for showing up here to work these things through, to me that shows you're working towards healing.

Take care, a hug if that's okay,

#86

Recovery Journals / Re: Desert Flower's Recovery J...

Last post by Desert Flower - November 26, 2025, 03:20:24 PM

Yes, lousy electriciens, ha ha. Thank you for the validation, friends.

Had another rough day. Maybe I'll write about it later.

#87

Recovery Journals / Re: starting over

Last post by sanmagic7 - November 26, 2025, 03:00:01 PM

DF, your reply rang true for me on so many levels.  thank you for that.  the idea of doing the best we can to stay afloat, just to manage being alive from day to day, is so very true.  too many professionals don't get that.  to go the extra mile and do what we're 'supposed' to do is often way more than is possible.  it's like working so hard to stay afloat while awash in a turbulent sea - how can we maintain a certain expectation to do so in a 'healthy' way?  sometimes it's just not possible.   

thanks for the hug, chart.  love it!

i'm going into a dark place again - haven't been there in a while.  this bedtime anxiety is getting to me in a bad way.  last nite i did extra meds just to calm myself down.  the upside was that i slept really well.  but, trying to figure out where the anxiety is coming from, how it's affected me, and the idea that this may be a whole set of emotions, besides fear, that have layered on over the years and 3 marriages - each of which i usually had to go to bed alone - and which i didn't have access to has brought up the idea that i may have to do emdr on myself, which brought tears to the surface cuz on the whole it means i have to take care of myself - again.  what  a heavy load it feels like i've been carrying.  no wonder my posture is crapola.

#88

Recovery Journals / Re: Desert Flower's Recovery J...

Last post by sanmagic7 - November 26, 2025, 02:21:56 PM

ditto what chart said, DF.  it made perfect sense to me, too.  my background had a slightly different bent, but basically it was similar.  severance from a parent meant death, be it physical or emotional.  don't upset/disappoint the parent, and you're ok to live another day.  that pattern became ingrained in us because it was attached to a sense of survival.  very difficult to break, to know we have enough in ourselves to take care of ourselves.  lousy electricians, indeed!  love and hugs

#89

Eating Issues / Re: Why “Morbid Obesity” Still...

Last post by sanmagic7 - November 26, 2025, 02:09:33 PM

it is, indeed!

[some things have improved]

#90

Recovery Journals / Re: Healing or Holding On?

Last post by Chart - November 26, 2025, 07:44:12 AM

Does anyone else feel like once they release their big feelings this way things seem normal, but after awhile, feelings accumulate and build up under the surface again? I'm starting to recognize a pattern here and I remember this being a problem when I was younger, too. I wish I could explain why I'm doing it but I can't think that deeply right now. lol

Darkartgirl, absolutely. I experienced this a lot in the past. But now it's different. My take on it is that realizations don't actually change anything. This is why therapy doesn't help in the way we think or hope it will. The neuronal structure of our brains don't rewire quickly. It can take decades. It is freezing-molasses slow... but cumulative! Core issues can be horrifically difficult to "change" permanently. Many (myself included) don't believe in such platitudes as "total recovery".... Suddenly going into next week with sunshine and butterflies. It just doesn't work that way. And odd as it may seem, I'm not surprised (and kinda glad) it doesn't work that way. For me, what this means is that it's not a question of "results" but rather an understanding of the "process". Sure I want change. I especially want the pain to stop. But now that I've realized that's not going to happen (at least not in any Hollywood sense), something else has installed itself in the place where "hope" used to sit. Call it resilience maybe... it's definitely not "strength". It's a kind of acceptance, but that word is too passive and doesn't do justice to the fact that some things have improved. I totally agree with the onion metaphor. But there's something else in this idea of "change". Some things ARE permanent. They have to be because it is the foundation upon which my "self" rests. For example: Love "has" to be permanent. I can't get around that one. It HAS to be. And so if Love is eternal, it's opposite must also exist alongside it. The duality of existence seems pretty well established. And now I'm rambling! Sorry. So yes, I do think I understand that feeling of emotion revelation and subsequent backslide. My solution to that is observation, acknowledgement and patience. I've also seen things change in myself. But it's like getting close to very small birds... you have to stay very still and quiet, hardly breathing.