Recent posts
#1
Recovery Journals / Re: Post-Traumatic Growth Jour...
Last post by sanmagic7 - July 15, 2025, 02:00:13 PMvery insightful stuff, SO. so glad you went with your gut all those times. unfortunately, the therapeutic field is filled with too many people who are unaware of what trauma contains, what it's made of, or what horrible consequences it's left on a client. and, dang, my dander was raised about blaming you for not 'getting there'. that's never on the client. rather, it's that the therapist doesn't know (yet or ever) how to help the client get to where they want or need to go.
unfortunately, it's a mindfield (i know the word is supposed to be minefield, but my fingers spelled this out instead, and i think it fits, too) out there when it comes to getting proper help from professionals. my very first therapist ended up being a NPD, but of course i didn't know anything about me or any of this stuff at the time, and took her word on everything as gospel, so to speak. it wrecked me, i pressed charges against her with the state board eventually, (it took me 8 yrs. to be able to finally get up the courage) and they told me i was correct in doing so.
so, yes, going w/ your gut is so important. i'm glad you can see more clearly now, even if you weren't able to do so at the time. and i had to wonder inside what a bossy and controlling anybody was doing at a shamanic ritual in the first place! so we live and learn. i'm glad you made it out, and have made it thru until now. keep going, ok? love and hugs
unfortunately, it's a mindfield (i know the word is supposed to be minefield, but my fingers spelled this out instead, and i think it fits, too) out there when it comes to getting proper help from professionals. my very first therapist ended up being a NPD, but of course i didn't know anything about me or any of this stuff at the time, and took her word on everything as gospel, so to speak. it wrecked me, i pressed charges against her with the state board eventually, (it took me 8 yrs. to be able to finally get up the courage) and they told me i was correct in doing so.
so, yes, going w/ your gut is so important. i'm glad you can see more clearly now, even if you weren't able to do so at the time. and i had to wonder inside what a bossy and controlling anybody was doing at a shamanic ritual in the first place! so we live and learn. i'm glad you made it out, and have made it thru until now. keep going, ok? love and hugs
#2
Recovery Journals / Re: Post-Traumatic Growth Jour...
Last post by SenseOrgan - July 15, 2025, 09:16:13 AMNarcKiddo
Thanks for dropping by and sharing some of your own experience. I feel so lucky to have found a community with people like yourself. It's so important to be able to communicate about EF's with people who've been there too. It's great you're getting better at sitting with emotions. There's a limit to that, isn't it? Being alone with it is the factor that makes it so unbearable and seemingly forever in my case. That part of the EF is the pinnacle of what went wrong, which is relational. I find it very hard to organize a relational container to provide a safe enough space to process this. It's like no part of me is big enough to hold something of this magnitude on his own. A very good therapist I once had framed it as the feeling having you, instead of you having the feeling.
sanmagic7
Good observation. That very much happened with the woman who organized the whole thing, who was present throughout. It was all sorts of unsafe for me to be there. As you know, that can get wildly out of hand when psychedelics are involved. Since the shaman was from a completely different culture [Shipibo], and I wasn't much into the shamanic side of things, or the worldview of many other participants, that felt very unsafe. It was an unwise decision on my part to attend. Even though I had talked to the woman who organized it quite extensively via e-mails. When I saw her IRL, I should have walked away. She was a trigger fest for me. Domineering and all over the place. It doesn't get much worse than to be at the mercy of somebody like that, when you're defenses are stripped down by psychedelics. It's a horrible combination with developmental trauma.
The environment triggered such alienation and fear in me, that my paranoid mind came up with that vision. I didn't expect there to be so much ritual involved, which triggered me like mad. I felt utterly out of place. My fawn response went through the roof. And a big dose of freeze was mixed in with it. I was reduced to a terrified, helpless little boy. I temporarily lost a lot of autonomy/ego strength that week and in the aftermath of that.
The shaman himself was actually a nice guy. He only spoke Spanish, which I don't [except for the part where I briefly could a bit!]. Since those experiences involved psychedelics, it's all kinds of unexplainable. A far away part of me remained in everyday reality, and knew the demonic vision was not real. In the midst of it. There was also a moment where the entire group, me and the shaman included, burst out laughing. A very special moment, in the otherwise dead silent, and pitch dark hall. When it was my turn to undergo the ritual that he did for everyone, I uttered "muy comico", which initiated a bit of a rerun of the hilarity for no apparent reason. It was summer 2019, and speaking with you about this now, does help to shed some light on these experiences. Thank you for that. In the end, the * is usually about the relationship with my mother.
I feel stronger today. Not so much in the EF. I wrote the below last night. It feels like I've taken some power back from the overwhelm again. Thank you for being a factor in that.
*********************************************************************************************************
Today I spent a couple of hours with a questionnaire. A friend wants to know if he's on the autism spectrum. I'd be surprised if he isn't. If I would be asked why, I wouldn't have an answer straight away. I'm intuitive. It takes time to English or Dutch that. I just tap into that and try to translate until it feels "right". My shrink tends to believe it's perfectionism. To me it's wanting to say something that I actually agree with, and filtering out the rest.
The way I tick has been a great source of suffering. I remember drawing a translation machine in group therapy. It was tied to the ocean floor with a chain, and the machine itself was being smashed around by the waves, while it churned out unintelligible characters. Many years later it struck me how well the image captured how I often felt. The irony was that the group session ended with the therapist and the group putting pressure on me to accept some story they had formed about it. What I remember is that I felt completely misunderstood. The very kind of lonely and powerless desperation I had tried to communicate with something else than the words I couldn't find for it. A whole group of steam rollers drove over me. No space for my experience here either. No space for me. Client centered therapy. Looks great on paper. I still don't regret honoring my experience and refusing to swallow the force-fed meal. Not in that, and not in any other of the gazillion times this sort of thing happened. Sure they all meant well. And it was a very painful rerun of the invalidation that had pushed me to this place to begin with. The only place that was available for me at the time.
In all therapies in that clinic, the idea seeped through that being mentally ill is some kind of wrong view or missing insight. I never understood how clearly intelligent and professionally trained people could navigate with such a reductionist premise. Even though there's a place for questioning the patient's beliefs and experience, this kind of angle inherently further undermines the very thing which has been damaged or even destroyed by abuse. It's the opposite of helping a person to trust his inner voice and self-validating his experience. If the therapist doesn't believe in the client, who will? A therapist not placing his bets fundamentally on the self-healing capacity of the client has not understood what healing means. That is dangerous, with so much power and so much vulnerability confined in a tiny space.
Being at the mercy of these people, and having them deepening the invalidation, and insisting on self-abandonment made me want to scream at them. I did a couple of times [not that I could translate what I felt so clearly]. It was all pathological in their eyes, off course. That's how they labeled me. It was re-traumatizing to be in that situation. A whole year. I chose me regardless. Over and over. That was what I considered actual therapy. Not what was presented as such. Anger is hard for me to express. It evokes a lot of anxiety, and it takes a lot for me to go against the shame that keeps it festering in a hidden place. I don't regret ever trusting my gut over any kind of psycho babble.
Many years later I understood that a good enough therapist has faith in the patient himself. A lot of people are afraid of not knowing, of letting go. Therapists are just like people. There's a place for top down. Not so much in "treating" developmental trauma. The best therapists I had were very good at attunement, and not afraid of any emotion. It's a specific blend of humility, compassion, courage, experience, and wisdom that makes a good therapist. A prerequisite is having done a lot of your own work first. That makes up a significant proportion of where the rub is, I'm sure. Inevitably transference does kick in. As a patient, therapists basically tried to teach me how they themselves deal with difficult stuff. Which most often was a version of altering the story around it. That's not how trauma stops ruling your life.
How about those feelings being the story that needs to be finally heard? How about experiencing that buried reality in the presence of an attuned other being the very thing that sets free? How about not abandoning, about not choosing fear once again? How about staying? How about opening your own heart and connecting from a human, vulnerable place yourself? I can go on and on. I met a lot of therapists who are afraid of themselves, and therefore didn't bring their heart to their job. There's no such thing as professional distance and being there for a human being in great need at the same time. A traumatized child or a regressed adult smells that from miles away, even if it doesn't happen on a conscious level. Safety can't be faked. What kind of healing will happen if that basis isn't taken care of? Any person in touch with his own emotions doesn't need to be taught that. It's very taxing to be a therapist. Because it requires you to show up, and welcome things in yourself that get triggered. Like "failing".
They blamed me for not getting "there". Like I was a recalcitrant kid sabotaging his own treatment. I was asked what I needed to feel safe. So they did pick up that I didn't. On the surface, it looks like a good question to ask. But it not being obvious that the angle they came from prevents that foundation to get established, makes that a very sad thing to say. If you ask a desperate child that question, you are stating that you are not attuned to him. That itself is the seed where attachment trauma, and thus the danger in connection, sprouted from. How therapeutic is it to recreate that environment and to blame a traumatized person in your care for blocking his own progress?
Because I listened to my gut, I knew exactly what I needed to. Even though I didn't know it intellectually. I'm so glad I didn't let these people in any more than I did. They had no business there. I guess that what I refer to as my "gut", or my intuition, is a bit like that ocean floor the translation machine was anchored to. It has always been my connection to home. Deep below all the turmoil. The sense of belonging is infinitely greater there than what anybody tried to convince me of. No words are needed to make that clear. Just like you know when you're at home. Because it's me.
Thanks for dropping by and sharing some of your own experience. I feel so lucky to have found a community with people like yourself. It's so important to be able to communicate about EF's with people who've been there too. It's great you're getting better at sitting with emotions. There's a limit to that, isn't it? Being alone with it is the factor that makes it so unbearable and seemingly forever in my case. That part of the EF is the pinnacle of what went wrong, which is relational. I find it very hard to organize a relational container to provide a safe enough space to process this. It's like no part of me is big enough to hold something of this magnitude on his own. A very good therapist I once had framed it as the feeling having you, instead of you having the feeling.
sanmagic7
Good observation. That very much happened with the woman who organized the whole thing, who was present throughout. It was all sorts of unsafe for me to be there. As you know, that can get wildly out of hand when psychedelics are involved. Since the shaman was from a completely different culture [Shipibo], and I wasn't much into the shamanic side of things, or the worldview of many other participants, that felt very unsafe. It was an unwise decision on my part to attend. Even though I had talked to the woman who organized it quite extensively via e-mails. When I saw her IRL, I should have walked away. She was a trigger fest for me. Domineering and all over the place. It doesn't get much worse than to be at the mercy of somebody like that, when you're defenses are stripped down by psychedelics. It's a horrible combination with developmental trauma.
The environment triggered such alienation and fear in me, that my paranoid mind came up with that vision. I didn't expect there to be so much ritual involved, which triggered me like mad. I felt utterly out of place. My fawn response went through the roof. And a big dose of freeze was mixed in with it. I was reduced to a terrified, helpless little boy. I temporarily lost a lot of autonomy/ego strength that week and in the aftermath of that.
The shaman himself was actually a nice guy. He only spoke Spanish, which I don't [except for the part where I briefly could a bit!]. Since those experiences involved psychedelics, it's all kinds of unexplainable. A far away part of me remained in everyday reality, and knew the demonic vision was not real. In the midst of it. There was also a moment where the entire group, me and the shaman included, burst out laughing. A very special moment, in the otherwise dead silent, and pitch dark hall. When it was my turn to undergo the ritual that he did for everyone, I uttered "muy comico", which initiated a bit of a rerun of the hilarity for no apparent reason. It was summer 2019, and speaking with you about this now, does help to shed some light on these experiences. Thank you for that. In the end, the * is usually about the relationship with my mother.
I feel stronger today. Not so much in the EF. I wrote the below last night. It feels like I've taken some power back from the overwhelm again. Thank you for being a factor in that.
*********************************************************************************************************
Today I spent a couple of hours with a questionnaire. A friend wants to know if he's on the autism spectrum. I'd be surprised if he isn't. If I would be asked why, I wouldn't have an answer straight away. I'm intuitive. It takes time to English or Dutch that. I just tap into that and try to translate until it feels "right". My shrink tends to believe it's perfectionism. To me it's wanting to say something that I actually agree with, and filtering out the rest.
The way I tick has been a great source of suffering. I remember drawing a translation machine in group therapy. It was tied to the ocean floor with a chain, and the machine itself was being smashed around by the waves, while it churned out unintelligible characters. Many years later it struck me how well the image captured how I often felt. The irony was that the group session ended with the therapist and the group putting pressure on me to accept some story they had formed about it. What I remember is that I felt completely misunderstood. The very kind of lonely and powerless desperation I had tried to communicate with something else than the words I couldn't find for it. A whole group of steam rollers drove over me. No space for my experience here either. No space for me. Client centered therapy. Looks great on paper. I still don't regret honoring my experience and refusing to swallow the force-fed meal. Not in that, and not in any other of the gazillion times this sort of thing happened. Sure they all meant well. And it was a very painful rerun of the invalidation that had pushed me to this place to begin with. The only place that was available for me at the time.
In all therapies in that clinic, the idea seeped through that being mentally ill is some kind of wrong view or missing insight. I never understood how clearly intelligent and professionally trained people could navigate with such a reductionist premise. Even though there's a place for questioning the patient's beliefs and experience, this kind of angle inherently further undermines the very thing which has been damaged or even destroyed by abuse. It's the opposite of helping a person to trust his inner voice and self-validating his experience. If the therapist doesn't believe in the client, who will? A therapist not placing his bets fundamentally on the self-healing capacity of the client has not understood what healing means. That is dangerous, with so much power and so much vulnerability confined in a tiny space.
Being at the mercy of these people, and having them deepening the invalidation, and insisting on self-abandonment made me want to scream at them. I did a couple of times [not that I could translate what I felt so clearly]. It was all pathological in their eyes, off course. That's how they labeled me. It was re-traumatizing to be in that situation. A whole year. I chose me regardless. Over and over. That was what I considered actual therapy. Not what was presented as such. Anger is hard for me to express. It evokes a lot of anxiety, and it takes a lot for me to go against the shame that keeps it festering in a hidden place. I don't regret ever trusting my gut over any kind of psycho babble.
Many years later I understood that a good enough therapist has faith in the patient himself. A lot of people are afraid of not knowing, of letting go. Therapists are just like people. There's a place for top down. Not so much in "treating" developmental trauma. The best therapists I had were very good at attunement, and not afraid of any emotion. It's a specific blend of humility, compassion, courage, experience, and wisdom that makes a good therapist. A prerequisite is having done a lot of your own work first. That makes up a significant proportion of where the rub is, I'm sure. Inevitably transference does kick in. As a patient, therapists basically tried to teach me how they themselves deal with difficult stuff. Which most often was a version of altering the story around it. That's not how trauma stops ruling your life.
How about those feelings being the story that needs to be finally heard? How about experiencing that buried reality in the presence of an attuned other being the very thing that sets free? How about not abandoning, about not choosing fear once again? How about staying? How about opening your own heart and connecting from a human, vulnerable place yourself? I can go on and on. I met a lot of therapists who are afraid of themselves, and therefore didn't bring their heart to their job. There's no such thing as professional distance and being there for a human being in great need at the same time. A traumatized child or a regressed adult smells that from miles away, even if it doesn't happen on a conscious level. Safety can't be faked. What kind of healing will happen if that basis isn't taken care of? Any person in touch with his own emotions doesn't need to be taught that. It's very taxing to be a therapist. Because it requires you to show up, and welcome things in yourself that get triggered. Like "failing".
They blamed me for not getting "there". Like I was a recalcitrant kid sabotaging his own treatment. I was asked what I needed to feel safe. So they did pick up that I didn't. On the surface, it looks like a good question to ask. But it not being obvious that the angle they came from prevents that foundation to get established, makes that a very sad thing to say. If you ask a desperate child that question, you are stating that you are not attuned to him. That itself is the seed where attachment trauma, and thus the danger in connection, sprouted from. How therapeutic is it to recreate that environment and to blame a traumatized person in your care for blocking his own progress?
Because I listened to my gut, I knew exactly what I needed to. Even though I didn't know it intellectually. I'm so glad I didn't let these people in any more than I did. They had no business there. I guess that what I refer to as my "gut", or my intuition, is a bit like that ocean floor the translation machine was anchored to. It has always been my connection to home. Deep below all the turmoil. The sense of belonging is infinitely greater there than what anybody tried to convince me of. No words are needed to make that clear. Just like you know when you're at home. Because it's me.
#3
Recovery Journals / Re: I Am
Last post by sanmagic7 - July 14, 2025, 12:17:09 PMBach, i echo NK's words of wisdom. the struggle of staying here, making it thru each day, just seems overwhelming at times. i relate to that all the time. looking back, it's what i see my entire life to be - one big struggle. it's so wearing. hang on tight, ok? we're here with you. you are so much more than your mother's expectations. love and hugs
#4
Recovery Journals / Re: Post-Traumatic Growth Jour...
Last post by sanmagic7 - July 14, 2025, 12:13:35 PMSO, that shaman experience pinged me, like it was something you've experienced in your past which is why it happened in your present. i mean, the idea of people presenting themselves as helpers, someone there who was supposed to take care of you, but ended up doing quite the opposite, and were awful to you instead. that's what your experience spoke to me. it must have been absolutely terrifying.
thanks for sharing. i've actually been one who did some drugs in my past for 'fun', but ended up being quite paranoid sometimes, having panic attacks, etc., believing my friends were laughing at me - so, no, it was not very much fun at all a lot of times, altho at other times it was a laugh riot. stopped all that quite a while ago, tho. not worth it.
and i agree, EF's seem to take all power away to make rational decisions at times. ugh!
i hope you find some peace soon, are able to get your feet under you, so to speak, and can experience some restful sleep. i know compliments can be difficult, but i wouldn't say anything of that sort to you unless i truly believed it. you are wonderful. love and hugs
thanks for sharing. i've actually been one who did some drugs in my past for 'fun', but ended up being quite paranoid sometimes, having panic attacks, etc., believing my friends were laughing at me - so, no, it was not very much fun at all a lot of times, altho at other times it was a laugh riot. stopped all that quite a while ago, tho. not worth it.
and i agree, EF's seem to take all power away to make rational decisions at times. ugh!
i hope you find some peace soon, are able to get your feet under you, so to speak, and can experience some restful sleep. i know compliments can be difficult, but i wouldn't say anything of that sort to you unless i truly believed it. you are wonderful. love and hugs
#5
Recovery Journals / Re: Post-Traumatic Growth Jour...
Last post by NarcKiddo - July 14, 2025, 11:50:27 AMQuote from: SenseOrgan on July 13, 2025, 04:00:46 PMThat experience where it feels like it'll be like this forever and there's no way out whatsoever
Yes, I find that experience very hard to bear. I am getting better at sitting with emotions as my T advises, but sometimes the forever feeling is intolerable nevertheless. Even when I know, intellectually, that it is coming from an EF.
Thank you for writing your experiences in your journal. You write beautifully.
#6
Recovery Journals / Re: I Am
Last post by NarcKiddo - July 14, 2025, 11:39:10 AMQuote from: Bach on July 05, 2025, 06:06:56 PMThe other day, I realised that I have actually been fairly successful in life relative to the things my mother implicitly (and in some ways, even explicitly) taught me were important when I was a child. These things are, finding someone to take care of me financially, being sexually adventurous, and not being fat.Oh, crikey. That resonates.
And yes, I am sure you could have done all manner of different things if you had been given better examples and proper support and encouragement. And it really sucks that you weren't. I am also sorry that the fact you are absolutely a better person than your mother does not seem like enough, because it is a big achievement. It's an achievement you have reached all by yourself, too. So well done to you and I am sorry it feels a bit hollow. That feeling resonates, too, and it is grossly unfair that life has dealt us the hands it has.
#7
Recovery Journals / Re: I Am
Last post by Bach - July 13, 2025, 10:52:04 PMEvery single minute of every single day I'm struggling through life, pretending there's more to my existence than a constant battle to stay one step ahead of anxiety and pain and fear. I am so tired.
#8
Recovery Journals / Re: Healing journal (tw) Anger...
Last post by StartingHealing - July 13, 2025, 04:09:40 PMJuly 13 2025
Rough night last night. I have to accept that this physical frame is not what it once was and to be the best friend to myself that I can I need to accept that the memories of physical capabilities are just that. I had a few tipples, and yeah. Realized this morning over coffee that I may be better served if I create a more structured approach to things rather than just responding to outside obligations. That is something that I've lived with for ... well, at least my first breath in this realm.
Still working on what feels good to me in my living space. I haven't put up art on the walls even with the command hooks that don't damage anything since I'm a renter. I may have overshot a bit with the minimalism aspects.
I haven't gone out and walked in a fair bit either. I also haven't taken the 35mm camera and did anything. IDK .. seems like in my puzzling over things I've lost sight of enjoyment in the spaces I am in. TBH I've minimized down a great deal perhaps I've cut back in to many areas.
I have realized that many of the activities I enjoyed as a child was actually trauma responses. Reading was one of my jams. At the time though it was a means of escape from the situation that I found myself in. I mean a child has more needs than food, water, clothing, shelter.
Being out in nature, rather being away from certain people, that was a go to as well. One thing about being on the farm was if there wasn't anything else that needed to get done, there were some hours where I could just go out to the "pond" it was dry most of the year. After the spring rain(s) it would have some water in it and the toads would come out of their suspended animation to create the next generation of toads. Or go to a dry creek to see what if anything got brought to the surface from the wind / bank erosion / water flow.
I think something that would benefit me would be some sort of regular practice that grounds me into this physical frame.
Time to get some cold pizza for breakfast. Wash it down with some sun tea I did yesterday.
Wishing all here, all the best
Rough night last night. I have to accept that this physical frame is not what it once was and to be the best friend to myself that I can I need to accept that the memories of physical capabilities are just that. I had a few tipples, and yeah. Realized this morning over coffee that I may be better served if I create a more structured approach to things rather than just responding to outside obligations. That is something that I've lived with for ... well, at least my first breath in this realm.
Still working on what feels good to me in my living space. I haven't put up art on the walls even with the command hooks that don't damage anything since I'm a renter. I may have overshot a bit with the minimalism aspects.
I haven't gone out and walked in a fair bit either. I also haven't taken the 35mm camera and did anything. IDK .. seems like in my puzzling over things I've lost sight of enjoyment in the spaces I am in. TBH I've minimized down a great deal perhaps I've cut back in to many areas.
I have realized that many of the activities I enjoyed as a child was actually trauma responses. Reading was one of my jams. At the time though it was a means of escape from the situation that I found myself in. I mean a child has more needs than food, water, clothing, shelter.
Being out in nature, rather being away from certain people, that was a go to as well. One thing about being on the farm was if there wasn't anything else that needed to get done, there were some hours where I could just go out to the "pond" it was dry most of the year. After the spring rain(s) it would have some water in it and the toads would come out of their suspended animation to create the next generation of toads. Or go to a dry creek to see what if anything got brought to the surface from the wind / bank erosion / water flow.
I think something that would benefit me would be some sort of regular practice that grounds me into this physical frame.
Time to get some cold pizza for breakfast. Wash it down with some sun tea I did yesterday.
Wishing all here, all the best
#9
Recovery Journals / Re: Post-Traumatic Growth Jour...
Last post by SenseOrgan - July 13, 2025, 04:00:46 PMsanmagic7
I appreciate your kind support a lot! I'm grateful that you're here. I have to work a bit on receiving compliments, but thank you. And right back at ya again
********************************************************************************************************
Oh god it was bad again last night. I woke up dozens of times, had terrible nightmares. My whole being was invaded, overpowered by a parasitic force, sapping my life energy. I experienced my mother as a demon. That's a part of it I remember.
When I woke up I was reminded of a terrifying aya experience, where the shaman turned out to be a demonic creature with hooves. I never realized this was what my subconscious projected onto him in this specific way. I could have walked away to never come back at any time, yet I felt completely powerless to do so. Even when sobered up in between the series of ceremonies that week. It looks an awful lot like a freeze response. I've always struggled a bit determining my F-type hierarchy. Freeze actually never crossed my mind as having much significance for me.
The utterly lonely, desperate stuckness I ended up in during several psychedelic experiences had the same feeling tone as my EF's. It seems quite odd now that I did go there to process trauma and somehow not recognized those experiences for what they are. They never come with a label, and the overwhelming emotional storm disguises it into something of the present. My mind has ways to be aware of things and keeping a lot of their depth out of consciousness at the same time. The reality reveals itself in bits and pieces of emotional hieroglyphs.
The state between waking and sleeping is very rich in this regard. I sometimes have a lot of access to my subconscious at night, which can be terrifying. If I don't write it down, it quickly disappears from my awareness. Just like with psychedelic experiences. Working with psychedelics has made my subconscious stuff a lot more accessible. That never gets easy or straightforward though.
During EF's, the most difficult parts are by definition overwhelming and confusing. That experience where it feels like it'll be like this forever and there's no way out whatsoever, it strips me of ways to deal with it or my ability to tap into perseverance. It reduces me to a ping pong ball on the waves of a stormy ocean. I forget what's up and down, left and right, front and back. But what hits me hardest, is the collapse of perspective, of the factor of time. I guess this is what happens when parts of the cortex go offline and things get primal and panicky. I hate those kind of nights. And trips for that matter. I never could get my head around people tripping for fun. What my mind manifests generally isn't that at all.
Whatever happens during the day, I'm never completely gone. I nearly always have the ability to do some things, however little or chaotic. It's more like most of the bandwidth I have is used up by this trauma stuff being triggered, and it takes a lot of effort to add anything else. Except if I'm floored by a sleep disorder, which is another branch of the same beast.
I appreciate your kind support a lot! I'm grateful that you're here. I have to work a bit on receiving compliments, but thank you. And right back at ya again
********************************************************************************************************
Oh god it was bad again last night. I woke up dozens of times, had terrible nightmares. My whole being was invaded, overpowered by a parasitic force, sapping my life energy. I experienced my mother as a demon. That's a part of it I remember.
When I woke up I was reminded of a terrifying aya experience, where the shaman turned out to be a demonic creature with hooves. I never realized this was what my subconscious projected onto him in this specific way. I could have walked away to never come back at any time, yet I felt completely powerless to do so. Even when sobered up in between the series of ceremonies that week. It looks an awful lot like a freeze response. I've always struggled a bit determining my F-type hierarchy. Freeze actually never crossed my mind as having much significance for me.
The utterly lonely, desperate stuckness I ended up in during several psychedelic experiences had the same feeling tone as my EF's. It seems quite odd now that I did go there to process trauma and somehow not recognized those experiences for what they are. They never come with a label, and the overwhelming emotional storm disguises it into something of the present. My mind has ways to be aware of things and keeping a lot of their depth out of consciousness at the same time. The reality reveals itself in bits and pieces of emotional hieroglyphs.
The state between waking and sleeping is very rich in this regard. I sometimes have a lot of access to my subconscious at night, which can be terrifying. If I don't write it down, it quickly disappears from my awareness. Just like with psychedelic experiences. Working with psychedelics has made my subconscious stuff a lot more accessible. That never gets easy or straightforward though.
During EF's, the most difficult parts are by definition overwhelming and confusing. That experience where it feels like it'll be like this forever and there's no way out whatsoever, it strips me of ways to deal with it or my ability to tap into perseverance. It reduces me to a ping pong ball on the waves of a stormy ocean. I forget what's up and down, left and right, front and back. But what hits me hardest, is the collapse of perspective, of the factor of time. I guess this is what happens when parts of the cortex go offline and things get primal and panicky. I hate those kind of nights. And trips for that matter. I never could get my head around people tripping for fun. What my mind manifests generally isn't that at all.
Whatever happens during the day, I'm never completely gone. I nearly always have the ability to do some things, however little or chaotic. It's more like most of the bandwidth I have is used up by this trauma stuff being triggered, and it takes a lot of effort to add anything else. Except if I'm floored by a sleep disorder, which is another branch of the same beast.
#10
Suicide Ideation/Self Harm / Re: Feeling Suicidal Again
Last post by Blueberry - July 12, 2025, 09:58:25 PMQuote from: BlueMoon_ on July 07, 2025, 07:40:15 PMMy therapist told me to look at the facts before, since they can be distorted, but this is the facts. I'll never be strong enough to defend myself.
It may have seemed that way for a long time and it still may seem that way, but that could change! Once you're well on the road to healing, surprising things can happen for the better.
I hope you're feeling a little more stable than last week. As Kizzie said, if you're actively suicidal you need to speak to somebody IRL who can support you in the moment. For other support, we are here