Post-Traumatic Growth Journal

[HannahOne]

I haven't posted or replied before so not sure how this will show up. But I related to your post number 8. I appreciate you sharing it here.

Nightmares are the worst.

I was thinking how I have been trying to "update" myself. Not so much to change myself, but to update, to become fully present in the present as I presently really am. To realize my actual age, and also to show up as that age in the world in a way that's recognizable. I have a youthful spirit or energy, people often remark. I was often passed over at work as seeming "too young," and not taken seriously. Sometimes I feel younger than I am, I feel immature compared to others.  Other times I feel very old, like my life is already set and done and I'm exhausted. I guess it's not the years, it's the mileage. I'm 50.

I too have become very isolated, for me it's been in the last five years, and going out and about to make connections feels scary, hopeless, and also interesting. So I keep going. Each day I've been going into a shop and chatting with the owner or worker. I find the more I do this, the more present I feel, and the more "updating" is happening. Sometimes through nightmares where it's like I have to check back and update myself about the past and take delivery of it again with more perspective of my age, sometimes through noticing small progress where I feel I'm taking delivery of the tools and opportunities I now have to connect in ways that feel safe enough.

[SenseOrgan]

Dear friends, thank you all so very much for being here! Thank you for your support, thank you for reading, thank you for sharing! I feel spoiled by the rich feedback I got from you. I'm a little overwhelmed by it. Lately, my brain has been working overtime. Dot's are connected left and right. In connection with you and others. Even the things that got lost in translation from my mind to written text, turn out to give rise to feedback that produces new insight for me. It's wonderful to notice what's happening. I'm playing around with a lot of things in my mind [that's right Marcine  ], and a part of me really enjoys that. Prompted by the EF. Never waste a good crisis, right?

Interacting here also comes with it's own challenges for me. It's not the first time this comes up. I'd like to have hours long conversations with each one of you about these topics. Exchanging written text feels terribly limiting to me right now. I want to do justice to the time you took to read what I wrote and to write a reply. At the same time I'm having trouble having different conversations with different people that all tie into eachother. I struggle to keep it short, because reducing the complexity and nuances of a subject quickly stops representing what I actually think or feel. I started writing long responses. The things I'd say when we would be on a long walk together. That's not what I want my journal to drift into though. It doesn't fit this format very well either. I think there's a conflict of loyalty playing along as well. I need to choose me. Especially right here. So I'm going to be what an old therapist used to call "ego central". The train of life has moved ahead full speed since we last communicated. I'm going to focus on that.

The cross-pollination that started happening around "deconstructing experience" is amazing. It's a very pleasant surprise to me this happened around a topic that's potentially so triggering and pretty far out. I very much like to continue the conversation in another place than my journal, where we can bounce ideas off of each other more freely. Collectively, we form a treasure trove of life experiences and knowledge around very specific challenges. I don't think we necessarily always make optimal use of that. Hanging out in the recovery journals a lot has it's limitations. Noted. I'll take some of what's on my mind to elsewhere on the forum. I hope to see you there. Again, thank you very much for being here! 

HannahOne
Welcome here! And thank you very much for sharing this! It's very inspiring to me that you go out every day, and I highly admire your courage for doing so. I too see this challenge through the lens of updating myself. It's the right mix between validation and challenge. Probably the optimal spot for personal growth. It brings a smile to my face that you're out there seeking this out. I recognize it as self love manifesting, even though it may not look like it or feel like it in the moment. Thinking about these sensitivities, I realize that in attuned connection with someone, the things that I "other" myself with don't exist. I'm just OK, and right there, in connection. These experiences do update my self image. Slowly. But they do. Wishing you heaps of these! Welcome on board.   

[SenseOrgan]

I'm transitioning out of ketosis. Goodbye brain working on all cylinders. It's been a lovely ride. There are only three days left with a tiny bit of benzo for sleep. I'm not sure if the ketosis has helped for stability. Because I got covid, and an intense trigger happened. And a bunch of other stuff. Next time, I'll probably do it again. I like the idea of bringing in more stability while taking on something potentially destabilizing. I sure went to the dark place that tapering off brought me to before. I'll never figure out this one though. There are just too many variables that went into this mix. I didn't spiral out, and I don't expect any trouble when I'm at zero benzo's. Other than sleep issues. I've noticed the quality of my sleep go down slowly. If things are going back to the old normal, that ain't going to be much fun. We'll see. It is what it is.

I've had a wonderful meeting with a support group for depression that I've been a member of for seven years. It's similar to what we do here. But we meet face to face once a month with the group. I've been upfront about what it actually is that I struggle with right from the start. Everybody is cool with it. I'm not the odd one out. I'm a normal member of the group. Some people in the group struggle with CPTSD as well, I think, but they're in a different paradigm. We do not live in the same mental space. Nobody in the group really gets CPTSD like you and I do. This is significant. It do sometimes feel like they too don't really get what I deal with. It makes communication difficult for me sometimes too. Since I have to translate my experience with more common vocabulary. We do not entirely speak the same language. The mental model we adopt does influence our experience. And it does influence aspects that are very important for recovery. Like the feeling of belonging. The concepts just don't cut it for me outside of the CPTSD framework. There's a difference in feeling depressed and believing it's a chemical imbalance, and feeling very similar but understanding it in the context of CPTSD, for instance. So even though I'm grateful to be a member of such a supportive and safe group, I've always wanted to be part of an actual CPTSD support group. Those are few and far between over here. Which is why I'm over the moon with the fact that it very much looks like I'm going to join one. Real life meetings, in a city close to mine.

I've had some e-mail exchanges and things are looking good. There are actually two groups I can choose from! One is for PTSD+HSP, and one for CPTSD. From the info on their website I can't quite make out what would be the best fit for me. Labels, argh! They've offered me to have a chat to figure this out. I'll be calling them today.

This got me wondering what it is exactly that I'm looking for. When I take the perspective of the ideal situation, I see myself developing in areas that have nothing to do with CPTSD. Changing my life into something more fulfilling, one day at a time. Because I have real support often enough with regards to CPTSD. That would be in my own city. A mixture of structured and spontaneous get-togethers, in a group and one on one. Formal and informal. Mutual commitment to supporting each other's goals in life. Something like that. In my mind groups like AA have got this covered way better. I've literally more than once thought it would have been so good to be addicted because of the support that's organized around that. I once saw a beautiful TV series about a guy who came out of prison. I learned about the concept of the halfway house. That's what I want for this. Relationally. The divide between therapy and life could hardly be bigger over here. I'll get by with a little help from my friends, and I love to be one for someone in a similar spot. That's the bottom line. As things are organized now, there's a cliff between surviving and thriving. I think a lot of it does not need to be this way. It's hard enough as it is.

The advent of individualism comes at a price. People like us pay the highest one. We're canaries in a coalmine of some sorts. A part of this has nothing to do with us. It made us more vulnerable to struggle in isolation. It makes it bigger than it needs to be. And, in a meritocracy, bad things happen as a result of your own mistakes. Life isn't that simple. Yet we do get this message from society in many ways and it does affect us. We need to figure out how to be a community again. Where I'm at, this runs parallel to my personal struggles and it amplifies them.

[dollyvee]

  Good luck with your new group SO.

Also, just to clarify the double posting from me -- one was supposed to be from the night before, but don't think it actually posted.

[SenseOrgan]

dollyvee
Thank you. And no worries. Thank you for being here. Double . I hope we can touch on some things you wrote about later on. This is such fascinating stuff! More and more I start to feel like I'm part of a team of experiential experts, who don't necessarily realize they are. Your journal is in the private section, right? I used to navigate there via new posts. They haven't showed up on my radar for a while. Dunno what's going on. I'll try to navigate there another way. 

[dollyvee]

Yes, the one I have been using most is in the member's section. I wouldn't say I'm an expert, just some things that I have been found to be true for me. I always found myself constantly going to someone else about someone's behaviour to see if there was validation in it, or I was "crazy" for thinking that, but the whole process was dependent on "other," and had nothing to do with my own internal compass. This is what I had known growing up -- that my reality wasn't real, and I had to accept the reality of my unNPD mother, grandmother, and step grandfather as real, which required constant validation so it was "safe" to exist. My experience of that "emptiness" was both one fraught with fear because without a connection to those people, there was annihilation (explained well in Jay Reid videos this removal of the seat of Self that happens in scapegoating families), and my experience of emptiness/Great Mother (also, funnily enough, the spider woman in some cultures is the grandmother and weaver of reality/creator of all things) was through my gm in a way who told me she was my protector, as well as "all knowing" (more in my journal about this), which affects (and affected) my Self at a very primordial (?)/deep level. So, it was almost as if the connection to that Great Mother where I should feel whole is/was also filtered at some level through my gm (almost as a limitation to my personal power as well), and giving up that connection means giving up protection (but really just the idea or illusion of what I thought protection was), but I'm working this out. 

[sanmagic7]