Papa Coco's Recovery Journal

[Papa Coco]

Armee, Narckido, Larry, thank you for the support. I'm feeling better. Healing from Complex PTSD is a lifelong project, so I recognize that I still have it. The days of believing I was cured because I'm feeling better are gone. I've gone down that rabbit hole far too many times, only to be damaged further when I later realized I was wrong and that I still have PTSD. I am happy to be feeling happier, but aware that I can't let my guard down, because my past is never going to be erased. It shaped my personality, and that's permanent. Using daily meditation and prayer is helping, but just like brushing my teeth, I have to do it every day, because my personality is still my personality, and my personality, like yours, is one of kindness. I'm still looking for love in a world filled with sociopaths and narcissists, which is a no-win battle. Narcissists are born every day. They're not going anywhere.

I hope to keep this good feeling going for as long as possible. I have to work at my meditations the same way I have to exercise and brush my teeth every day for the rest of my life. And, I'm okay with that. If meditation and prayer are working to keep me from self-medicating in physical ways, then I just think of it as daily self-care. Like eating lunch. Brushing teeth. Showering. Changing the oil in the car. These are things we have to do to keep ourselves alive and healthy and maintained.

Dolly. Your post has so much wisdom in it. During my meditations, and my daily "Morning papers" (I make myself write 3 full pages of "stream of consciousness" thoughts every, single morning, and the wisdom I get from those papers sets the stage for each day's meditations), I recently realized the truth that I give away my power every time I overshare. I've read a lot of articles about C-PTSD and "oversharing" is one of the top symptoms of being a person with a traumatic past. All too often, I confess what I'm thinking. I say too much. I confess too much. I'm learning that there is an important balance in how we communicate with each other. We want to share so we can bond and see ourselves in each other. The open sharing on this forum has been a tremendous help for me as I leave the belief that I'm the only broken soul on the earth. But that can go too far. It helps me now, to ask myself, "What is my motivation for each time I share?" Am I sharing my inner thoughts because I want to bond with other good souls? OR, am I confessing my thoughts so I don't get punished later for having secrets? It's all about personal power. Sharing the right amount empowers us as a team to bond better. Sharing too much, waters down my own personal power. I guess I could think of it like a chef's secret recipe. I can share the food with others, but if I give away my secret recipe, I lose my business altogether.

OR! How about this theory:
  As a child, I had so many secrets that I felt like I was about to be caught and killed for my secrets. I kept it secret that I was being abused sexually, and that I was being shunned by my entire school, and that I was terrified of people my own age, etc, etc, etc. That terror ate at my stomach and head day in and day out. By day I hid from people. By night I hosted nightmares nearly every night about being abused and trapped and killed. I've been killed many times in my dreams. Somehow, holding onto information terrifies me, because it makes me afraid I'm going to suffer from the secrets again. Somehow, at some point, I learned that if I tattled on myself to others I could avoid being caught later. Telling too much feels like surrender.  We surrender when we finally realize we're outmatched. Surrender is a way of surviving what we cannot survive. Somehow, my urge to tell everyone every thought I have is a way to surrender to avoid one day being outed for my fears and foolishness.

Or even better: This might be the best theory of them all: A major symptom of Complex-PTSD is a fear of my own power. I hate board games and competitions because losing feels bad and winning is terrifying. I don't deserve to win. I don't deserve wealth or happiness. So when I get them, I feel like I have to give them away before I explode. Same with my thoughts I guess. When I begin to gain power because I know things others don't know, I feel like I don't deserve to be a step ahead, so I give it away. I open my big mouth and I tell everyone what I'm thinking. That way I don't have the power anymore, and can relax in my lowly servant place again.

It's a new realization for me. I'm floored that as I'm pondering this new idea, that you had the idea to share what you shared. It's like you knew exactly what I needed to read.

I routinely apologize for writing too long of posts. I write too long of letters. I am trying to shorten them, but that's proving to be difficult for me. I'm working on it. I'll stop here for now to practice stopping at all. (ha ha)

[dollyvee]

Hi PC,

I think we all like your long posts. When the comment came up, for me, I was thinking about how you felt like you couldn't share what you were experiencing because some people might not agree with the spiritual aspect of it, and I just connected it to what I read (because it also resonated with me in the book). You are having such a connection to what you're experiencing now and it shouldn't matter if other people approve (at least IMO). So, it just made me think that sometimes certain things are meant for just us.

Serendipitously, I've just read something in the John Bradshaw book where he talks about the strategies for dealing with shame and how they get more complex as we get older. So, where we might project or repress earlier on, our coping strategies can evolve into rationalization, minimization, explanation, compensation or sublimation as secondary defenses. By using these we transfer our shame onto others. I think it's like you said where if you held onto your secrets, you would be killed. So, you had to transfer this to someone else. This is just IMO and stuff I'm working with now too. For me, I feel like I have to overexplain myself so that people will believe me, that they'll see what I'm saying and essentially, that I matter, that I have the right to exist I guess.

He also talks about turning against the Self as one of the coping strategies for dealing with shame. I recognized this in myself. I think at a certain level I also fear my own power, or sabotage the things in my life where I can express that power. I think I always made things harder than they needed to be because, like above, who am I to say these things (no one believed me), or always told me I didn'tt know what I was talking about.

Thrning Against Self
Turning Against Self is an ego defense whereby a person deflects hostile aggression from another person and directs it onto self. This defense is extremely common with people who have been abandoned through severe abuse. Because a child so desperately needs his parents for survival, he will turn his aggressive rage about his abuse into abuse of himself. The extreme form of this is suicidality. In such cases, (the French call it self-murder), the person so identifies with the offender that he is killing the offender by killing himself.
Common but less intense examples include nail biting, head banging, accident proneness and self-mutilation. In later life people may injure themselves socially or financially. In all cases the rage at the offender is so fearful and shameful it is turned against self.

Sorry if I'm taking over your journal, I just wanted to share what's resonated. I like your posts  I don't think there's anything "wrong" with oversharing, though I don't know if the reasons why we do it will bring about the results that deep down we're hoping for. To me, it's maybe another survival mechanism like you pointed out that we picked up along the way.

Sending you support,
dolly

[sanmagic7]

 

[Papa Coco]

Journal Entry for Tuesday, November 14, 2023


Thanks to CPTSD I can wake up each morning and wonder who I'm going to be today. It seems that good days and bad ones randomly pick me. I don't pick them.

Today I woke up not feeling so great. I'm taking a break from feeling great. (That's a positive way of saying I'm struggling today). I'm glad that I've learned to be cautious about being too excited about feeling good for a few days (weeks) in a row, because over the past two days I've fallen into an all-too-familiar triggered state. The weeks I felt great were a nice vacation, but guess what...Complex PTSD is a relentless condition. It comes back on us from time to time. It's come back on me as of yesterday.

I met a new IFS part yesterday: It's possible that by meeting him/her/them (I'll go with them/they/their until I get a name to identify them with) that I put myself into this triggered state, and I'll stay here while I process the fear that this IFS part has been subject to for the duration of my entire life. They are the person who lives inside me who is terrified of the future. I haven't settled on their name yet, but I can feel the formidable force that they have been living under for the duration of my time on the earth. The future terrifies me, and this IFS part feels the terror with me. They are the one who buys the locks and alarms and backup water and backup batteries and fire extinguishers and double-n-triple locks on all my doors and possessions. This IFS part is always perched and ready to assist in case the future is as terrifying as I expect it to be. What if someone scams me out of my pension? What if I get sick and live the next 30 years in a bed? What if my family leaves me or is hurt in some freak accident? What if...what if...what if.

The joy of the past few weeks has been that I've been focused only on the present, letting the past and future sit in the background. But today I'm just tired. Tired of expending so much energy trying to not be a traumatized, terrified, hypervigilant, hyper aroused, nervous, workaholic, foodaholic, manic/depressive scared little boy in an old man's body.

I'm SO TIRED!

Sometimes that which is good for me hurts when it does it's job. I finally got the Audible version of The Body Keeps the Score. I listened, this morning, to chapters 1 and 2. I had to stop. It's excellent information, but it hurts my brain and soul to listen to it. HOLY SMOKES I'm discovering that I have even more symptoms of PTSD than I had previously believed I did. I'm so tired of being so freaking scared all......the......time! The excellent book is digging up the muck that I had pretended had settled beneath the glistening surface of my being. Everything's murky again. That's how healing happens, but *** I'm SO TIRED OF IT.

My only hope today, is that this agony I'm feeling is me digesting another positive step forward, and that the pain will only last a short time, and that I'll come out the other side of it feeling better than ever. Fingers crossed. Sadly this is only hope, and hope has no evidence to back it up. I have decided that Faith is hope with evidence as Hope is faith without evidence. (example: I can have faith that my car will start if I have evidence that it always does and there's nothing wrong with it. But I would only HOPE my car would start if I just bought it used and I have never tried to start it before. I call it "hope" when I have no evidence. I call it "faith" when I do have evidence). Sadly, faith is tough now because the evidence sometimes shows that this can go on for several weeks. So, hope that this passes quickly is all I have. I only hope it turns out to be a good thing.

Meanwhile I'm preparing for a cold winter deep within my soul. Up to two days ago I felt on top of the world. For the past 36 hours, the world is on top of me again. I'm used to this going on for months on end. Only time will tell how much permanent movement I got from that last hypnotherapy session. This is going to be my first trigger-test to see how much permanent movement I made.

[Papa Coco]

San and Dolly, thanks for the hugs and validation. Just being heard is one of the top benefits to this forum. I truly appreciate it.

Dolly, do you believe in synchronicity? Because you seem to always know exactly what things to bring up to me exactly when I need them the most.

Yesterday I watched enough podcasts and listened to the first two chapters in The Body Keeps the Score. Adding these two things to what you said about Bradshaw's book, renewed my fascination of how much of my personality is truly trauma-related.


Is it Real or is it Trauma?

Today, I came up with a question that I plan to ask myself over and over as I go through the day: Is it real or is it trauma? It's almost like a game I could play with myself. Like something a late-night talk show host would use to tell jokes. But it's a very, VERY critical question that I hope can really help.

I know that black and white thinking is a C-PTSD symptom. Everyone either loves me or hates me. Everyone is either for me or against me. Today is either awesome or horrific. The gray area is the healthy mindset that allows all our IFS parts to work together as a team that sees the good and difficult in every situation. But when it comes to this: I'm wanting to cut through the gray matter and separate out the wheat from the chaff.

The unexamined life is doomed to repeat itself. That's why we often recreate our own problems over and over in life, because we are magnetically attracted to what we already know. But if I can stop and put each trigger and each happy or fearful moment I have, under a microscope, maybe I can get better at knowing which of my habits, addictions, fears, triggers, are real or are trauma. It's not trauma that makes me afraid to cross the street without looking for cars first, the fear of being hit by a car is a good fear. But the fear of saying the wrong thing to people who like me is more of a trauma fear.

If I'm going to be stuck living with C-PTSD for the rest of my natural life, then at least I want to be better able to know which emotions I'm having, or health risks I'm dealing with, are unavoidable parts of reality, versus which are avoidable parts of trauma-drama.

Black and white thinking, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. Only when we take it too far and add trauma-drama to it does it become a sticking point. There is absolutely no way that any human eye can see both sides of a coin in one look. Only through mirrors and cameras can I see both sides of a coin at once. There is no gray area between heads or tails. That's okay. Gray area exists, and binary choices also exist. The trick is to know which are binary, and which are blended. It's also helpful to know which are real and which are trauma responses.

I'm tired of feeling like I have to work SO hard to heal every day. I want, so badly, to go light a fire in the firepit in my backyard, grab a nice cup of coffee or tea, and maybe a book, and just enjoy the moment. Instead, I see a floor that should be vacuumed, or a book I feel like I'm responsible to write. WHAT MAKES ME THINK I OWE THE WORLD what I know?

The books I wrote in 2011-2017 were books I wanted to write. I needed to get the story of my life off my chest. But now, I find myself feeling like I have no choice but to keep writing as a duty to the world. But there are ALREADY enough books on PTSD and enough Podcasts on PTSD and SA that the world isn't looking for what I have to say about it. So I ask myself: Is my pull to write more books real, or is it trauma?

I'm going to play today like it is a gameshow. And every burden I carry will be asked: Is it real or is it trauma? And my first question is: As I'm finding bits of healing here and there, am I REQUIRED to share those with others or am I allowed to light a fire, and enjoy the peace of a quiet night in my back yard? Is my need to teach others real, or is it trauma? That's what I'm going to meditate on today.

[Armee]

 

The roller coaster! It's real!

[natureluvr]

Papacoco, you said "I'm still looking for love in a world filled with sociopaths and narcissists, which is a no-win battle. Narcissists are born every day. They're not going anywhere." 

OMG, can I ever relate!  I've been doing the same thing, but have gotten better with this.

You said "What if my family leaves me or is hurt in some freak accident?"  I can really relate to this fear too.

I just want you to know you are not alone - I'm right here with you.      

[Papa Coco]

Armee! Yes, the roller coaster is real. I repeatedly fool myself into believing I've found the way off. This time, at least, I remained cautious, since I have, so many times, tricked myself into believing I'd overcome it. There is no overcoming. Only mitigation. Mangement. Learning to live with it. Gads! My hypnosis helped for a few weeks. I guess I should be grateful for having had a few weeks of pretending I'm not still dealing with the traumas.

Naturluver, it's awesome to hear from you again! These fears we live with...They never really go away, do they? Knowing they are trauma-based and not reality-based helps a little. The pain is still there, but at least I'm not confused by it anymore. It's trauma. The wonderful world of trauma.


Journal Update: 11/16/2023

TRIGGER WARNING: There is some hopelessness in the words below this line. I don't like hopelessness, but I have to be honest: I feel hopeless.

Three days ago, the rabbit hole opened up below me and I'm still freefalling deeper down the hole. Today, while listening to the audio version of The Body Keeps the Score, on chapter 11: Uncovering Secrets: The Problem of Traumatic Memory, I found myself on the floor sobbing like the world had just ended. The author, Bessel van der Kolk, was telling the story of a man who had fragmented memories of being molested by a priest. As he talked about how this client would never be able to recall the memories in any proper order, and would never have the luxury of remembering the whole story, but who is destined to live with disorganized fragments, random flashbacks and haunting body memories instead, I actually fell to the floor and started whaling.

Nope. My happy days are coming to an end. I feel lucky I got to have a few weeks feeling on top of the world. What a nice vacation from the reality of the fractured world. I've been doing projects all day, organizing my garage and shed again, I can feel the dark cloud hovering over me. soaking into my body through skin that isn't strong enough to keep it out. The poison of my memories is too strong for my skin to stop it from entering my body and abusing me all over again. As bad as I feel, this book, which is triggering me even further, is actually still a good read. I NEED to know what it's telling me, even though I hate what it's telling me.

It's showing me more symptoms than I ever realized I even have. It addresses my constant fear of being unprotected. It addresses exactly WHY I can't stand the sound of barking dogs or loud neighbors. Van der Kolk is putting a lot of science on his explanation of exactly how trauma rewires the brain and makes us skittish, jumpy, self-destructive, worriers, and, of course, there is a very obvious story behind the fact that I feel like my own clothing and skin can't stop this trauma from entering my body. I'm sure I don't need to elaborate, but I can say that the stark realization that I'm still VERY much affected by the sexual abuse of my childhood that I wonder if I'm actually still 7 years old and it's all still happening. It blew my mind that I couldn't make him stop and nobody would protect me. Today I realize it's been almost sixty years and I still can't make him stop and still, nobody can help. Van der Kolk is giving me a look into my world. I never feel safe. I never feel protected. I'm jumpy. Easily distracted. Unable to focus. Today, while I lay on the floor sobbing, my mouth said words I didn't ask it to say, it kept repeating, "Nobody can help me. Nobody can help me. Nobody can help me." I was thinking about how, even now, all these years later, no matter how many professionals are learning about Complex PTSD, so far nobody has figured out how to help me.

I'm not in my right mind. My body is numb and my brain feels like I'm watching a movie about someone else. It feels like my brain is sitting inside a robot body, looking out the window through my eyes. Like my brain and body are no more one than a human body is one with the bus it's riding in. My body is an inanimate object, and my soul is just sitting in it going for the ride. Just like riding in a bus.

I'm alone right now. But I'm heading home to my family on Saturday morning so I can celebrate Thanksgiving with them. Here in the US, it's Thanksgiving one week from today. I have a serious love-hate relationship with holidays. Lots of FOO drama and fake love. I'm SO glad I'm not in contact with FOO anymore. So Thanksgiving is more fun now with just my wife, and my son and his family, but the trauma shares the ride with me. I was SA'd by priest(s) during the Holidays when I was 7. I was supposed to be rehearsing for the christmas play, and somehow I ended up getting some "special rehearsal times" during the school day. I used to wake up in class around 1:45 PM, having no memory of anything during the lunch hour or how I got to my desk.

Van der Kolk is making me feel more certain that I'll never, ever, ever stop feeling this. Not while I'm alive in this body.

I'm so sorry for being in this mood. One thing that has kept me alive for so long is this constant, hypervigilant search for healing. I keep trying everything I can find. It's time I change my life's mission. If I can't ever find freedom from this, then I need to stop wearing myself out, trying so hard to find that silver bullet. I tell people that we can't be cured, and that we need to work to find ways to live happily while being traumatized, but then I don't listen to my own advice. I keep thinking that the cure is in that one thing I haven't tried yet. And as I partake of the new cure, I use biases to make myself believe that I've finally found the cure. Only to predictably fall from grace again and again and again and again.

Okay, Trigger warning ended.

[Armee]

Hi Papa Coco. Here with you. Also reliving physically what happened. Even though it's still playing through my body quite graphically it's somehow easier now to accept thats what it is that's what happened and to let it be there in all its disgusting awfulness. It doesn't have the same horrible emotions anymore. I'm not foolish enough to think it won't be bad again but I can attest at least that a year ago I sat here with these flashbacks and they were intolerable. The past month and a half, same flashbacks, but they just are there. The bad stuff happened. It keeps happening that's why we hold on and tell ourselves this is something from the past, our body is sharing with us what happened, we are witnessing it, we are presently safe even though it feels like it's happening now.

I wish there was magic to be done. But you went through a lot, there's a lot to process there Papa C. This is that time of year. You're going to get through this and then be ok again. They are memories. We'll be here through the tough times and here when you are riding the crest.

You're safe now. 

[Papa Coco]

Armee:

 

Thank you for being a friend during the good and difficult times.

[NarcKiddo]

There IS hope, Papa C. And the book will cover that. You just haven't got to that bit yet. I also think that once you have finished the book you may be better able to answer "is this real or is this trauma?" for any given situation. You will have more knowledge, and knowledge is power. Knowledge is also tough and unpleasant at times, especially when it relates to CPTSD. The gift that just keeps on giving. I think, though, that we do not seek to know what we are not strong enough to handle. Digging deeper means you are stronger.

 

[Papa Coco]

NarcKiddo,  Them are some good words. Thanks. I will be driving back into the city later this evening. I can listen to chapters 12 and 13 or so while on the three-hour drive. I would sure love to find a little hope in all this. At the moment, I'm not feeling it. Just a lot of utter, shear exhaustion.

He says some things I already know, but he adds in a lot of stuff I've either never known, or wasn't ready to absorb in the past. And when he talks about how people who were abused or raped as children live their lives in ever-diminishing cortisol levels, I was hearing that for the first time. I would have always believed my cortisol levels were higher than a calm person, but what he says makes sense on multiple levels. Cortisol, like gasoline, runs out when the motors are running at high speed for 60 years. It also explains why I NEED coffee every day. I joke about how I can't sleep at night, and then I suck down all that caffeine, but it's been my experience that without the coffee boosting my cortisol levels, I become so dark and depressed that I can't rise up from it. I've been running my engine at full throttle for 63 years and my cortisol levels are depleted. It makes so much sense now. IT definitely plays into why I feel so run down and tired and exhausted all the time.

[CactusFlower]

I agree with NarcKiddo. It's a slow whittling away of symptoms, sometimes much much slower than we want. Even if we never get rid of some things, learning gives us a slight edge up on it. But one other thing we have is each other on this forum. We understand each other and support each other in good and bad. When I started therapy, I told her that my MPU had the first 11 years of my life, I'm not getting over it overnight. It was hard to read that book, yet like you, it explained so much for me. I'd forgotten about the cortisol issue. I wonder if fibromyalgia has any connection to trauma-lowered cortisol. In any case, here to support you even if I don't post often.

Gentle hugs if you want them, peace and compassion regardless.

[Papa Coco]

Cactus Flower,

You hit it on the head. This forum is my saving grace right now. Being able to talk about "who I am" without having to explain it, is itself a healing tool.

The book is helping me with my shame issues. For example, I'm always embarrassed that I can't stand the sound of barking dogs, other people's music, loud motorcycles, or anyone, anywhere who is shouting aggressively. Van der Kolk repeatedly talks about our flinch responses. Knowing that listening to the neighbors' dogs barking all day long isn't just me being a jerk, is helping me feel a bit less ashamed of myself for being an adult survivor of childhood abuse. The book hurts. My heart hurts and my brain hurts while listening to it, but the information is only going to make me stronger in the future, so I want to absorb it. Books with this much information in them require me to read/listen multiple times. I plan to do just that. As soon as I've listened to the whole thing, I'm going to simply start it over and listen again. Likely I'll do that about 4 times, maybe more. It's how I learn.  Van der Kolk even mentions that children who were in the he11 I was in have trouble staying focused. I made it through Catholic school with straight D grades because I couldn't even hear the teachers. All I heard was shame and exclusion. Like in the Peanuts cartoons I grew up with, the adults just said "Whaa whaa whaa whaa".

[Armee]

Papa C...I also got a ton out of the Body Keeps the Score and also it was quite triggering too.

I also really liked this book for normalizing my symptoms...so much that this one I bought a second copy and asked my husband to read it too.

https://www.amazon.com/Life-Reinvented-Healing-Sexual-Survivors/dp/0989834123/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?adgrpid=59731235927&hvadid=274753704655&hvdev=m&hvlocphy=9032027&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=4898152299617499722&hvtargid=kwd-307961193010&hydadcr=15179_10362783&keywords=life+reinvented&qid=1700257261&sr=8-1