Papa Coco's Recovery Journal

[sanmagic7]

thinking of you, PC, as you de-clutter and move thru life.  hope you're doing ok.  love and hugs

[natureluvr]

But the world we live in now is lonely and isolated. And every box I open reminds me of that.

I can sure relate to this.  I've been very isolated most of my adult life, but even more so since 2020. I can relate to the feeling of loss with decluttering. 

As little boxes of items leave the house, I feel a little bit of release from my emotional attachments. It's like all those old sayings of "getting it off my chest" or "Feeling lighter".

This sounds really good. 

As difficult as the past was, this house used to be teaming with life. OUr children lived here, Coco's mom lived here with us for 14 years. There were always extra children sleeping on the floor in the TV room on Saturday mornings with our sons. It's just Coco and me now. And I have to find my peace with all that.

I can relate to this quite well, having grown adult children as well.  It's been very hard for me. 

I hope the race with your grandson went well. 

[Papa Coco]

Rough week this week. It seems that EF's always find me in Autumn every year. This year is no exception.

I'm crashing but maybe that's not such a bad thing.

I get obsessed with learning how to overcome trauma. OBSESSED! I am like a racoon that just won't stop going after what I want, and what I want is inner peace, but I can't find inner peace while I live with all these booby-trap triggers constantly cocked and loaded for anxiety all day every day.

Lately I've been spending all day in the books and online at seminars and YouTube training sessions for how to meditate my trauma into peacefulness. The stuff works, but I'm so overloaded now my brain hurts.

I need to stop learning for a few weeks. I need to sit back and just enjoy being the broken soul that I am. I need to just say "life sux and that's just the way it is."

I feel like a snow globe that needs to stop shaking so the snow can settle and rest.

I feel like I've been drinking from a firehose.

I feel like I've eaten a year's worth of food in a month, and I need to let it digest. Digestion is where everything I've learned gets a chance to settle somewhere in my body and do what it does. My inner world is just like my outer physical world. I take vitamins but they don't work while I'm swallowing them. They start to work after they've digested. Some vitamins go to the eyes, some to the blood, some to the stomach. Others to the bones or the liver or the spleen. They can't do this until they digest. In my inner world, everything I've been learning is stuck in my throat begging me to stop feeding it so it can digest.

I need to live for a few weeks with what I've learned so I'll know what stuck and what went over my head. I need to experiment with all that I've learned so I can see what works and what is not of any value to me.

We learn by first absorbing information, and then by letting time and experience prove out what we've learned. In the training world we understood that 10% of knowledge is taught to us in books and words and classrooms. Another 30% is taught to us through coaches and mentors who stay with us while we're absorbing and settling with the information, and the final 60% is taught to us through experience. The longer we use what we'd learned in class the more skilled we become. After a semester in the driver's ed classroom at age sixteen, I was a very bad driver, but I got better with practice. That's where I am now: I've been learning all about how trauma and karma interact together. I've learned that stuck Trauma/Karma is what makes us live our lives waiting for something to change so we can get what we want. In other words, we trauma survivors feel like something is standing between us and our happiness and we keep waiting for it to let us find joy.  I've been learning that I can access my ancestors to help them help me work out our shared stuck traumas/karmas, like from the books It Didn't Start with You and Attuned. I've been learning how to empathetically sense people in my body rather than just think about them in my head. I've been learning that all I need to do is love people and that is how the healing power of empathy passes itself around the world. I NEED TIME now to exercise what I've been learning without shoving in more knowledge. Some of it will stick and change me, some will be dismissed as bad info and some will go to the back of the line to resurface when I'm more ready for it.

For now, my brain is all tangled up. I need a vacation from learning so I can find out what stuck and what made sense and what did and what didn't prove itself to be good intel for me.

I didn't sleep well last night. Too much obsession with learning. I'm literally learning myself into madness. Trying too hard.

This EF is slightly less painful than those of the past 60 years, so I guess all this exhausting, relentless work to try and find peace in this world has been helping me with a little bit of progress.

My wife says I'm a much easier person to live with now than ever before, and she actually thanks me for working so hard to get better, because my mental health affects hers, and I'm healthier than I've ever been.

But I still suffer. It's SO EXHAUSTING to be a human in this world. Everyone is traumatized. There are three types of trauma in most of these writers' books: Individual trauma, ancestral trauma (like in It Didn't Start with You) and Collective trauma. Our individual traumas come together to make for an entire collective trauma of the whole world. Even our entire world is traumatized. This life isn't easy for anyone, and I'm really in need of resting for a few days and letting the world just be as messed up as it is for a few days before I feel the pull to buy into another book or another teacher or another podcast.

If I don't slow down and stop obsessing over getting better, I'm going to drive myself mad. I just have never been able to accept that this is all there is. I have this raging hope in me that keeps thinking if I try just a little bit harder, I'll find inner peace.

Well...there's SOME truth to that. Moderation, I guess. Learn at the proper pace. I need to keep searching for answers, but I have to stop trying too hard at it.

This week I'm participating in an online summit where a lot of the authors we talk about here on the forum are giving presentations every day on how to help the world's trauma and hopefully start to help heal the world by using our empathy. I'm jealous of these authors, many of whom I've read their books. They have all had rough lives, but they've succeeded to rise up to a point of self-love that they can now teach. I'm still in the grinder. I haven't risen to that level of healing yet. Many people have asked me why I don't write more books or why I don't become a therapist, and my reason for why I never could become a therapist is because I never felt like I handled my own trauma, so I am not qualified to help someone else with theirs. In Attuned, Author Thomas Hubl teaches and teaches that trauma therapists absolutely must get control over their own traumas so they can connect with their patients and not become caught into EFs of their own. I can't do that. Your trauma still puts me into EFs with my own trauma. So I can't become a therapist. Now I'm getting too old to even consider starting the process of getting the proper degree and a license.

Today I just need to let myself off the hook. I can't be a therapist so I need to stop pushing myself to try and overcome my issue so I can help others. It's time for me to put my own oxygen mask on first before I even attempt to put one on another passenger. Time for some self-love and not this obligation I've always felt that I need to fix the whole world.

I just need to find some peace for my own life. I really need to love myself more fully before I can pass that love on to others.

[SenseOrgan]

Hi Papa Coco!

TW!
The firehose is coming through! There's so much in your post I recognize. I'm sorry you're having EF's. Life is frikking hard. It truly is. It's potentially so triggering to state it here, but I believe that opening up to life being how it actually is, is our greatest challenge and our greatest relief. We throw the second arrow with infinite versions of shouldism. I've been having a go at it myself lately.

I love how brutally honest you are to yourself and sharing it here. Can you point out where exactly the line is between teacher and student, therapist and patient, successful and failed, traumatized and healed? I do not want to minimize the pain you feel around not becoming a therapist because your own trauma has such a relentless influence on your life. I do find it honorable you take the transference that you know would occur so seriously. I've been re-traumatized by people who hadn't. Can you see how you are not perpetuating suffering by not running away from your own pain this way? I think that moving towards the difficult stuff inside is the greatest gift we can give ourselves and as a result of that work the people we interact with in our lives. You've had a terrible start in life. And you did a lot of work and continue to do so. Is it only a "good" life when our actions have certain outcomes? Are you only than good enough?

Much love 

[Desert Flower]

Hi Papa Coco, I'm sorry too you're in an EF. It's coming through loud and clear. I can just almost feel your head exploding with all this learning. What I've learned when my head is too full like that, is to do something physical, like sweeping up the leaves in our garden for an hour or so, angrily or happily, it doesn't matter. Just something with psysical movement. Please disregard if that's not for you. It's just what came up with me.

And I do so appreciate you not feeling ready to be a therapist. I feel we have too many therapist already. If everyone would 'just' focus on cleaning up their own stuff first, we all would be in a much better place together I think. And that's what you're doing! And we will know how to relate to another person without reacting to our own reactions instead.

And I do feel you have in fact been making progress as you can feel - while you're in the EF - that this EF is slightly less worse than the ones before. That's awareness! Although it still sux to be in it I know. I hope you'll feel better soon.

Big hugs    Your PTUN (with CPTSD)

[NarcKiddo]

The thing is, Papa Coco - you DO help others. You don't have to be a licensed therapist, promising healing, to actually spread love and healing. You are doing it anyway. I've made such great strides since joining OOTS, and in particular since getting to know you better both on the forum and in the other projects related to OOTS. You've been a part of that and I am thankful to know you. I am also keen that you do indeed put on your own oxygen mask, and keep it on, because that benefits everyone. Not only you, though goodness knows you deserve the benefit.

I'm sorry you are in your Autumnal EF, but glad you can recognise that the EF is slightly less painful this year. I'm also glad that your wife has been able to appreciate all the hard work you are doing and reassure you it is helping her, too.

Finally, I am glad you recognise that you need to digest your learning. I'm sure it is no accident that kids' schooling is split into chunks, interspersed with down time.

 

[Desert Flower]

The thing is, Papa Coco - you DO help others.

Very true!

[Blueberry]

The thing is, Papa Coco - you DO help others.

Very true!

Exactly!

Off the top of my head and in the space of 35 seconds I've come up with 4 different ways among 3 distinct groups of people and undoubtedly there is more.

You are allowed to take a break from that and put on your own oxygen mask!
  

[Papa Coco]

I am gaining a whole new respect for the healing power of sharing and empathy. For years I've believed empathy is the greatest healing power in the world. Now, I believe that with even more certainty.

I'm so grateful to have thought to share my distress on the forum yesterday because the inflow of empathy and compassion has helped me to feel a lot more grounded today.

Today is the final day of the Thomas Hubl 7 day trauma summit and I just finished watching the final live interview with him and Richard Schwartz, who is the founder of the IFS movement.

This summit had about 40 authors in it, many of whom I've been following and reading for the last year or two. I noticed that these authors are banding together with a more advanced message now that the entire world is in trauma, and we as empathetic individuals truly CAN help heal the world by healing ourselves while simply intentionally sensing our connection to all other trauma victims. They are teaching that we don't need to do anything for this other than simply be aware of the global trauma as we work through our inner parts, especially our inner Exiles. (I think of Exiles as the IFS term for the parts of ourselves that we try to avoid being in contact with, but who keep our Fight/Flight/Fawn/Flee response in high gear).


Sense Organ, You reminded me of how valuable it is to be a witness to my life rather than a victim of it. I tend to get caught up in my trauma-drama and forget the things I actually knew. And I needed to be reminded of the relief that can be felt when I stop attaching to the problems, and just be a witness to them. It's taught in pretty much every ancient religion, to detach emotion from witness. Detach. Be in the world but not of it.

Emotions lure me in like a moth to a flame. Detachment is something I need to be reminded quite often to do.

After reading your response I turned on the TV and watched again my favorite TV Documentary saved in my Prime account called, Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds. At one point, the narrator says,

From: Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds
    "Vipassana Meditation or insight meditation could be described as self-directed neuroplasticity. You accept your reality exactly as it is - as it ACTUALLY is. But you experience it at the root level of sensation, at the vibratory or energetic level without the prejudice or influence of thought. Through sustained attention at the root level of consciousness, the wiring for an entirely different perception of reality is created.
    "We have got it backwards most of the time. We constantly let ideas about the outer world shape our neural networks, but our inner equanimity need not be contingent on external happenings. Circumstances don't matter. Only my state of consciousness matters. Meditation in Sanskrit means to be free of measurement. Free of all comparison. To be free of all becoming. You are not trying to become something else. You are okay with what is. The way to rise above the suffering of the physical realm is to totally embrace it. To say yes to it. So it becomes something within you, rather than you being something within it."


Desert Flower, my Partner in the Part Time Urban Monk/Nun world, , Your suggestion helped a lot also. After feeling so tangled up in my own head, I took your advice and went outside and did something physical.  Here is where I need to add a caviette about my own self-care needs: Going outside to distract from my inner shame and sadness, has to have a purpose or it won't work for me. Exercise, walking, lifting weights, swimming, bike riding: Anything I do that is for me, won't help. For me, raised to be the world's savior, I HAVE to find a distraction that lets me feel like I'm doing something for someone else. That's when the physical activity calms me. When it's for someone other than myself. In this case, It helped immensely. The 24-foot-long wooden wheelchair ramp that the previous owner had installed leading from the garage to the house's back door needed it's annual pressure washing because rainy season is coming and the slimy mold on the wood becomes slick as ice in the rain. People other than myself use that ramp when they come to visit me, so I can't even imagine the irony of some visitor becoming disabled by slipping on my wheelchair ramp for the disabled. (HA HA!). The hour with the pressure washer helped. Going outside and doing something physical doesn't work for me if it's selfish, relaxing, or exercise, but if it's a chore that NEEDS to be done, then it's very relaxing. Doing something outdoors that truly needed to be done to protect others really helped my mood. Didn't cure me, but what really does, right? At least it helped. I came back in and took off the wet shoes, made myself a bowl of hot soup and felt a bit calmer.

NarcKiddo and Blueberry, I'm forever grateful for knowing you as well. Thanks for the badly needed pep talk and the encouragement. You're right; We don't need to write books and give seminars and become therapists just to help people. That's my TRAUMA trying to keep me in the impossible situation I was taught to be in: Save the world or die trying seemed to be the role I was taught to live by. It's a false message given to me by people who couldn't stand to see the innocence in me. (BTW: I believe that a high percentage of us on this forum are highly sensitive people who were born with a special kind of innocence that the narcissists of the world just can't help themselves from attacking). These are not just words: I believe the more sensitive we are, the more prone to CPTSD we are. I'm proud to be a part of this community of kind people. We help each other just by loving each other as fellow humans. If I attach myself to the new, growing trend of trauma therapists trying to increase our energy by meditating together and unblending our IFS exiles together, then by simply remembering I'm part of a movement while I'm working on my own exiles, then I AM helping the world.

This forum is such a blessing for me, because when I reach out for some sense of stability, people of like mind and thought resonate with me  and increase the healing for all of us.

I hope I don't sound too crazy with all this talk of energy and collective trauma. It's what the experts are moving toward and I'm a believer in the power of empathy and people working together to heal the world by putting on our own masks first and then reaching out and sharing our compassion with others.

Feeling a bit better today because I'm choosing to remember the things you've all reminded me of: 1) Healthy Detachment helps drive inner peace, 2) Distracting from ruminating provides a healthy break and slows or stops my tailspins, and 3) We help each other by just loving each other, and we CAN help save the world by saving ourselves. So I don't need to feel the pressure to write another book, take a college program to become a therapist, or sell all my possessions and give my money to the poor. That's all overkill.

We're all in this traumatized world together, and we're all stronger together.