The tipping point…

[Desert Flower]

I'm so happy for you spending such a nice time with your kids. Enjoy!

 

[Chart]

Thank you everyone!! I am to a certain extent "giving up" responding to posts on my journal. I ask your understanding, as I am simply feeling overwhelmed after a life of trying to control and organize and categorize and hurt NO ONE even those who either through their behavior merit the turning of my back or the soles of my feet as I walk away... I am wheeling in circles, catching glimpses of "real-life" in between the flashes of pain that still blind me ten to twenty times per day. I believe I am losing my sense of "old-self" and what is coming in its place is strange and disorienting. Transformation is a painful process too. It is not only the suffering of the past that lingers in my cells, but the fear of the new me that strides directly at me in a crowded street, our eyes lock and I get that thrill of novelty that I have so craved, sought and created my whole life. It is insanity to change, yet I cannot keep it from coursing into and through me. I have lost myself, in order that I might be found.

My new friends, both in my head, here on the forum, and hidden behind the woodwork, are whispering to me. They suggest I speak of the present moment. And I think this is wonderful advice. Funny how I carry the past into the present. But I can choose what I keep now, more and more. I flip from one idea to the next with quick decision... the old patterns dropping to the ground as quickly as my ancient neural networks fire them off. I want some things from the past, but most I wish to release. There're new things coming into those old dead places. New growth coming from the compost of the past. I've been contacted these past weeks by multiple people from my past. A well-known jazz pianist I met on the tennis courts in New York was billed in the performance center just a few clicks up the street from where I now live. I stopped in my tracks as I passed and stared at the old familiar face and felt it was a sign from the Universe... A week later I sat in the audience listening and as I often do now, cried, remembering the man I used to be, that city I cruised on my bike from one end to the other... what another lifetime, what another person. I don't recognize myself anymore. I'm suspicious. I feel something is coming, but I've no idea what it might be... could it be life itself? Can life get bigger? Better? Wider? Denser? Can life really change for the worst? I sense it differently now... "There is nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so..." -Bill
Received a text from an old friend last night... while talking to a new friend... it was almost too much. This old friend I've missed, so news from him was quite special. And he is greatly similar to my new friend with whom I was actively speaking... crazy serendipity. It's all getting to be too much. In the sense that I can't untangle it all. A week with my kids too, which was easy and simple and fun. Dare I say it comes from a new-found inner place of peace and balance? I don't know. I can't work it out rationally... The situation is too simple for my maddeningly complex organizational system created during five decades of confusion. Only at one point was I dogmatic. I "forced" my kids to take a walk around town on Christmas day. They'd agreed the day before when I'd proposed it, then when the afternoon actually came they both tried to weasel out of it. I held fast... then dragged them to the last place on earth they wanted to go... the Cathedral! I've raised two little die-hard atheists and they moaned with dismay as I led the way into the edifice. "It doesn't have to be a prison of reductionist ignorance..." I tried to explain, a big smile on my face... "It's a space-ship that can transport you to higher planes of conscious thought..." Perhaps there is a loving god after-all, as they settled down into a vociferous acquiescence of divergent questions and comments. We walked fast up and down the nave and transepts. Finally they got annoyed at my pace and sat down in the seats, talking between themselves. I made a tour, came back with my phone out and snapped off a bunch of pictures of the two in conversation. I am so god-awfully proud of these two... no idea how these things work out, but they are content in their present existence (imo) and seek fun as only complex organisms on a carbon-based life-infested planet can do. I suggested that more advanced species than ours would one day ponder our objective in constructing such structures. The whales will almost certainly rub their heads in wonder... "but isn't it obvious they all self-imploded and went extinct?" We came home and further expanded our consciousnesses with a Harry Potter film. Some realities are indeed far better than others.

I looked up the county records this morning in the town where I was born. A recent post by Dollyvee in her journal inspired me to try and find the records of my biological father. I'm unsure if he is still alive. It doesn't really matter, but I'm curious. I verified that there was no death under his name for the years that my kids were born. (Best not take any chances But beyond that I found very little. Did find where my great-uncle is buried, the one who died horribly in an accident making the first atomic bomb. If I ever go back to my birthplace I might try to visit his grave. Or not. It's all raindrops in the sea.

There are two terms, or concepts I've been thinking about lately. One is from Lisa Feldman Barrett (LFB) and the other is the term "non-duality" which has been popping up lately and I've decided to quickly classify it. My understanding of non-duality is the idea that everything is one, nothing is separate. I believe this concept. However, I've been curious how best to "get to that state". Since I operate in a dual-system universe, that is to say that everything has it's representative opposite, then I'm necessarily obliged to understand the contrast if I want to get anywhere in life... at least average everyday life. So I've decided that non-duality is actually like ones and zeros... one is one... zero is nothing. Both are necessary to construct a "reality". But since zero is nothing, one is all there "is", thus everything is non-dual. What I believe through all this, is that I need the two halves of my brain to function in this reality. But the "true" reality is that my two halves are actually two sides to one thing that is whole. Why on earth might this be? Why not make just one single thing? The answer I've invented for myself is that the sum of two things is actually "greater" than the simple addition of those two things... The sum of the parts is greater than the whole. To my thinking, this is why Emdr helps... when the one and the zero team up, they are capable of producing something that is new and different. And if anything can suggest a better modality to trauma healing than experiencing things in a "new and different" manner I'm sure I don't know what that could be...

Now the other thing I've been sifting through my head lately is "prediction error". (I have struggled with this because it keeps coming into my head as "error prediction" and that is not at all the same thing... (I'm pretty sure.)) So I'm going to break this down very quickly. I've used AI to help me on this, which isn't a justification that it's right, I just think that transparency is important here as to where I'm getting my "organization".

Prediction error can be positive, negative or zero. "Learning" occurs when there is positive or negative prediction error. For zero, nothing happens. Trauma is negative prediction error. And positive prediction error is enlightenment... eventually (and for lack of a better term). So described in these terms, prediction error also takes into the calculation the inherent assumption that certain behaviors are beneficial to the survival of a species, and other behaviors are destructive to the survival of a species. Trauma is the establishment of a series of behaviors that the brain (very accurately) attributes a negative survival paradigm. And the negative is extremely powerful, thus the neuronal patterning takes the parental behavior and attributes it correctly to a destructive and dangerous "prediction". As such, the emotional centers of the brain set off the warning bells whenever a situation even slightly resembling the core experiences occurs. Thus the brain stays trapped in a safety-loop which, for survival and safety's sake, doesn't change, regardless the "reality" which is in fact NOT dangerous.

So, put very simply, an EF (emotional flashback) is just another term for a prediction error.

How is this helpful? I mean, we all know that our EFs are just past childhood experiences and events resurfacing. Well, for me, putting my EFs into the terminology of "prediction error" does go a long way in helping me understand what is going on on a slightly deeper level. It helps me understand that my brain is "making a mistake" even in the instant of the horrible emotional overwhelm. The concept of prediction error, gives me just a little more distance between the feelings and the "sense of self" that does on occasion exist beyond this feeling. Prediction error is nothing more than a name for something that helps to more accurately understand what "it" actually is. I had the same experience when I discovered the acronym CPTSD. For me, Prediction Error is the element that allows me to define my EF in such a way that I have a little bit more elbow room to see and appreciate my inner children, the ones who suffered this process and the ones who are fated to repeat this suffering due to the neuronal necessity to "learn it or die".

So I understand better, much better, that the reality I currently live in, is constructed by me and my brain. And it's got it wrong to a very large degree. It has it wrong for a very good reason, but I'd like now to correct that error and open up those parts of my brain dedicated to a false threat to other possibilities and experiences.

I'm not entirely satisfied with how I expressed all that. But I want now to get "mes fesses" outside for a little walk. I'm going to go up to the library to look at beautiful women (they always seem to hang out at the library :-)

 

[Marcine]

Yes, Chart, to synergy, to alchemy, to libraries... amuse-toi bien

[sanmagic7]

you go, chart.  bang it!  love and hugs

[TheBigBlue]

What you wrote about prediction error really landed for me. The idea that the brain is doing exactly what it was evolutionarily designed to do - building models from past danger - but that those models can become outdated, feels both precise and compassionate because it avoids self-blame.

It reminded me of a neuroscience paper I read that helped me explain my own distorted sense of reality: trauma doesn't just create emotional pain; it reshapes how the brain handles threat detection, context-processing, and even self-reference - not just fear responses (Putica & Agathos, 2024, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105836). So when the alarm goes off, it isn't "wrong" - it's faithful to old data.

I really appreciate how you're using this framing not to dismiss emotional flashbacks, but to create just enough distance to stay present with them. That balance - understanding why without overriding what - feels important.

Reading your post also made me realize we're circling the same core theme (i.e. "My nervous system is not broken. It is loyal to lessions learned from a past that nearly killed me. And now I have to live while it learns something new") from different angles. You're naming and working with the error signal itself, at the model level. I'm currently more in the identity-level work - feeling the existential cost of updating those models while the old ones fall away. Both perspectives feel complementary to me.

Thank you for putting words to this process. It helps me make sense of something I'm still very much in the middle of.   

[Desert Flower]

I am to a certain extent "giving up" responding to posts on my journal. I ask your understanding

Of course Chart, never mind responding to my responses. Seems like an infinite loop anyway.
Just write whatever you feel like writing. But you seem to be doing that well enough already.

[Chart]

Hello everyone! Thank you for your feedback (and thank you for your understanding about sometimes (often) not responding to feedback :-))

It's New Year's Eve and two feeble attempts to spend the evening with friends seem to have melted. As well, my son had asked me to taxi him to a town nearby so he could attend a friend's party, then called a few minutes ago to say he had found another taxi... I was kinda sad, but then thought that accepting what the Universe brings is "okay" too. I then called my two oldest friends who live in the States and left messages on their telephones... Now I'm watching a YouTube video about how to change the clutch in a Vauxhaul Opel Vivaro... which is the same truck that I have... and to boot, I had the clutch changed when I changed the gearbox... so why am I watching this video?!? I'm not Exactly sure, but I suspect something to do with Cptsd...

I went to an osteopath yesterday. He manipulated my shoulder and now I'm recuperating. I'm pretty worried about my shoulder. Eight years ago I tore a tendon and have never done anything about it. When I mentally collapsed in 2023, my body produced a inguinal hernia and this right shoulder started deteriorating. A month ago, for work, I had to move about two square meters of earth, wet, from one place to another place, and with that and other physical work, I've felt my shoulder just getting more and more "contrary" to my expectations of functioning like it did when I was 18... I've pushed my body my whole life and it's served me so completely, utterly and tirelessly that now, finally when it's starting to crack here and there I can't but sigh and ask what it is I can finally do in order that it holds on another few years. I believe it can, but I definitely need to change how I treat myself... physically and the other third, mentally. Spiritual care is also in order. All of it comes now, two and half years after discovering what developmental trauma really is, what it does to a brain, and how I can best manage the whole affair in such as way as to live decently and with understanding.

The thoughts whirl of late. It is a winter storm of light snow and heavy winds. I am in many ways living on an edge, precarious and thin. I try not to look down too much, but in the depths lie the things that I feel I need to face and resolve. So I am hastily trying to learn how to fly, having come to an age when my unused wings are no longer at their prime.

Tomorrow is 2026. At least for me. I have spent 2025 fighting, just like 2024. How is it possible to just keep on compiling information and understanding, layer after layer. There is no end, I know, I know, just deeper to go. The earth is wet, full of rocks and my shoulder hurts.

I'm two-years solid every morning, PMR (progressive muscle relaxation), cardiac breathing (just five minutes per day) and abdominal exercises (I use a method called Guillarme, it's French and they have resisted my suggestion to "go English" with their technique, but it's just abdominal strengthening and there are other similar techniques out there. EMDR. I've done it in the past and have begun a second round. EMDR is tricky and confusing for me. Part of the complication is that my trauma is "mainly" pre-verbal. But I'm making headway, like crawling into a dark cave. Going slow, but very powerful. I also do binarual sounds (almost every day). Yet, I still don't know how to organize binaural sounds into a "container" that makes sense. I just listen, and let my mind wander. I believe I could be doing more, to make the experience more efficient(?) but have yet to arrive at that point. I'm committed to continuing to explore all that. I think getting both hemispheres of my brain working together can greatly aid the processing of what happened to me.

My mental collapse instigated a total draining of energy. Even now, going on three years, I am exhausted nearly 80% of the time. I'm just shagged. I organize my life around one week taking care of my youngest daughter, one weekend taking care of her and my high school son, and one week where I am "free" to work, or sleep or whatever depending on the conditions of my bank account. I have been an "independent" worker pretty much since I left New York back in 2002. I cannot hold a job in a company. I have way too much anxiety to survive working with someone else. I can do it for variable periods of time, but in the long run I am just too stressed, and so I break out and find something else where I can be relatively alone and independent. This is difficult to maintain, and after a month of working in a team, with a group, I invariably have to take off a week (or three) and just lie in bed and recuperate. It's a crazy situation when I reflect back on it. I've only in the past two years become conscious of how I operate. Now I understand what I've done my whole life, the stress and anxiety around work. My limitation, what's held me back over and over again. My brain is just deep-fried from early developmental trauma. I used to to think I was down-playing something when I would attribute my behavior and life experience to my infancy situation. Now I know, on a deep visceral level, the chaos of my first four years of life has absolutely impacted every single thing I've ever done or tried to accomplish. Coming to that full realization in September/October of 2023 hit me so hard, I still haven't recovered. I am literally re-constructing the very foundation of my psyche... and trying to do it right this time...

No wonder I'm tired. And I constantly fight that inner voice that keeps suggesting I'm lazy. That inner critic is really a wanker. I'm much better now at just flipping him off and walking past.

And in place of all those things I "should" be doing... I cry. I cry while doing my PMR. It erupts. I cry reading people's entries on this Forum. I cry when I think about my own children and just how hard it is to be a child. I cry as much as I frickin' can. I want to express just how hard I have struggled to deal with Cptsd. I want to cry and be seen by those who do not understand (and of course, I don't mean here). I want to get the fact across to the people I run across just how bad it can be. But I don't manage. I've got a couple ideas, but it takes energy, and energy is in desperately short supply at the moment. One of the hardest things I know is to react in such a way that no matter what I do, the other will not understand. My mother will NEVER understand. She didn't get it as she was abusing me, why on earth would she get it now? I got a card from her today... addressed to me formally, plus "the family" meaning her grandkids. Nothing inside but a crap Hallmark card saying "Peace on Earth" or some crap and signed by my mom and my dad... My Mother is a moron. I tried to love her, I really did. I consider myself extremely sensitive and empathic. I know exactly what my mother suffered from in her childhood. I could do nothing when her emotions ran roughshod over me my entire childhood, her anger, her over-reaction, her ignorance... she could never stand up for herself, so we kids had to submit to her reprisals. Looking back, I feel just how pathetic she really is. And she hasn't changed in the slightest. Vindictive and unjust, she lashes out at all those around her for her pain, dressed up in new-age spiritualism and watered-down Buddhism, all of which she is convinced she understands. She has apologized a million times, but I've never once heard her say it without affect, excuse, and reproach. Honesty is an absent trait in my mother.

Sorry, I don't often talk about my mother, but the digging the past few years has brought some stuff to the surface I want to get out. Thanks for listening.

2026... hmm... more healing? And then maybe a little more healing? And after that? Maybe I'll try and heal some more... LOL

What Healing looks like to me: First and foremost, I want more Energy. Energy gives me Agency. I want to achieve things that I know I am capable of, but because of my Cptsd I have not had the force to do them. So Healing in 2026 means, to me, getting closer to my inner children. I have two: the first is a baby, new-born really, the little guy that was relatively "okay" but then started seeing things that weren't normal. And of course, the total rejection from the biological father. That he had already attempted to terminate my existence should have tipped me off. But that's the funny thing about kids, they are actually really quite decent at that age... I mean, is it really so extraordinary to just want Love? So that little baby, he needs love, Love, LOVE. The real stuff, the deep stuff, the light stuff, the airy, wavey, miss-you-already-love! And I'm gonna give it to him. I'm giving it to him this very instant. I love you, chart. You were/are one little bundle of goodness. And I love you. And it's not gonna stop. It's NEVER gonna stop. Need more? No problem. I love you. I hold you, I kiss you, I cuddle you, I protect you... I'm everything that your biological father wasn't and couldn't. The tears are flowing. They are for you, with you. You have EVERY RIGHT to be sad. I'm sad with you and being with you. We are one.

My second inner child is four. He appeared the day his biological father disappeared. Not an easy day. It wasn't a day. No one told him. Or maybe they did... You're not going to see your father any more. In a blink of an eye it was no longer an "issue". He's gone. What was never there, is now gone. Did you have to "move on"? Did you have questions? I know you did. Are you angry now? I think you are. I also think you have EVERY RIGHT to be angry. I absolutely agree with your anger. How can I help? No, we can't beat people up, though I agree I'd like to as well... no, we have to find another way, a better way, one that is good for us. What can we do instead? That's a tough one. I think we are going to have to do some work together this coming year. But I promise I am here now. I am "on it". I'm on your side, and we are going to explore this together, hand in hand. And I won't let go.

I'd better stop there. I'm already totally lost in tears of release. Happy New Year everybody. My thoughts are with us all. Much love and see you around :-)
Chart

[Marcine]

Thank you, Chart— for sharing and for the gift of these soft, fat, flowing tears crying down my face.

[Chart]

Thank you, Chart— for sharing and for the gift of these soft, fat, flowing tears crying down my face.

   

[NarcKiddo]

Ugh. Shoulders suck! My right one has been playing up all this year for no obvious reason, but it has stopped me from boxing. Which is annoying because I find pad work very therapeutic. Taking my rage out on an exercise bike or walking on a treadmill just doesn't cut it!  I am glad you went to see the osteopath. It is also well worth making a policy of doing some shoulder rehab exercises both now and even when it feels better, just to keep on top of things. And see the osteo regularly if you can. My fitness trainer does a rehab massage once a month this days. It hurts to absolute heck as he is very strong but I think part of the reason he is so effective is because he dares to go harder than my regular "nice" massage therapist would. Here endeth the lesson...

Sending love to you and the inner children. Wishing you all the best for 2026. See you next year. 

[TheBigBlue]

Thank you, Chart.
Happy New Year to you too 

[Chart]

Thanks NK! All that really helps. I actually don't go to doctors, except for my kids. I don't like to recognize that I am weak or broken or need anything. I've never really bought into the western Cartesian idea that the body is a machine. Most people don't, yet doctors seem to just plug along with that idea. It's funny because even so, I've not been particularly kind to my body over the years. That's changing and it's a sign that I actually went and saw an osteopath. He was very gentle, but it did indeed hurt like heck. He said I should come back in a month if I wanted, no pressure. I immediately took an appointment. I've had off and on pain in my shoulder all day, but it's different than before. It's actually REALLY important that I regain a certain amount of strength there. I've got tiles and roofing work next monday, and the bank account is seriously depleted since Christmas...

[Chart]

So tonight is just serious hang-out on the Forum. I'm really good at being lazy. I might go take a walk later. An evening stroll through Bourges. When I first came to Europe in 1991 I was (maybe like many Americans) just enthralled with the old houses. The centers of most European cities often have buildings that date back to the 1500s, sometimes earlier. The Cathedral in Bourges was started around 1195. So, even after being here now for over twenty years, I still LOVE the center of old towns. And aside from Paris, I never lived in town, I've always lived in really small towns or the countryside. So Bourges is now just outside my door. I don't think I'll ever get over the wonder of it. There's a three-quarter moon tonight. It's cold, but the bells are ringing, and I'm safe when I'm alone.