Hope's Journal 2026

[Hope67]

Hi SanMagic, Thank you 

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24th January 2026
Just copying some notes I made about ANGER, so I can tear up the paper copy, but keep the notes in this journal.

Unfortunately I don't know what source I found these notes in.

These are the notes I took:

Emotion as a houseguest - showing up to tell you something.   Open the door.  Give them a moment to connect with you.  Go on with the rest of your day.

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Anger - It's not a bad feeling, but when we ignore or project it, it can lead to unhelpful reactions.

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Anger - helps us speak up when we've been hurt.

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Anger - helps us identify and protect our boundaries.

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Shadow work (Jung) - meet those hidden parts with curiosity and compassion.

[sanmagic7]

nice notes, hope.

i've heard before about the connection between anger and boundaries - that when a boundary of ours has been crossed, it's natural to feel angry about it.  natural, as in anger is with us from the beginning.  how many times has that anger been stomped down by someone else in order for us to shy away from it later in life!  the idea that we had boundaries, we wanted them respected, they weren't, and we reacted in a way that made someone else feel uncomfortable?  it's on them once again.  just my opinion.  love and hugs

[TheBigBlue]

Thanks for sharing, Hope.
I'm starting to understand anger and sadness as two sides of the same coin. Sadness often comes from loss or hurt; anger comes from the same place, but it carries the signal that a boundary was crossed. For me, anger has been much harder to find, so it often goes underground and shows up as sadness, collapse, or exhaustion instead. But I am trying to allow  anger to exist - even quietly - as it can actually be protective. 💛

[SenseOrgan]

A productive/constructive first month of this year for you, isn't it? I'm getting good vibes from your posts   Very much looking forward to the unshaming book. Almost there... Your earlier quote from the book is profound. Little overt violence needs to happen in order to install toxic shame in a child. Chronic misattunement/emotional neglect is a solid pathway for that. 

[Hope67]

Thank you SanMagic - I very much appreciate what you said 

Thanks TheBigBlue - I also try to leave some space and opportunity for my anger to surface, as I do think it is protective.  Thanks for what you said. 

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27th January 2026
I've been dreaming lately - really realistic dreams.  I've been waking up from those dreams with very tense muscles, as if I've been in a state of fight/flight in the dreams.  Some of the dreams have been based in my early childhood settings - but I think I've been an adult, rather than a child.  I think I've been taking a more 'active' role in the dreams - i.e. rather than being a passive person, I've been actively involved in 'actions' - so this feels quite good to me, when I reflect on it.  It's like I'm actively taking some steps towards some independence and actively making some differences in the dreams, rather than running away/being scared/feeling terror. 

I haven't been doing any bilateral stimulation for the past fortnight - I had been doing it daily before that - listening to the binaural beats music - but for some reason I felt like it had integrated something for me, and I just didn't need to do it in the past couple of weeks!  I think that's amazing really. 

I've also noticed that I've been getting some flashbacks of memories relating to my teenage years and early 20's - just now and then, but they feel as if they're correctly placed in time and place - which is interesting as before I wasn't able to pinpoint such things - it felt so much more fragmented - it's like it's beginning to link together and make some grounded sense.  I don't think I can convey this appropriately in words, but just writing this will remind me of what I'm thinking of.

I've started reading the book about Shame called 'Unshaming' - but I've noticed that I can't read much of it in one go - I need to pace it in very short chunks - which is ok - I suspect I am then able to process it more.  But I also recognise that there's something 'stopping' me from reading it for long.  I am respectful of that - I'll try to pace it at the level it seems to want to be.

[Hope67]

Hi SenseOrgan,
I just saw your reply - thank you!  I love that you've got some good vibes from my posts 

I hope the Unshaming book arrives soon for you.  I am so glad to have bought it - very grateful for your mentioning it. 

[sanmagic7]

hope, somehow i like the idea that you're becoming more active in your dreams.  i remember something similar, when i was able to say 'no!' to someone in my dreams.  it felt like a big turning point, and i think it might have been.  maybe some of those neural connections came together more appropriately, giving me access to an active voice for a change.

i hope this keeps up for you.  love your progress.  love and hugs

[Chart]

 

[TheBigBlue]

... they're correctly placed in time and place - which is interesting as before I wasn't able to pinpoint such things - it felt so much more fragmented - it's like it's beginning to link together and make some grounded sense.  I don't think I can convey this appropriately in words, but just writing this will remind me of what I'm thinking of.

I think this makes a lot of sense. I have been listening to, reading and thinking a lot about the "structured dissociation/fragmentation" topic lately (I initially saw it in Janina Fisher's book, but the theory is originally from Van der Hart around 2006). This theory makes so much sense to me, e.g. the profound disconnect of my "Apparently Normal Part" (ANP) that was high-functioning in the world, but was cut off from the "Emotional Part" (EP) that carries decades of unprocessed fear, shame, and grief. (using ANP/EP in structural dissociation terms - not DID or classic IFS)

In infancy, the brain is not yet an integrated, self-regulating system. It is experience-dependent and organized through repeated interactions with caregivers. In a neglectful, abusive and/or inconsistent caregiving environment, fragmentation is a developmentally appropriate survival adaptation to conditions the brain cannot escape.

This is how I'm currently making sense of it for myself:
1. The infant brain is built from the outside in
At birth and during the first years of life:
- The right hemisphere (emotion, bodily state, attachment) dominates
  (see also Prof. Schore's video that Chart posted about "attachment theory" turned "regulation theory").
- The limbic system is immature
- The prefrontal cortex (integration, inhibition, meaning) is undeveloped
- Regulation depends almost entirely on co-regulation by caregivers

An infant cannot:
- Self-soothe
- Mentally contextualize/reframe threat
- Escape danger
=> So the brain adapts structurally to what is repeatedly happening.

2. Neglect, abuse and inconsistent caregiving create incompatible states the brain cannot integrate
In a safe environment, the infant repeatedly experiences:
distress → caregiver response → relief → return to baseline
=> This builds integration.

In neglect, abuse or inconsistent caregiving, the infant instead experiences unsolvable contradictions, such as:
- Need for proximity and fear of the caregiver
- Intense distress without relief
- Pain or terror without explanation or containment
- A nervous system pushed beyond capacity with no repair.
=> These states are extremely difficult to integrate in an immature brain. Integration would overwhelm the system and risk overwhelming the system (in evolutionary terms that would mean low survival chances)

3. Fragmentation is the brain's solution to an unsolvable problem
Because the infant cannot leave, fight, or cognitively understand, the brain uses the only remaining option = State-based compartmentalization:
This means that different neural networks specialize for different survival demands and are kept separate to prevent overload.
=> This produces early forms of what later look like "parts."

4. EP and ANP emerge as functional adaptations
EP (Emotional Part) Encodes:
- Terror
- Pain
- Rage
- Panic
- Attachment distress

It is dominated by:
- Right hemisphere
- Brainstem
- Amygdala
- Oriented toward immediate survival
- Timeless, sensory, nonverbal

ANP (Apparently Normal Part) Develops to:
- Maintain attachment
- Preserve functioning
- Avoid triggering threat responses
- Suppresses or walls off overwhelming affect
- Becomes task-oriented, compliant, vigilant
- Oriented toward continuing life despite threat
=> This is not a conscious split. It is neurodevelopmental specialization under stress.

5. Why fragmentation increases survival odds?
If the brain remained integrated under adverse conditions it would result in:
- Continuous terror would dysregulate physiology
- Cortisol toxicity would impair development
- The infant could fail to thrive or die.

Instead fragmentation allows:
- Emotional pain to be contained
- Daily functioning to continue
- Attachment to be preserved (even if unsafe)
- Allow the organism to grow to the next stage.
=> In evolutionary terms: the infant brain chooses fragmented survival over integration, because Integration risks collapse or severe dysregulation (= low survival chances). The brain fragmented because it was brilliant. It learned how to survive when no one helped it regulate.

6. Fragmentation is adaptive early - and costly later
What saved the infant becomes costly in adulthood because:
- The brain matures but the compartments remain
- to me that explains why I didn't know, why I had "amnesia" about my childhood trauma
   for 56 years. Instead I blamed myself - asking "what's wrong with me",  instead of "what happened to me"    )
- EPs still fire as if danger is present
- ANP maintains control through suppression
- Integration feels unsafe because it once was!
=> The system is not broken. It is frozen at an earlier solution.

7. Healing is not "removing parts" but restoring integration safely
This is incomplete, as I am still trying to understand this part, but what seems to be helping me so far involves:
- Building external regulation first with my T, by opening up to two friends that can be trusted
- Creating safety before integration
- Allowing EP material to be experienced - ideally without overwhelming the system, but that has not worked all the time
- Updating the nervous system that survival no longer requires separation of ANP (left) and EP (right hemisphere - loosely speaking).

So to me, your feeling of "it's beginning to link together" make a ton of "grounded sense" 
Thanks for letting me think this through out loud ...
(As Chart says, I too understand if you prefer me to move this long post elsewhere)

[Chart]

That was frickin' cool. Thank you TheBigBlue. I "knew" all that, but one, I can't learn through memorization, and two it was brilliantly organized and procedural which (for me) is intensely helpful (allowing me to learn through integration).

Hope, can we play around in your sandbox for a minute? :-) I want to add stuff, but if this is not the place, don't hesitate to tell me and I'll remove it and put it elsewhere.

I want to pick up where TheBigBlue left off...

7. Healing is not "removing parts" but restoring integration safely
This is incomplete, as I am still trying to understand this part, but what seems to be helping me so far involves:
- Building external regulation first with my T, by opening up to two friends that can be trusted
- Creating safety before integration
- Allowing EP material to be experienced - ideally without overwhelming the system, but that has not worked all the time
- Updating the nervous system that survival no longer requires separation of ANP (left) and EP (right hemisphere - loosely speaking).

EP material is difficult to integrate because it contains contextual parameters outside the capacity of the Right brain. Because of the separation of the two hemisphere's, the Left brain which is analytical can say, "That was a lot of shouting... too much shouting!" But since that information of quantity is cut from the Right brain, (or because the Left brain has not come online yet (3-4 yrs of age)) then the "relativity" to "quantity" is absent. So the EP just has an emotional reaction without any context. A "lot", or "a little", is nearly the same... Or another way of putting it, "It's all too much". And so Flashbacks later in life, with the adult, function totally in a reactionary manner, and not at all in a contextually appropriate one. That's why I still "feel" the same way every morning. The EP has not been able to associate the total absence of danger since over fifty years. Time doesn't matter to the EP.

So in order to process EP material, it has to be taken in appropriate doses so as not to overwhelm. And determining that dosage level, and I know for a fact that it can be very easily ZERO, is hard to engage without triggering the same response. Hard to stimulate a stress response in order to "practice" when anything ABOVE zero sends me into a total shutdown.

But there are ways, as we all know.

Body relaxation. Really working this and "priming" the totally relaxed system by really calming the body, then moving gently into the trauma territory.

Forcing parasympathetic system functioning... PMR, cold showers, petting the cat, etc. There's tons of tricks to activate the parasympathetic.

Emdr, which "widens" the communication between the right and left hemisphere's. I'm certain from the work I've done, that this is allowing my EP to access the technical details that it normally doesn't pay any attention to. Emdr (in all its forms, tapping, binaural, brain spotting, etc) helps the two hemisphere's coordinate. And together they make beautiful music... and allow bilateral integration to begin/continue. And for me, VERY often, this is where "release" (which many call grieving) occurs, when those two halves figure something out. Tears, loads of them... The EP infant gets to cry like the baby he is, and the ANP get's to sigh as he has finally gotten the critical missing information through to the child. And together they can be as one. The Love explodes between the two and understanding blooms... and the crap that terrified me yesterday is incredibly easier to deal with in the life that still awaits me... Something at the "root" level has worked it out.

My goodness that was pleasurable for me. Thank you TheBigBlue, that was so helpful. And thank you Hope for letting us play in the middle of your living room. :-) (And seriously, if you want me to move my post I will totally understand.)

Lots of hugs to everyone.