[ti]warning[/ti]PTSD, CPTSD, and more, there's always more. CAUTION

[ceremony]

I have learned I'll be managing my symptoms the rest of my life. They started well before I was 12, and there are a lot of stories on the way to my current age of 58. The early trauma, and that's complex, settled in my brain, and the wiring of thoughts would have to go through survival mode most of my life. 

There were early attempts with AA, counseling, inpatient, and more counseling. None of it did anything for my hyper vigilance, anxiety, and depression. Those were developed from the very earliest neglect, and became a part of me around age 12 when the bullying began. There were also more serious things out of my control. And, when we're helpless to alter the course of an event that hurts us badly, it can create deep symptoms. That's when my cptsd placed itself as the umbrella under which all else found their niche. 

I'm purposely avoiding the event/s, we know how trauma is created, so, I'm moving toward the therapy of these past 2+ years. That therapy started a bit after I found an online group after a late in my life breakdown. That was about one old trauma. I would slowly find in therapy, that it was more complex. All the years of pain, and anguish about parts of me would need my attention. I've given them a lot of attention, and that lets me share, and believe in what I'm working on. 

I've had a very good therapist for this 2+ years. She's hinted that we are likely to end soon. That's not ideal, but as I've progressed, I can understand, and in some ways I believe I am getting to that point. I will need to maintain symptoms by myself going forward. That's where some of the what ifs can take their turn in my mind. I can especially note them when men are on my mind. I am not intending to convey all men, this is about traits and personalities that can bring the vigilance back, anger, anxiety, and then depression. Men have been a trigger for me. I don't really have a lot of happiness if a situation with male friends were outside my social safe space. I am still defining what that is for me, but I know it won't be bars, sporting events, bachelor parties, men's night out, or any testosterone fueled things. 

I'm on edge about some men right now, and they're periphery to my life, but the chance interaction can trigger me. I've gotten bolder with standing up for myself over the years, and I can do that sort of well. I might lose concentration, because I have dissociated in the past rather than deal with anything. I have to be purposeful, and I am better. I'm aware, and I don't want to find myself scapegoated, bullied, manipulated, taken advantage of, or hear from some jerk, that he's got a something, something, that make women want him. I don't want to know how manly they think they are. I'll be very put off by talk about alpha males, or pumping iron, or stuff like that. That's if the context is to show off somewhat. Even if it's not intended, I find that thoughtless expressions without consideration for others gets to me. I will be angry. That anger will take energy, and I'm too old to give my energy to stuff like this. 

Thanks for reading. 

[Trinity]

In the now, in the moment, and separation from the triggers.

Men are men, I am not a man, I am trans, I am nonbinary. So I don't particularly care what they do. And I don't try to be "part of". I am not part of, I am of myself and others that are gender variant.

that gives me a measure of distance and detachment.

What men do, and what they did, they did because of the assumption that I am of man, and I am not. So they assume I am the same, but I am detached from their matrix and their rules do not apply to me.

So they can do what they want, and as long as they do not overrun my personal space and boundaries, then fine, I cannot change them, they are men, but I can walk away from them and I do not have to please them and their ways.

The rules of the matrix do not apply for me, the rules of human kindness in detachment do apply, so that is my choice.

This gives me the freedom to be me.

hugs.

[Leena]

*hugs*

I've pretty much always avoided interacting with men, when possible. For a long time, I barely even talked to them. I got a little better at it when I was working in sales, but I still didn't really enjoy it often. I felt the strong need to appear more masculine than I am.

It's also not really all that possible to avoid men altogether though, unless you just stay at home. I have a tendency to do that, and it's really bad for me if I do that for long.

I don't necessarily avoid bars or sporting events, I mean women go to them too. I'm not going to limit where I go beyond what a woman wouldn't do alone, though there are things women don't generally do alone.

[Ativan Prescribed]

It isn't good to face your fears with the fear still in place, like trin says, detach from that, and it is entirely possible and once done, it isn't even hard to do.
I posted before about situations that are traumatic, survival is in knowing it isn't inside you but is around you instead, throw the fear away and just know that you aren't a part of it anymore.
But the biggest thing you can do for yourself that doesn't necessarily cost much if any is to seek out those self defense classes, they are out there, a lot of the martial arts places offer them as a way to get people interested in them.
There are classes that are designed for women, but in today's world, everyone is accepted in them.
Even if they do progress to costing money, group classes are not expensive, your therapist costs more if you pay out of pocket.
But the simple attitude adjustment that you can make that will take you farther is to stop being the victim, stop being a survivor, that plays to the idea that somehow you are the victim and are alone in its effects.
Simply put, everything that is in the past is still there and you can't change it and it can't hurt you or change you, it is in the past, it is a memorie and no more than that.
If you have expectations that the past will predict the future, then it is going to, you will manipulate the present to form the future that you think is the only way life is going to be.
Just the simple reasoning that once it is done and is a thing of the past and that it isn't going to be your future, it's like waking up from a bad dream.
Be in the now, the past is gone, it can't come back, the future isn't written and your actions today have very little to do with how the future is going to unfold.
Consider that with all the intention in the world you can pull up, you can't make the future as you think you can see it from the now, the butterfly effect is going to mess with it all the time,, both bad and good.
The more you try to deal with the past, the less you will deal with the now, the world as it is, the people and places in the past can't even exist in the now, reality has changed the way people and places are, society deals with the same stuff differently than it did in the past.
The future is the same way, you have no real idea of how it is going to be, the very best you can be is to always strive for a better future.
You are simply moving along in the now and the past is gone, it doesn't exist other than a memory and constantly referring back to it as a predictor of now and the future is wrong, it can't change any of it, it is gone.
Can your breakfast from yesterday decide what you are going to have for breakfast tomorrow?
What you are going to have today is based on the now, the future can't effect it, the past is gone, all you can do at best is to eat the breakfast that is good for you in however you think it should be for today, not yesterday or tomorrow.
Consider that you ate a total fat filled breakfast yesterday, does that mean you should today? Does it mean you should tomorrow?
All you can do is eat the breakfast that you determine is the right one for now, today, at this moment, the logical thing based on what you had and where you want to be, but yesterday's breakfast isn't going to change a thing even if you dwell on it all day.
You can take the past into consideration, and that can form what today, the now, is going to be as a point of logic, but the delights of a filling breakfast yesterday isn't going to make todays any different, todays might be the very same thing and it won't be quite the same if at all.
Life's events are like that breakfast, what it was can't be repeated, all the other events have changed the parameters of the effects even if everything is exactly the same, you can't repeat your feelings even if you repeat the same thing with the very same results.
At best you might get a confirmation of some point, but it is never ever going to feel the same, some of that is because now you know, events are always going to feel different and for most things the outcome is going to be different.
I used to run experiments over and over until all the outside influences where taken into consideration, prevented from contaminating the next run.
But the next run is never ever going to be exactly the same thing, you run it over and over and find that thing that is the same, that one thing and even that is alway always going to be in a range, it is very hard to duplicate anything exactly.
When it come to the events in a person's life, they aren't repeatable because the environment has changed and there is very little chance of making it the same, sure some things can be in the range, but once you know the range and how to get there, you either don't or you do depending on what you want, you have changed because you have already learned from your past, so there isn't a way that you should even be repeating it with the same expectations, we are in a different place in the universe already if you want to get out there on it.
You have to be aware of the now, it is the accumulation of all the things you know from the past, and the past is already gone, never to come back, good thing because groundhogs day should never be how we live, always waking up to the exact same song at the exact same time, just the idea of it makes the idea that the past is somehow going to dictate your future preposterous.
You are in the now, Make the best of it because you can't ben the future to you will alone, it is the future of all things in the now, everything dictates a part of the future, you can't say for certain that crossing the street will get you to the other side, that side might not be there, you might get turned or worse just die in the middle of the street for some reason, there are no guarantees for the future, so you live in the now and have a direction you want to go in, but to be foolish enough to say that this is going to be the future for you is arrogant and foolish.
Now is the only reality there is and how you deal with now determines how you feel and how much of a direction you can have that you want to go in, it isn't the destiny, its the journey, the destination is an illusion of your direction, the very next step you take is up to you.
The past can't take take that step for you, the future is such that you don't know where that step is going to land.
The now can be any length of time you want, the results are the same, and if you are smart, then all lengths of time are the now, the results are the same.
If you feel like the past is going to shape your future, then change the way you deal with the now, if you fear other people because of something that happened, then learn to defend yourself, if you want to take that further, you can.
Martial arts is a very good way to live, it isn't about going to war and flying through the air with a sword while screaming like a banshee, its a philosophy that calms the spirit when it needs it, it inspires it when it needs it.
There isn't anything in modern psychology that is different than learning how to properly feed your spirit, almost all of it is based on the past, your past and tries to center that somehow on the now, to predict in a false way what the future is.
Sure it can help, but they will tell you that they can't cure, they can only guide, because there is no way to change the past no matter how many times you talk about it, think about it.
In view of my impending death, I have no time for crappy thoughts---- Carlos Castaneda in his book Journey to Ixtlan, he was talking about how he thought something bad from the past was going to prevent him from doing what he hoped to achieve, his mentor said that to him.
And I can guarantee you that my past has much more bad shit in it than yours does, and the only way through it was to know that it is around me and not in me.

[ceremony]

Thank you all for the here and now living attitude. I have done work with that in AA. My first meetings were around age 17. I had these symptoms then too, and an unhealthy isolation is what I lived on an off. Even when I married at 23, I would need some out of home time to be wandering alone with myself. When I got sober, I would wander cemeteries for hours, nearly every day. I needed to be out of me, and not think. That's why I wasn't sober, my mind was a source of attack to me, as anyone that might do anything. There is scientific research about the brain, and I've studied that research, read thousands of posts from other survivors, read "The Body Keeps the Score", and tried to learn about what happened to my brain during those earliest years, then to the acts perpetrated on me.

The brain will be wired very differently than someone who is raised with a care givers affection and attention, and then never having to face what too many have to deal with. My wiring went very badly, and I suffered intensely because of it, and that's not living in the past, that's biology, with reproducible research studies. Brain scans show how the survival mode brain sends signals through that wiring, and may not have and processing in the Frontal region. There is a very difficult life for trauma survivors, who began life with whatever difficulty they endured. Many have very tragic histories from birth. It's not been my practice to compare. 

That brain activity is why I am not to blame for having problems with dissociation, hyper vigilance, anxiety, attachment issues, and that I wasn't sober for near 2 decades of my life. The good news, is that with the latest 2+ years of therapy, I have learned all the above, and worked to bring my brain back into some processing with my Frontal lobe region. EMDR and IFS, Sensorymotor psychotherapy, and understanding the workings of me Window of Tolerance have given me a lot of awareness of the triggers I face. I noted in my opening that I well work on these symptoms the rest of my life, and that holds true. The difference of before and after therapy, is that I am now aware of exactly what my brain's role has been, and I've made efforts to rewire my reactions to have a better chance to process events in real time. I can still be reactive, and that's decades of hyper vigilance untreated. 

Ptsd and Cptsd therapies are very new to me, and I've found through my therapist we worked with the best suited to my life. I know we're all different, and I hope some of what I mention here about therapy isn't new here? 

I will keep trying to live one day at a time, and sometimes moment to moment, which is in line with the work I did to rewire my brain to perform that function better. I will in time have performed the better reactions much more often, and I know I'll feel a lot better.

Thanks for reading, 


Hugs to everyone.

[Trinity]

We speak of the forest paths, they can lead anywhere, but the path is before us.

Each path is different, each has led through different places, but we walk them and there are forks in them and choices to make as we go down each one.

Some are on the cliffs edge, others are on the deep glades, some are through the harsh places, some the soft.

But each path has something on it to be greatful for, some spot of beauty to sieze, on any given moment.

Therein lies the joy of it.  Finding the moments we cherish.

Even at my worst, there was always something, sometimes just watching a sparrow for a few minutes, or seeing the colors of a sunset, the free things of life, God given and God created, for each of us equally.

The purity of the sparrow, the innocence of a bird, it could change an entire day.

Those moments are everywhere, if we look for them.

Hang in there, and find moments for you, whatever they may be.

[Ativan Prescribed]

That is a good description of what living in the moment can be, life pivots on moments in time.

[Ativan Prescribed]

I've been in the psyche units enough times and for longer than they want you to be there.
Things imploded at one time, the past was beating on my brain, the present was doing a whole lot worse and the outlook for the future wasn't good.
I kept my head down for as long as I could and then just as things seemed to be getting better, the antagonizer in my life would just do every shitty thing she could to take that away.
Taking away my everything is what started the entire thing, she was relentless, I don't think I had much more than a week or two before she was trying to screw me up again, and after a while she did.
It seemed like just everything was dumping on me all at the same time, and a lot of it was, one thing that set off a lot of bad was getting some kind of weird bacterial infection, they sent it to the CDC and they said they didn't know, it matched nothing they had.
And it was leaving my hand swollen like a surgical glove blown up like a balloon, and then all hell hit and they had to do surgery that left me in a bed for days, and the antibiotics were as heavy duty as they have, and lots of morphine, lots of it, anytime I wanted it.
This went on for about three weeks, I couldn't leave my room, they were afraid I might be contagious or something, the first week they all wore like a spacesuit to come into the room, so high on morphine, it was doubly weird.
Things didn't get better from that, it took weeks and more to completely heal, and work was not happening for a long time, so no money coming in.
But I did go back to work and it had changed, I didn't like it at all anymore, it didn't last long.
but then more time in and out of the psyche units, I wandered in and they took me in, shelter from the storm.
Previous to all of the things going wrong was a lot of years of interesting jobs that I excelled in most of the time, and before that was a few years living in hell and learning to cope with that.
It was a dangerous time and I had to always be on guard, even away from things for a few days wandering around in the southern highlands, verging on the jungle and the elevation going down the more south you went, so it was farmland butted up to the swamp and jungle.
Those times were the best, had a relatively nice vehicle and a very good girlfriend, transgender, totally natural and very hard to tell that she had a dick, hardly any chest, but she just looked flat chested yet not at all like a guy.
Her family had a couple places that were pretty nice, not quite a house, but so much more than a cabin on a hilltop.
They had people who took care of the places, one even had horses there, but I still felt like I had to keep my sidearm with me in the holster that sat lower and was more gunslinger style, but an old colt automatic 45 isn't like a fast draw weapon, it was just comfortable.
That was pretty wild and things went from really bad to really good more than several times a day, over here it was bad, over there it was good, it depended on what door I walked out of to go somewhere.
But like I have mentioned in posts before, you have to see it all and be a part of it, but you always have it outside of you, you have to realize that it is just around you and not in you.
But things always still had to be dealt with and the emotional impacts ranged from a tap to a knock you on your ass emotional spins.
The times that it was too much for the moment was the times that you just stopped, sometimes literally, and you look around and find those things that are good in your mind, the little things can mean so much in helping you get through the moment, the day, that year...
I was still young and despite being in what was considered a backwater country, the experiences I had to draw on weren't as much as they became after that gig, but I still had them and I still had things I could think about that grounded me.
The way that works is to know that in spite of everything that gets thrown at you that knocks you down, you always have the ability to get back up, everyone does, it can be the hardest of things, but we all can do it.
There is a lot in knowing that the places you've been and the things you have done, learned, enjoyed, cried about and over, all of it is what shapes you.
I could never let any of it become a negative in moving forward, the bad wasn't stopping me, I wouldn't let it, it might in the short term, but the very way I was able to navigate was because I knew where the pitfalls were and I learned more all the time, bad stuff can be good if you treat it right, let it have the label as bad, but don't ;eti it become something inside, leave it out of yourself, I grew up with some people in my life always on the downside, always letting certain things stick to them and never letting go of the rest, life was miserable from their point of view.
I learned from them that you just have to let it go, that doesn't mean forgetting it, not by any means, it means stopping it from trying to take up residence in our heads and taking over some of the good parts.
People are inherently good and they have a lot more that they are capable of that they have no idea just how much, but everyone can always do better and just trying gets you past the stuff that seems like it wants to stop you and being in the way, just giving it a push usually gets you through without any damage to yourself.
And that's the thing that holds people back from moving forward, the what if I fail, what if I get hurt, what if what if...
So fricken what if that happens, nothing will happen if you don't shove it and walk forward to the next curve up ahead, sure you're going to be safe as can be if you don't try something because what if, but what if not doing anything is even a worse thing, what if...
Getting hurt is a part of the game, I used to do things that people would say that I'm going to get hurt if I'm not careful, so I was careful, but because I was, I just did things a little farther out there than others thought they could.
For instance, growing up where I did, there weren't any mountains to climb, the rock faces on the river valleys were some good climbing spots, but hardly the stuff that stops you, you climb up and your at the top, so what.
We use to go from one side to the other, because that was always a lot longer , a lot of the bluffs ran for miles and the rock faces could be longer than you could go in a day.
So traversing it was, and the thing is, you don't have to be all that high up, its going to hurt when you fall but you'll probably live.
The ground was usually at an angle and hitting it wasn't the same as just coming to an abrupt stop, but you bounced along heading down and then there were trees, the trees hurt if you had bounced a couple times already.
But we pushed it all the time, some people were better at it than me, but we all took our turns falling or getting stuck, or just not being able to find that spot you needed to be able to turn out and pee because that happened, reality of things there, you have to be able to stand in one spot and hopefully that isn't into the wind.
But the point of it is, you fall and the only easy way to follow anyone or take the lead was to climb back up and keep going, trying to get through the patches of brush and branches and all of the things that are there but a path was harder and took longer.
So falling was always the good story, talking about this hurts and that's bruised and the scrapes, shit happens when you fall, and it is a bad thing, but you make it into a good thing and then it becomes an asset later on, it becomes something that you can stand on to see where your forward path is going, you always have to be looking to get to the next curve in the road, nothing worse than becoming stale and maybe moldy and stinky and just a blob of a bad life that is all you have to tell people about.
There isn't anyone who hasn't had the bad do damage of one sort or another, its still easier to traverse the rock than the try and take the hard way in the brush, you have to always get back up and we always do, but sometimes we take it with us, and it becomes the weight.
Take a load off Fannie, the Weight is a good song that in its own odd way has become like an anthem for a generation on how it works.
Lots of ways to say it and you've heard a lot of them I'm sure, but the way to get from here to there is to leave behind the stuff that is just weighing us down, shed that stuff, why carry around a bad story of your past?
Why not find the upside in that and change the narrative of your life to one that is always ready to take the next steps and look forward to the scared what ifs, ready to blow through those as they come up.
Here's a thing, went skydiving one day and the guy in front of me, the first to exit, had a bad chute and then it got worse, looked like he burned in bad and probably didn't make it, so I was ready to jump right there for sure, because he broke the odds, even less likely I was going to have a bad chute, and that's the way you have to take things, sure it made it suddenly scary again, but instead of the logic that says you need to stop and rethink this, use the logic that says you can just step forward anyways, and you know a little something extra as well.
It doesn't mean you can't mourn for whatever reason, bt do it and move on, there is better things ahead and it's up to you to be able to find them on this journey, which again, that's what it is all about, the destination will still be there when we get there, I'm not in any rush and I'm not afraid that it might be around the next curve up ahead, if it is, then I've arrived, otherwise, there has just got to be something more up ahead, the journey never ends, not even at the destination, because once you hit one of those, there is going to be another one.