Week 108 - 2015-11-11 Wed.

These are things I have started at various times and never finished.  Well today I finally finished them until the topics come back up.  Which they probably will.  Their all self contained so here they are.

Test 2015-11-10 Tue.

I watched a video titled "Understanding Trauma: How Stress and Trauma Cause Chronic Pain, Anxiety, Depression, & PTSD" the other day.

While this is a very good video it misses the freeze reaction.  While freeze is often a prelude to flight or fight.  (Especially for me.)  It is not always so.  (Even for me.)

Sometime I think it is the least understood of the three.  Flight, Fight, or Freeze.  Even though it is documented in nature, well beyond "the deer in the headlights".

WARNING:  This next line may be very triggering for some but, it is the essence of my point about beyond "the deer ...".  Sheep will freeze to the point of being eaten alive with out moving or making a sound.

What happens when I freeze is my entire body assumes an isometric exercise posture.  Every muscle is frozen straining trying to decide what to do.  While my mind is either paralyzed or running at such a hyper speed that it might as well be paralyzed.  I am fortunate in that I have taught myself to the unconscious level that my body knows what to do.  I become the totally impartial audience watching what is happening.  Sometimes wondering that I can do some of the things I do.  Especially when in a motorcycle accident.  I no longer ride motorcycles.

However, for those micro/milliseconds when I am in the frozen state I am in a state of terror.  I can feel my body changing, feel my cognitive abilities slowly shutting down.  Until the snap and my mind is free from the fear.  In sense I am lucky in that I can't remember the feeling of fear (I can only remember that it was there) most of the time.

2015-11-11 Wed.

Unfortunately this also means I can't remember the feeling of love and joy other than in the present either.  This doesn't necessarily mean I won't remember the feeling of having a great day last week/month.  However, it can mean that too.

Anyway back to Freeze.  Freeze needs to be understood better.  I have dealt with some psych professionals who have started to include it but, there are still too many who don't.  In a way it is the hardest of the 3 Fs to deal with.

While I don't often freeze I have frozen once or twice for a minute or so (it felt like 15 or 20 at the time) before I was able to break out of it.  In the sense of being of the animal kingdom I understand it.  It is a trait many animals use to very good advantage.  However, as a human, I think, it is more often than not of very little use.  This is not to say it is useless.  It's just not a safe place to be.  We need to have the ability to function at all times.  At least when I start doing I don't feel the terror anymore.

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2014-11-25

This is a paragraph from the book I'm reading with a short introduction.

Lazar had just lost his best "friend" Jumo, the only man he really trusts, who died a few hours ago.  Ana is a the woman he loves and she loves him.  However, Ana is married to the Zar (king), so it is a hopeless situation punishable by death.  They, with three others, are on a mission to save Lazar's adopted land from his birth land where he is a banished first prince.

"Later that night he mourned Jumo deeply, and that only intensified his sorrows over Ana, over the touch that told him she was his, had always been. The hurt over his two favorite people blended and his grief that he could never be with either again intensified his sadness. He grieved again at the thought that they could never be together. He needed to be alone with his thoughts, to clear them. He must accept that Jumo was gone from his life and he must lay his desires for Ana to rest once and for all. Love equaled pain, and he had no more room in his heart for it. Loneliness could never get worse, a solitary life was quantifiable and once accepted, became routine, manageable, and even comfortable… familiar as a comfy old chair or a favorite shirt."

Lazar is in a place I have been in the past.  Sometimes for long stretches, even when I had other people in my life, as Lazar is.  I fear the comfortable the aspect of it.  Though when I'm there I don't know this, the fear doesn't exist because it's an emotion.

This however isn't the best time for this, so I'll add to it later.

2015-01-22 Thu.

In psychology there is a well known premise (falsehood) about "better the hell we know".  Trauma people (those I've met anyway) have a very good understanding of how this works.  The thought of changing my life from the hell I know is scarier than "getting better".  Every time I find myself in a close relationship, romantic or not.  I end up getting hurt.  The last time I ended up inpatient with suicidal ideation that would not quit.

In my life, "Love equaled pain, and he had no more room in his heart for it. Loneliness could never get worse, a solitary life was quantifiable and once accepted, became routine, manageable, and even comfortable … familiar as a comfy old chair or a favorite shirt." This is not to say I have abandoned love.

This is something I am incapable of.  I have even talked about feeling love for my therapist and there are others in my life who fall into this category.  Yet do I really want another truly meaningful relationship in my life.  Another person who I want to feel attached to like no other.  The real answer is yes.  However, that old "favorite shirt" will hang in the closet in a way that may stop me from ever really trusting anyone again.

2015-11-11 Wed.

This, to me, is one of the saddest aspects of what trauma has done to me.

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2015-01-06 Tue.

Intolerance?  Intolerance is something we all have to some degree.  More often than not, it gets worse as we get older.

Now I've read and heard a lot about making one's life better.  Sometimes we need to embrace our faults before we can fix them.  In the case of intolerance I'm not saying I should become more intolerant of people who don't think.  I need to pay more attention to them and figure what it is that drives me up the wall when ever I have to deal with them.

As an obvious example it really drives me crazy when people stop to talk in the middle of the sidewalk making it necessary to walk in the street, if possible, to get around them.  Why should everyone else have to deal with these people.  Their rude, causing a hazard, generally just being a pain in the butt.  However, what really bothers me the most about these people is they don't even realize what they are doing.  Unless of course they are purposely being mean, very unlikely most of the time.

2015-11-11 Wed.

My thought of what embracing my intolerance is accepting it.  Living with it, letting it run it's merry way through my mind.  Until it starts to become obsessive.  At which point I try to tell myself 'time to let go of those brainless fools'.  To which I often come back with But.  But hell, I should let someone I don't know run my life.  While I do have a pet peeve with "No one can make you feel anything".  I also know that I am the one getting upset and, staying upset ruining my day.  Not those brainless fools blocking the sidewalk.

It just occurred to me that in a way my intolerances remind me to always be mindful.  To not be in someone esle's list of intolerances.  Unless of course they are intolerant of what I am.  In which case we should just avoid each other.