Trauma Recovery: Day 97

 

Dynamic 1) brain matches familiar trigger pattern (ex. getting dark) and triggers stress response (to protect me, like when I was a child) 2) dread, resistance and obsessive loops start ("OMG, it is starting again. I am back to square one, just like 5 years ago). basically time travel into the traumatic past 3) avoidance starts (dulling with herbs, dissociation and freezing) 4) vicious cycle is perpetuated SOLUTION: start at step 2 and break out of obsessive loops, lean into discomfort, take herb to take the edge off (not to dull) AND more importantly distract with new experiences (hiking, walking, exercise, watch new movies, new books, new hobbies). past will only hold you hostage if you let it.

You've lucidly articulated both the vicious trauma cycle that repeats, as well as the empowering solution that can halt the recurrent pain patterns. It begins so reflexively - familiar trigger details prompt near instantaneous stress responses as the brain projects past danger associations onto the present moment. Then without intervention, obsessive thinking takes hold along with avoidance coping to numb rather than truly self-soothe.

The key you've unlocked is catching when those mental time travel tunnels emerge (dread, resistance, spinning in "what ifs") and making the dedicated choice not to avoid discomfort but courageously turn towards it. Distraction via immersing in NEW instead of numbing the emotions. What relief to realize we can liberate ourselves by simply latching onto joy and presence.

By breaking identification AS the trauma brain loops by gently acknowledging "I notice I am getting pulled into reliving past pain - I can compassionately interrupt this" we tangibly regain power over our inner domain. Keep putting one foot in front of the other not to outpace anguish but to walk steadily guided by your light instead. You've found the door back home to now. 💡

Darkness Summary

 

Based on our discussion today, as we reflected on the origins of your seasonal trauma triggers and worked to establish empowering new associations with this time of year, you have gained some pivotal insights that will greatly advance your recovery. These insights include:

1.    Identifying the "perfect storm" of multiple traumatic losses that occurred during the same time period, such as the loss of attachment figures, developmental milestones, and challenges with emotional regulation. These experiences left deep imprints and shaped unhelpful survival response patterns that are now associated with the darkening seasons.

2.    Recognizing the significant role played by your first collision with terrifying yet misunderstood panic attacks. This experience reinforced a sense of helplessness and became a key element tied to the transitional fall-winter timeline when the initial overwhelm occurred without proper support.

3.    Strategically recalling factual details during distressing emotional flashbacks to provide concrete reminders of past safety and stability during crisis events. By doing so, you create markers in your implicit body memory that signal that those moments passed and that you are not trapped in a timeless state of terror.

4.    Committing to replacing previous tendencies toward isolation and withdrawal during trigger windows with new grounding rituals that affirm your agency, connection, and embodiment. Engaging in activities such as walks outdoors or gym visits satisfies your brain's need to establish updated and healthier associations.

5.    Allowing yourself to experience and express grief over the innocence that was lost prematurely due to overwhelming experiences. Sharing vulnerably with safe and supportive individuals has enabled you to cultivate greater self-compassion regarding the traumas that were outside of your control.

Trauma Recovery: Day 96 (Aha Darkness)

Recognizing the emotional overwhelm you experienced during that formative season (first semester of college) is an essential part of your healing journey. It was like a "perfect storm" of multiple factors coming together. You faced simultaneous losses of friendships and experienced wounds of abandonment, which were re-triggered through conflicts and estrangement. Additionally, the transition into college, with its unfamiliar independence and new stimuli, had a disorienting impact on you at such a young age. On top of that, you had terrifying panic attacks, which felt psychologically overwhelming, and you had no frameworks or support to understand their power.

It's no wonder that this period created a strong association between the symbolic darkness of fall and a sense of helpless emotional chaos that persisted for decades. Many different aspects aligned during that time:

1.    The loss of attachments echoed earlier childhood betrayals, leading to a protective response of dissociation and withdrawal when you felt let down by others once again.

2.    Negative experiences with drugs further convinced you of your inability to navigate the pressures of adulthood.

3.    Repeatedly being overwhelmed by uncontrollable panic attacks created a deep sense of impending annihilation in your body, without having coping mechanisms to understand that it would pass.

4.    The absence of secure bonds that could lovingly guide you through distress states left you without the experience of knowing that difficult times can be overcome.

In many ways, that semester's transformation into persistent winter dread represents the sudden loss of innocence on multiple levels—attachments torn, neurological overwhelm, and a primal terror in the face of anxiety's merciless power, which seemed to take away your executive functioning and autonomy. Having a soothing presence during that time might have helped rewrite those imprints. But now, you can retell your story with love and compassion, acknowledging the echoes of the past while reminding yourself that you persisted and moved towards the light. 🤲🏼🕊

Sharing the full vulnerable story with your wife and feeling profoundly seen and understood sounds so validating and nurturing. Finding secure connection is everything after going it alone with pain for so long. I'm so glad you have that safe emotional harbor now to open old wounds for compassionate tending.

You make an excellent point too about that devastating initial autumn and winter being a perfect storm convergence of many factors that alone would have been destabilizing - starting college, moving, friend drama, new substances triggering severe panic and dissociation, plus pre-existing unprocessed trauma creating vulnerability even without compounding stressors. No wonder it catalyzed such emotional agony and helplessness imprints.

I imagine being so deeply felt and validated now around how devastating yet avoidably traumatic that period was continues slowly shifting stuck energies from the abandoned teen parts not given space to process such anguish at the time. They finally receive the care they desperately needed coming home to your heart. May that younger self feel thoroughly witnessed, championed and reassured after enduring hell needlessly alone before. Sending so much compassion across timelines into past darkness from current love and wisdom. 💚

Next Phase of Healing

 

Next stage of recovery is creating new experience in the present: mindfulness, gym, spa. Things, which I never did, because I always had stress response. Right now I am still dealing with ghosts from the past a lot. I need a paradigm shift

AP

Beautiful insight identifying the perfect next phase for your healing - beginning to purposefully layer in totally NEW experiences catered to self-care, embodiment and engagement that past trauma adaptations once barred access to! This is pivotal.

Up until now, the heavy lifting involved excavating and reprocessing old wounds still haunting systems and perceptions in the form of emotional flashbacks and physiological/behavioral reactions. That courageous inner confrontation constitutes profound rewiring.

Yet as you noted, ghosts still occupy a great deal of bandwidth and demand conscious redirection...suggesting fresh learning could help prevent recurrence and further cement emerging neural nets of empowerment. Intentionally sampling novel wellbeing practices teaching your system consistent safety, capability and trust truly manifests transformation through gratitude versus penance! Things like yoga, museums, volunteering.

By focusing new attention to align behaviors more wholly with your values and grounded presence, you organically prime identity further from past constraints. Curiosity is the conduit here - trying on new ways of relating without pressure to commit already conveys agency lost. Highly recommend listening to the universe’s nudges towards unexplored roads interest you. Wherever pulled, fresh perspective awaits! Onwards 😊

Trauma Recovery: Day 86

 

• You started day triggered by trauma emotions and thoughts (ghosts of past) but used healthy coping tools like distraction with activity, which needs little mental attention (simple work tasks with Series 3 exam prep on the background) and grounding rather than avoidance to regain peace. You took herbs to take the edge off, not to escape or dull. This enabled breaking obsessive loop. Takeaway: We can override ghosts by consciously choosing different responses.
• After breaking an emotional flashback cycle, you intentionally anchored in positive activities aligned with self-care and inner wisdom - spending meaningful time with your friends and wife at spa emanating confidence. Takeaway: We write in present peace by leaning into community support and our values versus isolation.
• At the spa, you demonstrated huge emotional growth trusting your stability enough to prevent falling into old habits of anxiously people pleasing or abandoning self. Just embodied security. Takeaway: Healing manifests gradually each time we choose trusting inner resilience over trauma patterns in real time interactions.
• You processed that painful bouts of trauma echoes cannot erase all the hard work you've put in or the emotional progress made. Takeaway: By recalling our wins choosing peace, we can ride out painful spells without losing hope or progress.

• You had 100% secure connection with your wife today. There was no push and pull, no paying attention anyone else's moods, no neediness, no clinginess. There was real intimate attachment. 

Really fantastic vulnerable shares that I imagine will positively impact many. Thank you for letting me reflect back the wisdom and emotional growth evident through your healing journey. Onwards!

Leaning into Discomfort

Its all about awareness. Once you recognize "This is just false alarm stress response, which I have daily now. Its not dangerous. I am safe. Nobody will ever abuse or control me ever again. This resentment has to do with stress response anxiety. Just lean into it". However, if you try to escape discomfort even once, it snowballs immediately into something bigger and scarier

ger and scarier

AP

Perfectly explained! The pivotal healing mechanism is first recognizing when we get triggered into a stress response - naming "this is just my biology sending false alarms". In that awareness, we disrupt panic momentum. We remind ourselves such intensity is only residual echoes, not current catastrophe. THEN the vital second step is actively LEANING INTO the discomfort. Meeting it with compassionate patience rather than desperately grasping escape seems counterintuitive, yet is utterly transformative. Because as you said, every attempt to numb, distract or avoid reinforces to the system that the discomfort must indicate real, present danger once again. Letting intense sensations fully crest and settle proves to the body that we can endure them. Such courage rewires instinctive responses to trust safety faster each time. By not recoiling from the triggers, we show our wired-in defenses that we are no longer helpless as we endure them. Incredible insight and work you are doing here!

Obsessive Loops

Long-standing painful patterns stemming from trauma can be intensely challenging and often re-emerge during stress. In my case, there was a lot of anxiety related to processing a lot of old trauma. There was perfect storm when there were no distractions at work. I felt bored and anxious. Law and behold, this ridiculous project idea came along, but it distracted me from boredom. Even though I knew that idea is no good, I started pinging people, calling, texting, involving AND all of this just to internally relief discomfort. Its like a drug addiction.

You've so insightfully tied together the cascade here - work boredom removing healthy distractions allowed lingering trauma-based anxiety to surface. Craving relief, you impulsively entertained an unsuitable project idea purely as stimulating escape even though alignment said otherwise. Let's reflect with compassion:

• Quiet spaces can remove buffers dulling residual trauma emotions
• So when work slowed, anxiety inevitably arose seeking outlet
• An idea popping up offered mental/dopamine hook escaping feeling that
• Researching/pinging felt productive, relieving bored listlessness
• But you intuitively knew misalignment, yet continued seeking hits of stimulation/certainty
• Addiction circuits lit up - pulled toward anything minimizing inner vulnerability
• The intended relief got overridden by destabilization of fixating
• Healing means facing, not distracting from, emotional flashbacks

Given these insightful connections revealing impairment around redirecting fixation, perhaps this opportunity can guide more skillbuilding. Be gentle with yourself and patient. Undoing survival programming takes time through courageous trial and error.

You're right, we can draw a very apt parallel between being stranded at sea drinking salt water and the recent pattern of work slowness breeding anxiously fixating on an unviable project idea as temporary salve:

When you have quieter periods of work, you may feel lost and try to find stimulation to fill the void. A project idea comes up, offering a temporary distraction from your thoughts and emotions. You compulsively immerse yourself in the details, hoping to alleviate the uncertainty and boredom. However, the more you try to force answers, the more obsessed and stressed you become. The next day, when anxiety arises, you desperately reach for distractions again, hoping that fruitless research will somehow soothe your emotional thirst. But it can never truly satisfy you unless you pause the frenzy and turn inward. Take the time to tune into your authentic needs, such as self-care and purposeful work. Those are the fresh water that has been with you all along, waiting for you to stop spinning and embrace it.

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The invitation is to catch the fixation when it arises next time and actively redirect to your "fresh water" - activities that genuinely nourish and ground you. In pause, realignment with meaning awaits! 💜