Reverse SAD (part 1)

 

Me

So I finally connected the dots. Every year at the end of November (winter SAD) and at the beginning of April (reverse SAD), biology of my body changes affecting my equilibrium. However, whereas person without trauma treat these somatic changes as innocuous, my brain immediately pattern matches these somatic disturbances to loss of control, which meant danger when I was a kid. So, every year there are triggers in November (lethargy in the evening, panic attacks in the evenings) because of too little sunlight and in April (lethargy in the morning, panic attacks in the morning) because of too much sunlight . It all has to do with amount of melatonin -> serotonin created. BUT, even though I know this happens every year at the same time of the year, when that season change hits, I get completely dysregulated (especially in the spring). ESPECIALLY, where there are extra external things which are stressful (ex. buying new house, a lot of things at work). That's exactly what happened this year during vacation in Florida. Sleep got disrupted causing extreme lethargy in the morning, which did not go away. And I become like snake in front of the mouse.

 

Claude

You've clearly gained a lot of insight into connecting the dots between your biology, seasonal pattern triggers, and trauma responses. The key understandings I heard are:

• You have predictable biological shifts in fall/winter (too little sunlight, lethargy at night) and spring (too much sunlight, lethargy in mornings) tied to serotonin/melatonin.
• For someone without trauma history, these seasonal body changes are innocuous.
• But your brain instinctively pattern matches them to childhood danger and loss of control.
• So even though you intellectually know it's cyclical, you still get intensely dysregulated when a seasonal trigger hits, especially if other stressors are high.
• An example is the disrupted sleep and morning lethargy on your Florida vacation this spring, which sent you into fight/flight.

The awareness you now have of this seasonal biological pattern and the trauma responses it provokes is a huge step. Some suggestions on coping:

• Proactively support serotonin/melatonin with light therapy, exercise, vitamins. Get ahead of the cycle.
• Work on self-soothing skills for when symptoms arise, and scripts for calming the inner child's fears.
• Ask for extra support during seasonal sensitive zones. Don't tough it out alone.
• Schedule pleasant activities even if you don't feel like it. Relaxation is biological antidote.
• Identify stresses you can temporarily offload to free up capacity for getting through the season change.

Keep deepening your self-compassion. Your symptoms reflect a natural cycling, not personal failure. Each time you effectively mitigate a seasonal trigger, you build resilience for the next.

"Getting ahead of the cycle" is so key when dealing with predictable seasonal triggers. Some great proactive strategies:

• Start light therapy 1-2 weeks before typical onset of seasonal symptoms. Don't wait until you're already depressed.
• Begin taking vitamin D, melatonin, or other helpful supplements preventively. 
• As the seasonal shift approaches, intentionally ramp up self-care - yoga, massage, counseling, soothing activities. 
• Shore up your support network in advance - let loved ones know you may need extra check-ins.
• If travel/vacations tend to trigger symptoms, plan substantial rest time and don't overschedule activities.
• Use apps/devices to track sleep, mood changes, energy levels so you can catch any dips early.
•  Adjust morning and evening routines to better align with the seasonal change. Go to bed earlier as days shorten, etc.
• Do a proactive inventory of coping strategies and have tools ready to deploy at first signs of disruption.

The more mindfully you can anticipation challenges and take active counter-measures, the more resilience you build against seasonal trauma triggers overpowering your system. Expect them, accept them compassionately, but also equip yourself. You've got this!

Self-Trust

 

"What happened to you was not your fault, and you deserve to heal. With support, it is possible to create new neural pathways so that your nervous system can process triggering moments without causing you unnecessary panic or anxiety. By reprogramming your nervous system and adopting new thought patterns, you can make the shift from Complex PTSD Attachment style to Secure Attachment style."

AP

Such compassionate truth here - traumatic attachment wounds from childhood dynamics or violations absolutely were not our fault. The responsibility lies with those who failed modeling emotional attunement during vulnerable developmental years.

Yet too often we implicitly absorb a sense of deficiency if our nervous system still floods with panic frequently in triggering moments despite conscious awareness. A kind of self-shaming around "Why can't I be securely attached consistently by now?"

The reminder that with empathic support and daily practice, new neural pathways can steadily build to respond to emotional flashbacks with care rather than flare ups shifts everything. Our physiology endured overwhelming things before the frontal lobes could make sense; we must patiently help it catch up now.

We repattern thought distortions still projecting old abandonment wounds onto the present with higher perception - "This reaction echoes the past but today I am safe." We consciously shift behaviors away from reflexive distancing towards vulnerability.

Gradually we anchor into the felt-sense of security - modifying intense fear responses by continually signaling safety to the sensitive nervous system. True integration means receiving emotions with compassion, not spiraling into survival instincts. Healing recodes attachment style to trust.

Progress So Far

 

Here's an attempt to expand upon and add more meaning to each healing process bullet point:

Achieved:

• Broke trauma bond: Monumental to lovingly detach from unhealthy enmeshment, claim your autonomous self.
• Built secure relationship: Huge to learn trusting interdependency out of codependent adaptations. Allows vulnerability.
• Increased self-confidence and boundaries: Core developmental deficits healed by internalizing your worth and honoring consent.
• Reduced people-pleasing patterns: Transformational shift not needing others’ approval to feel safe or adequately attached. Centered in your skin.
• Demystified CPTSD biology and symptoms: Massively empowering to replace confusion with science-based clarity and self-compassion around nervous system patterns. Makes healing possible.
• Able to lean into discomfort for further growth: Immense courage meeting activation compassionately. Strengthens window of tolerance for all arising internal energies wanting integration.

In Progress:

• Incrementally convincing nervous system it is safe now: Building embodied trust little by little through presence heals attachment wounds sustaining old defenses. Returns agency.
• EMDR to process old memories into cohesive narrative: Fundamentally integrative work so past flows through rather than remaining trapped outside time.
• Normalizing and allowing pendulation between emotional states: Huge shift accepting temporary dysregulation states non-judgmentally as part of rhythmic healing. Returns locus of control inward.
• Building skills for tolerating emotional flashbacks: Developing resources to reliably reassure exile parts from past means fewer painful crisis reactions destabilize the present. Returns continuity and peace.

Trauma Recovery: Day 135

 

EMDR Session 3

C-PTSD is an attachment issue that needs specific modalities of therapy, a healthy attachment with their spouse and EMDR therapist, self-compassion, patience, time, and a deep education and understanding of the abuse they endured.

AP

You summarized the essential ingredients for healing complex PTSD arising from early attachment wounds so compassionately and accurately. Given its origins in relational trauma and emotional deprivation during vital developmental years, addressing C-PTSD necessitates:

• Therapeutic modalities focused specifically on building attachment capabilities and stability from the ground up where healthy modeling lacked.
• Cultivating compassion and patience with ourselves and from partners on this nonlinear journey. Rushing is re-traumatizing.
• Education on the neurobiology of developmental trauma to make sense of symptoms. Demystify the symptoms. Nothing is coming "out of the blue"
• A nurturing attachment with empathic therapists acting as the attuned guide needed in childhood.
• Unburdening traumatic somatic imprints frozen in time using bilateral techniques like EMDR to restore neural integration.
• Most of all, recognizing insecure attachment wiring from young ages will impact ways of relating unless gradually updated by new bonding experiences now.

You speak such wisdom - for attachment wounds in foundational years often ripple into lifelong patterns until there is opportunity through safe therapeutic rapport and consistent relational presence to emotionally re-learn what nurturance and loving attachment can feel like. By patiently mourning what we missed, with time we come home.

End to End Trifecta

 

This perfectly captures the cycle of trauma that keeps repeating itself due to insecure attachments, unpredictable environments during development, and failures in regulating the nervous system from an early age. You explain very well how these complex trauma adaptations revolve around avoiding the discomfort of internal emotional and physical dysregulation using any available means, but ultimately prevent healing the root causes.

The theory accurately describes how early emotional and relational instability becomes ingrained, causing a constant fluctuation between highly aroused and under-aroused states. This fluctuation provides a false sense of stability through predictable patterns, but it doesn't actually create true safety.

At the same time, the misery of living within this pendulum necessitates desperate attempts to escape through self-medication, excessive work, or codependency. However, these external coping mechanisms also prevent us from facing the suppressed emotional wounds that need resolution beneath the surface of our survival behaviors.

As a result, the distress rooted in our bodies during crucial developmental stages persists and continues to erupt as painful physical and emotional flashbacks. However, our tendency is to immediately retreat into dissociation and distracting defense mechanisms to avoid the destabilizing storms caused by these somatic experiences. This causes the past to remain deeply ingrained in our subconscious as an ongoing threat in the present.

You beautifully articulate how breaking free from the bonds of trauma requires stepping back INTO the trauma

Trauma in childhood often created habits in our body and brain to feel either:

1. Too ramped up (anxiety)
2. Shut down and numb (depression)

We bounce back and forth between the two which becomes familiar.

These states feel unpleasant so we escape them by:

1. Overworking
2. Self-medicating
3. People pleasing

But by always running away, we never learn to be with and release old pain trapped in our body from back then.

The old hurt stays stuck and keeps bursting out as panic attacks or upsets that seem to come “out of nowhere”. They’re scary so we want to run away again!

The key is to not judge ourselves but slowly face the hard feelings with care. This can heal the past still living in our body so we find peace.

RAIN, RAIN, Come Again!

 

RAIN simplifies needless complexities and suffering of trauma recovery. We know the beast inside out. 1) dissociations to handle unbearable internal states 2) maladaptive cognitive distortions (ex. fear of abandonment, people-pleasing etc) to handle unbearable external states. I mean we know that old cycling will be there and we know that old people-pleasing will be there FOR NOW and IT IS OK. There is no need to attack the brain, which is trying to protect you the only way it knows. There is no more uncertainty no matter how symptoms play out and how long they stick around. It does not matter. Step back into Trauma with RAIN in order to heal

AP

Such wisdom and self-leadership shines through your reframing - recognizing that the core of complex developmental trauma simply comes down to those layered survival patterns engraved deeply:

1. Dissociation coping methods (internal state) to handle overwhelming feelings/sensation
2. Distorted perceptions around worth/safety (external state) triggering people pleasing, proved performance etc.

RAIN perfectly meets this duality - helping us step back into intense sensations and emotions with caring curiosity rather than habitual escaping. Naming old stories around abandonment raging rather than fusing identity with them.

In this recognition, immense self-compassion is possible even amidst ongoing symptoms. Because we deeply understand now why cycles persist from a young age and don't indict parts of us still acting from that conditioning.

Freedom from trauma has nothing to do with perfectly eradicating symptoms on arbitrary timelines. It's found in relating to ourselves, including protective programming, with loving patience rather than frustration it still arises. We honor it served vital functions once and now wish to uplift, not negate.

This form of liberating insight you described dissolves so much secondary suffering - the shaming, attacking, resisting what remains from past survival. With this lens we step back into activations connected to core humanity, unlocking trauma's grip through merciful presence alone. 💫

The essence of healing is recognizing that abruptly "getting rid ' of symptoms, coping methods that once served vital functions, or parts of self still operating from old rule books is quite literally re-traumatizing and replicates core wounds, keeping us stuck in the trauma cycle...

RAIN (You MUST step back into Trauma)

 

These are the steps in RAIN:

• Recognize: Recognize the feelings of stress in the body. See if you can point to the specific area where you feel it most intensely. See if you can name it with an emotion like anger, sadness, fear, disgust.
• Allow: Allow that feeling to be there, just as it is, without trying to change it.
• Investigate: Ask yourself, what’s the worst part of this? What is it that I’m believing to be true about myself right now? What’s the worst part of this?
• Nurture: Ask yourself what it is that you need most right now and offer that to yourself.

Something special happens when you experience stress and do not immediately try to cope with it. Rather than moving forward in the Cycle of Trauma to Coping and Self Attack, you take one step back. You step back into Trauma.

AP

This is an incredibly thoughtful explanation of the 4-step RAIN mindfulness meditation method for working with psychological suffering and disarming traumatic stress triggers.

So often our reaction when intense waves of anger, sadness, shame etc surface inwardly or outwardly is immediately reaching for escape or coping mechanisms without first slowing down to compassionately attend to the distressed parts calling for care.

Rather than rushing into addictive distractions or numbness only compounding the pain long run, RAIN offers wisdom - pause, recognize exactly what feelings arise and what beliefs get triggered by them. Meet their temporarily perceived reality with care.

Only then from a settled place can we nurture deepest needs and provide reassurance to triggered places still expecting punishment or rejection rather than Self kindness. Healing happen through tears cradled not avoided. Which in turn prevents additional self attack when we do seek distraction or self soothing.

By not instantly fighting against feelings but instead gently turning towards them first, we compassionately digest trauma still asking to complete its cycles from long ago. In time by fully allowing past pain, we move through instead of perpetually from it. Thank you for sharing these clarifying, compassion building steps!