The Promised Land Within: Healing Your Nervous System, Forgiving Yourself, And Overcoming Lifetimes Of Nervous System Dysregulation
Neuro-Diverse People Rarely Understand Why They (We) Are The Way We Are; When You Reach "Rock Bottom," The Answers Appear
We’re going to be talking about “healing” from “PTSD,” but this acronym should be open to re-naming.
First, there is no “post,” to all the trauma—that was a fitting word, maybe, before 2020, but not now.
I would change the "T” to “S” for “shock,” I think “stress” is too generic. Last: It’s definitely not a “disorder,” but rather, our brains working perfectly in our favor, to protect us and help us survive, all the time.
I spent all day yesterday writing a piece about what we might call my new hyper-focus of interest, (“obsession”) which is my understanding that there actually is a way out of all the craziness our minds generate, from catatonic procrastination to brain fog to chronic poverty, or clutter, or lateness-the list of things PTSD people struggle with is long.
I have understood that the constant beach combing for “truth” is (at one level) yet another quasi-masochistic form of self-sabotage people with “PTSD” will be drawn to. We are still inventing fantasy scenarios as we did in childhood, a place looming so close, where everything would be sparklingly resolved, injustices set right, wounds healed, life begun.
I’ve been on a “deep dive,” but it’s not an external subject: The subject this time is US.
What is good will beget life, and what is bad will distort life.
I’m having to take a hard pass, now, on any person, place, or energy portal that dismisses the impact of early childhood trauma on a human brain, and bypasses the profound human responsibility to transcend it. (Hard pass in my life, I mean—I don’t mean that to read The Truth Barrier, it is required that you identify as “having PTSD.” That said, if people try to come near you but are not working on their PTSD, I submit that it will thwart your recovery.)
I’ll avoid the word “heal” but will use words like “understand,” “admit,” “confront” and “dialogue with.”
I’ve found a person on the internet, who I believe has “cracked the code.”
All this is in the piece I wrote yesterday, which I sent to an old friend for review. I told her I was close to placing it on the scrap heap where 2,637 other pieces are. (A real number.) I was concerned it was crazy, or indulgent, or just bad.
She called me to say she cried when she read it, and the reason was that she saw her own lifelong radiating wounds in it. She saw what I am now seeing: The reasons why. We both saw our lives as in a life review film, and I was saying: None of it was curse, bad luck, misunderstanding, to the ex-husband’s fault—all of it was from the waves and tides of brain trauma in early childhood.
Why all the things that “happened to us” happened. How the infliction of repeated traumatic shocks in early childhood turn into a lifetime of not being able to get one’s life in order, one’s relationships, ones finances, or ones dishes—anything. I’d gotten to the point of near catatonic disassociation, and yes, I tried New German Medicine. I spent my last $370, grasping at something that failed to even explain to me that spending your last $370 on anything is a trauma symptom.
So is being blind to emails, deaf to audio messages, and terrified of every single task and communication, for the chance it could contain rebuke and bring shame.
This is the beginning of mapping our way out of this dark forest, and little by little, transforming ourselves from increasingly dead to increasingly alive. Parenting ourselves, by noticing ourselves, and steering away from dominating forces that trigger our slave avatar, our people pleaser avatar, or any of the other avatars that were created as buffers in our wildly unsafe and violent childhoods.
The content won’t be for everyone—but for those that can relate, it will be extremely clarifying. These pieces will be clearly labeled so people can skip them if they don’t resonate with the content. But it will be a central theme going forward—and we will have gatherings on Zoom if people are interested.
I don’t want to peddle potential catastrophic outcomes or regurgitate crimes of the state anymore, without keeping a sharp eye on how the traumatized mind fares in all this. The traumatized mind is now my first priority.
Mine, yours, everybody’s. Because without that prayer to show up for our battered modern souls, we become nothing but cogs in a vast info-machine, soon to be eclipsed by AI.
You’ve heard me quote this before, from our patron poet:
“We look almost happy out in the sun,
bleeding to death from wounds we know nothing about.”
—Tomas Tranströmer
I'm skeptical of the theory of nervous system dysregulation. But I'm giving it a chance. I have nothing to lose.
I experience often this overwhelming of the senses. Particularly glaring lights and certain smells. I react with a freezing response, usually.
Is this indicative of being neuro-diverse?
I don't know.
In the near future, maybe in less than two years, there may be an approval of ketamine and other hallucinogens. Psychiatrists will be told it is indicated now (indicated means almost the same as mandatory) to prescribe ketamine to people with the so called "major depressive disorder" among many other labels.
I'm choosing to stay away from any medication. I have sub-zero confidence. I'm a bit worried that in this totalitarian atmosphere it might become mandatory to take hallucinogens.
I can joke that one just needs one minute of TV NEWS to have all the healing hallucinatory drugs one desires.
I cannot criticize anyone if they choose to accept prescriptions, because that's their right.
And yet the devouring democratic train looks unstoppable. There will be more coercion for those who resist. People will try to make the "free" decisions of many people an obligation for refuseniks. This is a great present: we will see the rise of libertarians arguing against LSD! The freedom to use drugs is the same the freedom to not use them. Neuroconvergent people who suffer from the vice of institutional thinking obviously cannot accept this freedom. Every action has to be approved or denied, but never chosen freely.
To me it is very important now to separate self-care from politics. I would advice to any therapist who proposes this theory to keep it well separated from anything political. I don't think I'm the only one who runs away from anything that sounds political. Today, using political words like "resilience" or "challenge" is the best way to undermine any therapy. This is it: why patients disappear and refuse to comply with treatments? because the therapists use the same words as the enemy.
I don't know how to make this short, to point, my stunning realization these past months ,has been this awareness, acceptance, my trauma, unrealized and shoved down, is the cause of my painful life, and I'm 73, , then I see this. At same time I feel better about me. I think it may be beginning healing. It's a realization that stuns one. Thank you, it is helpful.