Certain trains of thought must be hard to follow, and I apologize for that.
Upon rereading my last few posts, I spied many streams of consciousness, which emerged in a disorganized manner, as well as a plethora of grammatical mistakes that frustrated the teacher in me ... If you ask why this series of posts leans toward mental discombobulation, I'd reply: Each time my thought processor is busily transitioning away from yesteryear's denial of reality toward today's absorption of clarity, concerning fear-based misperceptions that have haunted me, subconsciously, ever since childhood, here is what happens ... While one portion of intuitive thought is still busily peeling away at another layer of denial, a latent sense of anxiety arises, pumping so much adrenalin into my bloodstream as to sabotage my think tank's natural ability to construct sentences with such attention to detail as to convey each insight-driven train of thought with the precision that proves necessary if your thought processor is to remain on track, absorbing strings of insight that flow so smoothly out of the depths of my mind as to be clearly absorbed into yours.
Each time anxiety disorients my train of thought, your think tank gets sucked into the same mental maze that throws my thought processor for a loop until anxiety passes, offering my mental clarity free passage to reconstruct trains of thought, which proved so complex as to have chugged out of my depths in such a raw, half baked state as to compel me to reconstruct every sentence that had grown to such extraordinary lengths as to have boggled your mind even more than surging spurts of adrenalin had boggled mine ... WHEW! I've wanted to express that last train of thought for quite some time!
The fact of the matter is this: After each session of EMDR therapy, subconscious fears (associated with terrifying memories) which had been blocked from my conscious awareness ever since I experienced childhood trauma, begin to stir deep within my mind until, as though out of the blue, a fear to which I'd been blind tumbles into the conscious portion of the highly complex machine (commonly known as my brain) and Having grown accustomed to writing my way toward clarity, my sense of mental disorganization draws me to the computer, where all ten of my fingers can be seen flying all over the keyboard so quickly as to tap the wrong keys as my typing speed tries but can't keep up with each next train of thought that pulses out of my intuitive depths as if each emergent string of inter-related insights (Exposing a subconscious fear, based in misperception, which had remained secreted from my conscious awareness since the age of three) is making its most valiant effort to swim through turbulent currents of adrenalin, which, turning my blood vessels into rushing rivers of churning rapids, propel the sum of my adult smarts to focus my mind's eye on the emergence of a deeper truth that has always swirled in an unprocessed state just beneath the surface of my persona's ever-ready smile, and not until both sides of my brain (the subconscious, traumatized portion and the conscious, intelligent portion) are wholly zoned in on exposing and penning secreted fears based in terrifying misperceptions, which were so beyond the conscious comprehension of a terrified child as to signal Mother Nature to save me from feeling so overwhelmed with fear too great to bear as to alert my defense system to construct the first layer of my wall of denial, right then and there, and once that wall divided my brain into two separate parts, each of which remained blind to the other, from that time till I was diagnosed with PTSD, every awareness that had proved too scary to bear, signaled my hypervigilant defense system to secret away anything that caused my sense of personal safety to quake with latent fear until EMDR therapy began to relax my hyper vigilance enough to filter individual details from this fearsome memory or that one through this crack or that crack in my wall of denial ... And eventually, there are so many cracks that another layer of that wall crashes to the ground, freeing a forgotten memory to tumble, unexpectedly, into my conscious awareness in such a garbled state as to terrify my sense of safety as much today as had been true when an adult had caused the defenseless mind of a child to feel utterly worthless, many decades ago, and not until I piece the shattered details of the forgotten memory into comprehensible state does my episode of high anxiety have reason to relax ...
Though it's true that my adult sense of safety feels threatened each time my conscious mind envisions myself as that traumatized, three year old child, whose misperceived self-assessments swirled through one set of anxious rapids after another, EMDR therapy charges my adult intelligence with fortifying my connection to courage in order to sweep the terrified child (I had been) into my strongly protective and loving embrace, so that she and I can reach the shoreline, directly ahead, before another wave of subconscious fear can overwhelm my resolve to dive every more deeply into my psyche. And thus does my adult sense of courage wrestle with my defense system's natural reaction to maintain its wall of denial until the power struggle that pits my frightened, defensive state of mind against my courageous need to know myself in depth feels so totally exhausted of energy as to drown my current state of determination to fully comprehend whatever new eruption of personal imperfection is accusing the sum of my strengths with feeling as useless (worthless) as had felt true when the sudden deaths of my Grandpa and my baby sister (several weeks apart) rocked my family's entire world, spinning every adult brain off its axis, so that no matter how hard a terrified, good little girl tried to win a smile, not one adult, who had once basked in the sunshine of my natural sparkle, did anything but respond with perpetual frowns. Then when crying and shouting, while casting blame for my angelic sister's death, forced terrified, three year old me to hide from the searing flames of adult fury in the closet until my dad (whom I'd run to and clung on to for dear life) arrived home from work—for so many weeks without end—and I, being as egocentric as is true of small children, who, feeling utterly confounded by complex emotional reactiveness on the parts of adults, had silently condemned myself guilty of having committed the unforgivable sin of being such a bad. unlovable, little girl as to have deserved to be forgotten by my mom and grandma, day after day, until that unprocessed pain grew so great as to alert Mother Nature to call forth my defense system, which shielded my traumatized psyche from emotional pain by constructing an impenetrable defensive wall of denial, behind which my conscious awareness habitually stuffed every fear or problem that might otherwise zombify the vulnerable nature of a child's hold on sanity in a world gone mad, and thus, from the time of Janet's death until Will and I separated, most of my troubles remained anesthetized and numbed from conscious awareness, most especially when any situation, fraught with emotional pain, felt too unbearable to bare to myself once I came to harbor this unprocessed fear: If ever my subconsciously silenced, self-assertive voice speaks aloud, frowns will surely grow so loud as to draw forth my self assessment (which remained closeted since I was three), suggesting that I am unworthy of love, and thus did I smile and comply with every request, by day, while by night: Throughout my childhood, an itch, more intense than words can describe, awakened me in the dark of the night, when I was seen scratching my arms so raw as to have drawn blood, while crying so hard that I'd actually gasp for each next breath as though subconscious pain had been desperately clawing its way out of my psyche's subterraneous tunnel exposing need to exhume unprocessed fears that surfaced by way of visceral reactions, year after year ...
BTW—if you misthink that description of eruptive subconscious agony as melodrama then may I respectfully suggest that you know as little about the savage ravages that undiagnosed PTSD wreaks upon an intelligent, well-educated adult think tank as did I. However, having worked determinedly to attain 'today's' crystal clear sense of mental clarity, you can see why I give thanks for EMDR therapy, which continues to coach my intuition to work at saving the haunting nature of a traumatized, little girl, who swims through swirling channels of my subconscious as I work, consciously, to free her from painfully guilting herself, undeservedly, repeatedly, and she and I transition away from childhood's confounded misperceptions toward refocusing my adult conscious sense of clarity toward growing ever more wholly aware of the admirable, free thinking character traits that I've conscientiously worked to develop over these past seven decades of my life, and though each turbulent ride through yesteryear's rapids causes my adult mind to tumble into a time machine that sucks my think tank into misbelieving that an anxiously confused, darkly colored misperception is true, I've grown ever more determined to disempower emergent episodes of PTSD from running interference with crystal clear reality. And if you ask how I plan to minimize an episode of PTSD, I'd reply: I plan to call upon the sum of my personal strengths to act like a life raft that will save my hold on clarity from capsizing each time an episode of PTSD attempts to fool my brain into believing that my imperfections make me unworthy of living the good life, because each time I feel need to frown, I feel so bad (subconsciously) as to condemn myself of being undeserving of love, and when I guilt myself as unlovable, all I want to do is to closet myself away from the rest of the world untilmy next session of EMDR therapy works to exhume, identify and assuage the subconscious fear that spurred each next eruptive episode of PTSD to highjack my adult think tank's connection to present day reality, and as soon as I feel calm enough to engage my think tank in the mental gymnastic wizardry necessary to exhume an unprocessed, subconscious fear that had choked my sense of personal safety half to death at the age of three—well—I'm sure you can see why my conscious awareness can't help but sigh with a surging sense of emotional release as soon as my current state of mental relief senses clarity replacing confusion, thus propelling my sense of wholeness to feel so eager to share insights that I've worked to absorb, concerning my ability to free a sweet natured child from serving out a lifetime sentence, which had shackled her spirit, 24/7, to internal chains of undeserved guilt, as to add strings of emergent insights to a published post as soon as each review of a previously written train of thought pulls into the next rest station. And thus has it become my habit to feed my need to free freshly streaming strings of insights to fall wherever they pop out of my mind in hopes of conveying unidentified fears, which are in the process of tumbling out of deeply buried subconscious pockets in hopes of offering my conscious awareness a brand new vision of where my self assessment has been in need of change for the better, close to forever. And not until I review each post do I realize which trains of thought flew out of the oven half baked, suggesting that certain morsels of self-empowering knowledge had been served as raw as sushi for public consumption ... WHEW!
So, hopefully, you can see why, upon arising, feeling well-rested, morning after morning, intuition compels me to take a step back, pick up my iPad and review the previous day's work, at which time, the editing process develops a mind of its own in that I can't seem to stop additional strings of insights from surging up and pouring out, here, there and everywhere, until each half baked train of thought can be swallowed down as smoothly as Campbell's chicken noodle soup tastes Mmm Mmm Good! And with that said, you now know why each post, penned or edited during the tail end of an episode of PTSD, tends to border on discombobulation no matter how much editing the teacher in me feels compelled to do. In fact, if, weeks later, intuition pulls me back to review a series of posts published at the tail spin end of an episode of PTSD, I spy words that should have been deleted but were not, and I can also see where auto correct has made a mess of a sentence. Geez!
At any rate, posts written while my brain is still transitioning from a painful episode of PTSD toward gaining a more conscious sense of today's reality, concerning the sum of my character traits, shows you what the inside of my head feels like while my brain is undergoing each stage of mental transition from traumatized misperception to healthier adult self assessment, suggesting that you are watching from the stands while I'm making my way safely around the bases. And each time my think tank is 'up at bat', and I find myself home free of errors, fouls or striking out, you get to watch my wearied mind experience a peaceful rest stop on the bench, where I can sit back, relax, breath freely and whet my thirsty whistle with a sense of personal pride in having successfully completed another difficult task until the next inning of the game of life, sees me up at bat, sizing up another daunting, eruptive episode of PTSD, which suddenly flies straight at my head as though from out of the blue, scaring my conscious mind half to death; however, from now on, instead of quaking in my cleats, I'll invite you (if you continue to be a fan) to witness my sense of courage rising to the occasion with bat in hand, facing each curve ball, which, traveling at the speed of light, challenges my think tank to smack a homer straight out of the ball park, again and again, because when it comes to love and life, I admit to being an over achiever, who believes that tis good to take a seventh inning stretch without leaving the ballpark, mistaking the game to be over, when deeper truth suggests that the game's not over ... till one side wins to the other's loss. And if you know me, at all, it comes as no surprise that I don't play to win or lose—I play until win/win is won ...
Ever since my current therapist astutely diagnosed PTSD, each emergent episode of PTSD proves less traumatically debilitating and therefore less lengthy than the last—why? Because knowledge is self empowering, suggesting why change for the better demands that each person on the field of play is charged with consciously cultivating inner strengths such as patience and calmness under fire (think my Line of Control), courage, fortitude, resilience, humility (and between you and me, a corny sense of humor doesn't hurt).
Once armed with the sum of those strengths, the human brain can be trained to keep a keen eye focused on today's ball by readily steadying anxious reactiveness to rely on a think tank that has worked to assemble such a safe and peaceable, well balanced emotional environment inside your head, so that the sum of your personal strengths can grow ever more deeply attentive to absorbing every morsel of knowledge that an experienced coach is coaxing your conscious mind to field as you come to feel ever more capable of directing the sum of your smarts to tunnel ever more courageously into scary subconscious memories in order to progress through the pain-invoking series of mental breakthroughs that proves necessary to heal each portion of self esteem, which had been traumatized during childhood. And with that insight in mind, here's what I'm training my brain to do whenever something flies in from out of the blue, catalyzing another episode of PTSD to erupt as swiftly as a pitched ball becomes a blur, speeding straight toward my noggin, altering my well practiced sense of courage and timing to rise to the occasion quick enough to smack that episode of PTSD right out of the park, or if the best I can do under extraordinary emotional pressure is to not get hit in the head so hard as to free subconscious fear to stunt the sum of my smarts to feel as useless as when I was three, well, common sense suggests that's a commendable sign of progressing toward change for the better, concerning improving my self assessment under fire, as well.
As you can see, facing each next inning of my recovery by training my brain to feel capable of regaining my lost sense of self empowerment proves to be exceptionally tiring work, which is why reality checks, concerning progress, during rest periods, encourages me to focus on pain leading straight toward gain, pinpointing the fact that, over the long haul, healing the shattered bones of my self esteem (without need to throw stones at the glass houses of others) proves personally strengthening as well as immeasurably worthwhile. And as today is the first day of the rest of my life, I feel thankful for the fact that my think tank has dedicated so many waking hours to working toward exploring and absorbing a perspective, concerning love and life that proves to be as positively focused as are most of the posts that I pen, again and again, until clarity of thought is finally mine to share with you!
I saw my therapist, today, who explained that though David's psyche had most likely experienced deja vu (concerning the severity of his spine surgeries of several years ago) my son's sudden spike of anxiety did not necessarily point to PTSD for this reason: The intensity of David's stress was proportionate to the length of time that he'd been controlling emotional frustration, concerning the depth of his physical pain, which has severely limited his freedom to enjoy life. So when months of hard work to heal himself seemed for naught as his pain intensified, David's reactive, sudden spike in anxiety remained within the realm of that which is considered psychologically normal, considering the circumstances, suggesting, yet again, that two situations can seem the same on the surface when a knowledgable connection to deeper truth indicates that that is not the case in point. Whereas David's (temporary) loss of personal safety made sense, my lost of personal safety (over several weeks) in the aftermath of having successfully created a memorable Passover weekend, enjoyed by twenty loved ones, made no sense, at all ... unless PTSD, correctly diagnosed, factored into the complicated story problem's equation.
If we stop to think about it, life is a lot like higher mathematics in that we need to grow ever more able to solve for the unknown X factor, and each time an episode of PTSD feels provoked, the problem at hand grows so complex to comprehend that the sum of our smarts must hunker down to correlate how the X factor interconnects with that which renains unknown until we solve for ...Y to the tenth degree. (As I had been placed in an honors algebra class, during my fresh year of high school, where my teacher's sarcasm scared me half to death, my thought processor, fearing making a mistake, froze so often that I barely escaped at the end of each semester with an [unacceptable, unforgivable] 'C' ... Aha! So that answers why I've had recurrent nightmares about taking those finals, again and again, and during the dream, if I don't achieve at least a B, landing me on the freshman honor role where intuitve frustration has always known I'd belonged, my current teaching certificate will be revoked!). So after bungling my way through algebra, which navigating the mind, successfully, through geometry depends upon, studying higher mathematics seemed out of my league ... on the other hand, the highly complex nature of the inter relational functions of the human brain fascinate my thirst to absorb depths of logic to no end ... Why? Because the absorption of knowledge proves self-empowering ... For example:
Whereas David had readily processed every logical point that his dad and I took turns orally conveying, concerning the fact that his frustration had spiked for sound reason, considering the fact that his physical injury has continued to painfully interfere with his enjoyment of life for more than six months, our son's mental connection to clarity would have been severely compromised had PTSD boggled his conscious mind. Once an episode of PTSD high jacks a person's thought processor, the conscious mind may remain blind and deaf to logical reasoning for weeks before the traumatized portion of the subconscious calms down enough to stop imagining the presence of danger, closing in, so as to alert the adrenal glands to stop secreting such an over-production of adrenalin as to flash freeze every organ within the entire body to tense up in basic survival mode—and as the brain is an organ, it tenses too tightly to think clearly until the brain feels safe enough to melt tension down and relax, at last ... BTW, that's not just personal experience talking—being an over achiever, I do my homework, and every sentence, clearly penned in today's post has been confirmed as a statement of psychological fact.
I sure do hope that upon rereading today's post, tomorrow, every word written will make so much sense to me as to believe my think tank is growing ever more capable of conveying deepening degrees of clarity (concerning strings of insight into self discovery) so as to be more easily absorbed by you, if not today, then tomorrow. And with that thought, simply stated, today's stream of consciousness senses the shoreline, waving an all-clear flag, signaling this tired swimmer to head straight toward the next rest station, which awaits my safe arrival, directly ahead ... only a few laps of crystal clear water left to tread before my weary mind and a sweet natured child can be seen basking in a calm, sparkling spa, laughing at who-knows-what ... until something utterly unexpected flies in from out of the blue, driving the locomotive that's determined to heal from PTSD to tunnel, inner strengths intact, toward clarity, again ...
I saw my therapist, today, who explained that though David's psyche had most likely experienced deja vu (concerning the severity of his spine surgeries of several years ago) my son's sudden spike of anxiety did not necessarily point to PTSD for this reason: The intensity of David's stress was proportionate to the length of time that he'd been controlling emotional frustration, concerning the depth of his physical pain, which has severely limited his freedom to enjoy life. So when months of hard work to heal himself seemed for naught as his pain intensified, David's reactive, sudden spike in anxiety remained within the realm of that which is considered psychologically normal, considering the circumstances, suggesting, yet again, that two situations can seem the same on the surface when a knowledgable connection to deeper truth indicates that that is not the case in point. Whereas David's (temporary) loss of personal safety made sense, my lost of personal safety (over several weeks) in the aftermath of having successfully created a memorable Passover weekend, enjoyed by twenty loved ones, made no sense, at all ... unless PTSD, correctly diagnosed, factored into the complicated story problem's equation.
If we stop to think about it, life is a lot like higher mathematics in that we need to grow ever more able to solve for the unknown X factor, and each time an episode of PTSD feels provoked, the problem at hand grows so complex to comprehend that the sum of our smarts must hunker down to correlate how the X factor interconnects with that which renains unknown until we solve for ...Y to the tenth degree. (As I had been placed in an honors algebra class, during my fresh year of high school, where my teacher's sarcasm scared me half to death, my thought processor, fearing making a mistake, froze so often that I barely escaped at the end of each semester with an [unacceptable, unforgivable] 'C' ... Aha! So that answers why I've had recurrent nightmares about taking those finals, again and again, and during the dream, if I don't achieve at least a B, landing me on the freshman honor role where intuitve frustration has always known I'd belonged, my current teaching certificate will be revoked!). So after bungling my way through algebra, which navigating the mind, successfully, through geometry depends upon, studying higher mathematics seemed out of my league ... on the other hand, the highly complex nature of the inter relational functions of the human brain fascinate my thirst to absorb depths of logic to no end ... Why? Because the absorption of knowledge proves self-empowering ... For example:
Whereas David had readily processed every logical point that his dad and I took turns orally conveying, concerning the fact that his frustration had spiked for sound reason, considering the fact that his physical injury has continued to painfully interfere with his enjoyment of life for more than six months, our son's mental connection to clarity would have been severely compromised had PTSD boggled his conscious mind. Once an episode of PTSD high jacks a person's thought processor, the conscious mind may remain blind and deaf to logical reasoning for weeks before the traumatized portion of the subconscious calms down enough to stop imagining the presence of danger, closing in, so as to alert the adrenal glands to stop secreting such an over-production of adrenalin as to flash freeze every organ within the entire body to tense up in basic survival mode—and as the brain is an organ, it tenses too tightly to think clearly until the brain feels safe enough to melt tension down and relax, at last ... BTW, that's not just personal experience talking—being an over achiever, I do my homework, and every sentence, clearly penned in today's post has been confirmed as a statement of psychological fact.
I sure do hope that upon rereading today's post, tomorrow, every word written will make so much sense to me as to believe my think tank is growing ever more capable of conveying deepening degrees of clarity (concerning strings of insight into self discovery) so as to be more easily absorbed by you, if not today, then tomorrow. And with that thought, simply stated, today's stream of consciousness senses the shoreline, waving an all-clear flag, signaling this tired swimmer to head straight toward the next rest station, which awaits my safe arrival, directly ahead ... only a few laps of crystal clear water left to tread before my weary mind and a sweet natured child can be seen basking in a calm, sparkling spa, laughing at who-knows-what ... until something utterly unexpected flies in from out of the blue, driving the locomotive that's determined to heal from PTSD to tunnel, inner strengths intact, toward clarity, again ...
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