ADDENDUM TO SATURDAY’ S POST, SPOTLIGHTING TRIGGERS

On Saturday, December 23rd, I received an email, copied below, from
My dear, high school friend, Debbie, who
Follows my blog, daily:

Dear friend,

Your recent posts have left me with concern for you. Please know that the sun IS shining! Today will always be a better day than the last. There is so much to smile about. Your granddaughter seems precious and you need to enjoy this time with her. Let the ghosts stay in the past and let the sunshine in. Love and hugs and support from your long time friend. ‘Debbie’ 

My reply that same day:

No worries, dear friend ... truly😊

I write exactly what happens each time my brain’s connection to clarity is distrupted whenever an episode of PTSD has been triggered to usurp control over the conscious portion of my mind—I write so that others who experience this recurrent dilemma can better understand what’s taking place inside their brains in hopes that they, too, may choose to muster the courage, humility and positive focus necessary to buoy their spirits while they work ever so determinedly at healing their brains of subconsciously repressed pain, which has long felt need to be consciously identified and thoroughly expressed.

As is true of recurrent cancers, each episodic attack of PTSD is not a matter of choice; these attacks erupt when triggered by a current event, and as each eruption of temporary disorder mirrors a very real emotional trauma experienced during childhood, the re-emergence of deeply repressed fear and/or grief must be consciously tolerated, identified and released in order to empty my subconscious storehouse of yesteryear’s ghosts, whose triggered re-emergences shatter my current connection to clarity, empowering yesteryear’s experiences of doom and gloom to threaten my personal sense of safety until cognitive understanding, concerning today’s reality, feels so calmed as to gain flashes of insight, spotlighting the trigger(s) responsible for igniting the complex nature of my brain’s functionality to darken today’s sense of reality until a courageous connection to clarity is once again mine at which time emotional reactions, which had felt too fearsome , overwhelming and intense for the undeveloped think tank of an inexperience child to understand have been absorbed into conscious memory, today, suggestive of the fact that having consciously worked to develop a set of mental strengths to have at my beck and call, my growing sense of emotional intelligence, once calm, has gained the ability to integrate each of these terrifying moments from the distant past into the framework of today’s experiences, which had seemed to not make sense until puzzling pieces, emerging from my history, are identified and reorganized in such an astute fashion as to create the bigger picture, which will disempower each next frightening episode of PTSD 

from shattering my personal sense of safety as the future unfolds—in short, we come to see why healing the wounded portions of the human brain is not for sissies—in fact, it is common for caring observers to fear that the little that they can see on the surface of my reaction is not healing, because they have no clue as to the frequency with which my inner strengths call upon my sense of courage to arise and spin its cocoon, providing my intuitive powers with a peaceful haven, where the healthy (greater portion) of my think tank accomplishes its best healing work unimpeded by any aspect of life that might otherwise disrupt my concentration away from the gargantuan mental task, which my intelligence now has well in hand.  (This paragraph has lengthened due to the fact that my power of intuitive thought chose to call forth literary license in order to enhance my original reply to my dear friend’s expression of loving concern by additional insights, which string together as my think tank reviews whatever has already been written.)

As you shall soon see in a post that I’m still composing, (that post was published, late Saturday afternoon) I’m still gaining a strengthened sense of my brain’s ability to maintain control over these episodes until so much deeply repressed emotional pain has been expelled that the ghostlike presence of future episodes will no longer daunt my connection to well being by distorting my view of reality as the future unfolds.  (Do you remember how painfully I’d scratched my skin raw during high school when my defensive mental block kept my sanity safe from consciously acknowledging that a pedophile was attacking me, repeatedly?)  This repression of emotional pain is not new to me.  Repression has been my defensive coping mechanism since early childhood when power struggles between adults shattered my fledgling connection to personal safety before I had so much as a clue that the severity of emotional distress of others was empowered to totally stress my undeveloped nervous system to the max.  However, within the safe environment, created during sessions of EMDR therapy, I can feel 'the original source' of repressed pain and fear ever more consciously, now, than when my fears of sexual abuse and grief born of unexpected deaths had remained fully repressed and unidentified under my skin.  It’s as if once my mental block cracked in the aftermath of my father's sudden death, the dis/eased portions of my brain have been undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, shrinking episodic eruptions of PTSD down in size, as one would shrink a tumor.  And just as chemo and radiation zap the body of energy, catalyzing a lightheaded sense of dizziness, which weighs heavy on the cancer patient's spirit, the same is true of those times when I find it necessary to actively work toward healing debilitating effects, directly related to the eruptive, disruptive nature of PTSD.

With thankfulness for your loving concern, I will always be Annie—who throws open the drapes and smiles at the sunlight beaming its warmth straight into my heart—feeling deeply blessed to have everything that love can offer me to live and enjoy my life, including our friendship, which I've treasured since we first met and always will!

Here I am, yesterday, with Ravi, who believes she is Simba from The Lion King.

As you can clearly see, Ravi and I both revel in every moment that we feel blessed to adore each other, and so, my friend, please feel reassured to know that I feel—much more often than not—really fine, most especially because I have sound reason to believe that my think tank has been getting the hang of outsmarting each next eruptive episode of PTSD!  😊💕🌈🌻

Debbie’s reply:
😍 Let Ravi know that my grandson, played Mufasa in a drama club performance!  Going to be w/all the kids tonight. Will try to get a current photo.  And, yes I do remember the scratching episodes. XOXO

And now, dear friends, as I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas wherever you reside in this often confounding yet wonderful world, imagine me embracing my good fortune to share my life with so many loved ones as to feel deeply blessed even at times when PTSD plays not-so-nice games with my mind, distorting my connection to personal safety until the dawning of intuitive insight brightens the wattage of my spirit's smile as naturally as if a light switch, flipped from off to on inside my head, brightens the darkness of yesteryear's worries as if sunbeams, dancing joyfully with clarity, are streaming through my mind, coloring my attitude glad to feel wholly alive 😍