I’m probably sharing too much here, but I have come to view this blog as emotionally beneficial. It may be that people I know read it, a thought which makes me uncomfortable, but the benefits are worth the risk of embarrassment. Hell, what could be worse than what I’ve already experienced, and sometimes still do?
Where in school did you learn that unprocessed trauma from your baby years could affect you for life? I don’t remember it, but it seems to be true.
I have awakened something substantial. If I don’t more or less drink myself to sleep, I wake up multiple times a night–something like every 90 minutes–shaking from head to toe. Apparently, people “with” PTSD have dreams they can’t remember, but which wake them up. I woke up punching the bed repeatedly the other night, and wonder if I was punched as a baby. One reads stories of mothers smashing their babies skulls on the wall, microwaving them, smothering them. I have recently noticed PSA signs saying “It’s OK to walk away”, targeted at mothers of babies whose crying drives them insane. I know personally how tiring it can be to wake up every half an hour all night, and that is presumably what happened to my mother.
Still, I was allergic to milk, and they kept giving me milk. I watched her burn 10 pancakes in a row one time. She is quite able to avoid learning anything she doesn’t want to learn.
But this is all very interesting. It is unexpected. It is a nice trip into the unknown. I really wonder how many people wander through life with undiagnosed PTSD from the period when their every last instinct is emotionally and physically exhausting for their mother. Who tests for this?
Could Multi Dimensional Eye Movement be added to physical exams, to uncover hidden and unsuspected trauma? I would bet 1 in 10 people have it to some degree. Is that why Kurt Cobain really killed himself? What about Hemingway? Were they fighting demons that were completely invisible to them, other than through the manifestation of pain?
And I got to thinking: logically, if an effect of trauma is a timeless, unchanging state, then could we infer that those incapable of breathing life into their notions about the world are by that very fact indicating some degree of trauma inheres in their beliefs?
Very short transition: leftism. Classes that don’t change. Historical processes that are abstract, ubiquitous, and inevitable. Usual suspects. Clumsy thinking that turns the whole world into a wax museum devoid of personality and ideosyncracy in motion.
Is Leftism the product of trauma, and if so, of what sort? It is the trauma of grasping, finally, the horror of history, of humankind’s very human defiling and murdering of other humans? Is it the unresolved trauma of the failure of the French or Russian Revolutions to accomplish anything but mass death and misery?
I will add two more things, then conduct my current process (as I think I said, I am going back into counseling, now that the value of abreaction is apparently better understood, again): I had a very unpleasant episode this morning. I am working very hard, physically, and by and large all alone. I was heading into a very hard piece of work this morning, in another city, processing memories that had arisen in the night from my baby period, and anticipating another 7 days straight of equally hard work, and it overwhelmed me briefly. Anyone who has felt severe clinical monopolar depression knows what it feels like. It is like a panic attack combined with wanting to cry but being unable to. Your head spins a bit, and this sense of unreality sets in, which makes you feel like you are going to collapse or have a nervous breakdown. You may just wind up in the looney bin.
No, no, no. I knew I had to fight it, but something like that you can’t battle with will, not directly. You can suppress many feelings; that is not one of them, not in my experience.
So I went through my inventory. This list, you see, was created by me for me, and then shared with the world, in that order.
Self pity: not a shred. I am in fucking pain.
Perseverance: I can do that. I can always keep going. A little voice in my head (no, not that sort of voice, just the intuitive kind) said that if I persevered in my work for 10 minutes, the crazy would go away.
Perception: Hell, why not simultaneously encourage the craziness, AND keep moving. EMDR is basically getting into a state, then adding motion. That is all trauma is: a state without motion, frozen.
So while consciously increasing my sense of depression, I kept working, and damned if ALL the symptoms didn’t disappear in short order. I worked 9 hours, largely by myself, in an office tower, and I felt and feel fine. In fact, I have noticed my irritability has decreased. Things that used to upset me, no longer do so.
I think that most people have all sorts of unresolved trauma that trigger things. What happens when someone cuts you off in traffic? Well, of course that can be dangerous, but that is not why you flip out, is it? Someone just told you you were UNIMPORTANT, you don’t matter. Fuck you, you nobody.
THAT is what creates road rage. There is a little nexus in there of potent content, and somebody just triggered it. I am realizing I have all sorts of triggers, that are diminishing as I get at the REAL trauma, the root of all of it.
Couple more thoughts: Spiritual Emergency might be thought of as an extended nervous breakdown with a beneficial end. As I tend to do, I feel almost everything most Westerners need to do has NOTHING to do with religion or spirituality: we simply need to become human, and many of us fail. Being human is where spirituality STARTS.
I also wanted to add that unresolved PTSD from the early years is a potent starter or seed for the formation of complex and strong Resonant Constellations, as I call them: it is invisible, real, and affects everything.
Also, of course, the birth process can play a role here as well. The thing about the birth process is that it is no doubt somewhat traumatizing for every baby, but I think babies that get the love and affection and attention they need get over it in short order. If, however, you add a hard birth to a barren emotional world, that, again, can create problems whose source is unclear that last a lifetime.
If your only tool is a hammer, it is not necessarily that every problem starts to look like a nail, but rather that you only try to solve problems that look like nails. You ignore the rest.
Until recently, hypnosis was the only mainstream method of getting access to these primitive states. Therefore, even though I am going to say with confidence the birth to 2 year old period is often a major source of unresolved and life altering trauma, psychologists, and psychiatrists largely ignore it. Anything they don’t know how to treat, they would rather not know about. It makes them look stupid, and they don’t like looking stupid.