Groundhog Day

I give up booze, then get back on it, give it up, get back on it.  But every time, now, the hold is less and less.  I am doing daily relaxation practices that get me the same state, complete relaxation, that I want, without the hangover.

I have had alcohol now twice in 3 weeks, but the 3-4 days in when I was starting my booze-fast–roughly two weeks ago (I’ve been traveling, and am just now posting some thoughts I’ve had), I went to see “Edge of Tomorrow” with my oldest, and I had the most unpleasant night.  I kept waking up thinking no time had passed, that the clock said the same thing; that I was stuck in a never ending night.

And I got to thinking about it: trauma is like Groundhog Day/Edge of Tomorrow.  It is the same, the exact same, day in day out across a lifetime until you deal with it.  Its very timelessness is its defining quality.  All things that exist in time evolve and change; but trauma does not exist in time.  This is what this recurring dream/hynogogic nightmare was telling me.

Bringing trauma into time, inherently, is healing.  Inherently, it places it in the moving current of change, and nothing hard can long endure such circumstances.

I am reading a very, very interesting book by Peter Levine called “In an Unspoken Voice”.  I will have more to say about it presently.

In the meantime, I wanted to offer one more observation in this vein: we call hear about how we humans use only some small percentage of our potential brainpower.  I can’t comment on this (other than to say it appears a LOT of guesswork and abuse of the authority implied by credentials seems to be going on), but I can say this: we only use a fraction of our potential selves.

Now, I think most people use 80-90% of their potential selves, but there are in almost all people locked away traumas and negative feelings that they don’t process.  I would say further that the difference between 80 and 100% is not purely quantitative–in the sense of creating a ratio of feelings felt consciously, and dividing it by the sum of those feelings and feelings not felt consciously.

Rather, there is a qualitative difference between a robust, complete capacity to digest emotion, and ANY degree of emotional indigestion.  Certain feelings are impossible, I feel, without full awareness.

This is speculative, but it feels right.  For my part, I’ve been doing some deep work over the past week, and it seems to have done some good.  I’m still shedding emotional fur.

Can I say that?  Fuck it.  I’m allowed bad metaphors.  Shedding, as a gradual process of letting go, seems appropriate.