Discovering Your True Self

 

It amazes me that one can live with oneself for decades and not see some things inside oneself. We have myopias in certain areas and they exist for a variety of reasons, many of which are a low-intelligence form of self-protection our brain uses to try to protect us, albeit in ways which are more focused on the short term at the expense of the long term.

I have recently discovered that I may have a fair sized well of unprocessed traumatic stress. I have been through repeated health scares with my parents, some very gory, some with repeated ongoing life-or-death stresses and fears for months or years, and some involving me providing front line care. I thought dealing with this was just surviving it, but I have learned now that all the emotion that needed to be processed may have ended up down inside in a large well of grief that now feeds accelerant into today's emotionally challenging situations, like gasoline on a fire.

This sort of deeply buried emotional trauma is the kind of stuff people with PTSD have sustained (I suspect mine is lesser, but that's a pointless distinction since it still has functional impacts on my life that I wasn't aware of). This sort of stuff is also something individuals will inevitably have a hard time dealing with and processing on their own without a proper therapeutic intervention because it is triggered by emotional shocks that literally overwhelm our existing ability to cope. It requires the help of a third-party, ideally a well-trained one, to work through and process. I'm guessing it's more challenging too when many traumas have added up and when years have elapsed with this stuff buried deep.

The amazing part to me is I have been reading a lot of books about Trauma lately and have even read lists of symptoms that would qualify people for a PTSD diagnosis and there with things on those lists I had experienced, but when I read those lists, I hadn't the faintest mental connection of my life events to those listed causes. I just didn't have any reason to suspect these tough times I had survived had left an emotionally destructive tumor inside me, I thought they were through, passed, over and done with, no longer anything more than a historical footnote. I NEVER imagined they might be a problem in the here and now.

I made some great progress on self-esteem, on getting out of my mental pit about relationships and my ability to have them, and about being enough and loving myself for who I am in September. Now, at the start of November, I have discovered another area of my head and my emotional makeup that desperately needs me to do some hard and emotional work to reach a better place.

I was warned, with this work that I am undertaking, depression and euphoria and mood swings are quite likely as may be disturbed sleep or dreams. Mind you, if I am having any dreams, I don't recall them when I awake anymore (been like that for years). I am tried enough I am sleeping, though I probably need to add a nap to each day and try to sleep at least 8-10 hours a day.

This is all very positive, even if it comes with some serious work and sadness. I have been finding some fearful responses and tensions in me and even after rationally understanding they were not true to reality, I was still finding my emotional reaction very strong. Now I understand that they are being fed and are strongly tied to this reservoir of internal sadness, grief, and pain. That's a great revelation (and it felt so obvious and true when it was mentioned, I found it hard to imagine how I had not seen it but I'm told that is normal because the brain is trying to protect us from seeing that grief again even to process it).

Knowing that there is a reason that my some tensions and fears evoked such emotional depth helps a lot. I was getting quite mad at myself for knowing the fears were not based in current reality ('what is') but still not being able to keep the emotional reaction appropriately mild or short-lived (or even to respond rather than react and not have the feeling reaction based on those fears).

Now that I understand there is something internally (big well of unprocessed grief and fear of loss) dumping gasoline on the fire (the fears), it feels like I will be able to work my way to a point where this deep reaction becomes a much more limited reaction then finally to a thoughtful, chosen response. This means there is a very positive outlook for taking overblown and stressful responses from relatively minor relationship bumps. That's a great relief to me and it will also allow me to be kinder to myself and not be mad at me for not having all of this in hand already.

Unrelatedly, I'm down to 220.8 pounds from a high of 258.0 pounds. My next goal is 210 pounds, then 200. If I can get down on the low side of 200, I'll be quite pleased and it will be much easier on my joints and facilitate activities. I'm already happy to be down to 220! My most successful diet ever only got me to 218 so I'm only two pounds off my record success and this one is coming a lot easier. My mom had a similar thing happen to her at 35 (I'm a bit slower apparently) where she just found it not so hard to take the weight off unlike the times before.

Learning yourself and helping heal yourself isn't the easiest path, but I'm already seeing the benefits and I am looking forward to the work.