Hyperfocus and Trauma

The recovery from trauma involves a lot of learning to catch yourself when your body goes tense or your heart rate goes up or breathe gets shallow.  Sometimes I may have déjà vécu or go into a non responsive state.  Any or all of these flare up and I find myself saying strange things, hyper-focusing on a thought that came through during the moment of flight or fight response, grasping on to a comfort zone of people or places.  The search to know my triggers and work through them has created a habit of oversharing with people who don't need to know what I am going through internally.  Yet being able to share those struggles would be beneficial.  I've shared some of my journey on this blog mixed in with my slow and unsteady art practice.  While one goal of my recovery process is to return to my pre-trauma work ethic in creating art.  Another is being able to socialize without getting caught in a cycle of anxiety.  Living in the comfort zone for me is a fairly lonely life.  While I enjoy my time of reflection and self improvement, it needs balance.  My habit of hyper-focusing on a concern or a mistake, it can exacerbate the stress and I devolve into behavior that is entirely in contradiction to my self identification and personal philosophies.  The embarrassment from such behavior leads me to struggle to return to socialization in the same circles, very few people are capable of understanding we all fuck up sometimes, most people find that support in family, family is always there.
Hyper-focus can be beneficial to a fulfilling life when directed in the right places. If I'm hyper-focused on a book, an art piece, researching a curiosity, resolving a situation, or completing a task for work, than the results are a sense of accomplishment.  My current task to find the best way to redirect my hyper-focus to the right places.  I'm currently redirecting my focus from a failure to keep myself together when engrossed in a concern that was eating up all my mental capacity for days, desperately needing an answer.  I fell into a poor state of mind and didn't handle it well.  The search for possible resolutions, for experiences that might help me get out of the comfort zone has brought me to some very triggering situations, but it has also brought me some grand experience that I can be proud of.  I like to think those achievements have more weight than the anxiety I experienced during them or the way I may have alienated myself among new people I was getting to know. At times I've wondered if I self sabotage out of fear of getting too close to new people, out of distrust that festers up from my memories of how horrible people can be. If so it's unconscious and it'd be great to catch myself ahead of time and breathe my way back into a calm non reactive state.  I've read that some people who tend to hyper-focus have friends, relatives, significant others who help them direct it.  My relatives are distant, my trauma has prevented me from getting close enough for significant others, and my friends while amazing for being there for me, don't quite get all this self improvement stuff. Luckily I re-directed myself today from feeling like I alienated myself again opening up about my recent concerns, to finding a possible solution.  Private therapy has only acted as a sounding board much like my journal, and seeking group activities always has a barrier at getting a new acquaintance to invite me out with the group.  So I'm going to find a PTSD support group, somewhere that sharing my shame is welcome, and understood.  Then, or perhaps instead take a class or join a creative art group or active hiking group where I can be social and not have to think or share my internal struggle, rather focus on the activity and learn to enjoy socializing again. 

The person who treats you right deserved to be treated right.

Today my mother told me I am the one child she can always rely on. It seemed such a strange sentiment from the woman who treated me like an unwanted burden through my entire childhood and youth. I have a deep seated sense of only being able to rely on myself because of it. I struggle to let anyone in or be vulnerable for anyone. Often feeling like at any moment they will tell me to be someone else or be mistreated, to do things a certain way or be neglected. This is my pain, the tragic thread woven through my life to give me reverence for the contrasting joy.  Since I know how it feels to be neglected, ignored, abandoned; I refuse to do that to any friends or family. I have a strong sense of honor and dedication for those I care about. Even those who don't do the same for me.

Dream of loss

Last night I dreamed all my things were stolen out of my car. My car contains my entire life. Everything that isn't my personal being. I was devestated, it would take years to replace all those things, so much time and work. Life without it all so empty and difficult. I felt stripped of my being.
In reflecting on this dream I realized it was my mind working through the loss of my best friend. The one person I always want to share my joys and sorrows with, even when we were out of touch. I was once attached to them romantically and the loss of them in my life forced me to work on myself, on the PTSD I suffered from. To become a practitioner of process, to accept the possibility of a life alone, to seek enlightenment and inner peace. It took me years to find stability and when they came back in my life I wanted it to just be friends, to have no reason for them to shut me out again.
Yet the gravity between us didn't make it easy and they decided to do just that.  I wonder what I could have done differently. Just as in my dream I wondered if I should have parked elsewhere or if I forgot to lock the door.  In both the dream and now in waking life I have to accept the loss, accept the lesson to be more present and aware in the future. There is no replacing what's lost but in time I can fill my life again, because no matter what or who is no longer there for me, I'm still here, I'm still breathing, I can still seek the joys of learning, gaining experiences, and find peace within myself.

What is this.

You occupy the best of me
The worst of me takes control
Not sure if I'm in love with you
Or the void deep in your soul
It reflects the emptiness in mine
Can you feel the gravity within?
A vulnerable way to live
Exposed by the flaming twin.
It's like a flaying tearing away
All these ways I'd rather not be
I guess I'd prefer it to be you
Who reveals the flaws in me.

Intoxicated

He only loves me when he's drunk
So perhaps it's not real
Perhaps he's conflicted in his interest
Not sure of what he feels

Or his self defeating doubts
Get taken out on me
I should listen to my friends
Who tell me to flee

Far from the pull of his voice
Far from the center of my dreams
He only loves me when he's drunk
While I love him unconditionally

I deserve to be honored
To be treated with respect and care
The integrity of the truth
Being shared anytime, anywhere

I won't settle for less than I'm due
Even though I can't help how I feel
He only loves me when he's drunk
Every day it's becoming more real

One Love

When you experience the realization that we are all one existence, one unified field. Then the success of others becomes your success and you can celebrate the rockstar or model or whomever is living your dream.  You can also empathize with those who are downtrodden, the  unfortunate who's life just doesn't seem to go right and they bear a lot of work and weight on their shoulders. With this way of thinking, there's no cause for envy,  and there's a very real reason to help others and lift them up because they aren't actually others they are just iterations of you. Remembering this can improve your relations at work, home or wherever you go.

Mostly when I drink too much...

When life seem to be piling up and weighing on me, when I can't figure out why the world, people, situations, are unnerving me. When being triggered is easier than usual... I always realize that I haven't been practicing yoga, nor writing, nor doing any of my usual activities that center and ground me. Without regular stretching and checking in with my body I end up cramped, aching, and thus easily annoyed or frustrated. Without regular writing I don't have the opportunity to flush all the thoughts that stream through my head. When they linger they mutate and end up twisted into a monster that I don't recognize as my own thought any more. As an artist I often have an open channel to that which is not of this world, something beyond myself. All my thoughts, emotions, physical sensations are in over drive. I'm screaming full speed down a lost highway of daydreams, deamons and darkness. I usually treat this over stimulation with mosh pits, marijuana or booze. If I'm lucky I channel it into art and exercise. Exercise connects me to the physical vessel I inhabit which brings on a feeling of being alive and helps to clear the excessive thinking clogging up my mind. I prefer the raw feeling feeding directly into artistic endeavors. Wipe away the logic that might hinder or redirect the flow of divinity that my hands have a rare occasion to convey. Let go of reality and take the ride. I bought the ticket, let's see this through. I'm not sure how this exposure of my inner workings might help you, perhaps you feel it too. There comes a time, when rhyme is natural and true without trying, no denying we are due... for something beyond our eyes, beyond the lies, beyond our cries, beyond the skies.... 

One people, one cause, one planet, one love...