I feel sick

When the construct of social expectations is recognizably false through all my senses... I feel like my insides are about to become my outsides.  Although I lack enjoyment in the causal conversations of weather and sharing useless tidbits about our days and jobs and what entertainment we take in...  sometimes it's the only kind of socializing to have with  some people.  There's a tricky process to move the conversation deeper that I have yet to master.  The art of conversation is a puzzle I have yet to crack.  My words so often taken not in the way I intended them.  Finding myself trying to correct misjudgment has proved such a wasted effort.  Rather I must work on understanding how and when those assumptions occur and subtle ways to show the true meaning of my words. 
Yet with the anxiety from trauma it's so easy to get caught up in repeating old "go to" conversations, repeating the words that didn't express myself properly before so why would I think to try them again?  The state I've been trying to achieve is to recognize when my heart rate goes up and my mind starts racing, and make it my instinct to shut up and breathe deeply until I return to a functional state.  Only then choose to speak or act, because if I speak or act during that state it's reaction to feelings associated with that panic state, so all things being said are being processed as an attack, a judgment, etc.   Reacting to it only serves to reinforce it rather than subdue or correct it.  I've found that the more physically active I am, the better control of my body and breath I have. Yet even knowing this I don't always step up and find something active to do. There's an error in my programming.  The trauma has generated broken code, and the machine of my body and mind is malfunctioning.  This can intensify in a feedback loop, brought on by the hyper-focus I experience.
I like to say that we seem to be a world of people trying to break the cycle of trauma, all of us have something that happened that snowballs throughout our life into some kind of minor to major psychosis.  Understanding ourselves is the first step, then make adjustments as needed. I've found that drastic change in my environment can help soothe me in times of transformation.  Strip away the old, all the way to the bone, and reinvent myself anew.  Again and again I've had to do this over the years.  Go down the wrong path, return, regroup, try again.... 

Somewhere inside...

No one is going to save me from this hell
Inside the walls I built for myself
My inability to love anyone else
Creates the loneliness I try to dispell
With no family and few friends
I wonder how to get through to the end
Of this life I cant seem to mend
Because I refuse to play pretend
Yet the passionate flame is strong
Hot enough to burn us all on
How can it feel so right and then go so wrong
Have we been fooling ourselves all along?

The journey is a spiral, we revisit mistakes until we learn the lesson.

I've been caught up in cycles of thought, struggling to accept the way things have come to be in spite of a great deal of effort to remain unattached to the outcome of anything. I'm feeling unsure of how to get through this. Except to let the pain burn through me, like a forest fire. Sear away every bit of the emotion that I had let back in.  What was I thinking?  Was I thinking? Like a little too much whisky leading me to fumble and fall, forgetting all the strength I'd been gaining.  Time to put down the 'bottle', back to working on myself.  The mistake was not continuing to focus on myself, slipping back into the old habit of living for someone else.  There is nothing wrong with caring so much, but neglecting myself only leads to an imbalance and moved me far away from my peace, my center, my aware, reflecting and accepting inner light that contrasts the darkness of my suffering and together they make the beautiful contrast of life.  There is no good or bad, no up and down, just foreground and background. I'd like to maintain a lively functioning foreground, the moment of now.  Let all the rest fade into the background.

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.