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May Peace Rest Upon the Earth
Like the rainbow, peace rests upon the Earth, but its arch is lost in Heaven. However, a single deed of violence and cruelty affects our nerves more than when these are exercised on a more extended scale. On 23 June 2016, at about 6pm, a gunman was shot and killed several people before he was shot dead by police in Viernhei, Germany, after he attempted to take several people hostage in a cinema. At least three people were wounded, two seriously hurt. People are being told to stay out of public places because there were shootings in at least two places. Coping with the daily threats of mass violence and everyday life takes a toll. Many adults who survive terrible experiences are caught in the same trap. Pushing away intense feelings can be highly adaptive in the short run. It may help you preserve your feelings and can be highly adaptive in the short run. It may allow you to protect your dignity and independence; it may assistance you in maintaining focus on critical tasks like saving a comrade, taking care of your kids, or rebuilding your house. The problems come later. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5
After seeing a friend blown up, a soldier may return to civilian life and try to put the experience out of his mind. A protective part of him knows how to be competent at his job and how to get along with colleagues. However, he may habitually erupt in rage at his significant other or become numb and frozen when the pleasure of surrendering to their touch makes him feel he is losing control. He probably will not be aware that his mind automatically associates passive surrender with the paralysis he felt when he friend was killed. So another protective part steps in to create a diversion: He gets angry and, having no idea what set him off, he thinks he is mad about something his spouse did. Of course, if he keeps going off, he will become more and more isolated. Nonetheless, he may never realize that a traumatized part is trigger by passivity and that another part, an angry manager, is stepping in to protect that vulnerable part. Helping these parts to give up their extreme beliefs is how therapy can save people’s lives. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5
For many children it is safer to hate themselves than to risk their relationship with their caregivers by expressing anger or by running away. As a result, abused children are likely to grow up believing that they are fundamentally unlovable; that was the only way their young mind could explain why they were treated so badly. They survive by denying, ignoring, and splitting off large chunks of reality: They forget the abuse, they suppress their rage or despair; they numb their physical sensations. If you were abused or lived a life in terror, as a child, you are likely to have a childlike part living inside you that is frozen in time, still holding fast to this kind of self-loathing and denial. A central task for recovery from trauma is to learn to live with the memories of the past without being overwhelmed by them in the present. However, most survivors, including those who are functioning well—even brilliantly—in some aspects of their lives, face another, even greater challenge: reconfiguring a brain or mind system that was constructed to cope with the worst. Just as we are required to revisit traumatic memories in order to integrate them, we are required to go back to part of ourselves that developed the defensive habits that helped us to survive. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5
So we can and should ask, what is the choice? Do we let go of our untruths and allow ourselves to feel again? Do we take the time to allow for ourselves to move through our old patterns that kept us imprisoned within our limited thinking? We can reconnect with nature and expect what it communicates to us in its universal truths every moment. Next time you are at the store or in town, slow down and take a look at the people around you. How many of them look happy with their lives? Are they smiling and can you see the joy bubbling up out of them? Do they seem to be feeling alive? Is there a light in their eyes? Or does it appear that their spirit is leaving their body. This is called Sampacu, loss of the life force You can see it in the eyes of the people in a village just before disaster strikes. The number of causalities in war boggles the imagination—many millions. How do we digest that? How can we possibly conceive of that in more than just an intellectual way? #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5
Just one person close to us dying can overwhelm us, bringing us to our knees for quite a while—and if that person dies a violent death, as though war, we might be even more overwhelmed. If more than one person close to us dies thus, we might find ourselves at a very dark edge, lost in the deepest pits of grief. And yet, if many, many more thus die, but are not people we personally know, it still disturbs us because we think what is my loved one had been out there? We also feel some kind of kinship or alliance with others in this World. Perhaps there is no time in which the ingenuity of man is more active than in those moments when he has a sensitive consciousness of being wrong, and consequently, a feverish desire to vindicate his works or acts to himself, as well as to other. The youthful heart is ready to believe that what it wishes will happen. Man does not speak by words alone. A mute glance of reproach has pierced the heart a tirade would have left untouched; and even an inarticulate may utter volumes. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5
Power and Life of the Modern Man and Lady
There is a perverse mood of the mind which is rather soothed than irritated by misconstruction; and in quarters where we can never be rightly known, we take pleasure in being consummately ignored. What honest man, in being casually taken for a housebreaker, does not feel rather ticked then vexed at the mistake? We keep seeing how difficult it is for traumatized people to feel completely relaxed. It is appropriate for these individuals to develop a more caring relationship with their body. They are usually uptight and tense because they are holding on to pain and constantly reliving bad memories, and may live in environments where they are frequently disrespected. While numbing (or compensatory sensation seeking) many make life tolerable, the price you pay is that you lose awareness of what is going on inside of your body and, with that, the sense of being fully, sensually alive. Alexithymia, as we have discussed, is the technical term for not being able to identify what is going on inside of their bodies. People who suffer from alexithymia tend to feel physically uncomfortable, but cannot describe exactly what the problem is. There is such a thing as making nothing out of a molehill, in consequence of your head being too high to see it.
As a result, traumatized people often have multiple vague and distressing physical complaints that doctors cannot diagnose. In addition, they cannot figure out for themselves what they are really feeling about any given situation of what makes them feel better or worse. The result of numbing keeps one’s body from anticipating and responding to the ordinary demands of their bodies in quiet, mindful ways. At the same time, it muffles the everyday sensory delights of experiences like work, friendships, music, touch, and light, which imbue life with value. If you are not aware of what your body needs, you cannot take care of it. If you do not feel hunger, you cannot nourish yourself. If you mistake anxiety for hunger, you may eat too much. Sometimes we all want comfort food and not sure if we are hungry or not. What I recommend is buy romaine lettuce and a good salad dressing, and having a big salad. That way you get full and it is healthy for you, unlike eating an entire cheesecake on your birthday, by yourself, because someone hurt your feelings. When you eat empty calories, and if you cannot feel when you are satiated, you will keep eating and gain weight. This is why cultivating sensory awareness is such a critical aspect of trauma recovery.
Most traditional therapies downplay or ignore the moment-to-moment shifts in our inner sensory World. However, these shifts carry the essence of the organism’s responses: the emotional states that are imprinted in the body’s chemical profile, in the viscera (internal organs), in the contraction of the striated muscles of the face, throat, trunk, and limbs. Traumatized people are required to learn that they can tolerate their sensations, befriend their inner experiences, and cultivate new action patterns. Focus your attention on your breathing and on your sensations moment to moment. You will start to notice the connection between your emotions and your body—perhaps how anxiety throws off your balance when you are walking. You may experiment with changing the way you feel or what you are thinking about or looking at. Will breathing in deeply relieve the tension in your left shoulder bald? Will slowly exhaling and picturing the pain leaving your body produce a sense of calm? Body awareness also changes your sense of time. Trauma makes you feel as if you are permanently stuck forever in a helpless state or city of horror and chaos. And you may develop anxiety because you are expecting something to happen. You could even start to feel a sense of defeat or resistance, anticipating that you will not be able to tolerate the feelings brought up by this particular day or area.
However, keep in mind, everything has two sides—the outside that is ridiculous, and the inside that is solemn. This helps you anticipate the end of discomfort and strengthens your capacity to deal with physical and emotional distress. Awareness that all experience is transitory changes and changes your perspective on yourself. This is not to say that regaining interception is not potential upsetting. Any physical sensations that unleashed horrific memories from the past that had been so carefully kept in check by numbing and inattention, when you are reminded of them or they are reactivated, this can cause you to feel excruciating physical pain or experience flashbacks that can leave you feeling like danger is eminent. Most of us have, at one time or another, felt our hearts beating rapidly when we are close to those we love or, occasionally when we have been offended by others. Many of us have felt our hearts sink, as if pressed by some crushing weight after the loss of a loved one. Some people have even had to break ties with old friends and transfer their children away from schools and playmates so they can heal from the life changes.
We recognize the precise magnitude and power of human contact. People who feel safe in their bodies and houses can begin to translate the memories that previously overwhelmed them into language. After my son started increasing his physical activity and focusing on things he loved, he noticed that he was able to talk more freely to about things he enjoyed. Let us take on healthy challenge, allowing it to sharpen our focus ground our hearts, loosen our belly, anchor our legs, ease our shoulders, deepen our relationships, enliven and honor our very being. Do this enough, and challenge will become something not to dread or bear, but something that we cannot help but honor, regardless of whatever edge we are working with. If we do not recognize and have some degree of intimacy with whatever in us can dehumanize or abuse others—however “civilized” or “rational” its demeanor—we pose a danger not only to ourselves, but to others, no matter how nicely we generally behave. What really matters here is not so much the presence of this inner darkness, but the kind of relationship we choose to have with it.
Okay it Happened and Now it is Time to Move on
One of the ways the memory of helplessness is store is as muscle tension or feelings of disintegration in the affected body areas: head, back, neck, feet, hand and fingers, stomach chest, and arms and legs. The lives of many trauma survivors come to revolve around bracing against and neutralizing unwanted sensory experiences, and most people I see in my practice have become experts in such self-numbing. As a result of hiding their emotions, they may become serially obese, anorexic, or addicted to exercise or work. At least 50 percent of all traumatized people try to dull their intolerable inner World with drugs or alcohol, and others flood their minds with therapy and new thoughts. Many people try to find things they enjoy to make the numbing go away like funny movies, hikes in the park, swimming or sports. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5
The purpose of numbing or blocking out the trauma is people feel like if they forget about it, then it will go away. Another purpose is when people are chronically angry or scared, constant muscle tension officially leads to spasms, back pain, migraine headaches, fibromyalgia, and other forms of chronic pain. They may visit multiple specialists, undergo extensive diagnostic tests, and be prescribed multiple medications, some of which fail to address the underlying issues. Their diagnosis will come to define their reality without ever being identified as a symptom of their attempt to cope with trauma. The first two years of therapy, it is reasonable to focus on learning to tolerate your physical sensations for what they are—just sensations in the present, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5
Truth, the most powerful of all things, is the strongest friend of innocence. In our therapy sessions, we work on staying calm enough to notice what we are feeling without judgement, so that we can observe these unbidden images and feelings as residues of a terrible past and not as unending threats to our lives today. The goal is to continuously challenge us to find new ways of helping people regulate their arousal and control their own physiology. One major issues many trauma survivors has is trust issues. They feel they cannot trust anyone, and a constantly trying to figure out who is loyal, and this causes them to shut down emotionally and run cold, some say they can physically feel cold spots when these people come around, and that their vibration is so cloaked to the point it seems they appear and disappear at will and are able to process temporal distortions. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5
The truth is always incredible, because the blind eyes of humanity can see only half-truths except by great effort. We distrust each other in this World way too much. However, that is understandable when nothing is truly impartial. Everyone has feelings, emotions, and most have a desire for money, so even if someone cares about you and does not need money, their love and concern for you, although it may be good, could cloud your judgement. Conversely, there are a lot of dark souls, and money and profit is their motive. So when it comes to subjective judgments, they are never truly non-bias. Truth is powerful, and it is not always that we do not believe what we eagerly wish. Trust and truth go hand and hand. Trust is the act of placing confidence in someone or something else, and it is a fundamental human experience, necessary for society to function and for any person to be relatively happy. Without trust, fear rules. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5
People have trust issues because of experiences in life. They were violated or abused at some time in their lives, experienced social rejection, were treated like outcast, and it eventually impacts their self-esteem. Basically, to overcome trust issues, you have to get to know yourself and slowly open up to others, but do not talk about anything personal and trust your instincts. Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretense to make it live. And if you [must] turn away from the needy awaiting mercy from your Lord, which you expect, then speak to them a gentle word. And do not kill your children for fear of poverty. We provide for them and for you. Indeed, their killing is ever a great sin. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5
Circumstance, Surprise, and Suspicion
Blessed are the pure in heart, but it is inconceivable that a statue went on to provide that lack of purity of heart and its symptoms should be defined by a Government Department in the rules and orders having the same effect as if they were contained in the Act. We forget that we are dealing with a fundamental and inevitable human impulse, and that it is our business to preserve those aspects of it which are good and to minimize those which are evil. They love darkness, and we know of whom that was first said. That love of darkness is shrewd. For, if we think of it, any attempt whatever to define obscenity—once we have put aside the vague emotional terms of abuse, foul, filthy, lewd, disgusting, et cetera (a Latin term for the expression that means: and other things; and so forth; and the rest)—in cool and precise. Individuals change as they grow. People are affected by their environments and the way they are treated. Two individuals may respond very differently to the same situation because they are different people terms cannot bring us to any crime against society.
Such as a child may chalk on the pavement without endangering the structure of society—he is less likely to find himself on the episcopal throne than in prison, unless by the strenuous exertions of his friends he is sent to a lunatic asylum. So great for the official mind in this matter are the advantages of darkness! We still live in a society which meekly permits a man to be fined or even sent to prison for the unfashionable use of perfectly correct synonyms. Even a bishop may have to protect himself against a word. I remember being amused as a schoolboy by an incident that happened to the then Bishop of Winchester (Samuel Wilberforce, nicknamed on account of his extreme urbanity, “Soapy Sam”). He had preached a sermon in a country church on behalf of the restoration fund, and the local paper reported that he declared the church to be “nothing but aa damned barn.” Fortunately, his secretary was able to write the editor that the word actually used by his lordship was “damp.”
David, a middle-aged contractor, came to see me because his violent rage attacks were making his house a living hell. He told me a story about something that had happened to him the summer he was twenty-three. He was working as a lifeguard, and one afternoon a group of kids were roughhousing in the pool and drinking beer. David told them alcohol was not allowed. In response, the boy attacked him, and one of them too out his left eye with a broke beer bottle. Thirty year later, he still had nightmares and flashbacks about the stabbing. He was merciless in his criticism of his own teenage son and often yelled at him for the slightest infraction, and he simply could not bring himself to show any affection toward his wife. On some level, he felt that the tragic loss of his eye gave him permission to abuse other people, but he also hated the angry, vengeful person he had become. He had noticed that his efforts to manage his rage made him chronically tense, and he wondered if his fear of losing control had made love and friendship impossible.
I introduced David to a procedure called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). I asked David to go back to the details of his assault and bring to mind his images of the attack, the sounds he had heard, and the thoughts that had gone through his mind. Just let those moments come back, I told him. I then asked him to follow my index finer as I moved it slowly back and forth about twelve inches from his right eye. Within seconds, a cascade of rage and terror came to the surface, accompanied by vivid sensations of pain, blood running down his cheek, and the realization that he could not see. As he reported this sensation, I made an occasional encouraging sound and kept moving my finger back and forth. Every few minutes, I stopped and asked him to take a deep breath. Then I asked him to pay attention to what was now on his mind, which was a fight he had in school. I told him to notice that and to stay with the memory. Other memories emerged, seemingly at random: looking for his assailants everywhere, wanting to hurt them, getting into barroom brawls. Each time he reported a new memory or sensation, I urged him to notice what was coming to mind and resumed the finger movements.
At the end of that visit, he looked calmer and visibly relieved. David told me that the memory of the stabbing had lost its intensity—it was now something unpleasant that had happened a long time ago. “It really sucked, and kept me off-kilter for years, but I am surprised what a good life I eventually was able to carve out for myself. The following week, dealt with the aftermath of the trauma: how he had used drugs and alcohol for years to cope with his rage. As we repeated the EMDR sequences, still more memories arose. David remembered talking with a prison guard he knew about having his incarcerated assailant killed and then changing his mind. Recalling this decision was profoundly liberating: He had come to see himself as a monster who was barely in control, but realizing that he had turned away from revenge put him back in touch with a mindful, generous side of himself. David said that he also was doing his stuff, his sarcastic thing, and he did not know he was kidding. The blacker side of these role have crept into his personality. He like playing those sarcastic characters, and he lived doing it in his private life too, as a joke. It became part of his social humor.
Next David spontaneously realized that he was treating his son the way he had felt toward his teenaged attackers. He then asked if I could meet with him and his family so he could tell his son what had happened and ask for forgiveness. Days later, he reported that he was sleeping better and said that for the first time in his life he felt a sense of inner peace. A year later he called to report not only that he and his wife had grown closer and had started to practice yoga together, but that also he laughed more and took real pleasure in his gardening and woodworking. The most interesting problems in human culture have always existed on the borders between the professions, industries, system, and the critical areas which affect our daily lives. Entertainment, and increasingly all media trivialize these boundaries. As a result, the border between reality and unreality which has always been thin and constantly shifting has become even more fragile and dynamic in our times than ever before.
The Winchester Mystery House
Whatever happens, respect the place and the spirits that are still occupying the area. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Tearing it to Rags like a Brand New Suit after the Moonshine
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for countering the doom and gloom of other people. When a person is aware of himself and the World he lives in accord with these conditions of being alive, he is a harmonious part of all being. When, however, he distorts some of the conditions of his being, he loses that very being in the process. No human being that we know of springs forth from the womb as a fully-grown, sophisticated, wise, ready-for-anything adult. Nor does he possess all the necessary skills for effectively interrelating when he comes into the World. We have to learn the techniques of relating to other living beings. However, we do bring some characteristics into the World with us. Exactly what is inherited and what do we learn? That nature-nurture controversy has plagued psychologist ever since the science first began. Individuals change as they grow. People are affected by their environments and the way they are treated. Two individuals may respond very differently to the same situation because they are different people. And part of that difference is a matter of genetic inheritance. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 7
Confusion and mutism are routine in people who have suffered great emotional and physical pain: If we keep pressing them for the details of the story, it is totally rational to expect that people will become overwhelmed. For that reason, we do not avoid confronting the details of what happened, but we try to deal with it in a soft and gentle way and give them time to express what happened, and this is a way that we can gradually approach the truth. It is important to initiate treatment by creating an orb of protection around and within the body. In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands here. People are instructed on identifying parts of the body, postures, or movements where they can balance themselves whenever they feel nervous, terrified, or enraged. These part usually rest outside of the reach of the vagus nerve, which carries the communications of panic to the heart, tummy, and esophagus, and they can serve as allies in integrating the trauma into a healing experience by paying attention to what the body requires. You may be required to sit for a moment and think about what you are feeling and why. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 7
Ryan Phillippe Little Boy Blue
A simple delivery is much better calculated to inspire devotion, and shows a much better taste. Dealing with traumatic memories is, however, just the start of treatment and the process of healing and recovery. Normal people tend to hesitate when they see blood, a wound, or hear about an assault. Generally, speaking, they take the time to find out how the person is doing and see is there any way that they can accommodate them. After a while, most people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) do not spend a great deal of time or effort on dealing with the past—their issues is simply making in through the day. Even traumatized people, who are making real contributions to society by teaching, running a business, learning about natural medications, or spending time creating things that others enjoy and who are successfully raising their children expend a lot more energy on the everyday tasks of living than do ordinary mortals. We that fight the living World must have the universal for succor of the truth in it. Cast forth the soul in prayer, you meet the effluence of the outer truth, you join with the creative elements giving breath to you. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 7
No man that speaks just enough, and no more, ever wearies those that hear him. And that is enough which exhausts the subject before the patience of the audience. The art of oratory consists not in length of speech, or melody of voice, or beauty of diction; but in wise thoughts. The reason people become overwhelmed by telling their stories, and the reason they have cognitive flashbacks, is that their brains have changed. Trauma does not simply act as a releasing agent for symptoms. Rather, the physical trauma—or more precisely the memory of the trauma—acts like a forging body which long after its entry must continue to be regarded as an agent that still is at work. Like a snake bit that causes an infection, it is the body’s response to the foreign object that becomes the problem more than the object itself. Modern neuroscience solidly supports the notion that many of our conscious thoughts are complex rationalizations for the flood of instincts, reflexes, motives, and deep-seated memories that emanate from the unconscious. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 7
Trauma interferes with the proper functioning of brain areas that manage and interpret experience. Almost every brain-imaging study of trauma patients finds abnormal activation of the insula. This part of the brain integrates and interprets the input from the internal organs—including our muscles, joints, and balance (proprioceptive) system—to generate the sense of being embodied. The insula can transmit signals to the amygdala that activate the stand your ground or escape responses. This does not require any cognitive input or any conscious recognition that something has gone awry—you just feel on edge and unable to focus or, at worst, have a sense of imminent doom and gloom. These powerful feelings are generated deep inside the brain and cannot be eliminated by reason or understanding. If there by anything a man might well pray against that thing is the responsive gratification of some of the devout prayers in his youth. We know what to pray for when we pray, that God’s will may be done, and that we may be resigned to it. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 7
Being constantly assaulted by, but consciously cut off from, the origin of bodily sensations produces alexithymia: not being able to sense and communicate what is going on with you. Only by getting in touch with your body, by connecting viscerally with yourself, can you regain a sense of who you are, your priorities and values. Alexithymia, dissociation, and shutdown all involve the brain structures that enable us to focus, know what we feel, and take action to protect ourselves. When these essential structures are subjected to inescapable shock, the result may be confusion and agitation, or it may be emotional detachment, often accompanied by out-of-body experiences—the feeling you are watching yourself from far away. In other words, trauma makes individuals feel like either somebody else, or like nobody. My thoughts are that to overcome the unreality of trauma, one is required to seek help to get back in contact with their body, with your Self. Think over your prayers; for He to whom you make them knows all languages; that of the heart as well as those of the mouth. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 7
It is the first surrender that decides. There is no question that language is essential: Our sense of Self depends on being able to organize our memories into a coherent whole. This requires well-functioning connections between the conscious brain and the self-system of the body—connections that often are damaged by trauma. The full story can be told only after those structures are repaired and after the architecture of the foundation has been constructed: after nobody changes his thoughts and becomes somebody. If you do good, you do good for yourselves; and if you do evil [you do it] to yourselves. It is expected [if you repent], that your Lord (Allah, Djevel, God, Jehovah) will have mercy upon you. However, if you return [to sin] we will return [to punishment]. And we have made Hell, for the disbelievers, a prison-bed. Indeed, the instructions guide to that which is most suitable and gives good tidings to the believers who do righteous deeds that they will have a great reward. (www.thedeedle.com) #RyanPhillippe 7 of 7
The False Minor Called Friendship: Why is Deuce getting Lemonade High?
All professors of the arts love to fraternize. Trauma overwhelms listeners as well as speakers. One of the cruxes of living in Midtown Sacramento is the collision between events and the language available—or thought appropriate—to described them. It took a while to figure out what it means to be “smoked out.” Watch the local news and you notice a lot of the reporters, mostly men, seem to be out to lunch and acting like they lost their minds and it is because they have been smoking meth and cannot function like rational adults anymore. They get people and locations mixed up, and cannot critically think. Logically, there is no reason why the English language could not perfectly well render the actuality of spiritual warfare: it is rich in terms like blood, terror, agony, madness, shit, cruelty, murder, sell-out, pain, and hoax, as well as phrases like legs blown off, intestines gushing out over his hands, screaming all night, bleeding to death from the rectum, and the like. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5
The problem in Midtown Sacramento and in the media is less one of language than of gentility and optimism. The real reason [that soldiers fall silent] is that soldiers have discovered that on one is very interested in the bad news they have to report. What listener wants to be torn and shaken when he does not have to be? We have made unspeakable mean indescribable: it really means nasty. Talking about painful events does not necessarily establish community—often quite the contrary. Families and organization may reject members who air the dirty laundry; friends and family can lose patience with people who get stuck in their grief or hurt. This is one reason why torture victims often withdraw and why their stories become rote narratives, edited into a form least likely to provoke rejection. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5
It is an enormous challenge to find safe places to express the pain of torture, which is why writing about your experiences or keeping a journal can be so critical. Finding a response community can be just as easy as keeping a journal in which to tell your truth and it makes recovery possible. That is also why survivors require pleasant activities, which can get their minds off the agonizing details of their lives. I recall the first time a veteran told me about killing a child when tensions escalated to the outbreak of fighting between Patriot militia and British regulars at Lexington and Concord in April because of King George III’s rule was tyrannical and infringing the colonists’ rights as Englishmen. I then had a flashback to when I was about seven years old and my father told me that the child next door had been beaten to death by Paul von Hindenburg, in the front of our house, for showing a lack of respect. My reaction to the veteran’s confessions was too much to bear, and I had to go for a fresh air break. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5
That is why doctors are required to have done their own intensive therapy, so they can take care of themselves and remain emotionally available to their patients and families, even when the stories arouse feelings of rage or revulsion. A different problem arises when trauma victims themselves become literally speechless—when the language area of the brain shuts down. I have seen this shutdown in the courthouse in many immigration cases and also in a case brought against a perpetrator of a mass slaughter during the Nurember Rally. When asked to testify about their experiences, victims often become so overwhelmed that they are barely about to speak about what happened to them. Their testimony is often dismissed as being too chaotic, confused, and fragmented to be credible. Errors of memory are distinguished from forgetting and false recollections through one feature only, namely, that the error (false recollection) is not recognized as such but finds credence. However, the use of the expression “error” seems to depend on still another condition. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5
We speak of “erring” instead of “falsely recollecting” where the character of the objective reality is emphasized in the psychic material to be reproduced—that is, where something other than a fact of my own psychic life is to be remembered, or rather something that may be confirmed or refuted through the memories of others. The reverse of the error in memory in this sense is formed by ignorance. Others try to recount their history in a way that keeps them from being triggered. This can make them come across as evasive and unreliable witnesses. I have seen hundreds of legal cases dismissed because asylum seekers were unable to give coherent accounts of their reasons for fleeing. I have also seen numerous veterans whose claims were denied by the Veterans Administration because they could not tell precisely what had happened to them. My friend was unfortunate, he poisoned himself with cocaine because he was going through withdrawal of morphia, and immediately have himself injections of cocaine. Man, truth is for real, feel like dream for real. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5
I am Tired of Being Irritable—Local News Annoys me
True friendship disregards selfish considerations, and rather risks to offend by endeavoring to serve, than aims to please by concurring in what is injurious. There are thousands of art, music, and dance therapists who do beautiful work with abused children, soldiers suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), abuse victims, refugees, and torture survivors, and numerous accounts attest to the effectiveness of expressive therapies. Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking. That new sense, which is the gift of sorrow, –that susceptibility to the bare offices of humanity which raises them into a bond of loving fellowship, as to haggard men among the icebergs the mere presence of an ordinary comrade stirs the deep fountains of affection. However, at this point, we know very little about how they work or about the specific aspects of traumatic stress they address, and it would present an enormous logistical and financial challenge to do the research necessary to establish their value scientifically.
The capacity of art, music, and dance to circumvent the speechlessness that comes with terror may be one reason they are used as trauma treatments in cultures around the World. One of the few systematic studied to compare nonverbal artistic expression with writing in San Francisco, California USA. One third of a group of sixty-four students was asked to disclose a personal traumatic experience through expressive body movements for at least ten minutes a day for three consecutive days and then to write about it for another ten minutes. A second group danced but did not write about the trauma, and a third group engaged in a routine exercise program. Over the three following months members of all groups reported that they felt happier and healthier. However, only the expressive movement group that also wrote showed objective evidence: better physical health and an improved grade-point average. (The study did not evaluate specific PTSD symptoms.) The mere expression the trauma is not sufficient. Health does appear to require translating experiences into language.
The enemies who have once loved each other are the bitterest enemies of all. The stranger who looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and never finds it, is in cheering society as compared with him who passes ten averted faces daily, that were once the countenances of friends. In a true attachment, there is an innocent familiarity implied, which is forgetful of ceremony, and blind to consequences. True friendship disregards selfish considerations, and rather risks offending by endeavoring to serve, than sims to please by concurring in what is injurious. However, we still do not know whether this conclusion—that language is essential to healing—is, in fact, always true. Writing studies that have focused on PTSD symptoms (as opposed to general health) have been disappointing. Most writing stories of PTSD patients have been done in group settings where participants that the object of writing is to write to yourself, to let yourself know what you have been trying to avoid.
There are jilts in friendship as well as in love; and, by the behavior of some men in both, one would almost imagine that they industriously sought to gain the affections of others with a view only making the parties miserable. A treacherous friend is the most dangerous enemy. In life, it is difficult to say who do you the most mischief, enemies with the worst intentions, or friends with the best. Whatever the number of a man’s friends, there will be times in his life when he has too few; but if he has only one enemy, he is lucky indeed if he has not one too many. We amicable relations between two men happen to be in jeopardy, there is least danger of an ensuing quarrel if the friendly communication has been of artificial growth, on either wise. It is false that in point of policy a man should never makes enemies. As well-wishers some men may not only be nugatory but good obstacles in your peculiar plans; but as foes you may subordinately cement them into your general design.
Reciprocal friendship seldom exists in a strong degree between superiors and inferiors. Love may do much, but friendship shall do wonders; friendship, the nobler passion of the mind, born with the soul, must still with that survive, when love, the silly baby of the fancy, can be no more. This remarkable attitude of a quite prosaic young man certainly needed some explanation, so I asked him to continue his free associations. The next thought was of a factory stack which he could see from his bedroom window. He often stood of an evening watching the flame and smoke issuing out of it, and reflecting on this deplorable waste of energy. Heat, flame, the source of life, the waste of vital energy issuing from an upright, hollow tube—it was not hard to divine from such associations that the ideas of heat and fire were unconsciously linked in his mind with the idea of love, as is so frequently in symbolic thinking, and that there was a strong masturbation complex present, a conclusion that he presently confirmed. Those who wish to get a good impression of the way the material of numbers becomes elaborated in the unconscious thinking, must pay attention to reality. Friends may laugh: I am not roused. My enemy’s laugh is a bungle blown in the night.
Natural Killer Cells–a Man of Forms and Phrases and Postures
Ah! Child, you should read books which would teach you a little hypocrisy, which would instruct you how to hide your thoughts a little better. Some have considered the larger part of mankind in the light of actors, as personating character no more their own, and to which they have no better title than the player hath to be in earnest thought the king or the emperor whom he represents. Thus, the hypocrite may be said to be a player; and indeed, the Greeks called them both by one and the same name. In a subsequent study we got into, we asked half a group of seventy-two students to talk into a phonograph about the most severe mental or physical pain (trauma, torture, disturbance) of their lives; the other half discussed their plans for the rest of the day. As they spoke, researchers monitored their physiological reactions: blood pressures, heart rate, muscle tension, and hand temperature. When people allowed themselves to feel their emotions, the research indicated that the patients displayed significant physiological changes, both immediate and long term. During their confessions, blood pressure, heart rate, and other autonomic functions increased, but afterward their arousal fell to levels below where they had been at the start of the study. The drop in blood pressure could still be measured six weeks after the experiment ended. However, power struggles were influenced and encouraged by the newcomers and fueled by the never-ending supply of new technology, weapons, and tools that were offered. This fever of greed and acquisition of material things started to separate the people from their own governing laws. Perhaps, they too easily accepted the appearance of this new “easier life.” The once peaceful people developed a new understanding and appreciation of the concepts of power and war and produced the serpent energy.
The serpent energy is patriarchal, and unnatural to any people of Earth. It is not the natural order of things for us to be war-like. We are, by nature, a communal and peaceful people. Over time, the acceptance of this serpent energy would prove, sadly, to be their demise. The result of interacting with these strange newcomers, who had forgotten the sacredness of all things, would inevitably and quite rapidly bring about the end of their whole way of life, as well as the physical World they knew. The actions of warring upon others would break the great peace, and it would officially bring about the fall of the Nation. Critics knew that the results of breaking this bond between families, friends, and government would bring about the ending of their way of life. Therefore, to speak, by knowingly and willfully abusing others, these critics might bring danger to what is left of the understanding, or might possibly invoke the wrath of God himself. Insiders knew they were not supposed to allow laws and government understandings and practices to fall into the hands of the invaders because it might easily mark the end of the people themselves. It is now widely accepted that stressful experiences—whether divorce or final exams or loneliness—have a negative effect on immune function. However, when people were allowed to write about their torturous experiences or a superficial topic, they had fewer visits to the student health center, and their improved health correlated with enhanced immune function, as measured by the action of T lymphocytes (natural killer cells) and other immune makers in the blood. This effect was most obvious directly after the experiment, but it could still be detected six weeks later. Writing experiments from around the World, with grade school students, nursing house residents, medical students, maximum-security prisoners, arthritis suffers, new parents, and rape victims, consistently show that writing about upsetting events improves physical and mental health. Another aspect of the research caught my attention: When patients talked about intimate or difficult issues, they often changed their tone of voice and speaking style. The differences were so striking that I wondered if I had mixed up the phonograph recordings. For instance, one woman described her plans for the day in a childlike, high-pitched voice, but a few minutes later, when she described stealing one hundred dollars from a cash register with the key left in it, unattended, both the volume and pitch of her voice became so much lower that she sounded like an entirely different person.
One thing people forget about investigating is that some people will tell the truth about what they did if you ask around. Another thing is that by investigating, when people know others will actively look into crimes, they become spooked and are less likely to commit crimes. By just letting people get away with crimes, or selective prosecution, it makes society suffer. There is no crime so dangerous, so detestable, as hypocrisy; it has the complicated guilt of every crime that it conceals. Alteration in emotional states were also reflected in the subjects’ handwriting. As participants changed topics, they might move from cursive to block letters and back to cursive; there were also variations in the slant of the letters and in the pressure of their pens. Such changes are called “switching” in clinical practice, and we see them often in individuals with trauma histories. Patients activate distinctly different emotion and physiological states as they move from one topic to another. Switching manifest not only as remarkably different vocal patterns but also in different facial expressions and body movements. Some patients even appear to change their personal identity, from timid to forceful and aggressive or from anxiously complaint to starkly seductive. When they write about their deepest fears, their handwriting often become sloppier and disorganized and primitive. We see entire nations under the rule of dictators whose sense of morality seems almost alien compared with our own. It seems significantly increasing the likelihood that you will do nothing in the face of a faction bent on committing atrocities (diffusion of responsibilities). Under constant threat, we live with the knowledge that our lives could be extinguished at any moment if we fail to follow orders (coercion). Citizens who obey or simply remain complacent are offered rewards (reinforcement). If patients who present in such dramatically different states are treated like fakes, or if they are told to stop showing their unpredictably annoying parts, they are likely to become mute. They probably will continue to seek help, but after they have been silenced, they will transmit their cries for help by not talking but by acting: with suicide attempts, depression, and rage attacks. We will only improve if we both appreciate the roles that these different states have played in our survival. The oppressor, Mayor Kevin Maurice Johnson, has a master plan of genocide and imperialism. The distinction between good and evil is almost always nuanced. We are legitimately defending our territory, and working to preserve all lives.
Deadly Terror Attack on a Train in Germany—Bless us All
As a functioning member of society, we are supposed to be cool in our day-to-day interaction and subordinate our feelings to the task at hand. When we talk with someone with whom we do not feel completely safe, our social editor jumps in our full alert and our guard is up. In Germany, on Monday night, 18 July 2016, a teen boy, identified as a seventeen-year-old Afghan refugee, who was armed with an ax and a knife, injured at least four people on a train in Bavaria, Germany. Just a few weeks ago, the teenage boy had also recently moved in with a foster family, and out of a house for unaccompanied refugee children. The suspect’s motives were unclear, he allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar,” which means God (Allah) is great. Islamic State group claims responsibility for this recent train attack in Germany. The young man was supposedly an Islamic State’s soldier, who carried out the attack, in response to calls to target nationals of countries that take part in the coalition fighting ISIS. I want to make it clear that there are other ways to access your inner World of feelings. One of the most effective is through writing. Most of us have poured out our hearts and souls in angry, accusatory, plaintive, or sad letters after people have betrayed or abandoned us. Doing so almost always makes us feel better, even if we never send them. When you write to yourself, you do not have to worry about other people’s judgment—you just listen to your own thoughts and let their flow take over. Later, when you reread what you wrote, you often dis cover surprising truths. Writing is different than talking to people who make you feel uneasy. If you ask your editor to leave you alone for a while, things will come out that you had no idea were there. You are free to go into a sort of trance state in which your pen (or keyboard) seems to channel whatever bubbles up from inside. You can connect those self-observing and narrative parts of your brain without working about the reception you will get.
In the practice called free writing, you can use any object as your own personal test for entering a stream of associations. Simply write the first thing that comes to your mind as you look at the object in from of you, but you may want to keep this information private, and then keep going without stopping, rereading, or crossing out. A wooden spoon on the counter, for instance, may trigger memories of making tomato sauce with your grandmother—or of being beaten in a house for children without family. The teapot that has been passed down for generations may take you meandering to the furthest reaches of your mind to the loved ones you have lost or family holidays that were a mix of love and conflict. Soon, an image will emerge, then a memory, and then a paragraph to record it. Whatever shows up on the paper will be a manifestation of associations that are uniquely yours. My patients often bring in fragments of writing and drawings about memories that they may not yet be ready to discuss. Reading the content out loud would probably overwhelm them, but they want me to be aware of what they are wrestling with. I tell them how much I appreciate their courage in allowing themselves to explore hitherto hidden parts of themselves and in entrusting me with them. These tentative communications guide my treatment plan—for instance, by helping me to decide whether to add somatic processing, neurofeedback, or prayer to our current work. Keeping things to yourself is viewed as the glue of civilization; however, people pay a price for trying to suppress being aware of their pain. You are required to release deeply personal experiences that you find very stressful or traumatic. Write about what is currently going on in your life; the details of the traumatic or stressful event; and recount the facts of the experience, your feelings, and emotions about it, and what impact you think this event had on your life.
To prevent from having a violent burst of emotions, I am telling you to write and keep your information private so you can release whatever you are feeling and start to recover. If it is something you do not want anyone to read or know about, then delete the document or shred the paper after so you can have your information protected. Spent fifteen minutes, on four consecutive days, while sitting alone in a small room expressing yourself. Some people will reveal secrets they have never told anyone. Many people will cry as they write. Most people write about the death of a family member being the most traumatic event they ever experienced, but 22 percent of women and 10 percent of men reported sexual trauma prior to the age of seventeen. I have heard many cry out against sin in the pulpit who yet can abide it well enough in the heart, house, and conversation. People who abuse you have a cloak of hypocrisy always ready to cover the dirty stable. Both religion and virtue have received ore real discredit from hypocrites than the wittiest profligates or infidels could ever cast upon them. It is also interesting to point out that these students reported histories of major and minor health problems: cancer, high blood pressure, ulcers, flu, headaches, and ear aches. Those who reported a traumatic sexual experience in childhood had been hospitalized an average of 1.7 days in the previous year—almost twice the rate of the other. People who wrote about their trauma had a 50 percent decrease in doctor’s visits, compared with others who did not. Writing about one’s deepest thoughts and feelings about traumas will improve your mood, and will result in a more optimistic attitude and better physical healthy over the long run because it will help you think about what you felt during those times and realize how it affected you. Thinking helps people to resolve past experiences and will provide a peace of mind, it will help you understand how you felt and why. Seek forgiveness of your LORD (Allah, God, Jehovah, Djevel) and He will let you enjoy a good provision for a specified term and give every doer of favor their favor. However, if you turn away, then indeed, I fear for you the punishment of the great day.
Given Destiny—Future I got the Keys!
Trauma stories lessen the isolation of trauma, and they provide an explanation for why people suffer the way they do. The description of the situations allows doctors to make diagnoses, so they can address problems like insomnia, rage, nightmares, or numbing. Stories can also provide people with a target to blame. Blaming is a universal human trait that helps people feel good while feeling bad: Hate makes the World go round. However, stories also obscure a more important issue, namely, that trauma radically changes people: that in fact they are no longer themselves. We were born of their union, their love. You cannot undergo a change of heart of this magnitude while you are thinking that you are separate from life around you. You cannot thrive through these shifting of realities if you think that animals are just beasts with no consciousness, and therefore you can kill them without consequences or just for financial gain or for sport. Murder for sport does not cut it. #BethBehrs 1 of 5
It is excruciatingly difficult to put that feeling of no longer being yourself into words. Language evolved primarily to share things out there, not to communicate our inner feelings, our interiority. (Again, the language centers of the brain is about as far removed from the center for experiencing one’s self as is geographically possible.) Mot of us are better at describing someone else than we are at describing ourselves. The task of describing most private experiences can be liked to reaching down to a deep well to pick up small fragile crystal figures while you are wearing thick leather mittens. You cannot thrive through this shifting of consciousness and dimensional realities, if you think you can take whatever you want from the Earth without asking or without giving anything back. There is a little matter of the law of the giveaway. All law has cause and effect. We are feeling the effect of our lack of awareness of the Sacred. We must learn to heal our thinking. We must learn to heal ourselves. Somehow we must remember the Sacred. #BethBehrs 2 of 5
We can get past the slipperiness of words by engaging the self-observing, body-based self-system, which speaks through sensations, tone of voice, and body tensions. Being able to perceive visceral (internal organs) sensations is the very foundation of emotional awareness. If a patient tells me that he was eight when his father deserted the family, I am likely to stop and ask him to check in with himself: What happens inside when he tells me about that boy who never saw his father again? Where is it registered in his body? He replied he felt his heart sink in his chest, the light being sucked out of his eyes and like he was trapped in a dark room all alone and wanted to cry. He felt like no one was there. Aloneness is very different from loneliness. However, you can never know the unbelievable potential of living in a state without loving yourself. And if you do not love yourself, you exist in a state of denial. Living in denial, you only know separation from life, from God, and officially even from self. #BethBehrs 3 of 5
When you activate your gut feelings and listen to your heartbreak—when you follow the interceptive pathways to your innermost recesses—things begin to change. The most intense and powerful one-on-one developmental relationships, entailing the most influence, identification, and emotional involvement offers hints of telepathically sensing sensitive individuals. Such individuals might learn a mind trick or two and probably have impressive reflexes, but they will never fully realize their promise without a mentor’s guidance. When they are simply preset, with themselves and with each other, they experience a profound sense of connection. This was a revelation to them both. And yes, they may even be capable of creating other life forms, as they are doing in Los Alamos New Mexico. The future is not somewhere out in space. The past is behind us. We must find the Now. We only allow it to exist in fleeting moments of beauty that we mostly shrug off as fantasy! Then we shut off the fantast to return to reality, which is a hopeless fantasy, is it not? #BethBehrs 4 of 5
This is the doorway for all of us—to recognize that all of our suffering, relational and otherwise, is a symptom of our loss being and our confused attempts to remedy that. Nothing will work unless we realize our deer nature. A good man protects his child. A good man follows orders. The dichotomy creates internal stress (cognitive dissonance) and causes hesitation in the father until, under the duress of witnessing his son’s torture, he chooses the gender role that is consistent with protecting his child. Technology can only go so far. The scientists and technopagans may be able to go to the moon and even calculate the potential size of an earthquake, but they cannot tell you when it is going to happen. They have even learned to time travel, to a certain extent. They can assemble and dissemble the structure of molecules, as they did in the Philadelphia Experiment and the secret work at Montauk. They might even know the experience of other dimensions. We have to make some serious decisions soon. #Bethbehrs 5 of 5
