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Nothing Human is Foreign to me–Buddy is Watchin’ you!
All persons are doomed to be in love once in their life. Children become attached to whoever functions as their primary caregiver, and the nature of that attachment—whether it is secure or insecure—makes a huge difference over the course of a child’s life. Secure attachment develops when the caregiver includes emotional attunement (a sense of harmony or being one). Attunement starts at the most subtle physical levels of interaction between babies and their caretakers, and it gives babies the feeling of being met and understood. When infants and young children notice that their caretaker is not fully engaged with them, they become nervous. When their caregiver disappears from sight, the youth may cry and become inconsolable, but as soon as their mother, father, or caretaker returns, the baby quiets down and resumes their play. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 8
Many people require a safe haven that promotes self-reliance and instills a sense of sympathy and helpfulness to others in distress. From the intimate give-and-take of the attachment bond, children learn that other people have feelings and thoughts that are both similar and different from theirs. And these safe havens allow people to get in sync with their environment and with people around them and develop the self-awareness, empathy, impulse control, and self-motivation that make it possible to become contributing members of the larger social culture. These qualities are painfully missing in many people today and that is why they do such heinous and destructive things. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 8
Love is the greatest thing in the World because it makes an angel or a God out of a grocery clerk. Only when in love have we blind faith in humanity; everything is perfect, everything is beautiful, and everything through, notwithstanding the terrible disappointments that usually follow. It puts us on a level with the gods and incites us to all sorts of artistic activities. People are encouraged to wonder and reflect on their own experience. Ask yourself, “What is happening right now?” The purpose of inquiry is to expand the sense of self to embrace as much authentic experience as possible, including hitherto unconscious emotions, wishes, fantasies, visions, and creative potential, so one can live a full life and open to the landscape of human expression and possibility. We become real poets; we not only memorize and quote poetry, but we often become Apollos ourselves. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 8
A secure attachment combined with the cultivation of competency builds an internal locus of control, the key factor in healthy coping throughout life. Securely attached children learn what makes them feel good; they discover what makes them (and others) feel bad, and they acquire a sense of agency: that their actions can change how they feel and how others respond. Securely attached kids learn the difference between situations they can control and situations where they require help. They learn that they can play an active role when faced with difficult situations. In contrast, children with histories of abuse and neglect learn that their terror, pleading, and crying do not register with their caregiver. Nothing they can do nor say stops the beating or brings attention and help. In effect, they are being conditioned to give up when they face challenges later in life. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 8
If parents cannot meet a child’s impulses and needs, the child learns to become the parent’s idea of what the child is. Having to discount its inner sensations, and trying to adjust to its caregiver’s needs, means the child perceives that something is wrong with the way it is. Children who lack physical attunement are vulnerable to shutting down the direct feedback from their bodies, the seat of pleasure, purpose, and direction. Most children are securely attached. When they grow up, their history of reliable, responsive caregiving will help to keep fear and anxiety at bay. Barring exposure to some overwhelming life event—trauma—that breaks down the self-regulatory system, they will maintain a fundamental state of emotional security throughout their lives. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 8
Secure attachment also forms a template for children’s relationships. They pick up what others are feeling and early on learn to tell a game from reality, and they develop a good nose for phony situations and dangerous people. Securely attached children usually become pleasant playmates and have lots of self-affirming experiences with their peers. Having learned to be in tune with other people, they tend to notice subtle changes in voices and faces and to adjust their behavior accordingly. Instead of a separate self-struggling to survive, they learn to live within a shared understanding of the World, and are likely to become valued members of the community. Problems spontaneously lose their hold because these people have a greater awareness, openness, and clarity because that is the source of true freedom and aliveness. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 8
It takes tremendous energy to ignore or suppress the truth, whereas opening to the truth liberates this energy at its source. This upward spiral can, however, be reversed by abuse or neglect. Abused kids are often very sensitive to changes in voices and faces, but they tend to respond to them as threats rather than as cues for staying in sync. Abused children become so easily defensive or scared because they are making their way through a sea of faces, trying to figure out who might assault them. Eventually, they may spend more and time alone, reading, watching TV, playing computer games, falling even further behind on interpersonal skills and emotional self-regulation. Some learn to cover up their fear by putting up a tough front. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 8
The requirement for attachment never lessens. Most human being simply cannot tolerate being disengaged from others for any length of time. People who cannot connect through work, friendships, or family usually find others ways of bonding, as through illness, lawsuits, or family feuds. Anything is preferable to that godforsaken sense of irrelevance and alienation to some. Others might commend these people who spending reading books or watching more TV for finding other ways to be patient and peaceful until they connect with like minds. After all, the self and World construct system constitutes a way of relating to life that is familiar, apparently continuous, and stable in comparison to the instabilities of life. Sometimes being alone provides a standpoint, a seemingly secure ground from which to view and encounter the World. Without spending time along and doing things you like, people fear becoming ungrounded, disoriented, and insecure. (www.thedeedle.com) #RyanPhillippe 8 of 8
A Midsummer Night’s Dream from your Sun
Ten years later, and in another country, we meet again. You are the whole World to me. I love you for your absolute sincerity. Thank you for being that something extraordinary in my life. Your love-lit eyes are like sparkling stars, dispelling loneliness from my heart. I know a place without water is a desert; I know a place without sounds is loneliness. You are the rain to water my heart; you are the sound to accompany me in my life course. I want to tell you a story I heard when I was a kid that kind of reminds me of what I am doing. There was once a beautiful young girl, called Sadako Sasaki, who lived in Hiroshima, Japan. When she turned 13, she was diagnosed with leukemia, and was given only a year to live.
After being diagnosed with leukemia, Sadako Sasaki spent her time in the hospital folding origami paper cranes. The crane in Japan is one of the mystical or holy creatures, and it is reported to live for 1,000 years: That is why 1,000 cranes are made, one for each year. An ancient Japanese legend promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by the Gods. Some stories believe one will be granted eternal good luck, instead of just one wish, such as long life or recovery from illness or injury. Legend has it that the 1,000 cranes must be completed within one years and they must all be made by the person who is to make the wish at the end. Sadako Sasaki completed 644 beautiful paper cranes before she became too weak to fold any more, and died on the morning of 25 October 1955.
In the World you know, to me, you are the source of encouragement, the ingenious consolation and the light flickering in the recesses of my soul. My goal was to write 1,000 reports in a year, this is report is number 1,000 and it was done and 22 months, which is a year and ten months, so we are still technically with in that time frame, and I wanted this one to be special. Not only do I want to dedicate my 1,000 reports to you, but I also want to dedicate it to Sadako Sasaki. My hope is that your dreams come true and that Sadako Sasaki be reincarnated so that she can live a full life and enjoy the pleasures that everyone is entitled to. May we be stars in the sky of youth scattering whiteness and ever-lasting glory together. Our sincere love is smooth water of the lake shinning the Sun and the Moon in our hearts. The person of one’s heart, the heart of a person, even flowers and birds will be infatuated.
Feeling is so subtle. You cannot reject its coming, neither can you keep it back, however you try, when it ebbs. We should not be at a loss for love. An honest heart is a vast sea and I keep the image of your sail on the Albatross in my heart. White squall makes it difficult to send a letter to the sea. No matter which direction I post my letter, voice of the tide in night would bring the scattered sentences back to my dream once again. It is such a little thing to weep, so short a thing to sigh. A castle by the sea; afterwards it lies not directly on the coast, but on a narrow canal leading to the sea. You are in the castle, and I stand with you in a large salon with three windows. Someone has said change is just the meeting of two clouds, it will continue as long as we grasp change well; our love will have a result as long as we value it. As long as your Summer scent is in my eyes and a sincere poem is in my heart, the sparkles at night have given me all your love and World, so I know that I deeply love you with my life.
It is you who breed me and give me strong muscles and bones and a healthy body. You offer me your sincere heart when I am in pains. You walk with me when I am discouraged. High from the Earth, I heard an eagle whisper your name. What mystery pervades. Like a neighbor from another World the love will not disappear with the passing, accompanying with me to the ends of the World forever. What affects my soul and urges me forward is your true and self-less love. My blessings are out of my heart, it is a silent song from my heart, wishing you safety and success. My congratulations to you, a resurrected eagle with golden feathers, on your first flight rising from the red flames. I can only ask the white clouds to carry my words to you: May you find happiness and return earlier after advancement.
The Cost of Losing your Body—Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research
I will not attempt to win your delight and will not be concerned about whether I will gain your love. Since I am now totally attached to you, I should tell you the truth. I came to your office and was unable to make eye contact. You immediately knew how distressed I was by my difficulty meeting your gaze. It always turns out that I had been laughing with you, full of tender feelings, and I gained your elation which made me feel loved. I miss you, every second, every minute in every day. I dream of you, every second, every minute at every night. It never occurred to me that survivors of chronic trauma had a different activation of the prefrontal cortex in response to a direct eye gaze. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) normally helps us to assess the person coming towards us, and our minor neurons help to pick up his intentions. The intellectual achievements as such belong to the same psychic forces as are responsible for all such achievements during the day. We are probably much too inclined to overestimate the conscious character even of intellectual and artistic production. The most essential and original part of my creations came to me in the form of inspirations and offered itself to my awareness in an almost completed states. In other cases, where there is a concerted effort of all the psychic forces, there is nothing strange in the fact that conscious activity, too, lends assistance. However, people with post-traumatic stress disorder, it is the much-abused privilege of conscious activity to hide from us all other activities wherever it participates. People with post-traumatic stress disorder do not activate any part of their frontal lobe, which means they could not muster any curiosity about the stranger. The just reacted with intense activation deep inside their emotional brains, in the primitive areas known as the Periaqueductal Gray, which generates startle, hypervigilance, cowering, and other self-protective behaviors. There is no activation of any part of the brain involved in social engagement. In response to being looked at they simply go into survival mode.
It hardly seems worthwhile to take up the historical significance of dreams as a separate theme. Where, for instance, a leader has been impelled by a dream to engage in a bold undertaking, the success of which has had the effect of changing history, a new problem arises only so long as the dream is regarded as a mysterious power and contrasted with other more familiar psychic forces. What does this mean for the ability of people who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder to make friends and get along with others? How do they go about healing? The problem disappears as soon as we regard the dream as a form of expression for impulses to which a resistance was attached during the way, whilst at night one is able to draw reinforcement from deep-lying sources of excitation. To have genuine relationships one has to be able to experience others as separate individuals, each with their own particular motivation and intentions. While one is required to stand up for oneself, one must also recognize that other people have their own agendas. Trauma can make all that hazy and gray. The roots of resilience are to be found in the sense of being understood by and existing in the mind and heart of a loving, attuned, and self-possessed other. However, the greatest respect with which the ancient peoples regarded dreams and life is based on just a piece of psychological divination. It is a homage paid to the unsubdued and indestructible element in the human soul, to the daemonic power which furnishes the dream-wish, and which we have found again in our unconscious for what we so call does not coincide with the unconscious of the philosophers. From dreams, the unconscious—and hence all that is psychic—occurs as a function of two separate systems, and that as such it occurs even in normal psychic life.
The city was full of disturbed and disturbing people. They were wild creatures who could not sit still and who hit and bit other people, and sometimes even the staff. They would run up to you and cling to you one moment and run away, terrified, the next. Some masturbated compulsively; other lashed out at objects, people, pets, and themselves. They were at once starving for affection and angry and defiant. Some were painfully complaint. None of them seemed able to explore or play in ways that was typical for people their age. Some of them had hardly developed a sense of self—they could not even recognize themselves in a mirror. They find it difficult to ascribe any function to consciousness; it appeared to them a superfluous mirroring of the completed psychic process. By means of perceptions of pleasure and pain, it influences the course of the cathexes within the psychic apparatus, which otherwise operates unconsciously and by the displacement of quantities. The automatic rule of the primary pain principle, together with the limitation of function capacity bound up with it, is broken by the sensory regulations, which are themselves again automatisms. We find repression, which, though originally expedient, nevertheless finally brings about a harmful lack of inhibition and of psychic control, overtakes memories much more easily than it does perceptions, because in the former there is no additional cathexis from the excitation of the psychic sense-organs. One boy at their school threw gasoline at a classmate and set him on fire. Another boy was caught in crossfire while walking to school with his father and a friend. He was wounded in the groin, and his friend was killed. Given their exposure to such high baseline level violence, the censorship had been hoodwinked so successfully that under the mask of an innocent father and son, a phantasy was admitted to consciousness which otherwise would have remained in the preconscious.
Der Begriff des Unbewussten in der Psychologie
Many erroneous things have been written and said by the sages, but never did they float a greater fallacy than that love serves as a spur to win the loved one by patient toil. Let us now try to correct certain views which may have taken a misconceived form as long as we regarded the unconscious and consciousness of reality, in the crudest and most obvious sense, as two localities within the psychic apparatus—views which have left a precipitate in the terms “repression” and “penetration.” Thus, when we say that an unconscious thought strives for translation into the preconscious in order subsequently to penetrate through to consciousness, we do not mean that a second idea has to be formed, in a new locality, like a paraphrase, as it were whilst the original persists by its side; and similarly, when we speak of penetration into consciousness, we wish carefully to detach from this notion any idea of a change of locality. When we sat that a preconscious idea is repressed and subsequently absorbed by the unconscious, we might be tempted by these images, borrowed from the idea of a struggle for a particular territory, to assume that an arrangement is broken up in the one psychic locality and replaced by a new one in the other locality. Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies. Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard. Angry people live in angry bodies. The bodies of child-abuse victims are tense and defensive until they find a way to relax and feel safe. In order change, people require to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the World around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the oppression of the past. My hand is on my heart, and yet my heart is not in my own hands.
Love is no more capable of allaying hunger than a rose is capable of delighting the ear or a violin of gratifying the smell. How can people open up and explore their internal World of sensation and emotions? First notice and then describe the feelings in your body, not emotions: pressure, heat, muscular tension, tingling, caving in, feeling hollow. After receiving the news and seeing the imagines over and over for six months, I feel like my soul separated from my body and I was still partially attached to my body, but as if I might drop to the ground and float away. I heard my heart cracking and my esophagus opening up as I drank water. Six months later to the day, I feel like only hours have past. Negative events bother me a lot, it makes me feel cold and like I am in the middle of an open field searching for comfort. Nevertheless, I think it expedient and justifiable to continue to use the mode of representation if we remember that ideas, thoughts, and psychic formations in general must not in any case be localized in organic elements of the nervous system. Noticing sensations for the first time can be quite distressing, and it may precipitate flashbacks in which people curl up or assume defensive postures. There are somatic reenactments of the undigested trauma and most likely represent the postures we assumed when the trauma occurred. Imagines and physical sensation deluge me at this point, and I have to learn how to process what has happened to me so I can be familiar with ways to stem torrents of sensation and emotion to prevent myself from becoming retraumarized by accessing the past. (Schoolteachers, military, nurses, and police officers are often very skilled at soothing terror reactions because many of them are confronted almost daily with out-of-control or painfully disorganized people.) However, we are justified in thinking of the systems—which have nothing psychic in themselves, and which never become accessible to our psychic perception—as something similar to the lenses of the telescope, which project the image.
If we continue this comparison, we might say that the censorship between the two systems corresponds to the refraction of rays on passing into a new medium. When a person feels unloved and are isolated, their soul and body can be compared to a daisy flower taken out of the Sun, and placed in a dark closet. The light force, in this case, the soul is trying to escape and seek out the energy it requires to thrive and as it is pulling away from the body, the host starts to split, and this split drains their energy to where they feel weak and like they are floating. If the person does not stay active, they could enter into a deep sleep not to awaken again. The most natural ways for human beings to calm themselves when they are upset is by clinging to another person. This means that patients who have been physically or sexually violated face a dilemma: They require and crave touch while simultaneously are terrified of body contact and do not want it to be sexual. I attempted to interpret a number of psychic manifestations from everyday life in support of the natural ways to heal, this conception underwent elaboration and modification when it was recognized that the essential character of a preconscious idea was its connection with the residues of verbal ideals. Individuals who lack emotional awareness are able, with practice, to connect their physical sensations to psychological events. Then they can slowly reconnect with themselves. In its inner nature, it is just as much unknown to us as the reality of the external World, and it is just as imperfectly communicated to us by the data of consciousness as is the external World by the reports of our sense-organs. The body grows outside—the more convenient way, — that if the spirit like to hide, its temple stands always ajar, secure, inviting; it never did betray the soul that asked its shelter in timid honesty.
A Fflavit et Dissipate Sunt—Die Leiden eines Knaben
The man who loves, and loves truly, should not long permit its object to remain in any doubt of his feelings and intentions. The price for ignoring or distorting the body’s messages is being unable to detect what is truly dangerous or harmful for you and, just as bad, what is safe or nourishing. Self-regulation depends on having a friendly relationship with your body. Without it you have to rely on external regulation—from medication, drugs like alcohol, constant reassurance, or compulsive compliance with the wishes of others. Heart-sickness is the worst kind of sickness. Real love can only arise where there is either a void in the heart. A true hearted lover forgets all trespasses, and a smile cureth the wounding frown because real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 15
For too long, my fears, anxieties, and loss of my social network has made me avoid anything that could possibly pierce those layers of pain. I pushed my awareness deep underground, but after a while, one has to glimpse the possibility of allowing some light to enter the shadowy World. Believe that you can get beyond the pain of your past. Sometimes people are not able to love you the way you would like them to because they lack the understanding to show love and are clouded in darkness of their own, which has caused their hearts to become callous. When a person’s heart is not open, they lack the consciousness to be aware, but that does not mean that they have stopped loving you. Lovers are wholly destitute of conscience, magnanimity, common sense, and ordinary courtesy. Why is it that the noblest of our passions should be also the most selfish? #RyanPhillippe 2 of 15
Somatic symptoms for which no clear physical basis can be found are ubiquitous in traumatized children and adults. They can include chronic back and neck pain, fibromyalgia, migraines, digestive problems, spastic colon/irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue, and some forms of asthma. Traumatized children have fifty times the rate of asthma as their nontraumatized peers. Studies have shown that many children and adults with fatal asthma attacks were not aware of having breathing problems before the attacks and when they get upset, sometimes it is too late to reach the inhaler, and they end up going to the hospital. The learned compute that seven hundred and seven million of millions of vibrations have penetrated the eyes before the eyes can distinguish the tints of a violet. What philosophy can calculate the vibrations of the heart before it can distinguish the colors of love? #RyanPhillippe 3 of 15
Alexithymia is a Greek word, which means not having words for feelings. Many traumatized children and adults simply cannot describe what they are feeling because they cannot identify what their physical sensations mean. Sometimes they get reminders of a specific situation or episodes where they get tingling and numbing sensations shivering vertically down their bodies and have to try and remain in the present. They may look furious but deny that they are angry; they may appear terrified but say that they are fine. Not being able to discern what is going on inside their bodies causes them to be out of touch with their needs, and they have trouble taking care of themselves, whether it involves eating the right amount at the right time or getting the sleep they need. Is being in love anything beyond being very found, and very silly, and with a little touch of melancholy? #RyanPhillippe 4 of 15
Keep to your caste; and be too self-respecting to lavish the love of the whole heart, soul, and strength, where such a gift is not wanted and would be despised. No man can paint a distress well which he doth not feel while he is painting it; the most pathetic and affecting scenes have been writ with tears. Alexithymics substitute the language of action for that of emotion. When asked, “How would you feel if you saw a truck coming at you at eighty miles per hour? Most people would say, “I would be terrified” or “I would be frozen with fear. An Alexithymic might reply, “How would I feel? I do not know…I would get out of the way.” They tend to register emotions as physical problem rather than as signals that something deserves their attention. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 15
Instead of getting angry, Alexithymic people experience muscle pain, bowel irregularities, or other symptoms for which no cause can be found. About three quarters of patients with anorexia nervosa, and more than half of all patients with bulimia, are bewildered by their emotional feelings and have great difficulty describing them. When researched showed pictures of angry or distressed faces to people with alexithymia, they could not figure out what those people were feeling. Many of these people are professionally successful, but their relationships are bleak and distant. Suppressing their feelings have made it possible to attend to the business of the World, but at a price. They learned to shut down their once overwhelming emotions, and, as a result, they no longer recognized what they were feeling. Few of them had an interest in therapy. Nature has formed our ears open; but enabled us to shut up our mouths. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 15
Cease to be astonished, and only learn to love—an important lesion, and one not too well learned. Trisdale, was a talented writer, suffered a traumatic loss when someone he loved died while he was only twelve. He was a lost adolescent with no one available to take the place of his warm, loving father. Everyone else was too involved in their own lives and situations to be able to help him. He retreated from close relationships, and found comfort in the World he created. On the surface, Trisdale seemed surprisingly resilient, enjoying precocious success at fifteen when he published his first story. He published his first novel a few years later, and another right after that. To bury oneself in wood and wilds consists in nothing more than flying from those enemies we have not the courage to encounter. How much superior is the life of him who lives in the midst of vice and temptation, uncontaminated by example, untainted by the sad influence of the age! #RyanPhillippe 7 of 15
There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores, the better. Life is not governed by will or intention. Trisdale was not only a successful writer, he was also handsome, charming, and happy in the company of his friends, father, and family. His loneliness was hidden at a deep level where he longed for a fulfilling, passionate relationship. Trisdale was clueless about how to change his life and equally clueless about the roots of his distancing. The neglect fact can play a major role in his current challenges, as his long and continuous experience is spent alone and writing. Because Trisdale had trouble sensing what was going on in his body, he lacked a nuanced response to frustration. He would either react to stress by becoming spaced out. Whatever his response, he could not tell what was upsetting him. This failure to be in sync with his body contributed to the well documented lack of self-protection and high rates of revictimization and also his difficulties feeling pleasure, sensuality and having a sense of meaning. A true lover’s blood is always at his finger’s end. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 15
In love one letter is of more force than a thousand looks. Trisdale had begun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others. Human life—that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. People with alexithymia can get well only by learning to recognize the relationship between their physical sensations and their emotions, much as colorblind people can only enter the World of color by learning to distinguish and appreciate shades of gray. Most, however, do not do that. Many people seem to have made an unconscious decision that it is better to keep visiting doctors and treating ailments that do not heal than to do the painful work of facing the demons of the past. I do not know what I am feeling, it is like my head and body are not connected. I am living in a tunnel, a fog, no matter what happens it is the same reaction—numbness, nothing. My brain does not feel. #RyanPhillippe 9 of 15
There is nothing so good as a voyage to England to cure a love fit. Some people could not tell if they were being burned at the stake, having cake in the ocean, or being assaulted. The more people are out of touch with their feelings, the less activity they had in the self-sensing areas of the brain. Depersonalization is common during traumatic experiences. I was once mugged late at night in a park close to my house and, floating above the scene, saw myself lying in the snow with a small head wound, surrounded by three knife-wielding teenagers. I dissociated the pain of their stab wounds on my hands and did not feel the slightest fear as I calmly negotiated for the emptied wallet. Traumatized people are not so fortune and feel separated from their bodies. #RyanPhillippe 10 of 15
One particularly good description of depersonalization comes from German psychoanalyst Paul Schilder: To depersonalized individual the World appears strange, peculiar, foreign, dream-like. Objects appear at times strangely diminished in size, at times flat. Sounds appears to come from a distance…The emotions likewise undergo marked alternation. Patients complain that they are capable of experiencing neither pain nor pleasure…The have become strangers to themselves. I was fascinated to learn that a group of neuroscientists at the University of Geneva had induced similar out-of-body experiences by delivering mild electric current to a specific spot in the brain, the temporal parietal junction. In one patient this produced a sensation that he was hanging from the ceiling, looking down as his body; in another, it induced an eerie feeling that someone was standing behind him. #RyanPhillippe 11 of 15
This research confirms what our patients tell us: that the self can be detached from the body and live a phantom existence on its own. Similarly, at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, brain scans were done on people who dissociated their terror and found that the fear centers of the brain simply shut down as they recall the event. And, strangely enough, here is another proof that I am superman! The platform of Notre-Dame was my favourite nook in Paris; every free afternoon I used to go up into the towers of the cathedral and there clamber about between the monsters and gargoyles. The circumstances that all the excrement vanishes so rapidly before the stream of urine corresponds to the motto: A fflavit et dissipate sunt. It was a hot Summer afternoon; in the evening, I had given my lecture om the connection between hysteria and the perversions, and everything which I had to say displeased me thoroughly, and seemed utterly valueless. I was tired; I took not the least pleasure in my difficult work, and longed to get away from this rummaging in human filth; first to see my family, then to revisit the beauties of Italy. #RyanPhillippe 12 of 15
In this mood I went from the lecture hall to a café to get some little refreshment in the open air, for my appetite had forsaken me. However, a member of my audience went with me; he begged for permission to sit with e while I drank my coffee and gulped down my roll, and began to say flattering things to me. He told me how much he had learned from me, that he now saw everything through different eyes, that I had cleansed the Augean stables of error and prejudice, which encumbered the theory of the neuroses—in summary, that I was a very great man. My mod was ill-suited to his hymn of praise; I struggled with my disgust, and went to the house earlier in order to get rid of him; and before I went to sleep, I turned over to the leaves of Rabelais, and read a short story by C. F. Meyer entitled Die Leiden eines Knaben (The Sorrows of a Boy). #RyanPhillippe 13 of 15
According to the theory of wish-fulfilment, this life situation would not have been possible had not the opposed, and indeed suppressed, yet pleasure-emphasized megalomaniac train of thought been added to the thoughts of disgust. For nothing painful is intended to be represented in the American Dream; the painful elements of our daily thoughts are able to force their way into our dreams only if at the same time they are able to disguise a wish-fulfilment. Like every other displacement, this serves the purposes of the censorship, but it is often the work of wish-fulfilment, for wish-fulfilment consists in nothing more than the substitution of an unwelcome thing by tis opposite. Just as concrete images may be transformed into their contraries in our dreams, so also may the affects is usually brought about by the dream-censorship. The suppression and inversion of affects is useful even in social life, as it is shown by the familiar analogy of the dream-censorship and, above all, hypocrisy. #RyanPhillippe 14 of 15
Love gives even to a dull man the knowledge of his lover’s heart. If I am conversing with a person to whom I must show consideration while I should like to address him as an enemy, it is almost more important that I should conceal the expression of my affect from him than that I should modify the verbal expression of my thoughts. If I address him in courteous terms, but accompany them by looks or gestures of hatred and disdain, the effect which I produce upon him is not very different from what it would have been had I cast my unmitigated contempt into his face. Above all, the, the censorship bids me suppress my affects, and if I am a master of the art of dissimulation I can hypocritically display the opposite affect—smiling where I should like to be angry, and pretending affection where I would like to destroy. Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. (www.thedeedle.com) #RyanPhillippe 15 of 15
Victorian Frame of Mind
Currently, perhaps the most common reason for intimacy to suffer or vanish entirely is an exclusive focus on someone’s history of past trauma and the resulting issues. Fire in straw will not be hidden, and the flames of affection will burst forth at length, though it be long kept under. Reliving a strong negative emotion causes significant changes in the brain areas that receive nerve signals from the muscles, gut, and skin—areas that are crucial for regulating basic bodily functions. The brain scans, as you recall, showed that recalling an emotional event from the past causes us to actually re-experience the visceral (internal organs) sensations felt during the original event. Each type of emotion produced a characteristic pattern, distinct from the others. For instance, a particular part of the brain stem was active in sadness and anger, but not in happiness or fear. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
All of these brain regions that produce emotions are below the limbic system, to which emotions are traditionally assigned, yet we acknowledge their involvement every time we use one of the common expressions that ink strong emotions with the body: You make me sick; it made my skin crawl; I was all choked up; my heart sank; he makes me bristle. The elementary self-system in the brain stem and limbic system is massively activated when people are faced with the threat of annihilation, which results in an overwhelming sense of fear and terror accompanied by intense physiological arousal. To people who are reliving a trauma, nothing makes sense; they are trapped in a life-or-death situation, a state of paralyzing fears or blind rage. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
People who are traumatized have their mind and body constantly aroused, as if they are in imminent danger. They startle in response to the slightest noises and are frustrated by small irritations. Their sleep is chronically disturbed, and food often loses its sensual pleasures. This in turn can trigger desperate attempts to shut those feelings down by freezing and dissociation. How do people regain control when their caveman brains are stuck in a stand your ground or escape for survival mode? If what goes on deep inside our caveman brains dictates how we feel, and if our body sensations are orchestrated by subcortical (subconscious) brain structures, how much control over them can we actually have? #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Knowing what we feel is the first step to knowing why we feel that way. If we are aware of the constant changes in our inner and outer environment, we can mobilize to manage them. However, we cannot do this unless our watchtower, the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), which controls a person’s personality, learns to observe what is going on inside us. This is why mindfulness practice, which strengthens the MPFC, is a cornerstone of recovery from trauma. However, do not be discouraged. Many people have survived trauma through tremendous courage and persistence, only to get into the same kinds of trouble over and over again. Trauma has shut down their inner compass and robbed them of the imagination they require to create something better. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, the often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from themselves. The more people try to push away and ignore internal warning signs, the more likely they are to take over and leave them bewildered, confused, and ashamed. People who cannot comfortably notice what is going on inside or become vulnerable to respond to any sensory shift either by shutting down or by going into a panic—they develop a fear of fear itself. People’s lives will be held hostage to fear until that visceral (internal organs) experience changes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
The price for ignoring or distorting the body’s messages is being unable to detect what is truly dangerous or harmful for you and, just as bad, what is safe or nourishing. Self-regulation depends on having a friendly relationship with your body. Without it you have to rely on external regulation—from medication, drugs like alcohol, constant reassurance, or compulsive compliance with the wishes of others. Do not let anyone look down upon you because you are young. Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you. Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Preserve in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
What is so Credulous as Self-Love?
We get accustomed to mental as well as bodily pain, without losing our sensibility to it. No misery can equal the struggles of a virtuous mind wishing to act in a manner becoming its own dignity, yet carried by passions to do otherwise. If money if fairly and honestly earned, why should we pretend to care what it comes out of? Death, self-interest, and fortune’s changes, are every day breaking up many a happy group, and scattering them far and wide; and the boys and girls never come back again. Being able to surrender control is a skill that is often the hardest to learn. It certainly is the one that I continue to struggle with. Yet it actually can be the easiest, because when you take a longer look at whatever happens to be up for you, you will realize that you are not really in control of most situations to begin with. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5
As a neurologist who has treated hundreds of people with various forms of brain damage, I became fascinated with consciousness and with identifying the areas of the brain necessary for knowing what you feel. I devoted my career to mapping out what is responsible for our experience of “self.” There is a deep divide between our sense of self and the sensory life of our bodies. As poetically explained, sometimes we use our minds not to discover facts, but to hide them…One of the things the Sunscreen partially removes from the mind the inner states of the body, those that constitute the flow of life as it wanders in the journey of each day. The Sunscreen hides most effectively is the body, our own body, by which I mean the ins of it, its interiors. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5
The Sunscreen can work in our favor by enabling us to attend to pressing problems in the outside World. Yet it has a cost: It tends to prevent us from sensing the possible origin and nature of what we call self. Self-awareness rests on the physical sensations that convey the inner states of the body: Primordial feelings provide a direct experience of one’s own living body, wordless, unadorned, and connected to nothing but sheer existence. These primordial feelings reflect the current state of the body along varied dimensions,…along the scale that ranges from pleasure to pain, and they originate at the level of the brain stem rather than the cerebral cortex. All feelings of emotion are complex musical variations on primordial feelings. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5
Our sensory World takes shape even before we are born. It will help you to begin the process of finding a community to engage with by recognizing that surrendering control over the outcome of a venture is something you routinely practice. For instance, if you are stuck in a traffic jam, you cannot move until the traffic starts moving, so you have to surrender control of the outcome, which is staying on your own personal schedule, or you will drive yourself crazy, have an attack of road rage, hold others hostage on your cellphone while you complain about the traffic jam, or otherwise spin your wheels mentally and emotionally. Even after we acquire consciousness and language, our bodily sensing system provides crucial feedback on our moment-to-moment condition. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5
What is taking place around us also affects our physical sensations. Surrendering control is especially important when you begin to practice new ways of being in intimate relationships. Trying to control what others do or say is almost always an exercise in futility; we all knows this even if we sometimes forget it. Yet, our conscious self also plays a vital role in maintaining our inner equilibrium: We need to register and act on our physical sensations to keep our bodies safe. Realizing we are cold compels us to put on a sweater; feeling hungry or spacey tells us our blood sugar is low and spurs us to get a snack; the pressure of a full bladder sends us to the bathroom. And keep in mind, real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5
Give me a Place to Stand and I will Move the World
The opposition of an individual to a community is always dangerous in the operation and seldom successful in the event. If the one proposed any amusement, the other constantly objected to it: they never loved or hated, commended or abuse, the same person. As a rule, man everywhere oppresses his weaker fellow. True; but he betrays consciousness of his error, directly or indirectly. Once can show his sense of magnitude of his crime even by the manner of defending it. The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 11
My friends, peace be on this house! On the master thereof, on the young maidens, and the young men! My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is peace? It is war? No. Is it strife? No. It is lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? O yes! Therefore, my friend, I wish for peace, upon you and yours. Pick up your journal, open to a blank page, and write a few paragraphs about your first love affairs or first couple relationship. Do not spend a lot of time thinking about it. Describe what thrilled you about the person. For instance, how did your friends, family, religious or neighborhood community feel about you being with this person? #RyanPhillippe 2 of 11
Here the parable ends, as all parables end—incomplete, disappointing. Name a few things this person valued most about being in a relationship with you. What about you? Did you value the same things? What do you remember as the most challenging part about this first experience? How did it end? How did you feel about its ending? If you had to choose a title for your first experience of being in (or wanting to be in) a couple relationship, what would this title be: Young and Innocent, or Love Hurts, or Me, Myself, and I, or What was I thinking? Decide what early experience definitely has a significant bearing on who you are today. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 11
The idea is to get you to understand how trauma affect self-awareness, specifically sensory self-awareness. The Mohawk of self-awareness—starting from the front of the brain consists of: the orbital prefrontal cortex, the medial prefrontal context, the anterior cingulate, the posterior cingulate, and the insula. In individuals with histories of chronic trauma the same regions show sharply decreased activity, making it difficult to register internal states and assessing the personal relevance of incoming information. Brain scans of eighteen chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder patients with severe early-life trauma was startling. There was almost no activation of any of the self-sensing areas of the brain. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 11
There could be only one explanation for such results: In response to the trauma itself, and coping with the dread that persisted long afterwards, these patients had learned to shut down the brain areas that transmit the visceral feelings and emotions that accompany and define terror. Yet in everyday life, those same brain areas are responsible for registering the entire range of emotions and sensations that form the foundation of our self-awareness, our sense of who we are. What we witnessed here was a tragic adaptation: In an effort to shot off terrifying sensations, they also deadened their capacity to feel fully alive. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but one who stands firm to the end will be saved. Nothing gives so much strength to an adversary as the view of timidity in his opponent. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 11
The disappearance of medial prefrontal activation could explain why so many traumatized people lose their sense of purpose and direction. As you can see, there are many ways to reconstruct the past. It does not matter much what you remember about the specific details of a past partner’s emotion or relational profile. It does not really matter what did or did not happen in terms of significant events, or what said and did what during a major argument. It does not even really matter why the relationship ended. What you are trying to discover is what you learned from your past efforts in intimate relationships. What lessons did you take with you when the relationship ended? You are looking for clues about what might have shaped your current ideas, fears, dreams, tender places and sore spots. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 11
There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies. So, instead of getting lost in your happy and unhappy memories on this trip down Memory Lane, try to look for the signposts that signal what your past relationships have to teach you. You want to discern what stands out as important danger warnings and what the welcome signs were, too. You are looking back for the relationships that taught your gut to flash “Danger, Falling Rocks!” so that you learned to keep your eyes open. You are also looking for what you learned about your ability to find the bypass signs that allow you to detour past the worst swamps and skinholes. Indiscreet opposition does frequently as much mischief as giddy love. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 11
Sometimes your relationship with your own inner reality is impaired. How can you make decisions, or put any plans into action, if you cannot define what you want or, to be more precise, what the sensations in your body, the basis of all emotions, were trying to tell you? If you are really honest with yourself, you may discover that you just do not like taking new relational risks, period, whether in a group or not. There are plenty of reasons why you might want to end the journey you have been on right now and try to convince yourself you can live with everything that shaped our individual ways of approaching intimacy and challenge. Our comfort with intimacy is very powerful. As gold is tried by faire, and virtue by temptation, so is sterling wit by opposition. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 11
It makes sense that if we risk new ways of connecting, we risk being vulnerable to old pain. We could be badly disappointed, hurt, betrayed, or trapped all over again (not every man wants to marry you because you threaten to have him arrested for sexual assault, or trap him with a baby). The temptation to stay away from such risk is often very strong. The lack of self-awareness in victims of chronic childhood trauma is sometimes so profound that they cannot recognize themselves in a mirror. Brain scans show that this is not the result of mere inattention: The structures in charge of self-recognition may be knocked out along with the structures related to self-experience. Struggles against yourself as you would struggle against an enemy.#RyanPhillippe 9 of 11
I have seen the media and community members latch on to individuals and physically attack them, pry into their houses, and personal information, rob them, harass them, and slander them until these people are being frequently sent to the emergency room. These critics steal everything from them from their WiFi data, money, family, cars, and medical records and get away with the unlawful behavior. Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency (SHRA) and Good Day Sacramento CW31 (KMAX), and CBS13 (KOVR), and NBC Universal are a few of the worst offenders. And then they get in groups and call you crazy so no one will believe you nor help you. What I find insane is you guys target people, everyone knows it, and you pretend like nothing is going on and keep going even when you know you have gotten people hurt. Then they sit around like a bunch of junk yard dogs and stare you down and laugh and talk feces about you. #RyanPhillippe 10 of 11
You cannot do what you want until you know what you are doing. The implications are clear: to feel present you have to know where you are and be aware of what is going on with you. You cannot go around trying to mind the business of others, mind your own business, fix yourself. Many of you sit around like drones talking feces about others and calling them crazy and making their lives a living hell, but look at yourself, many of you are not normal. Why you always focused on what this man is doing? If the self-sensing system breaks down, you need to find ways to reactivate it. I do not think you were invited into his house nor to read his private email. Nobody outwardly disbelieves nor opposes a gentleman at the head of his own table. Violent evils require violent remedies. #RyanPhillippe 11 of 11
White Man’s Shoes—the Most Talkative Men of their Time
Fear of Danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than Danger itself, when apparent to the Eyes; and we find the Burden of Anxiety greater, by much, than the Evil which we are anxious about. The courage as well as cowardice of fools proceeds from not knowing what is or what is not the proper object of fear; we may account for the extreme hardiness of some men in the same manner as for the terrors of children at a bugbear. The child knows not but that the bugbear is the proper object of fear, the blockhead knows not that a cannonball is so. Fear brings one into more dangers than the caution that goes along with it delivers one form. Something must be done by a man who refuses a challenge to let a challenger see that he has better motives than fear for a refusal. Parents who never showed their love, complain of want of natural affection in their children; children who never showed their duty, complain of want of natural feeling in their parents; lawmakers who find both so miserable that their affections have never had enough of life’s Sun to develop them, are loud in their moralizings over parents and children too, and cry that the very ties of nature are disregarded. When applied to the purposes of indulgence and debauchery, opium rends the nerves, destroys the strength, weakens the intellect, and undermines life. However, fear not to use its virtues in the rime of need, for the wise man warms him by the same firebrand with which the madman burneth the tent. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its official course—its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; freewill still free to ply its shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions modified by freewill, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events.
The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before. And how far a body can hear on the water such nights! I heard people talking at the ferry land. I heard what they said, too, every word of it. God’s own presence is felt lingering yet, as if, in love with his own work, he stayed to touch it again—creating new charms in multiple duration. Prove to a man that his will is governed by something outside of himself, and you have lost all hold on his moral and religious nature. There is nothing bad men want to believe so much as that they are governed by necessity. Necessities usually are odious. However, women meet them. Men evade them and shirk them. To be reduced to necessity is to be wicked; for necessity is not only the temptation, but is such a temptation as human nature is not empowered to resist. Why should a man want to be better than his neighbors? Let him be thankful is he is no worse. My friends, we are now in the mansions of the rich and great. Why are we now in the mansions of the rich and great, my friends? Is it because we are invited? Because we are invited? Because we are bidden to feast with them, because we are bidden to rejoice with them, because we are bidden to play the lute with them, because we are bidden to dance with them? No. Then why are we here, my friends? Air we in possession of a sinful secret, and doe [sic] we require corn, and cranberry juice, and oil—or, what is much the same thing, money—for the keeping thereof. Probably so, my friends. The most innocent echo has an impish mockery in it when it follows a gravely persistent speaker. Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of the outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
Incomprehensible Torture
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your human population, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God (Jehovah, Allah). The ideal light that you kindle is flame in my mind, which is more brilliant than rosy dawn, stronger than sunshine, more interesting than norther lights. The body keeps the score: If the memory of trauma is encoded in the viscera (the internal organs in the body), in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching emotions, in autoimmune disorders and skeletal/muscular problems, and if mind/body/visceral communication is the royal road to emotion regulation, this demands a radical shift in our therapeutic assumptions. Not being seen, not being known, and having nowhere to turn to feel safe is devastating at any age, but it is particularly destructive for young children, who are still trying to find their place in the World. This is a difficult concept for many people to understand. The common response to distress is to seek out people we like and trust to help us and give us the courage to go on. We may also calm down by engaging in a physical activity like walking or going for a swim. We start learning these ways of regulating our feelings from the moment someone feeds us when we are hungry, covers us when are cold, or gently holds us when we are hurt or scared.
However, if no one has ever looked at you with loving eyes or broken out in a smile when they see you; if no one has rushed to help you (but instead said: Stop crying, or I will give you something to cry about), then you need to discover other ways of taking care of yourself. You are likely to experiment with anything—drugs, alcohol, binge eating, or cutting—that offers some kind of relief. People who suffer from trauma and neglect experience an extreme disconnection from the body. Some people cannot feel whole areas of their bodies. Their sensory perceptions simply were not working. People with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) often have trouble putting the picture together. When our senses become muffled, we no longer feel fully alive. Some people are surrounded by all that can render life happy and agreeable, still the faculty of enjoyment and of feeling is wanting…Each sense, each part of their proper self, is as it were separated from them and can no longer afford any feeling; this impossibility seems to depend upon a void which the victimized person feels in the front of their head, and due to the diminution of the sensibility over the whole surface of their body, it seems that they never actually reach for objects which they touch. All of this would be a small matter enough, but for its frightful result, which is that of the impossibility of any other kind of feeling and of any sort of enjoyment, although they experience a requirement and desire of them that renders their lives an incomprehensible torture. Many find themselves feeling increasingly encumbered and limited by the interpretations and labels they have accumulated over the years. Rather than feeling more connected with other people and all of life, people who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) feel more fragmented and self-absorbed. These people require space and freedom so they can recognize their fantasies, wishes, requirements, and so forth. The existence and inherent value of this subjective individuality is often taken for granted.
