Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD – From Surviving to Thriving

[Bluefyre]

I just wanted to add to my previous post. I was dashing off to work.

I've added Joe Dispenza's You are the Placebo meditation to my daily practices as well as Reconditioning the Body to a New Mind. The meditation works with changing beliefs. His ideas remind me so much of Laura's Knowledge videos which is really generating the feelings of gratitude for the changes you want and leaving the details to the information field, or the quantum field as he refers to it. Although it has been from ignorance, it's painful to realize I have created my life from my past. CPTSD disables being able to imagine a different future. For many years I've felt this "stunting" and the meditations, applied diligently, along with the work of uncovering programs and deeply rooted beliefs is opening my awareness to possibilities and then getting out of the way as I release them. Sometimes the struggle is to get that I can release them. One idea that struck me is "Don't believe everything you think". Laura 's video, not thinking about how it will happen. He talks about intention and elevated emotion. The only way to create a different future is from the skill of learning to be in the present and making different choices, as the Cs have talked about. When I catch myself with memories and beliefs (LIES) from the past, I find myself now asking myself questions, several he asks in the meditations, like "What is nobility? Can you teach your body emotionally what it feels like to have honour?" That's a big one for me right now as I work through the degradation I put myself through as a young adult because I didn't know I had choices. "Can you teach your body emotionally what it feels like to be worthy of receiving?" It's amazing, this "benign curiosity" a term Pete Walker uses in his book. Objectively noticing the programs, lies and beliefs and questioning them with benign curiosity. Stops shame dead in it's tracks. Every time I access the possible new states of being in the alpha state and rewire my body, they stick a bit more, my body retains more and it carries with me throughout the day. It has taken years to shake loose the iron grip of the past, like turning a locomotive in the opposite direction and I feel like I'm building up a head of steam, finally. We'll see. One step at a time, making haste slowly.

The information in Pete Walkers book helped me understand what I have been dealing with and how my body/brain were conditioned and so recognize things now that I could not before. I work with these concepts every day, because I need constant reminders, like Pavlov's dogs, but in a life enhancing way. For the first time in my life I feel excitement rather than dread of the future. As Gandhi said, we must be the change we want to see in the world. Every painful horrible article I read on SOTT fuels the fire within me to choose a different future. And perhaps the wave has upped the anti and the acceleration. I am constantly amazed at how the pieces of the puzzle come to me as I can apply them, in this amazing mosaic of life!

 

[Bluefyre]

Thanks for your post Aleana and your encouraging words. My therapist is very good at mirroring back to me my strengths and when I am beating up on myself and showing me how she sees me which is often diametrically opposed to my own version. LOL, really, it is quite comical sometimes, although sometimes painful as well. That has been a common experience in flashback mode. And I agree, one memory brings on a cascade of related memories. In this Boon book (recommended for dissociative personalities like moi), the very first exercise has been very helpful for me to come back to the present. My therapist calls it the Take Five exercise, which she never did tell me about. I was telling her about how it was helping a few weeks ago and she said "Oh, didn't I tell you that one?" It's a sensory exercise, noticing five things you can either hear, see or feel, and importantly for me, saying what they are out loud with three descriptives, like "I feel the sun on my face. It feels warm and healing and welcoming." It was bloody amazing. I'd be in flashback panic and I would go outside (always more powerful out there) and say out loud things I could hear, things I could feel, things I could see. I didn't want to go to things I could smell because smells have always been my worst triggers.

My greatest experiences of changing my state is by asking questions to get the frontal cortex working, which overrides the limbic system and it is such a blessed relief to come back to the present. I also say out loud, quite often "we are safe in the present. No one can hurt us in the present". Well, with stuff like Missing 411 that's not exactly true, but the feeling of lack of safety comes from not being in the present. I've said it before, but it truly is shocking to realize you've spent your whole life in the past or projecting the past into the future, as Yoda said "Never being where you ARE!"

 

[Joe]

but the feeling of lack of safety comes from not being in the present. I've said it before, but it truly is shocking to realize you've spent your whole life in the past or projecting the past into the future, as Yoda said "Never being where you ARE!"

Very true I think. I've been practicing the 'gift of the present' for a while. By practicing I really mean just becoming aware of the idea and at times limiting my awareness and focus to only what is going on right now. This has worked pretty well, over a period of time, to stop the "doomsday scenarios" from getting the better of me. Last night I had a strange experience of waking up (to an extent) because some dreaded fear had just dropped itself into my consciousness, in that same dreamy state immediately afterwards the thought came to me that, the next time this happens, don't run from it, but just 'go into it'. So that's what I plan to do I reckon.

Something else I've realised in the past while is the truth of something Ark told me once, that just because you feel a certain way doesn't mean you have to act on it. I think that applies to most (if not all) negative emotions. I'd never really grokked that until I really started to feel negative emotions in a very conscious, in your face, kind of way. There was a point where I was starting to feel victimized by them, and sort of wallowing in them a 'woe is me' kind of way, but then someone snapped me out of it and I realized I could "feel the fear and do it anyway". Sure, it's still not pleasant, but it was a revelation to me that you CAN carry on despite these 'feelings' that invade your heart and mind, and with the help of focusing on the present etc.

Anyway, just wanted to share that and also ask you guys if you have ever had your cortisol levels tested?

 

[Bluefyre]

I know that one well, waking up and shutting out the feelings just wanting to go back to sleep instead of seeing them as an opportunity. Well, when it happens awake or coming out of sleep, they're all opportunities. The "battle through us" is to pay attention I think. To catch it at the start and I tell myself whatever I'm feeling is okay. This too will pass. Sometimes I can trace the memory or thought back to what generated the emotion, but not usually coming out of sleep. I see myself embracing, holding it in a space around my arms, accepting it rather than judging it. My therapist has talked forever about accepting what I'm feeling. For a long time I thought "no, that's wallowing". But it's observing and honouring without necessarily giving credence. I always see it as mist that dissipates as I acknowledge. I had this belief that accepting was condoning but am coming to understand that it is acknowledging, with compassion and neutrality and again, that benign curiosity, with the underlying understanding that just because I feel it doesn't mean it's based in any objective truth. Well, 99.9% of the time it is NOT based in any objective truth. And also as you say Joe, doesn't mean I have to act on it. Course when anger is triggered, especially tied back to memories, not acting, keeping it below the neck can be a monumental battle. The other battle is to remember that I DO have a choice. You can't make a choice until you aware that there are choices to be made. What a great freedom, being able to see choices. The more I rewire my brain the more possibilities come into my awareness.

No, I've never had my cortisol levels tested. For most of my life I know they have been off the charts, living in constant flight/freeze mode. I've taken adaptogens in the past, mostly rhodiola as my body does not do well with ginseng, it actually makes me more hyper and I think the rhodiola is more suited to my genetic makeup, coming from Siberia, if I remember correctly and having northern European/Scots genes. Vitamin B complex really helps calm my body, as well as doing yoga with the focus on being present with my body, the take five exercise posted earlier and for the first time feeling compassion for my body and myself in a way I never have.