A brain is busy with all those survival processes running in the background and the second-by-second management of triggers and symptoms. So what happens when that system gets overloaded?

Today, we’re talking about the pattern of symptom masking/ignorance, overcompensation, loss of functionality, and eventual collapse. And how does “resilience vs. resistance” change our perspective?

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Transcript / Blog Version:

Hey my Fuckers, welcome back to the podcast that aims to answer, “Dude, nongendered, what’s my goddamn problem?” And I hope we’ve cleared some of that up by now.

Last time we talked again about personality “parts,” or, “the ongoing bane of our existence when we have brains we’re trying to learn to control.” We’ve learned that our heads are finicky and fine-tuned for danger, and that danger will catapult us into discrepant modes of existing that feel like alter-identities taking over. Jeckel and Hyde sortof shit. OR, child versus adult you sortof shit, depending on the situation.

Remember how we talked about family re-immersion keeping you stuck and feeling like a prior version of self?

Yeah, that’s some parts shit.

You’re going to feel like a child and find yourself weirdly behaving like a child when you’re around the folks. Old wounds, suddenly ripped open and old programs for dealing with them, suddenly taking over your experience. Same goes for any situation that just FEELS a lot like being around the fam. Authoritarian bosses and hierarchical work organizations that run on bullying, for instance? Gonna make ya show up with your kid parts. And that’s a whole shame and fear factory, reporting to the office when you feel like a baby.

Plus, neither of those situations will be helped by what comes next.

So, when we’re triggered to high hell, just trying to get by but finding our brains aren’t acting as one whole unit, we have a lot of problems that follow. Losing progress in your recovery and losing sense of self creates fear and self-judgment, as we’ve covered. Feeling like you’re limited to being a “fraction of who you really are” is extremely disempowering and distressing. And it will begin a comparison cycle, in which you measure who you are now versus who you once were, at some more ideal time.

With this growing distress and personal shame, we do what we do best as living biological beings. We try to compensate. We have to survive this situation, we know there are issues going down, especially with our own mental ailments… and we don’t want to put them on display nor fall prey to the danger they signify… so we work extra super hard to try to mask those inner events from the outside world.

For instance, if you’re feeling like a helpless child every day thanks to your micromanaging boss and tribalism-tainted coworkers, you’re going to avoid the situation and get out of there, or you’re going to overcompensate and refuse to settle for that. You’re going to go above and beyond to try to make up for what’s been happening. More hypervigilance over every email, more obsession over every move, more hours spent at the office trying to get ahead.

We attempt to hide our distress in life, often by trying to overcompensate for our wonky internal conditions and trying to push them away… but this doesn’t work. It’s called “symptom ignorance.” The thoughts, feelings, and memories will only continue to flow and grow as we attempt to shove them to the backburner.

And this… is a trap. Our symptoms increase in prevalence and strength. Our distress gains power. And our mental faculties are slowly worn down as we exert all this extra energy trying to obfuscate our problems from the public.

Then, as we work increasingly hard, white-knuckling it through our days to stay afloat… we have a lot of cognitive challenges emerge.

Namely, we start losing our ability for executive functioning. We’re exerting so much energy trying to avoid our memories, contain or numb our emotions, and continue performing up to expected standards – all the while, with our anxiety, insomnia, depression, obsession, and ADHD gaining strength – that we stop being able to fully DIRECT our brains. We lose short term and working memory, the ability for planning, the capacity for manipulating data that we’re holding in our heads.

We also extra-lose that ability to see ourselves over one consistent, lifelong, timeline. This is a highly integrative brain function that requires a lot of perspective awareness and malleability – meaning, we lose our self-esteem and belief in where we’ve been before.

And as a result? Well, we’re under duress, all the time. No human likes to feel incapable or as if their mental behaviors are coming unhinged. This whole process can feel a lot like being disabled – and some of us DO wind up on disability, unable to effectively work, with all these brain disturbances going on behind the eye holes.

As we push against our own disappearing mental faculties, trying to force things to work according to factory settings, we continue to add strain to the whole system. And eventually, we experience what they call “post-traumatic collapse.” This is when the brain finally can’t keep up with all the functions it’s being forced through, we can’t hide our symptoms anymore, and our ability to chug uphill through life finally comes to an end.

We have a full retraumatization. Our nerves are fried. Our brains are depleted. Our system reverts to nonfunctional status.

And this is where we doubt that we’ve ever really started to recover at all. That we’re even capable of getting better. That our brains and lives ARE manageable – because, look, asshole, we just really tried to weather this storm and it still wrecked us. Hell, we might not even KNOW what that provoking storm WAS – which makes the whole set of observed events even more concerning.

And we shall be judging ourselves for these perceived “failures,” all the while.

As if, you know, society and our social connections weren’t doing enough of that already. Truly… or just in our fearful, socially-oriented, approval-hungry, heads.

But here’s the good news, my Fucker.

It makes sense that this would happen. You aren’t the only one who’s experienced it – this shit is RESEARCHED in other people. And it isn’t a permanent deviation from functionality… if you don’t let it become a self-fulfilling prophecy, that is.

Of course, if you give up entirely and fall into a pattern of avoidance – yeah, you’ll never get the chance to re-emerge in the world and re-test what you’re capable of. Once we label and believe ourselves to be “disabled” it’s a tough hole to climb back out of. A lot of perspectives to re-write.

But if you don’t go that disastrous route… if you give yourself the resources that you need to heal those parts of you that have been calling for attention, acting up, and draining the well… time, space, and energy… then you can get your full brain back in your control again.

Distracting background programs closed. Daily “default mode” patterns of self-fuckery, dissipated. Distress, relieved. Energy, restored. Functionality, reinstated.

And this is called… resilience. Resilience is falling and getting back up. Experiencing backslides and trauma reignitions, being affected by them, but gathering up the chaps and moving forward again in the aftermath. Going through the cognitive shitholes and maybe getting lost in a pit here or there, but climbing your way back up from the bottom. And continuing to march. To find out what you’re really made of.

I bring this up, because I think a lot of us are told that “resilience” is the opposite. NOT being affected by life, whatsoever. Feeling the burn, but shutting it out and pushing our way through anyways.

In reality, this is “resistance” to trauma. And it’s a nice idea. But it’s unrealistic and a potential point of self-judgment for us.

Sure, someday you’ll be resistant to those triggers. The shit that used to really get your goat won’t touch the farmyard anymore. But that’s not possible until you’ve healed those pain points, so they hit you like a stubbed toe rather than breaking your fucking kneecap. And it’s unfair to expect more from yourself. In fact, it’s dangerous. See, all previous statements about the destruction we cause ourselves by focusing on our sense of incapacity.

So, when we DO suffer a busted joint? Well, it would be unwise to tell someone to just keep walking on it, limb dangling loosely as it’s dragged on the ground. It WOULD be wise… to rest. To give our brains exactly what they need to sort their shit out and recover. With our help, of course.

And those things that we require to patch ourselves back up, so we can get moving once more? Are going to be discussed in next week’s episode. But I’ll let you know, I already easter-egged the answer here today.

So. Don’t hate on yourself for any loss of functionality you might observe in the midst or the aftermath of a t-word event. Or, going back to the work example from earlier, when you’re trapped in a brutally t-word environment. Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t try to hide your symptoms from your self. Don’t push yourself to your own breaking point.

And especially don’t consider it a lifelong sentence if that executive functioning starts to fail. That’ll only drive you further into fearful patterns which further degrade your mental powers and sense of control.

You’re going to be alright. But first, you’re going to have to give yourself time to heal. And your brain will finally be able to work the way you expect it to, once again.

You’re a resilient – not resistant – motherfucker. And don’t you let anyone tell you otherwise.

Til we talk here again…

Hail your Self. Respect what your symptoms are telling you.

Hail our ability to get back up, even after a few trips and stumbles that feel like lifetimes.

Hail Archie, who did nothing but trip, stumble, crash, and fall… but that motherfucker always got back up, eventually. And he was congenitally missing half of his brain, by birth. That’s why he’s forever our mascot.

And cheers, ya’ll. I’ll see you out there, when you feel strong enough to start marching again.

Love ya. Take care out there. Bye.