Ya know, it’s been a rough fucking ride for the past 18 months. I’ve slacked on some duties – like updating this blog, for instance – to keep things afloat. Ya know, my inner critic hasn’t let me forget it.

But podcast and community-wise, it’s been full steam ahead! We’ve already covered a lot of the CPTSD basics and beyond… and that needs to be relayed for the Fuckers who are looking for answers.

If you haven’t been around since day one, let’s catch up on the “family trauma and relational PTSD aftermath” story so far.

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This is a show about living with complex trauma. Key words… living with. As in, learning enough about it to understand your brain programming, to process what’s happened in life, and to figure out how to work with the trauma-artifacts that you might still be carrying around… in the name of moving forward, instead of being defined by the destitute picture in the rear view mirror.

SO to summarize what we’ve learned:

• Trauma is the experience of your brain “splitting” memories between your logical, narrative, set of recollections (AKA, how you humanly perceive and report on things that have happened), AND your experiential, visceral memories (i.e. your feelings, sensory information, visuals, emotions, and whatnot – how your BODY remembers things that have happened).
• When you can’t process one set of data in line with the other, you can’t lay those memories in the “historical information” pile and move on. Instead, your head just keeps replaying those old bangers with no sign of relief. Hey, those are called flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, and ruminations.
• This is an issue at the time of our historical trauma, because it lays the ground for what we know as “PTSD.” But this recollective “uncoupling” also tends to become an easily accessible brain function after repeat chances to practice it.
• In this way
• Emotional dissociation (or, numbing) is the experience of being overwhelmed by the visceral side of things, using your energetic resources in your logical center to keep surviving, instead.
• Cognitive dissociation (or, feeling blank and foggy) is the opposite. Overriding your logical human brain because there are too many feels to deals with.
• When one system isn’t synced up with the other, we wind up with big backlogs of information to sort through whenever our systems are less freaked out. Hence, those big emotional tsunamis or sudden periods of cognitive mania when all the details are suddenly rushing back to you after “browning out” for some amount of time.
• Moving on.
• Our neural networks are like… 80% of our mental illness issues, if you ask me. What’s that mean? Your experiences are all trapped in your head, in some way or another. Everything you’ve seen, heard, thought, smelled, read… whatever. And it’s organized in webs or networks, not in neat little piles.
• Over time, we have a tendency to prune or reiterate our neural connections, depending on our brain activity. Practically meaning, if you aren’t thinking about an event (on purpose via shame or on accident via having other shit to think about) you might manage to compartmentalize that portion of your brain cells. It becomes inaccessible. Until.. You know… the day that one of your neural connections accidentally pings that forgotten pathway.
• We also have a tendency to over-connect and over-activate some of our brain cells. This is how we get generalized reactions to things, like anxiety. It’s how we get default thinking and behavioral programs that might become lifelong ways of existing if left unexamined.
• Looking broadly at neural networks versus our internal energy management… I believe, these de-activating and over-activating issues are how we can easily wind up with obsessive and attentionally deficient patterns. Are your brain cells TOO intertwined to keep your thoughts on one pathway? Or are they TOO compartmentalized and “sticky,” to where you can’t get OUT of a pathway after wandering down it?
• If we think about how this relates to getting stuck in depressive spirals, inner critic battles, anxious attachments, addictions, hypervigilant traps, and so much more… well, there you go. Sticky brain programs – bits of neural networks that act like escapeless traffic circles we accidentally set to “default mode” – are what I like to blame.
• And, uh, what else? You’re always on edge because you were trained that you had to be. You’re highly sensitive to people sounds and “vibe changes” because you were trained you had to be. You’re likely to be a bit of a malleable martyr OR a valiant narcissist because you were trained you had to be. Rumination, shame, depression, and PTSD are all somewhat inextricable brain mechanisms meant to keep you alive….

I mean, the list goes on… we’ve covered a lot of brain mystery explanations already on the show, but I think this is at least a good place to get started with understanding mental illness.

Throw in family cognitive and emotional patterning, our love for abuse dynamics, and our tendency to lose our continuous sense of “self”… and, hey, we’ve really run the full trauma gamut.

But there’s always more trauma archaeology to do, huh?

Tune in to hear the next round of “Oh, that’s trauma?” discussions, digging into experiential and academic information explaining the baffling parts of operating this stupid fucking human brain.

See you there!

Cheers,

Jess

For all the details in this brief discussion, hit up the Patreon.com/traumatizedmotherfuckers backlog of episodes.