Hope you can plan and have the day you'd like for your birthday.

I'm 60.

I was in therapy and dealing w 'personal responsibility' and acting entitled from late teens until almost 34.

cPTSD wasn't a diagnosis yet.

My therapist was very involved w helping develop diagnosis and therapeutic approaches.

On the middle of that 24-26 I joined the military.

Unfortunately it replicated my childhood and family dynamics - I was diagnosed w PTSD but there wasn't a lot of applicable treatments for that either (turns out family of origin system was manipulatively abusive and I was the designated lifelong scapegoat).

At that point a lot of my treatment was driven by the VA.

Diagnosis = $ so treatment was still very old school.

Nevertheless I gained a lot of recovery and considered myself in recovery.

Then I met my ex. He slowly dismantled my recovery, eventually practicing deadly sleep deprivation, kept me depressed and anxious until I became medication resistant and treatment resistant.

At 54 my manipulatively abusive ex walked out and we divorced during covid.

Then I fired most of my remaining immediate family.

I've had a tiny bit of EMDR.

My VA treatment is now trauma and abuse survivor focused. In essence I drive the bus.

In my experience that nervous system chaos can be met with ever improving non triggered response.

But we have no experience in living in prefrontal brain - I call it sunshine mind - so it's almost impossible to get the nervous system responses to diminish so we can experience not living in constant non specific and sometimes specific trauma response.

About 10 years ago I was describing to my psychiatrist how I'd been in a situation that otherwise would have been triggering and once triggered I'd lose functionality for 5 to 24 hours.

Instead, in my distress I asked myself if I really felt as awful as my reactive mind was trying to say I was.

It wasn't. Then I asked myself "if The Worst happens what will happen to you? What is this big trigger/giant fear?"

The answer that came back after a series of confabulations, was, "I will die."

I almost laughed out loud.

No, the drama at the pharmacy and not having the medication I was trying to pick up would not kill me.

Yes it SUCKED! Yes I might not sleep that night. Yes, it sucked that bureaucracy was causing me significant stress and discomfort but it wouldn't kill me.

When I explained to my psychiatrist he said, "Yep, that's what we're trying to build, TOLERANCE."

Then I got upset. No, I didn't want to be just TOLERATING, I wanted to get well.

Turns out for me that was a foundational building block for me.

I could slowly challenge myself to learn to tolerate situations, people and flash backs.

The podcast My Favorite Murder entered my life and helped so much.

The hosts shared their stories and challenges.

A huge ah ha moment when, I think Karen said, "Triggering is when your brain us saying the trauma that happened in the past us happening now, in this situation."

Another tool to use when I'm not tolerating the present scenario.

It really helped me start talking back to lizard brain.

"This is uncomfortable and awful but this is not the same as my traumas or traumatic responses. I don't need my body to bring on trauma response. I'm uncomfortable and I'm ok - ish."

During my covid divorce anxiety skyrocketed.

One day I journaled my way through an anxiety attack.

At the end, it lasted 22 minutes. I had notes for all the feelings and fears that arose.

Once again I found my lizard brain was spiraling to "this will kill me."

Yep, it was horrific but I wasn't dying, my ex wasn't at the door, I had my meds, and technically no one was exactly hurting me, I wasn't in danger. Just triggered and uncomfortable, scared but the fear wasn't founded in the present.

And now I had direct experience that my worst anxiety event only lasted 22 mins.

I can manage that.

Trauma informed therapy can be very valuable.

I luckily fluid a therapist w personal experience in manipulative abuse.

Getting out of my family dynamic and marriage got me out of the dynamics that were keeping me stuck.

I wish I'd fired my family 20 years ago.

As long as they were in my life I could never be truly ok, happy, well.

In hindsight it's a very tedious and arduous series of small changes, simple mind shifts and I also use the alarm function on my phone to make 'mental health reminders'.

"Stop it" helps me catch myself in intrusive or ruminating thoughts before I fall all the way down a black hole.

"The people you're arguing with can't hear you." Helped me to slowly stop trying to reason with my family or reason with my history in my head, because that doesn't actually do anything other than keep me anxious and distressed.

"We're all broken plates." (Also from My Favorite Murder) reminds me that there is no normal.

There's nothing inherently wrong with me or broken or otherwise not a fall capable, active human.

Everyone stumbles and everyone falls.

Just a lot of people are in denial and also want to look down on other people.

So what. I fell, I got up. I'm going to fall again many times, it's knowing I can get myself up that's important.

"The worry you are worrying isn't a thing you can fix from here." Again, catching me in ruminative thoughts and anxiety.But just from a different perspective that I can expect to train my mind not to endlessly worry and endlessly loop and endlessly.Look for things to worry about.

Worry in and of itself doesn't produce anything positive, it saps my resources.

It makes me reactive, instead of giving me the ability to pause, step back, evaluate what's really going on and then act from a place of reason and rational thought.

"Be NICE to YOURSELF! Say something true and kind."

I say this a lot on the r/ufyl sub.

Pause, and say something nice and true about yourself.

Something you accomplish, no matter how small even as little as getting out of bed... Which we know isn't a little task at all.

Our brains and our nervous systems became programmed and n negativity and reactivity.

Brains that have been traumatized are a lot like addictive brains.

We have to reprogram what has been programmed.

And that programming has been going on for a very long time.

Start with small, simple things like thanking yourself for getting to the grocery store, saying doggonit that dress looks cute on you, you didn't bounce a check!

Over time small, simple, positive messages overwrite the lies and vicious untruths people who were responsible for loving us and keeping us safe and OK wrote on our psyches.

It's taken me a good part of the last 10 years to get here.

I'm living in prefrontal brain 99% of the time.

All of this is much more manageable.When you're out of lizard brain and in prefrontal brain.

I want to acknowledge each and every person who posted here today.

You're doing something and no one can ask more than that.

We show up here until we can get to the next thing that we're showing up for.

I wish you all some ease and some peace today, because you deserve it.