Recovering The Mind Into Presence

Recovering can feel incongruent and dangerous when stress is flowing, so you may want to even look at it as an act of defiance in operating the body above and beyond the level the survival brain had been running it on. 

Under the influence of stress, the body will naturally keep breathing in a pattern that keeps the survival response running, until the survival brain knows we are safe, and this is how human beings are all still alive here today as a species. 

The challenge is most people don't know they can recover or the measures they can take to recover, and most importantly they have not been muscle memorizing these measures in order to build a safety default that helps wake the higher functioning mind up when stress puts it to sleep. 

Through everything you see, reestablish working connection between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, realize the present moment you're in doing this from; this is what's most important. 

Hold this present moment for longer periods of time at a time through whatever level of emotional intensity you've developed your ability to withstand so far. Wake up in the realization of the present moment you are in, Give yourself the same grace you would give a 3 year old child for the mind running in the first place, and you are doing some profound healing work. 

As a self healing survival based organisms, the human body heals itself. Psychological healing requires our active participation, realizing presence as our most natural state of being, knowing we can heal, we realize a greater sense of hope in healing and we begin healing. When we actively participate in our own healing, we accelerate our healing.  

Adaptive / healthy coping generally:

• Reduces stress long term 
• Improves health and relationships 
• Builds resilience 
• Increases emotional regulation

In contrast, maladaptive coping is an inadvertently self descructive way of providing one's self with a quick sense of relief from overwhelming pain, (the bad stuff) in order to gain the time and space necessary for the mind to figure out what's causing the pain and neutralize it.

Examples of Maladaptive coping include, but are not limited to: 

• Abusing drugs / alcohol
• Overeating 
• Overexercising 
• Intellectualizing 
• Anger used to create temporary feelings of control 
• Isolation used to reduce perceived danger 
• Dissociation used to numb unbearable stress 
• Hypervigilance used to feel protective 
• Overworking used to prevent emotional collapse 
• People-pleasing used to reduce risk of conflict or abandonment

Maladaptive Coping is doing something to feel better without fixing what caused the pain. 

I have done this in many ways, and I am very guilty of maladaptive coping. 

From abusing alcohol to lifting weights at the gym for several hours per day with adrenaline as opposed to form, control, or discipline, I did everything I could to avoid looking at the pain for as long as possible. 

Intellectualization can be done by the human mind with sports teams / player statistics, work projects, etc. It's remaining cognitively preoccupied in the analytical portion of the mind operation, while subconsciously knowing there's still the emotional and physiological portions to deal with. It's kind of like my mind using logic to delay the onset of emotions for as long as possible. 

I have intellectualized lots of things in my life to escape the intense feelings associated with traumatic memories. I have also learned to sit through the biological lifespan of emotions to realize presence on the other side of them to the best of my ability so far. This teaches my survival brain I am safe here and now. 

As I am healing healthier I am becoming more capable of retaining my perceptive awareness in this present moment, through emotions of greater intensity for longer periods of time. My mind dissociates alot, almost contantly at times, but not as constantly as it use to and not as intensely. 

I remember, one day after trauma therapy, considering that if all things being equal, there are the factors of negative, neutral, and positive involved in everything, then there must be negative, neutral, and positive aspects of dealing with trauma.  

After completing 14 weeks of Intensive OutPatient PTSD treatment I needed a break, but remained determined in my healing. I didn't want to jump right into the positive side because it seemed unrealistic, and I wanted to avoid a polarity swing, so I decided to first focus on everything neutral I could about three things:

1. Trauma Remembered 

2. OurSelves as standalone entities to any trauma remembered

3. The process to healing from psychological trauma

The neutral approach opened up all kinds of avenues in Self understanding, the world we live in and on, the understanding about why physisists describe the world we experience as holographic, or what the term, "Life is an illusion" is referring to, without addressing the "Why" it's an illusion component. 

Although technically still maladaptive, I justified intellectualizing and investigating the operation behind trauma experienced, along with the corrective measures to help recalibrate the nervous system / endocrine system after changes from trauma, ultimately to feel better sooner rather than later. 

It made sense to me that if I am going to dive into one subject and intellectualize it, it may as well be understanding trauma to heal from it. 

Intellectualizing this stuff provided me with great relief, however intellecualizing is maladaptive because it involves dissociating. What I am teaching my survival brain to do is return to presence from dissociation. Instead of my mind dissociating negatively in trauma pain, or positively in fantasy, my mind was dissociating neutrally by intellectualizing. 

Actual healing didn't begin until I learned to hold my mind awake and present through the biological lifespan of emotions (usually saying something like, "Yep this is terrible" for at least a little bit longer at a time. Holding my mind awake to the best of my ability allowed me to begin teaching my survial brain that, no matter what no emotions can kill me, they only feel like they can. 

(Note - The biological lifespan of emotions is only about 90 seconds, and not 2 weeks like I once thought, which showed me this is possible to do).

There's a fine balance between understanding something to reduce uncertainty and be better able to deal with it, and intellectualizing a topic (especially an unrelated topic) to avoid dealing with the emotions provoked by specific memories. 

Understanding is necessary, intellectualizing is maladaptive.