Written as a work-in-progress, a conversation-oriented towards life becoming life anew, this thread offers perspectives on PTSD, shaped by perspectives based on experience of it and all else so far.

Some ways of seeing, ways of being…

de-solation…

and later here.

Since time and space are here understood as perceptual, differences between ‘here and there/now and then’ are effects of shifts in perspective; of movements in the viewer’s point of view.

These perspectives are stated here, as they may assist you or someone(s) connected with you who

• experiences the condition
• has questions regarding how lived experience can find its place beyond it

These points of navigation towards access to desire; desire decomposes by this type of experience.

A few words on desire, defined here as:

• life as vector
• a pulsation, a gesture of the soul towards its expression, realisation;
• your desire is your compass.

Desire is an index of life, even when lived experience feels unbearable.

Desire is rarely articulated directly but through infinite resonances. A retraction from desire at one level is -most probably- serving desire at a more fundamental level. We are navigating this as unknowable-in-advance, yet potentially recognisable retrospectively.

The place of confusion, misperception, disorientation is vital and probably inevitable to some extent. We are subject to the knowledges, thoughts, understandings and beliefs available to us; as and when they are available to us. They come to us through innumerable pathways: our dispositions (preferences, desires, affections, passions, states); through our communities, our learning, our training, our accidental encounters, our revelations and inspirations, our deductions in an unfolding lifelong journey. This path of life’s unfolding is the one we are on; however, it may seem, we don’t seem to stray from it, even when we fall over, and over, keep getting up and falling over, until one day we begin falling less, weeping less, smiling more, laughing more heartily, loving becomes less fraught, seeing more, fearing less; believing less and less in our nemesis, realising the orientation and creative power offered by our desire.

So often defined in ways that give rise to reading its direction as a lethal path, desire is the vital force that inevitably guides our lives. And the lethal force? This arises in power only to the extent that we do not know how to read it or to navigate the fields of desire. Unable to admit the gap that our desires open, we try to kill them. In so doing, we cannot avoid their resurrection in ill or monstrous forms. The lethal forces arise from the fodder of our unknowing how to do with life, and specifically in the ways that it touches us most intimately.

A few terms/perspectives on trauma as lived in PTSD, understood here as:

• an experience of an absolute, non-negotiable force/impact opposing one’s desire
  • resonances with the idea of ‘irresistible force meets immovable object’;
  • the immovable object is that which is most sacred, most precious to you;
• this opposing force presents itself as the Final Word on the matter;
  • the matter corresponds to the ‘Meaning of Life’ (MoL) as perceived by the experiencer;
  • for trauma to occur, something of considerable force must rock or seem to defeat that which delights you;
  • although it seems defeated, life (desire) is indestructible, it comes back, again and again, and again;
• an experience that defeats (unceasingly attacks) the point of view that is the current personality;
  • the current personality can and does change; if or how is the decision of the subject;
  • the current personality cannot change if it doesn’t know how to do so without giving up on that which is most sacred to that life (person) it represents;
• upholding a perspective that includes distance necessitates the support of geometry
  • grasping the comprehensive nature of this geometry requires grasping something of the elements common to both macrocosm and microcosm – as far as we can project our thinking,
    • at least it seems to be so in this language, in this speech community;
  • references Einstein, space-time, and the conversations around classical and quantum mechanics of the physical (material) world all that is matter.
    • I formally studied physics only to age 16, so this is within the field of awareness of a non-specialist.
  • Referencing matter implies the immaterial, which is not so easy to describe or encompass. How so? Many reasons, one of which relates to the meta-non-data (information as organising structures) that make possible our awareness of our consciousness – including our very sense of being alive. Immaterial data that underpins how we process and interpret information into meaning.
  • If that is disturbed, we are troubled…
  • oh, ok. Do you hear it too? Does this have any connection to our immovable object?
  • Probably
• The Psychoanalytic definition of trauma is as ‘something that cannot be assimilated into the body of knowledge’. It holds good against the demands of experience.
  • the implication here is that the body of knowledge has to be modified in order to be able to take the experience into account; to either understand it or coalesce with it, including the necessity of integrating such an event into an entire chain of shifting perspectives extending along lifespans.
  • Absolute conclusions most often must shift, become relativised to a frame of reference (Einstein) even if – eventually – the new conclusion is that trauma is not absolutely absolute, even though it seems to be so for a very very long time when one cannot know otherwise.

Since language is a key element of the consistency of ptsd, I aim to write in a way that takes this into account. More will, no doubt, come to be said about language as this thread unfolds.

• the triggering of flashbacks appears to arise from a few preconditions that line up to produce a distinct effect:
  • a fear relating to our sacred object (this may not be obvious but my guess is that it is a common feature)
  • a catastrophic event involving our sacred object;
  • this gives credence and, therefore, mass to the fear and the way of thinking, feeling and being that it relates to.
  • something is said (spoken) that consecrates the above and refers it (in some way) that touches on the core of the being of the perceiver: hearer, seer, experiencer.
  • this gives one’s worst fears the status of an Absolute Truth, an infinite magnitude given to a seemingly inescapable, all-encompassing, unacceptable MoL;
  • our MoL is the sum of all our experience to date, a proximate to our centre-of-gravity; virtual point of convergence of all axes. It probably functions best as an open, unconcluded place that includes experience but doesn’t close into petrified definitions.

to be continued…in the meantime,

A simple sketch of an experience and some viable directions towards life:

For this author, experience under the dominance of PTSD imposes an indefinite not-knowing if or how life could be possible, other than as non-life in the intense shadow of the event… but…

• retrospectively, the experience of beyond this indicates that it is possible, but not guaranteed, and the time-scale has its own unfolding. The personality is not in any way in control of this.
  • it is now 41 years since the event
  • flashbacks set in a few weeks afterwards, triggered by a conversation (reference language, speech).
  • flashbacks ceased following the birth of a child around a year later
    • prior to this, one day, during the pregnancy, a single thought arose from amongst the ashes of the wasteland, ‘When the baby is born, this madness will stop.’ and it was so. (reference language, thought)
    • One month after the birth, she looked back and saw that there had been none since the birth.

Luckily, this was the end of that part- ie the incessant-several-times-daily repetition of an impact of absolute mass. The love for a child, new life, something to love again, to give a compass, a vital starting point, was enough to close that particular door of perception in this case. Investment in life, becoming absorbed in something else, seems to be the source of power to begin dislodging the trauma from its place of seeming absolute power. The Final Word becomes not so final, after all.

• It was not the end of the PTSD, as repercussions of experience remain with us, for good or ill. Where flashbacks are the experience of the direct impact, there are many impacts that continue to be experienced indirectly:
  • eg, perceptual issues with memory, sequencing, recall, difficulties with concentrating on reading, on decision making, living within the parameters allowed by the trauma, unless one is dedicated to not remaining enslaved beneath a crushing force.
  • for around 8 years, she felt that she didn’t want to contaminate others with what she was ‘radiating’, so kept a distance.
• 7 years on, she entered psychoanalysis on the birth of a second child, a daughter, on seeing/realising a line of succession of catastrophe in the family lineage (4 generations of women, grandmother, mother, the subject, and the new daughter). The realisation forged a decisive and unceasing moves towards transforming the legacy that would be handed on to the next generation; (ideas: disarmament, de-escalation, diffusion of explosive impacts; a wheel turning around 180 degrees.)
• There were 3 arcs of analysis, from the 2nd on these were related to psychoanalytic training. The material spoken there dealt with ‘everything else’; not the ptsd.
  • it couldn’t be said,
  • she didn’t believe that another could help with that,
  • she still didn’t want to bring radioactive material to others, unless its destructive power could yield to transformation. this permitted
    • the extraction of use value – a clinical, therapeutic value of a more workable grasp of the coordinates and implications of trauma, including what we gain from it;
    • awareness that the sacred cannot be destroyed for the subject, it awaits new forms; new forms given by our thinking;
    • awareness that the trauma is intimately bound up in the sacred;
• What psychoanalysis did contribute was vital but indirect. It enabled her to
  • build more and more degrees of freedom into the direction of her life, transforming the life energy ensnared in trauma into forms of desire;
  • modify her body of knowledge, so admit gaps that permit different knowledges to coalesce, not least the coalescing of the sacred with the fact of devastating events and their after-maths.
• Around 28 years after the event (AtE) it became possible to speak of the core experience – in a formulated mode – as here. Before then, it rarely issued any words or press releases or inclination to be spoken. It was a speech no-go zone, a mocking presence existing as a clear, absolute knowledge of an embodied experience, with geometry, a sequence; and a Chaplinesque comedy of a repeating loop – over and over, and still, even when it was over.
• Around 28 years after the event, she was listening to news items about US veterans and ptsd and had a thought, something like. ‘Oh, that’s the name of what happened then.’ There had been no name to it in her awareness until that moment.
• Even now, she is aware that speaking or thinking about it – speaking about it especially – must be approached with care if some anxiety is not to be triggered. The anxiety presents as a body-event – eg, palpitations.
• This embodied anxiety doesn’t get out of hand, as the trauma has been teaching her, bringing her to new knowledges. For example, she now knows:
  • that this anxiety is a sign to back away from it and she does;
  • how to bring calm and equanimity to herself and herself to the place that she wants to be.
  • She now knows that desire (life) is stronger than trauma, which is a disturbance of perception that has very real impacts on lived experience.
  • knowing these things enables a clearer grasp of many aspects of life for which they have implications;
• She doesn’t ever think of it now and thoughts of it don’t come to her directly ever, except as the reference arises for sharing useful knowledge/awareness with others – like writing this blog.

What steps can potentially work for someone to dislodge the dominance of traumatic idea?

• A different perspective from which life can be considered in all its diversity and complexity. My experience says that there is a transcendent perspective that is not excluded either by physics or biology. For each human being, it is personalised nature is linked to their intimate desire. In fact, it is present as the benchmark against which we discern our preferences. 
• It can be perpetually deferred or ruled out by discreet beliefs for a very long time or even indefinitely.
• This cannot be forced by so-called, ‘good sense’ coming from someone/somewhere else. It has to be found ‘within’.

Minimal cultivation of fertile foundations for life, bringing lived experience toward equanimity as a starting point:

1. Breathing – Basics
   • Fundamentals of breathing with practical exercises
   • https://breatheologyworld.com
2. Yoga Meditative Practice
   • In person courses for Beginners through to Advanced Training https://www.ishafoundation.org 
   • Learn Yoga Online – Isha Upa Yoga Practices – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf5qUhz-FVk
3. Daily breathing practice 15-20mins: resting word-based thought
   • reading the effects of thought on experience;
     • deciding where thought is permitted to go;
     • realising that it is – in principle – within the gift of the thinker to decide where thought goes;
       • traumatic flashbacks seem to go against the above, as the personality structure is totally overwhelmed in the moments of the flashbacks, and is impinged upon by the prospect of the next one in the other moments.
       • this thinker’s flashbacks initially would ambush whenever she momentarily forgot the preceding catastrophic event. There may be particular reasons for this in her history, or it may be a related to the nature of the triggering conversation: someone told her details of the event that she had tried to avoid hearing, without either of them realising that this was happening at the time. So, the impactful speech act happened against the grain of what she was trying to achieve at the time. The event caught up with her. Was it irrevocable destiny; would she ever be free of its dominance? For a very long time, she believed not. She was right and not; more later.
       • the flashbacks (repeated mental experience) took on the form related to an impactful sentence spoken. This indicates that language – speech acts/verbalised thoughts – lends form to experience.
       • incrementally moving toward steering your thoughts; however, it may seem to the contrary, knowing that it is your prerogative to come to be able to decide what you pay attention to; setting your intention to accomplish this with EASE; easing up on believing that your thoughts decide for you is crucial. All of this is a vital context that furnishes the texture of your experience. With the stillness of a daily meditative practice permeating experience, you will be able to cultivate the room for manoeuvre you need to begin directing your life in conformity with your desire.
       • There is no way that this author is aware of to come to steer your own life without testing out for yourself what works and what doesn’t.
4. Structured Handplay – this is a big topic -subjectivising and perceptual organisation of spacetime – but in the meantime, here is a summary: Structured handplay has immediate structuring effects, some discreet, some dramatic – as it introduces perceptual tools – using geometric forms – that allow the mind to improve perceptual organisation and integration;
   • ROMBi – wooden block puzzle custom-designed for improving perceptual organisation/spatial awareness quickly and reliably, from which positive developments follow: http://www.rombipuzzle.com
   • The Art of Treeplanting is Soil Preparation. A list of basic – mainly free – tools/resources for cultivating conditions for thriving are listed here: https://access-1st.blog/blog

With 1 and or 2 above, preferably both, you are better placed for any next step you take than you would be without them. With access to a little space, a little stillness and the geometric compass points in your embodied experience, whatever else you invest in (analysis/therapy/coaching, sport, education, enterprise, whatever,) will bear richer fruits more quickly than they would without them.

If the previous upbeat sentence is too far too fast, we can deal with this in the Q & A.

Attunement to internal verification processes and improved moment to moment navigation and decision making is both crucial and possible. It has taken me many years to distil the confidence that I am expressing here. In sharing this with you, I wager that it doesn’t have to take you quite as long.

As we have a clearer grasp regarding how various aspects of mind co-operate, it becomes possible to see new ways of finding or building ways out, ways beyond. One by one, each reclaiming their life to their person; a person both vitally the same but also quite different.

(C) Author, Axis of the Storm, 2018