From my journal for December 10, 1995<\/p>\n
I\u2019m feeling very lost and uncertain.\u00a0 <\/span>I finally finished Anna Salter\u2019s book because Lynelle said the last chapters were relevant to her situation.\u00a0 <\/span>Horrifyingly, I find them relevant to mine too, I see that I have a \u201ctrauma-based worldview,\u201d \u201ca profoundly hopeless sense of personal vulnerability and lack of efficacy in the face of what seems to be a random or even malevolent universe.\u201d (p252)\u00a0 <\/span>It looks like once that basic trust in a benign universe is broken, one doesn\u2019t ever get it back.\u00a0 <\/span>We just learn how to manage the pain.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cThe survivor\u2019s arsenal for reducing pain can be fairly extensive: remaking meaning, developing a cognitive life-raft; confronting the internal, perpetrator-based critic, behaviorally de-sensitizing; and consciously avoiding.\u00a0 <\/span>Even so, there will still be a need for self-soothing after doing all the pain reduction possible.\u00a0 <\/span>As in the serenity prayer, the adult survivor must self-soothe that pain that cannot be reduced, reduce that pain that cannot be self-soothed, and develop the wisdom to know the difference.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>(p295)\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s it.\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s the best I can do.\u00a0 <\/span>There\u2019s no \u201cmaking the pain go away.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m looking at the prospect of living the rest of my life in chronic psychological pain \u2014 so what\u2019s new?\u00a0 <\/span>I understand that I\u2019ve lived up til now in chronic psychological pain.\u00a0 <\/span>But I think I always had some hope that I could change it somehow, if I could just understand, it would go away.\u00a0 <\/span>But all I have done is just break the denial, become more conscious, eliminated the various distractions that I was using to self-medicate.\u00a0 <\/span>So now I\u2019m left with the pain.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t see any way out at all.\u00a0 <\/span>I look forward to struggling through the winter with various physical ailments, and struggling through the summer with the plane phobia.\u00a0 <\/span>Circle Dance is a small candle in a dark cavern.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s all I\u2019ve got.\u00a0 <\/span>Except for the knowledge that I love Dana, Shenanigan, Lynelle, Beverly, I love the trees and the rocks and the streams.\u00a0 <\/span>I wish there were also feelings of love, it would make it a little easier to be in this grim desert.\u00a0 <\/span>I wish I believed in God, or the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, but I have no sense of a benevolent spiritual force.\u00a0 <\/span>I think of Jesus, and the pain of being forsaken by God, but even that doesn\u2019t seem very real right now.<\/p>\n
I almost wish it weren\u2019t so beautiful outside.\u00a0 <\/span>The contrast makes the dark deadness inside more painful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I wish I had written the name of Anna Salter’s book. \u00a0I suspect it was Transforming Trauma<\/a>, because it was published in 1995. It’s about treating adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse.<\/p>\n
I talk about “basic trust in a benign universe.” This is an idea that Kaethe Weinberg talks about in her book Common Shock<\/a>. She wrote that “children raised in a \u201cgood enough\u201d environment grow up with three assumptions:\u00a0 the Universe is Benevolent, Life is Meaningful, the Self is Worthy.\u00a0 Trauma breaks this basic safety, suddenly the Universe is Malevolent, Life is Meaningless, the Self is Not Worthy.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From my journal for December 10, 1995 I\u2019m feeling very lost and uncertain.\u00a0 I finally finished Anna Salter\u2019s book because Lynelle said the last chapters were relevant to her situation.\u00a0 Horrifyingly, I find them relevant to mine too, I see … Continue reading