Focused Self-Therapy Goals

Okay, so – besides updating with any news of my life (of which there should be very little for a while, and that is by design!) I am going to focus my entries on 2 things: sim images of important people in my life (good and bad) and how they affect me, which I’ve already begun and then doing some active journal work addressing trauma issues. I’ll go back and forth, as the whim takes me, and just keep sharing my personal stuff and what I’ve learned about trauma from various books and podcasts.

After this, I’ve decided to switch to active IFS self-therapy. I had already started around this time last year with the group therapy, but I want to continue and really dive down. I think I’ll even use that whole “sim making” skill I have and create sims of the various Selves I’ve met in dreams! That could be fun! All while explaining how IFS (or Internal Family Systems therapy) works.

I really want to process this stuff so I can actually move on. I’m getting better steadily just being away from trauma and in a safe environment, but I have backslides and my progress is too slow for my own satisfaction. I’ve done this kind of writing therapy before, and it seems to help. At least it gets my higher cognitive parts of my brain on board.

Meanwhile, in addition, as I live in a “green” state, I’ve done my research and am now experimenting with marijuana. Various types have various effects, and I found an oral spray that works to stop anxiety attacks (and I’m hoping panic as well) in under 10 minutes! That’s important because once I start to get amped up, it gets progressively more difficult to calm down again. Cutting off the process as early as possible is crucial. (Edibles take 1 to 2.5 HOURS to hit you fully, so they don’t cut it.) I’ve smoked a very tiny bit, but I’m not a smoker and it kills my lungs. However, to learn the effects of various kinds, I’ve been trying a new kind every other month or so, about 2 joints worth, in a single hit or two at a time. I’m a VERY cheap date!

Honestly, the ganja works as well as, or better than, Ativan does. Less side effects too!

NOT that I want drugs to be the answer, just that my research shows that PTSD basically means that my brain’s reactions are well beyond my ability to overcome on my own, and I need to carefully ‘re-train’ it to stop hyper-reacting to every darned trigger! If that means I use medicine thoughtfully, then so be it. I surrender! I need more help than ‘willpower.’ Its the primitive, animalistic parts of my brain that take over during panic attacks and anxiety, and those survival parts trump every higher cognitive brain function. This is fact. So I need a multitude of strategies in order to end this cycle of suffering.

Wish me well!