~Anonymous

When I bring up the word forgiveness to people most greet it with a sigh. The sentiment often embodies something along the lines of “I’ve tried”, “good luck,” or “what a struggle.” To forgive in our modern culture seems to be a mountain to climb, a long arduous road, and in the worst case an unattainable destination. But in my journey of healing, I have found transformation in perspective and persistence. Where so often we take ideas of things such as happiness, love, worthiness, and self-esteem and establish ourselves as other, or separate, the reality is we create greater proximity towards our desired outcomes through our willingness to become a student to the world around us. When we shift the way we see ourselves towards the greater outcomes we’d like to create in our lives, what was once an impossible obstacle becomes a journey that changes us.

“It’s the journey that matters, not the destination.”

~Ralph Waldo Emmerson

As a survivor of Childhood Sexual abuse forgiveness has been anything but easy. The confusion of growing up with my perpetrator and a family who did not protect me left a deep scar of broken trust that has been a difficult maze of unconscious rage and unstable attachment. I learned from a very early age to not believe what I was feeling on a physical and emotional level. Yet each choice and decision to change and take another step forward has created the momentum for me to begin to take full responsibility for my experiences and life. From setting new boundaries, and daily self-care, to trying new therapies and embracing my own brand of spirituality. Bit by bit the incremental shifts allowed the quantum shift of being willing, open, or just considering forgiveness to take place. 

“Become life’s student or get schooled.”

So what do I mean when I say take full responsibility? 

When we make the perspective shift from “Why me?”, “Why did this happen to me?” into “What can I learn from this?” or “What is this experience teaching me?” we begin to take back control of our lives from the situation/s that we’ve felt helpless and victimized from.

Now I’m not saying this is an easy fix or an overnight transition but when we start to make the pivots toward empowering ourselves personal responsibility is the first ingredient. 

• Full responsibility does not mean you are at fault for your abuse
• Full responsibility does mean you are responsible for how you handle it and what you do with your pain.

“One common but mistaken belief is that forgiveness means letting the person who hurt you off the hook. Yet forgiveness is not the same as justice, nor does it require reconciliation, (Worthington). A former victim of abuse shouldn’t reconcile with an abuser who remains potentially dangerous, for example. But the victim can still come to a place of empathy and understanding. “Whether I forgive or don’t forgive isn’t going to affect whether justice is done,” (Worthington). “Forgiveness happens inside my skin.” (Weir, 2017)

When we take ownership of our lives and choose to make the adjustments that our difficult experiences are asking us to make we are not only empowering ourselves to take back control of our lives but at the same time we are releasing what we can’t control and letting our pain guide us through a portal that not only heals us but changes the way we interact with the world. 

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

~The Serenity Prayer

This looks like having more energy, feeling a greater sense of purpose and connectedness, less stress, having a calmer mind, ease in the body, deeper access to emotions, greater levels of happiness, and more profound healing experiences. These choices to take responsibility for our pain and let go of holding on to blame and victimization are the building blocks of what forgiveness is made from and create the momentum for the greater paradigm shift of healing that forgiveness offers. 

My Journey With Forgiveness:

Bob Enright Ph.D. and Co-Founder of the International Forgiveness Institute has identified a 4 stage process to forgiveness.

1. Uncovering Phase or (Uncovering One’s Anger)

The uncovering phase constitutes the beginning of awareness and the emotional upheaval and pain that comes with fully understanding and feeling whatever trauma or injustice we may have experienced. (Enright, 2022)

“Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

~Carl Gustav Jung

I had been running for quite some time, not knowing why I felt the way I did or why I acted how I did. From poor grades, mental health problems, and ticks, to vandalization, early-aged drinking, drugs, and theft. I was angry and while I didn’t have the awareness to speak about what happened to my body, my subconscious did it for me. My pain couldn’t be contained. After graduating late in high school, leaving my family with a backpack, and riding freight trains across the U.S. the pain was still there. Not enough weed, distance, or distraction could push it away. The further I got from my family the more I sensed it like an upset stomach gurgling in the depths of my body. It took me going back for a visit all the way across the country. From California where I had gotten a job that winter, living and working on a farm, back to Detroit to remember the abuse. It was a flood of tears and knowing. A voice spoke deep down from inside me, it wasn’t my own conscious voice but an echo from a little boy who had never been heard or seen. One evening in my parent’s house after my family had flown me back for a week at Christmas time, I told my brother and sister what had happened. Our father had molested me. Crying intensely the tears felt as though they had come from out of nowhere a sense of detachment from what I had spoken encompassed the whole experience as many more spontaneous fits of crying would follow throughout the week, still unable to feel the weight or emotional context of what was beginning to surface. It wasn’t till I arrived back at the farm that my friend Andrea looked at me and told me, “Jeff, I don’t think going back there was good for you.” 

Back in California, what I had shared with my brother and sister quickly disappeared from my mind as my emotions began remembering what my mind already had. Soon my seasonal work on the farm came to a close and I found myself an emotional mess. Unable to feel much in the form of emotional stability while facing the inevitable prospect of going back to the street. My friend Andrea from the farm had agreed to come with me as he was curious about riding freight trains and completely unaware of how much I was struggling emotionally inside. As we left the farm together I became a pressure cooker of emotional distress. The instability and stress of living on the street coupled with the enormous weight of the trauma that was coming up gave me no outlet or way to cope and all I wanted to do was run. 

Exploding at Andrea and pushing him away with quiet anger our friendship began to fray. There on the beach in L.A., his patience had run thin. Telling me he planned to leave once and for all. I had no clue that the intense emotions I had been feeling overwhelmed with, nor the push and pull behavior I had with him had anything to do with what I had remembered about my father. As Andrea stood up and turned to leave, something from inside me erupted once again. Through tears, I found the familiar words I had told my brother and sister without conscious thought. It felt as though I knew he was my only form of safety or hope. Sitting down he waited till I stopped crying and looking at me told me he would make sure I got help.

      2. Decision Phase (Deciding To Forgive)

The Decision Phase happens when the person realizes that continuing to hold onto whatever trauma or injustice will ultimately be more damaging and that the choice to forgive has become an option to work towards. (Enright, 2022)

“F-E-A-R

Fuck Everything And Run

or

Face Everything And Rise”

It had been two years since I had gotten off the street. Settling in Asheville North Carolina I had gone through a series of unstable housing situations, a hospitalization for suicidality and now finally I had a job, a home, and a therapist. Sitting in her office one day she told me about how she had gone through a similar experience with abuse when she was younger. I was amazed as she seemed so stable and strong, it gave me hope. Looking at me from her chair she asked, do you think one day you might be able to forgive? Something inside me knew that it was an important piece for me and my experience but I could not let go let alone relax with the memories and trauma I sat with. “Maybe one day,” I told her. 

     3. Work Phase

This includes the willingness to look at and understand why the perpetrator of the injury may have done what they have done and begin to develop empathy, not to excuse but to humanize the transgressor. This phase also includes acceptance of the pain in order to take responsibility for the pain felt from the injustice and not avoid it by passing it on to others or giving it back to the transgressor. Goodwill may be offered to the transgressor while maintaining appropriate safety and boundaries depending on what is deemed safe and healthy by the individual. (Enright, 2022)

As I pushed on, my life became an ebb and flow of normal life stuff, negotiating bills, work, and friends but always dealing with my trauma. The pain would not go away and it consistently colored and showed itself in how I interacted with the world. I had so much rage toward my father and my grandfather. I would work on it in therapy trying everything I could find. From breathwork and core energetics to even having a session where I acted out killing my father and the perpetrators. It was healing to let out the anger but as my therapist warned it is best to get it out and move on, not sit in it. Finding more help with off-the-beaten-path therapies like Network Spinal Analysis, I found myself losing the charge of anger and resentment that had built up over time. The distressing anger and emotional discomfort I felt when I thought of my father slowly began to diffuse. My body began to feel lighter, I had less tension I was holding onto, and with that sense of ease, I could relax into a more neutral place. I wasn’t my trauma, I wasn’t what happened to me and while I had no desire to have a relationship or reconcile with my father in the physical world I began to see the situation for what it was and who he was. 

     4. Outcome / Deepening Phase

The Individual begins to see relief and progress from the pain and weight of trauma. May find purpose in the pain experienced. May discover a new direction in life. Understands the paradox of Forgiveness: When we give to others and love others we in turn are healed.
(Enright, 2022)

“When you stand up to the pain of what happened to you and offer goodness to the person who hurt you, you change your view of yourself.” (Weir, 2017)

Slowly I began to find myself going deep within and beyond the pain, I felt. I was a different person. It was true I couldn’t take what happened back, but now I wouldn’t even if I could. I knew that who I had become was far better, more whole, and happier than who I had been or where I had come from. I was grateful for it. So often it’s not the destination but the journey where we heal and change. I saw my father for who he was, a wounded person who had not taken responsibility for the things that happened to him all while he passed it on. Yes, I was angry. Yes, it hurt but now I was empowered because I chose differently. I made the choice to stand in my pain, own it, and not pass it on. No longer could he intimidate me and no longer did I need to hide what had happened. Instead, I chose to transform it. In 2021 I sold everything I owned and bought a one-way ticket to Italy. Since then I finished writing a book about my experience with my traumas and time on the street. Setting up a speaking program I’ve begun sharing my story with youth here in Europe. The more I share the more I realize how connected we all are and the more I realize the trauma was a trauma of shame and isolation. When I speak to the pain the mask I wear dissolves even more and the unspoken between me and the rest of the world thins. In this, I have found we truly are a reflection of each other and my forgiveness has been a choice to no longer let what has happened to me control who I am.

My anger is so red

Heat pulsating

I douse it with water

And watch it drain from my heart through my eyes

I breathe

Our anger we carry around as our armor to protect us

Fighting a world we are apart of

Fighting ourselves

I feel it breaking

I feel the fragments of a mirror falling to the floor

And I no longer see a broken reflection

But a whole world I’am apart of

A whole world I’am

~Jeff Spiteri

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Jeff Spiteri

Jeff Spiteri is an author of the unpublished book ‘The Bridge Within’ a memoir chronicling his experiences as a homeless young adult riding freight trains around the United States and the childhood trauma he uncovered along the way. Jeff is proud to use his voice as an instrument of influence, guidance and impact with young adults and educators sharing his experiences and tools for resilience and healing.

www.thebridgewithin.com

There I was stuck on a boat on the river Thames in a far western area of London. I flew from Denmark with only a couple hundred Euro in my pocket and the opportunity to work with a youth organization. I had arranged a volunteering position on this houseboat where I could trade a few hours of work a day for food and a place to sleep from a questionable website I typically didn’t use. I had known it was a sketchy decision but out of fear of losing more money I chose to not pay for a subscription from one of the more popular life and work internet platforms as this one was free.

The man sensed right off the bat from our phone conversation that I was in a pinch and told me to book an exit flight out of England just in case I got screened at the airport, something not uncommon to do if you’re backpacking Europe with no particular destination. Landing, I made my way to Kingston Upon Thames where we met at a bar for a drink and discussion about the boat and a chance to size each other up. I knew he was an alcoholic after glaring at his picture a second time before leaving Denmark. His face flushed red and sagging with hints of perspiration told a story.

There at the bar, the man ordered three pints for himself offering me one with no expectation. I politely refused having already had one before he arrived. After spending some time talking, I was ready to leave and head back to the boat while he stayed back at the bar to do some computer work. Despite his heavy drinking he seemed put together, little did I know the boat would tell quite a different story. Arriving at the boat along the riverbank in the dark the city gleamed across the water with its old brick buildings, restaurants, and church spires. It was a beautiful and then I saw it. The floating home looked more like a squat house.

Navigating my way from the shore up a step ladder lashed to its side I hoisted myself onto the front deck with my hiking pack and laptop bag. Maneuvering around a dolly and giant water cistern I found the front door. Peering in I was disappointed but more than that I was exhausted and ready to call it a night. Rapping on the door finally someone answered. Following him inside the man was much taller and weighed a considerable amount more. The doors and windows of the boat were plexiglass with cheap ragged black carpeting on the floor. Inside the main area of the boat lay the kitchen with half-eaten food and crumbs amidst random jars of minced meat on the counter. Dirty dishes sat in the sink as though they had lived there for ages. The cupboards and furniture were mismatched and dirty with oil residue from the stove.

Finding my way down a pair of clunky homemade wooden stairs I entered a narrow hallway with white-painted plywood walls just wide enough for one person. The room I had been given sat at the front of the boat directly below where I had entered. Opening the door to my room I found Sai. He was an Indian student living on the boat and now my bunkmate. With little more than a greeting, I set my bags down and made my way back up the hallway towards the staircase and up to the kitchen where I cleaned several of the dishes so I could have something to cook with. The boat had no refrigerator, and its electricity ran from solar power and a generator at the back of the boat.

There were no toilets, just a sink to pee in and coolers for number 2 that were eventually emptied into two sealed barrels at the back of the boat. The bathrooms wreaked of piss. It was a dump, to say the least and after finding the meat I had been instructed to cook for myself that had been left to stay cold in the grill outside I found myself at odds with a foul inedible dinner. Luckily one of the other housemates arrived on the boat and as we talked, we began to find common ground discussing mental health as he was in recovery for addiction. Warming up to each other he saw my plight. Offering me a few pieces of his pizza I gratefully retired to bed in the hull of the ship.

Waking up the next few mornings I would soon begin to acclimate myself to the fact that this was an unlivable situation. As I sat with my feelings and observations there was no way of flipping this situation around. I knew I needed to leave. Arriving in the bedroom I was staying in one evening I found Sai. Looking at him I told him in casual frustration, “I need to get the hell out of here.” Looking at me concerned he asked why. I told him, as if it were not obvious, the decrepit state of the boat had me concerned for my safety let alone having to deal with a manipulative alcoholic. I could feel the way the boat owner talked to me as though he were searching and trying to confirm my buy-in on the ship. One second he would be dominating and demanding and when he would feel me begin to set boundaries he would ease up and try to be accommodating to reel me back in. I could feel the situation was toxic but played along until I could get my head straight about what to do.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. One morning after waking up early I packed my bags. This was it I had to make a decision and now with only 150 Euro I walked upstairs with my gear and set it on the couch. This was it. I would leave and figure something out. Why? Because I loved myself enough to not stay stuck in the fear of the what if and I knew that when you make a change you show the world what you are willing to accept and what you will not put up with. You affirm your worth. This was me choosing love.

Finding my way over the course of the next few days I checked into a hostel near London tower the first night. Trodding through London’s rainy streets I followed my intuition from one hostel to the next as I planned to stop into meditation centers, and whatever other live and work situations I could think of. Making my way to Kensington Chelsea as the sun set the next evening I strolled past the Kadampa Meditation Center towards a cheap hostel I planned to check in at. A stroke of intuition hit me, “go back,” it told me. Turning around I entered the storefront of the building. Walking inside I met a man cleaning the toilets. Slowly as we began talking we realized we had conversed on the phone back when I was in Denmark as I had called asking about volunteering opportunities previously. He invited me to come with him by bus to a meditation center north of London that night. With all my gear there I sat debating. Maybe the meditation center would let me stay the night, maybe I would meet someone? It was around 7 pm, I thought to myself, the worst that could happen was that I catch the bus back to the hostel I was originally going to. The piece of me that wanted to dig its heels in was the piece of me, I was learning, that wanted to resist change, an old identity afraid to die even though nothing was at stake except something new.

That night I found myself in the silent presence of myself and others. It wasn’t just a change or something I begrudgingly decided to check out it was just what I needed. The atmosphere felt so relaxing, and I felt so present with my thoughts, truly grateful to be among other people who cared about their own well-being. My body relaxed. Afterward we all gathered in the lounge area of the center drinking tea and talking. The man I had come with introduced me to some of his friends as we talked, and I told them about my mental health project I had come to London for. A larger fellow with tattoos up his neck and arm several years older looked at my bag. “You need a place to sleep tonight?” he asked me. Looking back at him I told him, “Hey If you’re offering, I won’t say no.” Surprisingly he was on a date but neither of them minded. My friend and the couple now walked out of the center to the tube station, and I laughed out loud to myself at how seamless and easy life felt. It was such a gift.

The next day I would head out of my new mates’ apartment with a full belly from breakfast and a truckload of great conversations and serendipity I truly felt blessed. Making my way that night, back to where I had run into my friend cleaning the toilets, I decided to check back in on a hostel job where I eventually crossed paths with the manager and agreed upon a working position.

Love is a powerful emotion, often it elicits images of joy, ecstasy, intimacy, and ideas of perfection. In an ideal world, love reigns supreme but in all our dreams and fancy we tend to forget the cost which it takes to truly love. Love is not just a simple emotion but a commitment and a choice. It requires responsibility for ourselves first.

In life we are often faced with many decisions, so often we operate on autopilot running away from pain or tough choices and don’t realize just what we are actually saying no and yes to.

When we look at the world from the eyes of love, we become its student. Every situation is an opportunity to learn, every situation is an opportunity to choose ourselves and choose wholeness. So often this means seeing our own humanity in the reflection of someone else or in a life circumstance. When we turn to face the pain or discomfort, we begin to stop identifying with the fear that keeps us separate from those uncomfortable parts of ourselves. This allows us to address and integrate whatever social or personal judgments, stigmas, triggers, and or traumas we may have that keep us running from the acceptance of the parts of ourselves we’d rather not face. When we take full responsibility for ourselves, we make the conscious choice to not just see and feel the discomfort but be curious about it.

Only then can we learn the lessons of our pain and use it as a compass. This is where the real healing happens because only in our acceptance of a situation can we find forgiveness and consciously create the appropriate steps in our lives to transform and employ what we have learned toward a new way of relating to the world from a more whole experience. This is where patterns and choices and our life trajectories can change in powerful ways. When we choose to love we say yes to all of ourself.

So next time you’re faced with a tough decision, you’re triggered or emotional. Take a step back and get curious. Ask yourself where the discomfort is coming from. What lesson are can you lear and where can you take responsibility for your life in this situation Ask yourself, am I reacting out of fear or love and then make the adjustment and move forward.

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Jeff Spiteri

Jeff Spiteri is an author of the unpublished book ‘The Bridge Within’ a memoir chronicling his experiences as a homeless young adult riding freight trains around the United States and the childhood trauma he uncovered along the way. Jeff is proud to use his voice as an instrument of influence, guidance and impact with young adults and educators sharing his experiences and tools for resilience and healing.

www.thebridgewithin.com

My journey with mental health has always been a revolving door of experimentation with practices and tools. Just as we change inevitably so do our needs and the tools we use to meet those needs. For me, grounding has been paramount to my healing and day-to-day health and well-being yet so have to be flexible and keep an open mind. Many times when our lives are shaken by mental health its an indication that something is not working; but where so often we might find stability in our habits, routines, environment, and the people we surround ourselves with we often fail to give credit to or see the importance of finding our own inner anchor. Our Inner anchor not only helps us weather whatever storm might be brewing in our outside world but is also essential to grounding as we heal and undergo dramatic and powerful changes internally.

Mindfulness and self-reflection have been a huge part of my healing journey. While they are tools for me they are more so values that I create tools and habits and make decisions around. At a young age, I found myself floundering in childhood trauma and the mental health symptoms that it had created. I was not in a safe and supportive environment to begin to make sense of my experiences being that my trauma had originated from home. While I did not have the awareness or capacity to verbalize what I was feeling, my behavior and symptoms told the story for me. Slowly my ADD became ticks and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. My grades in school were at an all-time low and I could barely function at home. After getting put on medication the symptoms began to subside but something deeper inside me was still unsettled. Around this time my mother bought me a book on meditation and I began sitting in the dark in my bedroom with a candle silently for 5 minutes at a time. Solitude was something I was becoming used to after not being able to attend school and while I felt alone it gave me time to be with my thoughts.
My emotions, inner pain, and anger were a compass I was discovering and the more I spent with myself the more they were dying to be expressed. As I became more acquainted with my inner world, poetry became a natural tool I soon discovered to transmute the raw feelings I felt. It was an excavation process and the more I found myself dedicated to giving these hidden emotions life the lighter I became and the stronger my own inner compass grew. I began to learn what loyalty to myself truly meant and was willing to speak my truth among friends and family. Through trial and error, I would watch how I would discover my own triggers, reactivity, and self-sabotage. 

After the stress and overwhelm in my home life became so unbearable in late high school I ended up stabbing myself in the arm and ended up in the psychiatric hospital. Realizing my home environment was no longer a safe or healthy option for me after high school, I ended up on the street. There, a safe distance from my family where I had felt so unable to understand the pain and trauma I had experienced, I began to remember sexual abuse from my father. As my world fell apart I knew I needed help and once again I came back to myself. Sifting through the inner chaos I struggled to decide what to do. As I began pushing people away from the overwhelm of my situation something deeper inside me spoke and I knew my friend who had been with me this whole time was the only safe person I could trust. I began to realize that my inner voice had guided me far enough away from my family so I could feel and discover this and now I had a choice. I could keep running and potentially die as I could barely take care of myself in the overwhelmed or tell my friend, get help, and face what I had remembered. Finally just as I had almost pushed him completely away right as he was about to leave me I made the decision to tell him. 

The Fear melted as I exploded into tears and shared with him about the abuse from my father. The lid was off and now I stood face to face with the pain and weight I had been carrying around. My therapist later would describe me as a leaky box. I had no clue how to contain the enormity or weight of my pain or the abandonment I felt. With one decision to stop running, I lost the idea of a family and began to see my life through a different lens. It was painful but it was a new chance, a chance to change things where I couldn’t have before. Getting off the street and healing from my trauma wasn’t immediate but required me to continuously say yes to myself and keep pivoting towards a life with less pain. Pain in fact was my compass and as I began talking about what I had been through the emotions became lighter and instead of drowning in overwhelm my emotions became more potent and distinguishable. I began to learn more deeply what it felt like to trust myself, to say no when something didn’t feel right. To not hold in my anger and instead use it to set boundaries and skillfully express myself instead of exploding and lashing out at people or quietly being resentful and to love in a way that came from my own self-respect and not out of the need to please for fear of being abandoned.

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Jeff Spiteri

Jeff Spiteri is an author of the unpublished book ‘The Bridge Within’ a memoir chronicling his experiences as a homeless young adult riding freight trains around the United States and the childhood trauma he uncovered along the way. Jeff is proud to use his voice as an instrument of influence, guidance and impact with young adults and educators sharing his experiences and tools for resilience and healing.

www.thebridgewithin.com

I met my friend Steve in a park on the west side of Chicago in a rougher neighborhood at a homeless feeding. I was on the street at the time and passing through the city riding freight trains to the west coast of the United States.
Steve was 17 and told me he had been running away and riding trains since he was 14, but something always brought him back home.

Several months after meeting him in Chicago We ran into each other once more in a soup kitchen in Portland Oregon. It would be like this for several more years even after I got off the street. Steve was fearless, I remember getting pictures of him from India and Nepal trekking to Everest base camp. After going back home for a summer he had gotten a job and saved up just enough money to fly to India and Europe.

Over the years I would run into him in the basement of the University of North Carolina library in Asheville. According to him, the library had the best calculus book he had found and he would sit in the library studying it. His goal was to teach himself to build and program synthesizers. He was obsessed with Electronic music.

One evening I found myself in the basement of the same library at the University I would run into Steve. 

Hopping on a computer I scrolled through some social media messages until I came across one that stood out. It was a message from someone back when I was on the street. Reading further my heart sank. Steve was dead, not just dead, he had killed himself.

I was devastated, a lump in my throat formed as my mind raced into a blur of confusion, shock, and grief. I knew Steve had been running from something just as I had when I was on the street, but where I had chosen to turn around and get help he had failed to face the monsters he had been running in circles from, and now he was gone.

Strive for greater alignment:

Ask Yourself,

How are the decisions you are making in your life aligning to your goals?

What adjustments can I make to align closer?

‘A house built on rock can weather any storm but one built on sand will wash away ‘

No matter the outcome we may have in our minds, the decisions we are making every day are what get us there.

The problem for many of us isn’t that we aren’t taking action. For many of us, it’s the foundation we move from. Our habits and choices affect the quality of action and balance we create.

When we experience trauma or adversity the gap between us and hope can feel like a chasm but hope often is the “why” so many of us are desperately searching to move from helplessness to help ourselves.

According to Anthony Scioli and Henry B. Biller Authors of the book ‘Hope In The Age Of Anxiety’ Hope is linked to three vital needs 

• Attachment
  • Our relational patterns and experiences

• Mastery
  • Our Talents, Goals, and sense of Purpose

• Survival
  • Trust, yearning, instinct, drive. Turning fear into determination as a motivator.
  • Transmuting the energy of fear into motivation and determination to move forward.

For many of us, we can become so focused on the outcome that we get stuck in our blind spots, old patterns, and programming, how we see ourselves, and messages about ourselves we’ve been made to believe. These blind spots and unconscious ways we see ourselves must be brought to the light, felt, seen, and rewritten for us to welcome in the new life and version of ourselves we are striving for. 

Often we find ourselves turning our gears and repeating the same mistakes and problems.

Many times this takes having a new experience that shatters the old belief and often times this means taking a risk that can feel scary and threatening to our old identity 

A recipe for realignment:

• Relax
  • Disconnect / Set Boundaries
    • Step away from your routine
    • Have some fun
    • Do something for yourself
    • Make a change in your environment
• Ground / Be Your Own Authority
  • Anchor
    • Seek out and employ new techniques to clear your mind, reset your energy and come back to your body and the present moment
    • Spend time in nature / Forest Bathing/nature and neuroscience
    • Disconnect from your device
    • Meditate
    • Exercise
    • Pranayama
    • Heart Math

• ReConnect / Take Action
  • Come back with a fresh perspective 
  • Make a change
  • Implement new habits
  • Set New boundaries
  • Start Slow
  • Start Small
  • Grow habits Create momentum through small achievements, Dopamine, and rewards

Listen to yourself / Be your own authority:

People will try to tell you who you are, where to go, what to do, and how to live your life

But only you can determine what is possible and what you are capable of and it starts by developing that relationship with yourself.

The more you listen to yourself the more your inner voice and compass get stronger and the more you trust your own decision making

The more trust and confidence you develop the more power you have to discern and direct the flow of your life and the better boundaries emotionally you can create with people
Find balance.

Set Boundaries

Often times when we restrict access to our energy the people around us who are used to getting our energy relating to us or interacting with us in a certain way can get mad hurt or try to take it from us without our consent through manipulation and often times these reactions are unconscious and speak to a greater unfulfilled need that the person has. Many times the energy you give or the way you interact relate or just are can become a crutch for others and people start to rely on this way of being to fill a space in their life that they haven’t worked on or have not figured out how to fill. But when we pull our energy back and direct it in our own lives for our own use we become an example and stop being a crutch or a punching bag or someone to take from. We go from being the victim to the victor.

Ask yourself:

• What happens if I’m scared they’ll retaliate?
• What do you look for from others that you can give to yourself
• What do others look for from you?
• Does providing this to others help you?
• Does it hurt you?

Ask yourself:

• Watch how you spend your time
• What habits do you have
• Who do you hang around
• What media do you consume
  • Messages about yourself 
  • Other people
  • And the world do you expose yourself too
    • How Does it Make You Feel?
    • WHY?

Take action

‘And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.’ ` Anais Nin

Taking action is always the scariest part. We can prepare and prepare and prepare but until we take that risk of being seen heard witnessed whether it is sharing about our trauma, trusting someone with our love, or going after something we’ve always wanted to do the chance that it might not work out or that we will be rejected and retraumatized can seem daunting. Brain science shows that our experiences create neural pathways and when negative experiences impact our lives continuously our brain begins to become hardwired towards those negative experiences, how we’ve created them, and what they feel like, it tricks us into recreating them as a way to keep ourselves safe but it is precisely recreating and doing the same thing over again that keeps us stuck.

‘Insanity: Doing the same thing over expecting different results’ 

When we begin to make decisions that challenge how we’ve known things to be or how we’ve experienced life we give ourselves not only the opportunity to experience a new outcome and create new neural pathways but also a chance to observe how our decisions truly impact our life and learn from the situations and people around us.

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Jeff Spiteri

Jeff Spiteri is an author of the unpublished book ‘The Bridge Within’ a memoir chronicling his experiences as a homeless young adult riding freight trains around the United States and the childhood trauma he uncovered along the way. Jeff is proud to use his voice as an instrument of influence, guidance and impact with young adults and educators sharing his experiences and tools for resilience and healing.

www.thebridgewithin.com

While the journey itself can take on a life of its own the most important questions we always have to come back to, i.e. “What do I need?”, “How do I feel?”, “What is right for me?” contain answers that only lie within ourselves. In answering these, we take responsibility for our power and in doing so empower ourselves and heal.

Go within don’t go without.

“Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
~Rilke

Autobiographical Chronicles: https://vocal.media/authors/jeff-spiteri

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Jeff Spiteri

Jeff Spiteri is an author of the unpublished book ‘The Bridge Within’ a memoir chronicling his experiences as a homeless young adult riding freight trains around the United States and the childhood trauma he uncovered along the way. Jeff is proud to use his voice as an instrument of influence, guidance and impact with young adults and educators sharing his experiences and tools for resilience and healing.

www.thebridgewithin.com

The past 11 years of my life have been dedicated to resolving a mountain of childhood experiences that have had a stranglehold on the way I’ve experienced and shown up in the world. As a kid in my late teens I left home after high school and set out on what I thought was an adventure and a quest for fulfillment and purpose, little did I know just how it would really unfold. While all my friends were getting accepted into colleges and some going the other route, selling drugs and finding themselves in their own existential dilemmas with the law I chose to leave. Now many might wonder how a 19-year-old kid who graduated a year late from an alternative high school with no driver’s license or vehicle was gonna take off on his own and materialize some kind of life for himself. Especially a life that did not look like renting an apartment in a low income area a few miles down the road from his parents and working some menial job while he decides whether he wants to go to community college or not. As an avid subscriber to all things alternative and far left of center my solution was found in a tiny niche of the punk culture I belonged to at the time, I would ride freight trains. In fact, I had spent the past two years of my life researching how to ride freight trains, I would spend hours excitedly sneaking into the freight yard down the street from where I had grown up in Sterling Heights MI, scaling auto carrier trains ogling graffiti plastered gondola cars and learning how to walk around a yard, figure out the layout and safely navigate the strings of cars without getting maimed. This was my ticket to a new life and away from a childhood and situation I had painfully floundered in, wrought with emotional and behavioral issues, and feeling blamed for falling short of measuring up to an ideal kid, student, peer, male, etc. All of which felt entirely out of my grasp to control. This is my journey, my story of transition change struggle pain healing, and redemption. Join me as I share with you the bricks I’ve laid to bridge the forgotten and lost parts of myself into a more whole and healthy me.

The ember that I stoked

Carried hidden in my heart

From the depths of hell,

Of prison

I carried it from the birthplace it was born

Into the prison, it was raised

The fire that ignited a life

Was once a smoldering lump of wood

Threatened

I stoked its flame

I bravely held it in my hands

And in its heat

I warmed my body

In the cold stale darkness, I was surrounded

And in its luminescence, I was guided

Magnetized to the oxygen on which it thrived,

Outside of those cold stale rooms

Through a maze in that cold stale home

Through terror and triumph, I held you tight

And with every breath, I breathed

Through every conceded notion

Against the impermeable winds of death, of atrophy

I stoked your flame and carried you close to my heart

Even when all was thought lost

I followed your smoke signals back to you,

Through the forest

Magnetized and attracted to your heat

Magnetized and attracted to your love

To my love

Because without you

I am not

And together “we” becomes “I”

I wrote this poem several years ago describing my childhood and the journey I had awoken to since getting off the street. It had felt desperate like I had been fleeing from some ominous darkness. A refugee in the night; It was a time of great uncertainty. It was 2013 and the summer before I had spent in limbo trying to find my footing after losing a series of jobs and unstable housing situations. My days of train riding had come and gone and I was making my way out of the well of trauma that had urgently ushered me off the streets in desperation. Asheville North Carolina had been my saving grace back in 2009 when I had initially made the difficult and arduous journey from a small farm in Northern California I had been working on to finally put down roots and get help. Aside from a failed attempt to move to Colorado it had been my home ever since. However tumultuous and uncertain my footing was with jobs and housing, Asheville was familiar and I found myself looked after as long as I had sought out the help. There seemed to be people and services willing to cut me a break and help me out of whatever pain or predicament I was experiencing. At this point, I had been in therapy for several years finding emotional regulation and teasing my way through the dance that is trauma work. My healing process was in a state of shift, and I was making strides to bridge the gap into greater stability.

Now, poetry had always been a cathartic release for me, a form of solace and a way to process the immense depth of feelings that my heart could not play a specific instance or timeline to.

But to better understand just where that poem came from and what its seemingly ominous pain spoke of, a deeper understanding of my past is in order.

Like many suburban white kids in the late nineties and early 2000s my adolescence and young adult life was colored by much of the emerging alternative trends of the time. I was a skateboarder, and mischief-maker heavily influenced by the Jack Ass MTV culture that slowly had begun to give me a voice to the dissonance and break I was experiencing with my understanding of who I was and the family culture and politics that was still trying to control that perception. The trauma I experienced, in my family unit and the rift it caused was just an expression of inherited traumas that had been passed down before me. I just so happened to be the scapegoat, the lottery winner or the expressor of the burden for this trauma, immediate to my experience and generationally passed down.

I grew up in a town just north of Detroit, my parents had moved us from our home outside of St. Louis Missouri when I was 3, after my father quit his job at McDonnell Douglas. We stayed with my grandparents, his parents, until he could land a job and figure out the next move for our family. My father was a second-generation Maltese American, his father had emigrated from Malta after World War 2 and came to the Detroit area through Canada where he met and married my grandmother. But the seemingly inspiring stories from the war and warm family that I was expected to accept at face value would slowly lose its sheen and deteriorate as I got older.

Now depending on the weight and nature of the trauma one is holding, its expressions can be more or less drastic and show up in a myriad of ways. In this case, mine showed up through physical, behavioral, and mental health issues.

These problems had been slowly percolating for years. Rearing there head with my family’s academic expectations running high and from a very young age a seemingly hopeless inability to keep up with my rageaholic father’s lofty goals for me. His moods would often swing from playful warm and fun to biting cold, angry and temperamental. Screaming, yelling, and a sense of tension coupled with violent outbursts made the air in our household feel like walking on eggshells when dad was home. My grades and performance in school were only the beginning of the emerging physical, behavioral and mental health problems I would begin to experience leading to an ever-burgeoning rift and more frequent clashes within our family dynamic. A constant renegotiation of boundaries expectations and norms was happening as my shifting physical, behavioral and mental health issues changed, worsened and played out.

Initially it was ADD, My grades had started to take a turn for the worse as early on as 3rd grade. I can remember my mother telling me how my 3rd grade teacher passed me from 3rd into 4th grade only because it was her last year of teaching and she was in a more lenient place. This would prove to be much of how I got through the rest of my years of schooling. In 6th grade I would develop a tongue abscess from my own nervous tensions and subsequent gnawing of canker sores in my mouth. My uncle would commit suicide that year and I would be left with the confusion and heaviness that would weigh over our families psyche trying to make sense of what happened. My mom seemed more distant but for a time things appeared lighter. The grief and weight of the situation had brought my family out of their rigidity and maybe away from being able to focus their energy on me.

This period of mourning however was only followed by greater issues with my own struggles; and the tension and anxiety that had been manifesting itself as canker sores had also been building into a series of ticks and behavioral patterns. By 7th grade these ticks and behavioral issues had begun to take a more prominent hold of my life. By 8th grade these ticks had fused with thought patterns and had developed into obsessive-compulsive disorder, I couldn’t function. My thoughts and fears circled around unwanted sexual advances from classmates and suicidal thoughts and feelings that had begun since my uncle’s passing. My life had become one riddled with fear and anxiety and the resulting prescriptive rituals I had created to quell the stress. Insomnia ensued and my schooling tanked altogether. I was pulled out of school and a deal was negotiated with the principal where I would submit work as I finished it at home.

Through the see-sawing of symptoms, the ticks that had been subtle had escalated into full-body shaking. My parents took me in for neurological testing yet nothing was found abnormal. I had MRI’s done but nothing showed up, still my parents were convinced I had Tourettes Syndrome. After all of this however I was beginning to get fed up with the medication and the doctors and the assumptions as to what was wrong with me with little regard or question as to how I felt or what I thought. I was watching my entire middle school years slide away from me. I could no longer be on the track team, one of the few semblances of relief and socializing that made me feel normal, alive and a part of something. I was a complete outcast and no one I had been in school with really knew what I had been going through. But there was a sort of space now, a distance that had been building in relationship to the seemingly tight grasp my parents attempted to wield. I was suffering and so the clenched fists of judgment and expectation that had once strangled my life had begun to release their grip. For one reason or another, they knew they couldn’t hold on as tight anymore. Maybe it was a mixture of love, worry and guilt, or the awareness of some, that my health was a liability. In this time I found greater freedom to explore and voice to give to the unanswerable anger frustration and pain I was feeling inside. That’s when I found punk music and everything changed for me.

Now some may think, “gee Jeff, you’ve had a lot of difficult experiences, I’m so sorry you’ve struggled so much in so many different ways,” and write everything I had been through off as some god-awful fluke and see me as a victim of circumstance or not having the genetic cards dealt in my favor. In fact that was exactly the narrative I was fed by my parents and team of random doctors, therapists and psychiatrists I had been seeing since the beginning of my struggles. But little did I know there was actually a name for the set of experiences and their subsequent symptoms I had been displaying.

According to the CDC’s website, “Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s): are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood (0-17 years). For example:

experiencing violence, abuse, or neglect

witnessing violence in the home or community

having a family member attempt or die by suicide”

A paper published in 2014 by the American Academy of Pediatrics expands on this list:

Adverse childhood experiences include

• Emotional abuse

• Physical abuse

• Sexual abuse

• Emotional neglect

• Physical neglect

• Mother treated violently

• Household substance abuse

• Household mental illness

• Parental separation or divorce

• Incarcerated household member”

As a child with no cognizance or understanding of my own body and no way of being able to fully understand what I was experiencing I was left to live out my pain and actuate my emotions in the only real ways, I had access to at the time.

An article on acesconnection.com references a study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 2004.

The article states,

“The researchers discovered that 89.5% of the sample had one of the following diagnoses: undifferentiated somatoform disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, dysthymic disorder, simple phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, major depression, dissociative disorder not otherwise specified, and borderline personality disorder.

That isn’t all.

Researchers also found that dissociative disorders were present in 47.4% of those researched. Unfortunately, those with dissociative disorders also had experienced childhood emotional and sexual abuse, physical neglect, self-harming behaviors, and suicide attempts.”

But this list is just a tiny glimpse at the way my life would end up expressing the greater traumas living inside.

Aside from punk rock, there had actually been a historical protest in my long journey through my mental health struggles that lent a somewhat undeveloped subconscious voice against the dominant coercion of my parents’ narrative and the doctors they employed, being more concerned with medication than the larger picture of my health history. Which for so many of us begs the question. What happened to you? In fact, this question has begun to represent a shift in attitude around the medical establishments’ evaluation of the public’s health. “Traditionally, the health care system would point to high-risk behaviors such as poor diet, drug use, or a sedentary lifestyle as the primary causal factors. Questions for patients have focused on “What’s wrong with you?” rather than “What happened to you?” American Academy of Pediatrics.

From as early on as 4th grade I can remember crying in obstinance as I protested my morning Ritalin and later on Concerta for not liking the way it made me feel nor the implied social shame I felt from having been diagnosed with ADD. Further on I would find myself explicitly at odds with my parents insistence that my shaking and often times violent ticks were Tourettes Syndrome despite the inconclusiveness of what the neurologists had found in my brain scans. My symptoms were not just symptoms, in the sense that the clues to what I was really struggling with did not just lie in the physical and mental health realms of my childhood but in the behavioral realm too. As a child my awareness of my sexuality and lack of boundaries led to ever-growing run-ins with boundary violations and acting out. From chasing my 15 year old babysitter around the house snapping her bra strap, to grabbing my friends crotch in middle school and getting suspended for sending a sexually provocative note to a girl in high school. My pain and trauma was coming out in all directions and although I could not recall what it was that ailed me. The life I was living was alive with an unfolding story of a dormant past I was only beginning to get to know.

But Punk Rock saved me in more ways than one. Not only was it a great outlet for the angst anger and pent-up energy I had felt on a day-to-day basis, but It was also a purpose, It gave voice, direction, and meaning to my life in a time where I had felt isolated, alone, and misunderstood. Finally, I had something to stand for and someone, a group of people, a culture and ideology who was sick of the same old bullshit and not willing to settle. Even if I didn’t fully understand what they were talking about in there songs, or what exactly I was feeling or struggling with, I was learning by listening, and not only to the music but to me. I was discovering my voice and soon would immerse myself in topics like philosophy and politics. I began song writing, dreaming of singing in a band, and for a brief one night practice session I did. My lyrical dabbling developed into more expressive tones and I felt myself channeling poetry. In my most congested difficult emotional states the words would flow from my heart, my body and my soul out through my fingers and pen and onto the paper. It was a language all of its own and I was learning, developing and growing it one conversation and one emotional release at a time. My politics slowly evolved with my musical taste and I found myself meeting new people, especially women. The more I began to listen and know my body the more I began to identify and understand the women in my life and sometimes even over-identifying to my detriment. By my Sophomore year I slowly became turned on to feminism after a series of romantic interests both in-person and online through a punk rock dating website I frequented. My whole self-understanding turned upside down as I began to Identify and understand the toxic rigid male-dominated culture I had come from and more importantly, the relationship with the one man in my life who represented my relationship to that culture and much of the unanswerable and unspoken pain I was dealing with, my father. I became absolutely polarized, as I tended to do, demonizing men and denouncing my own masculinity, I adopted a more flamboyant personality and began to explore my sexuality allowing my gender to fall into a more amorphous expression, fluid. It not only became a way of self-discovery but also a mask. By denying my own masculinity I did not have to face the impossible truth of what I was harboring deep inside. In this way, I could cast aside the hurt wounded male inside of me. In fact, I didn’t just cast him aside, I hated him. And so, my adoption of a more gender-fluid identity acted as a cushion and space holder for a time in which I was slowly uncovering my hidden truth.

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Jeff Spiteri

Jeff Spiteri is an author of the unpublished book ‘The Bridge Within’ a memoir chronicling his experiences as a homeless young adult riding freight trains around the United States and the childhood trauma he uncovered along the way. Jeff is proud to use his voice as an instrument of influence, guidance and impact with young adults and educators sharing his experiences and tools for resilience and healing.

www.thebridgewithin.com