Secrets we once thought we would have to take to our grave
We need to seek out a safe environment to share our stories, to share our unexplained awful feelings, an environment that is altogether new to us. Perhaps even now, an environment we do not yet trust or believe could exist, like a therapist’s office. What is therapy? It is finding a safe place where we can learn to share our hidden inner secrets, our confusing internal world… the secrets we once thought we would have to take to our grave.
The littlest of things at times can set off this warehouse of stored traumas
I spoke at the beginning of this of how it does not matter how smart you are. Within me, I have bouts of my past emotions invading, devouring my present consciousness with radiating feelings that often seem to be connected to nothing. Something probably happened in my present environment, a triggering event, perhaps a momentary thought, which raised the repressed emotions, but the present event may have been a nothing burger.
The littlest of things at times can set off this warehouse of stored traumas, leaving me consumed, frantically suffering, waiting for it to subside. For me, just as an example, very often I find myself unable to pick up the phone to talk to someone, and most especially in person. I cannot face people at these times of living a flashback from the buried past. And more than that this emotional crisis coming over me boldly interferes with my mind’s logic center.
My clear thinking is buried, obscured, overwhelmed in the swamp of past terrors emotionally re-lived
My clear thinking is buried, obscured, overwhelmed in the swamp of past terrors emotionally re-lived. I can’t think straight. It does not matter how smart I am, thoughts, though too are a mystical phenomenon when you think about it, they cannot hold a candle to the strength of living emotions. My memory begins to stop working correctly during these C-PTSD flashback times, and these times can last for weeks or longer. The amnesia spoken of earlier, the dissociation, seems to come into play when having a strong emotional episode leaving my experiences in these high-stressed times of flashbacks, often forgotten. As if the drama/trauma still activates nature’s amnesia to protect me when the emotions consume me, and so much of my life is highly stressed!
Truth be told, so much of my life, I just do not recall. This is dissociating from the now moment, a symptom of C-PTSD.
Come To Love
By Jesse Donahue 2021 ©
To grow, to come to live self-love… is to change the world.
Identity becomes, but only through love.
To love oneself is to heal the self, and it is to know the world.
Learning to love yourself, is a process, becoming.
It is the human path, the journey of man.
Now, to love is to step out and be loved, as love begets love.
To heal the self is to heal the world.
To live outside of love is trauma; it is to mistrust, hide, and pretend the false self in design.
To come to self-knowledge, self-understanding…
Self-love is awakening to nature, to the eminent being, the human expression of existence.
It only makes sense in the traumatic nature of life.
It is the only quality worth seeking in caring, understanding, and becoming.
It is the answer to the empty direction sought in seeking wealth, in seeking self-beauty,
In dissociating from feelings in addictive distraction.
Love is blocked in the unconscious escape toward things we obsess about to fill our emptiness.
Love is the state of grace that is every man’s purposeful journey in this life.
We all have a journey to embark on and come to love.
All paths taken in seeking answers to self-suffering lead us to love,
Or they are misguided ventures.
Existence and consciousness are eternal, as is and as in this moment, as is love.
To be self-welcomed back into the arms of humanity
Yours, our humanity… as a family through nature’s love, understanding, forgiveness, and caring.
Be the genius life meant for you to be
By finding and reaching out to others with nature’s gift.
The self-understanding, caring, and forgiveness in finding and knowing self-love.
It is the only answer and solution in life… to life.
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** Copyright notice. All of my writings are copyrighted and registered with the Library of Congress.
- My name is Jesse Donahue. In 2015, at the age of 58, I took up writing, and since then I’ve written two novels, poems, and essays about my journey struggling with CPTSD. The essays, 70+, were an adjunct to journaling in therapy to amplify my learning and self-understanding.
My writings, which include therapy notes, poems, novels, and essays, are all a part of my ongoing personal therapy. Many of my essays are in a stream-of-consciousness style, unleashing, sharing, and delving into energies that continuously process in my subconscious. My writings, initially, geared for me and my therapist’s eyes only, began with my exposing my thoughts, fears, and feelings (or the lack of) onto paper… a journal of therapy notes. Then, with fear overcome and via a personal decision of choice, I shared them here with the readers. My essays, most all, originate from my weekly therapy notes. My intent and desire is to encourage readers to recognize traits in themselves and find a therapist if they are willing and able to do so. If you are in therapy, ask your therapist to read them and discuss what pertains to you. For some, it can be a long and difficult process over extensive periods to awaken to the unconscious issues that have us acting out in life. Our behavior can seem like dancing to a buried, invisible energy that we are not able to directly see or confront. It is my sincere hope that my insights will assist the reader in the process toward reaching a deeper self-understanding. Bringing the unconscious out into the light of self-awareness, understanding, and acceptance fosters self-love and the process of change.
My published writings with the CPTSD foundation: The Hidden Bugaboo (*recommended). The Beganning. Twelve Days Without Coffee. Learned Helplessness. Cast Out of Eden by Toxic Shame. The Crumbs and The Banquet. What an Outside Appearance may Not Show. Obedience to the Light – Bombs or Love. Stepping Into the Shoes of Who You Are. Personal Honor, Integrity, Dignity, Honesty. Inspirational Tugging – Teachers. Codependency – Overriding the Monster of Self Hate. Surfing the Light Through the Darkness. We are but Storytellers. A Writer’s Brain – The Gift. The Highway of Worries. The Emptiness of Yesterday. The Man Who Lives Under the Bridge. Living in the Dis-World. SPECTRUM.
