Connections

I often wonder why I write these blogs?

I wonder what the purpose really is?

Some have asked me "but that's all behind you, why drag it up?". Some consider me to be attention seeking and making trouble. The phrase 'let the past be the past' can leave you feeling weak and stupid.

Originally I wrote because I wanted to learn how to write. A magical thing began, a blessing. I began to learn the peace of connection, explaining and giving meaning.

You see its all well and good if your past is in the past but for me my past was / is very much in my present, I am going to write quickly now in case I end up in a muddle. 

Imagine your a maths professor. Now imagine there was a maths formula you could not understand. You mull it over in your mind and think about it day and night (sometimes even when you don't want to) it haunts you. You seek solution to the formula by chatting with others who may help you read and research similar maths problems. You keep going until you have found the solution and then you have peace because you understand and have meaning for the formula. That formula then gets filed under 'understood'. Occasionally you are even in the position of being able to help another understand the formula in a quicker way than it took you, you enjoy the victory of understanding by connecting to others who have also understood the formula and can talk with you about other maths issues.

Frog Face

1991 aged 14 and 'frog face' started to follow me. I did not get away until 1997 then aged 20.

Frog face would wait for my school bus and lurk in the roads opposite. Frog face would watch me through the door to the sweet shop I worked in. Frog face would call, send letters and sit on the other side of the road watching our house. Frog face could appear at any point, at any time of day. I could not shake Frog face.

You may think that Frog face was a figment of my imagination, unfortunately that was not the case. For almost 6 years I was stalked.

As previously discussed I have a complex history. Frog face was just part of what has made that thick strong 'C' in the word complex.

Already fairly damaged in my world view, I found myself having to learn to live being disempowered daily. By the 'fear' of the 'ifs, maybes' by the potential of Frog face appearing without my control. I would stand on one side of my front door not knowing, would there be another note on the other-side. I jumped if ever the letter box clanged, or the phone rang.

For reasons I cant go into in this blog, I was unable to tell any one about my situation. All I will say is that Frog face was an adult who held a secret over me. To endure those days at the time, I believed outweighed the shame of anyone finding out. (As I said my perspective was already damaged).

So why write this? if I don't want to write about what happened and why?

Well I love brains, I love how they cope and how they protect themselves. During those years I found my brain doing just that. Protecting me in the best and most honest way it could. You see my brain was my greatest friend. We argued, we fought, we had stand offs! we did all the things together that BFFs do. But it has only been in the last three years that my best friend 'brain' has aloud me/us to share our friendships with others.

Over those long years my identity went from singular to plural. It still remains that way today, I am not an 'I' I am 'we'. At first I split myself in half. The day belonged to Frog face but the night was mine. During the day hyper vigilant, my whole focus was on avoiding and planning ways of out witting Frog face. At night I sewed a hidden pocket into my jeans. In it I tucked a protective knife 'we/I' would go out walking with the families fat springer spaniel. I'd walk in freedom owning my world and revelling in the sense of safety.

Pretty quickly I realised another split was needed if I was going to avoid anyone  knowing what was happening.  At school I created another split in another world as although bullied, it was at least 'seen'.

This splitting carried on until I was nine different people / personalities.  I jumped between these personalities daily depending on the environments encountered.

Soon we were all defined enough to speak for ourselves. We made an internal community. We had all our answers, we did not need anyone. Having lived through this process quite naturally and at the time logically. I have nothing but respect for grey matter.

I met Zippy and so started the great clamp down on the now completely dysfunctional set of people living in my head.  The greater the safety I could trust, the greater the need to want to quiet everything down into something less confusing. As Zippy says 'Carwen nothing directly bad has happened to you now for 13 years'. Today my personalities have been whittled down to bare shadows. Only their voices remain with me. I have learnt to accept them and accept us all living and chatting in my cortex. On good days we are friends, on bad days we are enemies  (especially when I'm tired), there is sometimes just complete overwhelm. But as my strap line says. I am Colourful Carwen, a crowded brain learing to be at peace with itself and its inhabitants!.

The pattern of "Sorry"!!!!!

Sorry

From pretty early on I learnt the word 'sorry'. In my younger years it was my violent behaviour that made me say it but even back then I used to feel extremely frustrated at people not understanding why I had flown off the handle.  To be totally honest I didn't understand either as was too young and used to believe I was an awful individual.

 An example of the build up to 'loosing it' would be a sound or a feeling that would overwhelm me. 

Unable to process the invading stress would result in me launching myself at whoever or whatever was creating the problem and attacking it. 

By the age of four I had scarred my sisters face and thrown her down the stairs and, quite rightly, both my sisters we're scared of me and kept their distance. Now I'm not talking about obvious stresses that everyone can understand creating this behaviour; my stresses, built out of nothing, escalated rapidly and left all involved in shock. let me give another example.  Once aged five I had been put to bed excited, my mum had told me she was going to the shops to buy us all new pillows and was leaving us in the care of my dad. This you must understand was extremely rare, I felt scared in the dark and she would not be there. I also wanted a new pillow. So I started to act up and in the end my mum came into the room I shared with my little sister. She said "If your not asleep when I'm  back then you won't get a pillow".  I cried more, the threat, my brain processed it as an unsolvable problem. "If I sleep, how will I know when you come back to get the pillow???". So I tried holding my breath to look asleep which also failed and gradually the dispare gremlins arrived playing in my head with no ability to get out of the loop, couldn't get to a new view or thought that I could get my reward the next day. Neither did I believe that the situat could ever be ok as it seemed impossible to be asleep and awake at the same time. I took my mums words literally. My brain even at that age was over thinking and became overwhelmed by all the possibilities It came up with to solve its predicament. My body got wound up and full of anger as each thought or action failed.

Preference

Have you ever sat in a room with a few other people and experienced a film together? Each person has watched the film from their unique view point, each persons opion is valid. When talked about some opinions may be challenged and changed, but overal the experience will be judged as a whole, and given a reference that the group can all link back to in retrospect, for example " that was a great night" , or " lovely film ,shame about the ending".

As human beings we have to create meaning to our experiences, enabling us to connect and know how to talk with each other, explain, or comfort one another.

But what happens if one of the people watching the film has a pair of sunglasses on? so experiences the whole thing from a different view point that no one else can share or understand. What if, to make it even harder those sunglasses were invisible.

Ah but that's not hard enough!, let's make this senario even tougher and give it two more options possibly three. 

Option one. What if the person wearing these glasses did not have enough understanding to know they had the sunglasses on?

Option two. What if the person knew they had the glasses on but hated them so tried to hide their impact on the film from those watching with them?

Option three. What if the wearer knew they had the glasses on and so did the people watching, what if everyone understood?

Not my words, but BIG THANKU Dan Segiel!!!!!

This is the first of a series on Interpersonal Neurobiology: Relationships, Health, and the Brain. 

How does knowing about the brain’s parts make mental health and happiness more likely to occur? 

On the one hand, we know that part of our mental life is shaped by how the brain functions. Neuroscience tells us that if we damage this or that part of the brain, our thoughts or feelings, memories or actions will be directly impacted. We also know that what happens in our relationships shapes our thoughts and feelings, memories and actions. And for these reasons, in Interpersonal Neurobiology we focus on seeing the mind as both embodied and relational. Embodied means that the mind is more than simply what happens in your head—it extends to at least the whole of the body in which “you” live.

But “you” also live within your relationships with other people and with the larger environment, the planet. So on the other hand, your connections with people and the planet shape your mental processes, from thoughts and feelings to decisions actions. This is why we say the mind is relational as well as being embodied.

The essence of mental life from this viewpoint is the flow of energy and information flow. Flow is the change of something across time. Information is a pattern of energy with symbolic value—it stands for something other than itself. And energy, in physicists’ terms, is the capacity to do something. This capacity creates a potential that extends from certainty to uncertainty as possibility is turned into actuality and then melts back into potential. Even if you just think of energy as a property of the universe that enables things to unfold that comes in various forms like light, sound, and heat, you’ll have a good starting place for how to just sense what the term ‘energy’ entails.

How energy “streams” or “flows” through our lives shapes our mental experience. If you smile at me and I don’t smile back, your feelings will be different than if I resonate with your smile, feeling the feelings inside of me and then revealing that resonance with a returned smile on my face, in my gestures, and in my tone of voice. Our separate bodies become “connected” as energy flows from you in the form of a smile that then connects with me. Your eyes and your ears pick up how that energy was received and two separate “entities” become connected as one in the exchange. This is how people come to feel “close” to each other even with physical distance that separates their physical bodies. Closeness is about resonance where two “systems” become linked as one.

Knowing about the brain is important in well-being because when we understand that the brain is a part of the body, and the body and relationships shape the mind, then mental health can be more likely to be catalyzed with knowledge of the brain as one part of the whole system of mind. Knowing about the brain’s different parts enables us to optimize how those parts work collaboratively as a part of an integrated whole. In Interpersonal Neurobiology we say that integration is the basis of health. Integration is defined quite simply as “the linkage of differentiated parts.” With integration emerges coherence and harmony; when integration is impaired, chaos or rigidity ensues. 

This background will prepare your mind to optimize chance experiences of life so that you’ll be able to sense chaos and rigidity and detect how differentiated areas of the brain—or differentiated aspects of your relationships with others—may not be functioning as a linked whole. Louis Pasteur once said that “chance favors the prepared mind” – and knowledge of the brain’s parts can prepare your mind to integrate your life by linking differentiated areas of the brain to each other, thus creating neural integration.

In the related blogs that follow this introductory overview, we’ll see the various players that, when known, can be intentionally shaped in how they function. For the brain, “function” means how energy and information are streaming through those particular circuits. Attention is the process that directs energy and information flow—within our brains, and within our relationships. And so we’ll discover that how we learn to focus attention can activate specific circuits. Where attention goes, neural firing occurs. And where neural firing happens, neural structure can be strengthened. When that firing is integrative, then we can see how using our attention in integrative ways can actually reinforce coherent integrative functioning in the moment and grow integrative fibers for future functioning to be more balanced, coherent, and harmonious.

So for now, this is enough for us to share. How you’ll learn to focus your attention with intention and knowledge in integrative ways will build the skills you need to create neural integration in your brain. Get ready for some fun!

INSPIRE TO REWIRE is a mark owned by Dr. Daniel J. Siegel and Mind Your Brain, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Can't sleep

So I thought I would just make sure there was a reason to still be taking a sleep aid a night.

I find myself writing this in a catch twenty two, having not taken my little blue pill at the prescribed time of 9pm I potentially now will loose a whole  nights sleep!!!! Boooo!!!!!

Or, it only bring 1am I could take one it would kick in by 2am. As these little beauties last twelve hours, It would mean loosing half my day tomorrow. Or a the least being awake made of concrete.

That's a basic! The next issue is that my mind is free to play. Humph!!! And I am not alone.

 I have been fighting to try and stop going to the toilet every half an hour as one voice suggests 'your bladder is full'. Another had me obsessed with finding a song from zippy's computer, which I finally listened to by blue toothing it to the steroid in the kitchen.

 And No!!! I do not want to 'go on the exercise bike' till I'm exhausted!!!!! And No!!! I do not want to 'go and check if the fox is pooing outside!' 

I feel resigned can I cope with seven more hours of this. This which will only get weirder and more intense. Why oh why did I not take the pill. Oh yes I remember know because 'what if I'm ok now! What if I'm better! What if people found out! I relyed on pill induced sleep. I am ashamed. Surly I should be better than this!

I fight to make sure I am not just feeling another's pain interceding on some poor disempowered behalf, and so have send emails and texts to make sure everyone is fine. Now paranoid I have to cope with the possibility I woke them all up.

My ears are ringing and banging. Do you know what, writing this has helped. 

Instead of me working up to waking zippy up in another two hours (probably in floods of tears) asking, 'what I should do?', my head is full of people and banging and ringing and suggestive voices!! (Poor zippy,humph!!) and him asking, 'why didn't u take your pill?'.

I choice the blue pill!!!! 

Ode Dur cortex (tiny poem).

Trigger and overwhelm went out to play,

Trigger and overwhelm said let's annoy amygdala today!

So they puffed and they fought

But amygdala had a chemical help of sorts.

In the end trigger and overwhelm, could no longer play all of each and everyday.

And then Big Brother cortex arrived, demanding to stay! He said to amygdala "we will no longer do things thier FFF way!".

So together amygdala and cortex began the fight, to bring trigger and overwhelm to their correct and appropriate height!