A good question Caitlin, “How do you all think of your condition?” For me I live in a fog of dissociation and I react by denying my reality. There are times I am pushed over the edge and like davOD is communicating I will fight back. My nature is to fight, especially if these holes in my brain makes my mental connections go haywire. I especially fight when I am violated and overwhelmed by others. The madman will attack. I can become obsessed defending myself from potential threats from the environment and my difficulty is whatever bad I see — I will also exclude the good.
Because I am self-aware enough to know I am missing out on many important aspects of life, particularly relationships, I have lived in a constant emotional storminess. My brain is deficient and the problem is I have identified with the woundness. Then I am caught in emotional reactions and beliefs about my deficiency, and then I construct an identity out of it. I will feel like an outsider, who never belong anywhere and again the result is my constant emotional storminess and reactivity. This leads to the feeling something is missing inside, but this perpetuates the sense of inner lack without dealing with the root problem.
If I do not react or feel anything my denial of life can be astounding. I deny my TBI ever happened or I think I can work it out mentally. I will think this really did not happen, dissociation, and I will feel life is a bad dream, make believe, so life will not really happen to me. Denying and reacting serves me from facing my trauma, but is also flight from self-awareness. So in response to my denial, reaction and my brain living in a fog I am trying to learn to just be aware.
Awareness appears to not cling to anything. This awareness appears to not get caught in my inner impoverishment and shrinking back from contact, and by clutching at the little I think I have or afraid of losing. This awareness appears to take in serenity and more than I am comfortable with. Serenity appears like I need to become open to others and to accept life exactly as it is. Awareness, within serenity, feels like I accept the conditions I am working with. There appears to be flow here and there is no feeling of effort or striving. Calm and balanced, however, this also feels like a stranger walking down the street and again the madman is about to attack.
My thoughts cannot understand this and putting myself on this awareness line and trusting it seems strange that nothing can be added or subtracted from it. I just can say I can no longer cling to my ideas, open my mind and learn to observe with awareness. Serenity and awareness maybe can release this activity of judging and dividing myself into judging and judged parts. Naturally, something totally new is hard for me to explain and is more to my lack of trust. My mental complexities I am truly aware of them and I am trying to move just into awareness and serenity within it. I say this because I am tired of this horror, like a beast pounding on the door of my unconscious, and maybe awareness can take the door off the hinges. Yet I do not have good realistic trust in taking the door off, and maybe this simple awareness is enough.
Thanks to all of you and thanks for allowing me to have your trust.
