I wrote to Danielle today, June 16th 2018, about moving from a state of consciousness to a stage of consciousness. It seems to me there is no beliefs, no particular image and no idea of doing anything. The good from this stage of consciousness is I no longer experience my intense mind and the chaos that went with it, which erupted into aggressive impulses. My mind is no longer being filled with hatred. This adjustment to this stage of consciousness is growth. I am not discouraged by this “nothingness” on this stage because my peace of mind is everything. The stage offers wholeness in not doing and yet understanding this new consciousness is not thrilling nor is it exciting to me.
My adjusting to this acceptance in “not doing” and being okay with it is still beyond me. I feel like I am adjusting to my own value on this stage without reference to anyone or anything. What certain values are necessary to submit to on this stage? Is this writing even realistic?
I would say if you are a writer, it may be your best expression?..For me no!..I have been told by many professionals that I should write a book, well that just aint me…Some need a therapist to talk to?
Acceptance to me is simple, the anger is gone, the why did this happen to me…The thought of “is life worth living?”
I find happiness in sunny days, fresh air, something that makes me smile or laugh.
I have learned to control what I can, get away from things that bother, hurt, cause confusion…
I think acceptance to me is I accept who I am, I cannot change the past…What I do today affects the future…Now there is still plenty I want and need, and that hasn’t come my way as of yet…I still have hope…
I like your insight. You always have something interesting and worthwhile to say. I am appreciate how you communicate “the anger is gone” and for me surrendering my madman is just beginning. The madman, my aggression within me, kept imposing patterns into everything and even projecting ideas into every circumstance. Because I am beginning to let go of this madman, disturbed and delusional, I feel somewhat bored and somewhat depressed. Yet this depression is different or at least I do not feel near the anger and aggression turned inward against myself. There is greater acceptance, as you also communicate.
Your last words, “I still have hope…” appears clearly as your acceptance of life struggles. It is like your hope is finding meaning and a certain reward in life’s struggles. For me, much of my aggression pertains to hopelessness and being separated from the world’s activities. So in a sense, as you also appear to be saying, this place requires a radical acceptance of life. I am still adjusting to this acceptance in so far I no longer clinging to the endless activity of my mind as my source of information and identity.
This stage of consciousness is starting to offer acceptance in the sense of stillness and peace. I am just rather slow catching on.
I always wanted to ask about your head injury: how it happen, how many years back, and what you experience now? If this is too complex and exhausting (painful) for you we can let it pass. Thanks for your open mind.
Hi, Syd…My TBi is a strange one and have to be careful as what to say…The first work day of the new year in 2007 I went to work, never to work again…Put simply I was poisoned, or you could call it overdosed! I worked in a government lab, and there was a dangerous chemical that leached out and nearly killed me!
I was completely out of it for 6 weeks, then after about 9 months they slowly started all kinds of therapy…It was the hardest thing I have every had to endure!
I have bad frontal lob damage(short term memory) All sensory integration( smell, touch, taste, ect)…PTSD, headaches, confusion, loosing vision in my right eye as it is now my vistibular for the left side of brain.
I lost my family over this, I only am contacted by my youngest daughter, no one else…lonely totally, but I am alive and i live my life with strategy every day to survive!
Thats a simple explanation to like so many of us of a very complex experience!
Thanks davOD. I am so sorry you have had to experience this and endure the overwhelming recovery. This is very raw and shocking. I still want you to know I appreciate you being generous and understanding to all who need you here.
**what I am seeing written here is something that only a person who experiences a TBI, can understand. Mentioning ‘stages’ of conscious, and ‘state’ of conscious, that sort of felt familiar as I thought back to what I remember about my own progression while I live this thing. I looked at it as ‘phases’ of recovery. Will I ever be Fully Recovered? GoD only knows / TBI … you only know it if you live it **
You words are insightful John and this is good words “‘phases’ of recovery.” Because my mind was never clear or certain, anxiety increased. This caused my mind new and more complicated problems. Also because I am unable to repress unconscious impulses I can be extremely high-strung. For some reason this always makes me intense, nothing is clear, and I will find hidden meaning and causes everywhere. So it seems to me this stage of consciousness is radical acceptance, as DavOD is saying and like you are saying.
Radical acceptance is a turning point for me. This learning to accept my unconscious impulses, even when they fuel intense involvement in my perceptions, is still a hard path. Acceptance, though, is beginning to compensate for my “ugly-duckling” feelings, which created physical and social handicaps. When I can accept I seem able to let go and release the feeling of being inadequate and defective, unimportant and undesirable. There also are those times when this mental recovery takes deep courage to accept and sometimes it is just unsettling, which makes it difficult to identify and resolve. This stage now means I accept my feelings and impulses no matter how unseemly or unflattering they are. Maybe this stage of acceptance will offer a peace, though I am not fully home with this yet, as it is taking me into accepting my powerlessness.
Powerlessness for some reason is still threatening and makes my unconscious flip into anxiety. This powerlessness creates horror for me and makes my mind obsessed with defending myself. Yet anxiety and a fearful faithlessness is no longer a way to live, because living within it makes me feel the need defend myself. Maybe, after all, this stage is the beginning of accepting my powerlessness. The horror and uncertainty is more simple and even beyond me within this acceptance.
Thank you as I truly feel you can understand what I am saying. Also thanks for your open mind and being resilient with your setbacks.
Syd I found that if I ate a BUNCH of veggies that are known to help the brain, then yes I did notice I was better able to deal with whatever my own TBI threw at me. My advice to you is that you study up, on Brain Food, it really helps
Thanks John, good advice and I will look into Brain Food. Could I ask about your brain injury, as long as it is not to uncomfortable for you. When and what happen if I may?
i was told it was a Diffuse Axonal type of injury and after the 32day coma people told me I looked fine somthe told me to go out and live a normal life like everyone else. I guess it’s normal to have a job history which reads like a phone book. I remember many problems as I muddled along over the last 41+years
This is shocking John and it is hard to believe they told you to live a normal life. These medical people were sure neglectful to you, not recognizing the medical problems and the emotional problems combined. There appears to be so much repression resistance in the medical field and it is like they want to maintain relationships with their patients with an illusion. Medical people can have a place where there are completely unreliable, do not want to do anything and are like running into a stone wall. I am sorry you have had to suffer this neglect, besides all the pain you have had to endure.
I always had good medical help, sometimes had to strong-arm people to get my way and other times just left the middle to the doctor appointment when they would tell me it was in my head. Also, after my head injury, I was thrown into recovery immediately and my father was of the mind “What I say goes!” He would shout longer and louder, threatening me, and never letting up until I gave in. Maybe this was good forced recovery, as Dad swaggered around like four-star general, yet it created a madman within me. My mental connections went haywire many times, thus getting out of this craziness and paranoid delusions has been a tough road. Now I am trying to face my insecurity and powerlessness, trying to move into acceptance.
“TBI … you only know it if you live it”, which for me has caused over identification with my ego, deep states of reactivity, deep states of self-alienation, deep states of self-destructiveness, suffering and everything in between. I personally feel a TBI has made me caught in a grip of obsessing on negative thoughts and relentless self-reproaches, which became a form of delusional thinking and no ray of hope could intrude. My mind would become this chasm of inner darkness, open up to this black hole inside, and then drain out whatever life I had. The intense suffering became this source of torment, and the whole of life became an unbearable reminder of my alienation. This tormented consciousness just burned inside me and naturally I was looking for a way out. For me I need to escape my intense mental suffering, become aggressive and withdrew, got drunk, and was my way of saying no to life. I refused to go on being tormented.
I am now working to accept my crushing negative self-consciousness rather than trying to rid myself from myself. I am working to accept I have been defeated by life and feeling defeated is something strongly offensive to me, like I am being shown I am worthless. Yet this madman no longer serves me, as it makes me deeply disturbed delusional paranoid. Letting go of this madman and this horror is a leap into the unknown and to describe life this way is something totally new. Naturally I want to cling onto my ideas about how this should work, yet it feels like it is more just letting go and letting a leaf fall off the tree.
Naturally this falling creates self-consciousness and alienation, yet this time I am learning acceptance, serenity, and even being okay of being “told” who I am not ---- in the falling.
the journey starts with a single step. Obviously you have done that to be where you are today. Be proud, and build on each and every accomplishment no matter how small it may seem to anyone else. You are WINNING. YOU WILL WAKE UP AGAIN TOMORROW, build on that