Journaling, neurodivergence, abuse history
Looking at my history informed by Erickson’s Stages of Development and more ADHD knowledge. The accident happens when I’m 4-5, so Erickson’s guilt versus self determination. It gives me PTSD which amps up frustration and sets up CPTSD because now there’s no future if things go south, everything’s immediate. My Dad’s “tutoring,” gifted classes, the decision no students skip grades and behavioral classes happen during Erickson’s competency stage.
Journaling, neurodivergence, abuse history
So that reenforces ADHD, C/PTSD, more learned helplessness; I’m stuck and trapped because I’m too inept to get out thanks to my own actions- or even if I could it’s been decided that I’m supposed to be stuck, trapped, the villain role, unwanted except for my utility etc. As I’m starting to recover at the end of grade school, high school means isolation and social censure and really brings back all that right during Erickson’s identity development stage.
Journaling, neurodivergence, abuse history
All of this circles back to undiagnosed ADHD and PTSD. Nobody has ever told me being stuck and trapped is just how I feel due to my neurochemistry. When I get frustrated and melt down it’s always been because I’m an evil monster to be corrected by even more punishment (everything already feels like punishment). Which stacks with all the messages about being ugly, stupid, unwanted therefore endangered as shit I now unquestioningly believe.
Journaling, neurodivergence, abuse history
College is a break from this because classes fit more with ADHD. And… I graduate, nobody wants me except my parents who want their version of me, I’m vulnerable, and the tech boom assures me other people are what’s valued, safe and comfortable; it’s all the messages from high school and earlier amped to max volume. Learned helplessness settles in and stays essentially unchallenged until my first psychedelic trip in 2008.
Journaling, neurodivergence, abuse history
By this point I’m retraumatizing myself (everything fits to personal myths about lack of agency, a stuck, trapped, ill tempered comic villain) and being retraumatized (relationship, work especially narcissistic abuse in 2016-17, politics) during Erickson’s productivity stage.
Left feeling I’ve failed to build a family, career or community, so what’s left is death - but I don’t get it until more being someone else’s convenience unlike the GOOD people.
Journaling, neurodivergence, abuse history
And, after college and into why a relatively few psychedelic trips worked, connects to feeling I challenge my assumptions and behaviors only in a sweet spot where it’s obvious those assumptions and behaviors aren’t working, AND everything’s NOT falling apart too fast to recalibrate
with whether “everything’s falling apart” really tied to how LONG I’ve lived with less certainty it’s all falling apart. Before 2008 I don’t think I considered that, at all!
Journaling, neurodivergence, abuse history
Also now thinking about how non dualistic nuance has been a feature of my adult hobbies, something which literally didn’t exist in my mind before graduating college. I can be less than a perfectly skilled artist, martial artist or cook and still be better than utterly lousy and needing to give up if not required to do whatever by an external authority. Accepting that’s a skill I’ve literally spent 3 decades learning.