Ally’s Reviews > Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving > Status Update

For without access to our uncomfortable or painful feelings, we are deprived of the most fundamental part of our ability to notice when something is unfair, abusive, or neglectful in our environments.

As I am writing this, my son’s friend synchronistically tells him, “This LEGO creature I made spreads brain attack and eats away at the person.” I marvel at the synchronicity and think, “What a fitting image for the trauma-inducing parent.”

[This dude is such a doof, it’s kind of adorable.]

[in trauma] He becomes stuck in an adrenalized state. His sympathetic nervous system is locked on, and he cannot toggle into the relaxation function of the parasympathetic nervous system.

[A friend calls it "Mars rover-ing" when thrashing because there are too many tasks to prioritize - I'm fascinated by the attraction to mechanistic, digital models for fuzzy, analog, organic processes. Trauma as a busted switch.]

Later, when I learned about auras...

[goddamn it where are my people that both deeply value and study emotional experience and also care about what's actually really real]