Kimberly Revis Callis's Blog, page 7

Book 2: Symptoms and Progression of Complex PTSD Available Now on Smashwords

Book 2 of the Stoning Demons Series, Symptoms and Progress of Complex PTSD is available now on Smashwords.  You can download your copy today in epub.  Don’t worry if you don’t have a Kindle or reader, you can download Adobe Digital Editions free.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/438441

Complex PTSD takes a progressive pathology, with symptoms worsening over successive traumatic experiences or during periods of elevated stress. Complex PTSD has its foundation in childhood trauma, impacting our development and undermining our mental and physical health for a lifetime. 

We tend to ignore the lifelong effects of trauma, with the misconception that children are inherently resilient. Those of us who experienced trauma in childhood know the truth of it. We are changed and shaped by those traumas and the response of others in supporting us through them.

As adults, we are not separate from who we were or what we experienced as children. We remember it, if we are battling Complex PTSD, we are reliving it.

My IndieGogo campaign running until July 26th.  I am looking to raise funds to hire an editor to help me polish up the series and to self-publish printed editions.  Please help me finish off this project and help raise awareness about Complex PTSD recovery.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/stoning-demons-series/x/661994

Thought for the day….

It is impossible to be worried about anything when you are coloring with crayons.

A few months ago, my son gave me a coloring book for grown-ups.  He wasn’t sure if I would like it, but he thought it was neat, so he gave it to me.  I loved it immediately.  Tons of pages in a nice sturdy book full of black lines tracing images of butterflies, goldfish, flowers, cats and whatever… cute little scenes.  I grabbed my six-year-old nephew’s crayons and sat with the book at a table.  Once I had picked a page and a color to start with I was lost from all the cares of this world; dropped back into a former time and part of myself that didn’t need to focus on anything but staying in the lines.

I’ve used coloring as part of my therapy before, but I chose children’s books full of Disney princess and threw all of my anger into them.  This particular book is fabulous though.  The pictures are so very positive and light that it’s easy to let go of myself in get lost like a happy girl in the simplicity of it.  Choose a picture, choose a color, choose a space between the lines to fill.  I can be a little artistic and leave some of the lines empty, making a butterfly pop off the page or a bird look like it’s sitting on air.

It’s a lovely form of meditation.  A safe way to feel like a six-year-old and to let go of everything else for a while.

I’ve started using coloring as a way to distract myself if I have a bad day to help wind down my anxiety.  It really helps me settle and can pick up my mood better than almost anything else.

Free Webinar: Flashbacks & the Fight/Flight Response

From Michele Rosenthal on Heal My PTSD:

“Flashbacks and the fight/flight/freeze response are two of the most difficult PTSD symptoms to cope with — that’s why we’re devoting an entire FREE 60+ minutes to talking about how and why they happen, plus what you can do about them.  

On Thursday, June 19th (that’s next week!), Michele will be hosting The Science Behind Your Symptoms, Part 2, the next free webinar in the PTSD webinar series, HOW TRAUMA AFFECTS YOUR BRAIN.”

Marijuana Withdrawal Syndrome

This is a good blog article by Dirk Hanson about the symptoms of marijuana withdrawal syndrome.

Anyone who uses marijuana-supported therapy should educate themselves on the effects of stopping the treatment.  It helps to be prepared because some of the symptoms can bring on physical symptoms similar to CPTSD issues, making it more difficult to stop.

Keeping perspective through withdrawal is difficult.  I know this from personal experience.  I have had all of these issues and they have been powerful enough to keep me using marijuana even when I should have been finished with my therapy.  It is a vicious circle because I often go looking for traumas or psychological problems to address, just so I can maintain the calm I feel with marijuana.

But, it’s a false security at the end of the day.  My true goal with my therapy has been to recover and get back to living a full life.  It is just not possible to do that when I continue to medicate.  Marijuana support has been important while I dealt with the progression of CPTSD, but once I plateaued and felt stable, I needed to move past medicating to living naturally.  I think I forgot about that part for quite a while.

Marijuana addiction is a real condition, even though recovery may not be as difficult physically as alcohol or other drugs.  It takes real resolve to get through it when you have recurring anxiety or chronic pain.  It takes strength and determination to stop using when marijuana makes so many of the CPTSD complications easier to deal with.  But, the point is eventually a person needs to get back to a natural baseline… if that is possible.

I believe it is possible.  I believe I can live an unmedicated, full life again.  I believe I can heal my CPTSD to a point of real, lasting remission and that I will not need to use marijuana to cope.

So, here I go.  I am stopping the medication with the intention of full abstinence.  It may not be easy, but certainly it will not be as hard as the work I’ve done on the rest of my recovery.

I will share  the experience here and in the Stoning Demons series.  In the meantime, this article is a good read.

http://brainblogger.com/2009/06/15/marijuana-withdrawal-syndrome/

 

Nearly 1 in 8 American children are maltreated before age 18

By the time they reach age 18, about 12% of American children experience a confirmed case of maltreatment in the form of neglect, physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, according to a new study by researchers at Yale University.

Read more at http://scienceblog.com/72687/nearly-1-8-american-children-maltreated-age-18/#BbEJBxio4RErTP0G.99

America’s mental health crisis: a Guardian expose

America’s mental health system is in crisis.   The Guardian has put together a series of articles exposing some of the issues behind treatment of mental illness in the US.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/series/us-mental-health-crisis

 

What experience have you had with mental health care and support?  What would you like to see done to help patients and their families?

Related reading for recovery and growth

High on Low: Harnessing the Power of Unhappiness
By Wilhelm Schmid

Is not being happy really so bad? In HIGH ON LOW: HARNESSING THE POWER OF UNHAPPINESS, bestselling author Wilhelm Schmid argues that far from preventing us from living a full life, being unhappy is a crucial part of well-rounded, active, and creative living. Rather than treating unhappiness as an unwelcome interloper on our quest for happiness, we should harness the very power of not being happy.





A Year of Transformation
By Mary Anne Smrz

A Year of Transformation is Mary Anne Smrz’s third book in the Reflections from the Red Kayak Trademarked series. Mary Anne takes readers halfway around the world, paddling toward their authentic selves, as she reveals nature’s life lessons, discovered during a year of kayak excursions.





The Tao of Happiness: Unleash the Happiness Within
By Lidiya K

“The Tao of Happiness” is a guide on how to be happy without trying to change things and interfere. Instead, I write about how to let go, slow down, find contentment and enjoy the present moment by truly experiencing it. The book is a simple reading about what it takes to be happy, how to find joy in everything we do, to fix our relationship with ourselves, be grateful and go with the flow.





Diet Therapy In Homoeopathy
By Amit Majumdar, Sr

Hippocrates, considered the father of medicine, had said hundreds of years ago: Let the food be the medicine!Indeed, diet is an important factor that makes a big difference between health and disease. Correct diet acts as an elixir, enhancing health and prolonging life whereas incorrect diet acts as a poison, undermining health and, sometimes, bringing a premature and to life.

Article: Modern Parenting May Hinder Brain Development

This is an interesting short article from ScienceBlog.

This new research links certain early, nurturing parenting practices — the kind common in foraging hunter-gatherer societies — to specific, healthy emotional outcomes in adulthood, and has many experts rethinking some of our modern, cultural childrearing “norms.”

Read more at http://scienceblog.com/58957/modern-parenting-may-hinder-brain-development-research-shows/#sLVFvQSEvf5kOByC.99

Help me finish the Stoning Demons Series

I am looking to raise funds to finish the Stoning Demons Series. The funds will be used to hire a professional editor and to print 250 copies. I plan to get out next year with advocacy for medical cannabis and to promote understanding of developmental trauma and CPTSD, the print copies will help me get the word out.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/stoning-demons-series/x/661994

Journal Excerpt: Taking responsibility for my recovery…

I wrote this during my stay in Hawaii, when I was really immersed in my clumsy recovery.  Trigger warning: this is a fairly sad and hopeless entry.  Coming back to it later and reading it as objectively as I could, I could see a few important things:

I was scapegoating myself.  Yes, I have responsibility for my behavior, but I was deeply in victim mode at this point.  This thinking pointed me toward recovery work focused on scapegoated abuse sufferers.
I was sabotaging  myself.  I was completely undermining my own life, giving myself nowhere to go.  My unhealthy outlook on the past and the future was classic hopelessness.  This pointed me toward recovery work focused on growth, with an emphasis on making future plans and sticking to them. I also found I needed to work on self-esteem and healthy ego.
I was isolating myself.  My social phobias are fairly obvious.  I did more research on attachment theory.  I still have a lot of work to do in this area, but I am venturing out a bit more confidently.

Journal Excerpt: Taking responsibility for my recovery…

Looking at it all and finally spending some time alone I realized that there was another big piece of the puzzle that I was missing. It hit me today and brought out some very deep emotion. I know that’s good. It’s the same thing that’s happened with each of my new realizations, but this one is directed at me… not anyone else.

This time, I’m looking at my own responsibility for this “mess” I’m cleaning up… y’know, the internal mess as well as the external fallout. I guess it’s a critical step in moving from victim to survivor to I’m-just-bloody-well-over-it, but it comes with a real confrontation for how I have (or have not) handled my responsibilities in my life. After all… regardless of anything that has ever happened to me, I am responsible for my behavior and my feelings. It’s so confronting, but so very necessary for me to understand this and own it.

I’m responsible for not having a full life in the Netherlands, for not fully giving to my job or my kids or my friends or myself. It doesn’t really go any farther back than that. That was the time I let myself fall apart. That was the place where I let myself give in and give up. I feel all the shame and disappointment of that right now, but I guess that is part of owning my responsibility. I let myself flow along with the bad events, even created a lot of them. I let myself get wrapped up in self-loathing and self pity and felt entitled to do so because of a whole host of physical, mental and emotional issues. I was one great big crybaby. I hid from everything, rather than facing it full on like I should have.

Now, I find myself reaching back to that time and wishing it had all been done differently. Wishing I had the courage and strength to face it the right way. I know I learned a lot and I will get back to that gratitude I had for what I learned, but until now all the responsibility for it was somewhere outside me.

It’s hard to own up to my failings, but I have to. I expect the work I do on this over the next little while will be hard (big lump in my throat now).

The hardest part is that I’ve spent so many years in a place where I felt so out of place, with people I didn’t really get to know and now I feel that they must think as little of me as I do of myself. I know I’m not supposed to focus on what other people think of me, but I don’t think it’s possible for me to examine my responsibility without seeing where I failed other people. I can’t examine my failures without seeing what other’s must have thought of me.

I let myself fail. I let myself down and I let other people down in the process. I was unreliable, inconsistent and non-performing. I had no successes. I compromised a career I once loved and thrived in… a career I will never have again. I cost myself a reputation that I had built on hard work and real talent. I sabotaged my life and now have to rebuild it as something completely new (and foreign).

I will make something new of it all. I know that. Somehow through all of this (even the shame and embarrassment), I will make something that I can be happy with…. but, I think the grieving for what I lost will take some time. For the first time I will have to do it completely alone and only for myself. I can’t bring new people into the depths of this process.

I’ve had to face myself alone for the first time in months… face myself with all this new knowledge from seeing my family again… face myself in a new place with no outside pull to do or be anything… face myself. Ugh.

I know this place will ultimately heal my spirit, but being here is asking me to examine it more than I expected. I knew when I left the Netherlands, I was leaving in shame and as a person who failed to do what was expected of her. I said it was to go off on some other great adventure, but inside it just felt like shame. I can never go back and make it right. I can never undo it and I can never get back what I lost.

Somehow, I will come to an understanding of what I’ve actually gained and find real peace and acceptance… once I feel like I’ve tackled each part of this complicated mess. I can’t think of anything more difficult than forgiveness…. especially forgiving yourself.

I didn’t mean for this message to come out like this. I didn’t realize how much I was feeling until I started writing it. I was actually just feeling overwhelmed at reading my own writing from three years ago, two years ago, last year. I was feeling a little sad because I know that there are people in the Netherlands who couldn’t give a rats ass if I was gone or not, who wouldn’t care if they ever heard from me again.

Stupid, self-indulgent self pity, eh?

I swear my spirit tells me I’m a good person, but my ego is beating the hell out of me at the moment. Reading the very public pain and drama I spewed out three years ago is so very hard. OMG, I really made a complete fool of myself.