Gulp.

Richard Grannon has taught Charles to recognise the emotional flashback.

I am making progress!

I embrace change!

Argh. That familiar, hot feeling of rage washing over him. That constricted sensation in his throat and his chest. That surge of blind, condensed fury.

Richard Grannon – on numerous occasions – has respectfully pointed his YouTube followers in the direction of Pete Walker’s seminal book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (not forgetting his earlier, groundbreaking text The Tao of Fully Feeling) available free on Amazon Kindle, Charles has noted, if you are able to work out what the hell signing up to it actually means for your long-term fiscal and psychological well-being (which Charles isn’t, so he has purchased both, at inordinate expense, in paperback).

It was Pete Walker – an American therapist – who first made the connection between Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (typically experienced by war veterans with its characteristic mental flashbacks – triggered seemingly at random or by certain stressful situations) and Complex PTSD/R where the victim experiences emotional flashbacks. This means that they don’t have visions, as such, but they are engulfed/obliterated by feelings instead. These feelings are distorting, panic-inducing, arbitrary, overwhelming.

The original cause of these ‘emotional’ flashbacks isn’t as pointed and specific as in the standard PTSD (i.e. one, specific traumatic incident). They are sourced in a kind of watercolour wash – a destabilising blur – of traumatic experiences (generally associated with long-term physical and/or emotional childhood abuse: neglect, harsh criticism, cruelty, mixed-messages, parental unreliability/unpredictability). Over time this wash of abuse effects the brain’s HPA axis (these are the glands that relate to threat perception) and the individual’s baseline state becomes dis-regulated – fluctuates and nose-dives with no perceptible external cause. The primitive parts of the brain responsible for fight/flight responses are perpetually over-stimulated. The person is then emotionally hyper-normalised. They try to stop feeling (feelings are at once utterly overwhelming and completely unreliable). They try to block these unwelcome responses and end up over-thinking things or simply checking out. Feelings become the enemy. Feelings attack. They must be repressed. They become dangerous and unpredictable.

There is so much Charles still has to learn.

The Toxic Inner Critic.

Perfectionism.

The Trauma Tunnel.

Entitlement.

Emotional dis-regulation.

Developing critical thinking skills.

Learned Responses.

S.N.A.F.U. (situation-normal-all-fucked-up)

The Somatic Body.

Semangat.

Emotional flashbacks.

If only he could get started!

Why, why, why can’t I get started?

Although he does know about the Hand Mnemonic. He has almost got the Hand Mnemonic down pat. It’s a part of the basic skill-set that Grannon introduced, online, and in seminars, during an earlier phase (before the big American backers got on board and encouraged him to stop doing too much for free and being such a wildman/smart-arse).

Ah. The inter-relatedness of things. Yes.

There’s always something else.

Isn’t there?

Something else?

To look for?

Must. Find. Something. Else.

Easier.

Quicker.

Cheaper.

Better.

Searching.

For something else.

An add-on.

A bonus-ball.

To make it okay.

To feed the hunger.

To block that GIANT GAPING MAW inside that longs to be filled but cannot be filled.