Why You Are Having a Hard Time
Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D.
I put this in the last newsletter. I just reread it tonight. I am putting it in again. We are still working on it. Reread it.
The past couple of weeks have been difficult. Everyone I know has felt flat and sort of numb. I heard about forgetting stuff, feeling edgy and hypervigilant, feeling immobilized, having a hard time with sleep, anxiety and feeling just sort of checked out. The fact that so many were having such similar experiences really struck me.
As I sat and thought about it, I realized that this is way deeper than personal struggling. I began to hear the same story, spoken in different ways and the more I listened the more I began to sense that something bigger is happening. I believe that we have been experiencing cultural post traumatic stress disorder.
Jan 6 was a big deal. I think it rocked us more than we ever imagined. Now a few weeks ago someone asked why a list had gone quiet. I answered that I believed it was an insurrection and an inauguration. It actually was sort of a factual reply. I thought we were on overload. I got an email from someone who did the "how dare I talk about POLITICS" on a site designed to talk about food lecture, and
then went on to tell me all the horrible things that would happen to me.
This week, I decided I would speak about this directly.The story is actually isn't about politics at all. It is about the deepest level of WHY we do the program, why we work so hard to step out of addiction, into recovery and stay there. The story here is not just about "getting off of sugar" but is so much bigger. At its deepest it is about learning to hold intense feelings, and not use or do
things to numb our pain and discomfort.
As sugar sensitive people, we feel more deeply. Watching someone be beaten to death is a big deal for us because we experience it on a cellular level. And for those of us who have been doing the program longer, we feel it even more deeply.
When I reference the idea that we have been struggling with cultural post traumatic stress I am giving words to a reality that you may not even understand or know about. I have studied PTSD for more than 30 years. I developed the Safe Place CD as a way to help with it. I learned about the biochemistry of it and what will help to heal it.
I want to speak of this now so that you know it is not just a personal discombobulation you are feeling. It has been too much, too fast and we have not been able to catch up. I want to give you some practical ideas for healing.
Here are some ideas:
1) Do the food. At whatever level you are in the process, work from there. If you are on Step One, work on one part of Step One. If you were on Step Seven and you wobbled around, go back to Step One and rebuild one layer at a time.
2) Journal. Journal even if you haven't bothered to before. Write down times, include amounts, pay attention to intervals. Notice your feelings, if if you are tired, flat, edgy. If you don't know how to journal, take the journal classes.
3) Be realistic about what you are able to do. I decided to commit to doing one thing a day. I started a list so I could see that in fact I was not just sitting and staring into the moonlight. The list help to get me into. motion.
4) I started putting joy dots into my food journal. Joy dots go right into the amygdala which is where PTSD lives. It feels as if joy dots soften the brittleness of the trauma. If you don't know what joy dots are or how they work, ask on any list. The old timers will chime in and give you a sense of it.
5) Come to chat. We are talking about these things. Sharing helps. It makes it feel less personal.
We can heal. Connection helps.
"If you are going to be with a person in a dark hole, take a ladder and a lantern." the steps are the ladder and our humor and perspective is the lantern. You are not alone. Grace is unfolding.
