Tag: trauma

Coping strategies

Today’s question is what strategies do I use to cope with negative feelings? This is definitely an area where I need to improve. I have been dealing with about seven years’ worth of negative feelings, so I should be good at it by now, but I don’t think I have any strategy that works perfectly.

Before I get started on my list, I want to relate something I do that helps me get the motivation to get out of bed. On the days I can’t sleep the day away, I will hit the snooze on the alarm and just lay there thinking. I have this memory of my late grandmother stroking my hair on the days I was ill and feverish and telling me it would be okay. Even though I felt sick enough to die, it somehow made me feel like living. I found that memory also works on days when I am just sick of life. I will lay there in bed and imagine my grandmother stroking my hair and telling me the day will be fine. That memory is really the last time I felt true affection from another person. It was pure and unconditional love. Somewhere along the way, affection became tainted by people using it to get what they want. Pure unadulterated affection is probably the most powerful medicine in the world. Unfortunately, I can only find it in my distant memories now, but it still melts away all the suffering. Thank you, grandma, for healing me through endless ages with your love.

  1. Prayer. I pray to God a lot. It’s not like a traditional prayer, but like a very long conversation, sometimes spanning hours. There has never been a time when I thought I lost God’s attention though. He’s pretty much the only person who listens to me. I am reminded of David’s very famous line, “If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.” (Psalm 139:8). It really is true. He is always with his children, wherever they may find themselves.
  2. Games. I sometimes play video games. I’m not super into it like some people. I think this stems from the fact that I am not at all competitive. I mainly use games as a distraction. There is one thing about them that drags me into them. I sort of connect with the hero archetype that is personified in many games. If the right cause awakens me, I will slay all your dragons. Basically, I have a hero complex, otherwise known as a savior complex. If my people need me, I will rescue them.
  3. Conversation. If I meet the right person while I am out, we will have a wonderful time together, just talking the night away. I love conversing with those people. Sometimes I get to hear their whole life story, and I love true stories! Sometimes they are unloading emotional problems, and I’m totally there to hear them out. There’s also a surprising amount of intellectual, philosophical, and political discussions that happen at bars. I’m a great listener, and it’s definitely a good distraction.
  4. Dreams. Occasionally I have bad dreams, but for the most part my dreams are tolerable, sometimes even pleasant. In my dreams, I am not myself. I am free to be whoever I want. It is so liberating! I sometimes wish I could just change my name, move far away, and start over, meeting all new people. Dreams are the closest I come to that wish.
  5. Reading. I read a lot of books. My record for a year is over one hundred books. That used to be the goal I set each year. I don’t read as much as that anymore, but it has always been a part of my life. A good book is one of the only things that can sufficiently distract me from my troubles. I also listen to audiobooks when I go on walks or drive long distance.
  6. Writing. As you know, I write blog posts quite often. It helps me to get things out in the open. I am probably too open with strangers, but they are mostly supportive in the blogging community. There is some degree of protection from the anonymity of it all I suppose. To me, blogging is very therapeutic. I also dream of being a novelist one day, if I can ever straighten my emotions out enough stay on it.
  7. Women. I’m not going to lie, a lot of the negativity that encroaches on my happiness is from the heartbreak women have caused me. That being said, those same women filled my life with incredible happiness when they were with me. That’s why losing them hurt me so badly. I don’t think women realize how much power they have to heal. I know if the right girl came along, she would easily be able to wipe away all the hurt of those who left me in shambles. It’s almost too much power for any person to wield. I suppose there are women who feel the same way about men.
  8. Thunder. I don’t know why, but rolling thunder and rain help me to relax. I have an app that just plays the sound of thunder and rain. I use it to fall asleep some nights. It also seems to reduce the chances of me waking up over in the night. I suppose it is the remnant of childhood memories where the rain on our tin roof helped me sleep, or maybe thunder just scares off negative forces. Either way, the thunderstorm is one of my dearest friends.

Are there any memories from your childhood that get you through the day? What is your view of affection on mental health? Did you have a good relationship with your parents and grandparents? Do you have any good coping strategies you would add? What’s the biggest source of negativity in your life? Do you have a savior complex?

Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!

Also, thanks for being here! Love you all!

All the kittens died.

Please be advised that this post contains some graphic descriptions.

I knew her for many years, and I liked her, but I had only found out recently that she liked me the whole time I had known her. I remember she and I started hanging around each other a lot more, and things began to come out in the open. It was kind of surprising to me at the time, but felt great that our feelings were mutual.

I have a memory of one day when we made a drive in the country together. She had a horse and she was going to show her to me. She was something of a cowgirl I guess, and did barrel racing growing up. We drove out toward the ranch where her horse was pastured, but we never quite made it there. It was at one of her girlfriend’s house, but if I remember right, she saw she had company and didn’t want to interrupt, so we just kept driving around.

The conversation we were having was very distracting, and I remember it made me make a wrong turn. I actually turned down the wrong side of the highway, which was one way, and I was going against traffic! It didn’t take me long to correct this of course, and I’m lucky there weren’t many cars on the road that far out of town. Maybe this was a sign telling me I was going the wrong way.

As we talked, it came out how much we really liked each other, but something sort of came to mind that bothered me. I remembered something that happened to me when I was a child growing up. It was one of those things that is in the back of your mind influencing things, but you don’t really talk about it.

When I was growing up, there were a lot of stray cats living around the house. It was a small town and no one seemed to mind them. Some people put out food for them. I think people believed they were a good thing to have around because they might eat things like mice and rats, or maybe kill small snakes.

As a kid, I loved these cats so much and spent considerable time around them. Since they were strays, they were not neutered, and it was not uncommon to find a bunch of kittens in a wood pile or under the house. This was very wonderful for me to find as a child!

Every time I would come upon a litter of kittens, I would pet and play with them for hours. During this time, it was inevitable that I would find one that I loved the most. It was most often the black one because it usually had a patch of white fur right under it’s chin. It sort of made it look like it was wearing a tiny tuxedo.

Since my family was religious, I was a very faithful child. Because of this, a very strange idea crept into my little mind. I began to believe that if I loved a kitten too much, God would take it away from me, because it interfered with my love for God. I admit it was probably a silly idea that God might be somehow jealous of a kitten, but I was a superstitious youth, and kind of believed it at the time.

I should give some back story here. Young stray cats often get into a lot of trouble while they are growing up. There’s actually a lot of ways they can get hurt very badly, but there’s one thing that is especially dangerous to them, as I found out the hard way.

In the old days, cars had large cavities under the hood by the engine that were warm, dark, and quiet most of the time. These spaces were very inviting for a young cat because they could climb up into this area for protection from the elements and other animals. Unfortunately, cars back then also had a big metal fan that rotated at high speed when the engine was running, and it was prone to quickly massacre young felines before they even knew what hit them.

Because of my superstitious ideas, I began to notice something odd happening with the stray kittens. It always seemed like the cat I loved the most was the one to hit the fan first. I’m sure my focus on this one kitten increased my chances of noticing it missing more, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind that I might somehow be responsible.

I was positively traumatized by this every time it happened. It was one of the most terrible parts of my childhood, and I know my dad hated it as bad as I did, because it was usually him cranking the car to go to work in the morning that caused the accident. I can’t imagine how that made his morning.

I’m so glad my dad took care of this before I saw it. I wouldn’t know at all until the next day when I went looking for my favorite cat and couldn’t find him, only to be told later what happened when I asked my parents.

For many years afterwards, I was very scared to love anything deeply, because I didn’t want to feel responsible if something bad happened. I felt like God would take what I loved away, sometimes in the most terrible way possible. I was totally traumatized by these kittens being decapitated, and felt like I was the cause of it all.

I love you enough to give this a try, but I have to tell you, all the kittens died.

This crazy thought was still buried in my psyche many years later when I was on this ride through the country. I remember I told her, I love you enough to give this a try, but I have to tell you, all the kittens died. She was, of course, totally baffled by what I meant until I explained it later.

As far as I know, she’s still alive and well, but my what hell we went though together! It set in motion something that tore my heart into little shreds! Honestly, the trauma I had from the kittens seems light in comparison. From what I’ve heard, she might have fared even worse, but she hasn’t really told me what happened after she left town.

It’s over now, but I do still care about her deeply. I’m very sorry for what happened to both of us. If I had it to do over, I still don’t know if I could have changed anything. I think it was part of our destiny together. This time, the kitten lived! Thank God!

What experiences have you had with stray animals? Have you ever lost a pet to an automobile? Have you had similar traumatizing events? Have you ever had any superstitious ideas? What’s the best way to get over your superstitions? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!

The change I would like to make with this blog.

Honestly, I gave up on changing the world. My desire to change the world was beaten out of me by some really hard life events. I tried very hard to change the fate of just one person, but I failed miserably. This blog is more like a way of recovering from the trauma I have endured over the the last five or six years from trying to change the world.

I also don’t think I can change anyone’s life through this blog. I’m glad if my journey helps them feel better about their own life circumstances, but I am not responsible for their life direction. I recognize they may decide to make some sort of change after reading something I wrote, but the power to change is within them, not me.

Another reason for this blog is expression. There are ideas and feelings that are sort of trapped inside me. I have no other way of releasing them except through writing. I occasionally share thoughts with a friend or random stranger I meet, but much of what I experience is probably common to everyone, except we are not always brave enough to write about it publicly, or at least I wasn’t until recently.

I think at some point in a person’s life they just want to leave something behind that shows they were here. That is another reason I write. It’s the closest to immortality that we can ever come in the material world. Of course, I’m not sure if anything I ever did will last more than a few years after my passing, but no harm in trying.

Lastly, I have met some really amazing people along the way. Some of them really helped me in ways that I can never repay. Others were just interesting, or quirky, or brought out some surprising aspect of human nature, all worthy of writing about. My story was not my own. All these people were a passing part of it, all characters in my book, and a few of them appearing here, immortalized by my words.

One last thought I sometimes consider about blogging. I don’t necessarily believe in reincarnation, but it certainly might be real. I’m not really overjoyed by the thought of repeating the same mistakes eternally. Maybe if I left behind something that my future self can use, that might help him to get off the ground faster, or at least prevent him from worrying about the things he cannot control.

Possible discussion ideas…

  1. How would you change the world?
  2. Do any of my reasons for writing jive with you?
  3. Do you know or meet people you just want to write about?
  4. Do you ever think about leaving something behind?
  5. Did you ever write about a traumatic experience?
  6. Do you think the world is changeable or set?
  7. Was it hard for you to post your thoughts publicly?
  8. Do you worry about things out of your control?
  9. Do you believe in reincarnation?
  10. What would you tell your future self?

Let me know what you think in the comments, and thanks for being here! Please like, share, and subscribe!