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Forum Friends, My dear dear friend @Pencil died of a stroke on Sept. 15. It was very unexpected. She was 61. I met her here on the Forum ... a long time ago, 2011? She was a brilliant thinker, writer, and researcher. She was a great mom. She was my staunch friend through thick and thin...

I'm going to this conference in August in Boston on Personhood. I just got the preliminary program. Here is the Plenary session on day 2 . “‘We Are Not Disposable’: People with Psycho-social Disorders and Social Justice” Carol Moeller, Moravian College (Bethlehem, PA, USA) “Dissociative...

" An emotion, therefore, is a superordinate program which orchestrates and integrates the activities of various functional subprograms including reflexive affects, perception, cognitive appraisals, and feeling states (Cosmides and Tooby, 2000). Core emotional operating systems underlie complex...

Interesting... impulsivity, irritability, loss of connection with others, decision fatigue... http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/18/modern-world-bad-for-brain-daniel-j-levitin-organized-mind-information-overload?CMP=share_btn_tw

I have been thinking a lot about how we get "better." And one problem I have both as a wife and a mother is that I just don't really KNOW what "good" or "healthy" is supposed to look like. I got the wrong habits from my parents. My H got appalling habits from his. So what SHOULD we do, knowing...

This is a great paper on how childhood trauma effects neural development. I think they are too pessimistic about the possibilities of healing/adaptation later in life, but it is helpful to understand what is going on physiologically I think...

Here is what I've learned in the last few days: Human beings are not born emotionally integrated - we have different basic emotional systems (neurologically based) and it is an achievement of development to integrate them. As an analogy, when we are born, the images from our two eyes are not...

My question is kind of a big one. Or maybe it is several. What do you do with guilt? How do you learn to manage the emotion - not just the cognitions around it? Assuming that the thing you did or didn't do was (at least in retrospect) wrong, what do you do with the feelings? My H and my seven...

This is a kind of weird question, but I really don't know the answer. This week I have gotten three really really nice heartfelt sincere compliments. I am willing to admit that I probably deserved them. The problem is that I feel all squirrelly and my "inner critic" JUMPS UP as soon as...

I wonder if there is a pattern of supporters having this: Valentino Posted this in another thread and I had a "HEY! That's me!" moment. Took the questionnaire on the website, scored 20 out of 22. What do you guys think? taken from Psychology Today webpage blog: Stop Walking on Eggshells...

I have been having ALOT of trouble sleeping lately. In the last two nights I have managed some significant sleep (8 hours -- WOO HOO!!!! and 8 hours in five and three hour bits HURRAH!!) What I did was to talk my "inner children" into going to sleep. I have trouble sleeping because the...

We are so excited to announce the members of the second 21 Day Challenge want to keep going! And we want to encourage and invite New participants! All are welcome to join in! We will be using both a private conversation and this open thread. For those interested in joining the Private...

A bit of humor never hurts...

In another thread I said "Anyone who has suffered long term systematic abuse at the hands of their family needs to adopt some sensible absolute rules about who to screen out of the running for friends (partners, new family etc.) " But what rules? I did a couple of searches to try to find a...

http://kdvr.com/2012/10/05/slideshow-military-wives-go-topless-for-ptsd/ Sent by my daughter... started by a wife on their base. Made me cry... Wanted to share...

It occurred to me this AM that my friends on this forum are, in may ways, better family to me than my family is. They do the job, minus all of the regular human connection. So for those of us who wonder what good relationships are like, and how family members should treat each other - the rules...

H and I have been struggling a bit with me being constantly on edge waiting for the next "blow up"/dissociative episode. He noticed something the other evening on the phone. He had said something that put me on alert - but then joked about something and he said I calmed down immediately. He...

H got up this AM - and stood in the kitchen - it's small - behind me and announced he had something he wanted to "discuss" with me. He was too cold last night (I slept with our 5 year old - long story) I had turned on the AC and then opened the windows and made it too cold in the house and he...

I just found this link http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/apology.htm It is a very straightforward and, I think, accurate description of what makes an apology and how the whole apologizing/forgiving thing ideally works. I thought it might be helpful because in so many co-dependent and abuse...

Saw this in the NYTimes today http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/magazine/post-traumatic-stresss-surprisingly-positive-flip-side.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Kind of fluffy, clearly doesn't really understand what PTSD is (why should it be surprising to me that a reporter doesn't "get it?" Of...

Can barely bring myself to post. Horribly written. Maybe incoherent. Not my usual problems. Interesting....Here goes I hope I don't offend any supporters here. I guess I am sort of implying that we need help too - and not just with the coping stuff. I could be wrong about all of this. Ok I'll...

So, I managed to pull off a very nice birthday party for my five year old last week. Bounce house, balloons, etc. Husband picked up the balloons but otherwise it was all my effort. My folks came for the birthday, and were helpful at the party, but are a big stress for the husband. He mostly...

My husband has (we think) PTSD from childhood trauma. He says he is committed to getting into treatment for it BUT he won't lift a finger to DO anything about it. I believe that he wants to get help. And I am SOOO FRUSTRATED that he will go for weeks without making a simple phone call. I...

Dealing with my husband's PTSD (on top of the normal stresses and strains of life) has worn me out. I teach, so I need to be able to think to do my work. The problem is that ALL my mental bandwidth is being taken up by trying to figure out/deal with the PTSD and its fall out in my family and...

My husband has PTSD from childhood trauma (lots of violence) which has recently become rather acute (no "episodes" for the first four years of our marriage, but onset with increasing frequency as we approach our daughter's fifth birthday - when his parents divorced and his abuse started.) We...