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You "should" be able to find the 'shrooms where you live, though you may have to really search. They will change your life, and I'm not talking about recreationally, but in a positive, lasting way that is beneficial for your brain. Look up the various studies or DM me with your email and I'll send you a long research paper on the benefits. Amazing. I found out about psilocybin in Psychology Today years ago and Johns Hopkins is actively doing studies on it. Its been long misclassified as a recreational drug and illegal in the USSA since 1970 unless you can find a religious organization registered as a church (hint, hint). I do predict within 5 years it will be legal (already is in a couple liberal cities) and then what will these drug companies do with their depression meds that don't work and make people dependent (unlike psilocybin).
I don't think it's "legal" anywhere, just decriminalized in Oakland and Santa Cruz and maybe other places.
I'm more interested in how you define or experience "peace". Do you feel you've moved past it altogether? Do reminders challenge you but you cope better than in the past, so that's your peace? Is it still a frequent presence in your life but you've learned to move on with it, as opposed to past it? Did peace come at least in part from using the bad experience in some way to better your life or the lives of others?
I'll never move past it entirely. Fifteen years and counting. But I have learned to cope with it (in part by reading and learning on CD) so day to day, it is better and healthier for me. So yes, I move with it. And I suppose I've used the situation to grow and learn (although I sure can think of better and easier and more productive ways to grow and learn)
When frustration builds, it is really helpful (as others have said) to remember that the past can not be charged. So I take that frustration and direct it to doing something useful. (I think I probably have the cleanest house in town ;-) Then at the end of the day, I am able to feel a sense of satisfaction.
Then I remind myself of all the good in my life and I keep on plowing through. I would add that I really do "plow" through. I focus so intently on accomplishing all of the ongoing tasks that accompany my situation that I completely loose touch with all other parts of my reality. In that respect, I think my brain has actually become altered, if that makes sense. I'm not too happy about that, but when things "settle down" (love that euphemism) I'll deal with it.
Something else that helps - "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." That helps me ignore a lot of stuff which sometimes is best. And I really do believe that if I do "the right thing" (which can be defined as simply "the best thing, the kindest thing, the most moral thing") all day long then I will sleep like a baby that night. (tends to be true)
I wish you the best, op. I think it's usually an ongoing struggle, which as lodestar posted earlier in this thread, requires hard work and is super-worthy of protection.
Last edited by LilyMae521; 12-15-2021 at 05:05 PM..
Once there is acceptance and/or forgiveness, the result is peace (speaking of past traumas).
When the traumas are ongoing, it's much more difficult for me to find peace because my nervous system is on high alert and you never know what's coming next - so tense muscles, just waiting for the next bad news and/or trauma.
At a point, I realized I was giving continued power to my abuser.
That made me mad, and I made a concerted effort to take back my right to happiness.
In childhood they took my rights, in adulthood, I was giving them my rights. F that.
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“May peace and peace and peace be everywhere.†—The Upanishads.
There is an technique that I use to stay in peace. It's the positive affirmations technique. You chose an affirmation and then repeat it loudly, then in your head for many many times. You can read it of course. After a while you'll memorize it.
An affirmation is like a mantra. You can chose one already written by someone else or you can make your own affirmation.
For instance I use this one every time when I meditate, at the end of the meditation. I just meditated right now, a few moments ago. I repeat this in my head very slowly and I really mean it, I'm concentrating on the words and their meaning. You don't even have to believe in God to use this technique, just do it and see the results.
"Peace into my heart, peace into my soul. Peace into my consciousness, peace into my mind. Peace into my body, peace into my spine. Peace into myself, peace into my family. Peace into my neighborhood, peace into my city. Peace into my country. Peace into my world, peace into my cosmos. Om, peace, shanti, santhi, Amen."
Shanti means "peace".
You don't have to use this particular affirmation. You can use another one. Something very simple, such as: "I'm breathing in peace." Or just repeat the word "Peace" over and over again.
We always affirm something in our heads. Why not affirm something uplifting, peaceful, calming?
I also use this affirmation (and others) when I go for a walk in the forest. The walk takes about 40 min total. And I repeat the affirmation most of the walk. In my head. It's nice, it helps me relax, helps me go within. I use a few affirmations. Some are for courage, some for peace, some for health etc. It depends what I need at that particular time. I never use more than one affirmation at a time. So 40 min just one affirmation.
I truly recommend this technique. I didn't believe in this in the beginning, was very circumspect. But I tried it anyway and it works!
It's a precious and delicate, hard-won peace. For me that means I put some effort and self-discipline into protecting it.
I've discovered over the years that what hurt me once is apt to still be hurtful if I go digging around in it and drag it into the present. Some of the old uncomfortable feelings and even irrational thoughts may come right along into the present.
If they do surprise me I right-size my ego and banish feelings of justification for past hurts. Sure, I have a right to them, but really where has feeling miserable ever gotten me? My goal is to be as free as possible of poisoning resentments and the hurt that comes with being a human.
I am one of millions of human beings all with our wounds to heal or to harm so my hurt is not so special in the scheme of things and I'd rather be on the healing side helping others along than making things worse with my suffering.
I've got an old high school one that for the last couple of years keeps coming up in my dreams and waking feelings and am just now coming to the conclusion that I'm going to have to deal with it. And I think the reason it's gnawing at me right now is because I have reached that readiness spot to deal with it. I have started to see that what needs taking care of was not what she did but how I reacted to it. Never saw my part in it before!
This is good. Now to decide how to lay this to rest without opening old wounds for others.
Next - the "hard" part.
I think I don't fight hard enough to preserve my peace. Or maybe it's more accurate to say I may not have found my peace yet, and I spend time looking for it in places where I know peace can't be found. I spend a lot of time here in the relationship forum because the stuff I dealt with as a kid had the most lasting impact, contributing to difficulty with people in general and with romantic relationships in particular. I think I hope my experience might be of use to someone here, but I also think I'm still looking for answers. I'm 64 so I don't really get a second chance at this stuff, but I seem to think I'll see my issues through someone else's recounting of theirs, and learn something. Not to use in the non existent next time, but maybe to find peace through a better understanding of my experience. It doesn't work so well.
I told someone recently that my experience here is a little like an alcoholic going to a bar to figure out why he drinks by observing other problem drinkers. The alcoholic could very well see himself in another person there and so it makes some sense in the abstract, but it's a ****ing bar. Where people drink and where he'll be tempted to drink too. I too often succumb to the temptation to see stories here about men who struggle and to relive my own painful experiences.
I don't need to do that to myself and I doubt there's much to learn anyway. Sometimes I tell myself I'm trying to rewrite my story. Not in a counterfactual way, but with a gentler, more hopeful tone. That would have some value, but I don't need to read other people's sad stories to do that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikala43
Mine was a childhood "issue".
At a point, I realized I was giving continued power to my abuser.
That made me mad, and I made a concerted effort to take back my right to happiness.
In childhood they took my rights, in adulthood, I was giving them my rights. F that.
I did that with my dad issues. It's too harsh to say he was the enemy, but he was one person and I could focus my hurt and anger on him. And he was so inept on a good day and so sadistic on a bad one that I knew it wasn't me.
As I think about it, I flipped him the bird regarding parenting and redeemed my pain that way, but I wonder if he primed me to believe the crap kids spewed at me, which set in motion a lot of self concept stuff that I've never really shaken. Which started with him.
Besides some very conscious next generation changes I made, I'm much like him in design and appearance. So much so I wonder sometimes who I'm making peace with, or scarier yet who I resent.
Do you think your dad took the time or efforts to develop your insights?
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Lily Mae makes a good point. Years ago people just said, "Think positive thoughts." Well, that's easy for them to say! And there was no scientific proof that this made any difference.
But with new tools for studying changes in the brain there is now actual proof that a person can reprogram their brain and build new neural pathways that lead to more positive mood.
Farm fatale, my mantra is from Julian of Norwich a religious mystic who lived during the Medieval times. "All will be well and all will be well. And all manner of things will yet be well." But it's surprising how many people come to this conclusion without ever hearing of her.
A classmate, retired missionary and woman of few words just says, "If you worry, why pray? If you pray, why worry?"
Of course this works for anyone., not just religious people.
On my refrigerator I have a hand-made button of a smiling toddler taken perhaps in the late twenties of the last century. It was given to me by a man who used to come to the State Hospital to tell his story of familial alcoholism and how, with help and perseverance, one by one, all of his family eventually started a recovery. He was the first and he had been sober for fifty years. Nothing short of a miracle.
On the button it says, "Everything will be alright!" I see it every morning.
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