MAKING SENSE OF ALTERED REALITY

Ramin Entry #52

9 – 24 December 2023

My trauma healing process started in April 2017 and naturally progressed to a deep dive into Psychology in May 2021, followed by an intensive journaling process. Much has been unpacked since then to the point of being able to accept who I really am and coming to terms with my gender identity; to be able to freely express my gender expression publically in my daily life. Since a little over a year ago, as I began diving even deeper into trauma healing, my motivations and resolves have transformed to become intrinsically influenced and formulated; no longer dominated and driven by extrinsic validations from people pleasing (fawning).

However, the recent events culminating after my departure from Atma Jaya University have been quite a scare for me, triggering an avalanche of unresolved emotions to bubble up to the surface. I have been thrown aimlessly in a disoriented array of slings of being shaken, beaten, and wrung in emotional turmoil. It’s as if a large hole has been opened and I’ve been sucked through to tumble and slide into an unknown world of foreign emotions. My feelings and intuition that I’ve come to trust have been failing me. My perceptions, both internally and externally, all seemingly smashed into each other, colliding into bizarre swirls of sticky goo. It’s been an uphill struggle to hang on to this life and reality.

I was contorted and convoluted to falling back into a lifetime of traumatic chapters and experiences that have speckled and spattered my whole life, which could be easily classified as CPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). My traumas have also made it challenging for me to trust people, let alone let them into my life. I have been constantly betrayed and disappointed in so many different levels and facets that now I‘ve developed healthy trust boundaries in keeping an escape route for whenever anyone doesn’t hold to their words and promises – this is why I respect and honor those who hold honesty and authenticity true to their hearts.

By being trauma-informed and understanding the non-linear nature of the trauma healing process, followed by trusting the trauma work process, I had come to an epiphany that my recent experiences have been due to grieving the death of my dreams, as I had written in my previous entry. I owe my gratitude to a special visitor in coming to terms with this realization. Through experiencing Dr. Gabor’s method of Compassionate Inquiry therapy with Onyx Trixie, I had the honor of meeting this special visitor, an honored guest – a child from kindergarten – my very own inner child. It feels like she’ll be staying for a while to find permanent comfort and safety in resolving her unresolved emotions. Her presence has been most felt throughout my days.

My inner child is hurt – very deeply hurt – and severely traumatized. She’s conveying emotions of disappointment, emotional neglect, abandonment, belittlement, unloved, unacceptance, betrayal, unworthiness…with feelings of being unseen, unheard, unaccepted, dismissed, unwanted, and unimportant; so much so that she feels her existence didn’t matter. My compassionate reassurance of safeness threw her into anger, fury, and further sadness of distrust and disgust, along with a hard refusal to continue the conversation further. It’s these co-existing yet conflicting feelings of distrust with the refusal of safety that may have been the factors to transmute the explosion of trapped emotions into an expression of epileptic seizures.

I’ve been pulled back into a looping altered reality of anxiety and imprisonment, trapped by feelings of learned helplessness, hopelessness, disassociation, disappointment, distrust, discouragement, disorientation, failure, unworthiness, resentment, anger, rage, abandonment, betrayal, confusion, impatience, irrationality, loss of control, fear, frustration, bitterness, shame, guilt, pities, insecurity, paranoia, rejection, sadness, constant threats of danger, unsafety, stupidity, belittlement, worries, unloved, and being used to be disregarded and discarded as trash. The blender of emotions and feelings produced an intense self-strangulation that turned into self-hatred equals to the notion of being better off dying. As my body became numb from re-living the emotions and memories from the traumas, I was transported back into darkness once again, cowering inside the dark abyss of the well that I had previously already climbed out of. I have been shattered, battered, and worn out.

This time I’m honoring and embracing her presence. I’m not shoving her away in treating her as a hostile visitor and stranger anymore like I used to. I’m feeling her pain, hurt, and suffering. I’m keeping an open line of communication to understand her concerns and fears. I’m re-parenting her by being gentle, kind, compassionate, and loving, to provide her with the care, treatment, and needs that she didn’t previously receive when she had been forced to live in a lie, deceit, and denial. I’m acknowledging and validating the chains of abuses, neglect, and mistreatments that were perpetrated, penetrated, and forced onto her. I’m changing the meanings of those experiences and breaking down walls that I had identified with and let define me, in an effort to integrate her into me as a part of my being. In doing so, I become stronger to not build new walls of misidentification anymore.

I’m sorry I mistreated you.
I’m sorry I forced you to live a fake life.

What’s keeping me alive now is having the honesty and courage to hold a safe space for myself by being present, self-aware, and mindful, with the courage for being able to come face-to-face with the true underlying painful emotions underneath this tribulation. Besides being my own patient, I’m also embarking on a holistic approach to trauma healing, imploring some new techniques and methodologies: Biodynamic Craniosacral, Compassionate Inquiry, Kundalini Yoga, Bioresonance, LDS breath work, acupuncture, and hypnotherapy; paralleling with Qi breath work, physical fitness, clean eating, spirituality, solitude, mindfulness, meditation, journaling, and soon in conjunction with EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and Buteyko breath work. These are on top of my continual study into psychology and being a counselor practitioner of trauma healing.

One of the factors that keeps me determined and self-motivated in my trauma healing process is my sense of curiosity to investigate deeper in order to understand myself to the very core of my very being, to get acquainted with the true authentic Ramin – her purity and her essence. I will still continue to grow emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, in reaching self-actualization as part of my search for life’s meaning and higher purpose.

This journal chronicles my trauma-healing process and progress. If you’re interested to read in sequence in its entirety, you may jump directly from >here