Tag: ptsd

Neville Longbottom and Harry as kids with PTSD?

It is interesting to see how different cultures hide the mistreatment of kids.  The Brits seem to be a bit more up front about it, but also more harsh than say, Turks, who adore children.

I am being lazy and re-reading HP2 to work on my Turkish reading, instead of continuing to slog through something by Orhan Pamuk, because I am just too tired (and I am starting to hit words like bequeath while watching my favorite family TV show of all time: My Magical Mother! (Sihirli Annem!) so it really is time to get back to some reading to keep up my Turkish.

But back to Nevile -I identified with him immediately: I was the one walking into walls in Middle School, forgetting everything, and being told to come down out of the clouds.  Now I know (and we see in later books with Neville) that these are symptoms of childhood PTSD, which presents differently than with adults.

So please, for the love of God, Humanity, Children and the Human Race, or at least for the love of the planet and the potential creativity of the human race, please look out for such signs in kids and try to understand and help them rather than yelling at them.  Don’t let them turn into Invisible Children, or worse.

 

In Solidarity with All Kind People,
Peace via Cooperation and Non-Cooperation,

ShiraDest
5th of December, 12015  HE

What I learned from NaNoWriMo about Writing and Depression

My second practice novel actually started on Wattpad , but much easier to track the deadline on the NaNoWriMo2015 website, has taught me several things about managing Depression (or PTSD -> anger->depression, sort of…).

First: Making a deadline feels good, even if it is Just/Only YOUR deadline. You DID it.
Second: Physical activity every day, like running  or dance, etc, is, at least for me, imperative (and also read, and have a sun lamp).
Third: Making a deadline a second time, better than you did the first time, proves you can repeat the feat, thus showing discipline and perseverance. This makes me feel like less of a waste of oxygen, provided I can find a way to use that to help other folks.
Fourth:
Writing 1.) When writing your first/second/fifth practice novel, be sure to have a physical workout routine, preferably involving boxing gloves, AND several people to talk to about all of the crap your writing will drag out of you.

(Remember NOT to use the gloves on the people…)

Writing 2.) For me, at least, plan the ending first…
Writing 3.) Plan setting, time and weather for each scene, not just the plot!!
Writing 4.) Outline by scene, not by # of words (I outlined by 300wds, which ended up driving me nuts toward the end…)
Writing 5.) Do not write a chapter per file, it is a formatting nightmare to insert 18 files (one for each chapter) into one ‘book’ file on an exhausted day 28!
Writing 6.) Lay out the chapter plan on one large calendar in the same notebook (if at all possible) as the planning notebook (and resist the temptation to plan each chapter on small scraps of paper!! You cannot believe the number of scraps I now have floating around…).
7.) Start on day one, and don’t punish yourself for not planning ahead. A planner is not a pantser, and you will feel annoyed if try to write stream-of-consciousness just because you have 2000 words to finish That Day.

Better to take the day to plan out the next two scenes and write them the next day, at least for me.

I found that when I knew the time of day and year and weather as well as what the MC was supposed to do in the next couple of scenes, I could just imagine the flow and zap, 2000 words came out of no where (I did NOT say 2000 Good Words, but that is for the next 3 or 4 re-writes!!!).

and the real

Writing 7.) Set a new notebook aside for the 30-Day 50k challenge, because it will turn into at least a year, and probably 80k words. Before it goes back down to 60k again.

🙂

In Solidarity with All Kind People,
Peace via Cooperation and Non-Cooperation,

ShiraDest
29 November 12015 HE

Shira

Does this Climactic Chapter Work?

Dear Readers,

This is my 2nd draft of Hubris and Hemlock, a very short novel (40k words or 150 pages), which is Women’s Fiction, so: 1. Relationships are Key, and 2. The Heroine saves Herself.  But my question, before I go to polishing the prose, is: Does the plot hold your interest?    Especially Chapter 17, the climactic chapter.

I plan to post the last chapter shortly, but it is just a wrap-up, so if chapter 17 doesn’t work, neither will chapter 18.

Thank you for any feedback,

 

Read, Write, Dream, Teach !

ShiraDest
23 March, 12016 HE

review of Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence by Judith Lewis Herman

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political TerrorTrauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence–From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror by Judith Lewis Herman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book, for me, was a horrible read. Horribly accurate. Yet hopeful as well.

Horrible to see that I am not so different after all -I see myself in every comment she makes on adults who survived long-term trauma as children.
Horrible to see that my experience is not so different.
Yet hopeful to see that there are ways of solving the problem, living ‘normally’ -just that ignoring it is not one of those ways.
Most irritating.
Especially after burn-out has twice stopped me from working enough to distract myself from my distracting memories.

She mentions The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma in her 2015 epilogue, and that book seems to recommend both movement and writing -both of which helped me until I had to get back to sitting in a chair looking for a job all day long.

I seem to be stuck in Stage 2, and worst of all, I read over and over again that either in writing or in talking therapy, I must now stop “living in my head” and move back into my body. I have always found it easier to forget to eat then to bother about my body. Work has always been a useful form of escape, until now. Ok, not so much -once I get to about the intermediate level of just about anything, it seems no longer to hold my interest, and I find myself assaulted by unwanted memories that refuse to go back into their Blankety-Blank-Blank!!! boxes.
Irritatingly enough, this is the first place I have seen such a thing predicted.
She even has the gall to predict and counter my ‘unique’ perspective on my right to choose when to die, and how. Apparently this too is normal for folks like me. Huh. So much for being misunderstood. I guess she has us pegged, finally, Thank the non-existent God!! Finally someone actually documents what we go through, and tells us it is a normal response to a hideous start in life. Ok, now, on to how to fix the problem: start with saftey (years of martial arts did help some), get a good therapist, talk, write, and move your body. And remember that faking functionality will not work forever.

Peace,
Shira
27.10.12015 HE

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What is spirituality, and why do I care? Four reasons….

A woman came up to me, after a Zembekiko at a Greek festival in the Boston area, and asked me
‘What do you feel when you dance?’ -I had to ask her what she meant; she explained that I seemed to be in another world, as if I were having a spiritual experience, when I danced.
Upon reflection, I had to admit that she was right -the beautiful music of the Mediterranean, the Balkans, even of those wild places where men danced with swords in hand, or like Zorba, gone mad with grief -those mournful yet insistent strains pulled me into some place where life existed. A place, maybe the only place, where I felt alive.

For me, spirituality seems to be that thing that gives meaning to life, a reason to keep going day after day, eating, breathing. Why bother? Because there is beauty in this world, and each person has a particular way of looking at it -a distinctive way of seeing the world.

For me, writing makes me understand and remember how it felt to be alive, throwing myself into the air, reaching into the clouds, stretching into the breeze. When the words overwhelm me, refusing to leave me alone, writing them down is the only escape.
But then, they demand to be pondered.
The emotional work always follows the meaning -is it possible to be happy, and why does that matter? Action matters. But thoughts and feelings affect actions.

So I use four criteria to order my days:

1. An action that gives meaning to my life: either dance or write each day,
2. A thought that adds to my emotional stability each day, either comprehending my reasons for feeling/behaving a certain way, or meditation on some feeling and the causes behind that feeling, leading to a decision on how to classify and use that feeling in the future.
3. A physical action that furthers my goals for reaching my body’s fullest potential (running a marathon, for example), and
4. An action that furthers my goals for developing my fullest personal intelectual potential (reading a certain number of pages in Turkish, for example).

For me, these four things represent my personal responsibility to reach my fullest potential as a human being, spiritually (if that exists), emotionally, physically and intellectually. Now, I wonder if and how I can help others do the same?
Shira “Holocene/Human Era” Destinie
20 August, 12015 HE
Bretagne

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: A world that should be safe for ALL
Current Music: Imagine -John Lennon

Tags:

abuse, adultriteofpassage, health, jogging, marathon, meowvision, novel, survivors, tools, writing

( Cut: Semaine 11, jour 3; jeudi = session dur pour la semaine

4 km marche/course ‘J’ selon le plan, donc j’aurais du marcher/courrir, mais je trottins si lente que je me suis permets de trottiner tout les 4 km…)

J’ai commencé ventre vide et très fatiguée à cause du temps gris:
marché 5 minutes pour m’échauffer,
km 1: 12:34
km 2: 10:07
km 3: 10:10
km 4: 9:16
Totale de 4 km: 42:07 en trottinant si lentement possible sauf le dernier km.
12 minutes de marche en refroidisant.

Je remarques (mon Bescherelle, il est où ?) que j’ai senti meilleure le dernier km, quand je me suis permis de trottiner plus vite. Par contre, j’ai commencé à sentir mes gennoux aussi après quelques minutes de trot plus vite. 😦 aufff…
20.8.12015 èH )

Why Share Your Story?

For similar reasons to why ALL should write a book…

Protect Others via:

Protect Others: Tell Your Story (Please Help Break the Silence-Shame-Intimidation-Exploitation CYCLE …)

How can telling your story, as one friend told me, protect others?  I suppose that as one progresses, and learns

how to overcome, those lessons learned along the way can help prevent that same harm from befalling other

vulnerable people.  But how?

1.
Well, if the first childhood memory is one of sad anger, of loss, the green Caddy driving to NYC may impede, for a

lifetime, that love of large cars and of the Big Apple that so many Americans seem to boast.  If that memory is

tied to a borough where the kids rejected you, and your next memory was of being locked in a room, at 4 years of

age, hearing your mothers screams as furniture fell and things broke in the living room, as her boyfriend beat

her, how do you use this to protect others?

By coming up with a plan for teaching children to protect themselves from silence, from shame, intimidation and

from exploitation, via:

A New Adult Rite of Passage:  http://meowdate.dreamwidth.org/6177.html

2.
If one was sexually abused at 6, and told not to tell, how do we protect children from parents who can protect

neither their children nor themselves?          -Teach kids that Silence = Death, because silence can lead to

suicide, after a few years.

3.
If one took refuge from bullies by running and retreating, how to undo that shame?  -Teach kids that we ALL have a

right to our personal boundaries, to equal bodily respect, and to equal human dignity.

4.
If one was refused self-defense because “young ladies don’t fight” but they can come home in bruises that will be

ignored, how does one learn to stand up to intimidation?  -Teach kids that if you stand up, you might or might not

be hurt today, but if you cower you WILL agonise for years to come.

5.
If one was physically and sexually abused as a teenager, with all the blame heaped on a 15 year old, how to learn

not to exploit nor be exploited?  -Gandhi and Frankl cite adult choice and power: UpHold your Values and Create.

6.  Only then is one ready to be An Adult: http://adulthoodchallenge.dreamwidth.org/318.html

(This is the real answer to Millie’s question:
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/7591180-answer-to-millie-s-question-on-education)

((and a summary of the Adulthood thread: http://meowdate.dreamwidth.org/tag/adultriteofpassage))

ShiraDest,
April, 12015 HE (Holocene/Human Era)

(original post at: http://meowdate.dreamwidth.org/12873.html earlier today….)