that's the latest "diagnosis". if i want to recover my memories, i must first repair my posture - shoulders back, chin up, straighten the spine, balanced weight on both feet.

as for my anger - it's protected by my fat body - fat because of cordisol, or some such. so a diet can remove all my anger.

either i'm not hearing my T at all - or i am REALLY stupid, cuz i just don't get this.

maybe the truth of the matter is - i'm too stupid to comprehend what needs to be done to get well, so i should just give up now.

and right now - giving up sounds pretty good to me.

I know that we can "armour" past experiences in our muscular-skeletal structure... I remember when I started some practices to "straighten up"... yoga that I would often be flooded with emotions that were release from being in my body. I wish I could reference the psychologist who has written about "muscle memory"... it is a reality.

I don't know about the anger/cortisol/weight gain hypothesis... but doing a practice like yoga will help resolve this too.

The main thing is to approach this at your own pace and when the time is right. I know many people have had tons of good "free advice" throughout my recovery, but it is impossible to do everything all at once

You are a beautiful human being... I honour you in your survivorship... do what you can and don't be your worst enemy

aleph

Mark, I didn't repair my posture before recovering memories. Both of my parents always urged me to "Stand up straight and throw your shoulders back. Be a man". I felt so broken inside that their advice was totally beyond me.

But:

There is something called body memory. It is kind of a new area that therapists are looking into. I have an interesting story about it.

My abuse trauma hurt my eye muscles. Do you know about cross eyes and the opposite condition wall eyes? When I would get abused as a child my eyes would go wall eyed. The worse the abuse the worse the eyes. When I was early into my recovery, my T advised me to get treatment for my eyes because they didn't look good. I took his advice and after the eye treatments began I had the most horrible flashbacks after the eye treatments. It seems that when my eyes began to straighten out, it started to bring back memory systems. At that time the memories were just overpowering and so we had to work out a more gentle approach. I had to postpone the eye work until some of the pain was relieved by talk therapy and EMDR.

The effects with my eyes are apparently an example of what your T is talking about. Except he is talking about the big body muscles of posture. The idea is to correct the muscle memory and then the mind memory will follow.

The link with the hormone cortisol is this: Corisol or cortisone is the stress hormone (one of them). It changes our appetite and causes us to gain weight when we are under stress. Survivors of CSA are habitually under stress and therefore most survivors of CSA are overweight.

When we start to lose weight it apparently injects hormones and other things stored in our fat into our blood stream. This makes it harder to lose weight. Exercise helps to overcome this mechanism.

Hi MarkK - At the Alta weekend this last fall we did a lot of somatic (body) related work. While we may not realize it, the body carries a lot that the mind may not be aware of. Paul Linden (one of the WoR facilitators) has several books out regarding this, including one that is intended specifically at survivors: Winning is Healing - Basics: An Introduction to Body Awareness and Empowerment for Abuse Survivors. I haven't read it yet, but based on my experience with him at the Alta weekend, he knows what he's talking about. His book might help you get what your therapist is talking about - might help your therapist too!

As for giving up looking good - I know that feeling. It may look good, but keeping at it leads to recovery, and that looks far, far better!

Peace, Mike

Hey, Mark.

Rather than giving up, maybe take a little break. I realized that I was on CSA recovery overload...just spending a little too much time on MS, and it was beginning to negatively effect me. You know, too much of a good thing...I needed to (and have) cut back on the amount of time I'm spending here.

Anyway, don't give up. If you just step back, reflect on whatever progress you've made and think about whatever information you've gained, and give yourself time to digest it. You may be on information overload! Cut yourself some slack. If it takes some time to sink in to our thick skulls, so be it. That doesn't make us stupid! It's a lot to comprehend, especially after decades of not remembering any of it.

I'm always available for you to talk, Mark. Shoot me a PM or email if you feel like it.

Hang in there, bud.

Peace,

John