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P.T.S.D.

Google AI overview: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that can develop after you experience, witness, or learn about a terrifying or life-threatening event . Symptoms like flashbacks, bad dreams, avoidance, and feeling on edge can last for more than a month and disrupt your daily life. Common Symptoms Intrusion: Unwanted memories, vivid flashbacks, or bad dreams that make you feel like the event is happening again. Avoidance: Staying away from places, people, objects, or thoughts that bring back memories of the trauma. Negative changes in mood or thinking: Feeling numb, hopeless, or having ongoing fear, anger, and guilt. Arousal and reactivity: Being easily startled, feeling tense or on edge, having angry outbursts, or trouble sleeping. Common Causes Direct trauma: Experiencing physical or sexual assault, severe accidents, or combat. Witnessing trauma: Seeing a violent event happen to someone else or living through a natural disaster. Indirect exp...
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Resentment and Forgiving

 From dictionary.com noun resentment anger, bitterness, or ill will noun resentments the feeling of displeasure or indignation at some act, remark, person, etc, regarded as causing injury or insult. Synonyms: jealousy, envy, irritation, pic, dudgeon From vocabulary.com Resentment, or the strong and painful bitterness you feel when someone does something wrong to you, doesn’t have actual physical weight, but it feels very heavy and can last a long time. Forgiveness is one way to get rid of resentment. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think that we have all felt the bitter taste of resentment at one time or another in our lives. It seems to be part of the human condition. For me it was just a part of how I lived for a long time. I did not even understand that I resented things. I was, in my mind, just placing the blame for things where they belonged. I was also, in my mind, justified for all of it. After all, things had been...
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It's A Zen Thing

 In the winter of 1994 - 1995 one of my nephews, I have a lot of nieces and nephews, and his friends got tired of me bitching about winter. They told me one evening that the next day they were kidnapping me to a small little ski area known as Maple Valley. A little place long since closed. They were all snowboarders and they informed me that we were going to go there and that I was going to spend the day learning how to snowboard. They said that my bitching about not having anything to do and too cold and all of that had gotten really old and that I had to at least give this a try. If I didn't like it by the end of the day that I had at least tried and they would accept that. This was the winter before I started going to recovery meetings. I was lost. Hated myself and everything else. Was not in a good space. So we went. And by the end of the day I knew that they had won. I was hooked. Damn it :-) And they were surprised at how well I took to it. And for the rest of that winter I w...
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A Human Becoming

 We are all Human Beings. Yes. Even You. No matter how much you or I am in denial of this, it is so. And we just keep on Being all the time. And whether or not we are Being someone whom we can be happy with or not is completely up to us. No matter our past circumstances, what happened to us, who we are Being Right Now is up to each of us. No exceptions. So many of us settle into a way of being at a very young age and never evolve after that. And there is nothing wrong with that. For most people they have become someone that they can be that is familiar, that is comfortable, even if the only comfortable part of that is the familiarity. And there are really no surprises left in their lives. It may or may not be very workable. And it is the known. And for so many of us it is the familiar known that may not be great over the unfamiliar unknown even though that unknown could be fantastic. Or, rather the devil you know over the angel you do not. And then there are the fewer numbers of pe...
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The Hero with a Thousand Faces

 The title of this blog is also a great book by Joseph Campbell. I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone who is interested in History as told thru Stories. And the history of stories. I will be touching on many of the same themes that Campbell covered in his book, probably much better than I. The difference being I will be talking about us today from a very personal perspective. In the book what Joseph talks about is the Hero's Journey. And if you want a great example of all the elements of a Hero's Journey then watch the original three Star Wars movies. "A New Hope", "The Empire Strikes Back", and "Return of the Jedi". That is a standard Hero's Journey straight out of Joseph Campbell. For me, I think we all have to possibility within us of a Hero's Journey in our lives. I believe that every life has at least some of the elements of a Hero' Journey within it. In Campbells work he breaks it down into three sections and each h...
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Reality VS Excuses

 For a little over a year now I have been following a young lady on a few different social media platforms and a Telegram, phone app, channel. She lives in Kyiv, the capitol city of Ukraine. In these places she documents her experiences of living in a country that is being invaded. Living in a city that is under constant missile and drone attack. She shoots photos and videos of being under missile attack with her cat. Photos and videos of the aftermath of these attacks on her city and country. And her and her cat. She is tired a lot. She also shoots photos and videos of her daily life. And I am struck by how normal they can appear. She goes to get coffee. Goes to work. Goes to places where she can hike in nature and try to be detached from the reality that is living in a war time city and country. Of just living her life to the best of her ability during a very difficult time. A few days ago the President of her country fired the Minister of War for reasons that I have no clue abou...
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The Stranger in the Mirror

 In the late 1990's a Television show appeared called Babylon 5. I found it after it's run was over. I very much liked, and still like, this show. It was Science Fiction, with a prewritten 5 year story arc, good casting, good writing, and good acting. In my opinion. In this show there were two very advanced races of beings. One was called the Vorlons. The other was called the Shadows. They were represented as being millions of years older and more advanced than humanity and the other "younger" races. Each race had a demand question. What I mean by that is a question that demanded an answer. It was in this question that they figured out who you were and how they could use you. For the Vorlons the question was "Who are you"? For the Shadows the question was "What do you want"? For most people these questions are very hard to answer. Even if, or especially if, we think that the answers to these questions are self evident. And, I also submit for your c...
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