rebuilding pod | does this help?

// Some helpful/useful resources that I personally have used and found helpful. If you don’t listen to any other, just listen to this one. This is where I’ve compressed all the info into.

None of this stuff is sponsored. I am a literal random stranger on the internet who just wants to get some information out in the hopes that it helps SOMEBODY at least.

And please know that all the resources, whatever I’ve talked about - it all takes work. A lot of work. Especially some of the things that really work, really well. They take up a LOT of time too. But you can’t rush through it, the more you take your time with it, and you do it right - the more you get out of it.

P.S. I’m not trying to be dramatic, I was just tired when I started recording :) //

‘Trauma’, the first time I heard that word I was at a Doctor’s office, having my ear checked. I was about 13-14 years old, and I’d lost some hearing in one ear. The doc said, “There’s some trauma. But it’ll heal on its own.” On the way out, I asked my mom what exactly trauma meant, she said “injury”. I felt stupid for not knowing such a simple term, but I also headed out wondering why didn’t he just use the word “injury” then. What’s so special about trauma? Well, as it turns out that’s the medical term for injury.

So trauma literally, in the medical sense is a wound. And what do we know about healing wounds in general? If it’s a tear in the skin it’ll be fine in a week and return to its previous state in a few more. If it’s a muscle, maybe a few weeks. Bones take longer, depending on the type of injury and which bone it may even be a few months and up to a year for it to return to the previous state. Sometimes these injuries leave a scar. If it’s a bone, it may even look different after - because of the way it rejoins.

I view the mind in a similar light. Trauma is defined as a deeply distressing experience when it comes to the mind. And when our bones and muscles themselves take so long to heal and sometimes they leave a scar or sometimes even disfiguration, why don’t we grant our minds the same kind of privilege? Of course, it’s not the outcome we’d prefer, but we live with it, don’t we? We grow to be fine with it. Sometimes we get extensive, painful procedures to fix it too, but we do what we can to heal it.

When we break a bone, we put a cast on it. We don’t move it, we elevate it. We let it rest. And we do end up losing a bunch of muscle mass in the area. But once the cast is off, we rehabilitate it, we give it time and nourishment.

But when it comes to our minds, we go harder at it. Our mind needs time too, that’s probably all it needs sometimes. Instead, we minimise the trauma, we minimise the whole experience and we tell ourselves we’re good. That we NEED to keep pushing and that we shouldn’t take a break ‘cause we’re too easy on ourselves. And that somehow pushing ourselves will make it all better, our lives better and our futures. We tell ourselves all this while we’re expending so much energy making it worse.

I’m not saying I’m different, I’m speaking from experience. I even have disfigured bone to show for it all.

Of course, there are some people who talk about growing calluses. And how that will make you tougher. Well, here’s the thing, you can’t have calluses without healthy skin tissue as a base for the callus to grow on. Calluses can’t grow on wounded torn-out skin. It’s hardened skin that makes calluses.

David Goggins is all about the calluses, isn’t he? I used to think maybe his book would be helpful. Well, it was. ‘Cause if you read the whole book, you’d know. When he pushed himself to the brink, he had to give himself time to heal too. He just had to start stretching, which he’d never done despite ALL that training.

So then what ARE some things that have helped me with the healing process? Let me give you a tiny list:

But before that!

Disclaimer: this is just from my experience and has only been applicable to me. I’m not telling you what to do, just sharing my own story. These are all pretty much just my opinions.

And here’s the list:

Since we’re discussing Goggins’ book, let’s start off there. I’m gonna be blunt here: self-help books are useless. None of them are actionable, they’re not directly applicable anywhere, and whatever you learn from it, unless you’re going down a spiritual path, you can’t do much with what you read there. And if you WANT to go down a spiritual path, there’s so much more you can do other than read these books. The self-help book industry is designed to help no one but the publication and the authors themselves. These books fill you with a feeling like you’re doing something and some motivation WHILE you’re reading them, but once you’re done there’s nothing there.

Motivation is something that NEEDS to come from within. You can’t try to buy it with a book.

Our experiences, our lives: they’re the source from which we can draw motivation, we can always draw inspiration from external sources, but motivation needs to come from our own experiences. That’s the only way it can come from within.

Without a sense of purpose, there’s no motivation to stay.

I recommend this one book really strongly, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter A. Levine

And Option B by Sheryl Sandberg was a good book too.

And it may be not for everybody: but some autobiographies like - Eliezer the Person by Eliezer Yudkowsky - that one helped me quite a bit too.

I’d say people’s stories are something I really look toward to learn from. And they have definitely helped. Again. It’s different for everybody. But autobiographies are usually good source to learn from.

Man’s search for meaning was a good one too. Especially, that last part was something I needed. The rest, it’s just - maybe useful for some people. And the fact he lays out, about understanding WHY is the key. - especially for anxieties and compulsive behaviours as well as depression, pretty much everything actually. If you understand WHY you behave the way you do, it’s easier to let go and move on. Basically processing your experiences well and doing that consciously seems to be the key.

I like books because they’re accessible, unlike therapists. And you do learn a lot.

The next helpful thing on the list would be, talking to people with similar stories. Especially when they’re in your immediate surroundings, it goes to show how prevalent these things are, which invokes a completely different kind of response from your system. But it’s definitely helpful and kind of pushes you toward a better direction, if you have the heart to deal with it and the will to accept it.

For me, the response I had to it was that it felt like the universe was calling out to me, like I NEED to do something.

And then, of course, reading up on this stuff to get a better understanding would be a great place to go too. The internet is great for that, but you gotta make sure you don’t get sucked into it. Be conscious of how it occupies your mind and attention. Basically, tread carefully.

Saving the best for the last: the most helpful thing for me has been Jordan B. Peterson’s Self-Authoring. It gets you out of your head and YOU do the actionable stuff and make the action plan for yourself based on YOUR processing of your experiences and who you are or were or would like to become.

It gives you that push you need, in the best way

‘Cause, you’re understanding everything better. Self-Authoring basically helps you process and then it guides you as to what you need to do now that you’ve processed it better.

Ok, we got one more: Therapy, of course - but you gotta remember they’re people too and they just can’t magically fix things for you. And their resources are limited too.

As for the other things that people recommend: like writing a gratitude journal - they’re not always the best thing to do for yourself. And meditating? The purpose is often defeated when instead of watching our thoughts as a distant invisible stranger, we sit near them and tell ourselves we’re fine and unbiased. That none of it touches. And well, that’s just not what would happen to a distant stranger observing the whole thing, right? I think, you need to give meditation time, and a group activity might be helpful but sitting alone, doing it all on your own - give it time, be ready.

Again, these are all just things I personally have learned from my own experience. And what works for me may not for other, what works for others and that applies to everything from the above list.

The way I see it, it’s never not gonna suck. And it shouldn’t ‘cause otherwise, you’re inching closer to becoming a psychopath. When you think of it, it’s gonna be sad ‘cause it is. It’s gonna be difficult. But we can’t let it consume every moment of every day.

Processing it is the difficult part, ‘cause this is information that we can’t get our heads around. It’s deeply painful like a sword cutting right through you, not that I’ve ever had THAT happen to me XD.

But you eventually get to a point where happiness becomes an option. In the beginning, you might have to actively choose it every moment of every day. But it slowly gets better and making the choice easier and less and less often.

All you gotta do is choose the joy more times than you do the pain. I mean, if you’ve had the will to persevere this far, you surely can do this bit. Just takes a bit more patience.