traumatherapy

So the next step has become clear: trauma therapy.

I went my whole life unaware that I was traumatised. Didn’t have a clue. I had hard armour and I was successful and I didn’t cry and my situation wasn’t that bad anyway; just a bit of roughing up at school. Others have it worse.

And they certainly do, but trauma isn’t about the cause, it’s about the effect.

While I was in the hells I came to the conclusion that adhd is itself trauma. I’ll expand that a bit and say that dopamine dysregulation combined with adverse events is trauma. And that the trauma itself will cause more dysregulation, which causes more trauma, and more dysregulation, and so on.

The symptoms of ptsd are almost identical to the symptoms of adhd. I thought I had been misdiagnosed for a while, but in reality I had only been half-diagnosed.

What happens is we learn, fast. Something bad happens to us, and our sharp-ass chisel comes in and carves that stuff deep. So where someone else might have a groove carved at +10, we end up with a groove carved at +100. Highly sensitive person. The trigger was the same but the learning that occurred was not; this is why trauma cannot be compared.

We then go off and behave differently; we have learned that the world is scary and unfriendly. If you are in fear and isolated it becomes hard to empathise; we have to solve problems before we can talk about emotions. In fact, talking about emotions just carves the groove deeper; we have to process them non-verbally and maybe type them out like I do so we can detach them from the emotional charge. The emotional charge is the chisel, and the chisel only carves.

Ptsd, for a normal brain, would be a +100. This on its own could make that brain dysregulated and cause the thoughts to flow in an unusual way. If the thoughts are water and the surface is undulating and smooth then they can trickle around in all directions. If the the surface is carved and scarred then these thoughts can only proceed along the gulleys.

This can happen to anyone, but it happens more to those with a sharpened chisel: children and dysregulated adults. Exposure therapy wont work because there’s no planer, and cbt won’t work because the chisel went too deep. There is a feedback loop because this dysregulation will raise someone’s dvar and make them more prone to other dysregulation: alcohol, drugs, abusive partners, abusive self.

This is the root cause of my type of audhd sometimes seeming to lack empathy even though we care deeply. It’s the root cause of apparent rigidity in thought in selective realms, while retaining great neuroplasticity and open-mindedness in others. It’s all because those experiential grooves are deep and getting deeper.

We can reprogram / cbt ourselves to an extent. This is how I survived all the years: I intentionally cut different grooves through repetition and force of will. But this does not remove the trauma-groove. What you end up with is water being split between two conflicting paths and eventually coming into conflict along the way. You wind up with a brain that both knows everything is ok and knows everything is definitely not ok. The record keeps skipping between the two; you have head-noise and internal conflict and floating anxiety and you have no idea why. 

So you cut more grooves. You go to a therapist; you cut a groove. You drink; you cut a groove. The reprogamming cannot work properly because the surface is too scarred; all it does is carve conflicting and connecting channels which eventually lead to implosion.

This is all because of high-dvar.

High-dvar is what causes us to learn so quickly, both for good and bad. And the trajectory of this dvar, especially in our modern world, is to get worse with time. 

Unless we learn to regulate and observe and accept and release.

This is where meditation comes in. But you can’t expect someone who has audhd *and* trauma to be able to sit still and meditate effectively. You need to give them something more high-stimulation as an on-ramp. Within 5 minutes of cycling yesterday I knew the cause of … well … probably all the problems with my intimate relationships. And now it’s on its way out.

Journalling is good but it’s just a land survey. It’s checking where the grooves are; maybe carving a few more.

What we need is a stable dopaminergic platform with which we can observe and plane the trauma away, slice by slice. This is why aripiprazole is seeing success in treatment-resistant ptsd with the US military. But aripiprazole takes 3 weeks to leave the system and has a 3 month recovery arc afterward. For someone like me, sure, it is probably necessary. For most; no. It’s dangerous.

For most: we need something fun and evidence based that will help us release this trauma.

We need bike tours.

I’m serious.

This is how I stayed sane. Every 3-6 months I would go on a weeklong bike tour and cry and feel terrible and shake for 3 days and then… liberation. And I had no idea why. Now I do - dopaminergic tone and long-distance steady-rhythm cycling. Meditation.

I think we could induce this dopaminergic tone with electrical stimulation for those who do not like exercise. I do not think we need to rely on pharmaceuticals. And I do not think the current research landscape quite understands why the pharmaceuticals work; for that you need buddhism and most scientists are not willing to look at the facts; they’re just like ‘no religion’

Well how about empirical evidence, Mr Scientific Method? There are millions of people worldwide every year who are helped by these things. Aren’t you ignoring the facts? The DSM criteria are all self-reporting yet you ignore self-reports from religious practitioners because their faith system is different to yours?

Anyway - I’m trying to separate the practices from the dogma. If anyone wants to help me, I am ready to start talking to scientists and to start building a company which will do this.

Unfortunately the language of the times is greed. I no am no longer afflicted by this parasite so I would make a pretty good CEO; keep things on the straight and narrow like a fletcher truing a shaft. 

But imagine how much impact you could have if you created a meditation machine. Something you stick on someone’s head for a few hours a week while they export their trauma and neuroses, and then off they go back to their lives happier and healthier. And the ones who want it can even use it for enlightenment. 

Just imagine how this could change the world.

/jb202509110532