This is the piece I needed to read at 25. And at 35. And probably again at 55.
You have named something I have been circling for years: the difference between optimizing the vessel and tending to the one who lives inside it. The medical school friend you described is familiar to me. I have been him. I have worked with him. I have watched him drop dead at 51 with perfect biomarkers and a nervous system that never once believed it was safe.
The frame that landed hardest for me is the distinction between coping and healing. Coping makes the pain quieter. Healing changes what the pain means. That is the difference between a lifetime of managing the symptoms and a single moment of touching the root. I have spent years watching clients try to out-supplement, out-discipline, and out-perform their own set points. It almost works. That is the tragedy. It works just enough to keep them chasing it.
The MUD framework you lay out is where the real leverage lives. Misguided, unconscious decisions made by a child who did not have the capacity to decide anything. And then the emotion poured in like rebar, hardening the whole structure into a felt reality you cannot argue with. That is the architecture I work with in every healing session. The story is not just in the mind. It is in the chemistry. It is in the nervous system. It is in the immune system. And it will keep producing the same result until the story changes.
What I would add from my own work is this: the story does not change through effort. It changes through recognition. The ratchet effect I write about is not about pushing harder. It is about being held in a field that is coherent enough for the nervous system to finally feel what safety actually is, for the first time, at a level deeper than any protocol can reach. The healing is not in the optimization. It is in the witnessing.
This is cool because you mentioned memory reconsolidation somewhere else and I love how you combine medicine with psychology and see how they interconnect and how that can improve our lives! Very useful hopeful stuff! I've been following @cptsdtherapist on Instagram and her info on memory reconsolidation and it's one of the most hopeful frameworks I've found so far. I just couldn't find a therapist in my area I could afford that does it because I'm on disability benefits after 2 burnouts. The irony 🙃
No hidden message in this account.Neither contradiction nor affirmation.
I have lived in this very state for >40 years.
Most mornings, wishing that i had died in my sleep.
I'm thankful I do not have cancer, not intractable searing.
I HAVE REDEEMED my life with considerable satisfaction as an unaffiliated facilitator 3rd world country.
I do not know why I consented to take only the necessary meds.
I never attempted to take my life, perhaps because I knew I would succeed.
4 weeks, on my birthday, I simply realized that "just because of the complexity of living my daily life. Just a nuisance." Like giving up on ac15 years car.
Please no advice
no Sympathy
no kudos.
NO RELIGIOUS adages.
I endured
I guess I wrote because my life has been the opposite.
I guess that was it
And an MD facilitator.
I do have a definite non-violent plan.
So far, my extended family of 25 years shows evidence they receive satisfaction from my being alive.
This is the piece I needed to read at 25. And at 35. And probably again at 55.
You have named something I have been circling for years: the difference between optimizing the vessel and tending to the one who lives inside it. The medical school friend you described is familiar to me. I have been him. I have worked with him. I have watched him drop dead at 51 with perfect biomarkers and a nervous system that never once believed it was safe.
The frame that landed hardest for me is the distinction between coping and healing. Coping makes the pain quieter. Healing changes what the pain means. That is the difference between a lifetime of managing the symptoms and a single moment of touching the root. I have spent years watching clients try to out-supplement, out-discipline, and out-perform their own set points. It almost works. That is the tragedy. It works just enough to keep them chasing it.
The MUD framework you lay out is where the real leverage lives. Misguided, unconscious decisions made by a child who did not have the capacity to decide anything. And then the emotion poured in like rebar, hardening the whole structure into a felt reality you cannot argue with. That is the architecture I work with in every healing session. The story is not just in the mind. It is in the chemistry. It is in the nervous system. It is in the immune system. And it will keep producing the same result until the story changes.
What I would add from my own work is this: the story does not change through effort. It changes through recognition. The ratchet effect I write about is not about pushing harder. It is about being held in a field that is coherent enough for the nervous system to finally feel what safety actually is, for the first time, at a level deeper than any protocol can reach. The healing is not in the optimization. It is in the witnessing.
This is cool because you mentioned memory reconsolidation somewhere else and I love how you combine medicine with psychology and see how they interconnect and how that can improve our lives! Very useful hopeful stuff! I've been following @cptsdtherapist on Instagram and her info on memory reconsolidation and it's one of the most hopeful frameworks I've found so far. I just couldn't find a therapist in my area I could afford that does it because I'm on disability benefits after 2 burnouts. The irony 🙃
So glad you found it
Ive never understood wanting to live past 65
I'm 78, a retired internist.
This is NOT a casual statement.
No hidden message in this account.Neither contradiction nor affirmation.
I have lived in this very state for >40 years.
Most mornings, wishing that i had died in my sleep.
I'm thankful I do not have cancer, not intractable searing.
I HAVE REDEEMED my life with considerable satisfaction as an unaffiliated facilitator 3rd world country.
I do not know why I consented to take only the necessary meds.
I never attempted to take my life, perhaps because I knew I would succeed.
4 weeks, on my birthday, I simply realized that "just because of the complexity of living my daily life. Just a nuisance." Like giving up on ac15 years car.
Please no advice
no Sympathy
no kudos.
NO RELIGIOUS adages.
I endured
I guess I wrote because my life has been the opposite.
I guess that was it
And an MD facilitator.
I do have a definite non-violent plan.
So far, my extended family of 25 years shows evidence they receive satisfaction from my being alive.
Don't overthinkthis.
No current american metaphor will slightly apply