Introducing: Triggered Tuesdays
A weekly rundown of personal epiphanies, journal prompts (and entries), information I picked up from various people and places, and other cool shit that doesn't really fit inside a full issue
Top of the ‘noon to you!
Today we’re getting started on a new experimental project: Triggered Tuesdays.
What’s the point of this, you may ask - I want to share my personal experiences with trauma and healing and how trauma impacts our healing journey, and I’ve found I have a yearning to share parts of my interior human experience with you.
Why?
In the 1930’s, a guy named Bob started a program that has since become a worldwide phenomenon (and estimates put the success rate of it somewhere around 30-40%): Alcoholics Anonymous. The premise was simple: find a dedicated space, make it feel safe, and invite others who were obviously struggling with alcoholism a place to put their stories, their guilty consciousness, their histories, their truths, their shame. And once people began to open themselves up like that, to share their true experiences, a lot of those people were able to stop drinking and find better, healthier ways to cope with the human experience, instead of resisting it, or attempting to understand it.
That program still works today and I can attest to its seemingly logical, yet still miraculous structure which allows so many people from so many walks of life to find safety and community.
What does any of this have anything to do with Triggered Tuesdays?
In some ways, the recovery community has been inspiring. Initially, I wanted to wrangle the credit away, giving it to the 12-step program itself but that’s not how recovery worked for me. For me, it was backwards: for me to feel safe in a place filled with strangers and share my deepest, most authentic and shadowy Self, I needed to know who these people were first. My trauma had made it difficult for me to connect with people because I continually assumed believed (still do, to a degree) that people will fuck me over. So I stay away. And the more you know about me, the better you know me, the more damage you could do. So I ran away.
And then, standing in the kitchen, staring out at the backyard watching the squirrels hop in the snow, it all coalesced into something like an abstract oil painting.
It’s community that people seek. It’s community we need. It’s being seen and heard. It’s having your energy invited in, influenced and melded into something less fragile and more flexible, more willing. It’s a warmth we desire, like that of a campfire on a fall evening or the thinnest of blankets on a long international flight.
The saying is “no man is an island.” And while we can probably all agree that’s true, this week, I gave that a lot of thought and this is how it all combines - Triggered Tuesdays.
A place to build a community of safety, diversity, and authentic honesty. A place to find one another, empower each other, invite curiosity and malleability. A place for me to share some unfiltered, less organized thoughts. A place for me to show you the human behind the research and the advice and the encouragement.
So, as we foray into the creation of new paths, know that this human experience is the one we’re in right now. Remember this moment and this moment and this one, all these moments? Temporary.
That’s what I want to share with you - like a snapshot of moments in my own days, along my own path while attempting to lean into a brighter, happier future. An unvarnished glimpse into the realities of PTSD, epilepsy, a TBI, and depression.
All that being said, please be patient as I experiment and try new things. If you like something, tell me! If you hate it, tell me! If you have an idea, a question, tell me! I would enjoy having a larger and vibrant community!
Do you have any (burning, personal, weird, etc) questions for me? Email me (or just reply if you are reading this as email): ADpurchas@gmail.com
Thoughts and Epiphanies
This week - I had some pretty mind-bending, heavy hitting epiphanies:
My ego is a real problem in my marriage (ouch)
I am not as open and non-judgmental as I believed I was (ouch)
I’ve been protecting the duality of myself by suppressing my feminine side for many years (there’s still a lot to unpack there)
I’m a fucking badass
I was mildly triggered with parenting and our smaller dog, Xena, and my own narratives (since we’re being honest) this week and I’d be lying if I said it was easy to snap out of some spirals. It was not and even after all this therapy, sometimes managing my interior experience feels overwhelming and I all but collapse.
I got out of those spirals quicker than I have previously and the collapses weren’t as shattering, but the embarrassment I still feel for having those extreme reactions and thoughts both saddens and disappoints me.
Books on my nightstand
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
The Wisdom of No Escape by Pema Chödrön
Podcasts I enjoyed this week
The Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard: Dr. Sue Johnson, renowned therapist and creator of Emotionally Focused Therapy on intimacy, fear of intimacy, and love
Sweet Bobby, an episodic, Serial-style podcast about falling in love over the internet, how anyone can become the victim of emotional manipulation and abuse, and the true cost of cat-fishing (while this podcast was great and I recommend it, as an advanced warning: it’s a heavy hitter)
This Week’s Journal Prompt
For our journal prompts, I’ll place a prompt here and next week, post my own journal entry in reply. While you are encouraged to share your own entries and thoughts, you by no means have to. No one should feel pressured to share a part of themselves. So, if you want to share, please do! If not, burn after writing and know that you are on your way to understanding yourself better. That’s the only goal, the only aim, of these prompts.
If you’d like to submit a prompt, email me.
Prompt:
What are you striving for in your life?
Write, list, draw: dreams, goals, visions you have for your life and what that looks like, feels like, to you.
That’s it for today - I’m looking forward to finding a rhythm that works for us - and again, thank you for your support and generosity! See you Thursday.
Thanks Adrian! While I haven’t gone to meetings in a few years, I still celebrated 18 years a week ago today. What’s unbelievable to me is I had about 5 of my closest friends from my home group call to congratulate me first thing that morning. I owe it all (and a lot more) to those same people who let me ramble, vent, and be an asshole for the first few years.