I remember a feeling (Trigger Warning)

[u/Zanye_Blessed]

Not a memory… a feeling. I’m laying here in my room at 1:35 in the morning. It’s my birthday. I’m laying next to my wife. She’s asleep. The tv is playing FRIENDS but I’m too dissociated to pay attention to it. I don’t think sleep is an option, but I close my eyes to see if I can manage it. I can’t. Suddenly I’m taken back to a time in my past. I don’t know how old I am, or where I was. I don’t remember if it was my grandma’s house, or my mom’s house or even a friend’s house. This is not a memory, I have no details to put to it. Suddenly I remember the feeling Of falling asleep late at night with the tv running. I remember this feeling. I felt safe. Peaceful. Like nothing could hurt me. I was a kid in his pajamas. I can feel the inside of the pajama pants. I can feel how soft they are. I can feel the blanket under my face. It is also soft… but most of all I can feel the serene peacefulness of not having anything to worry about. Nobody is going to hurt me. Finances don’t matter. I’m in no danger whatsoever and it hit me. I was in no danger whatsoever. I forgot what that felt like. I forgot it was possible. I don’t feel that now. I haven’t in years. This was not me feeling safe. This was simply remembering the feeling. Remembering what was once a natural part of me. A child that wasn’t traumatized by adults. One who was never forced to deal with the heavy things that should never be exposed to a child. The feeling I used to have before adults took it away from me. I am not that child anymore…

[u/19then20]

1:30 in the morning in the dark, in bed, is a treacherous time. It was always the worst for me. The key here is to be able understand that your pre-frontal cortex(OFC) is not entirely on-line because your brain gives it inhibitors during sleep. So, its like your brain is in wake stages and sleep stages at the same time due to other cues (dark, still, in bed). The "feeling" you experienced is real and valid, so it's not prudent to marginalize it, HOWEVER, it is fair game to take ownership of your experience in reviving the "feeling"; you have no obligation to let the "feeling" completely hijack your headspace and rob you of sleep and nighttime recovery, and sometimes erode your self worth while your PFC is off-line. One thing I started doing was to schedule time to ruminate over the 1 am stuff during the daytumenhours. I started an exercise routine (in my case I started jogging) and I left my headphones at home. I would pick up the thought or issue from 1am and let my brain hash on it, but during a part of my day when my PFC was fully engaged. The pre-frontal cortex is the logic and reasoning center of the brain that can put things in context. At 1:XX am, thoughts run riot and hijack your head without the PFC as the adult in the room, but you have the right to take ownership of the process of your emotional center of your brain completely hijacking your existence. Sure, your head will come up with a rumination-worthy thought, but you have the right to manage how you process that thought, so that the processing (the thought is actively bouncing around in your head) is productive, not destructive.