Somatic Symptoms of C-PTSD: An Overview

Psychological trauma can affect individuals in various ways, both mentally and physically. One of the ways it can manifest physically is through somatic symptoms, which are bodily sensations or symptoms that have no apparent medical basis.

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) is a mental health condition that develops as a result of prolonged exposure to traumatic events, such as child abuse, domestic violence or ongoing trauma in adulthood. The somatic symptoms of C-PTSD can be debilitating and deeply affect an individual’s quality of life.

The following is an overview of the somatic symptoms that individuals with C-PTSD may experience:

Chronic pain: A significant number of people with C-PTSD suffer from chronic pain, including headaches, migraines, neck pain, back pain and joint pain, among others. Trauma-related pain can arise from various causes, such as somatic memories, muscle tension, or heightened arousal. Over time, such pain may affect an individual’s physical functioning, potentially leading to disability.

Gastrointestinal distress: Those with C-PTSD may experience gastrointestinal distress or functional digestive conditions. Trauma disrupts the regulation of the HPA axis, affecting the gut’s function and leading to problems like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), chronic constipation, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. These issues can significantly diminish an individual’s quality of life and trigger unpleasant emotional reactions, such as anxiety and depression.

Respiratory distress: Breathing difficulties, such as shortness of breath, hyperventilating or choking sensations are common among those with PTSD. People may experience these symptoms during flashbacks, when they feel triggered, or even when they try to relax. With C-PTSD, these symptoms may be more severe and chronic, causing feelings of panic or detachment that can make daily activities challenging.

Cardiovascular problems: Trauma can impact the nervous system, causing physiological changes that affect the cardiovascular system. People with PTSD are at an increased risk of developing heart problems such as arterial disease, hypertension and stroke. The chronic stress of C-PTSD can exacerbate these conditions, leading to potential health complications down the line.

Sleep disturbance: The stress and anxiety associated with PTSD can profoundly influence sleep patterns. Nearly all individuals with C-PTSD report symptoms like insomnia, nightmares or night terrors. Insufficient or poor quality sleep can lead to daytime fatigue, mood swings and physical exhaustion.

Sensory processing issues: Traumatic events can permanently alter the way an individual perceives sensations such as sound, touch and sight. Individuals with C-PTSD may experience hyperarousal or sensory overload, making it challenging to tolerate certain stimuli. Alternatively, some people may develop hyposensitivity, resulting in a diminished sensory awareness that may negatively influence their quality of life.

Dissociation: Somatic symptoms are not always experienced in the context of physical pain. They can also manifest as a sense of detachment or disconnect from reality. This feeling is known as dissociation, and those with C-PTSD often report experiencing it. It can cause memory problems, the feeling of being disconnected from the body or extreme emotional disengagement.

In summary, traumatic stress disorders are debilitating conditions that can have lifelong effects on an individual’s mental and physical wellbeing. Individuals with C-PTSD may experience a range of somatic symptoms that can affect their quality of life. By raising awareness of these symptoms, we can improve early detection and help those suffering from C-PTSD receive proper treatment.

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Turning Within

Everything ever written about the project of self-examination and awakening has at least two potentialities – it could aid in your progression, or it could prove to be obstructive. The inherent problem which anyone who talks or writes about self inquiry faces is that there is a crucial danger of all of this being interpreted as mere talk. In the process of awakening, which is really simply a direct experiential meeting of ourselves, no adding of concepts is required, nor is any kind of conceptual understanding or analysis.

The primary problem I find is that people become so intrigued with the potential suggested by mystical experience that they skip the only important part and wind up erecting a teetering mental tower of beliefs, concepts and assumptions, all resting on a foundation which is itself conceptual, and therefore not grounded in direct experience.

This is the primary danger of the project of self-discovery. If you trip at the very first hurdle, you might delay your awakening for decades, or even indefinitely. The mystics of every tradition have advised us unanimously not to take any assumption for granted in self-discovery, to turn within and find out for ourselves. You may observe that this is the opposite of philosophy or theology, in which a vast body of concepts is accrued and then some degree of rationalistic intellectual commitment is apportioned accordingly.

This is not the case at all with turning inward. In any other endeavor, it is always the last steps that are considered to have the highest importance, whether it is earning a military rank, a degree, a belt in martial arts, or a professorship. In self-discovery, in the meeting of our true self, the first step is always of the highest importance. The authenticity of the drive to self-knowledge is at the beginning, or it is nowhere. We do not accrue it after years of gaining conceptual understanding, nor through years of sitting in meditation, for that matter. This is because awakened nature has absolutely no dependence upon the conceptual.

The fact is, you could have studied anything and if you had not met your true nature from the beginning in total innocence and curiosity, then your understanding will be totally impoverished. This is what is meant by building a house upon a shifting foundation.

None of this other stuff, including everything we talk about to do with the various nuances of self inquiry, ego and spiritual sounding concepts, is finally necessary. In fact, I would go so far as to say that no spiritual concept, however sophisticated or meaningful, is ultimately more important than your actual awakening. There isn’t a universal checklist of things for you to believe or ways to behave after you wake up – it doesn’t work like that. It is certainly true that there are trends, but there is no prescription for what you waking up to yourself should look like. You start fresh every day, or you are really not starting at all – you are simply back in the temporally dominated realm of the egoic mind.

Meeting who we truly are is utterly simple.

The problem is that often once we are implored to turn within, we flex and twist in meditation as if we are in a gym trying to develop muscle for the ultimate test of strength. This isn’t what is being asked of us. We have what we are looking for, because it is unconditionally with us all right from the very beginning of our journey. It is consciousness here and now, the thing we always mistook as being so commonplace and ordinary.

What people don’t typically see is how that ordinariness is actually woven into the other aspect, which is the totally miraculous infinite. Since we could first comprehend language, we were all effectively brainwashed into thinking that this innate experience should be met with anything other than gratitude and astonishment.

All that is ever being asked of you in this mystical venture of turning within is that you stop your trying to get somewhere else, right where you are in this moment, and put down your baggage long enough to see what is really here. Your baggage is your beliefs, assumptions, expectations. Put it all aside for long enough to get a glimpse of that which was always already here and see that it is an immediately available miracle, a flower eternally blooming, an endless act of divine creation.

You only need to see the beginning of the experience once. You will give up every concept for it if you knew what it was, because you would immediately see concepts as chaff before a great fire of being which, at your core, you are. Then, once you have tasted directly from the well of your own soul, see what ventures and beliefs you are drawn to and go about your own way. But I cannot overstate the value of a true meeting with your soul. The fruit of this meeting is not a strengthening of belief, but Gnosis.

I would like to conclude this by saying that if you have not had this meeting, I would encourage you to prioritise it to the point of putting aside everything else practically possible. The alternative is to have a house built upon sand. No matter how elaborate and beautiful the house, it has no lasting basis – it is temporary. When the bedrock is discovered, anything built upon is merely a ‘nice to have’. The bedrock is discovered to be primary and indispensable. That rock is Being – but this is too easy to talk about merely conceptually.

See that which cannot be unseen, discover that which was always there beneath your each and every belief, idea, and concept, with every step and every breath. People are looking everywhere for how they are going to end up, but only because they have a poverty of experience when it comes to understanding where they begin.

Reality is not a belief, it is an experience. Because it is misunderstood as the former, religions and philosophies find disagreement and discord. Precisely because it is the latter, mystics of all traditions find no disagreement. You can believe in infinite variations of what is false conceptually, but you can only ever meet one Reality. So the invitation, as ever, is to turn within. Not for becoming better or more advanced, but to Know once and for all where you begin and end.

Simon P Murphy is a Nelson-based esotericist and philosopher, and author of His Master’s Wretched Organ, a brilliant collection of weird fiction stories.

Support For Establishment Parties Is Collapsing All Over The West

A recent VJM Publishing article had noted that support for Australian Establishment parties had fallen heavily since World War Two. Australian dissatisfaction with their rulers has never been higher, and this is not a phenomenon restricted to Australia. Support for the ruling class is collapsing all over the West.

It’s the same in New Zealand: Establishment parties (i.e. Labournational) are losing total support. Labournational scored 75.6% of the total vote in the 2020 General Election, down from 81.3% in 2017. According to recent polling from RoyMorgan, Labournational stands to win as little as 65% of the total vote in this year’s General Election.

In Holland this week, the BBB party came from nowhere to win 15 out of 75 seats in the Dutch Senate. The BBB party was founded in 2019 as a protest movement whose main grievance was globalist-instigated farm shutdowns. The party of the current Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, could only manage ten seats.

Last year, in Sweden, the nationalist Sweden Democrats caused chaos by becoming Sweden’s second-largest party. The negotiations to form the next government created no end of headaches for the Swedish Establishment, which is thoroughly globalist and did not anticipate having to share power with their nationalist enemies.

In Germany, the nationalist AfD is polling at around 15%. In Spain, the Vox Party, which has been labelled “far-right extremists” by the usual suspects, is polling at around 15%, and had been polling around 20% as recently as one year ago. In Finland, the True Finns, a nationalist rural populist movement following a similar model to the Dutch BBB, is polling at around 20%. In Italy, the Brothers of Italy, a nationalist conservative movement, is polling at around 30%.

It’s only in the Anglosphere, where nationalist movements are rapidly infiltrated and destroyed by intelligence services, where no such movement has taken off yet (although nationalist parties won about 10% of the total vote in the last Australian General Election).

The main reason for the rise in support for alternative parties is because of the ongoing collapse of living standards in the Western World.

When society is going well, people don’t feel much need to change anything. When the economy’s growing, and people can pay their bills easily, and they can afford to buy houses and raise families, maintaining the status quo seems like a good idea.

When society is going poorly, and people’s disposable incomes are getting chewed up by inflation, and the average worker can’t afford a home, and the prospect of raising a family looks unachievable even if you can find a decent partner, revolution starts to look tempting.

The collapsing support for the Establishment parties in the West can be seen as a sign of ongoing social collapse. As the knowledge and wisdom that underpins our scientific, industrial and economic power continues to dissipate, dissatisfaction with the ruling class will continue to rise.

Unfortunately for us, some degree of future dissatisfaction is hard-baked into our economies on account of that they’re powered by fossil fuels, which are finite and undergoing depletion. Fossil fuel depletion will eventually lead to inflation on a scale not seen outside of Weimar.

Even if this was not the case – say, if cheap renewable energy was developed and rolled out in short order – the greed of the ruling classes means that the masses will receive less and less of a share of production as time goes on. The wage share will continue to decrease as the ruling class uses its excess wealth to leverage even more wealth out of the masses.

Thus, we can expect that the future will give us more and more dissatisfaction with our ruling classes, as the dumb animal mass that is the voting public takes out its primal frustrations on their surrogate parents in the world’s parliaments. Whether this will lead to any true revolutionary movement remains to be seen, but we can expect that the process will entertain the gods.

What the Establishment really, really doesn’t want is for total support for its two favoured parties to fall below 50%. If this should happen, it raises the possibility of an actual opposition party (i.e. a party not controlled by the Establishment) or coalition taking control. From the point of view of the Establishment, losing control is the same thing as falling into chaos. They will do anything to prevent it.

If support for the Establishment parties falls below 50% in any Western country, and if this leads to a true opposition movement taking control, we can expect the ruling class to throw a once-in-a-century tantrum. Assassinations, terrorist sabotage and fomenting unrest through funding globalist counter-revolutionaries (such as Antifa) are all possible.

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Why The Establishment Pushes Identity Politics

Observers have noticed that conservative forces have thrown themselves whole-heartedly behind the gay pride movement. This seems like a extraordinary change in attitude, considering that conservatives were for so many years the reason that homosexuality was banned. The explanation for this change is actually very simple.

All sections of the ruling class push identity politics in order to distract from class politics.

Politicians don’t really care if men fuck other men up the arse or not. What they care about is maintaining their position at the top of the dominance hierarchy. And the way to do that, as it always has been, is through divide and conquer. Split the masses up and set them against each other: that way, they don’t attack the people above them.

Identity politics, a.k.a. idpol, is the most effective way to divide and conquer. Instead of identifying with their class interests – and viewing the ruling class as their collective enemy – the masses are trained to identify with immutable, natural characteristics, such as race, gender and sexuality, and to hate “bigots” and “racists”. Class concerns are considered less important, and so fall from awareness.

The reason why all differences in economic outcomes between races are considered evidence of racism, and why all differences in economic outcomes between genders are considered evidence of sexism, is because narratives of racism and sexism are essential to divide and conquer the masses. So the ruling class has to whip the masses into hysteria about racial and sexual injustices.

Despite being the leader of a supposedly conservative party, Christopher Luxon can promote homosexuality because he knows that the battle for homosexual acceptance is a distraction from class politics. The more people worry about rights for homosexuals, the less energy they have to worry about rights for the working class. Therefore, promoting this battle serves the interests of the ruling class by weakening their enemies.

Ideally, the population could be manipulated into thinking that politics was all about race, gender and sexuality, and nothing else. Such an outcome would push class concerns to the bottom of the priority list. That way, the ruling class could continue to suck profits, taxes and rents out of the masses without those masses even thinking about coming together to resist.

Cha-ching.

The divide and conquer strategy is sophisticated. The ruling class has to be careful not to campaign for any issue that might inadvertently unite the masses. So they don’t campaign to prevent any actual injustices, like homelessness, the War on Drugs, mental healthcare access or the food inflation resulting from mass money printing in recent years.

Luxon has no interest in promoting cannabis law reform, because cannabis is mostly used by poor people and therefore the issue does not divide the working class as effectively as race, gender and sexuality. The Labour Party doesn’t promote cannabis law reform either, and for the same reason. Neither does the Maori Party, even though almost 80% of Maoris voted for legal cannabis in 2020. Representatives of all of these parties are members of the ruling class first and foremost.

The simple rule is that the ruling class promotes any issue that causes the people to fight and bicker with each other, and ignores any issue that causes the people to unite.

The fact that the working class doesn’t care about the right to fuck a 16-year old boy up the arsehole is precisely why the ruling class promotes pride parades. That way, the ruling class can scream “homophobe!” at anyone who thinks housing or wages are more important issues. Anything to keep the working class at each other’s throats.

And so, the more politicians fight (or pretend to fight) over race, gender and sexuality, the further the working class sinks into the swamp of wage slavery. Never before has more attention been paid to identity politics, and never before has the position of Western workers been worse. These two facts are directly related.

Although most don’t realise it, white people not being allowed to have a white identity is also identity politics. It might be assumed that the promotion of identity politics implies the promotion of a white identity. That is not the case. If every race were allowed to have an identity, we would all know our place and would get along reasonably well.

Maximum division necessitates that white people be denied an identity. This leads to a sense of injustice, which leads to anger. This anger is then directed away from the ruling class by the apparatus of propaganda, which the ruling class controls. This propaganda declares that any white person seeking a white identity is pilloried as a racist or a terrorist.

In summary, the ruling class pushes identity politics to divide and conquer the masses, and to distract from class issues. They have done this ever since the first wave of feminism in the 19th Century. Their efforts intensified after Occupy Wall Street.

The only realistic solution is for a new breed of politicians, who reject identity politics, to rise in the West.

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