Outback Jack's Journey

Earlier last year (before my back pain came back) I had a triggering experience at the Brazilian Jujitsu place that I’ve been to for years with a coach called Rohan. I stopped going and paused my membership, and I received texts saying, “We’ve noticed that you haven’t been on the mats…” Eventually I met up with the head coach, Mitch, and he suggested that Rohan and I meet up and share our stories. I gave him permission to pass my contact details on to Rohan. Silence. For months. In June, I got excruciating back pain and realised I wouldn’t be wrestling for a while and didn’t bother following up, but I got better and then wondered why Rohan or Mitch hadn’t contacted me to meet up. I investigated some other BJJ places, but they didn’t seem to have the camaraderie of Dark Carnival.  On Monday, my usual staff meeting got cancelled and I decided I wanted to be assertive and find out why. I walked in and the head coach, Mitch, was there. He asked how I was and said he hadn’t seen...

Yesterday my wife and I had a session with our new counsellor, a psychologist, Ruth Holt. It was a good yet hard initial session.  We arrived early because my wife walks really fast (even though she’s shorter than me) so I was sweating even before the session started! 🥵 It was really hard to hear from my wife all the ways I’ve hurt her (lying, doc pics, naked pics, naked video calls, rationalising, etc). I teared up. The counsellor said I looked sad and asked if I wanted to comfort her, and I said I did, but my wife said she didn’t want me to touch her. 😢 Ruth spent about 30-min just talking to me, hearing about my distant father, repeated sexual assault aged 7+8, feeling alone, hating myself, living with a constant fear that I’m in trouble or the cause of everything bad, the inner child + EMDR healing work I’ve done. She asked what I called the dissociative state; I said The Grey Zone. She asked what gets me out of it; I said: an orgasm, sleep, or exercise.  My wife was lik...

I'm working out in the nude. I'm not jerking off or anything sexual. I'm just feeling unseen/rejected/abandoned. I missed going to Brazilian Jujitsu this morning and I'm feeling disconnected from men. My body is responding in Fear, but I’m trying to calm it down.  I do have counselling this arvo, so I’ll process this then. What I'm meant to do at this point is work out where the Fear is coming from: past, present, or future. It is not present, but my body is reacting unconsciously as if it is a present fear.  However, the fear is from the past: where I was rejected in primary school and high school by peers. When I was in year 5, most mornings all the other year 5s would play British Bulldog - a game played on grass where one person was "in" and everyone else ran from one side of the field to the other hoping not to get tagged. Whenever I was "in", I found it very difficult to catch anyone on the first few runs. This resulted in bullying and teas...