"I must describe a tremendous detoxification episode I went through last night -- actually, when I was awakened at 3 AM from a fitful sleep. It seems that my strongest detoxification events occur at this time when they interrupt my sleep. All week I had been leading up to it; I felt a lot of gut-churning grief and a few crying episodes over the whole abandonment mess with the two adult children of my 1st marriage, but I knew it was really a "soul nausea"-- a coming detox storm giving its warnings -- and that I was not yet ready to "throw up." But last night was the time to get it all out, and out it came! I refer to it as a "textbook" case of redirecting because I really experienced the difference between redirecting and merely having a primal. I was definitely having a primal, and I know you warn about people who self-primal run the risk of psychosis. Well, that was upsetting me ads I started shaking while walking around the house in the dark.

I really felt I was going insane and I started to get really scared. I sensed my fear building up because of the thought I was crazy, which in turn magnified the fear into an ever-increasing positive feedback loop or "vicious cycle." I found myself standing and shaking and silently screaming. My arms were tense and I was slowly pushing them up and down in front of me as if I were trying to shed skin or get out of clothing that was hampering me. Later I had a sense that this was a traumatic birth experience -- I was a blue baby, being suffocated at the very time I should have been taking my first breath. Also I had pneumonia and was in an oxygen tent in the hospital when I was 3 months old, so I'm sure there was something related to that as well.

I was really freaking out as I shook more violently, until I remembered that I should redirect. At first I didn't know which target to pick, but I was so terrified it didn't matter, so I just started with the "usual suspects:" my mother father, doctors in the hospital, God, the Pope the Catholic Church, etc. And the amazing experience was that as soon as I made the conscious decision to redirect, I was suddenly calm in the midst of this shaking, like a very calm eye in the middle of a hurricane. And I do intend a pun here, which we can only make in English, namely "eye" = "I". I was in the eye in the middle of my own toxic psychic hurricane, and as I was redirecting

I really felt that I was separating myself from the detox symptoms that were overwhelming my physical body. In other words, up until the moment I decided to redirect I was actually identifying my self, my I with the dear I was experiencing, which meant that I was allowing myself to be blown away by the hurricane. That is true insanity, or the path to true psychosis.

But once I started to redirect, I simply let the detox spasms take their course. If anything, they intensified because I was no longer inhibiting them. Imagine someone with Parkinson's really shaking to the point that they have to lie down because they are shaking so violently that they are losing their balance and can't stand up anymore. I then fell into the bed and was writhing. I was still completely silent, but inwardly screaming at my mother to come and pick me up, but shewouldn't come so I was angry at her. I became angry at other targets because this was a primal fear of abandonment I had to work through in order to experience the physiological memories of the actual abandonment I felt at birth, even in the womb.

As you say, Ellie, it doesn't matter if you pinpoint the exact primal event in your infancy or before. What matters ids that you find the security of your own ego, your own I in the center of the detox hurricane. Once there, you are completely protected and I really felt the nakedness of my own being there, nothing but me, myself and I waiting calmly in the eye off Hurricane Detox for the winds to run their course and finally die away. As I felt the episode weaken, I realized that I needed to do some reprocessing of the experience. I did some of my EMDR techniques (EMDR =Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) which are actually the brain's way of processing emotional trauma, as EMDR creates the conditions while awake, what REM dream sleep does for you unconsciously). That was the "icing on the cake" so to speak and allowed me to rest calmly, literally just like a newborn baby and I fell into a wonderful peaceful sleep at about 4 AM and woke up really refreshed and f! eeling wonderful at 7:30 AM. The sun has been shining brightly all day in my soul and giving me new confidence that when the next hurricane or tropical detox storm hits, I will simply redirect and ride it out as an observer in the middle of the hurricane "I". " Tom