Energy

What is energy and how does it relate to emotions and behavior? While Complex PTSD is diagnosed as a mental health disorder, experts understand it as a chronic nervous system injury. It’s about how energy gets stuck in the body and how to get it moving again.

In introductory physics, from Oregon State University to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and even my elementary science class, energy is taught as the ability to do work. It is an abstract concept, representing the calculation of potential or actual motion at a specific point in time.

There are two primary forms of energy:

• Kinetic energy describes motion and transference of energy, such as the force of a moving vehicle or the effort to pedal a bicycle.
• Potential energy is the stored energy in a system, such as the height of a table before a cat knocks a glass over, the calories in food before consumption, or the simmering anxieties of a group of people.

The concept of energy means everything can be represented as narratives of potential or actual motion. Everything, real and fictional, is energy. Energy is fractal, meaning it is always moving and generating reusable, self-similar patterns to build increasingly complex systems. How does this scientific foundation relate to the unpredictable whims of highly traumatized people?

There must be common mathematical patterns for how PTSD forms and how it can be healed. As with fractals and power, this project is less interested in specific calculations, and more interested in a fractal language to describe these patterns. Trusting in the universe’s logic helped me cut through through emotional projections and limiting beliefs. Through this, I’ve found compassion for my own erratic, even dangerous, reactions from CPTSD.

The patient’s narrative maps the past and potential flow of energy, looking for where emotions have been suppressed, stuck, and are causing cascading problems. The next phase in healing follows the Energy in Motion, the power coursing through the nervous system.