I know I can. My focus can intensify to the point where Martians could carry me to their home and I wouldn't know it until I woke up from the post-busying-out crash coma. When my focus escalates to OCD levels, I push myself until I exhaust myself, completely. My awareness of the world around me doesn't return until after the crash coma.

Now I compare that to the other end of the spectrum where I can't focus long enough to remember to breathe. . . Oh, for the love of balance. . . Can't I just pick one and make it work?

As for the quest for understanding. . . I, too, get that sense that the harder I look for understanding, the more it will elude me. Something like the butterfly who runs from a chase but comes to sit softly on my shoulder when I stop chasing and rest quietly on the hillside.

Mara, we are very good at being busy with stuff, and for me it is a way to avoid going inside me. Ultimately, I do look inside, which tends to be painful but necessary. I know we are only as sick as our secrets, and so once I have shared, the shame goes down. Hugs.

Absolutely. Striking a balance is hard in the best of times.

Hugs

Everything in moderation , including moderation. That being said, yup it is. Balance is the ideal , but not all the time. Its recognizing it that is the hardest for me to do. Sometimes, the best thing for me is to keep busy until i can face up and get through. Its all about the coping skills. As they get better, so does keeping the balance. So yeah, you kind of have to give yourself permission to reach these places in your healing, when you are ready, not when others or even yourself expect you to, i think. As long as you get there, nd you can cope when you do. Whats the point of getting there if you still cant cope with i t yet. Does that make sense to anyone besides myself?? Anywho, thats what i think for myself and my situation. Take what helps you and throw out the rest. Triple hugs of support~

Marah, you ask: "Do you think we can focus too much on things that are going on?" Yes, sometimes we lose sight of the forest for the trees with trauma, for sure.

Then you ask: "Is it less important to solve the problem and more important to get through the day?"

Oh, yes.

1/3 of my trauma was from domestic violence in the home, but 1/3 was because of a military adviser on the mission field where I grew overseas. He sexually assaulted me and other kids repeatedly until he got caught back on his return to the US . Then the other 1/3 was from the military he trained, when they tortured me when I was 15.

I couldn't solve any of it, least of all the last 2/3, which had to do with political craziness way beyond my scope to touch. I wrote it all in a book that got published, and by doing that put it on the record for others more powerful than me to solve. Then I joined support groups and got my PTSD therapy going so I could go on with me.

Eventually, that pedophile military adviser got sent to prison here in the US and died there, shanked by a fellow inmate in 2009. We kids who had been his victims got together and noted how, though it took 39 years, that solved that problem for us.
Imagine if we'd wasted 39 years of our own lives refusing to go on until that happened. It was better to go on and trust that eventually what goes around comes around, because it did.

Eventually, too, the military overseas that tortured kids like me when I was 15 got theirs, too. The dictator who ordered it all died in prison in 2004. Justice was done. It took 31 years for that to happen, but it did, too, and I'm glad I never gave up and lived to see it. They say that justice deferred is justice denied. Not always.

So I'm glad my focus wasn't on solving their problems, but on finding a way for me to go on and have a life of my own. Like reading a book for fun, as you mention. Sometimes that itself is the best revenge.