Introduction: Weaving a Tapestry of Healing from Curiosities in the Chaos

Facing crippling Anxiety and PTSD, every day was a battlefield. Finding curiosities in the chaos, I learned to adapt and overcome. This is my story - of stopping the spiral and climbing back out.

I’ve gathered enough pieces of the puzzle to write this book, “From War to Writing,” and my current vision is still coming into focus. As I polish my early writing and put the chapters together, more clarity will emerge. Everything that follows is an ongoing work in progress. Thank you for your patience. :)

This isn’t a memoir or self-help book, but it may be a little of both.

This is my story.

… of how I stopped falling down the hole

… and what I found to climb back up.

I needed to tackle crippling anxiety, an incredibly short fuse, and a handful of other curious things inside my head. They slowly built up over the years and I typically kept them in check, but as the end of my career loomed, everything became too much to handle.

I retreated from the world.
I needed a brain reset.
I needed to re-examine some kindergarten level stuff with a few more decades of life experience and an existential crisis for motivation.

Many things I thought I learned in kindergarten, I had to figure out from scratch.

Slow down. You can’t do everything everywhere all at once. Being nice to people is important. Treat other people like you want to be treated. Nobody likes a grouch. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

It has taken a while, but things finally make sense again.

FROM WAR TO WRITING

I WAS LIVING IN SURVIVAL MODE. Over my 24-year military career, I experienced war from several perspectives, but I wasn’t prepared for the battle I would encounter on the outside. Every day was a battlefield. After my first attempt at solitude, it took me six months to feel secure in my footing. That retreat enabled me to stop falling down a mental health spiral, but recovery was not immediate. After hitting the brakes, it took some time to change the inertia and start clawing my way back up.

Writing became a vital tool to regain my humanity.

When I started writing in December of 2024, I began searching for answers in earnest. As I’ve been slowly recovering, I have shared my journey on Substack as I find curiosities in the chaos along the way.

That is how my healing journey began, and that brings us to today.

In this book, the lessons I learned are (will be) refined and presented as a (hopefully) coherent whole.

If you’re curious if this journey is for you, let’s talk about…

Who is this for?

Apparently, I’m ‘supposed to’ start by determining my ideal reader. For some reason, I still struggle to connect the dots and figure out to whom exactly I am writing.

At some point I hope to get specific, but for now, here’s who I think would benefit most from this book:

• Anyone who feels compelled into solitude. This book is certainly for any veteran who finds themselves struggling to deal with other people after leaving the service.

• Anyone feeling constantly overwhelmed - If everyone and everything is an adversary or an existential crisis … and you're ready to make that stop … you're in the right place.

• Anyone facing a combination of PTSD and Burnout

• Trauma Survivors - I have been surprised to find how much of my journey runs in tandem with those who have survived and/or are struggling with trauma.

• Anyone struggling with a massive life change - retirement, divorce, loss in immediate family, etc…

• Overthinkers

• Perfectionists

• The digital recluse - who is ready to spend more time face-to-face with people and just needs some tools and fresh perspective.

• People who don't like people - but are ready to reconnect

You may also enjoy this book if you:

• have Challenges with Empathy - If you’re struggling to figure out what people want, or trying to find the motivation to care again, we’ll tackle that in depth in the Empathy Tank section.

• suddenly realized everything seems different and you're trying to figure out why. The world always made sense and all of-a-sudden doesn’t.

• are Neurodiverse / Neurocomplex¹ - my struggles may seem familiar to those with neurodivergent traits such as “ADHD, autism, giftedness, sensory processing differences, and other forms of cognitive or emotional divergence.”

• have challenges with overexcitability - This has been a lifelong struggle for me. My tips, tricks, and perspectives are all focused on staying steady.

Maybe this is for you if you are:

• out-of-sync with those around you. This book digs deep, and you may find some hidden gems of perspective to help get back in-sync with your fellow humans.

or

• a professional in the mental health space. This book should be quite a case study. 8^)

Maybe you've been through trauma, extreme stress, loss, grief, or other major life challenges… and come out the other side stronger and better. You may find this story interesting to see how someone else did it, or prepare for your next season of challenge.

Also - your wisdom may be valuable to help others in this small community. Feel free to share your experiences and insight in the comments here on Substack.

If you're reading my work, and I missed you in this list, I'd love to know why you're here! If you think this list is entirely too long, I am also open to suggestions on how to narrow it down. :)

A TAPESTRY OF HEALING

I’ve come to view my healing journey, and writing this book specifically, as weaving a tapestry of healing. As I’ve learned, started to heal, and begun to reconnect with my fellow humans, I’ve found many different concepts that work well enough on their own, but seem far more effective when woven together to form a coherent whole.

Each chapter is a thread. Each one stands alone, but they become more powerful when combined with the others to paint the full picture.

Your journey is unique. As you read this book, feel free to jump around. If some threads in this tapestry speak more to you than others, start with them. Though everything works best considered and applied together, each chapter provides useful, targeted insight.

Chapter Overview

As we begin, we’ll start with an examination of Notes, Cautions, and Warnings. Building from my experience as an aircrew member, I share a few techniques to slow down, handle the overwhelming stress of daily life, and focus enough to implement a strategy to heal. These may be similar to, or work well in conjunction with, ‘grounding techniques.’

Once we get a handle on daily personal emergencies, we’ll address techniques to better deal with people. To do that, we’ll touch on Stoicism, then discuss Empathy as a key to recovery. When we tie them together, we find connection, and a healing cycle is reinforced.

We will take a dive deep and tackle PTSD and Burnout - two specific issues I had to address simultaneously to make recovery possible.

An important part of healing is learning more about ourselves so we can connect more effectively with others. We’ll examine personal biases and how they impact our ability to empathize — and caused me to be overly blunt and judgmental.

A big key I found to healing was the importance of Empathy. We’ll discuss how Sympathy can be good, Compassion is often better, but Empathy is typically best, and why Empathy is the most valuable and finite resource of the three.

Understanding Empathy has become significant factor in my healing journey. As such, a few chapters in the book will combine to illustrate the concept of the Empathy Tank.

• The Empathy Tank - It stores our finite reserves of this valuable resource. It has one job: don’t be empty.

• Inputs - The Empathy Tank fills with a combination of nature, nurture, purpose, meeting of needs, and connection with others.

• Outputs - As we allocate our empathy, we must take care of ourselves first, then consider family, friends, colleagues, and the rest of the world.

• Leaks - Challenges such as grief, poor health, or extreme stress can cause leaks in our tank that get the entire system out of whack.

• Connection - When we effectively employ empathy, the resulting connection creates a feedback loop that helps fill our tanks. When that connection is severed, the system is once again out of balance.

In addition to these topics, we will also cover a few more curiosities I found along the road From War to Writing.

CURIOSITIES IN THE CHAOS

While dealing with the chaos over the last two years, I have discovered many things I find curious. I mentioned many of them above, but there is a subset of curiosities that continues to get my attention, which I have not yet expressed clearly in my writing.

I may have been holding back a significant amount of inner turmoil for many years - through mostly brute strength - without even realizing it. As such, my breakdown required me to figure out many things at once. This complicated interplay is likely part of the reason why my burnout was so intense and has taken me so long to wrap my head around.

We're all unique and have our own path to travel. Part of my healing journey has been trying to figure out how my brain is wired.

I am not anxious to pathologize here; however, I'm literally writing a book about mental health, so I should at least address the topic.

I will explain the challenge of having PTSD and Burnout kick in at the same time as I lost the last bit of control over my lifelong battle with ADHD… and also discovered I’d been ‘masking’ some Autistic traits (with varying degrees of success) most of my life… and couldn’t do that anymore either.

At this point, the most succinct and comprehensive concept I've found to explain my chaotic struggles is the Theory of Positive Disintegration, (TPD) which is addressed very well in this recent article:

When Burnout Says: “This Life No Longer Feels Like Mine”

If you like my writing, you may also enjoy

Lindsey Mackereth

‘s . I still only maintain one paid Substack subscription - and it's Lindsey Mack's. I've read most of her published work here, and both her expertise and perspective have been quite helpful to untangle and understand the chaos in my head.

Here’s a quick summary of TPD from Google AI:

“The theory of positive disintegration, developed by Kazimierz Dabrowski, proposes that personality development can involve periods of intense psychological distress and breakdown (disintegration) that ultimately lead to higher levels of psychological health and integration. This theory suggests that some individuals, particularly those with high intellectual, emotional, and imaginative overexcitabilities, experience a unique form of development where they go through periods of intense internal conflict and questioning before achieving a more authentic and integrated self.”

It is usually easier to fight an enemy you can name. It is also easy to hyper-focus on a diagnosis we find online from Doctor Google. Personally, I try to keep an open mind and keep looking. That being said, aspects of TPD seem to explain much of my journey, and I will address it in this book.

Discussion about neurodivergence is complicated, particularly because the vocabulary carries deep nuance I am not yet comfortable wielding effectively.

Overall understanding in this field has evolved greatly over my lifetime. It is rapidly evolving now. The lexicon is complicated.

Bias, politics, and simple lack of understanding, exposure, or clear definitions color much of the language and emotion surrounding neurodiversity. As such, I will attempt to wield my pen with finesse, and thread the needle carefully, and find the nuance required to express my thoughts in a coherent, accurate, and palatable manner.

I will address topics of neurocomplexity² occasionally throughout the book but intend to keep most of the commentary on those particular curiosities to their own chapter(s).

If at any time you wish to share insight, particularly if it might clarify or challenge my thinking, please leave a comment, or send me a DM on Substack. My 'door' is always open. (and remember: comments before going to print can impact (or be included in) the book)

The End of the Beginning

Now the table is set. Hopefully you can see the vision of this project - and perhaps you see things in here that will be useful for your journey.

While this is the end of the introduction, it is just the beginning of the rest of the story.

I look forward to sharing more with you every week as I weave this tapestry of healing.

If you would like a “preview” of the chapters, my full Substack archive is still public and free, for now. My journey of healing, and of learning how to write, is all there. It started off pretty rough and I certainly hit a few bumps along the road... but that's the real journey as I lived it. If you want to travel my road from the beginning, have fun, and buckle up. :)

Thank you for joining me today. I look forward to seeing you next Saturday.

Take care,

- jofty 8^)

1. The entirety of this footnote is a direct quote from the article linked below from Lindsey Mackereth. She coined the term “Neurocomplexity” after years of clinical work and shares her insight and expertise on Substack.

What Is Neurocomplexity?

Neurocomplexity is the idea that neurodivergence isn’t a singular category or condition—it’s a dynamic constellation of sensitivities, adaptations, and internal intensities that shift in response to the environments we've moved through.

It includes lived experiences such as ADHD, autism, giftedness, sensory processing differences, and other forms of cognitive or emotional divergence. But neurocomplexity goes beyond diagnosis. It speaks to the interplay between the internal systems that shape our experience and the external systems that have shaped our survival.

While this framework can be applied across the full spectrum of human wiring, my clinical work has primarily explored its applications within the neurodivergent crux of autism, ADHD, and giftedness.

Your attention. Your body. Your intuition. Your ideas. Your emotional radar. None of these emerged in a vacuum. They were shaped by your context:

— What you had to notice
— What you had to suppress
— What you had to perform
— What you had to protect

Neurocomplexity lives at the intersection of wiring and environment—of biology and adaptation, sensitivity and strategy—across all humans, but especially in those whose wiring demands more complex navigation.

Neurocomplexity Synthesized: Map Your Wiring to Your Survival Archetype—and Begin to Heal

2. Neurocomplexity: See footnote #1.