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Hi Rainagain,

This might be like going over old ground.  All the same, I need to go over it as it is still a live problem- it isnt over. Today I occupied myself by cutting up fallen tree branches with a chainsaw.

I was acutely aware of how I could not think about anything other than the unfairness of my past (as usual). Even though I was busy for several hours, my mind seems to be fully preoccupied with the injustices I faced. The thinking generally takes the form of me designing sentences to communicate to my doctor the unfairness of his practice in relation to me.

This is energy demanding. It is actually still a form of stress. 

How do I get my mind to think about something else? Surely you have your own preoccupations too?

This is still the last thing I think about at night and the first thing I think about in the morning, without exception. I think I might have to accept that this is going to be my reality for the rest of my life.

(Yes I am definitely going over old ground. Just recently we talked about the being stuck syndrome. )

In this video from youtube Jordan Peterson makes reference to this kind of preoccupation at 18.22. Im sure you have watched this video before. I cannot think about anything other than the abuse of power that I faced, I think I am more hurt by the betrayal by my doctor because he knew better and I trusted him. You see it is easy for me to view my employer as a snake- he was protecting himself from prosecution. But for a man of integrity to assist a workplace bully and to carry out defamatory misrepresentation of the truth in order to avoid personal inconvenience, I am not coping with that. This is the bit I cannot swallow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaJ5tMoilvM

Right now I feel that my best hope for a better quality of life, and progression towards some type of recovery lies in frequent physical exercise. Is that what you mean by deciding to recover? Forcing yourself into healing action, or potentially healing action? The whole thing is sometimes very tiring.

Thank you all for the posts. I made reference to this a couple of days back in a larger post but I want to make it more clearly here.

I want to extend huge gratitude to Kizzie for having the foresight, the composure and the compassion to create this forum. It is a God-send. It is a mine of insight, support and healing. I cant thank you enough Kizzie. You have put people in touch with the people they need to be in touch with.

Like you Libby, all I asked my doctor to do was to validate the stress I had been put through for years. I told him that I was being lined up for a very unfair dismissal if he didnt. His reply was, "I cant put that (on your sick line) just because you say it. Im sorry".

He refused to say the reason I needed a week off was due to work related stress. 2 weeks later I was unfairly dismissed.

Im afraid I cannot help but think that your therapist didnt have sufficient comprehension of trauma if she couldnt consider the possibility that forgiveness might not be possible. She may have personally had to employ forgiveness for certain things in her own life but that doesnt mean she can impose a no exception rule on mandatory forgiveness on you or anyone else. I have not forgiven, not genuinely. I have said the words and attempted to do it for my own sanity but it hasnt been authentic.

I have not forgiven and no one can tell me to. It cant be forced, whether anyone likes it or not.

Youve made me remember an occasion when I was confiding in someone I know, re my difficulties 5 years after redundancy. After I had given a description of the injustice I experienced, and explained the psychological injury as best I could, he suggested that rather than continuing to hate my old boss, I should maybe try forgiveness. I think he really began to get a sense of the whole thing when I told him that my old boss has had more forgiveness from me than from any other person alive and that it hadnt made me one iota less angry or less injured.

"Another thing I don't understand is taking an opportunity to do wrong just because you believe you can do wrong without punishment, what sort of person does that? How can a group of people unite to do that? That's the evil I have to accept and come to terms with."

Rainagain,

I really hope you are finding a reduction in the power of this affliction. Through all my ruminations and stress I have found there are very specific moments which come along, sometimes quite unexpectedly, when the full realisation/comprehension of exactly what was done to you crystallizes in your mind. These are awful moments. Im pretty sure you will be having them?

I had one yesterday while in the back of my friends car chatting to my friends mother. While she was talking I had the crystallized thought of the extent of the injustice that was waged against me--- the depth of the lying that they had to stoop to to defame me and protect the bully.

Im pretty familiar with these moments now. After they occur you cant help but think.....'if only you other 3 (that are in the car with me) had any idea what is going on in my head!' They simply cannot know and they dont want to know. The fallout Im describing is a highly personal experience.

For me this is where the evil you speak of reveals itself in its purest form. These moments are among the most painful.

Im running short of time here.... chat later. I hope you have a good day.

"To get unstuck you need some sort of input, only having an internal feedback loop doesn't seem to lead anywhere but down.

He mentions naïveté too, I was naïve, I wasn't strong enough when my troubles began and this led to all sorts of evil later. I hadn't realised I was in a situation that could be totally life changing so didn't rise to the initial challenge like I would (hopefully) have done if I'd realised the danger.

I trusted others to do the right thing, that was wrong of me. And naïve."

Hi Rainagain,

I just wanted to say that there are so many aspects of your own experience that I can relate to. We have faced some similar sounding scenarios.

When I reflect back on the 5 years since redundancy I can see there has been a self perpetuating loop of negative rumination which I have picked myself up from umpteen times, thinking I had put the problems to bed once and for all. After they refuse to be put to bed for the 20th time in 3 years you start to realise the trouble you are in and hope fades. Fear rises and you become lost in a reality underpinned by pain and anger, and possibly an obsession with justice and validation. Wellness and being ok in yourself are inaccessible, forgotten experiences. Worst of all, no one can understand what are are coping with.

I am grateful for every word you typed in that post the other day, your 2nd last one in this thread. It all resonates with me.

At this stage I have made a couple of life changes and I am viewing these changes as yet more attempts to arrest the internal feedback loop with new inputs. Its not that life changes were not already tried without the desired result, but now is a new time and I think I am beginning to feel real emotional movement. Even thinking that is powerful and healing on its own.

Could this be the reversal that the woman in the youtube video refers to when she says the trauma has to be reversed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otxAuHG9hKo

I think my reversing of trauma back to a better place is underway and I want to help it along with positive lifestyle decisions. Not ingesting alcohol is one such strategy and it is hugely beneficial.

I know my mental well being is still fragile and I know how easily triggered I am. The ways I am being triggered are more and more varied as time passes so I am not out of the woods yet. I am however learning to enjoy music again and I think I am learning how to enjoy who I am as a person...... I think.

I will get back to watching JP, I couldn't agree more, his talks are rich in good messages, incisive messages. I like how he helps you cut to the chase with the efficient delivery of the important messages about how to approach life right.

There are so many things I could say in relation to what you've said but I cant hit them all.

I hope you are seeing some bits of healing taking place in your reality?

I'm so sorry you went thru that. 

Here's another quote I happened across recently (I love quotes! They help me see things in new ways) -

Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the back either. Just refuse to bear them. —William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

Hi Three Roses,

Thanks for posting this quote. It helps me be clear on the fact that I did the right thing in standing up for myself before my abusive boss found his extra gears of abusiveness, which ultimately resulted in trauma.

Something has become pretty clear to me after helpful posts from other site users in recent days.

My abusive boss believed that I was fair game for his most unacceptable oppression because he knew I was someone who had issues with depression. As far as he was concerned this meant he could be as ignorant as he liked with me and that would be acceptable. This was low intelligence, mental health discrimination in its purest form.

When I protested I was revenged in ways so varied, complex and devious that the stress caused became traumatising.

After 4.5 years of a descent into mental ill health as a direct product of this discrimination, my own life long GP used the fact that I was a person who had a history of depressive episodes as sufficient reason to disregard all suggestions by me that I had been harassed or treated unfairly in my place of work.

This too was mental health discrimination in its purest form, executed by a respected NHS GP whom I invited into the situation in a desperate hope for a fair outcome to my experience of workplace harassment . He shafted me for fear that I might expect him to vouch for me in a legal battle. I only wanted him to tell the truth about my stress so that I would be protected from an imminent unfair dismissal.

This development plunged me from one level of trauma to a deeper level. I believe that what I have been living for the past 8 years or so bears a very close resemblance to the causes and the effects of Cptsd.

It has just dawned on me these last couple of days that behind the bullying in the first place, and then the disgusting betrayal by a healthcare professional, was discrimination because I had had mental health issues in the past.

Many times after the horrors of the abuse and the redundancy I have thought that my doctor knew full well that he could do and say whatever he wanted in relation to my situation because even if I had killed myself over this, he could maintain a clear conscience by saying my depression finally got the better of me. He always had that to keep him right.

Three Roses, discrimination is behind all of my trouble and I tried to not bear it at the time, but I didnt have the power that others had and in the end that was the difference. Discrimination and abuse of power to misrepresent that discrimination as over sensitivity on my part.

You know, even my closest family members have opted for the 'over sensitivity on my part' option because it means they can excuse the deeds of my employer and my doctor as being above board. People like convenience. People do not like complicated stuff and they will often choose the easy way to explain something away if there is an easy way available to use. I had 4.5 years of records of unfair treatment in the workplace, dates and quotes. My mother shredded it behind my back because she didnt like the conflict and she thought destroying the evidence would help magic it all away. This is what you are up against. The whole thing is so ugly that people close to you will go to bizarre lengths to wish it away.

Super post Rainagain. It means an awful lot to me, every bit as much as Libby's in the other thread (under 'Private psychiatric assessment results in script for anti-psychotic medication').

At this point I would just like to once again thank K for the existence of this forum. The support and validation available within these pages from many other users, like yourself Rainagain, is of immeasurable value. It is without doubt hugely informing, and therefore restorative, to those in unprecedented psychological trouble.

When your closest friends and family, not to mention your life long GP, refuse to employ the necessary energy to listen to and comprehend your predicament, that is a pretty defeated place to find yourself. If it wasnt for this forum and the way it has allowed me to connect with other down trodden people, Im not sure how I would have coped with the pain manifesting in my mind.

Thanks to everyone. More on your post later Rainagain.

Libby,

We are having exactly the same experience with our NHS health centres. As I said, I have been laughed at down the phone by one particularly frosty woman who answers the phone. It is because they have categorised me (with the help of my life long GP) as a lunatic and a nuisance, that my desire for support against health crushing workplace harassment was denied. I was spoken to by my GP as if I was not a person he had to take seriously and when I could not shake the effects of the trauma even years later, he got angry with me and asked me if I was going to move on or what? And this after he had point blank refused to be informed of the nature of the harassment that I endured for 4.5 years.

He assisted my employer in an unfair dismissal of me. This is not exaggeration in any way. After I was made redundant because he refused to say my stress was work related, he told me "its my job to get you well!" This particular chestnut was said by him to cut short and deflect my very first attempt to explain to him the wrongness of his refusal to say the stress I was suffering from was caused at work by unfair treatment, a decision which paved the way for a disgustingly unfair dismissal that he knew was going to happen.  He decided the stress of my harassment was just mental illness and unrelated to my job, and that meant he could just speak to me as if I was his ill patient that needed meds and my redundancy was in no way related to him. The fact is, my redundancy was fully facilitated by him. He was fully complicit in my unfair dismissal. I had given my employer permission to talk to him on the phone and between them, my removal from my job was decided upon.

That woman who laughed down the phone to me when I asked are there any other doctors available (my own one was off), I have noticed that when she answers the phone to me now, as soon as I identify myself, she asks me to hold on a second and the phone goes dead. She is deciding what to do. She is deciding what to tell me. Funnily enough, my doctor always seems to be off and rather than pass on a message, she tells me to ring back on friday when my doctor is back in. This way I might not bother.

Like you I am not being taken seriously, my old GP steadfastly refused to reconsider his position on my harassment. He withheld support when I needed it so he had to stick to his guns and that meant denying the validity of my grievance, denying that 4.5 years of harassment happened. On one occasion when I was trying, in vain, to reason with him, he said- "well I have no axe to grind with them". That was his position on my being driven to the brink of my sanity by the most abusive boss you could imagine.

Painting might just get me out of this mental prison. It certainly wont do any harm. Ive already identified thoughts of authenticity about myself since I started a bit of painting. I havent had such thoughts in years. I might just have discovered some form of emotional salvation/healing.

Maybe with our similar life stories it is no coincidence that we are both creative? I feel better already for having taken up the paint brush again!

Sorry for going over my situation in so much detail again, I cant seem to help it. I think I need to go over and over it because of the scale of the deceit that was carried out to misrepresent facts in order to have me cast aside.

"At my husband's suggestion, we looked into seeing a private psychiatrist, as I have never seen anyone other than GPs. I didn't bother because I would have needed a referral from my GP. I couldn't see, therefore, that an assessment would be unbiased."

Hi Libby,

Thanks again for your post, as Rainagain says, it is really thoughtful and insightful.

I wonder what you mean about the difficulty of receiving unbiased healthcare because your GP would have had to make the referral for a private psychiatric assessment, when your GP wasn't directly involved in your traumatising?

This strikes a deep chord with me because I do not know to what degree the psychiatrist that I attended and paid money to was informed (or misinformed) about me by my GP's practice before I spoke to him. The nature of the  assessment would suggest to me that he was somewhat prepared for me and that he was not an impartial listener.

In my naivety, I thought I could get an unbiased ear to hear my case if I paid a private psychiatrist. I rang one up. I was very surprised to hear a referral had to be made by my GP's practice for this to happen. I wanted them to have nothing to do with it as they have been a source of trauma and they have ridiculed my struggle ever since. One of the receptionists has laughed down the phone at me when I was in a state of distress. So I well understand your sentiment about the difficulty of getting non-biased private care.

Thanks again for your fantastic post.

Hi Rainagain,

There is no puzzle re bipolar/not bipolar. I am not bipolar. I am a person who has experienced fully explainable hypomanias which only happened because of the duration of the depressions which I had just negotiated. I would never have experienced hypomania without the preceeding prolonged depression. Neither were my depressions mysterious or unexplainable. Emotional and physical abuse by parents during childhood and adolescence made sure I thought I was a useless piece of crap for long enough to produce clinical depression.

There is no debate to be had on this. The suggestion that I am to some degree bipolar by this psychiatrist serves to illustrate one point and one point only. The fact that my GP chose not to explore the abuse I had experienced in the workplace, and the fact that he refused to say my stress was caused in the workplace is too inconvenient for the psychiatrist to accept. He cannot be seen to support my claim that I was further injured by the decision making of an NHS GP. By this stage I am not remotely surprised by his appalling course of action.

The  true nature of the stress I was caused in work was denied by the bully, then it was denied by the GP and now 5 years later, it is simply too much for the psychiatrist to do anything other than deny its validity too. The psychiatrist needs me to go away and be quiet, the same as my GP needed me to do that and the abusive employer before that. He will say anything to have me just go away and desist from this inconvenient story of abuse and betrayal by one of his colleagues.

There is no mystery here whatsoever. I will say it again, the damage that was caused to my mind is too inconvenient for these people in a legal sense. That, alas is of little help to me. They can all imagine it away as long as I shut up. They are not the ones managing the symptoms day and daily. I dont have the luxury of pretending I am just a silly, deluded nuisance.

There is nothing impossible to digest about the disparity of the 2 diagnoses. One of them was made at the correct time when it was well informed and fully impartial. The other one is a desperate attempt to avoid the truth of the present day by using historical information. I sat and watched this man orchestrate an assessment in which his main priority was to refuse the validity of the words coming out of my mouth. That says it all.


Having said all of that, I am currently enjoying a bit of respite from the deeply complex pain that has visited me again recently. Long may it last. I am really enjoying some music at the moment. That is a pretty remarkable breakthrough!

Morning, Libby and Rainagain and thank you both for your posts. This just a short acknowledgement as I am going to justify my existence today with a bit more oil painting practice. This is a good thing.

Libby you are hitting many nails on the head. Im not for a moment trying to suggest my trauma equates with yours but it appears the damage caused is of a similar nature. We are both managing the psychological consequences of stress and betrayal. Despite the differences in the nature of our hardships we can well relate on the psychological effects being dealt with now. Cptsd most closely resembles what I am living by a million miles. I had the light bulb moments when I discovered it and when I read Pete Walker.

You are right about the therapeutic properties of accepting that no help is available or forthcoming from those who traditionally should be providing it. I was only able to overcome an absolutely horrendous 2.5 month flashback (worst one yet) in the spring after the galling experience of sitting across the table from a private psychiatrist and watching him avoid the damaging truth of my situation. I listened to the most disgusting, flimsy, embarrassing misrepresentation of reality coming out of his mouth and all generated by his need to avoid exploration of the historic criminal practice of another NHS GP. His assessment was in part based on my doctors notes. My doctors notes are designed to mislead. I have them. They are an utter disgrace.

After this I realised that it would be easier to win the lottery than have these people hear the truth and accept what it has done to me. So I was somehow, quite remarkably, then able to end that particular flashback and throw myself into some work projects. This worked for a while then the season changed into Autumn and the thoughts got the upper hand again.

Thanks so much for both of your posts. It is all fantastic stuff!!

Later. I will get back to you later Rainagain.

I am not a doctor or therapist and thus have no credentials in this arena, but from my experience it is possible to reframe your experience somewhat.  Perhaps you can let yourself know that what you are experiencing is a normal response to some terrible things that you have endured.   You are not wrong, or bad, or defective.  In my experience, sometimes it is the very act of trying to escape the bad feelings and self concept that keeps me trapped.  Things do have a way of changing over time, just like we constantly are growing and shedding cells in our physical body. 

I'm not sure if this is helpful, but thought I might try to give you something to consider.  Sending good thoughts your way.

Hello again Jdog,

Thanks again for your response earlier today. My mind has settled down a lot from earlier today. My first response was written while anxiety and anger about the past was running high.

I have attempted some pretty novel ways to reframe everything. One of them involves me focusing on the fact that I should never have been in that job in the first place. I should never have been in a position of subordination to a man so devoid of either manners or intelligence. I hope that makes sense.

I try to imagine who I would be had I never had the misfortune to meet this person. That is a therapeutic thought.

Thanks again for your message, I am working on the reframing. If I hadnt been so good at what I was doing I would not have been so targeted for undermining and ridicule by this pathetic man. If I could somehow hold on to that solitary aspect of the whole thing I might be able to think more supportive thoughts towards myself more often.

Hi Kizzie,

Thanks a lot for the recommendations. I will take that on board and look into the processes.

Due to constant anxiety in recent months I hatched a plan to return to oil painting. I thought it would be calming. It isn't. It causes incredible anxiety. Im not sure it is possible for me to enjoy it. I am still trying but the associated anxiety is very tiring. Im trying to find the therapeutic vibe within artistic expression. Im in the middle of a painting right now and even though the first sitting hasnt been a complete disaster, the dread of making a mess of the rest of the picture is high.

Thanks for recommending EMDR. It is time I tried it.

Thanks a lot for your response Jdog. It It might be difficult for me personally to go about reframing my experience without the eruption of more unresolved anger because my experience was already reframed by the abuser and by my doctor to suggest that my grievances were irrational, mysterious and even fantasy. IE Gaslighting by abuser and doctor. Demeaning reframing by others is what I have been battling against.

I do not know how to reframe injustice without denying its validity. I want to let go but so far it hasn't been an option.

Im really not sure what must happen in my life or in my mind to change the status quo of frustration. Unfortunately, for me, things are not changing with time. The lies that were told are not becoming any less demeaning than they were 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 years ago.

Im sorry if I sound unappreciative of the advice, Im really not. I don't know how to disarm the untruths that were waged against me by people in positions to abuse power, people that I bump into on the street when I least expect it. Triggering is an ongoing part of daily life and I know how it undoes my self re-grounding.

Maybe I need to move away from home yet again, to reduce the instances of triggering.

Thanks so much for the positive thoughts.

Thank you for sharing this Kizzie. It is very good.