Out of the Storm

Hi everyone,

I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing day to day now, but I think I'm trying to be back.  I was going to post this elsewhere, but it's so long, I thought I better put it in a journal... hope it's not too annoying...

I'll just say sorry for making a mistake regarding the rules.  I thought I was doing what we were supposed to, but apparently not!  I'll take more care in the future.  I'll shut up about that now.

I missed coming here the last few days.

I went to my city's mental health emergency hoping to get into a short term crisis centre.  The cab I took was playing "Everything Is Gonna Be Alright" by Bob Marley, and the cabbie and I were drumming and singing along.  I was crying and whatnot.  The cabbie told me to take care of myself and life was going to get better.

I met with a hostile psychiatrist.  She was very upset about my general refusal to take medication.  I have tried MANY of them in the past, and she kept challenging me asking what dosage, what was the "Trade name", how long I was on them, etc.  I don't think she was too happy when I was able to remember how I was generally on the max recommended dosage, and stayed on several of them for over a year, and in some cases 2-4 years. 

She then started pushing the anti-psychotics, which I refused.  How is it that mental health experts can think numbing out and suppressing the emotional symptoms is a solution to trauma, which is inherently unprocessed/suppressed memories?  She said "clearly your therapist isn't very good, or otherwise you wouldn't be here.  You should find another one"  She said that after I told her my therapist is the only mental health professional I've ever found genuinely helpful.  She told me she was going to keep me in the psych ward until my trial, and if I wouldn't go voluntarily I was going involuntarily (a security guy was stationed outside my door by this point).  I kept saying I needed a few days in the crisis unit.

Eventually the psychiatrist came back and said "So, we're going to have to decide whether to send you to the crisis unit or admit you to the [???] ward.  Actually, I've already decided.  You're going to ??? ward.  It's very nice, there are no beds and it's very quiet."

I tried to argue, and the goalposts began to shift against me to get compliance.  Over the next day, through her and different psychiatrists, it went from her saying "You can check yourself out in the morning" to "you can check yourself out after you see a psychiatrist in the morning" to "a psychiatrist MAY be in today, to psychiatrist saying "we will revisit you having outdoor smoking privileges next week on Monday or Tuesday". 

On the upside, I had the whole ward to myself for a day, and the staff weren't condescending, domineering or dismissive.

One white-haired psychiatrist told me that he thought what I was going through was about as hard as anything he's heard.

I saw an "occupational therapist", who had a student with her.  They were both very cute, and I felt broken and damaged and unmanly.  She kept on pushing CBT type stuff on me.  I have no problem with CBT, but it has limitations, and I think I've internalized a great deal of its value over many years of different therapies and groups.  I must have been pretty comical, because they were in stitches a few times.  She tried to deal with what she could about my living arrangement problems, but couldn't.  At one point, there was this exchange:

HER: "Can you stop referring to her as the 'good' therapist?   That implies there are bad therapists."

ME:  "There are.  Over half the therapists out there are terrible.  They really should be doing something else for a living.  You have no idea the number of awful people out there."

HER: "No.  They are still good.  They are just different.  You can't judge their value as therapists."

ME: "Yeah I can.  A lot of therapists suck."

HER:  "No.  You can MAYBE say they are  less effective, but they are still good."

ME:  "I think we're just going to disagree on that.

The whole time I was panicked and dissociative and just disintegrating.  My body was screaming at me.  I think I did pretty good.  When we ended, I said "A psychiatrist is supposed to see me in a bit.  I now know they're 'good', let's cross our fingers that they are 'effective' too!"

We all laughed.  Later she came to say she was leaving for the day, and asked how I was.  I told her I was distraught, and she said she can't tell if I'm joking.  And I said I joke around when I'm nervous, and she intimidates me.  She laughed saying "Awww, you're SCARED of me!"  That was unpleasant.

A guy came in who was talking about how horrible jail is, and how he saw a lot of violence and "more blood than I thought I'd ever see."  A very frail and quiet woman came in, who was drugged up badly.  She was very fearful, but ended up trying to help me do a puzzle, but her brain wasn't working, and she eventually knocked the puzzle off the table.

Finally I had a meeting with another psychiatrist, who came with a team of others, and I was able to articulate how the miscommunication, lack of self-determination, and disempowerment weren't helpful.  I mentioned that I had been in these very rooms 25 years ago, and all I got was drugs and invalidation when I first came for help to deal with my Mom from growing up, so now I am not really interested in more of the same.

SECONDARY PSYCH WORKER:  Why don't you tell us about it now?

ME: "No.

SECONDARY PSYCH WORKER: Just give us the gist.

ME: No.

They sent me in a cab to the crisis unit, and I spent the last few days there, and calmed down considerably.  There was a man there I saw last time I was in, and an elderly woman came part way through my stay whom I befriended and hung around with on my last stay.  The frail fearful woman from the ward came along at some point, and she told me I was the only person who was ever nice to her, and she asked if she could live with me.  I felt really sad about that.  I hope she gets some help.  She cried a lot.  A couple of friends visited.

I got out today at ten.  I went to my house that I'm renovating.  It is SOOOO stressful.  I  HAVE TO work on it, and get it ready before winter and before my trial (in 8 weeks!!!) but just immediately fragmented and was in a disintegrated trauma state by 1230, after my Mom showed up (I can't drive so she has the power to be super invasive when picking me up material).  She started standing there and telling me how what I was doing was wrong, and I quickly fell to pieces.  An hour earlier, I was "Grimly determined" and confident.  I HAVE to move out of where I am now end of October.  I HAVE to have that house livable by winter.  I HAVE to get the court's permission to move.  I HAVE to be home for a curfew every night.  I HAVE to relive the trauma of the night I was trapped under my Dad's body in court.  I HAVE to start going to my lawyer's to relive that nigh again and again.  I HAVE to deal with my Mom all the time, and be under her control.  I HAVE to face the possibility of jail, where I will be trapped in again! and am sure I'll be victimized badly, or maybe house arrest, where I will face that terror of agoraphobia and social phobia again that I still work on daily after over 20 years, and the loneliness and isolation and self-hatred and fear of people.  I'm not weak, but I'm completely crippled with trauma and anxiety.  That's my next two months.  And I'm so utterly powerless in almost every aspect of my life!  And the flashbacks, emotional and regular, are terrible.  I'm being triggered by something every hour, it seems.

I'm now back in my crappy apartment, with sporadic running water and a caved in ceiling, in bad shape but feeling determined.  I have so much on my plate, and am absolutely terrified and being triggered and hammered into a terrified dissociative state with this trial stuff coming up.  I had signed up for an 8 week mindfulness program a couple of months ago, and started that a couple of days ago.  I have to somehow shrink this all down to just living moment by moment, but I don't really have the skills for that.  I still think I haven't found my feet since that EMDR guy.  Maybe I won't now.  Before the accident with my Dad, my life really wasn't full of drama and these extreme shifts and whatnot.  I wish it would stop.  It's been worse since a woman I know got mad at me when I told her I didn't want to know her any more and called the cops saying I had guns three years ago.  I didn't, but got evicted, and am now controlled in my living arrangements.   Before then, in 41 years, I had lived a total of 7 places.  I've lived in about as many since then.  The legal system just keeps stability from being possible at all.  I haven't even had the trial yet.  This shock trauma PTSD on top of the developmental trauma c-PTSD is really doing a number on me. The legal stuff alone fills the criteria necessary for causing PTSD. 

That was VERY long and I'm sorry.  I hope I didn't worry anyone by leaving, and if I did, I'm sorry about that.  I missed my c-PTSD peeps!   Sorry for running away, and I hope I'm welcome back.  Here, with my therapist, and with one friend are the only times I feel like I matter at all and am actually a human being.  The only times I feel like I can relax, even a little.  I missed you all!

So..... That was my week...  How was yours?

Meursault

TRIGGER WARNING


I wrote a poem a few days ago too, and thought I'd share t:

Get Out While You Can

When little Cindy Space-Girl
went off to Outer Space,
She left behind the horror
of all she could not face.
She knew at least that out there
in the emptiness and black
No-one could come find her -
She'd not be coming back.

Her friend, young Marty Stay-At-Home,
trapped with mum and dad
Was locked within the cellar –
They said he had been bad.
So he pounded and he hollered
and screamed to be released,
But dad was drunk and missing,
and mum became deceased.

He cried within the darkness
and lived upon the bugs
And dreamed of flying rockets
to Cindy and her hugs.
His fingernails were missing
or torn upon the brick,
His body white and shrivelled,
his mind had become sick.

Lost in fearful blindness,
stars popped in his eyes.
His mind became so dodgy,
he thought he saw the skies.
He tripped upon a gas can
left hidden in the dark,
And thought "Here is a rocket!
And I can make a spark!"

He sat upon the gas can,
and counted "three-two-one"
He put a spark within it
and shot toward the sun.
The gas can danced and wavered,
surrounding him with fire,
But all the while young Marty smiled
and thought that he flew higher.

So while Cindy made her hopeful way
to freedom in a dash,
Marty found another way
by turning into ash.

Meursault!!!

Welcome back! I missed you.

What a story! My heart goes out to you - I can't even find the right adjective to put in front of story.

Singing Every Little Thing Is Gonna Be Alright with the cab driver is such a complex and beautiful moment of human connection. Everything that came after sounds like a nightmare. I'm so glad you are out of the ward.

:bighug:

YOU'RE BACK! YAY!
:fireworks:

You were definitely missed!

So sorry about the nightmare you recently went thru!

I'm so glad you are here again. I think you're one of the bravest, kindest people I know, and I've missed your insights. :hug:

So..... That was my week...  How was yours?  lol!

You think you've had an eventful week,Meursault?  *, my computer charger doesn't work, I'm having a dispute with the company, and it's rained and rained, and I've just discovered my WOF is overdue!

Seriously, you are a legend with what you've been going through, your strength is inspiring.  But it must have been so hard and I'm sure it still is.  I do feel for you.

So glad you are back and safe (a relative term I know) :hug:

QuoteI'll just say sorry for making a mistake regarding the rules.  I thought I was doing what we were supposed to, but apparently not!  I'll take more care in the future.  I'll shut up about that now.

Welcome back Meursault and please know that you did nothing wrong, it was the guideline that was not overly clear and things got out of hand in terms of moderating.  That has been addressed and we are going to revisit the offensive language guideline as a community once a bit more time has passed and see if we can decide collectively what it should look like.  I hope you'll weigh in! 

Moving forward today though, I am sending you many :hug: and lots of support, not a great week or two for you, but hopefully it will bring some small measure of comfort to know you were missed and members were thinking about you.

WB, Meursault! :)

oh, meursault, i'm sooooo glad you made it back.  i've missed you a lot.  you helped bring a ray of sunshine into my life just by being back.

dang, what a nightmare!  your strength in the face of those oppressive 'professionals' is inspiring.  well done standing up to them and speaking the truth!  i completely agree with you about the therapists - some of them are much worse than 'just not as effective'.  have they never heard of therapists without ethics, boundaries, or who have done actual emotional harm to clients?  you were strong and brave and inspirational.  i just finished writing about speaking my truth, and here you are, talking about just that.  you've given me strength for that, and i thank you.

welcome back.  hang tough, i'm hangin' right beside you.

I'm glad I'm back.  I'm feeling pretty alone in life.  I'm glad we have each other here!

Radical:  That sounds like a terrible calamity!!!  Rain AND a broken charger!  What's WOF?

I'm going to vent a bit.....  I'm not sure about this stuff, so I better put a TRIGGER WARNING here:

I'm feeling like I'm in a war.  A friend texted today asking how I'm doing, and I just responded:  "It's like I'm raving in the trenches, artillery shells bursting all around."

I'm feeling fairly determined, but just amped up completely.  It's not going away, and I think it will stay until at least the trial.  It's like my body is SCREAMING at me constantly.  My brain is just this fragmented wild animal, extreme in every reaction and catastrophizing about everything.  It took me five minutes to figure out how to start my toaster oven today.  My brain is just being hammered by this constantly.

My life feels completely out of my control.  Anybody can hurt me or damage me and I have no way to defend myself.  This legal system just keeps tearing me further apart.  When my Dad died, I was doing pretty good.  I had given up on anyone ever loving me, but I was functional. I had many interests, I worked productively and successfully, I lived in the same place for years.  As soon as he died, I think I had probably over a hundred people tell me they would gladly go to court as character witnesses for me.  Now I don't work, am on the verge of homelessness or jail, have virtually no friends.

Six years of just being pinned in and powerless to move on and process the trauma of it, and every time ANYTHING legal or police related happens around me, including news, the wound is just opened again.  I'm being pinned down and forcibly made to stay in this horrible trauma from my Dad's death, over and over.  The legal stuff ALONE fulfills all the criteria for causing PTSD.

My body doesn't feel real any more, the life I'm forced to live is insane.  It feels like every cell of my body could explode.  It feels like my limbs and the rest of my body could just fall off and the whole structure of my body could just disintegrate and collapse.

And my Mom has so much power over me.... AGAIN...  *, my lawyer finally emailed to set up an appointment, and asked for my Mom to be there too!!!  The most vicious human I've ever met, who threatened the worst stuff imaginable, graphically, almost daily as a kid, and somehow, everybody thinks it is normal how she should have some control over me again.

Life is so hard.  I wish someone could just love me and hold me and make this all go away.  I'm so terrified of being trapped in jail, and all the victimization that will happen to me.

My Dad wasn't great, and was pretty abusive as well, but I really miss him.   I can't seem to connect to any memories of him, though.  Everything just funnels violently into the hour I spent struggling to keep from drowning under his body in the dark.  Trapped and powerless.  Ugh.  It never ended.  The  justice system just keeps it going.  And every week, there is some news article about some assault, or a pedophile, or some career gang member etc who get jail sentences less than I've already had to serve under basically house arrest due to curfew.

The learned helplessness, terror, re-traumatization, continued traumatization, vulnerability, and relentless destruction of ME and my life just continues.  Six and a half years, almost, and I am still pinned in and trapped by it all.  I am being treated like I'm garbage by the whole world, not just my Mom and sisters now.  I'm so completely debased and powerless and subhuman.  I want a life!

Anyhow, just needed to vent some of this.  A quarter of my adult life just forced to remain in the same spot, unable to grow and build, just waiting with a threat over my head, and no real control over my own life.

Meursault

I really hope venting helps, if anyone has earned the right to rant, you have Meursault.

This is such an awful place to be in so many ways, but please hang in there and be kind to yourself on behalf of all of us here at this forum who wish we could help, cook you a meal, hold your hand, listen to you, give you a hug.  That's a whole lot of caring that we need you to pass onto the boys on our behalves.  It's so hard to do when your body and mind is screaming in pain. I don't underestimate it.  Any little bit of kindness is good.

Do you have any physical outlet to burn off some cortisol?  Walking, swimming, yoga, stretching, handstands, I don't know how you like to move and shake it out a bit.

The other thing I wanted to say is when you say that you can't connect to any memories of your father, I relate to that.  There seems to be a trauma switch.  I've never heard anyone else talk about this, but it has happened to me in relation to a number of people who were important to me.  I can't access the feelings and can barely remember.  I wish I had control over this.

anyway, hang in there :hug:

dear meursault, my heart aches for you and rages at the fact that there's nothing i can do to help you except let you know that i'm here for you.  i'm just glad that you have this place for venting.  it's always helped me to be able to know that there's somewhere that will take the crapola from me and keep it for me so that i don't have to carry it around.  this forum may not be able to take it all from you, but hopefully even some little piece of it will drop off this horrible burden you're carrying.  i'm hangin' right next to you.  you are so strong, you inspire me to keep hangin' in.  thank you.

Thanks, everyone, for the well wishes.

Meursault

  :hug:  :hug: meursalt

Feeling very scared and alone today.  I have an appointment with my lawyer tomorrow.  I haven't seen him in ages.  I have been puking and shaking all day.  Waves of dissociation.  My brain is just stunned and empty while my body is screaming.  Hate this so much.  I wish it would go away.

Contacted a guy who was very helpful a few years ago.  He used to be a cop, but despite that, he's been pretty important to me.  He's on vacation, but we're going to grab a coffee when he gets back.

Good therapist and I have an arrangement that I can email on Sundays and she'll respond on Mondays.  Feel slighty better since she responded, but slightly better is still terrible.  Self-destructiveness isn't super loud.  Ran into guy who owns the gym I was going to and he showed a lot of compassion about this all.  Like most people, he's pretty shocked and disgusted this is even happening.  It was kind of good though, most people tell me I am a really kind and caring person, and he was saying that too.  It makes all this debasement and vilification I'm otherwise getting slightly less biting.

I'm totally dissociative right now, so I can't even read back what I just wrote to see if it makes sense.  Sorry if it's just raving.  Time to throw up again!

Meursault

I'm so sorry to hear what you're going through! Virtual hugs are all I have to give in the way of comfort, so here goes ... :hug:

A person's worth is not determined by their actions. It exists apart from them. Things we've been through, how we've reacted, do not determine our worth. We are all just travelers here, moving through this plane, some would say to the next.

You have been told for so long that you are worthless. You are not, you have been lied to. You are not any worse than anyone you see, walking down the street, sitting in cafes, going about their business every day.

You are valuable! I'm so glad you are here to share your wisdom and insights with me/us. If such a place as this must exist, I'm glad we've all found it and are journeying through this together.

meursault, from what i've gotten to know of you, you are a very kind and caring person.  i wish i could wave my magic wand and make all this awfulness just disappear for you.  i wish i could give you an earth mother hug and tell you you're going to be ok, everything's going to be ok.  i wish, i wish, i wish . . .but all i can really do is let you know that i'm with you in spirit, that we are all on this journey together.  hang tough, my friend.  we'll get through this. 

Thanks for all the support.  I read this right before I went in to see lawyer.  It was pretty bad.  I don't know what to do...  I was a wreck.  I guess I made it through, though, and haven't gone into crisis, so that's a victory.

Meursault

 :hug:

let's hear it for another victory!  yay!!!  one foot in front of the other on this journey.  big hug!

Triggers!

Just barely holding on.  My whole life has been a nightmare.  I wish this legal stuff would just go away so I could at least START to heal. 

I went to the doctor's today.  My doctor is across the city and it's a big ordeal getting there, but I went and was in a pretty reasonable mood.  Over an hour of travelling in total to get there.  I am always panicky at doctor's offices, ever since I developed really bad social phobia and agoraphobia when I was around 20, and had been trying to get help through my family doctor.

The waiting room was mostly empty, but there was a young woman who came in, probably only 18-20.  She was obviously really impatient and was listening to music and constantly tapping her feet and drumming on the chair and stuff like that.  Really moving suddenly.  I was consciously unaware of her, but the aggressiveness of her movements must have been working on me sub-consciously.  Without even recognizing how it happened, I was in a full blown state of terror.  Then it became obvious how her movements and tapping and hitting things was affecting me.  I had already started shaking badly , and a couple of hard stomps with her foot had me LITERALLY jump out of my seat and cry out.  I was hyperventilating, and finally got up and said to the receptionists as I was leaving "I can't be here any more!  Too much anxiety."  and fled.

I give up on going to doctors any more.  I was supposed to get a prscription for Prazosin.  I'm almost out, but I can't bear going to a doctor's again. 

Everything I am is just garbage, and I hate life.  I just wish it was over.  I'm just a broken animal, too traumatized to be part of the human race.  I can't see how it's possible to even GO to my trial.  I'm still in shock about the whole thing and it was six years ago.  Just constant states of flashbacks.  I hate myself so much.

Anyhow, every day is now just dissociative terror and hopelessness.  I don't know what to do.  I was trapped under my Dad's body for about an hour, and the cops and then legal system have been trapping me ever since, now they want to put me in jail and pin me in again!  My brain is breaking from all this trauma.  It's just constant.  My body isn't even working right any more.  I have a hard time walking and grabbing things even.  Still a month and a half before the trial.  They're willing to make a "deal" of a year in jail.  This world is insane.  Kept for six years in a * by this threat, and somehow their "deal" is as much or more time than pretty well anybody gets for a sexual assault, or half the manslaughter cases.  I do something trying to help my Dad so he doesn't kill himself in an accident, and they want to hurt me more than people who act out of malice.  I'm just not supposed to be in this world.  I don't understand why I have to suffer any more!

Sorry for the negativity.  I'm not suicidal, but I'm disintegrating from how utterly unendurable every moment has become.

Meursault

Meursault, if there was only something I could do for you! Just hang on a little longer, you'll be through this soon. Do you have someone who would go with you to the doctor's? Can you get hold of a doctor via Skype and get your necessary meds that way? There has got to be some help for you.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be pushy but I hate the idea of you hurting like this, so my mind is searching for fixes.

:hug: to you! We're with you, Meursault.

I don't know that this helps right now, but I was thinking of you today. We're always here for you.

If you can make it through this moment... Just one breath, do that. Then another, and another. It's all I could do for a long time because thinking of the future at all sent me into a panic. Eventually enough single moments will get you to someplace else, though.

I can't imagine all the hells you are going through. Do you have anyone who can help you pass some time? Even a game of cards and a short chat might be the kind of distraction you need and deserve.

Good luck, I'm pulling for you.

I guess I'm lucky, too, in a way.  There are several friends, probably at least ten, who are pretty supportive of me.  Two different friends texted me and offered to go to the doctor's with me after I posted of my difficulties on FB.  I just don't see myslef as able to do that any more.  My best friend and her husband are coming tomorrow to help me do some stuff on my house.  (I have to move in in two weeks and I don't even have it insulated yet!)  Then I'm meeting a good friend for food, then having coffee with a buddy I made a couple of years ago while in the crisis unit.  He's a military vet who just lost his service dog.

Then Monday I'm paying a friend to help me all day insulate and vapour barrier my place...

I'm so busy, but I am needing to keep my supports around a lot right now.  I feel so scared and alone, and all this trauma has just left me so damaged, I don't even think I'm a human any more.

The terror and dissociation is definitely very bad.  Reality is sort of "strobing" for me, and I feel like I'm saturated in terror.  Thinking is extreme and very negative.  I am somehow still functioning, but I'm not sure HOW, really, I can barely remember what I did all day.  I got lots done on my house, I put in eight windows, and finished insulating the main floor, but I only vaguely remember being there.  Just like the doctor's.  Everything about it all seems so far away, like it happened ten years ago.  Except that girl who scared the crap out of me...

Just an unrelenting hammering of emotional flashback...  arg.

My therapist (the good one!) has been saying our focus is entirely on stabilization right now until after the trial.  She is wanting me to write out what I like about myself and stuff like that, but I'm mostly drawing a blank.  Only a couple of things are really sticking out:  that I'm nice to people, and I'm pretty intelligent.

I suppose there's something else too.  I have gone on solo canoe/kayak trips, generally 30-40 days every year in Northern Canada (REALLY remote, hundreds of miles away from towns and roads and reserves).  The last couple of years I've had to go to court to get permission, since I have a curfew, but they have let me.  I met a guy who wrote a book about a canoe trip he took a few years ago, and he said this of me:  "There's probably only a thousand people in Canada who could do what you do, and only a hundred who would actually try."  It's the only time I feel like myself, and it's such a profound, lonesome, connected thing to be hundreds of miles from other people in the middle of the Canadian north.  This year I figured it was going to be about 45 days, but I was back after 16.  On day eight, I was woken up by a bear, a fairly large male.

So, I was standing there, in the pre-dawn in my underwear in front of my tent banging away with my axe for half an hour, while the bear was never further than 8-10 feet away, circling me.  Every time I stopped banging her turned and came toward me, so I went back to yelling and banging, and he'd go back to circling.  It was kind of neat.  Grey, early morning, lots of dew and a heavy fog.  I was in a deep green valley, and every sound echoed clearly off the hills. 

I asked myself "Am I afraid?" while it was happening, and I wasn't at all.  I debated going on the offensive and atatcking him with my axe, but thought I better not escalate yet.  I had bear spray in my hand with the axe but wasn't at the last resort point.  So weird, the bear just circling back and forth so close I could have touched him in less than three steps.  He wasn't at all afraid, and didn't even flinch from my banging or yelling.  I think he was just testing and figuring out if I could possibly be a threat, since I wasn't being sensible and running away.

Finally he started to wander away, and I discovered he had already taken half my food so I wouldn't be able to complete my trip.  Turns out he wasn't leaving.  He wandered about forty feet and then stood up, turned toward me, and rubbed his back on a tree.  Clearly saying "this is my territory, human!"  He then dropped onto all fours and bee lined at a fast walk right toward me.  When he was about three feet away, I blasted him in the face with half the can of bear spray.  He shook his head and took another step toward me, so, with the can only a few inches from his face, I emptied the rest, and he slowly walked away shaking his head.  As he walked away, he kept turning to come back, but the bear spray was confusing him.  It was right at the start of a 1-1.5  mile portage through thick bush, and I didn't think it was safe without more bear spray, so I quickly packed my gear and hopped in my boat to return, which took another 8/9 days.

I had no problem with any of that.  I didn't even have any adrenaline dump afterward or anything.  I was just very calm and matter of fact.  I think I'm pretty brave and strong in lots of ways, but trauma is an entirely different thing.  I have no defences with this stuff.  That girl at the doctor's office today just wrecked me.  Every bang of her hand or slap of the sole of her shoe on the ground was like a gunshot.  I'm so weak in some ways.  I involuntarily leaped out of my chair while crying out, for god's sake!  In retrospect, I bet my behaviour was pretty worrying to her, since she wouldn't know how badly her movements were messing with me.  I might have appeared like a "crazy person"!

Anyhow, I was pretty proud of myself with the bear encounter, and have always been proud of myself for the trips I take, so thought I'd post about it here.  Everything is completely falling apart, I have a hard time seeing anything human left in me.

Meursault

meursault, the fact that you could write about that undertaking with the bear, your bravery in the face of danger, your presence of mind, determination, processing the situation as to which was your best option at any given time, making the safest, most intelligent choices over and over again . . . and on and on shows what a strong human being you are.

then, there's the traumatization, which is a beast of a different color, something we don't know very much about because it continually twists and turns, backtracks on us, jumps out at us when we least expect it, and most of all, makes us believe that we are so much less than we really are in so many ways and on  so many levels - is it really any wonder that we continually feel like the rug is being pulled out from under us, that we have no legs to stand on, that our senses are screwed up and distorted from one minute to the next, that we are less than human?

keep your friends close, meursault, because right now you probably need them more than ever.  they are letting you know, through their support, their willingness to help, that they indeed see you as human, and even more, as someone valuable in their lives.  those horrid thoughts are the dank, musty breath of the trauma beast, fogging your brain, and making it seem like everything about you stinks.  in fact, it's quite the opposite.  hang tough, dear meursault - i'm hangin' right beside you!

Thank you Sanmagic.  Your comments are always a pick me up. 

Kind of dumb of me, but I just remembered what I did in therapy last week.  I've had a very elaborate fantasy life mostly centred in Tolkien's Middle Earth since I was about 11-12 ish.  It was my escape, and what made me feel good about myself.  I have a very complete storyline of what happens, and could draw many scenes, have vivid colours, smells etc for all sorts of parts of the plot.  I'm basically a Super-Mary-Sue in it, ridiculously heroic, unflappable, loving, respected and loved.  The plot has remained fixed since I was in my late teens, and a lot of my romantic fantasies fit into it as well.  In it, I'm basically the "ideal" me, and it's that ME I try to be when I have trouble and feel overwhelmed, at least when I remember it. 

I wrote out the whole story, just as a summary, without much descriptiveness, and it's a dense 12 pages.  It's really important and personal to me, sort of my inner secret.  I saw my good therapist last week, and asked her if she would be willing to read it.  I'm paying her for her time.  So, she's going to read it the day before our next session.  I really feel a lot of love for this therapist, and I feel like I'm sharing such a huge fundamental part of me.  It actually makes me feel more vulnerable with ehr than when I finally trusted her enough to tell about my mom and sisters.  In a way, that wasn't ME, it was what happened to me, although I spent months terrified she would laugh at me about it, or fly into a rage for me complaining about it since I deserved it.  I don't know though.  This stuff is ME, and she is so important to me, I am actually pretty excited to share it with her, but also worried about how pathetic or needy or childish I'll seem.

Mostly, this feels like I'm showing my deepest ME to someone for the first time.  I'm nervous and excited.

I'm not doing at all well lately, and I guess I'm kind of hoping with this that she will truly SEE ME and still care about me and think I'm not garbage and am lovable and all that sort of thing...  I really feel like I'm scrambling so hard to keep things together, and I hope this is going to help me feel like I'm not just some hideous thing.  Everything in my life is feeling so huge right now.  I'm not sure what I need from her for a response, but I hope she sees it and can give it.

Meursault

i hope so, too.  pretty brave of you, meursault.  pretty brave.  it sounds like you escaped into fantasy to stay sane.  that's pretty brave, in my book, as well.  i'm just glad you had a place to go, a place to be the real you.  what a great mind and imagination.  i've never had that.  i would escape into books, other peoples' imaginations/stories.  i always wanted to go down the rabbit hole with alice.  she represented my spunky spirit.  so, it'll be interesting to get the feedback from your t.  best to you with that.  i hope it goes just the way you want it to.

I've been awfully busy.  I've done enough on this house that it's liveable.  I'm only a month away from the trial and I'm so scared of all this trauma being relived.  I'm having VERY intense flashbacks.  Crying out, convulsing, falling, just horrible mental anguish and terror amd mental chaos.

I just moved into my house two days ago.  I bought a teddy bear this spring, thinking I'd just have it around as a totem for my inner child.  Turns out I needed it more than that.  I sleep with it and talk to it actually.  My first night here, I walked through the house with my teddy bear giving it a "tour" and said "this is a place we are allowed to be happy.  We don't have to hate ourselves here." Then I broke down and had a big cry.  I have my teddy bear on my lap now.

It makes me full of this weird big-as-the-world sadness when I think how much my teddy bears meant to me as a little kid, and it wasn't until I got this one that I realized it.  I wish I still had those bears! Feel kind of guilty for abandoning them!  Thinking about how little five year old me used to take my sisters barbies and use my bears to re-enact the stuff that happened with my sisters, teaching the bears how to do it and stuff.  That seemed like it was just normal until this last year.  It's like I was trying to process what was happening to me by teaching my bears to do what I was doing.

Wow does that make me sad.

I tried for the hundredth time to get a straight answer from my lawyer about why my case hasn't been thrown out, but he's completely evasive.  The supreme court ruled this summer that for provincial cases 18 months is the maximum allowable from charges to trial, and 30 months for supreme court cases.  Mine has gone on 78 months.   I don't understand how this isn't a human rights violation, and my lawyer is ignoring my complaints.   I think I should have been going to the media, human rights commission, justice minister etc long ago.  I feel like my lawyer has made some deal with the prosecutor to destroy me.  I'm just a basket case with reliving this trauma all the time.  That night never ended, and I don't ubdrstand how it is even legal for the justice system to keep the traumatic event from ending.

Anyhow,  I'm struggling.   Haven't been reading here much until today.  Life is just a battle, and I feel so alone right now.  But I have my bear, and for now I'm going to sit with hI'm in my house and not feel like I'm some disgusting unlovable monster!

I just wish this would all go away so I can start to heal.

Meursault 

All over the world, we have legal systems but not justice systems. I hope in your case that statement proves false, and that you do find some justice.

I'm glad you're being kind to your inner child and yourself with your bear. Good for you, getting so much done while also finding time to nurture yourself. Makes sense you haven't been here as much.

Wishing you more peace and healing.  :hug:

I've been thinking about you, hoping you are getting thru the days with a minimum of trouble. Mftb is right, there's not enough justice in the world. Why not go to the media now? Maybe a story in the news paper would tip things in your favor....

 :hug:

You are an inspiration to me, Meursault.  I don't say that lightly.
Something about your irrepressible spirit.

The Human Rights commission (or whatever it is called in your country) sounds like a good idea.  Also, do you have a law commission or similar) there?

Stay staunch!

stay staunch, indeed, meursault.   i've been thinking about you as well since i hadn't seen you posting lately.  i'm glad you're still with us.

bear spirit is very powerful as a totem animal.  immense strength and protectiveness.  so glad you got yours - i believe it will help you through this mess.  and taking your bear on a tour of your house has imbued it w/ bear spirit.  very strong stuff indeed!

and also glad to hear that you can now live in your house, that it is a safe place for you.  yay! 

keep hangin' tough, meursault.  we're hangin' right beside you! 

Thanks for all the support I get here.

I'm sooooooo terrified of all this, and I'm having horrible flashbacks all the time.  I was trapped under my dad's body.  Then trapped on a stretcher.  Then trapped by handcuffs.  Then trapped in a police station.  Then it's been trapped by the legal system since.  I can't handle if they trap me in jail.  I would wish I had never been born then.  So many years of that threat over my head, my life just frozen in the continuing trauma.

Anyhow.  Flashbacks and anxiety are coming in waves.  God does my life feel hard.

I wish I had found some lovely woman to have a life with.  Then even this stuff would be bearable.  (Bearable... get it?)

I had given that detailed writeup of my fantasy life growing and my therapist read it.  She said the ME that is in there, the idealized me, is the one she sees every time any ways... she told me how she sees me as strong and kind and that sort of thing.   That fantasy version of me could handle this.  I don't know how to be him.   And at the end of the day, is it worth it.  Just a life of suffering and trauma after trauma, alone.

Anyhow. ..  my limbs haven't been working well today.  I've fallen down a couple of times.  Its like my joints are made of butter and my muscles are made of electrified wood.

Cheers, everyone.

Meursault

and cheers to you.  i can relate about some days i wonder what's the point?  and, my body does that same sort of thing at times.  it's the strangest feeling, especially my legs.  they just don't work correctly, and i walk like i'm a hundred.  i've named it 'the slows'.  it's been happening to me for over 20 yrs.  can't walk well, can't drive cuz i can't turn my head fast enough, nothing responds except in slow motion.  weird.

hang tough, meursault.  i feel ya!

I like Haiku, here are a couple I've written:

Haiku - For a Beautiful Woman

Reaching for the door
I stand groping in light and
The scent of flowers

Haiku - The Death of My Father

When the moment came
I was a hole in myself
Falling on the ground

Haiku – Triggered Trauma

The wind rattles me.
I am wildly dancing leaves
Floating in autumn.

Meursault

These are beautiful, Meursault. Thanks for sharing them.

Some stories make me wish I had unlimited resources available - yours is one. If I could, I'd donate to your cause and get you better legal help.

ditto what she said.  beautiful verses.

Self-harm triggers.  Maybe something that could be seen as sexual in the poem at end.

Thanks Three Roses and Sanmagic!

I had originally written a longer thing about my legal situation and stuff, which Three Roses saw, but got worried about it for legal reasons and edited it out.  I spent the first four years of dealing with this doing it strictly alone, or guardedly in an edited way with therapists afraid anything I say would get me in trouble.  Everything about this situation exacerbates the trauma of it. Ugh.

I saw my therapist today, and I read her what I wrote above (Oct 16th) when I mention giving her my Tolkien based fanatsy life stuff.  I think she was a bit moved.

Truth be told, I was an absolute wreck today.  Crying, wailing, hitting myself (I'm all sore and bruised), shutting down so I stopped existing, I think I may have passed out a couple of times, shaking, "rending my flesh", convulsing, thoughts and feelings starting, and then exploding into a whirlwind of incoherence.  I was in rotten shape, and still am to a degree.  This whole thing is functioning the same way torture does on the mind, and has broken me down into something that isn't even human anymore, I think.

I got up, putting on my jacket, and planned to leave and not come back several times.

I brought my stuffed bear today.  I showed him to her, and kept him in my inner jacket pocket, head sticking out, looking at her.  He looked scared and vulnerable and extremely hurt watching her, but hopeful and needy too.  (I get that this is just an inner child part of ME here...)  She had me talk to him a few times, and introduced herself and greeted him.  At the end of our session, she gave me a hug, and insisted my bear get involved in the hug as well.  She tried to sort of direct me to place him between our chests, but I'm so phobic of overstepping boundaries, I jerkily handed him to her so I wouldn't be creating any pressure on her breasts.  (I hope that's alright to say.)  I wish I hadn't done that, because I think it would have meant more if he was surrounded by our hearts.  She invited him back in the future.

I just got my bear last spring, but he is already looking pretty worn and "well-loved".  She asked me his name, and I told her.  I wasn't even really ashamed or embarrassed much about it all.  Here I am, a supposed man in his forties, an emotional wreck, showing his stuffed bear to his extremely attractive thirty-something therapist.  I mostly didn't feel humiliated or emasculated, even though there's a part of me that always wants to appear masculine and strong so I can imagine she thinks I'm attractive.

My therapist was saying today how much I've changed since I started seeing her.  Remembering back, I was so scared and distrustful of her.  Everything she said was a threat, and I interpreted things so negatively, thinking she was telling me what garbage I was with so MANY comments.  She pointed out that I am a very open and honest person, and even in our first session, told her that I don't trust her, and wanted to go back to my old therapist.  I told her how lucky I was that I decided to stay with her.  A couple of friends are as important, but there hasn't been anyone more important to me in my life.  The last tehrapist, the "email therapist" mentioned that she was probably the first positive female attachment I had in my life, maybe of either gender.  I still have moments of core mistrust of her, but mostly, I feel how she really cares and loves me.  (I rarely even feel that she is just tricking me and secretly ridiculing how gullible I am!)

I was talking about how I have no hope left.  How even if I survive jail, my life is over.  No-one will want me or love me.  She told me that she believes it will happen and I will find love in some way, and she will hold that belief for me even if I can't right now.  I think she sees I have nowhere safe inside of me right now, and the trauma and terror and pain of all this is basically causing me to "internally self-harm" in a pretty severe and fundamental way, so she was letting me know she will hold onto the goodness of me so it doesn't get destroyed over the next month.  I feel like there is a giant in me stomping around in terror and pain, smashing the place up before something even worse happens.  I really don't think what comes out of this trial in four weeks will be salvageable.  The human brain just can't deal with this.

I've been getting these waves, many times a day, that I guess are pretty severe dissociation, where reality becomes nauseating, unreal, and choppy, like existence is strobing hard.  It's very disturbing, disorienting, confusing, and scary.  Sort of like your brain shutting off and on, every few seconds, and each time you become aware, it's like a whole new world where you have to ask yourself "where am I?", along with a low grade motion-sickness feel, whole body electrical anxiety, rational thought that's trying to form in a blender, and a heart that feels like it's going to pop like a bubble with endless wailing and grief.  I wonder if this is psychoticism?  This constant THREAT, lack of safety and control over myself I am ACTUALLY under, and not "just" reliving, really messes with all the other PTSD and C-PTSD manifestations.  Ugh.  I used to not be so melodramatic, but this is really as well as I can explain this.

I feel like an emaciated, mistreated and abused dog, jumping out of its own skin.  All I want to do is climb into my therapists lap and yelp and shiver forever.  (She likes dogs, so that's not weird at all   :blink: )

Then I came home and wrote this poem trying to articulate what my therapist means to me.  It is WAY too romantic, though, and I don't really see her that way (despite occasional erotic transference), so I don't think I can show it to her.

I Promise You

If I could
I would
Dress
My heart in the finest
Three piece suit,
Or
Those dungarees and tight
White T-shirt
You seem to like

So when I enter the room
And my heart begins to orbit
The Sun
That is you, maybe you would
See it
And think
"In this gown I will dance with
that well dressed heart,
Or with this body I will cling and entwine
that rugged, manly chest
In its well-worn
clothes."

But I
Am only me,
And hope this battered satellite
Warmed by your heat
Is enough, feeble and naked,
for you to notice,
And say
"I will clothe you in my love
and dance through the nothingness
Together
Until we are
One."

Meursault

I hope you are keeping this poetry in a safe place! Personally I'm not very poetic but I always seem to enjoy yours. :)

Maybe you will write a book about your experiences, when you are beyond them. And I do believe you will be beyond them someday.

Dear friend, thank you for sharing yourself with us.

Triggers for despair.  Very negative rant.

I'm pretty much at the end of my rope.  This legal stuff has kept me in this frozen state, destroying all possibility of socializing for years and years.  I am doing so poorly I can't even describe it.  The emotional pain I'm in right now is worse than any time I've ever had.  I'm so alone and unloved.  I don't know what to do.  It's basically all I can do to keep myself from just starting screaming and never stop right now.

Wrote my therapist saying I'm not coming back.  I give up on all that.  Still in"drafts" and haven't sent it.  This legal stuff has destroyed any possibility of ever having a life of anything other than unlimited pain. 

The cops psychologically broke me down immediately after the trauma of being trapped under my Dad's body,  And every moment since has been torture.

This is soooo beyond anything I can take any more.

When he died, I had lots of friends, and I bet over a hundred people offered to be character witnesses if I needed it.  Now I have no-one.  There is nothing human, and nothing worth salvaging in me any more.

The ONLY thing I've ever cared about having is the love of some woman, and all that partnership would entail.  I don't want anything else in life, and it's not possible to ever have that.  I am so hideous and subhuman and disgusting, even the legal system is forcing me to live in a loveless exile.  The whole world is telling me I am unlovable and using the threat of force to prevent me from even trying to find love.

Ok.  I am just garbage.  I get it, world.

Meursault

I don't believe you are garbage. You are not sub human. You are worthy of love and respect. You haven't done anything so horrible, only had horrible things happen TO you, done TO you.

There is hope.
There is hope.
There is hope.

I wish there was something I could say that could penetrate the pain.  I don't think there are any words that could.
You have shown yourself here and we love what we see. 
I believe you will find the love you have longed for and be held and cherished.  I wish it could be now when you need it most, but it almost never works out that way. 
I find this poem comforting when I feel at my most hopeless.  Spoken aloud.

TS Eliot 'The Wasteland'
What the Thunder Said:


Then spoke the thunder   
DA   
Datta: what have we given?   
My friend, blood shaking my heart   
The awful daring of a moment's surrender   
Which an age of prudence can never retract   
By this, and this only, we have existed   
Which is not to be found in our obituaries   
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider   
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor   
In our empty rooms   
DA   
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key   
Turn in the door once and turn once only   
We think of the key, each in his prison   
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison   
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours   
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus   
DA   
Damyata: The boat responded   
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar   
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded   
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient   
To controlling hands   

dear meursault, there are no words for me to express how my heart reaches out to you.  my earth mother being wants to gather you in, wrap you up, embrace you until the pain subsides.  i've seen no monster from the very first time you've posted, but i have seen a sensitive human being who is working at keeping the demons at bay with all his strength.  hang tough, dear friend, i'm hangin' right beside you.  i wish i could do more.

Thanks for the support!  I'm afraid I am about to do a huge unloading of what's happening with me....  Sorry about how long-winded I am.)

I love Eliot's poetry...  I'll post another one of my poems which fits in answer to the last part of what you quoted:

Ship

The seas around are turbulent:
A storm not of my making.
Who would wish for seasickness
When everything is breaking?

To build a ship of any worth,
You need the proper training;
But in this wreck, with drowning deck,
The hull is over-straining.

The masts are splintered, cracked, and bent;
All the nails are rusting.
The drying tars, the broken spars,
The freezing winds are gusting.

I do not know where lay the shores,
But, oh, the ship is creaking.
I'll douse the sails, and when that fails,
The waves will drown my shrieking.

So my already horrible situation was made so much worse three years ago by that girl who got mad at me for refusing to get into rehab with her so she would have protection from bullying.  She was making fun of me as I was crying and talking about how scared of jail I was, so I told her I didn't want to know her anymore (I wasn't polite).  The next day she tried to force her way into my apartment but I was able to push the door shut.  She ended up calling the cops and saying I had guns in my place.  The cops were even apologetic once the tactical unit cleared out, since I think they understood what happened, but the main cop told me his supervisor was making him arrest me because of all the spectacle  (they had closed down the major street, and there were at least nine cop cars I counted, plus a couple of vans, fire trucks, ambulances etc.  I saw at least 15 cops.)  It makes no sense how vicious that was.  I had only ever been nice to her.  She had a drug problem, and when we hung out she would start begging for money, and when I refused, would sometimes end up getting naked trying to lure me or get drugs in exchange for sex.  I never took advantage of that at all, though I'll admit I find her very attractive.  She nearly got us both killed when she did that when we were drinking with a couple of bikers once (and I mean REAL bikers, not just guys who say they are), begging for drugs or money, and I basically got crazy enough with them, threatening both of them not to touch her, even though either one could have pasted me to the wall.

That just made it so I have no life whatsoever.  She called the cops, saying I had guns, and a whole tactical unit stormed my apartment.  They obviously didn't find anything, but I had the bail condition I wasn't to possess alcohol, and their were three beers in my aartment, so I spent a few days in jail, then a year more waiting until a trial for breaching those conditions, but nothing came of that.  I already had all the damage inflicted from the new bail conditions.  I was evicted because the police "disturbed the other tenants", forced to live with my Mom, who was so abusive as a kid, sleeping in my Dad's bed (they had separate beds), while my mom had the TV blaring all day every day those true crime investigation shows about sex crimes, cut off from my social contacts, forced to attend AA, see a probation officer, be driven anywhere I had to go (vehicles are very bad for me mentally since the accident).  It destabilized everything, and I've now lived in more places in the last three years than I had lived in the previous 41 (I have to go to court every time I move).  And I've had this curfew for three years now.  It's basically amounted to a year of house arrest.  I ended up in psych ward from staying with my Mom.  The psychiatrist wrote a letter for the court saying I am being re-traumatized on a daily basis there and it is crucial for me to be out of there.  The prosecutor still refused to consent to that (which the psychiatrist and psych ward manager were stunned by, saying that had NEVER happened in all their years), and I ended up having to go to court to fight it.  Moved into a place for a few months, and then moved in with a girlfriend (in retrospect, she used me to pay for everything).  We got a foster kid, and I was all gung ho, but GFs adult son started doing drugs with the foster girl.  I had a problem with that and wouldn't relent, so GF kicked me out.  More time at Mom's, then a couple of days living with woman I met in psych ward, but she and her special needs daughter were BOTH very sexually invasive with me and I fled.  I've been pretty limited, though, because I have that eviction because of the police, finding apartments has been hard.  Thankfully, I now have this house.

I have faced more punishment from that than probably 99% of assault or sex crime convicts, and I don't even have a conviction.  Meanwhile, the accident with my Dad is still not resolved by the courts after 6.5 years.  The damage they have inflicted from that amounts to more than probably half the murder convicts.  My governments courts just threw out a first degree murder because the crown and courts had stalled for three years.  And here I am, with a lawyer who acts like this is all normal.

I can't go out in the peacefulness of the night, see the stars, get away for a day, socialize at most events with friends.  I went to court to get permission to go on my camping trip this summer, which my therapist wrote a letter saying was psychologically going to be very beneficial.   It's the only time I slept well in a year.  It has completely cut me off from so much of life, and I'm effectively exiled in the midst of the world.  How cruel is that?  Every BBQ, house party, music festival or show is off limits to me because of that curfew.  Can't go to six AM yoga, can't join in on sports tournaments I would have.  I sit in my place every night, on the verge of jumping out of my skin for hours, expecting a "curfew check" by the police.  Too afraid of making noise in case I don't hear them knocking and they kick down the door.  No wonder I sleep so poorly.

So, a bunch of friends were having a supper party tonight for a friend's birthday.  I had been looking forward to this for weeks.  Actually being able to hang out at some event with friends, meet some new people, maybe even a woman.   Actually having a moment where I was allowed to be a human, a person, and participate in life...  But nope.  The SISTER of that girl who caused me so much damage was coming.  I get horribly triggered by her.  I also stopped a mental health program this spring because her OTHER sister was enrolled in it.  I just fall to absolute pieces around them.  It takes me days to calm down after seeing her sister.  I didn't ask for her to not come, but I mentioned to the hostess that this is a major problem for me.  Her response was basically "too bad!  Hope to see you next time!"

I was really looking forward to that.  I'm less than four weeks away from this trial.  I wish I had had a chance to be a part of the world before it all ends in court.  I don't understand how these friends couldn't have allowed ONE event where I was able to go.  I'm so completely  alone and lonely. 

Anyhow, a guy I met in the crisis unit a couple of years ago is doing poorly, and came by my place tonight.  Just helping be a support for him actually distracted me from my stuff for a while.  Meanwhile, the house party is still going on, and I'm stuck here alone as always.  Brain just cycling in waves with this strobing dissociation.  Like reality is a bunch of separate vignettes.

God, is life hard.  Every year is getting harder than the last, and they have been brutal since I was four or five.  And in three or four weeks, I go to court and battle dragons.

Not to mention that girl who turned my life upside down messaged me last week, saying she was sorry, and it was all the fault of the alcohol and drugs, and hopes I'm living a good life, and she misses me.  Just twisting the knife.  She does that every few months to a year.

It would have been good to have the support of my friends tonight.  I was looking forward to seeing a bunch of them and at least chatting with a few of the women I vaguely know that I find attractive who would have been there.  Just to feel a rare moment that it's POSSIBLE I could find love.  On the bright side, one friend messaged me saying she didn't think it was right, and how  I'm the strongest person she's ever met.  Made me feel a bit better.  I also feel pretty good hat I didn't send a bunch of snide, passive aggressive texts to people.  I really felt like it.

Sorry about my long posts.  Probably almost no-one reads them  Thanks to those who do.  I'm just going through so much, and have been for quite a while.  I think I want to be back in the sub-arctic facing off with that bear.  I was happier then!

Also, saw that guy who I saw as a brief therapy therapist for a coffee yesterday.  He used to be a cop before becoming atherapist.  He was the first person I trusted at all to tell anything about growing up, although I didn't give much in way of the major stuff or detail.  We've kept in touch in email, and I asked if I could see him professionally, but he can't, but he said we could grab a coffee and catch up.  He told me I need to write a book of my life.  Last time I saw him for therapist session a couple of years ago he told me he's seen four or five thousand clients over his career (he's a "Crisis response" type therapist), and even without the stuff about  my Dad, my life would be in the "top one, maybe two percent most traumatic".  Made me feel like I'm not just weak, and a failure, and complaining about nothing.  To my family, I am just a stupid, weak, laughable, lazy whiner.  I try to remember what he said when I'm being put down by them.  I'm trying to remember what people here are telling me too, but it's hard when I'm so overwhelmed.

Anyhow, sorry for long post.  I just really need to articulate some of this stuff.  Helping that one friend, and the messages from that other friend in support of me, really brought me back from a precipice.  I was disintegrating really badly earlier...

Meursault

I may not always answer your posts (some days writing is beyond me), but I read every single one - sometimes more than once. I look forward to reading your posts; you are one of several people I always look forward to hearing from.

I have thought the same thing about you writing a book!

I'm so sorry you didn't get to go to the BBQ - if I could, I'd plan one just for you and only invite people you wanted there.

As someone here said just the other day, you have shown yourself to us, and we love you. Thank you for your post. :hug:

dear meursault,

i'm really glad you got some outside support from people, and i hope you can hang onto that while you're in the midst of this whirlwind.  i agree with both of them, you are so strong and courageous in the face of such odds.  you didn't send those snide messages cuz that's not the kind of person you are!  we do love you, see the very best of you shining through, even when you can't see it.  it's there, it's real, it's you.  big hug, meursault!  hang tough!

I wish this would just stop.  I don't think it ever will.  The lgal system has already prolonged this over twice as long as the Supreme Court says is the maximum allowable.  I don't understand what's happening.  And my lawyer is good, apparently.  He certainly seems good, and that therapist I saw briefly who used to be a cop told me he asked around to cop family and cop friends and they all said my lawyer is the guy THEY would get.  I've also had lawyers tell me the same thing.  They'd get my lawyer if they were charged with anything.  I don't understand why this is being allowed to go on for so many years.  It feels like my lawyer made some backroom deal with the prosecutor to throw me under the bus.

Anyhow, I (like the Kinks say)  "woke up in a panic, like somebody fired a gun" this morning.  I've been feeling motion sickness quite often recently, and a lot the last couple of days.  Walking around my place this morning, I think I figured that out.  IT's like I'm constantly teleporting.  It's like this rapid cycling of complete dissociation, so I'm almost jumping from one place to the next.  It's weird, though.  It's like my brain is going in waves of non-existence, but if I think of what just happened, my body was still there the whole time.  I don't know what this is.  Just moving from one place to another instantly in this weird strobing awareness.  To put it lightly, this is unpleasant.

Thanks for the comments, Sanmagic and Three Roses.  I don't think I would have made it through yesterday in one piece without them.

Meursault

i wish it would stop, too, for your sake, meursault.  you are being battered over and over through this legal tornado.  still, you're with us yet, and that speaks so much to your strength and determination.  those feelings you describe, i can't even imagine, yet you're riding their waves like an elite surfer.  hang ten, meursault!

Thanks Sanmagic!

The "waves" thing...  My therapist allows me to send a weekly email Sunday to be read by her Monday morning.  I've recently shared a lot of music I've recorded, my poetry (yesterday I sent the romantic ish poem I wrote unromantically about her!), and I've shown her my art, and have made a couple of graphic novels I got professionally printed.  I was actually tempted to send a PDF of them to you, Sanmagic, but I didn't know if you'd be interested.  Let me know if you are, and Three Roses, let me know if that's inappropriate.  I would message Sanmagic a link to a Google Drive file, so things are still anonymous and all that...

The waves thing...  Here's what she sent back as email today as response to my crazy, defeated, trauma-exploding email last night, which was pretty open about how much she's meant to me since seeing her too, and how I love her:   (I also mentioned that if things go south with me, and she wanted to know more about what's been happening with me, she could see my posts here, but I told her not to look unless things go badly for me.)

Quote
Thank you for your honesty and your vulnerability in this email.  I know a lot of these things are hard for you to share and I really appreciate your willingness to let me in.  Your poetry, artwork and music is truly beautiful and you should be proud.  Thank you as well for sharing you thoughts and feeling surrounding the work we've done together, our therapeutic relationship and how that has impacted you, I'm very glad that you feel comfortable and safe with me.  We will continue to work together and you will get through this.  We're riding the wave right now and it's not always easy. I listened to the music however did not read the stuff on the forum.  I'll see you on Thursday [Meursault].

Weird about "the waves", how you both mentioned it in a period of a couple of hours...  I really wish she was more expressive, exuberant and emotional sometimes, but she has such awesome control and boundary management, I don't think I would have been able to trust her if I didn't see how her control made her safe.

I've re-read that email probably a hundred times already, and it was just sent this morning.  I'm desperately clinging to her to keep it together right now.  (God, I hope she isn't mad or disgusted by the poem I wrote about her....)

Meursault

meursault, from a therapist point of view, i doubt that she was disgusted by your poem.  she's a professional, she knows about transference, she can put it in the category where it belongs without judgment.  it's part of your process, and i expect she can respect it for what it is.

she's doing her job, and part of that is to be strong for you, especially when you're at your weakest.  it sounds like you are trusting the dynamic between the two of you.  let it flow, let the process play itself out.  ride the waves - they have upsides and downturns but all the while you're staying above water, and that's what counts.

and, meursault, as much as i'd love to see your graphic novels, i'm going to have to pass for now.  i'm in a truly bad place, and i don't think it would be helpful for me to get involved with someone on this forum on another level right now.  but, thank you so much for thinking of me.  having read your poetry, i know you are incredibly creative.  again, thanks for the offer.  it was very sweet of you to think of me.  keep taking care of you - i'm doing the same. 

Fair enough!  I suppose it didn't hurt to offer!

Meursault

no, absolutely didn't hurt to offer.  like i said, i thought it was sweet.  i just can't do anything more than what i'm doing right now is all.  sorry.  and, i hope you know this isn't a rejection of you, personally, meursault.  it's just where my process is right now (in the basement).  you've been a great friend to me on this forum, and i appreciate you being in my life.

You too.  I think I would have been hitting the crisis point more if not for many of the things you've said to me, and to others.  You have a lot of wisdom!  I didn't take it as a rejection either (remarkably!).  Hopefully, if I make it through these battles, I decide to write about my life.  I'll sign a copy of it for you (before the book is pulled from the shelf for lack of appeal  :Idunno: )

I'm in an all right mood today.  I just got my cat back from my Mom's in the country, after being without her for three years!

Meursault

yay!  glad you got your cat back.

thanks for your kind words.  and, a book!  quite an honor indeed!

one foot in front of the other.  keep on keepin' on!!!

Saw my lawyer yesterday.  Absolutely brutal.  Going through the minute details of what happened that night my Dad died, reliving it all, being questioned about every little detail.  I only completely lost it once, so I guess I did okay. 

Left there and went for a coffee with my best friend.  She was at that party on the weekend.  I am completely torn apart by all that still.  That's broken me down and made me feel like giving up more than anything in the last year.  I'm just not even allowed to be a human any more.  I am completely disgusting and hideous and unlovable.  She kind of lectured me that "people can't remember your needs 100% of the time".  I haven't been on an outing with friends, other than meeting up at coffee shops or restaurants, since last winter.  She told me that being upset would just drive people away.  I told her it's not like I'm mad about it, but badly hurt.

She offered to organize a potluck for people to come to my place.  I just panic at the thought.  Do any of these people actually like me?  And that would just feel like "giving scraps to the poor".  I wanted to be a normal person, at a normal event, meeting some new people, women, really.  Anything at my place would just be friends who are not even romantic possibilities.  I would just feel like some mentally damaged THING whom they are condescendingly showing mercy to.

I guess I'm pretty appreciative of her offering that, but I don't think that helps me any.  I think I'm too scared of all these people now to even want to know them.  I'm just alone.  Life is *.

I don't understand what it is about me that makes me such a monster, and how no-one wants me.

Meursault

meursault, i think you're going thru an extremely traumatic time with all this legal stuff, and that can make everything else bigger, including neg. thoughts about yourself.  i can't wait till all this is over for you.  too many layers of trauma to see straight.  it's horrible, what you're going through.  if i had my magic wand, all this would already be over and done with and you could get back to rebuilding a real life.  always with you.

*****TRIGGERS for talking about childhood stuff, some sexual content....

I'm sure you're right, Sanmagic.  It's hard to keep a reasonable perspective with all this extreme thinking and overwhelming emotion.

I saw my therapist today, and she was very gentle and connected with me.  The stuff I'm feeling and pain I'm in is really all tied in with that stuff from when I was a kid.  I had my bear with me!

I don't think I've really gotten into detail about much growing up on here.  But It's like all that stuff has been activated.  The terrible attachment, the crushing inferiority and unlovability, constant daily fear of pain and death, the sense of annihilation, all that stuff.  The fear, the exile from love and affection.

I grew up with my Mom and three older sisters, but saw my Dad some weekends and over the summer.  My Mom HATED males.  From my earliest memories, all she was was a bottomless world encompassing rage about how men are all monsters, and deserve castration, rape, murder, disfigurement, jail, cancer, loneliness, torture etc.  She was an extremely militant radical second-wave feminist.  She did stuff like "person hole cover', and refused to let my Dad call her "my wife" since that implied ownership.  She had the most extreme view of patriarchy as one is bound to find, with beliefs like the medical system is a front for exterminating women, etc.  She cheered and laughed whenever hearing about something bad happening to some male in the news or whatever.  Men were all subhuman rapist monsters, and women all flawless angels.

It was constant and graphic how I deserved to die because I was male, and she took gleeful delight in telling me how men deserve to be sexually violated etc.  I could provide dozens of graphic threats I got on a daily basis of what I deserved for being male.  They are things that if someone said to a stranger, they would without question end up in jail.  Everything boiled down to rape.  I remember being terrified by four years old of her.  It was constant.  And she would laugh and take a great deal of pleasure in me shaking in terror or crying, and I'd be ridiculed for it.  My sisters took it to heart, and acted as her lieutenants.  I was garbage to all of them.  I was "bad".  Stupid, ugly, not human, pathetic, undeserving of either life or happiness.  Everything was viewed in a very hardcore political feminist framework.  Every sex crime in the news was talked about and discussed in graphic detail, and everything was the fault of the "typical male!"  I was threatened with castration regularly because "then you'll get what you deserve!" or threatened with being put in jail with "I should throw you in jail and then see how you like it with all those big guys having their way with you.  Then you'll get what you deserve."  Stuff like that was daily.

There was some physical abuse from my Dad, and I guess from everyone else too, like how my Mom recounted (and still occasionally does) how she bit me when I was about two years old hard enough to draw blood and how I 'howled".  That was something she has always recounted with great pride, like it illustrated what a creative and good parent she was.  I remember when I was either four or five an instance of sexual abusive stuff with two of my sisters.  I remember it not being unfamiliar, and I remember I regularly "taught" my teddy bears what to do with Barbie dolls until I was around nine.  I think there was quite a bit more than that one time.

Mostly it was just this totalitarian environment of hatred and rage, though.  She still proudly talks about how she refused to name me after I was born, and my Dad finally had to after a couple of weeks because the hospital couldn't release me without a name.  I was hated for being male from the get go.

There's so much stuff that happened I could go on talking about this for weeks, so I'll shut up.  Just thought a lot about that today.  Just feeling I am abandoned by my friends and am completely alone, and suffering through this ongoing legal trauma, barely human and cut off from connecting with the world, and women in particular.  It's really activated a lot of that stuff from when I was a kid.  If I reverse the gender on all this, it is obvious how abusive and brutal it all was, but I mostly still have a hard time even thinking it WAS abusive.  It was so forceful, constant, and from an early age, my brain just believes I deserved it.

So that feeling cut off from people, and feeling undesirable to women, just triggers this massive sense of attack in me,  Just this self-annihilating terror that because I'm unwanted, I'm unwantable, and that could only be because I am hideous, monstrous, garbage etc.  This stuff is so deeply built into me, I don't know how to deal with it (yet!) when all this other pressure is on me.  I was pretty much wailing in my therapist's today about "Why doesn't anyone want me?  What's so bad about me?   What do women see that makes me so disgusting and not even human?"  That sort of thing.

I hope it's okay I posted this, Three Roses.  I just kind of feel like I needed to express some of this.  I have a hard time gauging what I say regarding triggers etc, since this stuff was so constant, and for so long, it seems normal to me.  I'm sorry if I shouldn't have written this.  I think I intellectually understand this stuff mostly, but I'm still just a broken little boy emotionally a lot of the time.  This last week I've been like a screaming little boy suffering more pain than he can handle.

Meursault

Hi Meursault,
I wish I could be of some comfort beyond telling you that I believe in you and I believe you will get through this current *.  I can't even say why I think you'll get through.  I know not everyone does, but there is just something about you that makes me feel a kind of confidence.

Hearing about your family life also makes me all the more aware of the gravity and impact of losing your father.  With the tragic and traumatic circumstances and the all the outfall, I hope that loss didn't get buried.  Not just losing your Dad, and that is such a big loss in itself,  but the only male kin who can bear witness to the hatred and abuse you endured within your family as a result of being born male.

 :hug: :hug: :hug:

You've said nothing wrong! I'm glad you were able to get that out, in fact.

A little boy deserves to be held, cuddled, encouraged to explore his world, deserves to laugh and be happy and feel safe. It grieves me to hear you did not have that, growing up, and instead were threatened, assaulted and bitten. I can not imagine what could make a mother do this!

Please feel free to express your pain and longings here, it's what the forum is for.

Three Roses:  Okay, phew!  I wasn't sure about this sort of stuff, how to phrase it.

Radical:  Thanks for recognizing that.  It's something I deal with in my head all the time.  After he died, the battles between my sisters and Mom began.  Now there are two camps:  my Mom and oldest sister in one, and the other two sisters in the other.  They will NEVER speak again.  I tried to be a peacemaker and have to balance in the middle all the time.  About a year and a half ago, my one sister, who is just like my Mom, started trying to crush me down, being blatantly abusive.  Normally, it's been more subtle, but she had been getting pretty aggressive with me for many months.  Somehow I had really good boundaries.  I was with an ex-girlfriend and went to my sister's place, and she pulled out a stack of papers as thick as a phone book, full of sticky notes, and started to go through every little thing she could twist or misinterpret and verbally attacking me.  I left.  My ex-girlfriend was shocked.  She said "Oh my God!  I've NEVER been spoken to like that by anybody, much less family!"  I was glowing, because I thought it went pretty well!  Now that sister basically doesn't speak to me, and has gone around to extended family vilifying me.

So I feel pretty alone in my family now too.  To all of them, I am bad, have terrible friends, am a liar, etc.  Meanwhile, in normal life, most people I know tell me I'm kind, honest and intelligent.

Really, though, my Dad wasn't any support growing up.  He saw how bad it was but didn't do anything.  He used to regularly say "I'm glad when you're around, because then your mother goes after you instead of me."  Once, when he was raving about my Mom, I told him to leave me out of it, and he said "Everybody needs a whipping boy, and you're mine.   Your Mom takes it out on me, and I take it out on you.   That's how it's supposed to work!  Why do you think we had you in the first place?!?"  And then proceeded to empty a toolbox of wrenches by throwing them one at a time at me, as I was stuck working under a farm implement.  That always stuck with me very clearly.

Nine days before he died, I kind of finally confronted him about this.  All he said was: "I had it worse than you, she was supposed to be my wife!"  I said: "There's one difference.  You could have walked away, I couldn't."  He got mad and just insisted "I still think I had it worse."  Not much of a father, but at least he recognized how abusive it was.  He just didn't care.

I look at the night he died, and there I was STILL trying to be good and helpful and responsible, and trying to protect my Dad from my Mom and himself. Still trying to prove that I deserved to be loved.  What a joke.

I notice none of my sisters has ever called me to see how I'm doing about my Dad's death.  As bad as she was, at least my Mom puts on the show.  I'm pretty sure my Mom would be diagnosed with Anti-social PD, Oldest sister is a bundle of neuroses and anxiety, next sister (the one who now doesn't really speak to me) is almost a caricature , she is so quintessentially Narcissistic PD.  The next sister is very cold and controlled and aloof, but not mean, just robotic and unemotional.  They are all stupidly successful, as well.  Like, national chairs in their fields, cover of national papers etc.  And me?  Effortless getting good grades in school, but just all this endless trauma.  When I finally finished school, I was such a wreck emotionally because I felt so unlovable because no women wanted me.  Really bad depression, social phobia, and agoraphobia because of that.  At one point, I didn't leave the house for six months.  I didn't actually go on a date until 22, and lost my virginity at 23.  After that, I had about eight great years (really there were ups and downs there too), until a girlfriend of six years broke up with me. 

Last few days, I really miss my Dad, though.  He wasn't the greatest, but was more on my side than anyone else in my family.  He used to always complain to me: "I married my Mother, and my daughters are just the same!"

I hope I'm not being too negative about things here.  I guess I just need to spill some of this.

Meursault

☆POSSIBLE TRIGGERS☆

You are not being too negative. You are letting your pain out, and we are here to listen and validate you.

It's funny how we can miss people that are gone now but mistreated us when they were alive! My own dad was very abusive, physically and verbally, but there are days I just miss him so badly. He could be funny, and strangely enough he was well-liked in our neighborhood. He was a painter and sculptor, and I so have some of his art in my house, reminding me of his presence in my life.

Some of his attempts at humor, though ... for instance, one of his favorite jibes was that I was half way between pretty and ugly, and that made me pretty ugly. I just never knew when words or a hand or fist would fly out of nowhere, heading my direction.

I do hope today brings you some respite from all you're going through, my friend. Hugs to you!  :hug:

i'm glad you're able to let some of this crapola out, meursault, i really am.  like puking out poison.

and, that's how i see what was done to your mind - it was poisoned against yourself.  all those neg. thoughts you have about yourself came from someone else, which means they just are not true.  our own true selves only speak words of self-care, self-love, self-protectiveness, self-esteem, etc.  our baby selves only knew to take care of ourselves because that's what we believed we deserved.  unfortunately, those other voices were bigger and louder and more more more than our own voice.

your strength and determination shine out of the page on all of us.  you have kept going, and you will keep going.  that's what is truly inside you, not made up monsters and other uglies.   step by step, meursault. 

Three Roses:  My Dad was kinda like that too.  Most people saw him as a constant jokester, but with family there was always a barb in his "humour".  I recently ran across a real estate guy from my home town and he was telling me about how he was so proud of his first real estate sale when he started out, but then my Dad was getting lots of laughs making jokes about it with a bunch of the guys in the coffee shop, and he said he almost gave up real estate right then.  Really, a cowardly bully.  Not willing to pick on someone directly, but always hiding behind humour.

Sanmagic:  I try to believe that, but then day after day and year after year, that message is pounded so hard into me that they were right because no women seem to be attracted to me or want me.  I know it's not true, because I've had countless one night stands, been in a few relationships, and have several female frinds, but every day alone just reinforces that sense of worthlessness and wrongness, and it just grows and grows.  Not being able to go to that party last weekend really knocked my feet out from me.  IT's like the whole world is actively saying: "All women hate you and we are going to actively do everything to segregate you from them."  Just like the legal system is doing with years of curfew etc.  And then everything like Trump happening just fits all that and makes it worse.  I get the illogicality of it, but emotionally I am hit with the realization:  "women want him, women love him, so there is something so hideous about me that makes me so much worse."

I hate to bewail this issue, because most of the time, I just sort of suffer with that sens that the world is telling me I'm disgusting and worthless, and hope it's wrong.  But I get worn down and lose faith that there is any hope.

Arg.  Anyhow.  Being desired and found attractive by women is really what keeps that badly maimed attachment stuff from when I was a kid from just turning me into a fractured, mammal-brained, trauma and anxiety wound.  I can keep the faith for a while, sometimes it's been years, but then it all flattens my defences and the rational thoughts and I'm just like those neglected Romanian orphanage babies, thrashing and wailing inside, needing love and affection.  I think it could be called "Attachment Trauma" actually.  It's ugly.  Maybe I'm the only person that gets that, I don't know...  I think that self-annihilation stuff they talk about in Object Relation Theory and Attachment Theory is pretty major in these sensations.

I would give my left leg to be able to just sit quietly holding hands with some lovely lady right now, and having her look at me like I matter.  This stuff is weird, it's almost like the archetypal fairy tale stuff, where the feminine is needed to calm and soothe a wild animal...

Meursault

Just my perspective.
It hit you hard being rejected by your mother and feeling wanted, and especially sexually desired by other women (temporarily?) soothes that wound?

In relation to looking at swaggering I try to remember that if I had resources like great wealth, social status etc., sure life would be easier and being treated as someone worthy of respect and kindness by most people would make me feel better, but self-esteem built on a house of cards related to superficial external sources would be brittle.  I'm trying to develop unconditional self-compassion as a solid foundation, but it's really hard with the attachment trauma.  I didn't have a mother who loved me and I never will.  I can never undo that harm, but having a therapist who cares deeply and who 'sees' me does help, though it can never be the same, but it gives me some of that attuned attachment to reinforce my own work on building self-compassion.

I understand being rejected by your mother.  My mother couldn't really stand the sight of me and I learned to be invisible.  I spent a lifetime trying to figure out what was wrong with me.  Now i don't believe it was about me, but still I find myself noticing things and wondering 'was that why'?  I don't know how far i can go in healing such a primary wound but I have found that making conscious efforts to speak to myself lovingly and to care well for myself does make a difference over time.  Listening to the voice of my mother in my head takes me to a very dark place, but sometimes I can't resist listening, still.

My mother is still alive.  Now I am uninvolved in dramas related to my siblings (who do matter to her) she phones me once a month - I think she puts it on a calendar to remind her I exist, and I can hear how painful it is for her to carry out this duty.  She usually calls with a pre-existing excuse to get off the phone quickly, even though I never say anything about myself, and just respond to her, and if I call her it has to relate to someone else in the family who does matter, or she is overtly rejecting.

I can understand how for you this might have translated into feelings about sexual attractiveness to women.  I know for me that experience of 'core' rejection affects my behaviour and interpretations of others' behaviour towards me.  I tend to be too aloof, or too desperate, and both approaches seem to trigger unease or rejection in others.  I recognise the causal assumption of belonging and being okay and acceptable in others, and how that assumption affects how people respond to those who are lucky enough to have experienced attuned bonding.  It's like they can be so much less sensitive to others' feelings about them and just get on with life according to their internal values and how they feel about others.  It is an attractive quality.  The unhealthy extreme of this is narcissism, and feeling supremely wonderful and not even seeing others as being real humans can be supremely attractive because of an unnatural certitude, that especially those most insecure (or even, temporarily secure people when facing uncertain circumstances) can be drawn to like catnip.

What I'm suggesting is that you try to not buy into your beliefs about your supposed attractiveness or acceptability as a person, that you actively not seek to confirm or disconfirm hypotheses that mainly arise out of wounding and the resulting faulty programming.  The problem I find is that neither response from the world leads to the healthy assumption of okayness that securely bonded people have and allows them the luxury of getting on with life without being overly concerned about how other people feel about them.  The highs and lows of reward and punishment, both in different ways reinforce the lies in my head and cause compulsive reward-seeking or compulsive withdrawing.  For me they both lead away from true security in my self and confidence in  tackling challenges.

I admire the fact that you have managed to hold on to your authenticity despite everything.  And somewhere inside I feel there is an inkling of knowing in you that waxes and wanes.  It is a bright light.

Rationally, that's kind of how I see it.  When the trauma switches are flipped --- and ESPECIALLY when that fundamental core attachment need is screaming at me --- all that goes out the window.  I just disintegrate.

I didn't realize it was this attachment stuff until this current therapist.  It took me months, but I started to get warm fuzzy feelings for her.  She's incredibly attractive, but mostly that's neither here nor there.  Occasionally I want that kind of intimacy with her, but not usually.  I just wrote in my email last week to her how lucky I am I met her.  How for the first time ever, I have glimpses of how I'm MEANT to feel, how people normally feel.  How there is nothing disgusting and subhuman about me, and I'm allowed to exist and be an equal to those around me.  After I started bonding with her, I really noticed how those attachment needs overwhelm me around women.  Just this acute, desperate existential pain, like "self" is fracturing and scattering into chaos with this unfulfilled need.  It's literally as desperate and acutely painful as one feels when drowning.  In a way, I've been having a much worse time since starting with her.  Before that, I drank all the time, and had sort of "Cauterized" that part of me away.  Now those core needs are pretty much shouting at me constantly, and I'm not always dealing with it well.  It's like those systems were re-activated with her, and are now thrashing around wildly to "breathe" again.

Really, it's no wonder I don't do all that well around women without alcohol.  Internally, at that core level, I'm battling desperately for survival, and their interest and attention is the only thing that can help.  I suspect that between apparent aloofness (I'm busy being overwhelmed internally, and therefore focused inward), and all the shaking and anxiety from trauma around women, I'm not exactly putting my best foot forward!  Hopefully with my therapist I am able to internalize enough of that sense that the core ME isn't in such pain.  My best friend, that woman I had coffee with a couple of days ago, mentioned a couple of years ago that she can instantly tell, just at a glance, if there is a woman I'm attracted to in a room, by how I appear distant and quiet.

This is a total chicken and egg situation, though.  I get worse and worse with that agony (and that's a good word for it) and disintegration, and fundamental psychological and emotional need.

Just walking down the street, I'll see some woman's cute ponytail or whatever, and because there was never a proper "me" formed, there's just this absolute explosion and breaking apart of "me", just the overwhelming attachment needs overwhelming me and spinning into terror.  Sometimes, just seeing some attractive woman will send me into a many day panicked hiding full of crying, self-hate, and frantic garsping at keeping "me" coherent.  I don't even know what this stuff would be called.  Attachment Trauma fits well though, I think.  Unfortunately, it's even worse if I'm not able to be around women. 

This was what I mostly struggled with for 35+ years before my Dad's death.  That has made things much worse.  My therapist and I had a laugh last winter, when we were going pretty deeply into this attachment stuff, and I was finally able to tell someone about growing up, I mentioned my Dad and my legal stuff.  She said "God, I completely forgot about your Dad!  That's so far down on your list!"  I guess I should feel bad about that fact, but I finally found a therapist who respects and understands how this all has hurt me so badly, so I'm glad she said that.

This stuff is stupidly personal, and I hope I'm not disgusting or annoying anyone here...

Meursault

i think radical had some wonderful words of wisdom, especially about being mindful of how you speak to and/or about yourself.  an example would be how you just wrote 'stupidly personal' and used the words 'disgusting' and 'annoying' at the end of your post.  would you think that of anyone else who had written the same thing?  i doubt it. 

i get that when we're in the throes of all that has been rotten in our lives it's hard to keep the negatives out of our minds.  i know that feeling.  writing has helped me by allowing some of those thought processes to slow down a bit so they're not just completely overwhelming me, and letting me see exactly what it is i'm saying to and about myself.

there is a saying in 12-step groups called KISS - keep it simple, stupid.  when i was first attending meetings, i heard it and just accepted it.  but, one day, someone brought up the idea that we've been called 'stupid' all our lives, so why would we want to add to that and call ourselves that as well?  she proposed that it be changed to 'keep it simple, sweetie.'  when i heard that, i loved that change.  it was breaking a cycle of negativity.

i hope that you can begin breaking that cycle of negativity for yourself.   a little at a time, bit by bit.   you deserve it.

Sorry for the negativity!  It's definitely one aspect of things, but it seems more like a canary in the coal mine when I get into this EF thinking than a cause of it.  It definitely doesn't help, and probably keeps feeding the mental breakdown. 

I mentioned to my therapist this week that when I lose it and my inner child goes on a rampaging frenzy of agonizing neediness., I should try to do a "time out" for him.  She said she doesn't agree with time outs, and does "time ins" with her kid.  She pointed out that there is more soothing and healing in connection and love than in neglecting the child.  What I'm doing is basically abusing that inner child with the way I talk (as you and radical pointed out).  It's hard to remember that when that neediness is overwhelming me, but I have to keep at it. 

Instead of all the negative comments and self-perceptions (emotionally abusing the inner child), or distracting or ignoring this stuff (neglecting the inner child), I somehow have to find a way to address him and love and soothe him.  I wish I knew how...  I think I could really benefit from spending a lot more time nurturing myself during this terrible time.

It's taken me a while to scrape back into some sort of normal thinking and see this stuff.  I don't even want to re-read what I wrote above.  It was pretty chaotic and self-pitying.

I called my uncle last night.  He's my Mom's brother, and I always got along well with him.  After my Mom's Mother died, there was a big war in her family and she never talked to her Dad or brothers again, and now doesn't talk to her sister either.  The rest of the family was basically "forced' to do the same.  She would have disowned anyone who didn't. 

That uncle tried to help me a bit growing up.  Not in confronting my Mom -- that wouldn't have ended well -- but my Dad.   I remember him arguing with my Dad several times to stand up for me, and not make me responsible for looking after my Dad and protecting him from my Mom.  It once almost went to blows, and there was a lot of yelling, when I was about sixteen.

Anyhow, I feel pretty sad talking to him.  He was super glad I called, and so was I.  I haven't spoken to him in 14 years.  We talked for about an hour and a half.  He was talking about how much my Mom hated men, which was good to hear.  SOMEBODY else knows this.  And he was talking about how much my Mom was a totalitarian controller, and knocked the feet out from under us, mostly me and my oldest sister, so we were always emotionally damaged and she could control us.  He immediately saw that the only reason I would have driven that night was to try to protect my Dad, which I've done my whole life.  And he said "I can't imagine the * you must be going through, but you have no choice but to keep going."

I feel pretty sad about how I kept making that same decision, to go back and help my Dad and look after him, again and again after I left, (again and again) swearing to never talk with my family again.  What a mistake that was.  I sort of hhave the outline of something my therapist said (and the last one said too) about how I kept letting myself be mistreated in the hope that doing so would finally make me lovable, at least to my Dad.  I wasted so much time, and there has been so much damage done.  Wow.  Well, as you say, Sanmagic, one foot in front of the other!

Meursault

i've heard it said that we continue to repeat things until we learn the lesson we're meant to learn.  sometimes i agree with that, other times i don't know.  i do know that it takes some of us longer to realize what is actually going on, what our part is in it, and what else we need to do.  but i don't know that such a thing is a waste of time.  it's a learning process, and sometimes we just don't know what it is we don't know.  in that case, it may even take more time than we have, and we never learn what we need to know.

but, the bottom line to me is that we keep going as best we can.  some of us don't make it.  some of us make more mistakes than others.   some of us are so scared that we stay frozen in one place, maybe for the rest of our lives.  what i see on this forum are fighters, still hanging in there, still looking for what we don't know, and i would never consider any part of our lives a waste of time. 

i do hope you can be kinder, more nurturing to your inner child, meursault.  but look out !!!  it might start feeling good!!!  (small joke there)  seriously, the more i've been mindful of taking care of me, the better at it i've gotten (not without bumps and bruises along the way, spits and spurts of yays and nays).  your post this time was very different.  it sounded like self-care.

I'm really seeing why a couple of months ago my therapist told me our only goal until the trial is stabilization.  This stuff has just been cannibalizing any healthy coping mechanisms and leaving me vulnerable to all that unresolved pain and trauma.  All that stuff is so huge right now.

I just sat on my couch for about an hour last night, shaking like a leaf, sweat literally running off of me, feeling like I just got a concussion.  My brain was just this "electric stupor".  My vision was cycling through this fading out and in thing.  My system is in absolute crisis.  I'm riding the waves of it I suppose!  I'm never really calming down now.  I would say my baseline is similar to when I had social phobia and agoraphobia pretty badly in my late teens and early twenties.  Then things start ROARING at times.  I guess this shows some progress.  That stuff drove me to my knees then.  I wouldn't have been able to handle how much worse the bad parts have gotten.

I was thinking about this stuff last night.  I think the main resistance to stopping that internal abusiveness is that it is SAFE.  It may not be good, but it's predictable, and as long as I'm doing it to myself, no-one else is doing it to me (of course that's not really true).  I'm safe because no one would see the need to attack me when I'm already doing it to myself.  But I think that is such a forcefully learned lesson, a matter of life and death, from early years, it's ingrained and everything starts yelling "Threat!!!" when change is attempted.

I hope this ends, and ends well, after this trial for me.  I need a chance to try to get better.  This constant sword over my head, which could have dropped at any time over the last six and a half years, has been terrible to live under.

Meursault

 :hug: I think you're in the home stretch now! Hang in there my friend.

i can't even imagine what it must be like.  we're with you and hoping for only the best out of all of this, including an outcome that will allow you to breathe easily again. 

i get what you mean about attacking yourself first as a precautionary measure.  i'm glad to see that maybe you're allowing a little of that to dribble off, at least on this forum, that you're feeling a little safer in not having to do it here with us.  i'm happy for you with that.  and, yeah, change is usually scary, but here you go, showing your courage again.  you are one of the bravest people i've never met.  to go through what you're going thru, and continuing forward against these layers of whirlwinds that sweep your feet out from under you at any given moment without warning, that shows a brave soul.  stabilization sounds like a great goal for now.  onward.

Ditto the the above.

I just wanted to quickly say something about the 'preemptive (self) strike' of self-cannabilisation (great descriptor).

I once believed there was some benefit in doing that, I don't now, I see it as destructive and I don't believe it achieves what I've told myself it will; that getting in first will somehow soften the blows from the outside.  It's a bit like when someone you love is dying.  You try to prepare yourself by terrorising yourself in advance about their dying as if getting some of the pain out of the way in advance will soften the blow.  It doesn't.  When it happens the shock and pain is not diminished by inflicting advance pain.

This isn't blaming or criticising, Meursault.  I know too well that when your system is overwhelmed that self-cannabilisation is so often what happens, I know I often can't stop myself when my body and mind are careering and out of control.  Somehow it feels like it is soothing, or maybe taking control to be the attacker rather than just powerlessly under attack.  What I find is helpful when I can't stop it, is to also take the role of protector, to tell myself kind, soothing words.  The words nobody said when I needed to hear them. "you are okay, you don't deserve this, you will get through, you are strong, you are a good person, I care, I'll always care no matter what, It's going to be okay, you will get through this, this isn't forever"  etc.

i still feel ridiculous admitting I say these things to myself.  I think many people have internalised loving messages from caregivers when they were children, so they don't need to.  They experience compassion for themselves automatically.  I know that for me, consciously and repeatedly expressing compassion, over time, does start to penetrate.

You so deserve compassion, Meursault, from others, but also from yourself.

:hug:

Feeling really defeated today.  I wrote a poem earlier.  It's kind of dark humour.  I think there should be trigger warnings, maybe.  Suicide is mentioned, at any rate.   It cheered me up a bit, for some reason, so I thought I'd share it.

It Could Be Worse

Mandy had a phobia
So bad that she could burst.
She shook when she was looked at
But said it could be worse.

She scarfed back lots of Ativan
She kept within her purse
But often hid in terror
And said it could be worse.

She really was so lonesome
She tried hard to converse
Overwhelmed with panicking
She said it could be worse.

Brian was all broke inside
In childhood was coerced
He thought he was unlovable
But knew it could be worse.

He walked among the normal folk
And hoped he could reverse
A life of no affection
And feared it could be worse.

He tried to meet some lady
And daily he rehearsed
All the gentle things he'd say
And thought it could be worse.

Kimmy was a young girl
Who swore that she's accursed.
Lived trauma after trauma
But said it could be worse.

All her living memories
From recent back to first
Taught her she was worthless
But still it could be worse.

She drank so much that every day
She drown that inner thirst
And as the world would beat her down
She cried it could be worse.

Trevor had a family
Whose treatment was perverse
He often tried to hang himself
But said it could be worse.

He talked with many therapists
Their responses all were terse
At least he had his health they said
And know it could be worse.

The pain it finally led him
To ride within a hearse
And as he dropped into the grave
He laughed "It Could Be Worse."

Meursault

A little dark, but I like it!

you do have quite the poetic streak within you, meursault.  i'm glad it made you feel better.  that's what counts.

i agree that self-talk, no matter what form it takes, will penetrate and feel true if it's done often enough.  it's up to us to choose what that self-talk is going to tell us, even during the hardest of times.  those may be the most important times.  and i love radical's 'self-cannibalism' phrase.  wow!  quite the impact, and what a visual it makes.  i totally agree that it really doesn't help in the end.  the pain is still painful, the hurt is still hurtful - we've just added another layer of pain and hurt on ourselves.

i don't think it's silly at all to be telling yourself that stuff, radical.  i think, rather, it's wise and powerfully positive.  we can learn from you about that.  good one!

Self-talk IS an important piece of the puzzle, but it has its limitations, too.  I was talking to my therapist a while ago about that.  She said something about how it may help you not get hit by the artillery shells as often, but it doesn't do a lot when you have.  I think she thinks it's more important to find that body connection, and to connect with others.  I spent many years daily working on self-talk stuff, and still found I was constantly triggered by women, and still socially panicky all the time.  It was some deeper healing, with my relationships, that lessened that inner self-hate.

Like when I was at the doctors a few weeks ago, I was in a pretty good mood.  All my thinking was pretty optimistic and self-supportive.  It was happening without my awareness initially, but the aggressive noises and movements a girl there was making had me in complete breakdown mode before my thoughts were even aware of it...

Still, the boys hiding inside of me need more positive communication to feel safe enough to come out, so I need to start paying more attention to that.

Thanks for the comments about the poem, too!

Meursault

I really like the poem, Meursalult., it appeals to my quirky and sometimes dark, sense of humour.

I take your point that as social beings, we need healing input from outside of ourselves.  It is something I desperately need to work on, as I feel safest when I am alone and tend to respond to pain and fear by isolating.  It is the thing I find hardest, reaching out.

I disagree with your therapist about soothing and compassionate self-talk just being useful as a kind of preventative measure.  What I'm finding is that self-soothing during "artillery strike" can help.  Caregivers soothe their children when they are overwhelmed, and this is internalised, and able to be utilised by those who have experienced "good enough" parenting to mitigate suffering and damage in situations of overwhelming distress, throughout their lives.

Childhood trauma damaged how I relate to myself, and that certainly affects how I relate to others and interpret the behaviour of people around me.  It makes me dangerously vulnerable to external conditions that I cant control, and overreactive to rejection (real and imagined).

So yes, the three things are necessary, self-healing, external healing and bottom-up body work.

I suppose if it's not too bad that could works, but when I am in those intense EFs, there really isn't any meaningful verbal "me".  It's all mammalian brain and no pre-frontal cortex, I suppose.  Probably I need to be more cognisant when I'm not just a flailing wild monkey smashing itself on the bars of its cage!  But in the midst of the really bad stuff, I find words don't really mean anything.  They are just sounds that I recognize but aren't really applicable or comprehensible.  Maybe I'm unusual with that?  I'm not sure...

About the only thing I can actually even remember to do when it's really bad is to reach out for people.  The crisis line etc.  They often ask what I do to calm down, and although there are literally a hundred tings I can think of to do when I'm not in that state, I can't even remember, much less comprehend them.

I think I have a great deal of ambivalence about self-talk.  I was REALLY diligent for years with it.  Daily logs, making lists of things to say, saying positive things to myself in the mirror every morning for years.  Rewarding myself when I caught myself saying something positive.  I put in TONS of effort for years with that CBT stuff, both alone and in groups.  At the end of the day it seemed to bring me so far and no further, and since I was literally being told to "shut up" when I tried to tackle the stuff from my Mom, and receiving constant invalidation about it, the basic ME still sat in my head traumatized and triggered all the time.   I trusted that they knew what they were talking about and I worked hard for a long time on the CBT stuff, but I think I feel kind of betrayed and distrustful about that now, since no-one would even allow me to talk about my Mom.   

I remember sitting in an office crying, after I had first started with inflicting physical damage on myself in 1994.  The psychiatrist argued with me that it was "just the depression" and my Mom was probably a really nice person.  The psychiatrist told me she wouldn't help me unless I took medication saying "well, if you're not going to help yourself, how do you expect anyone else to help?"  When I already knew I needed to find someone with whom I could go through and talk about all the stuff from when I was a kid with.  I remember crying that "no woman loves me.  I've never even had a date", and she grabbed my hand, pulled it toward her and slapped my forearm repeatedly, and loudly said "and now that you've done that, do you think anyone will ever love you?"

I don't know what I'm trying to say.  Self-talk is good, I guess, but I think I have had such abusive treatment from the pros who taught it to me, invalidated by them about the traumatic stuff, and betrayed because I still put my faith in them in desperation, only to find that fundamental sense of "Wrongness' never left me, even though I could have filled books with all the affirmations, thought challenging, graduated exposure goal work, and arguing mistaken beliefs.

It certainly helped me function better, but emotionally, all that stuff was still there, just masked.  Anyhow...

Meursault

I've just realised.  Self talk only started working when I removed all abusive people from my life.  Never did a thing before.
I don't know if this is relevant to you.  I only say things i actually believe.  In the beginning that was so, little it was ridiculous.
There was a song on the radio and the part "something good will come my way" in the chorus got stuck in my mind.  I tried to use the mind worm positively, but as soon as I stopped paying close attention i found I'd been singing "nothing good will come my way" in my head.

I was had  the lyrics"And it doesn't look good, and I'm feeling like a block of wood" from a song stuck in my mind night and day for about 18 months.

Makes me wonder if that's part of it.  I have never been able to really get away from my family.  I tried several times, but it didn't work.

I tried to be "a good son and brother", so still remained friendly with my sisters.  It wasn't until I finally set good boundaries with my one sister almost two years ago that I easily stopped drinking.  She now doesn't really talk to me, since she could couldn't dominate me.  It was a real eye opener, because how she was acting that led to her not talking to me and vilifying me with extended family was not unusual at all for her.  I had my girlfriend with me and she was shocked at how abusive my sister was.

Any time I'd get away, find some other job, tell myself I'd only interact with family at Christmas, my Dad would start calling me up, undermining me.  He'd tell me how I would get fired, I was wasting my life, I was in a dead end job, the company would go under, that sort of thing, every week or two, and I should come back working with him.  He'd call and laugh, telling me how since it was winter, he could take as many holidays as he wanted, and I was still stuck working every week until I retired.  He would also complain about all the * my Mom was putting him through, making me feel guilty.  And he'd talk about how he was working from 4 am to 10 pm and that sort of thing and how I was lazy for only working 40+ hours a week.  Eventually, I became such a basketcase I found work too anxiety provoking and negative and would quit and go back working with him.

I was almost at the point of being a journeyman electrician, and just quit.  I liked that work.  Now everything is terrible, of course.

I've gotten rid of most of those bad people from my life, but not family.  I still want to get away, but since killing my Dad, how could I?  I don't know if I could from all the guilt for all the damage I've done to my family.

I just kind of realized how manipulated I was by both of my parents for their own needs over the last couple of years.  My Dad knocked my feet from under me, so I would work with him, and be a shield against my Mom.  He told me that directly many times even.  And my Mom likes stomping on everyone.  If she is not in a position of power over someone, she will do whatever she can to weaken them until she is.

This all makes me sad.  I want a life.  I want to heal and be calm and not hate myself and meet someone to love and who loves me.  I want kids and all that stuff.  I hope this legal stuff ends well for me in a couple of weeks.  I want a chance to heal from the cannibalization of my parents, and learn to not continue it myself.

Meursault

It's not until I escaped that i realised the powerful effect toxic people had on me.  They made me compulsive in so many ways.  I don't know if my sensitivity makes it worse.
I have my annual meeting with the family at Christmas.  It's my only contact and I'm not even welcome in any genuine way.  If I don't go I lose contact with the few younger ones that I really care for.  I'm keeping it to just three days and not staying with family.  But the effects will still be profound, and take a lot of getting over.

i, too, have found that a more profound sense of clarity, self-care, and self-compassion has happened each time i've gotten myself away from toxic people.  i went nc with my daughter last jan., and, while, it was extremely difficult at first, the longer i've been away from her, eliminated her from my life, the more room i have to breathe.  i haven't talked to my sister in over 25 yrs.  my parents are dead.  my ex, the father of my children who had been a friend since high school, i've also put out of my life last year.  recovery is easier without them

i'm close with my brother and other daughter, both of whom are supportive, kind, and caring toward me.  the rest of family, for me, doesn't come into my life equation anymore.  my hub has lately shown me that he wants to be in my life, and has changed a lot of his behaviors and words, but i was at a point where i was ready for him to go as well.  the farther i've gotten into recovery, the fewer people i allow around me on a regular basis.  and the less stressful my life has become.  i kind of startled myself the other day at realizing how many abusive relationships i've been in with both friends and family.  whew!

you like your present therapist and know she cares about you.  i've had destructive professionals along the way - they're gone with the wind now.  would she steer you wrong about positive self-talk?  does she want the best for you? 

and, there's another way to look at what happened with your dad.  if he was so abusive, maybe you helped rid the rest of your family of a toxic person.  that would be a positive thing, even if they're in denial about it.  you did what you did (i don't know the details) but there's a reason for it that you know about in your heart. 

in recovery, who is it important to put first?  who is the only person we can help?  who's well-being do we need to take care of above everything/everyone else?    this recovery journey is tough, to say the least.  i just think the easier we can make it on ourselves, the better off we become in the long run.  big hug to you.

and good luck to you, radical, over the holidays.  no way to stay in contact with those you care for without having to put yourself through a profoundly neg. experience?  i know this holiday thing is so huge for so many, sometimes as a pos. experience, but i've heard even more stories of how stressful, uncomfortable, and even disturbing it can be.  it's very sad to me.  i hope it goes as smoothly as possible for you.

I wonder how common this is with people who have experienced childhood abuse - it taking so long to learn that we are worth better than abuse, and as a result tolerating all kinds of abuse through our lives, not recognising the harm we were sustaining.

I used to pride myself on my tolerance and on being non-judgemental.  They are good qualities, but without boundaries, they can turn you into being open season for abusers, disrespect and danger.  I remember my therapist saying, early on, that I had a very high tolerance for other people's behaviour, no matter the behaviour.    It was enigmatic, I saw it as complimentary because of my belief system, but it troubled me too, and percolated in my mind for a long time. 

I'm sad for myself that I took a huge amount of abuse over time, I didn't protect myself appropriately because I had no internal model.  I hoped people would be kind, and was excessively grateful if and when people were, but i never expected to be respected, this too is a set-up.  It is so corrosive.  I feel sometimes I'm too old to be learning things i should have known when I first started my life out in the world.

Radical, I could echo every single thing you said here. Never knew I subscribed to the Repetition Compulsion, haha. I focused on external things and making others happy because that's what I was told to do - put it behind you, put it out of your mind, etc. Well, my mind was moving on but my brain wasn't! ;)

I have always known I would be healthier if I cut my family out of my life.  I think I am regularly beaten down enough I don't have the strength for it.  NOW wouldn't be a good time with my legal stuff, to say the least anyhow!

A few years ago after my drinking got out of control after my Dad's death, I was hanging around with all sorts of terrible people who, in my shock and trauma used me for money, or even their own cheap laughs.

Even last year, I met a woman (just platonic, she was married) and we met up several times over a couple of month.  She constantly wanted to know more about my Dad's death and all my legal woes.  One week I was extremely distraught over it and crying and stuff.  She sent me an email that she is not my therapist, and she really enjoys hearing the details of the accident, but if I expect her to listen to to my emotional turmoil about it, then she doesn't want to be friends.  Basically, she enjoyed being titillated by my trauma, with no concern for me.

My therapist has no problem with self-talk, and actually regularly suggests improving it, and challenging that internalized voice from when I was a kid.  She just understands when overwhelmed, in flashbacks and whatnot, what happens verbally is largely just sounds, since it is that mammalian part of the brain that is in charge, reliving trauma, and words have very little to do with what's happening.  I think she would say the TONE with which I talk to myself in that state is important, but language itself is not really connected.

I always prided myself on being accepting and open-minded, too.  I generally like people, even "bad" people, and tend to give the benefit of the doubt.  A former therapist said something like: "I bet you tend to trust people a lot and let them know far too much about you, and then when they betray that trust, don't want anything to do with them.  That's common with people who have had their boundaries violated."

About my Dad's death.  I KNOW I made the best decision available to me.   He was so completely plastered.  I think he would have died anyhow that evening, whether I drove or not, and maybe he would have killed some kid or family or something.  He was the "good parent", though.  My sisters are just like my Mom in many ways, and belittled him as stupid etc.  He had nowhere to take it out except on me.  He wanted a friend and comrade to support him with the abusiveness of my Mom and sisters, but I was too overwhelmed, so he took out his frustrations on me.  He had a brother and sister as well.  They were they only other people he ever flew into rages with, insulted etc.  Just me, my aunt, and my uncle.  Everyone else he was a drinking jokester with, and very non-confrontational.

Christmas is tough, and I hope yours is not too bad this year, radical!  I think what you say about it being common for those of us with childhood abuse is likely true, too.  My sisters and Mom actually freak out at how unreeasonable I am being if I don't accept abusive behaviour from them.  They are so inured to it, they think it's right and reasonable, and I'm stupid, perverse or being hostile if I challenge it.  They literally CANNOT see how I am worth more than being abused.  To them, threatening me, ridiculing me and dismissing me is healthy and sensible.  No insight into their own behaviour at all.  I think there is a great deal of narcissism there.

Meursault

I think I somehow screwed up here.  I'm not sure how.  I think I must just be crazy.  This stuff I'm going through is completely overwhelming me.

Anyhow, sorry for anything I've done.

Meursault

Not sure why I didn't see your post from 11/17 until just now!

You did the right thing, giving your dad a lift when he was too drunk to drive. I'm hoping that this all ends soon and favorably.  :hug:

(You haven't done anything wrong)  :heythere:

Am I just locked in a pattern here?  I'm feeling like everybody everywhere hates me and is disgusted by me, and wants me gone. Am I just interpreting things that way when they're actually untrue?  I'm feeling like everything I say here is stupid and wrong and making everyone mad.  I don't understand anything....

Sorry if I'm a problem.  I'm seeing how not many people have posted the last few days and thinking that's because people are avoiding the site because I am disgusting them too much.  It sounds ridiculous, as if I'd have that impact, but emotionally I'm immersed in that fear right now.

I think I must be crazy.

I'm completely trapped.

Meursault

I've never been mad about anything you've posted.  Just so you know, I have occasionally felt angered by posts here, but never by your's.  One thing this site can be good for is honest feedback that we can't necessarily receive or even ask for elsewhere.

Am I just locked in a pattern here?  I'm feeling like everybody everywhere hates me and is disgusted by me, and wants me gone

Boy, do I know that feeling! It is horrible, all consuming.  Sorry you are feeling this.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I feel warm towards you. 

Me too. :)

me, three.  speaking for myself, i have only sparingly posted lately cuz of dealing w/ my own stuff about my friend, and now i'm sick w/ a cold.  but, it has nothing to do with you, meursault.  one day i couldn't even get on this site!  lately i've been sporadic in posting everywhere here.  it's just my gunk getting in the way.  i've never been disgusted by you or your posts.  still with you, even if i don't get here every day.

I'm trying to not be all crazy.  I think I would qualify as having anxiety induced psychosis right now.  I feel like I'm completely alone and have no friends or anything either.  Just trapped and not even a human being anymore.  Called the crisis line last night and they told me they were busy and they'd call ME this morning.  They called and the woman was pretty gruff.  I didn't talk for long.  Sorry if that fear and insecurity is spilling out here.  I'm probably annoying how I keep bringing all this stuff about my Dad up, so it wouldn't surprise me I'm irritating people.

My body feels like it's exploded and is scattered all over the planet.

Lawyer is going to have me come in several times this week to go over my testimony.  Several emergency people testified last year how I was calm, didn't smell like alcohol or appear intoxicated, was polite and had clarity for the situation.   I thought "good!  now they'll believe me!"   The cops are saying differently.  I feel terrible enough just knowing it was an accident, yet they are torturing me with this so much, and want me to then go to jail for so long too.  I don't know why this is happening.  One cop even got caught lying on the stand at the preliminary so badly the judge laughed, and she excused it at trial by saying "I'm a people pleaser and I was just saying what I thought people wanted to hear."  They had done part of the trial last year, but it got delayed because somehow the prosecutor failed to properly inform one of the cops she was supposed to testify, so it got delayed another 15 months.  Something terribly unjust is happening here, but everyone seems to think this is normal...

I haven't even been able to address the grief and loss and what guilt I feel for this, with this constant threat that I can be pinned in again in jail to be raped and beaten and victimized and trapped with no safe place to retreat to.  It's just been terror for six and a half years of it being out of my control whether I am going to be put in a cage and spend years being raped.  I don't understand how this is even happening.  My brain is being physically damaged by this, I think.  The trauma isn't even in the past.  It's ongoing.  I'm still pinned and trapped, powerless, with no safety, with an imminent threat over my head constantly.  There is no solid ground.

Damn, I wish I could see my Dad again.  I don't know what he would say in support, but it would be good to hear SOMETHING!  I'm so alone, and I'm just SCREAMING inside for some soothing and affection.  And I am so completely disgusting and unlovable to women, and I don't know why...

I'm so badly trapped and powerless and terrified and it's non-stop trauma.  And I hate how everybody says "you're in your own prison."  I'm not, I'm in a prison they've put me in.

Meursault

You're not bothering me and I doubt you are bothering anyone else here, Meursault. We all seem to feel rather warmly toward you :) You don't have to apologize for feeling afraid and vulnerable. :(   We will be here for you as much as the distance will allow.

I wish there was something I could tangibly do for you, to relieve your pain! I don't know why you're going through this, it's not fair. You did nothing wrong; I have hope that your lawyer will see that things turn it in your favor.

i don't have words, but i hope you know i'm right beside you.  hang tough, meursault.  big hug.  i wish there was more i could do.

Thanks for your responses everyone!   I'm really grateful for them.  I get a lot of support from this place.  Last week, I asked my therapist to contact Kizzie if I don't make it through this stuff to thank people for the help I get here.  Even a couple of months ago, I felt I had some decent social connections IRL, but I'm feeling pretty alone now.  My therapist thinks that nobody knows what to do to help, so they just ignore it and put it out of their minds.  This place feels accepting (usually!).  It's good to have people who actually know what I'm going through.

It's weird.  My whole life I was just garbage to my family, yet they all support me (intellectually) with this.  They all think it's crazy too.

This has just caused so much damage to me.  Even 2.5 years ago in the psych ward, the psychiatrist specifically said I don't have BPD.  And last fall, I was enrolled in a DBT program, and they said I didn't either.  Now my therapist says she thinks I've been diagnosed with it, although she personally sees it as just a lot of trauma.  I feel like I've been living with this threat so long it's just broken me so badly. 

I think I'm just constantly immersed in both the situational trauma, and non-stop flashbacks....

I wish I could try to have a life.  It feels like I'm not even human any more.

Meursault

All too human, all too precious, Meursault.

I've been badly broken by circumstances as an adult.  It's amazing what you can look back on.  I've been involved in 'David and Goliath' legal battles which extended over years.  I didn't think I would survive, I'm not sure how I did.  A therapist at the time gave me these words from a poem by Kipling (never been wild about Kipling and I'll never be a man, but they reassured me that she believed in me).  I'm sending them to you, because we believe in you:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools:

Thank You, radical!  I always liked that poem!

through all this, you continue to hang tough, meursault, using the resources available to you, and i give you a lot of credit for that.  what you're going thru, anticipating, and contemplating are all so horrible - it would be so fabulous if it would all be resolved quickly and smoothly and positively and allow you to go out and finally find a life for yourself.  that is my wish for you.  hangin' right beside you!

Thanks sanmagic!  It's really hard to remember that people care when I'm immersed in this.  It just doesn't connect.  Do you find that too when things are rough?

Meursault

The old brief treatment therapist who was really helpful a few years ago got together with me today for a late lunch to chat and just catch up today.  I spent several hours in with the lawyer going over my Dad's death and then met up with him.  It made me feel good.  He used to be a cop, and really helped reassure me that it looks like the case is so flimsy.  It was good to hear from someone who knows the system.  He said something like "cops all know the system is a joke and has nothing to do with justice....  It's just the public doesn't, and the cops like it that way so they have jobs."

I'm so exhausted.  And terrified about this all.  I want to have a life again, and START to be able to deal with losing my Dad.

I feel like I'm battling dragons right now...

Meursault

As sanmagic says, standing with you!

when things are especially rough, i'm kind of in my own little world, so concepts like people caring for me sometimes doesn't even seep in.  but, that's gotten better since posting here, and since my hub has 'gotten' it.  i do rely on this forum a lot when i'm going thru a rough patch.

I'm not doing too well....

TRIGGERS for gender based issues, language related to sexual violence and childhood abuse...

So I was at a site today, and I did that ACE test (Adverse Childhood Experiences).  I could add a lot more that fall outside the questionnaire, but as it is, I got an 7 or 8 out of 10.  I was reading the lengthy thread of comments at the end, and generally feeling like I had some connection and community with the people responding.  Then the stuff that bothered me started to kick in.

One of the questions is specifically whether you saw your MOTHER abused by her spouse, and someone pointed out that they should have phrased it differently, since their experience was with an abusive mother towards their father. 

I understand how there is so much dismissal and invalidation in the world for the abuse women and girls often suffer, but it is pretty much universal when the abuse men and boys suffer.  And it seems like the excuses and minimization come largely from the people who are the strongest defenders and have the best understanding when it comes to girls.  I've seen the same thing many times, excusing abuse directed toward men and boys by women. 

There are several standard things.  It is minimized and silenced because it is not as prevalent.  The guy brought up some CDC study which showed similar rates between genders  for spousal abuse, which was ridiculed and called an out and out lie, despite the reputable source.  Maybe it is a poor statistic, I'm not sure.  It was mentioned that the abuser in early childhood is usually a woman, but that got explained and excused by saying that's just because women are around children more.  That seems as ridiculous as excusing male violence by saying men are stronger.  Any abuse toward men and boys is funnelled into discussion strictly about prison or military, like those are the only arenas where discussion of abuse of males is tolerated.  It seems like this huge cultural blindspot that people can't even recognize that they are excusing abusers and discounting victims.

I don't know.  I realize this is a separate issue from male on female abusiveness, but it's so disheartening that that issue is used so often to excuse the abusers of men and boys.  Attempts to address abusiveness to boys seems to face such hostility, ridicule and minimization it's completely demoralizing.  God does that make me feel so alone.

Someone in the comments mentioned "gender abuse", and I had this hopeful moment of "ah ha! That is the correct term for what I went through!"  Then I eagerly went to Google to search for stuff about that to not feel so alone with all the crap I had growing up, and maybe find some understanding.  No such luck,  The term is completely onesided, and is synonymous with violence against women.  Several sites specifically make sure it CAN'T be applied to men or boys, by defining it further as due to the cultural power imbalance between men and women.

I wish I had somewhere to help me make more sense of the abuse I went through, but there really doesn't seem like there's anything I can find.  The concepts have all been completely co-opted to work with males as abusers only.

But what do I do?  My mom HATED me, because I was male.  She absolutely crushed me emotionally every chance she could get, and hammered into me that I deserved it because I was male.  She regularly went into graphic detail, from age four onward (at least) about how I should be castrated, mutilated, tortured, raped, killed, imprisoned because I was male, and all from a very cogent and political radical feminist stance.  Her reasoning was basically an extreme of all that stuff on that page:  women have it worse, so you deserve this.  It was always a threat of rape with "Typical male!  You'll get what's coming to you!"  from her and my sisters.  She talked quite openly and gleefully how all men should be killed, and I grew up expecting to be killed at some point by her.  Threats of death and rape weren't  directed at me specifically every day, but they were a couple of times a week from four years old or so until I got kicked out.  Talking about how men deserved that generally WAS every day, though.  And it was all justified because of all the misogyny in the world.

It all comes down to "your abuse doesn't matter because you're male." when I see these abuse apologists.

I recognize and appreciate that this isn't uncommon for girls and women in our culture, but I feel so alone, and it often feels like there's nobody and nowhere that accepts like what I went through was important, abusive, or matters in any way.  I think a lot of girls have faced a similar situation to me, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere my abuse is accepted,  And the language and conceptualization of this stuff specifically excludes me.  That guy just pointing out that they should have phrased a question in a gender neutral way got half a dozen people actively minimizing the abuse of boys.

There's a "Men's Resource Centre" in my city, and I went through their introductory group thing last winter.  I was really hoping there was some place I could find guys who have gone through something similar and maybe feel less alone, and maybe get some understanding and wisdom from others about this specifically.  One guy was very hostile about his ex-wife, and used derogatory language about her.  I complained about it and wrote  that "my view of positive masculinity doesn't involve debasing the feminine".  I was supposed to continue on in another group after the intro one, but after that, they didn't want me in it.

It feels like I'm getting the message, almost universally, that what I experienced wasn't abuse.  I think it was, though.   Feeling like I'm even allowed to call it abuse without being attacked is really still the main struggle.  I trust my therapist a lot, but it's still a central issue I regularly work on with her.  Does she REALLY think it was abuse, or is she just laughing at me because  I deserved it?  Maybe that's as far as this will ever be dealt with.  The very places I've hoped to find understanding: those researching and addressing mental health, trauma, and abuse, which were really given voice by the feminist movement in a lot of ways, seem to be actively using the same techniques of invalidation that they have found so toxic.

Anyhow.  I got excited I might find something to help me make sense of all my crap when I saw the term "gender abuse'.  I feel pretty defeated.

Meursault

PS.  My legal stuff is still hitting me hard, but I wanted to express that stuff above.  I had such a moment of "Finally!  there's a word for it!"

Dear Meursault, I want to validate everything you just said. The views on abuse are completely skewed, and not just in this society. Thirty years ago, I had a friend who was physically beaten by his ex when they were married, and it's where I first had my views on this subject challenged.

We talked a lot about his experience; he had remarried and his new wife was a good friend of mine and he was very open about it. At first I balked at calling it abuse; how badly could she have hurt him? After all she was just a woman. He explained how badly, in graphic detail, and I was appalled! I'd never heard of a woman being so focused on actually causing damage to their husband! Sure, maybe women get mad sometimes and slap, right? But it was so much more than that - how, knowing she was weaker, she would purposely target softer spots; elbows in the ribs, kidney punches, wait til his back was turned, etc., and the pain was compounded by her verbal abuse. I asked why he didn't call the police and he said he had - once. They showed up and basically scoffed, leaving without arresting her. All he could do was cover and try to escape when she got violent. Defending himself could leave a bruise, holding her down or away might hurt her, and he knew she wouldn't hesitate to press charges. He felt betrayed by the person he loved & lived with and by our society in general. He changed my views on the violence that many men suffer at the hands of their girlfriends or wives.

I hesitated to relate this but I think you need to hear it, because of what you're going thru and how you've been treated. You were abused, Meursault;  no little boy should have to grow up under the threat of castration or death.  No man should have to bear being attacked and abused. That is abuse. It is violence. It makes no difference if it comes from a female!

The abuse I've experienced from females, I admit I see differently as from males, since females are supposedly the more "nurturing" sex and so for me this deepened the sense of unworthiness I felt. If a woman abused me, I must really be a nothing, a nobody!

I hope we broaden our views on this,  as a society. It will probably take men speaking up and demanding that their voices be heard on this subject.

Hi Meursault,

What happened to you was severe abuse.  Your mother is an abuser. It was gender violence.

An ACE score of 7 or 8 means all sorts of physical and psychological suffering, and on average, a significantly shorter life.  It would be difficult to argue intent to kill (though I wouldn't rule it out)  but at the very least, it means the infliction of injuries, suffering, and a kind of manslaughter.  Only some of the ways people hurt and kill each other lead to legal culpability, but your mother is morally responsible for her behaviour, no matter how she chooses to justify, minimise and deny it.

I don't want to get into politics.  I think it is dangerous in this venue as we've seen before, but I think who is abused and how abusers choose to abuse is mostly to do with who is available  to them to hurt, who cant defend themselves, and who they can get away with abusing, and what kinds of hurt they can inflict without endangering themselves, and brings them the satisfaction they seek. 

I can understand your feeling invalidated, and your abuse discounted as a male violated and offended against by a female.

It is so important to know that your therapist understands, to be validated in therapy.  I hope you can talk to your therapist and that she gives you the reassurance you deserve.

You matter, your abuse matters.  You didn't deserve it and you deserve to be heard, validated, consoled and healed.

Three Roses:  That just made me realize something.  I have bought the idea, lock, stock, and barrel that women are more caring and nurturing, while also having this history.   There's some double think needed....  I have always been completely threatened and feel unsafe around male therapists, and distrustful of guys in general.  Just realized I work under the emotional belief that "If women are this dangerous, and they are more nurturing, how much worse are guys going to end up being...."  Probably something worth addressing eventually, but that feels far away.  I'm not even close to that.  It's why I feel more comfortable around female therapists I think.

Radical:  In my mom's case, it definitely isn't a target of opportunity sort of thing.  She works SUPREMELY hard to gain advantage and power over men in many avenues.  She thought a previous mayor of her town was "too big for his britches" and was disgusted that his poor wife was stuck with him, she actively campaigned, very tenaciously and successfully, to have him defeated because he didn't deserve what he had.  She just has that much hatred for men.  She has taken the provincial government to court out of her own pocket for gender inequality issues, spending years and risking her our family's finances fighting the government, just to put "those typical males' in their place.

I wasn't intending to have this be political.  In a way, it's like if some woman here complained about getting sexist treatment from her mental health worker, and how she feels slighted, they should know better, and she feels people were defending her abuser, and how the establishment reinforces that view.  The reasoning behind my treatment as a kid was (at least ostensibly) political, but I wasn't intending to have a political discussion, but it's really impossible to talk about it without some political element.  My Mom would ridicule me and delight in me shaking in fear or crying and would explicitly say it was *because* it's my turn since women have had is so bad historically.   Even four years old, I was being terrorized and humiliated *because* I was abusive since I was male, in her view.  What I was mentioning about that page is ultimately about having one's abuse dismissed, invalidated, and excused, and how demoralizing it is coming from people who seem to recognize it's wrong to do to every other group of people.  Apologies if it came across as trying to discuss politics! (I hate politics!)  I was trying to avoid that as much as possible!

I dread how screwed up I may appear sharing this stuff, but I know what I am.  It always baffled me how I didn't end up gay or misogynistic.  I think my last therapist had some pretty good insight when she said that she thinks I basically have Stockholm Syndrome with abusive women, but also only find emotional nurturing from women as well.  My good therapist seems to think that although I had traumatic attachment damage stuff involving my Mom, at lest there was SOME attachment, whereas I've never felt that with males at all.  She's mentioned that at some point in our work, when I am more whole, she is going to recommend a male therapist for a while, but doesn't think I'm nearly ready for that yet.

Sorry if this is an uncomfortable subject for people here.  Any gender discussion like this has got to get some people into alert-mode.  With all this legal stuff going on, I don't know why this stuff is coming out so strongly at the moment.  I guess everything is....  The fact that this legal stuff is keeping me crippled and powerless, and my Mom has a great deal of power over me again because of this (she's in heaven with it!), isn't helping me mentally at all...

Meursault

Just found your journal Meursault and been reading through your posts - carefully to avoid getting triggered. I'm having a good day, so took a chance. Want to say you are normal and not "screwed up". The things that have happened to you are not normal; all those people who hurt you, threatened violence and death (OMG  :no: ), have serious psychological issues or disorders.

I also believe many therapists and doctors in the psychiatry profession are not empathic, and are in it for the power kicks, having control over another. They're not really suited to the job when it comes to CPTSD. I'm so sorry you have experienced invalidation from hospital professionals. It's too common I'm afraid. I sincerely believe there is widespread ignorance about trauma. It's absurd how clueless they are, when there is so much info available! It's seems to be across the pond as well as in the UK. There's a great focus on drugging and suppressing emotions, which as you rightly say are there to be processed and released. We are not born with CPTSD-wired brains and bodies. I could get political about the issue, but I don't think this is the right place.

Anyway, just want you to know that you aren't alone  :hug:

I'll check in again soon to see how things are going.  Please keep in touch. (Legal stuff is always stressful, you will get through it).

Thanks for posting and saying that.

I'm just mentally thrashing around now, and I don't think it'll likely get better until after this legal stuff is over.  I'm sorry for all the emotional dumping I'm doing right now....

I am feelng really terrible, and like the whole world thinks I'm just some broken monster who should be killed.  Kinda the legal system is now doing what my Mom always said i deserved.  I think I'm in a constant emotional flashback state with the re-creation of that.

I've been having a hard time with feeling like I'm just dismissed as a pathology.  That never really bugged me before since I think the medical model of mental illness is way off base, but that last "email" therapist sent me (as she has to by law) a list of other therapists she thinks would be good.  She sent this list of these really industrial-strength forensic pathology clinical psychologists.  It was almost like a final baseball bat shot to the knees...

My good therapist has been good helping me see that email-therapist is very inexperienced.  I actually had invoice #19....  She had really good instincts generally I think, but I don't think she had ever been around c-PTSD...

So, I had called a mobile crisis service on the weekend, and they were all reasonable and reassuring until I gave them my name and the woman told me she was pulling up my file.  As soon as she did, she told me they were too busy and someone would call me in the morning.  I told good therapist that today.  I've often worried there's been a diagnosis along the way of BPD.  Good therapist can't diagnose, but she tells me she thinks that doesn't fit and I just have a lot of trauma and attachment damage.  Old therapist (who used to be a cop) said he's seen almost five thousand clients over the years and he says it doesn't fit.  Last two times I was in psych ward, I asked, and was told by psychiatrists that I didn't, but who knows.  From that call this weekend, good therapist told me today that she has suspected someone has diagnosed me with it, and that REALLY made her think it.  No private therapists I've seen think it fits, apparently I present differently.  And I've never been diagnosed it when in psych ward, so I don't know.

Feeling like getting answers, I called mental health centre that has my records and asked how I get them.  It was all good until I gave my name, and then they started stonewalling.  They weren't sure, the person I should talk to wasn't available etc.  I ended up going down there and a receptionist was very helpful and helped me fill out the record request and had it in their system before anyone was the wiser.  I hadn't even left the building and I was called by a senior staff.  I turned around and came back and she talked with me, letting me know that it takes a long time and not many people do this.  Ultimately, she told me it would likely be thirty days and I left.  I got my records from years ago once and it was a bit of an eye opener.  Lots of factual information that was rewritten *not quite right* so it changed the whole meaning etc  Things like when I said I was depressed for four years before being on anti-depressants for last two years, it would be written as "hasn't been on anti-depressants for two years"  stuff like that.

I hope I get this sooner.

Anyhow, feeling pretty hopeless and unlovable and alone.  I was a wreck at therapists today, and didn't find it very calming or soothing.  She was supportive as always, but I was kind of mad about everything today.  How I've spent all these years waiting, all these years with those extra restrictions, trapped in basically house arrest every night because that girl got mad at me and had the tactical police unit come looking for guns at my place.  Just how EASILY she has been able to control my life EVERY DAY for years just by making a phone call.  How ANYONE for ANY REASON can completely ruin and turn my life upside down at ANY TIME, and since I have a legal charge over my head, I am utterly powerless.  I told her today that it's like my awareness is a playing card snapping away in a bicycle spoke.  I think that's a very accurate description.

I spend every night just sitting at home, frozen and trapped, feeling like the whole world has decied I'm a monster who shouldn't be allowed to have any life, and especially be able to go out and meet women and maybe find love or connection or intimacy or affection.  It's just hour after hour every night for years, and I'm not even convicted of anything.  I'm not even a human any more.

And my lawyer concedes that my constitutional rights have been violated in several ways with all this.  He says that it "sort of" matters, but that sort of thing can be conceded by the judge, but still he can decide to ignore it.  It's like for me, and only for me, constitutional rights are suspended, they are simply suggestions.  I've read about all sorts of murderers, rapists, child molesters etc getting their stuff thrown out, but not me, yet my waiting has been SO MUCH longer.  I look at that Brock Turner guy.  He has received an order of magnitude less punishment convicted of that than I have for simply having three beers in my apartment when the tactical unit came.  And it's just years and years and years.

My heart has been pounding so hard and loudly for the last two days I can't sleep.  It's pounding so hard my cell phone went walking off my chest last night.  Having some chest pains, and I'm kinda hoping it all just ends.  It's pounding so hard I have my TV cranked to hear it over the pounding in my ears.  This can't be healthy!

Sorry for all the complaining.  I hope if I make it through these next couple of weeks my brain stops being a cat thrashing around in the bathtub! 

I'm doing poorly, but I'm also feeling strong for still weathering this.  Maybe something I say or do might help someone else through their bad patches too.  Cheers, everyone.

Meursault

keep at it, meursault.  can't write much, but want you to know i think of you even when i don't have the energy to write.  one foot in front of the other.  and, yeah, you are strong and determined to have gotten through all this so far.  soon, dear meursault, soon.

In a move of self-preservation, I went to this drop-in counselling place today.  It's supposed to be a one time kind of thing, but the woman told me to come back on Monday as well, and gave me the information for accessing a closed acupuncture program they have.

I saw an instructor and a student.  The student was stunningly good looking.  She was pretty uncomfortable and nervous at first, but by the end, it was clear she liked talking to me, and was pretty open and spontaneous and wasn't disgusted or nauseated by my presence.  My first impulse was that I was making her skin crawl, but I think she was just a nervous student.  That was really what made me feel better about it, that a woman I thought attractive found me equally human to her.  She actually said a bunch of really positive things about me.  Both she and the instructor found me and my situation very interesting.  I was in for about an hour and a half.  They both told me that they don't think there is anything wrong with me that makes me unlovable.  I kind of believe them that they think that, but I don't understand it.  The instructor kind of delved about how I managed to form such a close bond with my therapist, and I kept talking about what SHE did, how SHE was, and she had to keep re-iterating that she wanted to know what *I* did to create that bond.  I'm still a bit confused about that, but what it came down to, was that I decided to try to trust her, and then I spent months slowly revealing myself in tiny bits, evaluating how she responded, until I had found that closeness.  I consciously and actively CHOSE to trust her.  I went in every week thinking "get closer to her or it will disappear".  My brain feels very muddled about this.  These words just seem empty and meaningless, but true too.

I didn't talk about my Mom at all, that was a bit too personal, but I was talking about how terrified of women I usually am and  trapped by these legal conditions and hence so lonely for connection, and the student pointed out how open and conversant I was with them.  I said that it would be different in the real world, I found her quite attractive, and that if I met her elsewhere I would be terrified of her, super awkward, and my mind would be completely empty of any ability to talk.  Neither of them found that unacceptable or terrible for me to say.

I don't understand what people see, but I've been told many times talking to people the last few years that they think I'm a really kind person, very intelligent, and that I don't deserve what the legal system is doing to me.  I kind of wish I could see what I look like, because it seems like such a weird thing that people keep pointing that out.

On the whole what I benefited most from was that there was an attractive woman who was comfortable around me, and actually found things about me likeable.  This sense of just being some hideous subhuman thing, cut off from humanity is terrible.  And I didn't get that sense from her.  I don't think I will manage to cope at all with jail or house arrest on that point alone if it comes to it.

I hope the positive sense I got from that lasts at least a day, before all the stress of this stuff I'm dealing with breaks me down again.

I think that's one thing I've been learning from the last year or so.  What helps me heal is in talking with people.  I have to open up and "show them" me, and be aware if I am feeling acceptance, being liked to some degree, and cared for.  And rightly or wrongly, I find women more trustable, despite my history.  It's not even rational, emotionally I m more ME.  And even more, women of roughly my age, which avoids a lot of the power dynamics and sense of authority of older therapists which makes me resistant.  That means that I likely do best with therapists I find either at least somewhat attractive, and/or would actually want to know personally.

And I only get actual lasting value if I have that last bit of emotional openness that I "relax my heart" sort of thing.  I think I'd be getting so much value from the work I do therapeutically this last year and a half if I didn't have this threat constantly over me all day every day, and had a future that wasn't just caged in some way.  I think what I've done with my therapist this last year would have put me in a place in my healing that I'm not likely to actually be at for another ten or fifteen years if I get any jail time or house arrest at all.  There will be so many years recovering from that first...  And then what?  I'm sixty, and just trying to find some love and meaning in a healthy way for the first time in my life.

Meursault

Mersault, Dropping by to see how it's going. I can tell by your writing that you are a sensitive and intelligent person, and don't let anyone make you believe otherwise.
I wish I could sweep away all those trapped feelings with a magic wand. I've had some experience with that. My T has been re-programming my sub-conscious so that I now feel comfortable in my little flat. I've stopped going to places that trigger fight or flight reactions. CPTSD means we've got to be really gentle with ourselves, get down those stress hormones. Please be gentle yourself Mersault, as best you can.

Here thinking of you.

Hugs  :hug:

A weird time to do it, but I went on a date last night.  I messaged this woman who's a friend of a friend on FB who said "I'm bored and want to meet new people"  so I messaged her and we've been texting back and forth for a few days.  We went for coffee yesterday and hit it off really well.  I think we were both pretty nervous.  We went for a walk after and I was trying to work up the courage to hold her hand but didn't.  I was really hoping for a hug and a kiss too, but that didn't happen.  Just the hug.  I wasn't pressuring her at all for anything.  She has already asked me for lunch again and floated the idea of going to her company xmas as her date. 

After I saw her off on the bus, five minutes later she texted me saying "Thank you for restoring my faith in mankind".  I'm not sure what I did, but that felt pretty good.

I think I needed this pretty badly.  I've just been feeling so hopeless and worthless and unlovable and disgusting.  I feel like I'm a human being, and I'm feeling like I'm now coping a bit better for my trial.  But I'm still feeling like I'm almost exploding with terror and panic over it...

Anyhow, I just wanted to do a bit of an update.

Meursault

 :cheer: :cheer: :cheer:

Fantastic news Mersault!  :yahoo:  You deserve it.

QuoteAfter I saw her off on the bus, five minutes later she texted me saying "Thank you for restoring my faith in mankind".  I'm not sure what I did, but that felt pretty good.

Wow... you're some guy. I knew it!  :)

i think i know what you did to encourage that sort of response - you were you.  nothing more, nothing less.  you didn't rush things, just let things flow.  you were your own kind, caring, interested and interesting self.  so very glad for you.  as long as it's helpful, i'm all for it!

I hope people send me some good vibes today and tomorrow.  I'm off to battle dragons in a couple of hours.

I'm so completely terrified.

Meursault

all the good vibes i can muster are on their way!!!  take care of you and hope it all goes well.  we're in your corner.

I am and will be raining down positive thoughts on you, like a monsoon! Standing with you :hug:

Absolutely!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi everyone....

Well, that was.... I don't know.  Lots happened and nothing happened.  I go back in a couple of weeks....

I don't know what to say about it all, except I managed to make it this long and I didn't fall to pieces this week.  I am feeling fairly strong and proud of myself.  IT's so scary though....  Lots of family stuff too, which is unpleasant to say the least!

A couple of weeks ago my lawyer said: "try to stay positive over the next couple of weeks." and I said: "That's like pushing me out of a plane and saying 'try not to hit the ground too hard'."

I had lots of friends who contacted me to offer support.

Anyhow, just thought I'd check in here. 

Meursault

Thank you for checking in! I was a bit concerned when there was no post from you. :hug:

You are strong and I'm glad to hear you saying it and feeling proud! You deserve it. Can't wait til this is over for you. Yay! :cheer:

 :cheer: :cheer: :cheer:

:hug:

I was looking through this thread to try to find some supportive stuff on Tuesday night to help me through the week, and radical, I wasn't really recognizing it, since I think I've been in such a constant state of emotional flashback for weeks and weeks, but you have a great deal of wisdom, but I was missing it.  My brain wasn't even speaking the same language!  You wrote a bunch of things I need to take to heart, I think.

And I really appreciate all the positive comments I've gotten here.  There's an old war buddy in an episode of Firefly, and there's a saying they have along the lines of: "Run.  When you can't run, walk, when you can't walk, crawl.  And when you can't crawl, find somebody to carry you."  Thanks everyone here for carrying me for a while.  I'm not out of this craziness yet, but I sure appreciate what you've done for me!

I've gotten a lot of support over the last few days from people around me.  Several people whom I haven't spoken to for a year, three years etc too.  Old therapists, distant family, etc even.

My uncle and I hung around for a couple of hours waiting for stuff on Wednesday, and he told me "I'd be devastated by it, but every day for the last six years I've been expecting a call from your Mom saying you're dead."

It's so good I have this support from people, but at the same time, it's also something I am doing alone.  It's only me living this.  I don't know.  Feeling very confused by everything.

I'm not sure if anyone remembers a couple of months ago when I went to that single intro session to see about a new EMDR guy, and he was so terrible, I ended up in the crisis centre, and had a couple of close calls with self-destruction.  Anyhow, that old friend from high school who is a therapist who told me she heard good things about him, and then was disgusted when I told her of what transpired, texted yesterday, and told me a patient of a colleague went to see him as well and has ended up in the psych ward after a single session.  I've had so much on my plate, I haven't properly complained to his regulatory body:  they really make it almost impossible, but I feel a couple of things:  I feel guilty for not complaining, maybe that wouldn't have happened with this other person, and I feel a bit vindicated, like people won't just assume there is something wrong with me, or I'm weak or lying or something.

Anyhow, my therapist has let me have unlimited emailing with her this week, which I'm so grateful for that extra care she is taking with me, so I've sent four emails.

I told her that I am feeling like a baby and I just want her to hold me and soothe me, and that sort of thing, and how I saw a cartoon series on attachment with a baby reaching for its mother with the thought bubble saying: "I need you to delight in me" showing those basic attachment needs.  I told her I was calming myself by visualizing holding her hand and having her basically feeling that way about me: delighting in my being.  I'm now feeling really vulnerable with her for that, like she will ridicule me or hate me or be enraged for wanting to feel that.  I logically knowshe won't, but it's the emotional expectation.  It's weird.  I feel complete shame and terror about her reaction for feeling so open and vulnerable and needy of her, yet I also feel excitement and acceptance and hope.  It's like there is an ocean of pain just behind a thin wall of terror and humiliation, and if I can just drop that wall, the ocean will just flow into her accepting arms and be contained by some gentle lovingness or something.  I don't know.  I'm weird.

Good god.  I explicitly told her I need to feel that she delights in me.  I feel really vulnerable with that.

Anyhow...  I just love that woman, I think she's saved my life.  I'm so glad she has such good boundaries, because she could so easily exploit or hurt me.

Meursault

i think your vulnerability is just that - vulnerability because of all the emotional pain you're going thru and the toll it's taking on you for such a long time.  she seems to have very good understanding of all that, from what you've written, and knows what transference is all about.  it's very common, especially in such a terrifying situation. 

as far as not reporting the other therapist, well, ya know what, meursault?  we can't do everything or be everywhere all the time.  your primary focus has to be your safety and boundaries for right now.  it's really awful that such a thing happened to that other person, but that's not on you.  it's on that therapist.   he will get what's coming to him.  for now, you are number one - you do have an awful lot on your plate.  keep taking care of you.  the universe will take care of him. 

in the meantime, i'm very happy for you that you're getting so much support from so many different places.  you deserve it.  keep hangin' tough!  you're doing a great job.

Well, this week has been one of stasis, mostly.  I had therapy today, and feel fairly good.

I go back to court next week, and it scares the bejeezus out of me but I am coping.  I won't see my therapist next week due to that, and then she's gone for XMas for a couple of weeks, so I brought her an XMas present.  Plus, who knows, maybe I'll be in jail.... I got her this high end bamboo covered thermos for yoga or whatever and a really nice yoga mat bag.  I figure she has really gone beyond for me, so I wanted to show my appreciation.  I also brought her a small flower arrangement for her office, and it felt awesome to give back to someone who helps me so much.  She was clearly excited...  Then I gave her the last gift, which was really a gift to myself, and not her, and I told her so.  I bought a little kid XMas mitt for a toddler, and asked her if she would keep it, so I can feel like she is holding the hand of little me when she's not around.  The flowers totally felt like I was an eight year old boy giving flowers to his pretty teacher.

She told me how she really enjoys working with me because I understand what we are actually doing, and I am very proactive and whatnot trying to heal that attachment trauma with her.   She kind of likes how creative and hard-working I am trying to address this stuff.  She really liked the little kid mitten thing.

I've talked with her about it before, but I sort of went into some pretty graphic detail of some of the sexual stuff from when I was a kid in one of my emails last week.  It scared the crap out of me when she brought it up today, and my mind was spasming in electric terror:  "How can she possibly be talking about this OUT LOUD!?!!"  Sort of thing.  It was like I had done something really bad in telling her, but it wasn't real that she knew until she addressed it.  Strangely, there was no embarrassment, just fear I was going to be yelled at.  Interesting how the little mes are right there ready to jump in.

I did get embarrassed about the whole: "I need you to delight in me" stuff I had brought up in email and mnetioned above, and I kind of huddled up a bit and covered my face when we were talking about that.  Major shame going on.... I don't really understand that...  Was it humiliation of telling her how much I need her, knowing I have so much less value to her?  Partially.  Partially it was fear of saying "I need you" and then having her look at me and judge me not worth caring about, which is the natural expectation....

TRIGGERY bit involving sex...

Anyhow, I have another date with that woman on the weekend... pretty stoked about that.  Hope I don't mess it up, and hope she doesn't insist on sex yet or anything.  We met again a couple of days ago and we had a brief kiss.  I want to actually feel some sense of intimacy before sex.  Normally I just sort of feel like i have to go along with it if a woman wants to have sex with me, and so I end up feeling mostly just used by the experience.  I don't want that, but I have no idea how I could say no.  If I've tried in the past, it normally gets them mad or there is some ridicule until I'm feeling like crap about myself enough that I just do it so they aren't mad.  It's stupid, but I can't seem to help it, it's like this need to be wanted is so huge, and the terror of their rejection is so threatening, I just give up...

Anyhow, I actually feel SOME hope about my legal stuff for the first time.  None of it makes sense, though, so anything could happen.  It's virtually random from my perspective.  A good part of me is like an animal frozen in headlights....

I think I've been doing pretty well the last couple of weeks, all things considered, and am actually kind of proud of myself.  I hope that doesn't sound arrogant.  I don't mean it that way.

Meursault

It doesn't sound arrogant, it's not arrogant, and you've made my day!
:hug:

I always look forward to hearing how you are. It didn't sound arrogant at all, in fact it was nice to know that you feel proud of yourself.

I'm not making much sense rn but I did want to tell you that.

you deserve to feel proud of yourself, meursault!  yay, you!  i don't see it as arrogance, but celebration.

i hope your woman friend will also find that going slow is a good thing - getting to know each other a bit, in my experience, always made the sex better anyway.  maybe it's something you'd want to talk about with her before it gets to an uncomfortable place.   sometimes a conversation about it can actually lead to more intimacy.  you'd know better what to say and how to say it than me, i'm sure.   

and, for the record, i lost many a potential boyfriend for wanting to wait for exactly the same reasons you're talking about.  it's difficult at times to find someone on your same wavelength.  but, please, don't let that be a reflection of you and what kind of person you are.  two people either fit or don't, but the only way we begin to know which one it is is by talking about it.  there's no wrong or right, just 2 different perspectives.   so, best to you with this new adventure.  i hope it works out the way you want.

You are doing great Meursault, no arrogance in your words at all. Love to hear how you are getting on. Keep it up  :cheer:

That little kids mitt gift to your T - very creative, and what a lovely idea to help get you through this court case. Remember: we are all standing behind you too.

QuoteI want to actually feel some sense of intimacy before sex.  Normally I just sort of feel like i have to go along with it if a woman wants to have sex with me, and so I end up feeling mostly just used by the experience. I don't want that, but I have no idea how I could say no.

That could have been written by me a few years ago - except you would have to swap 'woman' for 'man'.  I feel you've got to take it slow, and don't give in to pressure or it could spoil a (potentially) good thing. Put yourself and your wellbeing first at all times. Saying 'no' I have learned is about understanding boundaries, having healthy boundaries, so people can't just walk in and take from you. It's about feeling it's safe to say 'no'. And it is now. If you are not ready, or your instincts are shouting no, stand your ground, and explain gently. I think Sanmagic has good advice about talking about it first.

Ditto the above.

Just one bit of advice I've heard recently that resonated with me.  A date is not an audition.  You are great just as you are.  You are two people who like each other, enjoying each others company, if you are a good fit, you could get closer, in ways that work for both of you.
The same advice is relevant with new friendships.

it can be tempting to see how someone else responds to us (good or bad) as a reflection on our worth.  it really isn't.  You are a wonderful person and no individual's feelings negates or proves it, because it is a fact.

Well, it's weird how that stuff is still so huge and central even with all I have going on.  I go in for the rest of my legal stuff starting tomorrow.  I'm really terrified,  but it's weird, just feeling like someone wants me is making it so I'm not completely overwhelmed and disintegrating from trauma.  Its loke theres still a ME that exists within this hurricane of fear.  Wish me luck this week.  This pretty much decides my whole life, and I sure hope thing turn out positively.  I figure I'll likely end up dead or permanently institutionalized if this results in jail.   

God am I scared.  And powerless.

Meursault

I will be with you in spirit. :hug:

so will i, right beside you.  hope it goes your way.  you're worth it.

Will also be thinking of you, wishing for the best, feeling hopeful.

WEll, after all that time, and another 15month delay because the prosecutor failed to tell the main cop, they ended up not even calling their primary cops.  My lawyer said he has never seen something like this in 43 years (I have a lawyer who is considered the best by other laweyers and cops I know, and ALL of them say he is who they would hire). 

So I am kept in limbo, and essentially under house arrest all thhis time, breaking down mentally pretty much every night because I'm trapped in by a curfew, and all it took was 2.5 hours of closing arguments, and the trial is over.  I have no idea how it went.  The legal system isn't actually completely rational.  I am supposed to go back tomorrow to hear the judge's decision of a verdict.  I would rather not live than risk jail.  My brain won't be able to handle that constant trapped state.  And I face enough aggression and targeting from sadistic people in normal life, I don't think I'd have anything except being beaten and sexually assaulted in my future.  And the messed up thing, is that the only way they will get a conviction is off of something that a paramedic said that wasn't even accurate.  The same one who laughed at me and yelled at me in the ambulance as I was strapped down, and admitted to yelling at me as soon as I got out from being trapped under my Dad's body.  I was trapped in the dark drowning under my Dad's body for about an hour, pinned and unable to move.  Then I was strapped down and had all those braces and stuff pinning me down unable to move on the stretcher, with my Dad's body lying on the road right outside the ambulance, and put in another vehicle, the ambulance, and the paramedic turned the lights off and started aggressively questioning me.  I thought he was a cop.  He told me that the sooner I cooperated the sooner they'd let me go.  Even then, he had to lie about what I said.  Just completely traumatized and then attacked, and the legal system has NO PROBLEM with that aspect of it.  The judge ruled I wasn't even under the paramedic's control, that the paramedic wasn't in a position of authority, despite the fact I was physically unable to get free and he was threatening me, he said I wasn't being coerced.  I don't understand how this is even remotely allowed in a first world nation.  I have virtually no faith in this world any more.  The guy was a thug, and it was pretty clear to me that he was trying to force a confession out of me to impress the cute rookie cop who was at the scene.  Just brutally traumatized, and then actively re-traumatized and psychologically tortured and interrogated, and it doesn't even matter.  The judge didn't even see it as wrongdoing.  And it was that part that cut the trauma of the night into my brain, and made it so I haven't felt safe since, or felt I've had any control over my life at all.  And the guy actually had to break the law as my medical care provider at the scene to tell the cops anything I said.  This world is insane.

Now I have to make a decision: do I go and HOPE it ends well, or do I not go.  Today is going to be a hard day to make it through.  I just wish everything was over, but can I risk actually living to see the results of this, it might be too late and they will have me trapped and unable to have it stop?

If the system were logical, then I think my lawyer pretty clearly showed they haven't "proven beyond a reasonable doubt", but I've discovered that the layman understanding of the legal system is completely flawed, and it has it's own internal rules which aren't logical.

I never planned on seeing the end of this in case it ends that way.  Ugh. 

I'm trying to keep some hope.  I think the judge noticed it, how all the other firefighters and EMTs etc at the scene basically described what I did exactly the same way, but that one paramedic described it completely different.  I guess I'm hoping the judge sees that and realizes that the paramedic was lying, how he just had some grudge against me.  It's a small town, so maybe he was dating an exgirlfriend or something.  I have so little faith in any of this any more though.  A cop friend of mine assured me that "this isn't his first rodeo!" referring to the judge, and he'll be aware of this, but it's hard to trust that when it's your own life on the line.

Today is going to be about as hard of a day as I've ever had, I think.  How can I even think that there will be anything just about this, when no one had any problem with how that sadist broke me down?  This world is horrible.

Anyhow, I guess I'll make it through somehow...

Meursault

We are standing beside you :hug:

right there with you as much as i can possibly be, meursault.  fingers crossed and prayers flying.    big hug.  my earth mother spirit wants to wrap you up and keep you warm and comfortable and protected until this is over. 

With you in spirit, Meursualt!!!
Many hugs

Well......

Here it goes....

I'll post later today if it goes well.

Sending good thoughts your way ...

Thanks for all the help and good wishes!  They worked.  I was found not guilty!!!  I have a bit of faith in this system again....  not much mind you.

Meursault

I'm so happy for you!

Hey Meursault, you did it... awesome result! :cheer: 

Had been thinking about your hearing while I've been away, and so happy for you.

Hope you can start to put it all behind you now and focus on happier subjects, rest and recovery  :hug:

 :fireworks: :fireworks: :party:

holy crapola, ,meursault!  this made my day!!!  so happy for you, yay yay yay!!!  you did it, made it through, and are now going to be able to focus on you in a pos. way.  i'm so glad this is finally over.

:fireworks:

:band:

Yay, Meursault!!! :)

       :applause:          :hug:      :bighug:   

Thanks for the cheers!  In the spirit of moving forward, I am up at a stupid early hour.  I have wanted to go to the 6 am hot yoga class for the last eight months, but couldn't go due to curfew.  How ridiculous.  I couldn't go to yoga because of a curfew. 

Then therapy after that, then I'm going to the acupuncture stuff again.  Then I have a date!

One good thing about this all is that I have finally felt like I'm allowed to care about myself and not feel guilty for trying to help myself.

Meursault

More cheers:
:cheer: :cheer: :cheer:

:party: :phoot: :phoot: :phoot:

:yourock: :fireworks: :fireworks: :fireworks: :fireworks:

All these fireworks put a smile on my face!

this is the best ever, meursault.  you've gone thru *, hung on, and made it thru the other side.  there is no celebration big enough.  you deserve every good thing that comes your way.  yay!!!

I am so glad that court went as it should have. YES for all those plans to care for yourself - and a date, too!!

Maybe, just maybe, life can begin to get back to what you want your life to look like - it's finally time to begin the next chapter.

:cheer: :party: :fireworks:

I'm feeling emotionally confused so far by all this.  It's been six and a half years with a sword over my head, and the imminent threat of jail and all that entails.  And then Poof!  it's gone.  I have been emotionally all over the place, but mostly excited about looking forward and trying to have a life again.... then I cycle into a rage over everything they put me through, and how much of my life was stolen.  Anyhow, mostly I'm just eager to live again.  I feel pretty strong having gone through this.  I heard my Dad's laugh in my memory for the first time in years today.

It's weird.  I sure got a lot of supportive comments through facebook, texts, emails, and calls in the last couple of days.  But it's weird.  It's like the Joseph Campbell "Heroes Journey"  thing.  I'm noticing how most people don't understand this.  It's like I've gone on this epic journey through *, and came back with some deeper understanding (I don't know what yet, mind you), but all these people are speaking the same old mundane language that doesn't reflect what I've gone through, it completely misses the point.  I don't know, it's like all these people just have this really simple understanding of things.  I guess it's always been like that with trauma, but I'm able to see it because I went from this frozen, constant state of ongoing trauma for years to a sudden and fairly "Soft" end to it.  Maybe it's the sudden change that gives me this feeling....

Most of what people who talk to me is very supportive, but there are quite a few people saying things that don't sit right, even though they are also meaning well, I think.  I get people don't understand, but then there are some people making comments that reveal they think I'm a screw up or deeply flawed.  It's like people have to tell a story about this to make THEMSELVES feel better.  It's a scary world when this could happen to ANYONE, at ANYTIME, so they have a narrative that I am stupid, or weak, or an addict.  How I've "LEARNED MY LESSON"  sort of thing.  They can feel safe and secure by looking down on me.  After all:  it couldn't happen to them:  they are not weak or stupid like me!

It makes me kind of sad.  People like us, who have endured more than most, are judged by people who are too afraid of their own weakness and project it on us.  That's how it's looking to me.  It's sad though.  People (internally at least) put us down, although we have already been through so much, and try to make us less than them, just to feel better about themselves.  What a contrast here where I get nothing but support, from people who have so much of their own stuff to deal with!

I think I'm going to be working on this for a long time....

I've got my goals for the next year.  Draw a lot, making comics.  Going to the gym and eating properly, and maybe doing some competition weight-lifting if I get good enough (the guy that owns my gym told me he could have me in competition shape in six months if I trained constantly).  Do yoga a lot.  Finish my house.  Go on a kayak trip for a couple of months by myself in the arctic.  Continue dating, and if it doens't work out with the woman I'[m currently seeing, try again!  And hopefully find someone I want to share my life with,and who maybe would want kids.  Play lots more guitar.  Do things with friends.  Meet new people.  Get a dog.  And most importantly, continue working on things with my therapist, and let her help look after the inner children in me, and help me work through all the * from when I was a kid...

Anyhow.  I have no idea what value I've gotten out of all this, but one thing is that I see how much better I feel when I exercise and do yoga.  The guy that owns my gym mentioned that he wants to return to his home country starting in three years, and spend every six months there.  He is wanting a partner to run the gym during that time.  That''s a faint possibility I'm going to look at.

I hope everyone here is doing okay!  I just felt like posting this.  I'm mostly spending my week doing yoga, gym, and sleep.  I'm sleeping like 12 hours a day....

Meursault

My experience is that it's a longer road from finally getting outside the gates of * to peace and reconciliation than you expect.  People who say things like the "future begins now", or "it's over now" don't really get that.  From my own experience of years long legal battles (and winning) there is a lot of processing and many ups and downs on the way. ( I don't want to be a downer, note the word "ups".)

There is something I wish I'd learned from the experience.  My friend was primarily fighting for herself, for her own rights.  I wasn't able to do that.  I'm glad you were doing that, I wish I had been able to experience that then, and process it.  Savour that if you can, and grow form that foundation, as well as all the other aspects.  It may sound selfish and I'm not suggesting that you become a raging egotist as a result, just that you let it penetrate, understand how important it is to fight for yourself.  With backgrounds like ours here, sometimes that experience has never been allowed.

The friend I mentioned, had a newspaper article written about her and our experience.  (I didn't want to be involved in that).  She said "I was a school teacher.... (and other details of ordinary life)..... this happened to me and it could happen to you"  (direct quote).  It was one of the main reasons she wanted to be interviewed - to say that.  I don't know if it makes any difference to the ways people protect themselves from reality via denial.  I do understand how frustrating hearing others' self-protective denial feels and the intense desire to make them understand.  Other frustrating denial tactics include people wanting to tell you why the circumstances were unusual or unique, that what you experienced wasn't symptomatic of deeper problems but a freak occurrence, and that you winning somehow proves that.  Actually,most people lose when the deck is stacked against them.   There is so much injustice.  So if you lose, it somehow proves you were wrong despite the ridiculous odds against getting any kind of justice,  if you win, it somehow proves the system is working as it should.  Sheesh!

Take it easy and keep being kind to yourself.  I'm glad you are already working out plans for the future.  I believe it will see many dreams come true.

meursault, it just sounds so good to my heart to hear you being able to talk positively about the future, making short and long-term goals for yourself, having some confidence on a personal level.  it's like a blanket of fire has been lifted from you and you were smothering in the smoke.  now you can breathe again, and i couldn't be happier for you.

those others?  wusses!  i'd like to see them take on what you've taken on and come out the other side as well as you have.  your courage and determination through all this was marvelous to behold.  couldn't be happier for you.

just keep pacing yourself - this may be a little euphoria talking right now, so be prepared in case you have a little crash as well.  it will all balance out as long as you can keep doing what's best for you.  you have some different eyes now, so you'll be able to see things more clearly.  but, for the most part, enjoy, do the work that still needs to be done, and know that all your emotions are valid.   you'll even out eventually.  yay, meursault!  big hug!

Radical, thanks for what you posted.  It's "good" to see someone else has some experience with this.  I used to be fairly trusting of the lgal system.  Now I am so disillusioned by the mindlessness, corruption, irrationality, spitefulness, and utterly unfair nature of it.  As you say, the system is stacked against you.  People don't realize how bad it is.  ANYBODY could be charged with ANYTHING, without any actual legitimate evidence, and they would still be facing an uphill battle to be found not guilty.  The system is fixed.

Sanmagic, I think I'm going to be pretty mindful of what I'm feeling for the next while, becasue there will likely be some pretty extreme emotional reactions.  I just have to try o keep on an even keel.

It's weird, I'm still trying to process it, but within 15minutes of the verdict, two of my sisters (the ones I have my only memory of SA stuff from when was four) came up to me and started trying to bully me and manipulate me, and were even calling me stupid for not doing what they said and ridiculing at me.  The whole thing felt really "off" and I trusted my intuition as they were trying to bully me into doing something, and I refused.  The details are pretty messed, but my Mom (who didn't know about this) later told me my sisters were talking to my lawyer and trying to get some information out of him, but he refused and said they had to get it from me.  There is something fishy going on.  ANyhow, it was interesting watching my sisters working together like it was all scripted, ordering me around, insulting me, trying to manipulate me, and constantly ignoring what I was actually saying and discounting my refusals as stupid, wrong, and inconsequential, until I emphatically refused them.

I've been struggling with this for 6.5 years, and 15 minutes after it's over, I'm being ordered around, bullied, and used... Very messed up.  I think I finally saw the value of not ever talking to these sisters again...

Meursault

Hello Meursault, Happy New Year to you!  :cheer:

You got through a tough old year (or 6.5 years to be precise) and came out shining. It was traumatic... and there was the sisters to deal with after the verdict (ouch!) Are they NPDs? Best to avoid them till you are stronger I think. You have some fantastic goals for this year, and already started on them. You're an inspiration  :applause: I know how much weight training and working out can be such a stress reliever and mood booster, and yoga (and meditation) so grounding. I hope it all turns out well for you. Whatever happens, don't punish yourself if there is a setback, like Sanmagic says. Just pick yourself back up and keep going. With your positive mindset, anything is possible.  :hug: There is a saying: Expect the best, and that's what you'll attract.

Fen

Happy New Year everyone!

Somehow, some way, I hope you all find some of the healing you need in the coming year!!!

Fen:  Though she is quite infallible in her own opinion, I think my one sister is definitely NPD.  She is almost a caricature of the symptoms.  She even has one of the largest, most expensive houses in the city I live in.  It looks like a giant dollhouse, and she and her husband had it built for millions.  It is out in the open on a fairly majorly trafficked route, and she doesn't even put up trees so the view of her mansion is not obscured.  She is quite vicious, bullying, and debases and humiliates pretty well everyone she has power over.  She's really a lot like my Mom.  My Dad always complained to me growing up that "I married my mother and my daughters are all the same!"  She's the sister who basically doesn't talk to me.  I put my foot down and established healthy boundaries with her a couple of years ago, so she doesn't really speak to me and has gone around to extended family vilifying me.

The sister that she speaks to is similarly rich, but more understated.  She's kind of mildly famous in her field, and has been on the cover of a national paper several times.  She has complete emotional control of herself, and talks very robotically and basically "acts" all the time.  She almost ALWAYS follows the lead of the NPD sister, and has her  whole life.  The one exception is that she still talks to me whereas the other one doesn't.  Those are the two with whom there was some SA type stuff I remember.  The sister neither of them talk to has anger problems, but is very emotionally fragile, and extremely passive aggressive.

I think in my family, my Mom would be diagnosed with ASPD and maybe NPD, my oldest sister with MDD and GAD (she is nationally known in her field as well), the next sister NPD for sure, and the next sister I don't know.  She is very flat of affect and basically plays a character of what she thinks people expect.  She's been like that since her early teens.  It's like she consciously decided to hide herself and put on a mask.  I think my Dad would have been sub-threshold for NPD, but was mainly just an alcoholic and workaholic.

I've gotten GAD, SocPhobia, MDD, Agoraphobia, PTSD, C-PTSD, and Alcohol Addiction as diagnoses.  I almost always ask mental health professionals what they think regarding personality disorders, and they almost always say I definitely don't have one, so that's good.  A couple of times I've been told I have some cluster B traits, but that it's mostly because I'm overly worried what others think of me.

Saw my therapist yesterday and hd a good talk about how much she mean to me.  Talked about my family quite a bit, so that's obviously on my mind a lot the last few weeks.  I'm so looking forward to working on my stuff with her over this year. 

I'm not dating that woman I went on a couple of dates with, but we've become friends.  Strangely, a woman I've known for 25 years has started dating me.  We are kissing like a couple of maniac teenagers.  I've been avoiding sex though, even though we've been going out quite often.  I stopped during one of our kissing sessions a few days ago and said something like: "I hope it's okay that we're moving slow.  I don't want you to think I'm not interested or attracted to you, but I want to have closeness and intimacy before sex."  She said she understood and realized that and it was okay.  It's weird.  The moment it starts getting kind of sexual, I just freeze in complete terror.  I used to just be drinking when I had sex the first time with someone, so it wasn't an issue, and then after the first time it didn't seem to matter, I was already accepted.  Being sober and facing the possibility of sex, though, has me terrified.  Don't really understand what's going on there.  Think maybe I'm triggered, though.

Meursault

hey, meursault, it sounds like going slow is a good idea.  one thought that came to mind, since it sounds like the two of you are getting to know each other pretty well (in between all that mad kissing, lol!) is that maybe, if there's a time that feels right, you could talk to her about your fears of first-time sex.   i don't know if that's something that makes sense to you or seems right for you or anything, but it's something that, looking back, i wish i'd done more of.  too many of my relationships failed for lack of talking about some of this important stuff.

in the meantime, i hope you can continue to enjoy your freedom from the tyranny of the legal system, and enjoy your new lady as well.  i'm just so relieved that the horrors you went through are in the past.  my best to you for the future, on all levels, in every way, shape, and form. 

Hey all.  So I'm getting kind of insecure about this relationship.  I ask her if she wants to hang out every couple of days, but we're only seeing each other slightly more than once a week.  I get that she is busy working and whatnot, and does all sorts of other activities, but I only got to see her for an hour or two last week, and she seems to be keeping things at a once a week level.  When I talked with her about how I wanted to go slow regarding sex, I let her know I was wanting more closeness and intimacy first.  I'm not sure if she has misinterpreted that, or needs her own space or what.  I'm seeing her tonight and am going to have to bring that up.  I'm scared as can be about it.  I'm so fragile and easy to hurt, and all the asking if she wants to do something and her saying "not tonight" has me feeling really rejected, like it's just a matter of time, so maybe I'd be better off ending it myself before she does.  Neither of us are big texters either, so often i'll send something and she won't respond until the next day...

I don't know.  Maybe I'm just crazy....  Do I seem over-sensitive?

And then I have a problem with this woman I know (she's a daily alcoholic, chronically suicidal, and going through an on again off again separation with her husband).  I've been there for her as a friend repeatedly during suicidal times, and although I've told her about some of my stuff, I never leaned on her for it, just told her about some of it.  Anyhow, I mentioned how I lost one of my best friends after I quit drinking and how he was the guy I always thought would be my best man if I ever got married.  She responded that I'm not really marriage material.  I texted back how hurtful that was, and don't want to talk with her for quite a while.  She has texted that she was sorry and just joking around.  Like I am being over-sensitive.  I texted that I don't find telling people that they are unlovable funny.  She then got all "tough love" and told me how the world is hard etc.  and how she didn't mean anything by it, and I have been one of only two people who has cared enough about her the last couple of years to see how she's doing.  I don't know.  HEr comment, then her responses seem like abusive/gaslighting type stuff....  I'm doing really badly from it today.  Just feeling like EVERY woman sees me as COMPLETELY sub-human. disgusting and unlovable.  I'll get over it, but I'm really thinking I don't want to talk to her any more.

Anyhow.  It's weird.  I just went through that terrifying trial stuff, but I'm more scared with the woman I'm dating.  I've never dated sober before (at least in the early stages) and I'm discovering I'm constantly terrified and dissociative, as well as excited, calmed, and feeling warm fuzzies.  I wonder how I can work through this.  My therapist tells me it's best to talk with her about it all, but I'm so scared and I wouldn't even know where to begin.  I don't want her to think of me as so damaged I'm not worth it....  But if I don't address it, how is she reading my internal anxiety and dissociation?  Aloofness?  Disengagement?  I don't know.  I guess I'm going to have to talk with er about this, but I honestly don't know where to begin or how to approach it.  Somehow I don't think this will work: "Who has a lifetime of trauma involving women, is so terrified he's like a wild animal in your presence, and has two thumbs?  THIS GUY!"

Anyhow, just have to keep plugging along I guess.  I think I have to talk with her about this stuff tonight, though.  Much longer, and the sense of rejection and hurt I'm experiencing are going to be too much that I'll be genuinely adverse to being around her personally.

Meursault

Oh, mearsault, HUGS to you!

The only thing I can think to suggest is to take it slow when you do talk to her tonight. If she's staying with you, keep going. If she gets overwhelmed and quiet, take a break from your truth to ask her how she's feeling about what she's hearing. It will be a lot to take in and might be too much for one evening.

I know I found out about my husband's story over years. I knew parts, and no details at first. Slowly, as he felt comfortable, he told more details. We've been married 12 years and I'm still learning about his full story.

Funny thing is, he knows very little about my full story. He knows bits and pieces - when I've had to explain why I reacted the way I did.

As to the friend who you've been there for and who hurt you - no, you are not being overly sensitive. Yes, the world is hard and harsh and can be unbelievably cruel. Our friends shouldn't add to all that. The phrase - with friends like that, who needs enemies? - comes to mind. Only you can decide if the friendship is worth saving, but I can honestly tell you that I would be ashamed of myself if I said that to a friend who has been through tough times.

Thanks for your comments Wife #2!.  I feel a bit more validated about that friend...

I'm about to walk out the door to go meet the woman I'm dating.  Am I nervous.  Definitely don't want to go into too much detail...

I make comics about my stuff I kind of wanted to share.  Here's a link to one story trying to detail some of my life.  I don't go into much about growing up, but just the sense of things.  I have quite a few of these things, and I got a bunch printed into actual comic book form...  Anyhow, I'm off to meet her, God, I hope this doesn't blow up....

WARNING!!! There is some swearing, cutting, and typically sexualized comic book poses... http://wps999.blogspot.ca/2017/01/blog-post.html (http://wps999.blogspot.ca/2017/01/blog-post.html)

good luck, meursault.  i hope it goes well.

for the record, i echo what wife2 said about going slowly with any of this.  different people will react in different ways, but that's not on you, not you being a monster or anything.   that's their own crapola, if it's neg. or their own compassion if it's pos.  we have no idea of their backgrounds and histories, which can make for some really different perspectives and perceptions about anything and everything.

and i also agree it's not being too sensitive.  you're as sensitive as you need to be for you.  no shame, no blame.  people who are in the throes of active addiction just can't be relied on for anything, including support or being accountable for their actions.  thus 'you're too sensitive', putting the blame for their rudeness on you.

again, good luck tonight!  big hug!

Hi Meursualt,
Heres' my take.
Having grown up in an abusive family and then usually mixed with other troubled, (and too-often abusive) people i have been messed up about how relationships of all kinds usually work.
Most healthy people don't do careering into things at full-speed.  They take time to get to know others and trust builds over time.  Being healthy, they also have a whole lot of other interests, relationships and commitments.  They have boundaries and are clear about what they do and don't want to do, and it isn't personal if they prioritise something or someone else.  There is no hidden agenda, you don't have to read the tea-leaves or interpret major dramas.

Take your time, don't let your loneliness and insecurity steer the ship imo.  You've been through so much. Many people will have difficulty understanding, but the right people will want to listen and understand, because you are a brilliant person and potential partner.

I'm sending you a link that you might find helpful.  The site is gender-neutral, but being about improving and understanding relationships, it is weighted towards women:
http://www.baggagereclaim.co.uk/

Thanks for the comments.   I feel like it's all pointless.  I agree that I have no idea what healthy looks like in a relationship and clearly I'm lost there.  I just got back from our date.  I'll check out that site tomorrow.  I was unable to talk with her about this stuff.   We didn't kiss or hold hands or anything.  I just feel so much rejection I don't want to even try any more.  I give up with her.  I was in a stupor most of the evening.

Anyhow, I mostly want to just start drinking again.  Women liked me more when I was drunk.

Meursault

Sorry you're so sad and confused.
I doubt women liked you more when you were drunk. I suspect you just bypassed the hard stuff, and cared less how other people felt about you.
You are very much a person who is worth knowing.  You have so much to offer the world and other people.  I hope you can be as kind to yourself as someone like you deserves.

Thanks radical.  It's pointless, though.  I texted a few friends that I'm not interested in knowing them any more, that I'm just going to spend my time getting drunk.  I emailed my therapist saying I'm not coming back.  I give up.  There is something so disgusting and hideous and unlovable and all women see it.  I think I'm kind, and intelligent, and interesting, and all sorts of other things, but no matter how horrible, cruel, vicious, stupid ANY other guy is, women think he's more desirable than me, universally.  I am utterly unlovable and I don't understand why.  Women just automatically see it.  This isn't a life I have any interest in.  The only way I can bear it is drunk, so that's what I'm going to do.

Anyhow, hope my negativity isn't upsetting to anyone.  Sorry if it is.

Meursault

It's not upsetting me Meursualt.

I know the feeling, I think.  It has individual variations. 

You've been through a terrible, traumatic time.  People seem to expect that once it's over it is sunshine and kittens, but there can be a harsh after-effect which can be confusing as well as distressing.  I know it is really tough, because I've been there.  I also know that people do respond to how we feel about ourselves, as well as us often being very sensitive to rejection.

I hope you feel less pain soon.  It sounds like past abusers might be ascendant in your mind right now.  It doesn't change who you are and what that is worth.

Well, I wasn't really expecting sunshine and kittens!  I actually spent the last year warning my therapist that things will likely be harder than ever for a while after that.  I don't know, I'm back to the same nightmare I lived with for 25 years after puberty.  The stuff with my Dad was just a side show.  Even my therapist mentioned it at one point.  I mentioned killing my Dad, and she said "God!  I completely forgot about that!  That's so far down your list."  We had a good laugh.

It's just that now I'm more damaged, raw and vulnerable, less able to regulate, and most of a decade older, and I am still completely unlovable.  And more than ever, I need love and affection and women all just hate me.  I really don't understand it at all.  There is something SO utterly hideous and disgusting about me that no matter how monstrous or terrible or vicious any other guy is, women just all automatically and innately see it in me that I am not a man and pathetically subhuman and less than them no matter how they think or behave toward women.

I'm just going to shut up.  I'm having a complete breakdown.  I was in therapy today and told my therapist I think that comment from that acquaintance and the signals from the woman I'm dating have led me to have a psychotic break.  I was having visual hallucination stuff starting to happen.  The opinion of me that women have just annihilates my sense of self.  There's no me any more.  I'm having an utter breakdown.

sorry for posting this.  I'm completely lost right now...
Meursault

You matter.

You are lovable, exactly as you are.

With all your flaws. With all your strong points.

May I say something that might sound harsh? It's meant in the most loving way tho. Honey (I can call you honey, I'm 60 ;) ); honey, it's not that other people don't love you - it's YOU that doesn't love you.

But you are lovable. How do I know? Because I am. Because every single person on this forum is worthy of loving, of being loved. And that includes you.

You have internalized all those messages you were bombarded with as a little boy, I can see that in your drawings. Males are wonderful! Men are GOOD! SO much good has been done in this world by men; and bad has also been done by women. Neither gender has a monopoly on good or bad.

You are very talented. Your drawings are eloquent, I can almost feel the pain you're in.

Stay here with us. Please keep talking, keep posting. Let it out, here. We will listen and tell you you're just as good as ANYONE. I wish I were eloquent so I could communicate what I feel, what I know - that you are perfect just as you are, in your imperfection.

Ditto to all the above. :hug:

i'm with 3 roses and radical on this, meursault.  those messages you received about men were wrong.  i love men in all their manliness (except they don't keep the bathroom clean enough for me, but that's another story!  lol!)   you are as lovable as anyone else, all us damaged people here who can't always hold it together, who can't always see past our backgrounds, you can't always see the truth about ourselves.  you so matter, and i'd hate to see this place, this world, without you.  you are a honey (i'm 69, so i can say that, too) and worthwhile.  as they say, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince(ess). 

you've just come through some of the worst years of your life.  of course you're going to be messy, your thoughts and feelings will be messy.  that's normal and natural.  we don't care how messy you  are.  and, you don't bring us down.  all we do is want the best for you - always.  i hope you can fight your way through this.  you're worth it.  i've been glad you've been here through all of it.  we care.  love and hugs coming your way.

Well, I'm drunk.  For the first time in two and a half years at least.  I still know the woman whom I was infatuated with in high schol and after for about four years.  That was 25+ years ago.  She's a pretty good trauma therapist apparently.  She was actually the mentor of my therapist during her training.  I did acupuncture on Tuesday at the clinic she works at and she knows what's going on with me.  I first tried to kill myself over her 26 years ago last month.  Weird.  She has recently seen all my poetry and comics and whatnot.  God, did I love her.  She still just looks like an angel to me, and even she comments on how relaxed and enjotable and comfortably we converse on any subject.  All the abusiveness from me being a kid was all just latent in repercussions until her.  I somehow kept the faith that it wasn't ME as a little kid, it was my sick Mom, omeone would love me.  But then with this friend in grade ten, I fell completely in love.  for YEARS, and she didn't want me.  Everything came crashing into focus.  It MUST BE me.  I am garbage.  Hideous.  A monster.  Unlovable. 

Anyhow, she's been texting seeing how I\'m doing the last couple of days.  She was pretty insistent I come and hang out with her during an empty slot at work, rather than spinning further into self-hatred and into drinking.  I relented and went, and felt a bit better, but beelined for a bar when I left.  She told me she was going to bug me the rest of the afternoon.  She did.

I was about 11 or 12 beers into it.  I called an old biker friend and he came down and we drank.  My old friend texted a bunch of times, and I was just at the point where I was going to head to this sketchy house with a bunch of young punk kids I got into punk in their teens and who live in a dilapidated house in a seedy area of the ciy with a couple of pit bulls  and crap and drop acid.  That friend of mine finished work and asked where I was because she was going to pick me up.  So I texted where I was and she picked me up and we came back to my house for a while.

It was weird.  I utterly adored this woman (starting 30 years ago this coming september).  And here she is sitting on my couch/bed (I'm renovating and living in one room of my house) giving me advice about the woman I'm seeing and talking about our past traumas and high school and sex and her husband and kids and all sorts of things.  I have my teddy bear I got last year when I woke up my inner child.  I just showed it to my therapist a couple of months ago.  I showed it to this friend right away.  She introduced herself and held him for a while.  I told her about my mom some more, and about the sexual abuse stuff with two of my sisters.  Weird how open I was with it all.  She hugged me a couple of times, and I cried a bit about how unlovable I fele and how I only really feel like my therapist is safe and that sort of crap.  Hugging her was strange.  I was just thrilled with the feminine-ness of it all, her perfume, soft hair, breast etc, but mostly I just didn't want to engage.  I spent  a lot of terrible years just suffocating with attachment need stuff for her and just want to enjoy a platonic connection now.  I'm very comfortable with her that way!  I didn't want to get stupefied by how wonderfully female she is.   She genuinely looks almost the same as she looked since she was 19 or 20.  It's weird.

She told me about her sexual assault back then, but I already knew about it.  She told me then.  She thought she hadn't told anyone until therapy years later.  Felt kind of bad, because I couldn't remember who the guy was until she told me again.

WE talked about quite a bit of stuff.  She stopped us talking about sex at one point because she said she was getting excited.  I didn't want that and neither did she. 

She left and I immediately went down to the sketchy beer store a few block away and got a case of beer.  I'm now drinking by myself.  Maybe I'll get it back, but right now this is my thinking:  screw it all.  I'm unlovable and give up.  I'm never going to have that romantic love.  I'm never going to experience the awe of seeing a woman in a wedding dress for me.  I can't even really envision that happening, it awes and stuns me so much.  I'm never going to have a partner to have and raise kids with.  I'm never going to have some woman who comes home from work to stories from me about our dumbass kids and the hilarious stuff they've done.  I'm never going to have a chance to show a kid of mine, by my example, something important about how to live or be or interact.  I'm never going to have a son who knows how to be a man from his Dad, or a daughter who faces the world knowing she is loved and a strong Dad has her back.  I am unlovable and I give up.  IT's all meaningless, so I am just going to at least spend my time getting drunk, because women seem to at least want to sleep with me when I'm drunk, even if there is this universal indictment that I am unworthy of being loved or a partner or a Dad or any of that genuinely amazing stuff.  I've given up completely on the woman I've been dating.  I am getting too many rejection messages, and am too fragile and vulnerable to even try to address it all...

Anyhow, I'm still pretty unhappy.  But I'm also having beer.  It's a crappy solution, but it's the one I have to work with.

Meursault

all i can say is that you're doing the best you can, and i hope you can find your way back to being kinder to yourself.  you were doing that for awhile - i hope you can do so again.  best to you, meursault.  big hug.

 :hug:

I care for you, M.

I feel kind of ashamed for losing it the last couple of days.  Anyhow, the woman I've been seeing said "maybe" we could do something today.  If she calls I'm going to just say it didn't sound promising so I made other plans.  I give up with her.  I sang and played guitar doing a really slow dirge-like version of Self-Esteem by Offspring this morning. 

I honestly don't understand what's so bad about me.  Just decades of indictment from women that there is something so hideous about me I'm not fit to be a partner or have kids with them.  I honestly don't understand.  I think I'm actually pretty good socially, and lots of women I know talk about how easy I am to talk to.  Maybe I just freeze up too much when romance is a possibility.  and then Ithink how at least half the guys I know with wives/girlfriends treat them like crap, and yet are somehow still considered lovable and I'm not. 

Really, I'm still completely in a tizzy right now.  I'm trying to be positive, but I really have no faith.  I spend a lot of time just suspending that judgment and go out hopefully trying to find someone and not fully believing there is something fundamentally unlovable about me, but then enough time passes and I get so many messages of rejection, it would be insane to not accept it.  Anyhow, sorry for my craziness...

Meursault

Meursault - First, this is YOUR journal - all feelings, thoughts, gripes, vents whatever you need are allowed in here - this is YOUR place to express YOUR self free of judgment.

I don't have any answers for you. Lots of sympathy and even empathy from having been there, though. I do consider myself lucky that one man took a chance on me. It happened so late in my life, though, that only one child was possible. I was self-aware enough to realize that my best shot might be marrying a man with children already. Which I did. Making possible the confusing reality that my grandchild is the same age as my only biological child.

When I did decide to put myself out there, I prayed a lot, I joined every website known at the time (lots of hookup websites - not what I wanted). I worded my bio carefully to weed out the one-shot-and-gone fellows. Yes, I may be damaged, but I deserve love, too. Yes, my husband may be damaged, but he deserves love, too. Yes, you may be damaged, but you deserve love, too. Let me repeat that in case you missed it.

Yes, you may be damaged, but you deserve love, too.

I like that you respected yourself enough to not put yourself on the 'maybe' waiting list. That was good, not easy, but good.

When it comes to freezing up, that makes total sense! Really it does!

Personally, and this was a tough one for me so I get it's hard, I'd recommend not looking at the neighbor's green grass too much. You don't know the amount of *, I mean fertilizer, that's been tossed on that grass to make it so green. I did that a lot. It hurt my feelings unnecessarily. Of all the marriages I saw when I was single and jealous only half are still together. Some of the friends have been through two divorces and chosen to remain single from now on. It isn't so much about them being worthy of love - WE ALL ARE WORTH OF LOVE, YOU INCLUDED - it's more about making a choice to move the relationship forward or ending it. Without overwhelming the one we want to move forward with.

Some days I'm singing 'Love, soft like and easy chair'  other days, 'If you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with!'

Hey, that last one, it's a good one even if you're alone - still love the one you're with - yourself!

wife2 is so wise!  meursault, i completely agree with what she said.  there are no answers, only faith.  after 2 rotten marriages, i finally found a man while i was in my 50's.  my grandma found a man to live with when she was in her 80's!

i'm just saying, we really don't know what's around the corner.  loving yourself, tho, i believe is the best place to start.  i don't know if you act differently on dates where there's a romantic element involved than when you're around friends.  only you know that.  i do believe that if you can just be that guy who's comfortable to talk to, who's comfortable to be around, who's likeable and friendly and fun, you're going to go through life much more comfortable with yourself as a whole.  then, things will happen as they will happen.   best to you, dear meursault.  you'll get there.

I hear you on all this and it's likely right, but the agony of this is too much.  With my therapist I realized it's really these fundamental attachment needs that overwhelm me.  I don't know how this is even possible to get to a place where I love myself.  How does one do that?  When that attachment stuff is as agonizing and desperate as a need for air.  Not kidding...  I was writhing around on my couch feeling like I could explode yesterday, my heart Pounding so hard I was literally half deaf, cognitively chaotic and stunned, shaking, crying, arched back.  All sorts of stuff like that...

I don't know how it's possible to get to a better place when I am getting the implicit message constantly that women just SEE how I'm garbage.

Anyhow, I'm pretty ashamed of myself for the last couple of days, and am completely demoralized. 

From my perspective this is all very crazy-making.  I think I'm a decent guy.  I have all sorts of things I can do, and think I have all sorts of good traits.  Most of my friends are women and they just universally say there's nothing wrong with me and I just haven't met the right person and all that, yet I go on year after year, sometimes I lose all hope but for the most part I keep trying.  It's like I'm being verbally told the house is not on fire and yet I can't breathe and keep getting burned.  I don't understand any of this.

I'm pretty worried I made my therapist mad.  I sent her an email venting about why women won't just tell me what's so bad about me and that sort of thing.  There was definitely some anger in it.  I said I realize I'm kind of expressing an unfair general anger toward women in it but it was certainly the way I feel.  I just don't understand what women all seem to see that makes me such garbage.

I'm physically exploding right now.  My heart is like a hammer and my brain is like lightning.  This is awful and I feel nauseous.  To just cuddle up or hold hands with someone right now.   Ugh.   I remember a news article a while ago about people offering cuddling services.  I looked into it but it's not in my city.  That might help, but I don't know.   I think it's kind of important that the woman wants to be with ME.  Anyhow.

I kind of think I deserve love too, actually.  But no one wants me.  IT's really something I'm completely powerless with.  It's not my choice.

Meursault

Wishing I could send you a physical hug!!!

:hug: :hug: :hug: :hug:

Thanks, Three Roses!

Here's another one of my comics:  WARNING:  suicide!  http://wps999.blogspot.ca/2017/01/comic-1-12-aliens.html (http://wps999.blogspot.ca/2017/01/comic-1-12-aliens.html)

dear meursault, i wish i could just embrace you with my voluminous earth mother skirts and let you know that you'll be all right, say the right words to help you calm yourself.  yes, you definitely do deserve love.  but, you're right, we never know about it, do we.  it's out of our control, like so much that's in the world.

from what you've written about your therapist, i'd guess that she will accept that you're in an angry place, and that it's something to explore during your next session. 

do you have any soothing techniques that you can help yourself with?  someone wrote about repetitive tapping or stroking on her lip or hand or toes on the floor kind of thing that helps her calm down.  maybe you can find something that works for you.  does writing help you? 

i can't magically conjure up a girlfriend for you, but if i could i would.  in the meantime, take care of yourself as best you can.  hang tough, meursault - i'm hangin' right beside you.

I'm in a slightly better place...  What jumped out at me was my thinking saying "I don't want a girlfriend to magically appear!  I want a REAL woman to want the REAL me!"

Sure enough.  My therapist got back to me, reassuring me of her acceptance etc.  I think I was basically "acting out" and trying to provoke her with what I wrote to her, hoping to make her respond angrily so I could feel justified actually articulating how angry I am.  I re-read what I sent, though, and I was pretty reasonable.  I was actually apologizing for how unreasonably frustrated I am, and letting her know how bad I felt for making her uncomfortable hearing about how upset I am.  And I thought I was being completely unreasonably spiteful.  I must look kind of ridiculous to her.

Meursault

good.  i'm glad you don't want a magical girlfriend.  i think that shows that you're grounded in reality. 

i doubt you look ridiculous to her, meursault.  therapists know that outbursts of all kinds are part of the process.  they look at the big picture, and don't just react to a moment's blast of anger, provocation, neg. feelings of any kind.  you're in the midst of your process, and you're going to go to different places in its midst.  i think it's how we discover who and where we want to be, what we truly want in our lives.  when we're in the midst of it, tho, we can't see the big picture.  we're in the moment, only, and that can seem overwhelming.

you may still be in the aftermath of all you went thru with the whole legal system.  it hasn't been that long ago.  keep being gentle with yourself as much as possible.  wishing you only the best. 

My life is interesting,. that's for sure.  A friend of mine texted and invited me to the bar tonight for her 40th birthday.  She is a very wild woman.  Very Amy Winehouse, very much a party girl.  She called me and cried the day I got found not guilty, and she cried tonight.  I went for a while and talked with a few people I used to drink with, but I didn't drink, although they kept offering to buy me drinks.  One guy came (call him bartender guy), and he was the boyfriend of my first girlfriend.  She cheated on him to start dating me, and he smashed up my truck over it.  He and I get along well enough, though.  I can tell he is still a bit miffed, even though that was 20 years ago.  Didn't know he knew my Amy-Winehouse friend.  Lots of cute waitresses at the bar know him, because he is a bartender at one of the more popular and long standing bars in my city and has been for many years.  He was telling them about how I was the guy who slept with his girlfriend years ago.  Think he was trying to make me look bad, but the waitresses all stated that he better be over it by now, and that he and I seem like good friends.  I really like the guy, actually.  He's a nice guy, but bitter.

Anyhow, the birthday girl wanted the prime bar table, and there was a cute woman just reading at the big table by herself, so birthday girl went over and hit on her for a while until she offered for us to join her.  I went from completely socially comfortable and capable of conversing like a normal person, to this clunky, disjointed loser in her presence.  My mind literally cannot formulate sentences... I went outside at one point to smoke, where a bunch of our party were out having a joint, and the cute girl ended up saying she was leaving to go walk her dogs.  She took me aside and said: 'You have some really good friends.  They're good people."  It was weird, she was really very much offering some personal support or something.  I'm not sure what happened before I got outside, but I'm pretty sure birthday girl (who is VERY opinionated) must have been talking about my Dad's death, and bartender guy had clearly been talking about how his ex cheated with me on him, since that was the conversation I walked into when I went outside.  It was just weird how she took me aside and made a point of saying that and then saying bye.

A group of clubbing girls dressed very sexily were coming in and birthday girl was making comments to them and offered them a joint.  They were smoking it and a couple of them knew bartender guy, since they used to be waitresses at his bar.   Birthday girl was being very graphically sexual with them, and kept saying "Amirite?" to me.  I was feeling like a pervert by association.  Nobody seemed to mind, though, but I was kind of insecure.

Anyhow, when I left, birthday girl gave me a really long and sensual kiss.  I know for a fact she would not be good for me, she would just steamroll over me and dominate me emotionally and sexually.  But it was kind of okay.  Bartender guy gave me a hug and told me my not guilty verdict was the best news he'd heard in a long time. 

I don't know why I'm writing this.  I just sense there is something that I have to see the world in a completely different way... or rather see myself completely different... out of this, but I don't know how.  And I don't know.  My life just has all these major twists and turns.  Looking how messed up I was a couple of days ago to this.  I have to try to keep in mind how temporary it is when I am overwhelmed.

Anyhow, tonight was quite weird.  Glad I didn't just say screw it and get drunk because the cute girl scared the bejeezus out of me.  I really think my life is really weird.  I wish it wasn't, but I must do things to cause it... (I suppose going to a birthday at a bar with a woman who reminds me of Amy Winehouse should be a pretty clear sign.)  Well, I got home by 10:00 anyhow, I wasn't there long.

Meursault

Our journeys aren't linear; instead, healing is a twisting, winding path that doubles back on itself before straightening out - and then twists again.

We get caught up in absolutes ("I'm always - I'll never...") when life just isn't like that. We do good and bad with the same hands. We're just humans, bound to be imperfect. :)

Meursault,

Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I recognise something of myself in a different part of my life from your description of this night.   I don't know if I'm projecting here, but I do want to say, if only to the person I was back then "keep your wits about you - practice situational awareness, watch very closely, watch the responses inside yourself very closely, there is something important to learn".

I hope you don't mind.  Reading your description brought up an eerie feeling in me, and then, when you wrote about having an intuition about seeing the world and yourself completely differently.....all I can say is that sometimes parts of our minds are five steps ahead of us in our lives, (maybe they always are, actually).

Whatever, take care, be really kind to yourself.

Radical,

I'm not sure if this is it, but I'm glad I just left before 10.  Trying to heal from all this stuff is so hard, it's hard to not just jump into what we know.  And at least for a while it would feel better.  The natural instinct would be to have just stayed there and immersed myself in that way of living.  It's like pulling your hand from the fire.  It's completely natural to what causes less pain, which would have been to have that superficial connection etc.  But I guess I have to keep holding my hand over the fire and feel the pain to get out the "infection" I have from the abuse as a kid.

And there's a huge draw to the delusion that I can just "go back" to the way things were before my Dad died.  But it's not possible.  This whole thing broke me into pieces and the automatic feeling is that "just go back to what you were doing before you fell to pieces!".  I'm feeling pretty bad about the last few days, but I think I got out of the end of a (short!) relationship with as little damage as I could do.  Even a couple of years ago, that would have likely sent me to either the psych ward or into a really suicidal state.  I could have really used an extra session of therapy this week.

I appreciate what you're saying, and I think something like that was going on.  One thing I learned:  I now have no external pressure to not drink.  I tried it again, and prefer a sober life.  Drinking's just not for me.

Meursault

I think it's great you worked out what that situation meant for you.

That wasn't what it brought up for me.  It was much more about how I felt about myself and how that affected how I saw other people, how I interpreted things, what it meant that I didn't pick up on at the time  ( and in my case, at times, the danger it put me in).

The vicious circles and self-fulfilling prophesies of low self esteem, especially as it affected inappropriate gratitude and other misunderstandings.  If I could have taken a step back and watched more, and journalled to see the patterns across time, if I could have observed my own feelings about other people and about myself and done likewise......

hey, meursault, it sounds like you just turned a corner, had a realization of immense proportions.  when we're in transition, not where we were but not where we want to be, it can be very confusing.  working thru that confusion, making those connections and realizations, deciding what is and is not part of what you want for you is all part of the process.  i think you did really good!  yeah, you gave some old behaviors a shot, decided you don't like them anymore, and are putting them on the shelf.  good for you.

and, radical, finally getting to all those truths about yourself is, to my mind, also like turning a corner, just a different one.  still, it sounds like some learning went on and you now know things that you weren't aware of before.  i think learning plays a big part in recovery.  learning and realizations.  good for you.  i do believe these kinds of things are 'better late than never'.  at least now you have them, and i don't think that's a bad thing at all.  you're doing it differently now, and that counts.   

hugs to you both.

I'm an idiot.  Just feeling so ashamed of myself.  I went and drank again yesterday.  Just felt like there's no point and I give up.  Not the bad part, really.  I AM NOT doing that again.  Unfortunately, I emailed my therapist with a somewhat suicidal and frantic message and said I'm not coming back to therapy.  Then I REALLY foolishly posted on Facebook asking for women I know to tell me why I'm just garbage to women.  I deleted the post after several hours, but do I ever feel stupid and exposed right now.

This morning I emailed therapist apologizing and saying I'll try to come back.  I feel like I was just a maniac doing that stuff last night. 

Anyhow, I'm having a really bad day due to all the shame and embarrassment of my broken-ness....

Ugh.  The combination of that woman telling me I'm not marriage material, and then the end with things with the woman I've been dating have really hit me hard.  It's like all the work and struggles I've gone through don't amount to anything.  I keep it together for a while and then all that self-hatred and desperate need to understand why women don't want me kicks in and I have no defense against it....

Meursault

i think it's horrible to be so fixated (is that the right term?) on one thing that everything else good in our lives is basically pushed aside.  i've done that with my daughter.  (i know it's not the same thing, but i'm sensing a similar dynamic).   it was as if nothing else mattered if i didn't get her respect and/or acceptance for just who i was.   if i was with her and we were having a good time, the world and my life was bright and rosy.  if that went away, i did all kinds of neg. things, had all kinds of neg. thoughts about myself.  as i look back on it, it was just the most horrific cycle.  my brain simply jumped from one to the other and there was nothing in between.  all good or all bad.   

i have no advice here - just wanted to let you know that you're not alone in doing this.  it's the pits, to be sure.  big hug, dear meursault.

Meursault - you are not an idiot. Even if you did some idiotic things, that just makes you human! Really! Ok, so you really tipped the scale this time, but let's be real - haven't we all? You really can just say that you were having an alcohol-fueled moment. Very few in this world have not done things we regret with a little (or a lot of) alcohol in our systems. I could tell some stories - but this is your thread. Most will understand, the rest - and this may be the hard part to believe or accept - don't matter.

Truth be told, most of my 'amazing feats of stupidity' didn't even have alcohol at their source!

So, I watch 'America's Funniest Videos' and other shows like it to remind myself that the world is full of idiotic, stupid behavior. I (and YOU) don't have the market cornered on this. You didn't do permanent harm. That's the blessing in all this.  :bighug:

I'm haven't been very good listening to other people here for a couple of weeks.  Just thought I'd post something anyhow. 

So, years of that legal stuff over my head.  Literally thinking of it several times a minute for over half a decade.  I feel completely lost.  I figured I'd be even worse for a bit after this ended, but it's all hitting me rather unexpectedly.  I didn't expect it to manifest like this at all.  I'm really having a hard time going outside.  Fear and panic. 

I had gotten drunk a couple of times, but I'm good now about that.  But, I guess a few people have mentioned it, so I've had all sorts of these bad influence type people pop out of the wood work.

I got back to yoga, which was awesome and I've been feeling really good about that.  Going almost every day.  Now I think I have to find another place.  That little gym I was going to and finding really positive, there was a guard from the local jail who went there, and he heard about my stuff from either the owner or one of the old ladies I told.  Anyhow, in the fall, I overheard him loudly putting me down and vilifying me to the other people in the gym, trying to paint me out like I was some horrible criminal or something.  Just a cowardly bully and a sadist, as far as I'm concerned.  I stopped going to the gym after that, it just felt negative and hostile and unwelcome.  I want a place that I can do some healing of trauma, not be put down and talked about etc.  Anyhow, I went back after the trial, but Istopped again.  I just can't relax there now.  Anyhow, today at yoga, who is there in my class?  The jail guard guy.  I totally love that yoga Sangha.  It just feels ruined to me now.  Just with that negativity and hostility there.  I guess I have to try to find anotehr yoga place.

I've reconnected, just as a friend, with the woman I went to high school with and was infatuated with for several years.  All the abusiveness from when I was a kid just "popped" from her not wanting me, and I have never really recovered any sense of worth around women since.  She was also the mentor for MY therapist during her training and is apparently a pretty good therapist.  We went out for lunch and she was telling me her husband is concerned.  I really  think she is not good for me to be around.  I just feel SO GOOD around her, still, even justas a friend.  I don't like the connection with my tehrapist though (I completely trust my therapist with boundaries in this regard) and worry about how being frineds with her might actually be bad for my mental health, especially if she decides to not hang out with me any more.  I think that would fire off all that rejection agony that had me messed up for years, and sent me into complete recluse, social phobia and agoraphobia.  She has been telling me she thinks I should go no contact with my family.  There's so much stuff going on with me regarding this woman, I could write a book, and I don't really know where to begin.  She STILL amazes me, after thirty years, and although I don't want to date her, if that became a possibility I know I would be ecstatic.

Anyhow, my uncle called this week, pressuring me to farm with him now that the legal stuff is done.  He's my Dad's older brother, and the three of us and my grandpa farmed for a lots of years.  I always got along good with him.  I couldn't go back to that, though.  I have major breakdowns just being at the farm for much more than a few hours now.  And I don't think I'll ever drive again.  Talked to my Mom tonight, and I guess he talked to her to try to get her to convince me. 

I told my Mom how I can barely even be in a car, and I often spend whole therapy sessions just dealing with the aftermath of being in a vehicle with her.  How sometimes I'm weeks recovering from her driving.  She laughed and said "I drive good, don't I?"  I said "No, you drive like a maniac."  She said "probably everyone does to you."  I mentioned how my last two girlfriends were really good about that and drove cautiously and I was all right with them, and she said "It's safer to drive fast"  and then changed the subject.  She does drive like a maniac, though.  Really aggressive and fast.  My one sister won't sit in the front seat with her.  My Dad once ripped off the armrest of his door in terror.  HEr frinds won't drive with her.  On an hour drive on the highway, she ios guaranteed to hit 140km/h at least half a dozen times.  Tailgates badly, fast braking, fast acceleration etc...

She just fell down a week ago and split her lip and broke her wrist.  She is also going into surgery on Thursday for a growth.  I'm reall kind of unhappy about all this.  Is that normal for someone, especially a mother to react that way about what I said about her driving?  I've complained many times and even freaked out so badly in terror I tried to open the door and jump out at highway speeds.  I often get to the point where I'm crying out in trauma flashback stuff, shaking like a leaf, with her driving and she just laughs.  Is this as messed up as it feels to me, or am I just over-sensitive?  I also think that she is purposely getting injured (she busted an ankle two years ago) to keep me guilt ridden and connected to her.  Does that seem paranoid?  She told me a few years ago she has MS, but told me not to tell anyone.  I see no symptoms of it, and actually think she's lying.

Anyhow, that woman who told me I wasn't marriage material (which was sort of a catalyst for me losing it this time) texted a few times and we chatted a bit.  I think I believe her that she said she was just joking around because she thought it was so ridiculous because she sees me as very attractive and if she wasn't married, she would chase after me.

On a local FB mental health page, a woman was all frantic looking for help with a friend who was suicidal.  I felt pretty good offering what help I could to her, and info etc.

The woman I was dating has still not called, so screw that.  I went out for coffee with a woman I know who has a 1 year old.  She is very wholesome, hippy, earth mother type.  Very emotionally open and huggy and that sort of thing.  It was nice, but I mostly felt like some broken monster around her.  Her baby was initially a bit weird with me, but then got along well.  I dressed the baby in winter clothes before we left the coffee shop, and I felt awesome with her doing that.  How great it would be to be with some woman who loved me and have a kid with her!

Don't remember if I mentioned this, but a few weeks ago I cmplained to my tehrapist how people keep telling me that I have to love myself first and I said "Okay.   So how do I do that?  Magic?"  (Or something like that.)  She told me it doesn't work that way with the early attachment stuff, and how I would find healing in relationships, specifically ones with women.  I'm still a bit confused about that.  I think I understand, but I'm not sure, I'm going to have to talk more about that with her. 

Last week she told me she sees how I'm just desperate for her approval and for her to let me know she likes me and that sort of thing.  She said she has indicated that, but she mostly CAN'T give me that, or I'd be getting my sense of worth from her, how I have to learn I have worth NEXT to her, not because of her.  This stuff is really kind of baffling and I don't understand it, but I trust her.  I guess she knows I have to find a sense of worth with a woman, not in a vacuum, but not have that worth because a woman deems I have it.  God, this gets chaotic in my head quickly.  I can't even make sense of what I just wrote.

Anyhow, I suppose my women related stuff is still the major thing going on, but not nearly as acutely or desperately, or obsessively as it was a couple of weeks ago.  Lots of other stuff has happened since I last posted, but that's all I want to get into.  I've hardly left my house, it seems, except for yoga and a handful of coffee dates, but it feels like tons has happened.  I have contacted a few people who saw my humiliating FB post, and they all seem to see it as just a "bad day" type thing.  That's a relief.

A friend called and I'm working for him tomorrow for $25/hr.  I'm kinda torn about that.

Sorry I'm not being supportive to other people here right now,  Hopefully these post-trial extremes calm down soon.  God, do I dread Valentine's Day.

Meursault

Meursault - it's allowed to be all about you sometimes. This may just have to be your season. After all that you've been through, with all the attendant emotions and real consequences, you deserve a break. We take no offense!

You've helped us in the past, let us help you now. For as long as it takes. Because you're our friend and we value you. Besides, this is YOUR journal - it's the guilt-free-all-about-me zone!

 :yeahthat:

been thinking about you, meursault, how we haven't heard from you lately.  so glad to have you back.

the aftermath of the horrendous trauma you've been through will take a while to calm down.  if you can, just allow it, know it for what it is, and be patient with yourself.    that's all you need to do.  it will resolve when it's time.

i get what your therapist is saying about finding your self worth within yourself rather than through another person.  you have to know, first and foremost, that you are worth the best of whatever life has to offer.  not because you have a girlfriend, not because someone likes you, but simply because you're you.   i have faith that you'll get there.  it may take a while, but, again, be patient with yourself.  unfortunately, this stuff doesn't always turn the corners we want when we want them to.

oversensitive about someone's dangerous driving?  i doubt it.  actually, i'm a very good driver, but i do drive fast, and a lot of people have told me that they're scared to drive with me.  i experienced that with a sister-in-law, and then i knew what others were talking about re: me and my driving.  it IS scary.  i've toned it down since then.   sounds like your mom just wants to do it her own way, no matter what anyone says.

take your time, meursault.  you're worth it, you deserve it, and things will begin falling into place.  big hug!

But at the same time, she was saying it can only be found WITH someone, likely a woman with me, sort of discovering it IN a relationship, but not BECAUSE of the relationship.  I sort of get it, but then it all sort of collapses into incoherence and it confuses me.

And it DOES confuse me, because there is all sorts of stuff about me that I like and the only time I'd rather be different is when I'm overwhelmed with all the time passing being unwanted.

I never got a hug or a kiss or a date until I was 23.  I just went through writing out my life hisotry in a quick two page thing, and there were two periods of several years (4-6 years each) where I didn't have a date, or get a hug, or matter to anyone  between 23 and 44.  And I really don't understand it.  When I'm drunk, women hit on me and I've had sex with well over two hundred women.   So it's not like I'm physically repulsive.  Most of my friends are women, and are generally close emotionally, so I am likeable, and maybe loveable in that way, and trustable, and that sort of thing.  I generally am pretty funny, I think. People tell me I'm a good conversationalist.  I'm interested in other people and am pretty nice.  I have a lot of interests and have a lot of interesting experiences.  I basically retired in my thirties, so I'm financially stable enough.  Almost no one has ever seen me yell or get really angry or anything.  I grew up indoctrinated by my Mom's extreme brand of feminism and think I am quite good about not being sexist for the most part.  I don't know, it all just makes me more frantically desperate and confused and certain that there is something SO hideous and monstrous and worthless about me, that it trumps all these positive things about me.  I am so utterly baffled by women.  I feel like I'm just a confused bawling little boy finding himself utterly powerless and baffled why he is so unlovable.  Could it just be that I'm just so dissociative and frozen in terror around women when the possibility of romance seems present?  Hmmm...

Anyhow, that stuff is always going on with me, but I'm putting one foot in front of the other still, and not feeling completely overwhelmed by it, though that comes and goes several times a day.  It just reaches this utterly agonizing need for some affection and mattering to someone and stuff like that...  I really think that the attachment stuff, that annihilation sensation in neglected babies is what's going on.  And then my brian is just fireworks.  Anyhow.  I'm a tired record and should shut up.  I guess I'm still trying to make sense of this stuff.  I've been pretty wound up for the last couple of hours, but know I'll calm down in a while.

Meursault

You are not a tired record and you most certainly should keep talking!

:) :hug: It's just a virtual hug but it's sincere.

About the driving thing.  Seems to me it's kind of messed up, especially seeing as how I killed my Dad in a car accident.  And how traumatic that was.  I don't know, it seems to me that it just shows such utter contempt for the trauma I went through, and the flashbacks and stuff.  I mentioned it literally dozens of times asking her to drive more carefully over several months after he died, but gave up asking.  She just has no empathy I think.  I think she neither understands nor cares.  I've kind of always thought that about her, but I don't know if I'm just seeing things.

Meursault

Meursault - I don't think you're imagining things related to your mother.  I look through the good, bad and so-so drivers I know. The worst is my mother. My husband and I refuse to ride with her, or allow her to drive if transporting our son. It will not happen. She's too scary. I'd rather pay for a cab or pay gas money to a friend than have to depend on my mother to drive me. It's always been that way.

Some folks really just can't or won't change because someone else pointed out something flawed in their behavior. Sanmagic7 stated that once she was shown that it can be scary for the passenger, she changed how she drove. Even without riding with a scarier driver than herself, your mother is being inconsiderate given your specific trauma. How in the world can you heal with EF's, actual flash backs and panic attacks happening every time you must depend on your mother for a ride?!? She is at the least being inconsiderate and at the worst being non-empathetic.

If you are truly and completely stuck depending on her (no cabs easily hired, no friends to accept gas money for transport), the only thing I can recommend, and this sounds dramatic, is to literally blindfold yourself with earbuds in your ears playing the most soothing music you can find. Put them on every time you must sit in the passenger seat. Tell her it's for your mental health. You mean no insult, but this is the best self-protection you could come up with, given her driving. You will still likely be triggered, but it just might be less often and less intense. I don't know. I'm guessing here, wanting to help my online friend.

Be a broken record! Not all healing happens in a straight line! We go forward and fall back and the same issues come up again and again. That's completely normal. Completely! If you have to say it 100 times to finally be able to move forward from it, then say it 100 times. Here. We'll still support you each time.

I hope you find in your heart enough space to allow yourself time. Maybe you are trying too hard, too quickly. I know I do that a lot - it's part of my people-pleasing, 'Everybody must like me' tendency. Please give yourself permission to goof it, to blow it and to still believe that you're worth the effort! I do believe you are.

i echo wife2's sentiments about you being worth your time, patience, and energy.  whenever i try too hard to make something happen, that's when i get frustrated and all ditzed up.  when i take a step back, take a breath, readjust my perspective, and go with the flow, put my thoughts and energy elsewhere is usually when something good happens.  i don't know if that's worked for you.  it's different for all of us.

keep writing, mr. non-broken record.  you may realize something by seeing it in print.  in the meantime, one foot in front of the other.  that's the only way we get anywhere.  big hug.

Quote...it seems to me that it just shows such utter contempt for the trauma I went through, and the flashbacks and stuff. 

It seems this way to me, too. I wouldn't treat a stranger that way, let alone my son! And it wouldn't matter if I agreed with my passenger or not; if I'm giving someone a ride somewhere, I will do whatever I can to make that ride comfortable for the person.

It seems your family - please excuse me for saying this - is incapable of treating you with basic human respect. I don't know if they're mentally ill, or self-centered, or what - but if I were you I would be considering going no-contact.

You deserve to be treated well! In my opinion, you owe nothing to anyone - not even a mother - who treats you so badly. Relationships should be a give-and-take arrangement; if you get nothing but misery, I'd drop them like a hot rock.

Well, I've hid from the world for a couple of days and just said to heck with it, I'm going to pretend I'm taking care of my sick kid.  That woman who told me I'm not marriage material reached out for help to me.  She's all suicidal and drinks a lot every day.  Anyhow, I suggested she come to me to yoga.  Why did I do this?  I don't think it's healthy for me.....Anyhow, Hopefully she doesn't want to go when we're supposed to.

Anyhow, I think I've been badly in a pretty much non-stop emotional flashback state since I cued into it that the woman I was dating was being quite distant.  The last few weeks really seem like a fog.  Extreme reactions and thinking, but only vaguely conscious.  It's been really central for most of my life, but my fear of, and feelings of worthlessness around women have just been completely beyond my ability to contain this last bit.

I think when I decided to risk trusting my therapist and told her the details about growing up a year and a half ago, I didn't really have the tools to calm myself again.  And then her boss messed with the therapeutic relationship, so I made the healthy decision to leave and try the EMDR therapy, but then got back to the therapist I trust and love after she moved on to another clinic.  And then all the legal stuff just exacerbated it all, and was a monster of its own.  And because I DO trust this therapist, and am afraid of losing her again, I think I'm desperately fixating on that big unhealed wound in case she goes away on me again....  Too scared to take my time in case this is my only opportunity to heal from the stuff from when I was a kid.

I was JUST feeling like I had told her the gist of everything.  I think it was our second last session before her boss messed things up that I said "There, I think you know pretty much all my ugliness."  I still haven't gotten it whether she is secretly laughing at me or thinks I deserved it or am making it up, or it's no big deal.  Logically, I know she doesn't, I trust her (and myself) enough to know that, but emotionally I don't have that at all.  There is another thread on here:  http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=5439.0 (http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=5439.0)   The whole revelation thing hasn't happened at all.  Was it really abuse?  Or did I deserve it?  Logically, I know I didn't, and if I imagine someone else in the same situation, I have no problem getting it, but was it with me?  Is it abuse if it happened to me?  What if I'm really that worthless and I deserved it all?  Anyhow, that hasn't clicked with me yet...

I really liked this article:
http://www.kellevision.com/kellevision/2013/01/what-to-do-if-you-were-sexually-molested-as-a-child.html (http://www.kellevision.com/kellevision/2013/01/what-to-do-if-you-were-sexually-molested-as-a-child.html)

I don't know, I think that I've been disintegrating a lot more than I've been able to accept these last few weeks.  The aftermath of the legal stuff was expected, but I guess I never really connected with what it would look like.

So anyhow, I haven't been reading much here recently, but looked around a bunch today.  I think I'm going to start another thread about my stuff, and try to keep my focus on some of the more constructive stuff.  I really need to keep this inner child stuff in my awareness, it's really the only thing that really helps me from being completely self-hating and self-destructive.

I got Peter Walker's book from Amazon last week.  I just started it, but I'm super optimistic about it.  As well, a few months ago I bought "Freedom from your Inner Critic" by Earley and Weiss and lent in to my therapist.  She bought a copy and returned mine last week and we are going to start working with some of that.  She has been gently nudging me with Internal Family Systems stuff, so that is a good fit.  Anyhow, I'm going to start another thread in a few days and try to have it more geared toward the positives and things I can do to feel and get better.   I really feel like I've been in out of control meltdown, and although I'm pretty much guaranteed to be bouncing in and out of that still, I want to try to make things more positive if I can.  Who knows, maybe it will just be more of the same, but I'm going to try....

The little boy is feeling too scared to leave the bedroom or even stand up right now, so the father is going to go downstairs to the kitchen and make him some supper. 

Meursault

What a wonderfully caring father! It's good of him to be taken care of. Good job you!