Messages

there is nothing wrong with walking away... walk away, be safe, be happy

Yes! I've got a postive log on my phone that I add to. It's so easy to brush over positives and concentrate on negatives, but there are a lot of good things if you keep your eyes open. Writing them down got me through some rough patches, for sure.

So, where are we now then?

Big changes afoot here. All good I think, but naturally, a little more dicey if c-ptsd is in the picture.

Firstly, work going through a transition as we go though a buy-out. It's good, more cash, more security and interesting to boot, but it will perhaps take energy, and if there is one thing I've learned about energy and C-PTSD, it's that you have to manage it, budget for it as if it were money. Two years more, then I retire. That's the plan.

Then there's a house move, quite a long way away to a sleepy town where we can work remotly. Lovely house but a fixer-upper. More energy.

Money is finally under control after a LONG down cycle. Significant.

An old friend finally came up good and started communicating. Seems we both have ADHD. Mixed feelings here as he clearly wants my understanding because he needs it, but... well... where was understanding for me, ya know? It's a tough one to shake, the feeling of weariness where friendship should be. But I'm better just pushing past that and welcoming him back in. If I can.

Then there's my coldness in my relationship, some from me, some from my partner. Both of us want it to drift away but there's a bit of manoeuvring. Clearly there are some seismic life changes incoming which will give us the excuse we need to drop our various foibles. I feel like I'm ready, I just have to cross t's and dot i's and all that. Money a big part of that, huge. I was massively exploited financially in the past, used by the four closest people in my life and it cost me everything. I have nothing to show for a decade and a half of mindboggling effort. It cuts deep. I have to trust again.

For me, it's all about time really, I need time away from work, quiet healing time. I need to think through the last chapters of a long story. It's hard when I'm so swamped with work. I'm also terrible and resting. Surviving c-ptsd and it's attendant financial chaos has been an epic, and I'm terrified of easing my foot off the pedal. But I'm close to safety now. All I want is a good few years with my creativity front and centre. My books are doing really well, but that's on a very small allocation of available time. If I break through in the next couple of years then I feel I've achieved my ambitions. I just wanna write, and paint. It's who I am. I could get very nagry at how my potential has been blunted all these years but that's gonna waste my energy. At 61, there's no point. I need to press on, start living and clean up the last  worries in my head.

in truth, some of it was me. I wasnt myself.

But given that we ourselves have now arrived at a different station on our journey, it is appropriate to find new people that match our new paradigms. The people I know now are better in all honesty, because they appreciate the 'me' with all the life experiences and realism. They are not cynical, broken or bitter, they are good people. Better people.

'It's almost a month since you wrote this post - can I ask how you are doing now? '

Not bad at all, thanks Kizzie. I seem to have these moments every so often, but they are very much about burning off the stubble now. I have them, then the stubble is gone, and I move onwards. Less pain, but sharper when it arrives. I think it's a necessary process so I'm not worried.

Realising there was ADHD in the mix has been huge. But with it has come some very difficult realisations about why I couldn't get fully back on the horse, why I was so hung up over my friends in particular and why I was finding life still difficult, especially in regard to relationships.

Had I known the relationship between social awkwardness, impulsivity and adhd I could have changed my life totally. Instead, I tried to live my life as another person, jamming my round plug in a square hole to appease the unfeeling, unrealistic expectations of protestant work ethic. Life could have been very different.

My family, a mess from one end to the other, didn't understand anything of course, tho they fancied themselves a bit smart in the psychology department. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing should have been my family motto. I should translate it into latin. My brother, a bully, learned all he could about weaknesses in others, and was actually pretty smart, in a dark, dark way. Like many narcissists, he is a genius at something utterly pointless, namely the manipulation of others to hide their own massive flaws.

My friends, not gonna call them that much longer, fancied themselves as rather alternative, but in retrospect, once you looked beneath the alt-fashion accessories and punk hair they were despairingly old school, victorian attitudes to work, mental health and compassion lurking, waiting for adulthood to come out.

I dunno, somehow you think that the charecters in your life are going to shine in your crisis moment. They didn't. They either caused it, enabled it, supercharged it or just backed off and let me hang.

Normally when I post I try to gather my thoughts and push towards a positive, informed reflection, but right now I'm seething. I suspect I'm finally nearing the point where some of the 'friendships' I've been holding out for have reached the point where I deep down accept they were toxic, or useless. Who wants to admit that, eh? It's tough. I'm dumping a lifetime of expectation, hanging on for something meaningful from people I only really hung out pleasurably for what... 3 years? People I know now don't give me this pain. I don't fear the contact I crave from new people, but my old friends, it's like juggling grenades.

I simply do not like how they perceive me. I cannot stand the whole 'written off' vibe that came with C-PTSD. How can you see people as friends if they take a victim blaming stance with you? Man, I'm angry about this. I was sick. I was really sick. And I was sick alone, out there on my own after wasting 6 years on people who were using me financially and emotionally. The good news is that knowing the ADHD is there means I'm not wasting my energy fighting one thing when it is actually another. I think this may turn out to have been a big issue. It's resulted in a big drop in hypervigillance for sure, but it does feel a bit off seeing yourself with a condition that is further mockable. It could turn into yet another rabbit hole if I'm not careful, so I'm backing off watching the vids and reading the books on this one. I'm not going to get a diagnosis, not at 1500 quid for a multi choice questionaire I'm not. Nor will I seek medication. I am however, going to act on the dietry side off things because I think I was making it worse. Certainly I was prone to self medication, not just with red wine, but also with caffiene and sugar. That is an obvious own goal now and has to go.

But it's all another hill to climb right now. I'm tired. I just released a new novel, and top of that there's marriage plans, a very troubled step daughter and a job that's going through a grinding phase.

It's a lot. I've been through a lot.

It's an important point actually. The trauma was massive for us. The origins of that trauma were also massive. C-PTSD is of course massive, a trauma creating trauma all of it's own, because the symptoms can be so alarming and demoralising. Relationships become shattered, complex, frightening, even the good ones. We've all been through so much... but hey... look.. we are still here. Isn't that something? And for better or worse, we've learned about psychology, not via text books and online courses, but from the bottom up. We've been locked in a cell with language we've had to learn. Our survival is amazing really, not because we are amazing, but because had no choice. There are huge strengths to that ultimately. Hypervigilance is grim, but its the growing pains of a very deep understanding of what we will need to do next.

No matter how bad it feels, and boy do we know how bad that actually can be, remember... this is your life. What is wrong now, didn't come from you. But you do need to walk away from that which hurts you. Which continues to hurt you. It is your right. You owe nothing to people who harm you by word or deed. Nothing. People need to earn loyalty, respect and love. It is not love if is stolen.

I am angry today, but I need to be really. The cavalry I've been waiting for are not coming. I am the cavalry. I am my own first responder, my own psychologist, my own medication, my own mentor. I know the answers, I've known them for years, I just need to act on them.

So.... with recovery fully underway, I felt it was time to pop the question to my partner. We've been together 5 years and she's been through a lot with me. I had to feel the hyperviglance was on the way out before I felt I could do it, separating real and imagined issues has been HARD. She's not the most subtle of people but she never really means anything in a serious way, certainly not like the people who gave me C-PTSD. So, on holiday in France, I proposed. Because I am so handsome, witty and charming with the sort of looks Colin Firth would die for, naturally the foolish woman said yes, despite my obvious self delusion.

So far so good. Her kids are happy, she's happy, I'm... well you know, mildly hypervigillant.

Then, the planning kicks in.

I wasn't really expecting it. Straight off, the gaping hole in my family and friends is horribly apparent. My brother wiped out my family. He wiped out his own family. Extended family were propagandised so much that they backed off not just from me, but from Dr Goebel's himself meaning that I wouldn't even know my in country relatives if they were standing a yard away. Friends, well there's an issue there too. Many of those were shared with my narcicistic sibling too and a source of condescension, so they are out and then there's those with wives who have made the assumption that the death of my ex was down to me, and not down to the wine and vodka that she drank herself to death with.

Maybe some I exagerate, maybe some is real... sadly too real, but all this adds up to a very small wedding. In fact, no wedding at all. My partner was a divorcee, and doesn't want a big wedding anyway, but we are now trying to negotiate a path to not having anyone at the registry office but us.

Minefield, a minefield that I find very triggering. The whole 4 dimensional chess game of appeasing people who wouldn't give a rat's behind about anything selfish they may do, but who will make a right song and dance about what WE do if it doesn't suit them. Been there before... oh boy have I been there before.

We've explained it to the kids, and they get it, but really it should be just the four of us. It will likely be just us.

I HATE these dynamics. I hate how people use duty and 'blood' as an excuse to manipulate, and to manipulate even when they are not there and don't know what is happening anyway. My own family were, and are, master manipulators, trapping all around them into complex, futile dances about power, entrapment and exploitation. A day that should be about family, can't be about family, because family = TROUBLE.

So, yeah, all that came up.

A lot of anger at the past, frustration in the present and that old feeling of overload as you try to think your way through the mire.

It's come at an odd time for me. I've been sleeping badly, maybe in part because I'm just finishing and releasing a novel. It's been very intense getting it wrapped and I've had to think myself silly for months. Payback will be great, but yeah... exhausted. Work has entered one of its occasional grinding periods with a bad mix of repetition and stats measuring of our performance. It's a lot. One of the daughters is also in perpetual ill health and that's a strain on us all. sigh... life innit?

Lastly, processing the implications of my ADHD component is another biggie. Every day it's making more sense, jigsaw pieces falling into place. From the nursery onwards it brought a lot of abuse on to me. In adulthood it supercharged my trauma responses and blunted my faculties when I most needed them... when I needed them to survive. I wish I'd understood these things way back, but those days, everything was your fault. My old friends still carry these attitudes and their ill-informed condescension has been very bruising. Almost fatal.

So, yeah, good old C-PTSD. Each solution gives you a new problem. It will settle, because nothing lasts really. But wisdom builds. Surviving C-PTSD is a master's degree, a learning curve of epic proportions. You are obliged to learn on the job, a job you didn't even apply for, let alone... want. But here we are.

So yeah.... engaged.

funny, but after all these years, I can't spell narcicist. Narcsicist, Narcocyst.... whatever. tsk

sent!

Thanks all. It's good to be sharing these things again, and I think its especially important to share the recovery and not just the pain. There is undoubtedly a desire to move on and forget as far as possible, but there is a danger than no one  will come back to describe the recovery to those who wonder if it is even possible.

It is possible.

Hang in there and inform yourselves of everything - the science, the case studies and the hacks. Question those voices in your head that pull you down, and work out WHO's voice they are speaking in. Once you know who is responsible, then you can begin ridding yourself of their influence.

It's your life!

It's such a simple line, but it's pivotal. Whether your abuser(s) are still here or long gone, they have no right to be in your self confidence, pulling the levers. Get them out, and keep them out. Then live the life you should always have been living.

There are some terrible people in this world, keep them out of yours.

Waking up early a lot at the moment. So... mind dump.

Thinking a lot about why my head was clearing so much, and specifically letting go of the painful connections around people who were supposed to be there for me... but weren't.

Silence is a terrible thing in friendships. Outright criticism is far easier to process, but silence is a major blow when you are in a traumatic crisis. I was hung up on this a LONG time. Small words of understanding from people with whom you have history are worth gold at such times, but tho I would, and have, offered such support to others when it came to my time in the microwave, there was nothing.

So... some questions.

Firstly... there may have been more, but I wasn't hearing it.
Maybe... worth asking myself that. There WAS some of that, but crucially, what succour came my way did NOT come from family or 'close' friends. Thats the critical point. It came from relative newcomers in my life. Some of it came from people who were entirely new in my life. So, no... it wasn't about not hearing it. It just wasn't coming from the people from whom it would have had the most value.

There was something about the people I'd chosen as friends.
This has been a bitter pill I think. My oldest friends came from a very specific group. We'd been in bands together from about 16, all on that wave of angry punk attitude. We were cynical, judgemental and dismissive. Well, I wasn't, but they undoubtedly were. This was the 1970s, and attitudes to mental health went about as far as listening to joy division. If you had an issue, it was invariably 'your fault'. Looking back I'm a tad appalled by how not compassionate their attitudes are. The good people in my life now are very different. The takeaway is that my friends were a bit... off. Accepting that is tough. But I think that's part of my new growth really. I'm not going to wait on validation from people incapable of offering it. They almost all joined in on the narrative my abusive sibling was building on me too, which I find unforgivable. I just don't need that, or them, in my life... in my mind anymore. No big moment, I'm just gonna stop waiting on the clifftop with a lantern for them.

Who matters?
The people that matter are the ones you can trust. You don't have to trust them to do that much; in fact, the biggest thing really is understanding. The great paradox is that the more someone understands you, the less you need to tell them. People who don't have any intention of understanding you, make you batter your head mothlike against their judgement as you try pointlessly to explain your fear, your concerns and your needs. A good friend just... knows. Looking back, I wasted my time badly on the former and didn't notice the latter. Madness really.

The trauma club.
I have one or two friends now who have also had trauma. I think that's very important. We need that grounding effect that a fellow traveller can bring. C-PTSD is a monster; it is probably impossible to explain to anyone who hasn't had it, really, no matter how much they pin back their ears. Even as I recover, some of the intensity of emotional pain it gave me becomes impossible to recall. I want to move away and never feel that again... ever. I want to forget. It's not translatable even to me now, so how can anyone else get that? That one friend who is on the same path is gold. Cherish them.

Make new friends.
It's tough starting again. But you can, and you should... get out there. Make sure you've learned your lessons tho. Narcissists will look for you if you've met them before, so filter like crazy and look for the big hearts, the ones with perspective and those with humility.

The past doesn't have to define the future.

Hi all. Couldn't log in as my old JamesG.1 self so here I am in a new hat.

Been a long time since I posted. Lots of things have been and gone which are worth relating from a C-PTSD owner's manual point of view.

Last time I was in here I was dealing with a period of depression. C-PTSD symptoms were lessening but were stubbornly hanging on in these pretty horrible dips. Usually I'm pretty good at rooting out causes and sources for these things but I was really struggling to focus on these enough to hunt them down. What was evident, was that I was not creating, and that was huge for me. I'm a writer, and I've hung on to that all the way through the trauma and post trauma years. It's kept me going, frankly. I feel it's pretty much the only thing I really brought out with me. But, lockdown, homelife and a full time job were just wiping out any chance I had of finishing my third book. The frustration was awful. Because the first two had done so well, I felt like I had this open goal, but life had tied my shoelaces together.

So... eventually, I decided to hunt out EMDR. I looked into getting this through the NHS, but waiting lists were just horrendous and when I did see someone, they decided I didn't merit it. In hindsight, I may have shot myself in the foot. I talked up my recovery,and didn't sell my ongoing C-PTSD. Result... no EMDR. Wasn't happy. Neither was my GP. My hypervigilance just wasn't going. It was making me utterly worn out and she could see I wasn't getting anywhere. In frustration, I went private. Not cheap. 150 quid a session but... wow. I had four sessions, only two of which were actual EMDR and the results were mindboggling. Rather than deal with the whole story, we talked about my issues with my darling sibling, a narcissistic bully, and once we'd found the earliest memories of that psychological abuse, away we went.

Weirdest thing... it triggred this whole cascade of reprosessing. Long embedded memories were lifted out, reappraised and then put to bed. I found myself thinking through my entire history in a line, changing these early events as I saw them again as an adult and then feeling the whole of my story shifting. One way of describing it is like something nudging the back of a long train, and then that wave of energy bumping all the way through til the engine. It mostly happened quite deep in the subconscious, so I'd wake up knowing it had been happening, but suddenly unable to know what it was I was remembering and processing. Another metaphor... it was like moving files from a computer onto an external hardrive, out of the active part of your PC to a storage area, from RAM memory to something less active. Often tho, I'd wake feeling like I'd been in a 12 hour chess game, my head just wiped out with the effort. I'd go into work like a zombie. I found it really hard being around people at home, REALLY hard.

Anyhooo... I didn't have the funds to do more than 4 sessions, but it seemed enough to trigger about four months of this before the effect seemed to catch up with the more recent horrors. It was then very clear to me how that vile psychological abuse I'd had since I was a tiny wee lad had shaped me. It was now very evident how dysfunctional and hands off my parents had been and how they'd let my brother run unchecked. At no point could I fix a moment where he'd been pulled up. I'd been running this lie to myself that they'd been overwhelmed by my brother as well but in truth, they'd missed every chance they'd had to prevent what came later. His ultimate abusive patterns started there. Once I'd got all that cleared in my head, I could see that the lack of intervention in this very sophisticated psycholgical abuse set a pattern for my life. Somehow, I thought I deserved this kind of treatment, that the reason I was a target came from me, an effect that is very common I think in sibling abuse.

Then came the next revelation. Our youngest here had just come back from college and after a very short period back in the nest, was exhibiting very obvious ADHD traits. Being hypervigilant, the effect of the sound and the jabbering nonsense in a very small house was tough, not gonna lie. But, we packed her off to a private chap to have her checked out. Well she aced that, and we had a diagnosis, right there. Then the penny dropped. The questions asked were uncomfortably accurate for me. Suddenly I could see that the positive and negative effects of having ADHD were exactly what I was bullied over. My cognitive abilities were and are, very mixed. My maths and problem solving can be poor to non existant, but my creative ability has always been way up there. I can paint, act, write, sing, make music... the whole thing, but I can't hold a date in my head for love nor money. My focus and concentration is diabolical, unless I enjoy doing something, it's like trying to thread a wet noodle through a needle. Penny after penny dropped. The more I observed her, the more obvious it got. I'd been ashamed, made to feel ashamed, bullied for traits I simply had no understanding of. School was a nightmare. Work was awful, I got good at avoidance tactics and I dodged the hard stuff. I negelcted my own needs to pacify others. I accepted abuse from countless narcs socially and professionally because it was normal for me.

I escaped my brother, I thought, and eventually made a pretty good life for myself, but then he came back in on the back of my mother's ill health and the pressure on me ramped up. As the pressure mounted, my ADHD traits re emerged. As life wanted more from me, I could do less. My head went to pieces. Amazingly, I held it together until finally, I walked away from them all, including my alcoholic partner and then... wham... C-PTSD.

The thing is, that the C-PTSD covered the ADHD. I was so certain that everything I was experiencing could be down to that. It gave a very wrong picture and muddied my recovery. Now that I can see the ADHD, I can see why I was so primed for such a severe reaction. I've read reports that say ADHD people are anything up to 9 times more likely to develop PTSD after trauma. Relational trauma over decades from everyone around you is especially tough on people who find personal management hard anyway. Attitudes of my generation to theses kinds of neurodiversity were shockingly bad... victim shaming, mockery, intolerance and condescension. Well I had all of that.

Well, that and the EMDR had a massive impact on me. I could now genuinly start showing myself compassion. I didn't crave the validation of my frankly negligent friends anymore. That all melted away. I just stopped fighting, I stopped hiding who I am.

So a massive jump...

But wait, there's more.

I'm no longer on meds of any kind, but I was still getting constant anxiety.. dear old hypervigilance, especially at home. Stress hormones just don't wanna go. Although I'd made major breakthroughs, I was still being triggered. I have grown totally used to it. So anyway, I'm not big on supplements, I've never liked the idea of pill popping a lot of frankly ineffectual woo woo plants and compounds. But... the whole lion's mane mushroom thing which is huge online right now came under my nose and eventually I just thought why not? I checked out reactions and side effects and could find nothing to indicate a risk and gave them a go.

Well, effects have been remarkable. Cortisol just left the building.

Maybe it's a placebo, maybe other factors explain it, but I have to say that the last of my symptoms just went away. Everything changed. Not one of the many anti-deppressants I've taken did me any good, and coming off them was just horrible. These just give a sense of normality that is quite unique. This is all over the counter stuff, harmless, benign health shop product with next to no interactions. Bizarre. I can't find anything online that says otherwise too, which is something. Try looking up an SSRI and it's nothing but horror stories. Mirtazapine made me so hungry, I ate my own bodyweight in bread every night. They certainly do something.

At any rate, these three things have seemingly changed everything for me. I do genuinly feel like I'm back into my own life again. Awful stuff happened, tragedies, crimes, abuses and just... stuff, but somehow they're just not there beside me when I wake anymore. I'm much easier to be around, less effected by others and a lot more in control of my emotions. I was just a different kid, for better or worse, and I was a sitting duck for what happened. I get it all now. Suddenly it's just a story. It's not brilliant, but it's not my future. My future is still out there. MY new book is about to launch, I'm starting to enjoy my relationship properly and well... it's just life. Other people hurt me, I don't have to do that to myself anymore.

It's my life again.