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Welcome Andyman

Well, that's no small amount of life you are describing there, dreadful and totally beyond disgusting to have put you through that. The good news is that you are reaching out and beginning the process of recovery by making yourself heard. You are doing the right thing to begin this tough and brave journey, but you are not alone, and the symptoms you are feeling have been looked at and people have done much work to find ways of recovery for you. Start by giving yourself the freedom to feel things free of shame or guilt, none of it was your fault and what you feel now is a natural response to the trauma. NATURAL. That's the mantra really, Not your fault, a natural response, not alone. Tell your story in here as much as you need to, we understand and we are on your side. All power to you hombre.

Hi David, welcome to the team.
My advice in the short term is to make understanding the mechanisms of your condition a priority, knowledge is power in this game. With me, it's been very helpful to get to grips with the fact that the experiences are not unique, people do beat them and there has been much work done on understanding how they work. A good place to start is the Spartan life coach on you tube, his explanations are very much everyman and are quite an eye opener. Then counselling if you can find the right person for you. It certainly sounds like you are tumbling a fair bit, typical for these things. Give yourself permission to roll with it a little, it's really not suprising that you've been feeling overwhelmed by your experiences. Permission to have a break from the fighting is hereby given. Re the computer game, that rings bells for me, I think I played the same one a lot, because it gave me a sense of control over things knowing how that worked when life around me was a game I had no control of with no undo button. Re drugs, well there is nothing good to be gained from smothering symptoms with any substance, invariably you are just adding more fuel to the fire. Why not see if you can find something healthier as a defence, hard I know, I am the same with alcohol. Wait til the moment is right and try swimming or walking, anything that turns things physical. You are still a very young man, chappie, plenty of time to get this sorted.

so, CPTSD entering a new phase. All good but hard work. I'm in to a new period. The analogy is very much a boil - it's looking pretty angry but it's a good sign, it's gonna look a whole lot worse before it pops.

Harder to explain in many ways but I'm up against the deeper issues and learning to unpick some of the core things that got me here. Learning to stop and rest is like picking up spiders, I have been deep programmed to push and push and push - not for my benefit, but because the people around me have been driven by these insane guilts and image based needs to appear busy, important or beyond reproach. This is a new thing for me, I didn't see that til recently but it's clear to me now that the people around me all my life have been driven by some very warped motivations. It manifested itself in all sorts of odd ways in a host of people I know - the need to appear something and to display visible suffering while you did it, is something they all have in common. I used to think I was the odd one out because I was more carefree about that and I was attacked for it endlessly, especially by my brother, but it was very much a thing of my circle and I now see how much I didn't fit with it. It's called Protestant work ethic

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-protestant-work-ethic-heaven-knows-im-miserable-now-8563139.html

Brother took this attitude to extremes and then failed spectacularly, which is a bit like Superman falling off a roof and breaking his foot repeatedly for 55 years. My business partner strives forever to do extra homework and get a better exam result than an A; baffled that the world is not clapping him for his effort like they do Kin Jung Un. Mum, darling darling mum, was of course, a saint, a holiness factory loved by everyone who met her, at least that's what it says on the wikipedia entry she hoped I'd write for her because she was too lazy to do it herself. My ex was tortured by her own secondhand motivations, the by product of her status-mad mother, a woman who drove herself and her children along with the sort of bad atmospheres you can use to take barnacles off a battleship. All of them were labouring under these dreadful silly clouds and then reflecting it back at everyone around them as if it was something wonderful to be shared - the manual for a perfect life. But it isn't. It's a recipe for self-loathing, unhappiness and a life of endless disappointment. Do all the right things and surely, life will follow.?

Well... no.

No wonder I was attacked, I was confounding their logic, defying the gravity that they think makes them grounded but which superglues them to the baggage carousel at the worst provincial airport on earth. But there I was, joking and laughing; making light of things to keep buoyant, finding ways around the things that blocked me and improvising my way along with a spring in my step. HERETIC! Hadn't I read the memo? You have to suffer for your art, along with suffering for your dinner, your health, your peace of mind and your misplaced cool. You have to suffer when you cook, you read, you learn and you play. You need to display abject misery and shame while you exercise, have sex, watch a movie and wash. Sackcloth and ashes, forever battling through a seige that was lifted before it had ever begun, a need to appear heroic to a world that is not even slightly interested in their intellectual austerity. No wonder I horrified them. And not just when I was trying to just live my life in "normal" times, then I had to go and fry their duty obsessed minds by out performing them at their own game after Mum had her stroke. I called their bluff. "Goodness me, the trivial clown is catching the baby, and catching it well, does not compute." So, they attacked. They threw more and more responsibility at me to make me crack – but I didn't crack, I just kept going. But once they'd failed to make me buckle, they began to attack my coping mechanisms, my humour, my enthusiasm, my tolerance and the strain began to really hit home. But I held on and then, when it was all over.... then I cracked.

I've leaned so much about all this recently, In my new life there has been a trend towards people who have fought back against this conditioning, and it's good, but for me it's been so amorphous and vague. My four horsemen were a cocktail rather than a single hit of hemlock, a complex blend of four messed up puppies making a single epiphany harder. But the key to it now is that I don't ultimately need to understand them, either as a group or individually, I now need to see myself as the only issue that needs consideration. It's how I feel and how I live that matters now. They lose relevance every day.

But this is all hard fought for, I'm crying in my sleep a lot right now. I'm clearly starting to vent the deep held stuff. The noticeable effect is that the huge part of my head that was taken up with this garbage is starting to empty, but it leaves an odd void behind it and I find it quite alarming. It's like suddenly having no legs to run with or having an arm in a sling and feeling you need to be juggling. It creates an odd see-saw effect where I relax, then panic, relax panic relax panic..... I'm an agoraphobic in a greenhouse.

Docs and counsellors and friends are all screaming at me to rest and recuperate, and I'm finally listening. But it's so odd. After all that concerted effort and mental strain I just stop? Oh sure.... er... how? But I've got some really good peeps building up now, proper supporters who seem to feel I'm worth it. My older friends, yeah well... let's not go there.

Writing and its promotion is having to take a bit of a back seat as part of all this, I was pushing there too, the thing now is to say, it's ok, it's not going anywhere, recover. My plan now is to deliberately retreat into the welfare bubble, keep a small amount of work ticking over and write as part of my recovery as well as a long term strategy. Time to mellow.

New happier music
Healthy food
Exercise
Art
Fun
Life

tis time

it's a good point, is it possible to have them at the base of each page?

Feel free to message me if you want more pointers on how to get started, I was pleasantly suprised by how much easier it is  than the hype would have you believe. Trick I find is that you just break it up and make it all bite sized. There are a lot of tools out there to help you now too, things like Grammarly. Plus it's a really cheap hobby, and you get to sell a few along the way. I may be over egging this, but I think that that the sensitivity of the likes of us in here is a sign of the stuff you need to write, you have to be bright enough to feel this kind of pain you know? The key part is structure, get that right and the rest follows. And forget perfectionism at the start, it's evil, whack it out fast and furiously and ignore the errors, that can all be tidied up later, what you say means more than how perfect you write it at the start. Perfectionism is the kryptonite, run away!

re novels, start modestly and dabble, it's incredible therapy but I'd strongly suggest not writing about your experiences per se. Do it for fun, and do it for you, switch off the inner and outer critics and just have a laugh with it. There is a great book called "How not to write a novel" that is hugely entertaining and informative. One curious effect of the C-PTSD is that having had so many conversations with my assorted protagonists, I found I could write dialogue really well, something a lot of novelists find hard. An odd benefit! Give it a go.

that we are!

we all just have to accept the healing process don't we? I find the thing hugely frustrating but if you struggle you drag it out.

I did just finish a novel tho!

thanks Candid, I'm getting there. Dissociation is the killer now, man does that slow you down.

The fact  that you see it Sarah is an indicator that you are getting yourself into a position of recovery and closure. Its frustratingly slow sometimes but you'll get there. Abnormal behaviour is just that, NOT NORMAL. You are better than that, but like so many of us in here, you have to isolate yourself to be around people, you have to cut off the poisoned branches. It will get there in the end, it's a time issue. For me, the biggest tool to use for recovery has been the realisation that my response, all of it, the deppression, the shock, the fear, the loss of innocence and trsut, its ALL NORMAL. What created it isn't normal, but the feelings you have are your mind's way of working it through. Trust yourself, you are a good person who has faced things you should not have faced. We all understand that in here, in the larger world, if people don't get you, then don't bother with them, lean on those who understand and build a new life.

I wrote this out as an exercise and thought I'd post. Bit long so run now!

I'm 50. The issues probably start young.

My parents were both fine but my brother wasn't. He has a narcissistic personality disorder (I know now) which meant some fairly heavy psychological abuse when we were kids, something I didn't think was anything other than normal at the time. Looking back it is clear that it shaped me pretty comprehensively, giving me noticeable co-dependant traits.

My parents had huge issues with him, especially my father. Dad was ill, he'd had 2 heart attacks and my brother kept up a wave of psychological abuse at him until he left home, or rather dad threw him out after a particularly bad attack on my mother. Mom was badly co-dependant with my brother, something that was to prove significant later.

Dad died aged 55 in the late 80s, just about the time we'd both left college. My brother and I shared a lot of common friends and this became a bit of a playground for my brother once things started getting difficult for him with his own work. He had very lofty ideas about what he could do and when these invariably failed, he'd take shots at me, usually through these mutual friends. I couldn't make any sense of these. Some were pretty extreme, for instance I was once assaulted coming back from a friends house one night. I wasn't badly hurt but I was very badly shaken and my brother decided there was mileage in informing everyone I'd made it up. He also told everyone that I'd behaved badly at my father's funeral, something that had no foundation whatsoever, tho he had been pretty rough on mom during the event himself. Transference I think it's called. There was a lot of this stuff and I think it must have shot my confidence to pieces because it made me very awkward around people that shared a connection. This ultimately led to me turning away from my oldest friends because some were starting to act on my brother's lobbying and I found that very difficult to weather.

This led to the first long term estrangement, about 8 years. I went to live in another city until I split with my long-term partner and much against my better judgment, got in touch. I should point out at this point that my brother and his wife had moved in with mom. This 'temporary' set up lasted 12 years during which my brother worked little, blocked me from the house and was hugely abusive in his attitude to my mom. He treated her very badly, refusing to eat in the same room, filtering money from her and deliberately running her down to her face on a daily basis. Mom did little if anything to defend herself, concentrating on the granddaughter they had with them. When she did come close to putting her foot down, she was told that if she asked them to leave, she would never see her grand daughter again. Mom glossed over this stuff but it was clear that she was being badly run into the ground. Over the 12 years, considering she'd been newly widowed at the start, she lost all her confidence and became a willing conduit for my brother's attacks on me. Because I was nice to her she tended to see that as an invitation to lobby me to behave in the same co-dependant way and I had to get pretty short with her to insist that this would not happen. This became more important after my split when my brother went to some trouble to attack me through some people I'd known in the city where I'd been living. It had been a difficult year following this split and I dropped my guard, getting entangled with a few rather complex people. Stupidly I introduced them and sure enough, once he was certain it would have maximum effect, he used it. This came via a work connection I gave him in this city (he has huge issues getting his own work, not great in the self employed) and I asked him to please not get in touch with any of the people I new there while the thing was in progress. Sure enough, no sooner had he got there than he did just that and phoned me to taunt me with it. I was incredulous at this because the way it had happened made it pretty clear he'd planned it in some detail beforehand and the way he told me was downright psychotic. I was stunned by this. Up to this point I'd just tried to pass it all off as a difference in character but it was clear from this point that he was more than just different. That was just too much for me and I dropped him like a stone. My intention was to keep him as far away as possible.

So, I ended up with my last girlfriend, a very smart woman and we were pretty happy. Mom came to visit but I wouldn't go anywhere near her home, where they all lived. Thankfully my brother finally moved out and Mom had the house back. However, she was very damaged and she was not good on her own. She had few friends left and once she stopped teaching, her life's passion, she went into bit of a decline. My brother's marriage then started to hit the rocks.

Mom was now 75. Very reluctantly I went to her 75th birthday party and established contact, this was mainly because I felt strong enough in my own life to handle it but also because there was now a growing danger that my brother could move back, sans wife. Then sure enough, he did. This had been my nightmare scenario, I knew he'd fleece mom on every occasion and he'd be as abusive as ever, if not worse. Sure enough, he arrived and put huge strain on mom and I, because I had no choice, went down to make my presence felt. He was prowling around aggressively, ignoring mom's attempts to support him and acting very oddly. The manner of his wife's infidelity came out rather spectacularly because the other guy's wife had hacked his email and she ended up meeting Brother to pass the entire folder of material to Brother as an act of revenge. Needless to say, there was a heap of embarrassing and lewd stuff in that collection, stuff my mother would have been better off not seeing. Brother showed her the lot.

Mom has a stroke.

Now, girlfriend and I had been pretty happy up to this point. She was not the most warm of people but in her way she was very sweet. But she liked her wine, had a mother who'd bullied her pretty severely as a child and there were cracks in her usually very logical self. She was stubborn and self determined and I think that would never have cracked if the following events hadn't happened. I also am self-employed, very intensive work and another component in what came next.

Mom's stroke made it pretty clear that she was not going to be able to live alone. Needless to say, Brother had no intention of being her support despite having taken so much from her in the past and the only viable option was for mom to come to be near me and my girlfriend. With his eye on mom's assets, Brother pressured mom about her living with girlfriend and this began to cause lots of issues. At one point mom sent a letter to girlfriend asking her to convert the ground floor into a granny flat, a rather expansive plan that she'd clearly been told to write. Girlfriend went crazy and felt very under siege. It was her house, we never broke from that line and I was happy with that arrangement. This threw all this into uproar because girlfriend felt pressured and I think it also dug up all her issues with her own mother who'd only died a few years earlier. Things came to a head when Mom finally sold the house, a long drawn out affair that my brother had dragged out. It should be noted here that my brother was now in a relationship with his ex wife's lover's ex wife and was going to move in with her and her two children. I'll let that  one sink in! He made it pretty clear he didn't want her kids there and dragged the sale out, I think, so that he could wait until this woman edged them out at his urging. Ugly stuff and extremely unfair on all the kids involved. They have little in common but revenge. He refuse point blank to do any cosmetic repairs to the house, kept his old sick dog there which made it smell and blocked Mom and I from getting in any DIY to fix it up. The price dropped by 40k before it sold. I say sold, we emptied it and had mom ready to go direct into sheltered accommodation near us when the damn sale fell through. So... now I have a sick, depressed and bitter old lady leaving her home town, her house of 25 years and nowhere to put her but our house. This was an instant battleground of course. Brother poured on the guilt tripping at me and girlfriend, Mom picked it up and ran with it and girlfriend went into full defensive posture. Her reaction, I realize now, was to drink. I was slap in the middle. The stress was unreal. I just went into a sort of dazed comedy routine where I appeared outwardly calm but was really suffering inside. I was instantly isolated. Meanwhile I am trying to hold down my work. My own drinking increased, no surprise there.

By an absolute fluke, next to our house, a ground floor flat popped up to rent. Literally next door. I was on it like a shot. Now it was a question of riding it out until the house sold and a new flat came up for mom in sheltered accommodation. This took 6 months. This lost Mom's estate another 6k, and then another 10k off the house price to ensure a quick sale. Oh, and mom slung brother at least another 10k during this period. To prevent more losses, and as Mom finally went into sheltered housing, I put my foot down and insisted I had power of attorney. This caused yet another round of battles, but there was just no choice, if Mom lost her last reserves and went into a more intensive care situation, she'd have nothing to play with and you can be certain that Brother would have not had a bean. I should also point out by this time I had given him contacts to do his own work; to the tune of 50K, work I should have been doing I might add.

I was now jammed in a bad corner. Girlfriend was becoming more and more awkward with me and pushing me to be harder on mom. It was unrealistic because Mom was now my responsibility and post stroke was suffering badly from depression. Much of this had been stoked up by my brother and he was painting girlfriend as the wicked witch over not having mom in the house, despite the fact that on practical terms, it just wouldn't have been feasible having too many stairs, etc. Neither mom or Brother cared about the practicalities, it was all fairly basic emotional stuff and girlfriend made an easy target. Mom was very hard work, I had to take her everywhere, including counseling, dentists, physio and a wealth of other things. She was very lazy about her own things and yet resisted help whenever it was suggested. I now think that this is clear co-dependant behavior, I feel she was robbed of her confidence and pride and she had just given up. Still it fell on me very heavily. The counseling, through the NHS, ran to 8 sessions and around the 7th the counselor asked me to come in. I think she was keen to see if I was the same as my brother. It was interesting to say the least. She quickly realized that I was not just ok, but I was doing a huge amount to settle things down and she somewhat rounded on my mom about her ongoing campaign to force me into contact with him. The big thing though was her fixing my brother as having a narcissistic personality disorder.

Now I was aware of the term but I've tended to shy away from psychology as a subject. I'd always been told it was psychobabble but once I got home and dig some digging, everything fell into place. The list of traits is a perfect match. Uncannily so. At this point I finally realized what I'd been up against all these years and it took off a whole bunch of pressure I'd been laboring under. I mean there's just no defeating or reconciliation to be had is there? Still, Mom, despite a promising start, did not put two and two together. All this did was make her feel more sorry for the cuckoo and it became an ongoing narrative that 'poor Brother' was a misunderstood innocent who needed my help. I just couldn't get her to stop this litany and it meant that I had it every time I saw her. Nothing I did for her seemed to count. I'd see her at least once a day on top of my schedules and yet it was hardly recognized. She'd then tell Brother that I never saw her which naturally got broadcast to the world as a fact.

And of course, meanwhile I'm getting estranged at home. After a year of this Girlfriend began to act strangely. First hair loss, then insomnia and after a while patches of stumbling, balance etc. And she wasn't eating. Naturally I tried to get her to a doctor but she resisted fiercely. It got worse. She's from a medical family and she would do anything to avoid a doctor and I got nowhere. It got pretty bad. I was certain it was something to do with her endocrine system and ended up spending huge amounts of time googling symptoms trying to diagnose her so I could convince her to get help. But every time I got anywhere near this, she'd threaten me over the house. I was asked to leave 100 times I suspect. I pleaded with her, but I got nowhere. She lost weight. Eventually she did see a Doc, and had a low thyroid reading. This was clearly feeding into her mood, as was the guy next door doing 18 months of building work.

It was of course, drinking. I'd done a lot to try and convince myself otherwise but I'd got nowhere. I think other people locally to us had it worked out but I was in denial. I just didn't think that anyone so smart could get into such a mess. Her friends were distant too I should add, she'd become very reclusive and her father was up north. I was on my own with it. I rang helplines, spoke to her doctor and yet, unless she engaged with help, nothing was going to happen.

By 2015 Girlfriend was pretty bad. She ate virtually nothing, still avoided the doctor and refused to take the little medication she'd been given. I was still in denial, but by the middle of the year I'd found hidden bottles. After a few more helpline chats it was suddenly very obvious what I was dealing with and I crashed. I was just not sure I could handle the battle, but I was just trying to work out my approach when Mom had a fall. Girlfriend and I had to cancel a make or break holiday where we'd been intending to talk through our issues and then Mom then contracted pneumonia and died. But it took her five weeks. It was hideous, she spent most of it screaming in bed, she was abusive to the staff, partly due to drugs and her status seemed to change by the hour. At one point it would be 'she'll be back home soon' then it would be, 'she'll be dead in an hour' then it would be 'she needs intensive care 24/7'. this cycle went on for 5 weeks and I was, as usual, right in the firing line. Girlfriend was just too explosive to get involved so I kept her distant. But on the one occasion she did come in to see mom, mom was spectacularly insensitive and upset her. All through this my brother kept up his assault on me and I coped as I usually coped, by going numb.

Mom died finally, but not before telling me "thanks for everything you haven't done.' maybe it was the drugs talking but the futility I felt was vast. If you include my business partner, who contributed to the mix with dreadful reliability and bad temper, that's the four most significant people in my life pouring issues on me without a break for 5 solid years. I think this all went pretty deep, but I'd just numbed myself.

After the white knuckle ride of the funeral, with no space for thought, I had to make a decision. Could I take anymore. My last attempts to shake girlfriend into sorting herself out went nowhere. It took me saying I was leaving before she finally acknowledged how she'd been and in the month before I moved I finally got her to a consultant who diagnosed alcoholism to her in no uncertain terms. Oddly she asked me to come in with her for that. Her defiance went on for a few more days until finally, given that she couldn't threaten me over the house anymore, I let her know how things had been for me and for once she listened. But I was too far gone and I'd taken too much. So I moved out.

The next year was grim, the inheritance of around 170k total was to be split between myself, my niece and my darling brother. Mom had mooted I should gt more but I knew how that would look given I'd taken control of the situation so rejected it. I'd locked down the will to be as uncontroversial as possible and had appointed an external executor so that I couldn't be harried as things went through. It worked pretty well until said Executor was run over by his own car and killed. Yup, bizarre freak accident. He'd been scraping ice off the windscreen with the engine running when somehow, he'd knocked it into gear and it ran him up against the garage wall. Sad business.

Needless to say, that made things considerably worse. I was on my own in a flat in the countryside away from everyone, I was certain I was being badly judged for leaving Girlfriend and I was suffering badly with a wide range of emotions and under constant attack as I tried to wrap up mom's affairs. I had to explain to the solicitor and estate agent that my brother was an issue and they helped hold things steady despite abuse aimed at us all. But it took forever to sort. Sheltered accommodation sells very slowly and it took 6 months before it had a buyer. I was nearly there when the flat sale fell through. My brother went into full attack mode. I had a massive panic attack and started getting severe psychological effects. It was just sheer panic but it was constant from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. It was clear I had real problems.

I went to the doctor and it was clear I had C-PTSD, like PTSD but caused by long-term stress and no control to defend against it with. Again, once I knew what it was it was easier to rationalize but it was going to have to be prozac. So I went on that and sure, it stopped the flashbacks, nightmares and constant anxiety, but it stopped me working, flatlined my sex drive and ruined my sleep. It all became a bit dreamlike and so, around november I wanted to come off it. Coming off prozac was horrible, I was a zombie. Meanwhile work was severely heavy, and the inheritance crap just went on and on. The sound of a text arriving or an email or phonecall coming in would panic me horribly. It was still not resolved when I left in dec to visit friends in the USA to recuperate.

Severe work issues followed me there, as did my brother. My back was a mess, my head was a mess.

So I stayed til march 12 and then, given I had the inheritance finally in my hand and a hole in my schedules, I decided that I would take the next month by grabbing an apartment on the coast, finishing my projects and planning what I would do next. I was between flats so it worked out cheaper to be here than have one here so it seemed to dovetail nicely. I felt happy about my decision and was raring to go.

Well that's when the C-PTSD really hit home. I was in near panic, suicidal, horribly isolated and frankly bewildered at what I'd been through. I'd lost everything. It had all cost me tens of thousands and there I was, high and dry wondering what the point of going on was. I was staying in a hotel, 5 floor, and the laundry was on the roof. How I didn't jump is amazing, I was thinking of it around the clock.

I was tortured by thoughts of my ex, I just couldn't reconcile her attitude to her health, to money and to me. I began to struggle with the thought of how selfish her attitude to life had been. The nightmare of watching her accepting her declining health and ignoring the effect on me is one of the worst things I have ever experienced. The sense of abandonment during a series of major life events was a bitter blow but worst of all was that she turned my natural empathy round on me at the end by playing victim to the world at large once I bailed and because of the disparity of the male female view of these things, the world went with her. I am sure she feels awful, I am sure she feels abandoned, but she seems utterly unwilling to even begin to understand what I must have been through begging her to seek medical help.

My brother is just a nutjob, my mother was a coward, my business partner is just plain peculiar, but the combined effect of these people on me has been ghastly. It's nearing 2 years since I left and I am crawling along and suffering badly, most of it alone. Since may tho I have made a few, mostly female friends, who have been through stuff themselves and who understand and empathize with my experience. One in particular is fantastic and has the manual, without her on the scene I would be in deep trouble.

Throughout this, the lack of understanding shown me as a male facing sever personal difficulty has been shocking. I have been told I am over sensitive, I brought it on myself, I am a hypochondriac and a host of other "helpful" observations. Man up... is there any phrase that can cause the soul to drop? I asked for help from close friends and didn't get it, I was blamed by each of my four horsemen for the behavior of the others, I was driven physically and mentally to the brink and I have potentially years of recovery ahead of me. I am terrified of ringtones and email alerts. To be quite honest, I don't think I'll ever be the same again.

The positive news is that I have a project under way that I had running throughout this period that I treated as an escape and which is now maturing to the point where it will start paying me. I have new friends I feel I can trust, and I am severing contact with any of my past associations who were in any way involved in this lamentable story. I am learning self-care and pride again after being forced to neglect myself for 7 long years.

Discovering the depths that people will sink to defend themselves against direct responsibility is a hard lesson, a loss of innocence. It's very sad. But it's a reality that many people are capable of extraordinary unkindness in defense of their insecurities.

hi you... welcome to the forum. Recovery starts here, take a chair and put the kettle on.

sigh, too familiar I'm afraid. Sounds a lot like CPTSD, not suprising if it is. What the f!@£$%^ is wrong with these people? What makes them do it? Anyhow, the thing is that they do, and it isn't you. Wether it is C-PTSD or not, the thing is that you have been under attack and trapped with it, something that I found myself with my four horsemen. My advice is to step back, make a list of what is reasonable nd unreasonable behaviour and you will soon see how off the wall they are. Armed with that you can make a stand, as you have before (well down) and get your own life back on track. NARCS love obligation, duty and responsibility, not for themselves, but as a trap for other people. Don't fall for that, unreasonable behaviour should not have to be endured and you have every right to pull the plug on people that do you damage. Normal happy life is a right, grab it, take it and defend it.

totally get that Slim. I'm fighting dissociation big time at the moment. Soon as I get any steam up, I hit a bump, I stress, and down come the shutters. But it's normal, we have to remember that, it's like a scar on a wound, it won't drop off til it's done its job. Pick at it and you'll make it worse. The symptoms you have are your brain testing the area around you, looking for threats and preparing a defence, it's a siege, C-PTSD is very siege like, the fighting is over, but they'll have to prize the gun out of your hand. But that's the thing, the siege IS over. You won't move out til you are sure, so your brain is testing the signals to make sure you are safe. Your brain is on your side. I've been very lucky to have met someone who has been down this road and she's taught me a huge amount, the biggest thing is that you mustn't be scared of your mind, it's doing it's job,  there's nothing wrong with YOU, there was a lot wrong with the road that brought you here. It's an important distinction, you are not mad, crazy, nuts or anything like that, you are healing. Give your mind a chance to do what it is trying to do and find peace in that.

thanks chaps