Normal or not?

[Bermuda]

I hold people up to a very very high moral standard in most aspects. I find it extremely difficult to understand why anyone could do the wrong thing once they realise it's the wrong thing. I don't understand how people can be willfully ignorant, or even just mean to other people. I don't understand how people "can't be bothered". I've never understood this. Maybe it's because of my cPTSD, and my coping mechanism (which worked) was to be better and do better because I am not like *them*.

Now, with all that, how do you actually know when someone is doing something bad? Since bad is subjective and seems normal. How do you know if someone if mistreating you, being mean to you on purpose or out of spite, manipulating you, or taking advantage of you? How do you measure what is a tolerable level of unkindness and lack of sympathy? Is there such a thing?

When is the level of tolerance and understanding overstepping or detrimental to your own worth/progress?

I've had a lot of trouble recognising when someone is harming me or using me in my life. I always thought that people were all using each other for social reasons, emotional reasons, etc. I have always thought that was normal. How do you recognise if the balance of skewed? When do you stop being kind and compassionate? 

[rainydiary]

Bermuda, I struggle with this too.  I hadn't considered if some of my hard line is about CPTSD...it seems like it must be.  For years no one (including myself) heard me in distress and I want to believe there is help and justice and safety. 

And yet is everything I see as dangerous a danger?  Probably not.  Yet it's difficult for me to not emotionally and psychologically and physically do calculations based on my experience of how someone else's behavior may impact another. 

I am still on this journey but for me learning to listen to my body has been big.  Yoga has been the biggest help.  I like the Yoga with Adriene videos on YouTube.  She always says "find what feels good."  I think about this a lot.  For years I learned to ignore what felt good to me.  There are also things I and other people do that might feel good temporarily.  It is hard for me in the moment to always catch "hey this isn't right" but I am learning I can revisit the situation and discuss with a trusted person (although trust for me is shaky). 

There is so much gray area but I try to consider how something would make me feel both now and in the long term.  It is difficult because I still mess up.  But I hope that I am moving in the right direction.

[Bermuda]

Thank you rainydiary,

I guess going with what you feel is right makes a lot of sense. It's so hard for be to rely on emotion. Now that I think of it, I can't even tell when I am sick, or tired, or even hungry. I must have really severe trust issues.  I don't know how I feel.

Well, sad. I feel sad. I guess that means a lack of happiness, which means I should act on that. That makes me feel uncomfortable.



(P.S. When I reread over these posts, it sounds like I am joking. I'm definitely not joking. I really lack basic human life-skills.)

[rainydiary]

Bermuda, I understand what you mean.  We have a sense called interoception that I found was not well developed within myself.  I have been focusing on developing it since I learned about it.

[woodsgnome]

I've noticed a couple of my tendencies which may or may not fit with what you're noticing, Bermuda.

On the one hand, I have a deep-seated fear of anyone and everyone, a natural hypersensitivity easily traced back to the effects of c-ptsd. 

Counter to this fear, however,  was a notion that surely there's somebody I will be able to relate to. What happened is I'd flip  the careful suspicion of everyone to one of blind trust. And, a bunch of times found the trust entirely shattered when I was taken advantage.

The other characteristic is that I would see this split only in hindsight. This also seems normal to an extent, despite clear warning signs that trusting certain people wasn't as safe as it seemed despite my vigilance. . Basically the pattern was fear - discernment (or so I thought) - trust and then boom -- it all would collapse and the trust proved to be misplaced. 

I used to judge myself harshly as some sort of failure whose chase after trust was only an illusion. Self-love has been a stumbling-block, but now I can see that my history of abuse created both fear of people and a deep yearning for trust I'd never had from FOO or others. That I got burned a few times isn't worth the deep shame I've often felt about falling prey to people who hurt me. I kept obsessively blaming myself for this. While some circumstances crashed my hopes, I've nothing to feel guilty about for trying to find a better way than where I started from.

Yes, I also feel I definitely lack some basic life skills, similar to what you mentioned, Bermuda. Yet I can't wholly blame myself anymore either. It's a bit hard to see any silver lining sometimes, but if self-love has any promise of being real, for me it's been helpful to adjust my good/bad perspective; and not be so hard on myself and get so tangled when I only was trying to find the trust I'd ached for.

[Bermuda]

Thank you both for your comments.

rainydiary: Oh my goodness, yes. I have often thought I am on the spectrum, but it's so difficult since so many symptoms or criteria overlap with symptoms of trauma disorder. This is definitely one of those cases. I was just reading up on interoception and it's certainly a sense that I have trouble with. I tend to push everything until I crash completely or injure myself. Sometimes I forget I'm not other people, and I'm certainly not a mule. It's easy to forget. Also, my emotions are also up for scrutiny, how do I KNOW that my sadness is somehow grounded in now, and that it's not residual *ghost* sadness or secondary sadness. I see something sad, then I feel sad, but them AM I sad? My brain is a pit.

woodsgnome: This is also very true and relateable. I have never had a circle of friends. I can't manage more than one person, so I have always just had one very trusted person. One friend, one partner, one person. That's a lot for one person to live up to, if not impossible. I always wanted to feel loved and to have friends, but that just never worked out for me. I could not handle it. I am not really sure what love would feel like (how other people seem to experience it), and self-love is a distant hurdle. A friend pointed out years ago that I seem to love differently, which is completely true, and it makes me wonder if love is learned or if it's innate and damaged damaged.

I do everything to avoid feeling the distrust because I know the roof with collapse, and it's hard to only have on person, and it's even harder to think about having no one.

[jamesG.1]

Very understandable with C-PTSD and trauma.

But don't feel that means you are locked in these mindsets, with help and the right input you can transform your perceptions and interactions.

Yes, people are a minefield of moral disappointments and lousey behaviour, but I grew to realise that the real monsters are a very small percentage of us, maybe 3 in every 100, and that most bad behaviour stems from fear, clumsiness and ignorance, things we can all be guilty of. Most people are as decent as their busy complicated lives allow.

Some people are just plain wonderful, too.

Don't expect too much, and don't expect too little.

[Kizzie]

Great questions and comments Bermuda!  I think many (most?) of us with CPTSD struggle with similar thoughts and feelings, I know I do.

I'm not sure I'm at the end of my thinking on the issue of people who seem to lack a moral compass or have one that is damaged, but at this moment in time I see two basic groups. 
The first is those who have been damaged by trauma and have stunted or broken moral compass because of that (i.e., those with Narcissistic Personality disorder, sociopathology, psychopathology).  They lack the empathy that guides morality, compassion, kindness, sense of responsibility...  I have a degree of compassion for them because of my own trauma background, but I also steer clear of them because they can/will cause harm.
The other basic group I see are the 'haters', those who choose to hurt others for no reason other than it seems to be a way of thinking and it feels good, gives them a sense of power, etc. Maybe they are trauma survivors, maybe not but there feels like there is a distinct difference – like they have been raised to hate, to be predatory, not that they have been subjected to personality crushing trauma like the first group.

I don't count survivors with CPTSD in either group, quite the opposite in fact – we seem to have a heightened sense of doing the right thing. It's what my T and I are working on right now.  Even people with a moral compass and empathy sometimes do things that are not moral or empathetic or kind or compassionate... We're not built to be perfect in this sense and if we deny we have the capacity to be mean, unfeeling, unkind... we deny our humanity and to a large degree our protective self who does keep us safe from predators, people who would harm us without remorse.

Don't know if any of this makes sense  , but what I do know is that I am safer when I steer clear of both of the first two groups.  I suspect I will be healthier if I try to be more open to the third and learn to accept a 'normal' amount of the 'darker' side in myself and others.  It's a work-in-progress 

[Alder]

On the one hand, I have a deep-seated fear of anyone and everyone, a natural hypersensitivity easily traced back to the effects of c-ptsd. 

Counter to this fear, however,  was a notion that surely there's somebody I will be able to relate to. What happened is I'd flip  the careful suspicion of everyone to one of blind trust. And, a bunch of times found the trust entirely shattered when I was taken advantage.

Same. I'm working on this, but it's a tough pattern to break.