Papa Coco's Recovery Journal

[milkandhoney11]

Happy New Years, my friend.
I am so sorry to hear you have been struggling the past few weeks.
In German, we have this word "Weltschmerz" which describes the overwhelming sense of pain and depression we can feel when we look at the world around us and see how much suffering it holds. I've always liked the word as it encompasses so many different feelings and so much philosophical awareness. There is so much depth hidden in this one single word and there have been entire books written about the concept but to be stuck in this sense of "Weltschmerz" is just such an awful feeling.
Sometimes I look at all the terrible things happening in this world and (much like you) I lose all sense of hope. There's so much violence, so much pain, and so much suffering and somehow things seem to be constantly getting worse rather than better.
In the UK, for example, we currently have so many strikes and it feels like the system is collapsing. People are dying unnecessarily because the situation in hospitals and emergency services is so awful. So, how can one maintain any hope when you see this every day?
I'm desperately trying to cling onto hope by trying to take action, signing up as a volunteer, raising awareness, etc. I can't say I have regained much hope, yet, but I feel like staying active and doing things is reducing the desperation a tiny, tiny bit. It's probably not going to do much in the grand scheme of things but at least I feel a little better about myself and my place in the world and that's already worth a lot.

[Armee]

Your post has made me smile a big wide smile imagining packs of bears roaming the streets threatening a kind retired man with bad knees. And how you can bicycle now because the bears are hibernating. It seems like a metaphor even though I know it is meant literally. 

Happy biking, Papa Coco.

[sanmagic7]

i hear you, PC.  i have little hope for the world.  i do my little bit of recycling, repurposing, reusing as my way to help.  your biking amongst hibernating bears is great.  unfortunately, they must be getting pushed out of their homes to come walk the streets in gangs.  let's hope for a stronger, kinder new year.  love and hugs

[Papa Coco]

MilkandHoney, Weltschmerz. What a great word. Thanks for introducing me to it. Knowing it's a real condition that affects others gives me permission to stop thinking I'm a freak and the only person who can't look at the world we live in with fear and a broken heart.

I truly believe that the purpose in life is to connect with others. I also believe you and I, and most of the good people on this forum were born with a strong empathy. That's why we turned out to be so loving while our own siblings, who took the same abuse we did, turned out to be narcissistic jerks (at least mine did). My sister RoSatan was born a narcissist. (I strategically placed an extra T in her name to make it more appropriate to who she really is). So she became unbelievably cruel after being raised by our selfish parents. Being 11 years older than me, I didn't know her as a child, but relatives have told me that she was a mean, selfish, lying, theif of a child right from birth. As a teen, she stole from the jewelry boxes of all the people who hired her to babysit. My little sister and I went the other direction. We were born with emapthay in our frontal lobes. We became kind and caring. Fawns. We were born with brains shaped for empathy. We are the lucky ones who are able to see that the world is all connected. We humans, animals, plants, and structures were all created from the same stardust. We're one community whether we like it or not. And those of us with this intrinsic knowing that we are all connected end up with PTSD because we struggle so much with the ups and downs of that connection. We are more terrified of being cast out, while our narcissistic relatives couldn't care less about being thrown out. They aren't connected in the first place. They live the lives of predators who beleive that life is "eat or be eaten." They don't understand the connection, so they just suffer in hate for their whole lives, not knowing why they can't find true happiness. Rather than accept the truth, that empathy is good, they instead strike out at us, hoping that since they can't feel love, (which in my vocabulary, also means Connection) they don't want us to feel it either. Jealousy drives them to hurt us because they hurt. That's how they see connection. Share the pain.

I suspect C-PTSD and Weltschmerz  are two conditions that often work together in our hearts. One of my favorite movies of all time is The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Young Charlie suffers bad C-PTSD. He's in high school and is struggling just like I did in high school. In the last scenes of the movie, when he's in a hospital recovering from going "crazy" from having remembered the sexual abuse he'd endured as a child, he asks his doctor why there's so much pain.

CHARLIE:
Just tell me how to stop it.

DR. BURTON:
Stop what?

CHARLIE:
Seeing it. All their lives. All the time. Just... how do you stop seeing it?

DR. BURTON:
Seeing what, Charlie?

Charlie breaks.

CHARLIE:
There is so much pain. And I don't know how to not notice it.

DR. BURTON:
What's hurting you?

CHARLIE:
No! Not me. It's them. It's everyone. It never stops.

I believe that those of us who have C-PTSD know exactly what he's talking about in the movie. I believe the author of that movie knows that people who are born good, share a propensity for trauma and feeling the pain of the world. We are the connected ones. Connection is beautiful when we are connected with people who are in joy. But it's painful when we feel connected to the pain of others. It's not a curse, it's a blessing. We just need to learn how to use this connection as a blessing, and not let the pain of the world defeat us.

I also believe, with all my heart, that empathy is the greatest healing power in the entire universe. Empathy changes a common doctor into a gifted healer. I had 6 bad therapists before I met my current one. All 6 were more narcissistic than they were helpful. Always telling me how I SHOULD feel, and making sure I knew that they were the smartest one in the room. My current Therapist is a gifted healer because he's suffered as I have, and he knows the road out, and he shares it with me. He connects with me and helps me connect my fractured parts back together. Empathy is what made him a gifted healer, while narcissism just made my first six therapists richer. My current Therapist drives a subaru outback he purchased 15 years ago. My last one drove a jaguar and made sure I knew it.

That's my own theory. C-PTSD creates fawns out of people who were born to care about others. It creates monsters in those who were born with Narcissism in the frontal lobes of their brains.

Armee, Yeah, the bears are kind of a fun thing. I carry a small air horn in my pocket in case I ever need to scare one away. I also own several cans of bear spray, (highly concentrated mace), which I expect I'll never have to use, but it makes me feel somewhat protected when I'm on the beach alone or on a nature trail on my bicycle. We've always known the bears are here. But this last Summer/Fall, there was a shortage of berries up in the woods, which drove the bears to dig through our garbage cans with a vengeance this year as they were carbing up for their winter hibernation. No one was hurt by them. When they saw us they just ignored us and kept walking, like they were in a parade, down the streets.  I don't feel any danger around them. But it's kind of cool to be in a community that still has so much nature in it. We have a constant problem with deer, coyotes, and racoons also. We have regular sightings of cougars and wildcats too. The deer are so unafraid of us that they walk right up to see what's in our hands. Picnics can be a bit frustrating. There's a $500 fine for feeding them, but when their nose is in the plate in your hand, the choice to not feed them is not always mine to make. One year, I was mowing my lawn with a loud, gas powered lawn mower. Five deer were standing in my yard. Four of them slowly moved off the grass, but one of them refused to move. I had to mow around him because he wouldn't move out of my way.  I have to say, I really enjoy living in this community with the wildlife. I trust wild animals more than I do selfish humans.

San, I do my little part too with recycling and repurposing as best I can. I have a lot, because I've always been a compulsive shopper, trying to buy my happiness, so I give a lot of really good things to people who can use them. I hope, with you, for a brighter, stronger, kinder new year. Since I can't make the world a better place, I have a deep need to stop wallowing in my pity and start helping make it better within my circle of control.

I've been researching official volunteer opportunities in both my communities. I'm already a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) volunteer, and there are CERT programs in both my communities--(actually I believe they're in nearly every community in the US, and possibly even Europe), but CERT responders are only called upon during catastrophic events, like floods, earthquakes, bombs, etc.  So far, the four new volunteer programs that intrigue me are: 1) Cleaning up parks, 2) Driving Meals on Wheels weekly to shut-ins, 3) Visiting shut-ins one-on-one, and 4) Animal Rescue facilities that are always in need of loving volunteers.

None of us need to be signed up on any official volunteer rosters to do good for the world. I can put on my gloves, grab a garbage sack and start cleaning up my beach any time I want to. No official title needed. At the end of the day I can feel like I made the world a tiny bit better for others who want to walk on a clean beach without seeing the dirty side of humanity...garbage left, because of the ugly human selfishness that so many of us are just tired of looking at.

Steven Covey's Circle of Control always reminds me that I have a small circle of life that I have complete control over. Beyond that, I have a broader circle of things I can influence. Beyond that I have a circle of things that concern me, but I have NO control nor influence over.

Cleaning up the beach or driving food to shut ins is within my circle of control.

I once heard a story of two people walking on a beach. THOUSANDS of starfish had been washed up after a storm. One person kept bending down and tossing starfish, one at a time, back into the ocean. The other person said, "Why are you doing that? There are THOUSANDS of them. What you're doing doesn't matter."  The other person, bent down, grabbed another and as it flew into the ocean, that person said, "It mattered to that one."

That's my positive ending to today's post. 

Happy New Year everyone. I love you all!!!!!!

Group hug!

[Armee]

I haven't seen that movie yet Papa Coco so I am going to make time to watch when the kids go back to school. I need to recover from so much time with people. All lovely people I am happy to see but I need peace and alone time and there's been none for 2.5 weeks.

I've seen a lot of buddhist meditations pass by my screen focused on this topic of how to manage the pain of living in a world where so many are suffering and to feel that pain without being consumed by it. You are definitely not alone and who knows maybe some of those would help you too. If you wanted I could look through my inbox for some links. 

I used to be a total softy and very distressed at what was happening in the world. Unfortunately having to shut off my emotions softened the intensity of what I feel for all suffering. Not to say I am heartless or don't care but it is much more muted now.

Your positive starfish story reminded me of a happy memory in Greece I was with the two kids on the beach and hundreds of lady bugs were dying in the ocean. I don't know what happened, maybe a strong draft carried them out. We had a little boogie board or floaty or something and swam around putting as many little lady bugs on it as we could scoop up then would paddle to the beach to put them on the sand and go back out. The grandfather made fun of us for trying to save stupid little bugs of course but it gave the girls a good feeling of saving life. I wonder what makes people so evil and heartless. I'd rather be among people like you Papa Coco.

[sanmagic7]

i've heard that starfish story before, PC, and it's so true.  one of the things i had to learn when becoming a therapist was that it was not possible to help everyone who came to my office, but if i helped just one, they and the world would be in a better place.  i've hung my hat on that, and it truly helped.  keep doing your thing - it all counts.  love and hugs

[dollyvee]

Hi PC,

I spent a lot of time in Washington State growing up as we used to go camping there around Whidby Island and Deception Pass. The coastline is beautiful.

I agree with you about hope. It was the thing that likely kept us from realizing who our parents were because we hoped they would change. It's only been in the last year that I've realized that I go into relationships with this kind of fantasy about what I think will happen, and often it blinds me to the bad behaviour, red flags, and just general incompatibilities. So, I end up allowing a lot of bad behaviour that I probably shouldn't. I'm also realizing that I have a tendency to escapism, which I think is a kind of false hope. I think reality felt like a dead end growing up, and I didn't stop wishing for a better place to be. Not to be hard on myself though because this hope was a survival mechanism and maybe it's the one of the things that actually kept my heart open, so that I didn't grow up to be like the people in my family. Of course, hope coupled with people pleasing and bad boundaries like I had because I needed my family for survival, is not a healthy mix for adult me, or for staring adult relationships. But it doesn't mean that the good people aren't out there I think.

I found this a really affirming about doing the "right" thing after dealing with these people for so long because it does feel at times that yeah, I should be in survival mode and why do I have to take this stuff on? Maybe there's something in there that resonates. If not, please disregard.

The narcissist plays dirty... should you play dirty too?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko1IxT23RVM&list=PLaSy-g6A5sG3Jvh8Ru5k--D_0VUlZPpEw&index=31

I'm glad you're getting some rest at the cabin. I can imagine after having your body on red alert after the run in with your neighbours, a lot of feelings come up when it begins to relax. Part of me is also curious if given what you said about moisture and damp, you notice that there is a change when you come into the cabin vs. when you're not there? Like if the mood hits you at the beach house and perhaps there is something in the environment that is triggering this mood shift.

Sending you support and Happy New year   
dolly

[CrackedIce]

Hey Papa Coco!  Just wanted to stop by and say hi, hope you're able to get some R&R at the cabin.  The Circle of Control concept is interesting - I think the trick for us fawn types is to wrestle back the control from others (whether explicit or implicit) and try to steer the ship ourselves.  I still struggle to 'grab the wheel' so to speak when there's someone else available to drive.  The joys of co-dependency I guess. 

Hope you have a great week!

[Papa Coco]

CrackedIce, Thanks for stopping by to say Hi. Hi back to you! I saw your post today about how you and your wife are enjoying some closeness right now. Congratulations!  And, boy do I know that feeling you speak of of waiting for others to make the decision. For me, that comes from having been punished by family and church and peers whenever I made a decision of my own. I won't go into it with details, but in summary, my narcissistic people (Family, church, school and peers) either didn't allow me to make any choices of my own, or if they did, and I got what I wanted, they would wait until the perfect time to tell me that because I got what I wanted, I hurt someone else. Okay: a few details:  If I ever got my parents to take me someplace I wanted to go, which was rare, within a few days I'd find out that they missed an important phone call because they had to take ME to some stupid thing they didn't want to take me to. My parents were so good at blaming me for their misery, that at 14 I was accused of making my dad buy a pickup truck that he ended up hating. I wasn't even WITH him when he bought the stupid truck. But boy...because I liked cars back then, somehow it was MY fault he'd bought that truck. That's one of over a million examples I could bring up, but it's a good one. They never didn't punish me for asserting myself. And it wasn't a hit and miss thing: they were relentless. It was their steady, 24x7 mission to prove to me that I'm incompetent and dangerous. They never let me NOT feel shame for their misery. This shows how I was made to feel responsible for ruining other people's lives by getting what I wanted, and this was without exception. My therapist often has to calm me down when I can't make a decision by reminding me that I was born, grown and nurtured within a no-win scenario. I was bullied at school, bullied at church, then bullied at home also--those are the kids who grow up at the highest risk of suicide, drugs, unemployment, multiple divorces... He also reminds me that I was either not allowed to make choices, or if I DID make a choice, I was punished for it later. So I grew up, like you, being afraid to decide what restaurant to take Coco to. I always make her make all the choices. I cook all our meals, I buy our groceries, I pay all the bills, and when it's time to cook or buy something, I first ask her what she wants for fear that if I cook something that she wasn't hungry for, I'll be blamed for making her life miserable. And groceries is a major ordeal because I try to keep ingredients for HER favorite meals stocked up better than for my own favorite meals. If she says she'd like fish and onion rings, and I don't have enough onion rings, well... I go into my EFs. I can say with confidence that I've learned that Coco doesn't blame me for her misery when I buy the wrong ingredients. This is PTSD. This is about the past and the wiring that I got stuck with as a result of being the scapegoat in a nasty catholic family.

In reality, all people face this. Nobody can please everybody all the time. We make choices that sometimes please others, but sometimes don't. But the lucky people who were raised with a sense that they are welcome on the planet just deal with it. They are able to handle the snide comments made by someone who didn't like the meal or didn't like the restaurant, and they just deal with it. They might say, "Well if you like onion rings, you should have picked some up before you told me you wanted them." But for folks like us who spent our early learning years being punished with massive amounts of shame and guilt every time we wanted something, or made a choice on our own fruition, well...there it is: PTSD. The gift that keeps on giving for a lifetime.


Dolly, The Puget Sound is my favorite place on earth. I've only been to about a dozen states, and whenever I return home, and am surrounded by the mountains, the ocean, the rivers, the lakes, and the sounds of seagulls flying overhead, I feel like this is the only place on earth for me. My city house is 3 minutes from the ferry terminal to Whidbey Island. I hear the seagulls and sea lions barking off in the distance. On foggy days I hear the ferry foghorn. It's magical for me. My beach house is out on the coast, a 3 hour drive from there. Again: Seagulls and foghorns. By looking at photos, I sometimes wouldn't mind visiting New Zealand and Norway. But only for the scenery. I have no interest in traveling. I hate it. HATE it. I hate airports, flight delays, and when I'm somewhere else, I want to be home. My only trips out of the US have been to the Carribean, and to Montreal Canada. Montreal was a business trip, Sint Maarten was for pleasure. But once I'd seen the place, felt the temps, and met the locals, I was bored. Time to go home to my cold ocean paradises.

That's some powerful talk about hope. I am having a new thought all of a sudden. My therapist often comments that he's amazed I survived and was able to keep a job and a marriage, despite the insanity I was steeped in. He says that most people who've lived through what I have, don't manage a life very well.  You have put some good words to "hope" that is making me realize, that my HOPE that my parents would one day love me for who I am, and my HOPE that aging out of the family would magically make my life wonderful, and the HOPE that my finances would some day shape up, and that my kids would grow up to be wonderful, etc, etc, was a double-edged sword. On one hand it was the greatest of all evils, because it helped me to hide in my head and wait for the day people would love and respect me for who I am. But on the other hand, having not lost hope until I was in my 50s gave me a survivability that kept me alive and on course with my life.

Hope is a double edged sword. It's needed for survival, but it can't be left to do the job by itself. I'm really starting to see how it is the fuel that keeps our motors running, but if we just sit in the parking lot with the motor running, we aren't going to go anywhere. We have to also move forward by using the hope as our motivation. It's our actions that move us forward. I could have left my family 30 years before I did, but I didn't know I could. I thought they would one day respect me. Anyway...I survived, as did you, and so many others, because, we were too "good" to give up hope.

Now that I understand this about hope, I am trying to rekindle it. I want to contribute to the world again.

San: You said something that really hit home. You said that as a therapist you've hung your hat on knowing that you can't help everyone so your goal is to help who you can. That's a big deal for me. And I'll say that it's part of my thought process whenever I think about getting another job. I'm retired, but sometimes I think about finding a job just so I can feel valued. But I couldn't drive a bus or an Uber or be a therapist or an EMPT or anything where I risk failing to help someone. A pilot or driver has the lives of the passengers on their shoulders. I can't deal with that. If someone bumped into my bus and a passenger got hurt, I'd take the guilt to my grave. When I was a sexual assault victim's advocate, I had some clients who claimed they couldn't get the judge to stop sending their child back to the abusive dad's for weekly unsupervised visits. The mom claimed the dad was still abusing her. I couldn't help. I was just a Hospital Volunteer. A judge is a judge. And how would I know if this woman was telling the truth about the x husband? The pressure, and envisioning that little girl being in danger while I was comfortable in my safe home, had me crying myself to sleep every night. I kept feeling like I should be able to help, but I couldn't.  It's the biggest reason I don't upgrade my degree to a psychology degree and get a job. My therapist says I'd make a very good teen counselor, which is an area that is screaming for help, but I know I wouldn't be able to deal with not being able to help everyone I came across.  It's a curse I wish I could overcome, but that shame of not being able to help is burrowed deep into every molecule of my body and soul.  I am impressed by your ability to hang your hat on knowing you can only help those who can be helped.

Armee, That movie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower really shows how difficult it is to be a caring, compassionate, traumatized male in a world where males are expected to be tough and cold. Boys are actually supposed to punch holes in walls rather than feel emotional pain. So those of us who are like Charlie (Logan Lerman) are screwed, (and that hurts). And to your comment that you had to shut off your emotions to deal with stuff, is something I've never been able to do for more than a few hours. Dear God, I wish I had a volume nob on my frontal lobe, so I could turn down the empathy long enough to get something done in my own life. I don't know how to do that. I suppose that's why healing is happening so sloooooowly. I don't want to give up who I am. Whenever I feel like I'm starting to lose some empathy, I panic. I'm not me anymore. I'm supposed to be the one who suffers. If I'm not suffering as a victim, that must mean I'm now the predator. I am not good at finding middle ground. To me, everything is either a hammer or a nail. That's my PTSD in action. I'm either safe or in danger. Hot or cold. Kind or mean. IN pain or CAUSING pain. One or the other. No in between.

Final Comment: I'm living in 2023, the year that I always end every communication on a positive swing upward. In answering this post, I put a lot of "why I'm broken" comments in it. That's good. I'm being open. I hope that some of what I said is helpful to others, or is helpful to myself, as people respond.  So to end on a positive note, I'm going to watch some of the videos that Dolly has recommended and do some learning.  My therapist says he'd rather work with people like me who need to gain some assertiveness, than with people who need to calm down and become more empathetic. He says he can help people like us who want to become more assertive, but overly aggressive, confrontational, selfish people are very, very difficult to help.  So I'm glad I see myself as a nail, rather than a hammer. I'm proud to be a person who takes the pain but tries to NEVER give pain. Now all I need to do is keep learning from you all, and from him, and from the books I read, how to bring that pendulum to center, so I can be kind to everyone INCLUDING myself.

NOTE: These endings are helpful. Every time I force myself to end on a "here's how I'm going to fix this" note, I end up spending the better part of the day doing more positive things that I wouldn't have done if I'd have just complained and left it at that.

[Armee]

 

I like you just the way you are and really hope there's a way to stay compassionate without being a nail. I think there must be. Im not religious but it seems Buddhist monks manage this.

I think there is a knob for dialing up and down emotions but we don't really know how to use it thanks to trauma. All or nothing is the heart of it. I sure hope there's a cure.

[dollyvee]

Hey PC,

For me there is something very calming about the rain and the constant sound of the rain against the window. Yes, it rains all the time and yes, it's grey, but it's also very quiet when you go out into the forest. The mosses that grow have a way of softening everything around you and to me, that's really nice. Thinking about this actually brings back the good memories from growing up and makes me a little homesick.

I I think hope is the blueprint for how you wanted your life to be, what you wanted in it, and you went out and did that. That's pretty amazing, and as you say, for someone steeped in insanity, even more so.

I also wanted to say that I don't think you're broken, even if it seems like that. We all create narratives in our mind about how things are/were etc, what we have to tell ourselves and others. Stories are a powerful way to cope but it's "not the whole story." To me, CPTSD is like being in a car and you're going somewhere all the time and everything is passing you by so you can't really experience it. Yes, you can see it, or experience it in a way, but you're still in the car and it's like it's a blur. Every once in a while though, the car does stop and you can get out and stretch your legs. Here's to 2023 and hoping we all can reach our destinations and spending more time outside the car.

Sending you support,
dolly

[sanmagic7]

a thought struck me, PC, as i read your final paragraph.  you listed all these amazing resources from which to learn. may i add that you are also learning from yourself?  you have a treasure trove of insight into who you are, where you came from, limits and strengths. to me, as we go inward w/ all this, we are able to learn more about who we are, who we want to be, what we want to keep, what we want to change, and what we want to let go of.  it's ok to give yourself credit.  you do a great job of putting things together and gleaning what you need from all of them.  love and hugs

[CrackedIce]

Hey PC!  Wanted to comment on your post a few days ago.  Your reply about not being able to be assertive and always prioritizing others over yourself really rang true for me.  I'm not sure if it's from the same source (I think mine was just wanting to have as little "surface area" as possible to avoid abuse) but that feeling of being a failure, of not being good enough over one stupid little thing like missing a grocery ingredient or making a meal that you enjoy is definitely true for me.  I've gone from cooking full meals (I love cooking!) every day to cooking out of boxes just so my kids and wife don't get upset at me.  And like you said - in reality them getting upset or making a remark about the food isn't the end of the world for anyone else but myself.  It's just easier to reduce the odds of it ever happening than trying to process it :/

But let's end on a positive note!  It's been a great past week, I'm really enjoying a new board game I got a few days ago, and the weather has been really nice!  Hope you have a great week as well!

[Papa Coco]

Journal Entry for Tuesday, January 17, 2023

I'm reposting this on Thursday, January 19, with a TRIGGER WARNING. Some of the people who read it, or tried to read it, found it triggering. I sincerely apologize to anyone who was triggered by it, and encourage anyone who is feeling any hopelessness right now to NOT read it. It has some hopelessness in it. Rather than delete it, I'll put a trigger warning so no one reads it if they're not ready for some deep darkness.

Meanwhile I'm going to try to go very light on my posts for a while. I don't want to go offline, but I do want to try and keep my posts lighter and happier until I feel like I'm gaining some control over my darkness again.

I love you guys, and don't want to become a downer to any of you.


Well I'm doing it again. I'm out in the world, in a panic, looking for that silver bullet. I'm already steeped neck deep in talk therapy, Ketamine infusions, Uplifting vitamins, and I own a metric ton of paperback self-help books, and now I'm out there again: I just signed up for 4 weekly sessions with a hypnotherapist.  Now, my internal voices are punishing me again. I hear this, "Why can't you just live your life like everyone else?" "Why can't you just take all that money you throw at all these different silver bullets and take a vacation or something to get yourself out of the funk?"

I will be returning to the city on Friday. I'll need to stay there for a month because that's where these hypnotherapy sessions will be taking place. Which means I'll be wearing headphones for a month to block out those nasty dogs that live a few inches from my city-house bedroom window.  When I get home, I feel like taking Coco aside and just apologizing profusely for my chronic, self-induced tortures. I'm once again falling down the rabbit hole, where I feel more and more like I'm responsible for all the darkness in our relationship. Part of me knows that's not true, but a bigger part of me is just wallowing in shame over being so "broken" that I can't...just...get...over...it.

I'm truly beginning to resonate with my own theory that when my sister died in 2008, I lost all sense of direction and hope. Our big family was built around a big, dormant hand grenade, and her death was the pin that was pulled out of the grenade which then blew my entire big family apart. It's good that the family finally ended. It's my opinion they're the reason she lost her battle with the depression that they had created in her. They were toxic and poisonous people, and I was drinking the cool aid every day in order to force myself to hold to the fantasy that I was in a big, happy, supportive family. It wasn't true in real life, but my stubborn brain held to that fantasy for 50 years. Her death tore off my blinders, and then knocked over the first domino, which toppled the rest of the family, who went into "Knives-out" status until no one was left.

I've been struggling to find hope ever since. The saddest day in any gaslighting victim's life is the day we see the truth...that everything we had spent our life believing to be true about our relationship was a grift. A lie. Smoke and mirrors. It wasn't real. Every time they said they loved us, they were lying. And we suddenly realize we'd lived our lives by their lies. There's anger mixed with embarrassment mixed with irreversible loss and grieving. The anger and embarrassment wane away. But the sense of having been so profoundly betrayed is hard to deal with--and irreversible--and goes on for a long, long time. Fifteen years so far for me. The feeling is often called disillusionment, and it's no small thing. People think you can't change the past. But when you realize you've been a victim of narcissism, and a lifetime of lies, your whole past falls apart and nothing you can do can stop it from collapsing. Suddenly, even family photos have new meaning. You finally see the bitterness in the faces that were always bitter, but you never noticed that before.  For me, it's like I'd put smiley faces on monsters, and loved the smiley faces. Then one day I walked away from the monsters, and found myself grieving for the rest of my life over losing the smiley faces that I had pretended were real--and who had once loved me.

For me, the disillusionment is around the fact that my past has made me who I am today. If my past was a ruse, then who am I now? I'm not from the family I thought I was from. So who am I now? And who should I trust now?  Waking up and discovering I was in a prison that I pretended was a theme park, unsettles my belief in the people who I trust today.  I guess that's what Gaslighting is specifically designed to do: take away the victim's ability to trust reality. Blur the lines between good and evil so badly that the victim never again knows up from down, real from dreams, wants from needs. When is love real, and when is it just another deception?

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But I've made a commitment to 2023, that it will be the year I find a fresh, new hope, which will send me off in a new direction. One that fuels my excitement to get up in the morning again. I've always been troubled, but I've also always been so active that I balanced the depression with good days between the bad. I want that feeling back. I want to smile again. I want to matter again so that I can ultimately leave this world as an old man who is still active and still making positive contributions right up to the moment of my final breath.

I suppose, scheduling these not-so-inexpensive 4 weeks of hypnotherapy is me TRYING to move forward in my 2023 commitment to find hope again. I now believe that hope is the fuel that we use to get our motors running again each morning. Hope is why we get out of bed. Hope is why we try to achieve any goals. Without hope, I'm just sitting here, in my locked house, waiting for my body to die along with the rest of me.

I'm just embarrassed at how much money and energy I expend trying every single type of cure I can find, only to continue falling down this rabbit hole.

My other promise for 2023 was to make sure I end all my posts and emails and texts on a positive note. A call to action. When I write books or blog posts, I know that I need to end with the solution. No one wants to read a novel that ends in hopelessness. And I've begun to notice that if I'll apply the same rule to my posts, that no matter how dark the story is in the middle, ending it with a positive idea for solution does seem to help me rise up and take some positive action, at least for a few hours.

I've started to notice that when I make myself end with a light at the end of the tunnel, that I spend the rest of the day feeling a bit more motivated to gain control over my depression.

So here it goes: I noticed, yesterday, after my free Zoom consultation with this new hypnotherapist in my life, that I left the call feeling more energy than I had felt in several days. I felt like NOT eating so much junk food, and I actually got in the Jeep and went into town twice to do some chores which I had been putting off for a week or more. So, my positive ending to this dark post is that I am feeling a little bit of hope that this adventure with hypnotherapy does its job and helps me to rekindle a new hope that will supersede that old hope that I lost when my loving little sister, and childhood best friend, lost her lifelong battle with the depression that she and I shared as the two little ones in that nasty family. I have to close that chapter and start a whole new one.

There is a light at the end of this story. I haven't embraced it yet, but I can see it, and if I'll put forth some effort during this hypnotherapy, perhaps I'll come out the other side with some success. I'm learning to not expect much. This is NOT a silver bullet. I always go into every healing effort expecting it to be the silver bullet that finally ends my suffering. That means I always come out of the effort disappointed and more hopeless than when I went in. This time I'm going in hoping to get at least a little help rekindling some hope that will help me rise up out of bed each morning.  I am trying to give myself just the right amount of hope that this works. Not too much hope and not too much resistance to hope.

This may not be a cure, but it may be a positive stepping stone that leads me to finding my way up and out of my depression long enough to get my life restarted.

On one extra positive note: More than one therapist has told me that they are surprised I survived my childhood at all. I've noted on several occasions, that some of the boys I went to catholic school with didn't survive. My little sister didn't survive it either. My current therapist says that I survive, in part, due to how I never give up trying to find someone to help pull me up out of this rabbit hole. Those who give up, all too often, end up drinking or drugging themselves to death. For 62 years now I've been, somehow, able to stay just a few inches ahead of the Grimm Reaper. My therapist will probably praise me today when he finds out I've committed to four weeks of hypnotherapy. He's always proud of how I never give up...no matter how many times I ask myself why I don't just give up.

I refer to my new icon of me walking toward a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm in the dark, but I'm walking toward the light. I now have hope that I might be able to find new hope. So I hope for hope. Hey...it's a move in the right direction.

[Bach]

This may not be a cure, but it may be a positive stepping stone that leads me to finding my way up and out of my depression long enough to get my life restarted

This is a good realistic expectation!  Good luck with it, Papa Coco