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Topics - JamesG

#1
General Discussion / Changes ahoy
January 04, 2018, 09:08:36 AM
So...

big year for me.

Firstly, I move to Wales to save cash and concentrate on my writing. Big deal this. My costs will halve and, as sales of my novels start to climb, they pay my bills and I get to make it a job. Exciting stuff.

Next, I come off meds. I've been weighing this up and I just feel that although they did stop me thinking about leaping off the castle walls, they now numb me too much and are working against me rather than for me. I'm going to taper the little blighters as much as possible because they don't like being dropped.

Then there's my escape from the business partnership. Been a long time coming this but it's been hellish of late, a rolling storm of triggers. I let far too much pass when things were at their worst and this is the only way to correct the negatives. Outlook is good tho with new clients and contacts bubbling up and new routes to gain work starting to appear.

Mood. Well, it's still an upward curve but there seem to be far sharper ups and downs as you get better. I'd warn anyone here to watch for that and build it into your expectations, as you get better, you will feel it more. It's an odd paradox but this condition is all about numbness overlaying anxiety and panic and you have to take that lid off at some point. It's a lot like dentistry, you feel the pain when the anaesthetic wears off but it's nothing compared to how it would have felt sans the injections. I know I have a lot of pain and crying still to come, but I have to see it all as a symbol of recovery and keep objective.

Energy. This is the big one for me. My adrenals are a mess, no question. Also, I've been drinking on top of the meds (lepraxo/ecitilopran) and this has not helped. I'm now switching to low alcohol options and tapering the meds so we shall see how that pans out. I'm also making my diet fit the profile of adrenal fatigue and avoiding sugar and caffeine as well as burying myself in supplements. Seriously, if I get hiccups, people form conga lines. Vitamin D, ginseng and B 12 seem to be the main recommendations but there are lots of others on the list. Most are placebos but what the *, if a placebo works, have another. Alcohol reduction is a challenge because I have leant on it just to break the isolation so initially I am going to try and just drink less and lighter and still go out. But then it's sugary drinks... sigh. I might just buy food!

But it's going to be a big year. I must remember to take it slow tho and not burn out. You have to learn to self-care as much as possible, listen to your body and act on the warning signs. I'm impatient, I lost 7 years of my life to people who gave nothing back and left me with nothing, I want a life again. But we have to start from where we are and learn to overcome the desire to protest and recoil at the expense of building and moving ahead.

I'm still very hurt, bewildered and angry at how I was used, abused and let down but I want life more than I want to root through the wreckage. I'm 54, I have a life and I have a lot to give and that is my course now.

To all of you in here, all of you who have been so hurt and mistreated, I just want to say that I wish you nothing but peace and space to heal in the year ahead. We share as much that is positive as we do the negatives tho and I never fail to marvel at the humanity you all show. What was done to us all was wrong and just plain dumb and we, because we are so human and sensitive and empathic, took that stupidity deep and let it do us a real injury. But it is not like losing a leg. The brain is an amazing thing and if treated right, it will recover and serve us well as we go forward. Give it time, treat it with understanding and respect and let it heal in the way it needs to. Dress its wounds with logic, knowledge and common-sense. Find friends and supporters who understand and ringfence your recovery from those who don't or won't. This is your story, your injury and your recovery, put yourself first.

Let's all stand back up and fight back.

x
#2
General Discussion / C-PTSD and colds
December 30, 2017, 08:27:09 AM
ello,

huge frustration here. I had been doing really well, my energy levels were coming back, my head had cleared and I was starting to make big inroads into the future.

Then I get hit by work plus one of the most drawn out colds I have ever had, one I have had to work through, and work through the usual high emotion and blamestorming that has become a hallmark of my business partner.

This is now the third week of this cold and finally, I guess inevitably, it's joined hands with the C-PTSD. Fatigue and muddle-headed brain fog are all over me again. Hugely frustrating. I have a huge list of simple jobs to do, things that are fun if anything, and I just can't do them. Everything feels like it's too much for me.

I'm really annoyed because I made it clear to both my biz partner and the other editor that I needed to pace myself but they both carried on in their less than merry way and took us right up to the wire. Both had overbooked and then acted hard done by when it hit the fan. So I was forced to work straight through this bloody cold and so here I am, three weeks in bed and full of the anxiety that drifting gives me.

It's a real rabbit in the headlamp thing this, you know that time is going to work against you if you don't get on top of things and yet you just can't engage. Big trigger for me, and something of a feedback loop. The worry makes it worse of course.

The long term plan is good, I know what I'm fixing to do and I am certain I will get there, it's just the short term. I have to cut my links to these old patterns and regain control but I'm stuck in it until june at the latest. I move to Wales in march and my costs plummet, which is fab. New clients are in the wings, the writing is earning more and more... it's good.

But now, now is a *.
#3
General Discussion / onwards folks
December 27, 2017, 08:20:00 AM
well the xmas period is nearly over.... hang in there. Soon we can roll our sleeves up and get stuck in to the new year and start making a difference again.

Once more into the breach dear friends
#4
General Discussion / happy new year
December 23, 2017, 07:48:38 AM
my seasonal message to the troops

People of OOTS..

It's that time of year again, the time of year where it gets harder to dodge the triggers, harder to forget the mayhem and abuse of the past and near impossible to get on with normal day to day life. So be it.

The new year is the thing, the rest of the xmas silliness can go take a jump, the new year is what we all need to look at and focus on.

The people on this board have been through some horrible times, make no mistake, but they are universally the nicest community one could hope for. Gentle, self deprecating and slow to anger, I see more humanity on these forums than I do anywhere else online. Be proud chaps, you've kept that side of yourself despite the storm of human nature you have had to endure and you can be proud of that.

I hope that for all of you, the journey in 2018 takes you forward to a deeper understanding both of yourselves and the mechanisms that brought you here. You are not to blame, you are not flawed, you are not fated. Given enough time and space you WILL come out of this and make a happier space for yourselves. It is your life, reclaim it. Take your life, cut the wires and hooks away and begin to repair.

So I raise a toast.

To life!

x

James
#5
General Discussion / progress
December 15, 2017, 10:34:53 AM
been a really interesting month, I've been meaning to post in detail but time is very short. Some big changes in the CPTSD issue and I'm determined to relate them at some point because it's been a great lesson in how persistence pays off.

This thing is beatable folks. It was created by negative repetition, but it can, CAN, be beaten by positive repetition. The brain is an amazing piece of gear and it can repair if it has the space and time to do it. I've been through some very dark patches with it, as many of you are experiencing now but truly, it will go.

I'll write something substantial on what I've learned and what has worked for me so well recently once my deck clears, but there is one very simple thing to know, it is natural to react as we have all reacted. Do not pay any attention to any other message on that, there is no measure on how we react other than what the chemistry and physical reality of the brain says it will do. Trauma is a natural response to things that should simply not be happening. Ours is a natural and normal response to events that are neither natural, or normal.

Hang in there everyone, every battle has to end.
#6
General Discussion / From trauma to frustration
December 03, 2017, 08:37:03 AM
so....

well I'm definitly recovering, the churning emotion and anxiety is fading and in fits and starts, my old self is coming back. But as with everything about this condition, it's not a straight line.

I'm wading through these projects and as usual, the editors have messed up the schedules and everyone is in a bad mood, I'm working instead of recovering and I'm face to face with a whole bunch of triggers. On the whole tho, I'm weathering them better, but I'm struggling to keep alcohol at arm's length. This is not drinking to get legless and crash out, it's more to get me out of the flat and get a sense of kicking back. Trouble is that it collides with my meds and the next day, even on small amounts, my head is useless. It's a real impasse. Stay in without alcohol and I get miserable, go out I feel ok, if a bit of a barfly, and then wake up with a brain like a root vegetable. Inner city, winter, my alternatives are not brilliant.

However, last week I had a flash of personal productivity that blew my socks off. I finally had confirmation that the work with my troublesome biz partner is ending, but that a new editor who I find a breeze to work with is coming on stream. The clients are happy, I'm happy, she's happy. A weight lifted there, I can tell you. My biz partner is not a narc, but he's hugely complex and he's been a major element in my getting C-PTSD. If I can wing keeping the work but having a different team I could really change the landscape.

So after that I felt really energised and threw myself at my contacts to see what else I could make happen. And it was a fair old bit. My substantial back catalogue of artworks is bound for picture libraries, a few other teams want me on side for book pitches and then I started advertising my novels with renewed vigor.

But it didn't last.

That's the rub as you recover, the upward curve becomes a sawtooth, the highs followed by sharp crashes as you think you've escaped, but havn't. C-PTSD is nasty.

The antidote is to expect the crashes and do everything you can to build them in to your expectations, use them even. I made the mistake this week of dropping my guard when it went and acting as if I was well. I'm not well, my adrenal system is still very challenged and I don't have the emotional energy to sustain "normal". So lesson learned. C-PTSD is here til it decides to leave and it won't be rushed.

Meanwhile big changes. I am moving to Wales. London is horribly expensive and it is working against me as a writer. I had planned to get a job but it's clear that that is unlikely to be an option, and even if it was, my energy is way too unpredictable to carry it through. So freelancing it is, that way I can control my day. BUt it has to be in a cheaper place and as I have friends in Wales, and the costs are below half what I'm paying here in LOndon, it's a no brainer. The emphasis is going to be on writing of course, right now my sales are close to be able to pay my rent and that plus a bit of freelancing will work.

so yeah, up, down.

onwards
#7
saw a group on meetup, so decided to join.

thoughts on meeting up, good or bad idea? Personally, I find people without trauma hard to relate to so, well why not?

#8
General Discussion / dating
November 19, 2017, 09:39:17 AM
Probably not a good idea.

was a friend mainly thing but I could have done without the blunt rejection for a sexual move I hadn't even dreamt of making. Considering that the PTSD and my meds give me the sex drive of balsa wood I really wasn't hoping for some action. Bit of a male-female divide here, but if I'd said that to a woman, in that way, they'd be washing her self-esteem off the pavement with pressure hoses.

I'm not sure whether I care actually, in fact it may be a good thing in that it focusses my attention back on to me and removes a distraction. My counsellor said I should avoid dating, and she's right, this really isn't the time. Friends before lovers for now. I'm still reeling at the things I went through with my ex and her alcoholic narcissism and I'm in no fit state to deal with anyone else's emotional unpredictability. I need to dig in and heal, get my life back on track and kill off the last issues with my problem biz partner.

And I need to write. Write write write.  Had my 500th review on amazon this morning. I can do this, for sure, just need to get my head clear enough to sell it. Oddly, the writing is nothing compared to the promotion, that's the headache.

I'm just concerned that I won't find a groove work wise. I'm gonna be in deep do-dos if I don't get on top of this. Time for action.

And for the record, I didn't really fancy her that much either.
#9
General Discussion / CPTSD stage 4517/B
November 18, 2017, 09:09:58 AM
So, I'm working on this book about the brain. I knew it would be a tough one. To make it tougher than it needs to be, I have a client who is resentful of my biz partner, a biz partner who thinks that the burnout he's having isn't anything to do with him overbooking and an author who has supplied the worst image ref possible for a subject that is literally mind-boggling.

I blew my top last week to appeal for some logical working methods and yes, there were changes, but they lasted about 3 days before we drifted back to the default position. I made it very clear I was ill and that certain types of pressure, none of which should be present if we were running professionally, would cause me to become ill again. Well that didn't last.

I'm pretty angry right now because I can feel the relapse coming like a train and there is just no good reason for it. Not just that, but the editors, because they've taken on too much work, again, are now requesting the deadlines to go back. That means that we invoice later too. That in turn means I hit a financial wall around xmas day. So, essentially I am about to lose money because they both wanted to try and earn more.

This has gone on too long. The only way out of this now is to cut the chord and take my chances with some welfare options. That it has come to this is just the pits.

Not just that, but now my honesty about my health has been turned into condescension, part of an obvious defence against taking any responsibilty for the way these old patterns play out.

I have to get away from this. It's so bad for me.

Having said all that, the Cptsd nw feels less present, being replaced by the same old weariness I used to have before it flared badly back in jan. It's a kind of progress. But I know that my health now is totally linked to ending this partnership and doing something normal for my income. This just won't do.

People.... What a world it would be if people took responsibility.
#10
General Discussion / tell it like it is
November 15, 2017, 08:26:35 AM
yesterday, I had a proper meltdown and decided that rather than suffer in silence with my team, I'd tell it like it is.

So, I made it pretty clear how ill I was. Maybe it helps that the book we are working on is about the brain, has a spread specifically on PTSD, but I didn't hold back this time and I chose to ignore the condesention and doubt and just BLOW. That did the trick. Talk about alarm. Suddenly everyone can act like they give a damn for a bit and we can get this book off the desk.

Of course, the folklore will be that I'm an emotional nutcase, but I don't really care. I am done with being the dustbin for other people's inflexibilty and lack of consideration. If I have to display my PTSD, I will. If someone chooses to use it negatively then they are merely demonstrating that they are not worth my time of interest.

I am ill. I am ill in a run over by a car kind of ill, bitten by a cobra ill. There is and was, no choice in this. It happened TO me, and the injury is in the brain, invisible to people who chose not to look. We all have this issue that we would get more sympathy if we twisted our ankle or got food poisoning from bad clams.

So be it. I am not apologising for my condition anymore, and neither am I hiding it. I live with this legacy every day. If I have to live with it then I am not going to spare anyone the details. The people who get that will be my people, those that don't can take a dip in the north atlantic.
#11
well here we are, the work stuff is hitting the fan just as I was hoping it wouldn't but knew full well it would.

They've now managed to scramble my cashflow by being seriously late and I'm gonna be on carrots til january. Oh joy.

Last night I just blew. There was not a soul on the phone, online or hiding under the table to turn to so I rang the Samaritans. For the first time in 7 years I really cried. Out it came. The anger, the bewilderment and the shock. The injustice and the sheer pain of the whole thing.

It had to come out. I feel better, maybe. But Once again today I'm sat here waiting for people to break their promises. I am so done with this. The same old bloody delusions, the dreary gaslighting over schedules and that feeling of being trapped in your own life without the power to intervene in your own collapse.

But I'ts different now. I'm less PTSD and more just plain hacked off. I've come a long way and I'm not going back. Funny tho, I've goit an artwork to do shortly based on this image.

life is odd

#12
General Discussion / into the valley
November 10, 2017, 08:34:19 AM
well I've had a much better period the last few weeks, very big improvements all round.

but... I am now going to go through the mincer for 4 weeks with work. Complex to describe but I'm going to be working with a sea of bad tempers and I'll be the last point in the chain so I'll get the worst of it. None of the delays in these three jobs are mine, and each person who got us here won't want to take responsibility. Trigger central.

I desperatly want to stop doing this work and I should be able to swing it in the new year, but for now I'll have to chain myself to the desk and wade through heaps of dull artworking that has zero point to it, for not enough money and all of it far too complex to just blank out with, tho too boring to provide distraction. This is my kryptonite.

Somehow I have to get my head in a place that can keep this dispassionate. My business partner is a hysterical workaholic, the client is a bully.

My toolkit for this audiobooks and online courses, something that can fill my head with a sense of progression and interest to act as a counter balance. I need to walk a lot too, just to try and shake the moods I know are coming.

Am not looking forward to this.
#13
General Discussion / dropping the meds
November 02, 2017, 08:15:17 AM
After much research and balancing of pros and cons I think I'm going to drop my meds.

I'm on a pretty small dose of Escitilopram (lepraxo) of 5mg, but I think I've now reached the point where it is inhibiting rather than facilitating recovery. I feel a need to cry more and burn off the emotion the natural way, but the drug is suppressing that, along with a range of other natural responses to life. It's done its job, it has calmed me down during a period of high anxiety but as my old doctor warned, anti deppressants can and do slow recovery long term if you use them long term. It's a balancing act - energy vs deppression. I feel the energy and fatigue battle is my biggest obstacle to recovery now, I want my creativity, drive and libido back and am prepared to have an increased deppresion to do it. For me, the biggest weapon against anxiety and deppresion is action. I just don't want to have anything holding me back now, I want to organise, write and socialise and just plain get out there.

It may well make me stressed, but doing little to nothing each day is no solution anymore. I want to throw myself into work and fight my way out of the last shackles. I feel I have analysed this story all I can. I know what happened and I know waht was right and what was wrong. There are still behavioural things I need to address and intrusive thoughts to fight but they will be there anyway. I understand the mechanisms of this condition enough now to separate fact from fiction, reality from the gaslight, I have enough support now to take this on.

I am going to wait until my current group of projects is over and then I'm going to hit the button. Enough already.
#14
General Discussion / now the good news
October 29, 2017, 09:12:07 AM
Hi all.

Last week I woke up and the thing just wasn't there. The mood was up, the fatigue vanished and I was whizzing around doing stuff. Bingo. It's back today having crept back in last night, but I was expecting that. The thing is that for the first time, I felt what it is like without it.

Now, it's a muddy picture, as always, because I have been throwing everything I had at it. So the best I can do is to list those factors and see if it makes any sense to the rest of you. I'm dividing it into catagories, psychological, diet and habits.

Psychological.

Counselling got very intense of late with some big realisations about earlier traumas in the home and the effect on me as a kid. Things I thought were just me, were clearly trauma effects. This is big. I also seem to have reached a point where I can no longer sympathise with any of my four horsemen and know that I was just plain right when they were very, very wrong, as in right about how you live life around emotional issues. They gaslighted with the message that I was over emotional and theatrical in my response to events, but now that the tide has gone out, it is clear that they were living in unhealthy denial of serious unresolved issues and my more open and honest approach to the expression of feelings is the healthy route. The vultures have come home to roost on that one. I have no doubts on that now so I suspect the effect of the gaslighting just petered out.

I think I also was able to remember some of the good stuff about my father which had been buried under the dissacociative response to his battle with my "we need to talk about Kevin" brother. Dad was a man of his age, certainly no new age parent, but he was a kind and loving man who died too early. I have now retrieved a stack of good memories from the dustbin where my brother slung them and that is counterbalancing some of the negatives. My brother killed him, I have no doubt about that, he was an ill man and my brother harried him into a third and fatal heart attack at the tender age of 54. Remembering all that has been painful, but it needed doing.

Understanding the full mechanics of trauma and the effect on the brain has been big. I increasingly see my story in physical terms and also as part of a process that many experience in a very similar way. Trauma varies in cause, and the stories in here are diverse, but the way that the brain seems to react chemically and physically is suprisingly uniform. I take a lot of comfort from this because it is suddenly much easier to fight. It's a bit like finding that magical cleaning product that actually works. PTSD literally alters the structure of the brain, the hippocampus shrinks and it screws up short term memory. That vagueness that I found so disturbing isnt me, it's an effect, and given some peace and quiet, some normality and stability, I won't just get back to normal, I'll be better than normal. I have lived my whole life with one hand tied behind my back and that is about to end. We all struggle so much with C-PTSD because we have only one tool to fix the brain and that is the brain itself, that's tough. We see everything through a foggy lens so it's no suprise it is a huge struggle. Fighting it takes more effort than it gives back, so it is exhausting. Understanding that is MASSIVE. But the answer is quite simple in reality and it is this.

The brain is like any other organ, if you you use it the wrong way it will break. Abuse and trauma break the brain and alter the way it works. This clouds the way that you perceive the issue itself and makes a straight road a tangle. The emotion becomes bigger than the objective truth that everything you feel is natural, an understandable reaction to the injury. Instead of unencumbered thought and life, you have a heap of scar tissue that is warping perceptions. None of that is fair, true, but fairness aside, it's simple cause and effect and it isn't YOU. More to the point, take any other human being and put them in your shoes, and the same thing would have happened. There is no weakness; you are not a failure and fated to be sad, depressed and jumpy. This is simply your mind doing what it needs to do, trying to make sense of the senseless.

Abusers are keen to gaslight of course, so they will supercharge the doubts they have created, but it simply is NOT YOU. Never was. We are not perfect either, no human being is, but we are sure as * not as imperfect as the people that injured our brains. The guilt, all the clouds of swarming shame and the judgement they threw at you,  that won't go overnight, it may take years to settle, but they are merely a symptom of the sickness in the minds of others and you do not need to give them space to grow. Accept that they will flare and die in waves, that's normal. There is no success and failure in this recovery. Be good to yourself and let it wash over you from this point on, your mind is your friend, don't fight it.

That's the point I have reached on the counselling.

Ok, Diet stuff. Well I'm still on my anti depressant and I am still drinking a bit over the limits so I think I can rule out those as factors. What is new is a number of supplements. I now take:

vitamin D
Siberian Ginseng
Ashgawandtha (look it up)
cod liver oil
Multi vits
one ibuprophen per day (200mg)
plus my usual blood pressure  and cholestral treatments

when I sneeze, people form conga lines

My diet is different too:

Muesli and nuts
Chicken and fish over red meats
Caffeine is way down.
lots and lots of water

LIfestyle:

Well, I've very much taken on board that I have to treat the fatigue with respect. I now plan for it and factor it into my activities. There seems to be a distinction between physical activity like walking or yoga say, and anything stressful. So work can bring on fatigue if it is troublesome but a walk in the sun actually generates energy.

It is really important to understand cortisol, adrenalin and the adrenal system I think. Live in constant stress and these will be hugely effected. Post trauma, the adrenal system can go into spasm and just shut down, robbing your body of get up and go. Don't be angry with it. It's earned some time off. Tbe fatigue is a sign of the body resetting after years, decades or even lifetimes of trauma. Read up on it and know that it is natural. Part of the effect is poor concentration, mental fog and a lack of interest in life. ALL NATURAL.

The difference between a task with people or without people is marked. I am actively avoiding contact with friends who don't get what I'm experiencing. It is hugely destructive to be dismissed so why risk it? I am concentrating on the good contacts and avoiding the emotionally inarticulate.

I am now learning to stop pushing myself forward when I falter, it simply backfires and much of that pressure comes from the echo of old abuse and dubious philosophy. What suits me, is what suits me... end of story. C-PTSD is a serious condition, make no mistake about that.  If you had cancer you would react accordingly. Mental injury is invisible and public understanding is lamentable. It is only 100 years since shellshock was recognised, General Patton was slapping PTSD sufferers 70 years ago. PTSD in non-military situations has only really been looked at since the 70s and even then, the majority of the population still form their understanding of mental illness from the movies. This is not our problem. If they don't get it then damn them, there is nothing we can do about that and the quest for recognition, especially from the people responsible for our trauma is a habit we need to break. If they are capable of understanding it now, then they wouldn't have been capable of creating it in the first place. What matters are the people that DO understand and the people that accept you for who you are now, not what you were or what might hopefully become. Now is what counts.

I accept the ups, and I accept the downs. It's all healing.

No contact means no contact.

People pleasing is reserved for the people worth pleasing, the kind hearts, the gentle loving people and those needing support. I am not going to waste another second of my time pleasing a narciscist. Nope, nope, nope. Not going to happen.

Being good to me. There is nothing wrong with this. If you have been brought up around narcissists they will have indoctrinated you with myths about duty, obligation and shame. None of that is true. Unconditional love is a green light for abuse and it is inflicted through repetitive programming that any time or energy you use on yourself is selfish, irresponsible and criminal. Total garbage. Every human being on this planet is entitled to live the largest percentage of their lives in pursuit of contentment. Relationships are contracts we make with people that make life better for us all collectively. Abuse happens when people seek power in relationships to pursue base needs, sick desires or to defend themselves from their own weaknesses; using those closest to them as a human shield against risk, responsibility or failure. So I am making a contract with myself for now, feeding myself validation and doing whatsoever gives me the tiniest hi upwards. Even with drink, it isnt about outside judgement whether I drink or not, it is my own sense of whether it serves me or works against me that matters. If I want to drink, I'll drink. If I want to stop, I'll stop. This applies to any other issues too, including sex, TV, what I eat, what I wear, or in the case of sex, don't wear etc etc etc. There is only me in this equation for now and my needs are paramount. This does not make me a narciscist. Don't even start to go there! There is nothing selfish about making yourself content in your own skin. So my habit is to go with the flow... MY flow.

That's where I am. Last week was unmistakably the first indicator that I can beat this thing. I am doing something right, tho of course, its hard to pick a single cause from the above. Half the supplements will be placebos, but then, who cares? If it works it works. If I can get a higher dose of a placebo, I'm on it! That stuff rocks!

I can beat this, we all can. Learn, research, act... and be defiant with the knowledge that so many of those doubts and fears are illusions that can  be outwitted in time. We deserve life. Let's go get it, eh?

#15
whilst flat out with fatigue the other day I was mulling over solutions and actions I could take. Currently I am working on a book about the brain (I'm the illustrator and designer) and so I've got a little bit better at understanding certain aspects of how it works and, more importantly, does wrong.

I was looking at patterns for my fatigue last week and realised that the days on which the fatigue had lifted were the same days I'd taken anti-inflammatory drugs for my back pain. So, I started wondering if a fair bit of the fatigue comes from the repair of the brain in the post trauma sense. So after taking an ibuprophen, I started researching.

Bingo

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11031057/Could-depression-be-treated-with-aspirin-or-ibuprofen.html

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2109382-anti-inflammatory-drugs-can-relieve-symptoms-of-depression/

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/18/health/anti-inflammatory-drugs-depression/index.html

It stands to reason doesn't it? Think of the brain like your back, you do too much gardening and you pull your back out and it becomes inflamed. PTSD is a pulled brain. So.... in the interests of science, I am going to test this. I am going to see the fatigue as a headache and respond with ibuprophen. Dosage will be low, a tablet is typically 200 mg and the advice is a maximum of 2 tablets three times a day. I am going to avoid the max dose and only take in response to fatigue or non-specific anxiety or depression.

I also have naproxen but I'm going to avoid that because there is a known link between it and deppression if taken for any length of time and its tough on the guts.

I am also going to the docs in two weeks to arrange tests to see if there are any underlying causes for the fatigue as it's been severe the last few weeks, that may end up skewing this test and I should really can the alcohol. It comes in cans already, so that may prove pointless! 

Watch this space.
#16
General Discussion / you know what you feel
October 21, 2017, 08:41:18 AM
was up late recording, best bit of my old self I've seen in a while. Woke up and played it back this morning and wrote this to go with it.



You know what you feel


first they tell you how to walk
then they tell you how to kneel
but it doesn't really stick
cos you know how you feel

they're selling you ideas
they're selling what is real
they're after what you think
they're after what you feel

gotta leave the cage
gonna have to break the seal
gotta ditch the hymn sheet
cos you know what you feel

you've got a good idea
of what is fake and what is real
it's a question of perception
but you know what you feel

there are no search terms
for your head or for your heart
your mood is not their message
they need us far apart

turn the gaslight down
look deep into the heart
pull the cable from the box
hold me in the dark

when the daylight isn't real
and the night time is surreal
you are safe in inside the siege
you know what you feel

the phantoms in the feed
cold callers on the line
the products sold with fear
getting updates all the time

feel your senses coming back
feel the damage start to heal
the gaslight doesn't kill
you still know how you feel

you know how you feel




#17
General Discussion / complex PTSD is er... complex
October 17, 2017, 08:46:35 PM
last few days have been a real roller coaster. NO triggers, just me and my memories in close quarter combat. But it IS progress. I had a very good session with my counsellor on monday, digging into the realisation that I was traumatised throughout my childhood by my brother's domination of the house and set up to find optimism intimacy and lightheartedness a deep challenge all my life.

I'm squaring that away now I think, even the realisation that my mother's affection crossed a few lines I cannot quite explain. It wasn't sexual, but it wasn't not sexual either. I'd kept the lid on that one a long time, even tho it had happened even in her 80s. Hands had to be moved. I cannot explain that. It's a definite factor in what happened but exactly how, I can't tell. I'm wary of false memories but I am certain of at least 8 incidents where I thought it was not motherly.

But overall the PTSD road is huegly complicated, it;s just layer after layer of an onion that can grow back a skin after you remove it. It's huge effort because you have to fix a broken car with a broken toolkit and you are so untrusting of everyone in your life that you dare not ask for help.

Today I crashed for 2 hours at lunch and awoke in a full on emotional flashback, remembering begging my partner, who I had loved to death, to go to the doctors because I caught her throwing up blood. She's changed into someone I didn't recognise, swearing at me and telling me to leave the house if I didn't shut up and I'd stopped at the bottom of the stairs, caught between the need to confront and the realization that I was not going to make any headway. I'd stood there for 30 mins in the dark, too confused and traumatised to cry. Part of me is still there, one foot up on the first stair, going neither up or down.

I have friends who watch soap operas or read worthy literature about crisis and emotion who I cannot explain that to. They can't go near me right now, and it makes me so angry. My only good friends now are those who have been through pain because I can't relate to the wanna be polyannas who have these lead umbrellas above their heads and smiles they've seen on air freshener adverts.

Real people care, real people hurt.
#18
General Discussion / In the bones
October 10, 2017, 09:39:05 AM
In the bones

In your place of greater safety
in the place that they called home
the devil reached in to slap you
and he wore your father's clothes


and it hurt you
and you felt it
deep
in your bones

you said nothing

the storm it came and took you
and it threw you into the corn
and now you don't know where you are
and now you don't know where you are

and there's no one left to help you
but those people who will help you
because they know how hard you landed
and they know just how that feels

in the bones

and the corn is as high as an elephant's eye
and you were not in Kansas anymore
and it doesn't seem to matter
if you stand or if you fall

but it matters
oh yes it matters
it matters
it's all that matters

now the past is a long time going
and the future is a long time coming
but it's coming, you can feel it
in your bones

it doesn't really matter
that you're not in Kansas anymore
you're in a place of greater safety
leaning your head on your own shoulder

you can be delighted
you're not in Kansas anymore
and each day the family leaves you, you feel it less
in the bones

in the bones
#19
I'm really curious to know if there is a distinct pattern to the arrival of the fatigue between us. This is a very pragmatic question, I can't find any focused assessment of this online, so I wonder if any of you would be willing to share whether it was a during or after issue. With me, it seems to have suddenly descended as soon as I felt I was entering a new stability with friends and the flat, like was giving myself permission to throttle back and heal.  But then it could equally be that my nervous system finally ran out of gas and pulled the hose on the cortisol. Right now I feel a lot less panicked and less driven by bad memories, but the fatigue is running riot. Trying to find a pattern is very uphill. Would welcome a few extra perspectives on this if you feel able.
#20
General Discussion / Orchids in the ditches
October 04, 2017, 08:14:49 AM
So much churning going on at the moment, but it's very different. There's a definite switch in my perception underway but it's maddeningly hard to pinpoint, but I'll have a go.

Firstly, I think I am finally realising that there are a whole suite of behaviour patterns that I am only now attributing to my brother. This means that the damage is deeper and this also means I have to accept that damage and see myself as "damaged". I don't mean that in a negative sense, more in a simple recognition that I am fitting the criteria of post-trauma behaviour fully, something I've been fighting with I think. This is probably because, I guess, because I wasn't physically or sexually abused. I've had a bit of trouble reconciling this. My abuse was sustained psychological abuse, enabled by my mother and unchallenged by his wife, friends or extended family.

I have a friend who had severe sexual and physical abuse and I spoke to her last night, almost apologising for this difference, but she was adamant that in her experience, it's the psychological that is worst. I'm in no position to judge this, but there is no arguing with how well I fit the symptoms. My counselling is nearing some deep buried stuff and I'm feeling it. I'm now remembering that the house was so tense with my brother and father's battles that I have no memory of anything much else. It must have swamped everything at the time and I am starting to be aware that I was sitting in the shadows, watching, feeling unable to react, dissociating for all I was worth. When my brother wasn't attacking dad, who'd had two heart attacks and was very sick by this time, he was laying into mum, or bullying me. He dominated the home. Dad was a broken man. He once said to me, "please, be who you want to be, but never, ever be like your brother." Poor dad.

Then dad dies and there is nothing to stop this grotesque cuckoo taking over mum's life. Mum, recently widowed, and with all the spine of a sea cucumber, was never going to resist. Armed with a child, he was able to blackmail her into silence. But that wasn't the whole story, she was also a class A narcissist herself, but in a simple, theatrical sense. She saw herself as holy, special and pious, seeing my brother as her noble cross to bear, a handy way to mask her cowardice or fear towards him. Her response was to attack me, becoming endlessly manipulative in her perpetual drive to force me to support his parasitism without complaint. When I resisted, I would be guilt tripped. There was a ghastly symbiosis, something between Stockholm syndrome and deep fear.

I am also increasingly in agreement with my counsellor that he is psychotic. He had empathy, but he did it anyway. He knew what hurt people, he spends time gathering data for it, he is sensitive to it. This is a man that is in a relationship with his ex wife's lover's ex wife... (yup) for the purposes of revenge. That's how far he is capable of focusing on hurt.  In the course of today, he will be thinking of ways to get at me.. that's not paranoia, I can assure you it is the case. I have seen him doing it over others and I have no doubt that right now, I am an itch he would love to scratch. I know that I am being monitored, distant relatives have been trying to link with me on Facebook, something that is only likely to be happening because he is out there propagandising against me to make himself look better. The narrative will be something like, 'Poor James, he's so messed up, I'm so worried, but he won't talk to me, maybe you.... '

The realisation for me now is that this sustained madness has damaged me, I'm injured. There was an unhappiness in me when I was young, a melancholy that should not have been there, a depression that at the time, I thought was just who I was. Of course it wasn't, there was all this misery going on and this incessant erosion of my confidence. And it went on, it didn't stop. He didn't grow out of it, in fact he got worse and worse. As his dreadful approach to life yielding its inevitable failures, he became more bitter, looking for blame in those nearest to him and then exacting cruelty and spite in revenge for crimes they had never committed. He is a failed dictator, possessing an alarming range of behavioural similarities to Hitler. The banal cruelty, the savage tendancy to seek disproportionate reprisals for imagined slights, and unfathomable belief that they have been chosen for greatness despite all the evidence to the contrary. The Hitler parody videos on youtube are a very, very close match, that exploding blamestorming and need for retribution in the face of self-imposed failure, the people around them quaking in fear at the sheer level of stress being unleashed. That is MY brother.

It shaped my future relationships, making me a sitting duck for narcissistic friendships. I ended up as the sidekick to some truly ghastly people who I tried to please as they belittled me still further. The pattern was set. And I was sombre, intense, my relationships were cloaked in this issue in a hundred ways, the threat of his bizarre interventions a constant nagging anxiety. And the attacks came in, they still come in, tho the channels are mostly blocked now and his online bullying has been seen clearly on facebook by friends who once bought his dark charm only too readily. My partners had to deal with my fear, tho I never really got anywhere near dealing with it properly and the deppression came and went, the dissociation lingered, both wrecking my intimacy and abilty to just enjoy life. I have no doubts this contributed hugely to my ex's alcohol collapse, something which I feel very bad about suddenly. The stress in the last years must have been unreal, especially as she was fighting her own demons regarding her own mother's cruelty.

These people are dreadful, they are everywhere. This week is really clarifying my desire to write something about it in depth. Black comedy, that's what I do best, and exposing these people in that belittling light. I feel so much for my friends with abusive histories and for all of you, it has robbed us of the normality we should have had, that everyone should have had.

But it is not fatal.

We owe it to others if not even to ourselves, to reverse the damage and claim a happy life from beneath the wreckage, like poppies growing on a battlefield. The doctor said to me that I will never shake it, the trauma will always be there, it's how I live with it now that matters. And that's it really, looking for ways to turn the experience from * into manure. In Normandy there is a battlefield where the German army was finally trapped and obliterated in 1944. They had one last road available to escape and I walked this and I was struck by how amazing the orchids were in the ditches beside the roads. Turns out that the bones and blood of the horses, caught up in this grim finale were bulldozed into the verges and that there is so much of them still in the soil that the flowers thrive.

The abuse and the neglect caused by my brother have created talents in me, ironically. I used humor to pacify him, I leant on art for distraction, my sensitivity has led me to be empathic and to see hurt in others and now that I am a writer, I can see that this experience shaped that. It's something I see in a lot of the writing on this forum, definite skill and subtlety in the use of language. We can't change the past, we can't make it better, but we can be the orchids in the ditches, the poppies on the battlefield, defying the pain and loss to bring beauty back.