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Topics - JamesG

#21
Hi

just watched this vid on youtube.

Two warnings. 1, She's very vocally Christian from time to time and that may not sit well with some of you if there has been abuse through religious channels. 2. I at least found it horribly accurate for my experiences, whilst not the abuse that is mentioned, it is clear after watching this very experienced woman that whatever the reasons, I was definitely very badly traumatised by my brother's attacks and my mother's failure to back up either myself or my father, right to the end.
This lecture is so concise and accurate in describing the resulting effects for me, and most likely the rest of you, that I feel it is worth watching even with the above reservations. If nothing else, it is a perfect description of C-PTSD to have other people watch so they understand you and your struggles. I defy anyone to watch this and then turn round and write it off. Choose a good time to watch it tho, it could go either way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otxAuHG9hKo
#22
General Discussion / Vitamin D
October 03, 2017, 08:25:02 AM
One takeaway from the doc yesterday was to up my intake of vitamin D to combat the fatigue. I've done a bit of digging on this and sure enough, there are a lot of links on PTSD and depression and Vitamin D. The doc was saying that most people are deficient in it and given that PTSD makes you stay in and not exercise or see daylight, it would follow that it could be of benefit. I've been taking multivitamins but the dosage is not that high, the dosage suggested to me was 800 - 1000 units (20 - 25 mg). So, in the interests of the OOTS science unit, I am going to guinea pig myself and run a trial starting today. Self vivisection if you will. Anyone else interested to see if they get similar results?
#23
General Discussion / back from the doc
October 02, 2017, 09:44:41 PM
So, well the benefit first step is made, he didn't doubt it was PTSD for a second and has written the necessary note for the benefit people, Not home and dry yet, but it's a big step towards settling things down.

Intense day tho, counselling was dug deep into my childhood bullying issues and she felt certain my brother was actually psychotic. As she puts it, a Narc has no empathy, a psychotic has empathy, but does it anyway. I'm afraid to say it fits. Some of his behaviour is so gleefully malicious that it's really the only reasonable diagnosis. So much of it was also meaningless too, and the time he spent on it! If he'd used even a fraction of that energy for reasonable purposes then he'd have got somewhere. As far as I can tell, all he is going to leave as a legacy is a smell of sulphur.

It's an odd thing because I'm a natural comic, and I find myself making the counsellor laugh at some things that are really not funny in the least, they are just so out there that it's almost blackadder in it's wickedness. But thats the odd thing about such messed up minds, they veer into comedy quite often, if, and it's a big if, you can step back far enough to see it.

I'm certainly able to see it now, but clearly I have to go back into my past and rewire my memories to draw the correct conclusions instead of maintain the lessons I learned with the blinkers on. Why I ever took him seriously is beyond me. He's a coward of the first order, a lost boy who turned his heart black with fear and bitterness. But really, who cares at the end of the day, he's playing one a side football with himself and no one is watching. Everyday I diffuse a few more of the boobytraps.
#25
Was explaining c-ptsd the other day and realised I was basically creating a joke. Here goes:

I was driving up route 72 a few years back when this passing UFO dropped a bull it had beamed up for use on alien experiments and it landed dead centre of the road directly in front of me. I slammed on the brakes. I got out to see what had happened, but the bull, who was really annoyed, obviously, woke up and mistook by grey overalls for and alien and charged at me. Fearing for my life, I dashed towards a fence and went to jump over but in my haste, I hadn't noticed that it was electrified and the charge, which had been set too high by an idiot on his first day's work, shot me up into the air before I came back down in a field of alpacas. I landed on the back of one and it shot off at high speed towards a lumber yard and I was nearly sliced in two by a saw, but the alpacha veered left at the last second throwing me into a tub of creosote. It took me two days to get home by which time my wife had left me for a travelling banjo player called Dennis Patwad, with whom she shared a star sign and a rare blood group. I'd also lost my job due to a freak electrical fire in a water cooler, the house had been burgled by the aliens I'd mentioned earlier and I had missed a letter calling me for jury service.

And that's why I never take route 72.

Ok, it's not hilarious, but my point is this: the chances of all that happening every time this guy takes route 72 are very slight, well... impossible, and yet he draws the conclusion that it's the road that made it happen. C-PTSD is like that, we have these experiences that are out of the ordinary and yet our brains cannot help but extend the vigilance to keep us alert in case every road is route 72. Hypervigilance it's called, for obvious reasons. We wonder endlessly whether it would all have been so different if we'd taken route 71, or we'd left an hour later or a day earlier. What if we'd stayed in the car? The brain wants to make use of experiences to help us avoid bad water holes, other tribes, lions, simple stuff our ancestors needed to know as a matter of survival, but with these big modern life issues, especially involving the pain and injury caused by people we should be able to trust, the message is mangled and the mind tries to learn the unlearnable. In my story, a big moment of unpredictable madness happened when the executor for my mum's estate was run over by his own car causing all the defences against my brother to collapse. Totally off the wall event but it caused huge trauma because I knew what was coming next ... and I was right. My instinct then is to look for incoming threats of a similar kind, which is absurd, I mean how often do legal people get run over by their own cars? However, I was so on the back foot by this time , that I almost began to warn tne real estate people and the solicitors to check their cars were in neutral. That's C-PTSD for me, right there, you are programmed by hideous events to expect more of the same, wherever you go, whatever you do and with whoever you meet. Why not? That's what life has taught you, right? Fighting this is hard, very hard. Your mind is as right as it is wrong. Yes, something bad happened on route 72, and yes, its good to keep your eyes open, but come on, it's like winning the lottery twice with the date of birth of your five legged kitten, it could happen.... I mean, it could. But it won't.

It's frightening, but me and my brain are going to drive up and down route 72 all day today.
#26
General Discussion / Shutters and bugs
September 21, 2017, 08:03:02 AM
Two days ago, I had a phone call from a very old pal. We'd been in band together back in the late 70s and early 80s. He went on to do some music stuff until the mid 90s and ran a record lable. I'd told him I'd done some music and he'd asked to hear it. Quite unexpectedly, I seem to have been signed up for a new lable. That's right, I have a record contract. Aged 54, I have a record contract. It's ambient, home recorded twiddling but for some reason, it's exactly what they want.

Happy? Not a bit of it. I feel nothing. Neither do I feel anything when I get good book reviews for my novels. Not a sausage. Dissociation in action. Now I'm not writing this in despair, I'm being objective, but isnt that amazing? Two things I wanted to do all my life and now they are happening, I feel like they are hapening to someone else. This is a perfect example of C-PTSD, you throw out the bad and the good goes with it. Baby and bathwater, clear as day. This is precisley why recovery is so difficult, as soon as you open the shutters to let the fresh air in, the room fills with bugs. The bugs are worse than the stale air so the shutters close again. So what do you do?

You open the shutters. Then you kill the bugs. The air is better than the bugs, but this is not what the bugs want you to believe. They exert a greater power from outside the room than they do when they come in. When they get in they can be swatted and they can be sprayed. Keep the room sealed and you will suffocate, slowly and subtly, but you will suffocate. Ok so I don't feel these things as much as I want to, there is no euphoria but so what? I can't stop them because I don't feel giddy, that's what the bugs, the narcissists want, they want you to close your windows, they want that more than they want to bite you. If you stop, they win. They win your stagnation, the only way their own crippled insecurity can look better to them. They fear your happiness more than they fear anything else, you are a mirror, a nightmare reflection of why their terror is pointless and why it is doing them to decline. If you stop, if you fail, then their philosophy is vindicated. It's upside down, inside out and back to front but it drives them more than their black heartbeats.

Open the shutters, take a deep breath and roll up the newspaper.
#27
General Discussion / creativity returning
September 19, 2017, 09:38:41 AM
Creativity is a huge thing for me, defines me really. But it has been severely sideswiped, my ability to articulate what was happening ruined by the fact that it mostly made so little sense it sounded empty, a bit unreal really. Few lyrics can sum up life with an alcoholic but this I like:

I swear to god
I thought that we could take it to the bridge
find some happiness
but all we got were lemons in the fridge

still... I'm starting to dabble a bit again. I do a bit of music on garageband and I'm trying to force myself back into it so that I have a vehicle for expression regarding the C-PTSD. Graduakky getting there tho my head is struggling due to dissociation. For now some Lyrics. I am trying to push away from negative expression and embrace defiance and the truimph of survival so bear with me, I will make it digestible.

Cat on the boundary

Feeling's coming back,
to my frontline.
My contact with the world.
Over the wall.
The rustle of leaves.
Seasons changing.
The taste of spices.
A need for life.

Cat had my tongue.
He took it all
He does not own me anymore,
this side of the wall.

They own nothing.
With all their pennies looked after,
decline looked after itself.
And the boundaries... so close.
Too close.
No fat to spare,
no air to breathe.
Just the fear of contradiction.
The fragility of pride.

Cat had my tongue.
He took it all.
He does not own me... now,
this side of the wall.

I pray you learn something.
But keep it to yourself.
I'm past caring now,
far past
moving way too fast.
My life used to be what you made it,
what you allowed.
That pattern shifted,
and I broke.
I am still running -
racing


#28
General Discussion / Tearful therapist
September 18, 2017, 10:40:07 AM
Well that was new.

Described a lifetime of people running me down, contradicting me and undermining me, and she got very angry on my behalf and her eyes welled up. I'm getting closer to the point that really matters I think, the confidence-sapping attrition of a lifetime of narcissists. I am going to have to face this one down with some very painful analysis I think. Odd all this, I'm a successful novelist, you'd think I'd reason enough to shake all this but the truth is that they obliterated my ability to enjoy life, there was just no aspect of my self that was not pulled to peices or blocked, and it is not going to be easy to get past that conditioning. I will tho, oh I so will. Some days I get fan mail and I look at it blankly, at it means nothing. Food tastes like carboard, my sex drive has been towed out to sea and scuttled and the simplest things feel like olympic sports. I have two novels out, they are loved, I feel nothing. I've been wiped out. This must not last, I am blowed if I am going to let these sad, frustrating people shape the rest of my life. Life needs living. Get the F@£$%^ out of my head you losers.
#29
Poetry & Creative Writing / Held
September 17, 2017, 06:34:05 PM
Held

Whos in control?
Of the life and the love and the ticking of the clock
in your life?
And in mine

There are hands that hold
and some that hold down
there are those that swim
and those that drown

So you try to put your heart in the middle
the second son
but the wheels fly off and the roof comes down
thy will be done

There are hands that hold
and some that hold down
there are those that swim
and those that drown

oh give of the heart, of the head, of the guts
give of the time you have left
looking for meaning in a sea of selves
the mute and the blind and the deaf

There are hands that hold
and some that hold down
there are those that swim
and those that drown

you
#30
General Discussion / Under new management
September 17, 2017, 07:32:54 AM
My big thing right now seems to be accepting that I'm in control, something I know many of you will understand. Despite the fact that I've walked away from the causes of my C-PTSD, I still feel like they are here, pulling the levers and holding me back. It's deep subconscious stuff and I realised yesterday just how deep it went. These people were not just interfering in my life - demanding to be in control at a microscopic level, they were also crap at it. I know this, I knoiw this... I KNOW this, but still it lingers like a bad smell. Somehow I just can't get deep enough into my programming to switch this effect off and it just maddens me. Perhaps its because I know I am being willed to fail now I am out that is eating me up. I know that my ex and my brother NEED me to hit the wall to reconcile their own confused identities, plus my business partner is driven half mad by my writing. Seems my existance alone is enough to enrage them now. I think it's partly down to the fact that the fatigue and confusion of the raging dissacociation is making me feel like I'm doomed to screw up at times, it's certainly making me feel vulnerable to attack. It's a bitter pill to swallow after escaping my trap to find that I'm poleaxed by these symptoms at a time I most need my wits about me. But it is what it is. Lots of work ahead unravelling this junk. Hey ho.
#31
General Discussion / next layer of the onion
August 31, 2017, 09:37:51 AM
so, CPTSD entering a new phase. All good but hard work. I'm in to a new period. The analogy is very much a boil - it's looking pretty angry but it's a good sign, it's gonna look a whole lot worse before it pops.

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

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

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

Well... no.

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

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

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

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

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

New happier music
Healthy food
Exercise
Art
Fun
Life

tis time
#32
General Discussion / The longer version
August 28, 2017, 07:10:09 AM
I wrote this out as an exercise and thought I'd post. Bit long so run now!

I'm 50. The issues probably start young.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mom has a stroke.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


#33
General Discussion / fighting back
June 12, 2017, 07:35:56 AM
gaahhhhh. yesterday was bad. I was knee deep in looking at the the whole story and just wallowing in bewilderment.

There's no answer to it, you have to get that much from it. People can be dreadful. They always will. I phoned the samaritans late last night, not suicidal but its important to k ow that they are there for emergency counselling. Sometimes all you need is someone to hear your story and confirm just how off the wall it was. And it was. That helped a lot, it was getting dangerously close to the self blame thing, and yet I'm not even remotly blame for what hit me, not even slightly.

Anyway, it helped. Today I start with my new counsellor. EMDR and all that. Yes I'm out on a limb, but it's my limb.
#34
Curious to know how everyone approaches tiredness management, alcohol, anti-depressants etc. I know this is broad but just in objective terms, I find that fatigue brings it all to the surface. Sleep in the daytime causes near certain anxiety attacks and I found anti-deppressants made life harder. Is anyone imposing a regime on themselves with any noticable results? I'm planning to start a strict no alcohol, early bed thing for a bit to see if I can mitigate some of the effects. I know this is all about how we feel emotionally but I am very eager to deploy any practical systems I can to flatten this thing. I'm just not gonna take this lying down. It's enough to have other people damage your life in the first place and another to let that result in a permanent effect. Has to be fought.
#35
General Discussion / C-PTSD London help and more
April 30, 2017, 04:42:51 AM
Hi,
anyone in London with ideas or links to localised help? I just moved here and my first stab at a counsellor was a missfire, I knew far more about C-PTSD than he did and the vibe was that he wasn't even that convinced by it. I am, so that didn't last. I'm looking for any back up support I can get in London including meeting up with people with the same situation. Mine comes from a very long term narcissistic relationship with my brother, aggravated by his control over my mother. This flared up horribly as we came up to her death and collided with an alcoholic partner. My symptoms were far more than just stress and are raging on post event. The situation has left me single and starting again aged 54 and I am going to have to face this one down largely alone. Spartan life coach has quite literally been a lifesaver. But I will need more than that and I am not going near anti-depressants again having had a very rough time on prozac. The thing with C-PTSD is the sheer mental fatigue, it just will not let up and it is very very hard to get any steam up before the next trigger sends you flying. The current killer for me is early waking which is starting to wear me thin. However, my abuser is now getting his just deserves and I'm making new connections which are making a big difference, I had far too many cold and selfish people in my life before and I am making it a policy not to have anymore. So, London and help. Any ideas?
#36
General Discussion / hello, and story
February 06, 2017, 02:04:13 PM
Hi all.

I developed C-PTSD after 6 years dealing with an ill parent, sefending myself and her from a NPD brother while I did it and an alcoholic partner. Oh and a lot of work, huge steaming piles of self employment. It was a very sustained period of stress that only lifted when my mother died and I left my partner. Inheritance battles (predictably) have kept the thing ongoing since mum died 18 months ago and it's been a huge period of upheaval, which is fine untul now, when the symptoms of C-PTSD seem to be hellbent on derailing my future. My head is just so bruised that I am finding concentration next to impossible and work takes twice the effort just to hold the line. I'm in a new and wonderful relationship and my career as a writer is poised to go up a gear and yet my head is a total wipe out. Someone tell me this can be beaten. I'm exhausted and frankly, a bit frightened it is going to stay. The numbness was a survival tactic but it just has to stop or itv will ruin my life.Tactics, I need tactics. I was on prozac but coming down off that has been a nightmare. I want non medicinal ideas. What has worked for you folks?