Messages

and best of luck to you. Come on, let's kick this thing over and start living.

I think that the normality can be very frightnening if you hit it. I realised the other day that it has been so long since I was carefree and so programmed that I will be shot down if I got near that, that I just freeze and go into reverse. It's pretty normal I think, it's wrong but it's normal. Also you are picking off the scabs in therapy and sometimes it's early. The skin underneath is pretty sensitive. Try to see it as wearing in great new shoes, there may be blisters, but they are fab, and you'll wear them with pleasure once you get used to them. It's always so much easier if you expect the pain.

The family garbage dump, totally. I hear you loud and clear.

hi Eyessoblue

I'm going to pay for the sessions and be dammed. I'm not going to put up with this. I'm on a waiting list for one that does EMDR so we shall see. I've just got so much to digest and it's going to have to be done pretty much alone. I'm just very angry right now, I got caught very badly by the way things played out and its going to take some real guts on my part not to cave in and to fight back. But I will.

Waiting on a new counsellor. More confidence in this one.

it's really not suprising that experiences like that can make you react in severe ways, part of it is the luxury of expression after so much suppression. Don't be too had on yourself, see it as objectivly as you can and it makes it a whole lot easier. He sounds like a good man so work with him and not despite or apart from him. Sort it together. See this is as a great opportunity to work through these things with support but make sure you let him in and reassure him as much as you can that he is helping. Having been pushed away byt someone who really needed my help I can tell you that the rewards for being able to help someone you care about far outweigh the trouble that you are actually fighting. It's a privilege to escort someone through these journeys but you have to make sure they know they are making a difference or you'll build walls. I really hope things begin to settle for you and that good normal times lie ahead.

thanks for that. It's a very tricky path to be sure. I'm just coming out of a very hard few days with multiple triggers and its been pretty tough. Some of it was very deliberatly taken on tho, as I needed to talk to my brother's ex wife to confirm how our stories matched on certain events and put a few things to bed. That has dug up a few ghosts but worth it because the history was all wrong before and I needed clarity on what I know I experienced. I have also been weathering the separation from a GF in the states whom I was logistically unable to get to and my PTSD symptoms gleefully ruined what should have been an important time. There was no choice but to switch back to a friendship but that has given me some very complex feelings of failure, being damaged and abandonment. My family pushed me out to accommodate my cuckoo sibling, so you can guess how that feeds into these momemts. I'm also staying with friends while I wait for my flat to be ready. They are great but they happen to do a few things that have big triggers for me, not least leaving radio 4 on all day. This was exactly what my alcoholic ex did when she was out cold and working from home, I used to cry with frustration at that. I was working two days ago and blam, I was right back there. I rushed out to a pub and tried to drink it to standstill but it has now been 3 days and I'm exhausted. I've also had my old friends finally coming in to help but its a mixed blessing as I'm now finding myself repeating the whole ghastly story in a loop and its digging it up. Telling people is tough because there are often disconnects with those who think emotions are optional. Mine most definitly are not. If I could kick this aside and start living then I would. I'm just very very weary of it. There is a song by Magazine, my all time fave band - there is a song called 'song from under the floorboards' and it goes.. 'then I got tired of counting all my blessings.... then I just got tired.' that's very much where I am, I have notebooks everywhere that I have filled with lists of positives and things to drive me forward, but the notebooks in my head are crammed with a deep sadness and hurt at the behaviour of people that were supposed to be my nearest and dearest and who either let me down very badly or activly sort to abuse. Defeating that narative is very hard work.

Mine was set up in childhood but the real catalysts were over the last few years. Looking back tho I can see the patterns, I'm aware I was living with the damn thing a lot further back. Again, a narcissist, in my case a brother and mother tag team. The flare up of mum's illness and death were the final major trigger, exacerbated by work and an alcoholic partner. To my mind, nothing works better than new understanding connections and the help of old friends. It's been a close run thing for me tho, suicidal thoughts have been a regular feature. Having your life wrecked by other people for no rational reason is a killer.

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?

hi. It's not my real name. One symptom of dealing with a malicious narcissist is that you soon learn to give very little away on social media, which of course, also renders it pretty much pointless. So It goes.

I find this stage in many ways the most difficult, in part because I can kind of taste life without all this garbage and yet the frustration from how I am holding myself back is mindboggling. I feel quite resolved on the realities of the narcissists I have been dealing with, I suspect it's pushing out and trusting new people that is now the challenge. I weathered some pretty extreme behaviour over a prolonged period and was outnumbered by 4 to one most of the time (my four horsemen!) I've always felt that the saddest victim of narcissism is sentimentality, they make you eject it like a lizard discarding its tail. Getting that lightheartedness back into your life is the challenge. Had it been a short sharp event I'd have been fine I think, but it's so attritional isn't it? So many of us are strong, but too strong and far too able to endure things beyond the endurable.

Big hello and love to you all on this board who have experienced the same or worse. C-PTSD is a very private, grinding thing to endure. But once beaten, it gives huge strength and understanding I think. I see that very much as being the case for a writer like myself. I write comedy tho, and am not that keen on visiting this stuff as material just yet, despite the fact that narcissists can be hugely funny given the distance. I'd recommend 2 - 3 hundred miles. For now it's a dark old story and I am hungry for normality and progression.

Meanwhile.. has anyone ever heard this? Spot on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UIzkN64NGg

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?