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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

my biggest tips are:

1. learn everything there is on how the mechanics of trauma work (spartan life coach is excellent on youtube).

2.Share in here and see how not alone you are.

3. Don't blame yourself. Everything is a normal reaction to abnormal events.

4. Listen to your body and mind and learn to trust that it is working to help you. When it says rest, rest.

5. Be good to yourself, the majority of C-PTSD is a reaction to repetitive negative stimulus, some of it deliberate, much of it through neglect. The inner critic usually has the voice of others cheering it on. Think about those restrictions and doubts and ask yourself who or what is projecting them at you. Most, if not all, will be meaningless if you the bright light of psychology on them.

6. We are all entitled to happiness and a future. No one NO ONE, is entitled to lean into your life and alter it for the worse. Learning to see how that has been done and how it has affected you right down to your brain chemistry, is a big step to dismantling the cages we end up in.

you want a happy ending. Not gonna happen. He has no intention of going near an epiphany, and he enjoys your desperation in looking for one. We have all been there Achiles..

you are locked in an attempt to change him to be a decent person, and he isn't. give it up.

I went through this with my brother endlessly, the more I tried to find a way through it, the more he battered my confidence. You are feeding this man with your pain. Please don't use what you are learning about narcissists to try and change him,  because it won't. He will invert it on you as he does everything else. Your self esteem is on the line here, if you stay with this you will just be adding years to your therapy and he won't even feel it. Please... drop him and start healing. He is not the solution, there is no solution involving you, he will use you until you have nothing left for anyone better.

you need to go no contact achilles.

I think he knows you are onto him to frank, if he said that then he knows the game is up. Don't talk to him.

bravo!

yup...

brain fog. typical I'm afraid. It goes I am told.

funnily enough I am working on a book about the brain at the moment, design and illustration side, but... Trauma shrinks the hippocampus, the bit of your brain that distinguishes between past and present memories, this is is response to the brain's priority to it's needs. It's not brain damage, the analogy is more like a muscle builder only working one arm. The brain is flooded with specific threats so it prioritises. You will notice how you can talk at length about issues regarding trouble but not the names of writers or musicians. Two types of information and your brain has been partitioned to favour one over the other. One of the reasons the fatigue hits after the event is that this changing of emphasis back is hard work and you need peace and quiet to do it. So forget memory, go blank and trust your body knows what it is doing. Memory will return.

What was the question again?

that's great to hear Achilles, the shift in your thinking just on this thread is noticable.

My advice, in the absence of counselling, is to keep on learning about the way PTSD, trauma and neglect create these repetitive effects in us. The more you learn, the stronger you will become because at the end of the day, allthough we are all different, and our experiences may alter, many of the ways that C-PTSD and it's causes work is universal. It is important to draw the distinction between cause and effect, but realise that the effect in us is working to a pattern and that gives us power to heal it.

Your childhood clearly shaped you for abuse and that is a big indicator, and I am glad you have explained this. Childhood neglect or abandonment of that kind makes you very vulnerable to narcissists in adult life. There is a huge amount of literature out there on this and knowledge is power if you want to break the cycle for good.

Defiance is the key, defiance is your new best friend. Look back at your life and decide that the crap stops now.

thanks Achilles

it's a pig, but it is NOTHING compared to what caused it, we must never forget that.

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.

no Acilles, it's not pathetic, it's a well worn path to abuse. He is a parasite, a man who needs to validate himself via abuse. You have been taught to feel helpless and that he is the only person who can stop that. He is both disease and cure. There is a parasite that efects both birds and caterpillars. It infects the grubs with a larvae which then makes the caterpillar change colour to be easier to pot for birds and then as if that wasn't enough, the poor caterpillar goes to projecting branch and dances so that the birds see it and take it. That's your guy. He's not a lover or a partner, he's a parasite and he will play with you until you break. Lives with his mother, I'm afraid that's classic. He hates himself and feels too good to be independant so he probably claims to be a victim of bad lucjk and betrayal, otherwise he'd be plain magnificant, but he's not. He wants control and power and he's going to have it unless you just stop this and take back control. The charm thing is another red flag for me, they project it to everyone but their chosen victims. I'm sure many in here know this pattern.

Achilles, self hate is not the answer, yoiu are not unique in this, but you cannot squander your life to this kind of man, not because of how it looks to anyone else, or to him.. but it's about who you are. Is this acceptable? It so is not.

You cannot win this. You just cannot get him, and have him like you and respect you. He knows you want that now, and look how he is playing you. Back away and stay away. PLEASE

ok... so what's good about him... really? What justifies your attraction to him?

In the film the marathon Man, the ex nazi dentist tortures Dustin Hoffman by hurting his teeth then offering him tincture to relieve it. That is what this guy is doing. He's an obvious monster but you have got stop looking to him for validation (tincture), because the reason you need it is because he just drilled into your self respect and has given you the impression he is the only person who can stop the pain. It's lilke nicotine, I smoked to avoid withdrawal symptoms and kept doing it until I was coughing up my pelvis. Many of us here have had to hit that kind of wall to leave people who were killing us one emotion at a time. Are you gonna leave it til you are ragged or prove to yourself that you are worth more than this?

Achilles... don't respond... starve him of oxygen. You do not need to respond, let it go. If you are going to be a happy woman living a good life it has to start now.. so start and switch this nutcase off