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This coming up on BBC

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-61350174

it's left me a tad flat... but.

It's a good reminder, and somehow it cements a growing need to regroup and settle some issues.

I ended up chatting after a few beers, and that has to go. I'm about to start on some mild anti-deppressants and that gives me an excuse to drop the vino finally. Not a huge drinker but it really doesnt help. I don't like feeling out of control in social situations, even slightly.

And it shows that I need to focus my few safe places a bit. Talk about things, yes, but only where it's really a safe place.

Saddens me tho. There is a suffer in silence vibe about it somehow. But then there always has been.

So, a first social after lockdown with my work people.

All pretty light and cordial... but I made the mistake of forgetting to keep my mouth shut about my past and told too much to one of my colleagues about my not very pretty past. Bad move. She made excuses and bolted. Day after and I'm feeling lousy.

I think it's time I stopped sharing any of this, people just can't hamdle it. And do I really need to now anyway?

I've often been driven desperatly to share. I think because the key people in my life, my brother, mother, partner and business partner all caused my breakdown, there was no solid support available, so I leant hard on strangers, freinds and health professionals. Often this would backfire in some way leaving me feeling even more isolated.

It's a good reminder.

So...

such a mixed view of where I am now.

One thing that stands out at the moment is that 2 years of lockdown forcing me to be over-exposed to relationship interaction has been tough, and frankly not what you'd prescribe to anyone with C-PTSD if you had any sense. That being said, I have gone up and down in that time, sometimes benefitting from being forced into confronting what can feel like a phobia and on other occasions swamped by the flight or fight responses from my bruised Limbic system. Really exhausting.

Finally tho, I am letting go of the trauma that started all this. I've run the events a million times and really, truly, I did all I could to stay rational and in control in the face of forces far too numerous for one person to take. Yes, I did stuff wrong too, but I didn't do anything wrong I wasn't forced into doing under the pressures of utterly unreasonable behaviour over a very drawn out period. I wasn't equipped to get situations and decisions right 100% of the time, and you know what? So what?

But whatever I may have done, nothing... Nothing is as wrong as what I was put through.

But these things don't matter now. Two of my protagonists are dead, one is distant and contained and the other, the real narcicistic monster, is a bust flush, useless without hostages and probably now as physically ill as he is mentally. He still makes guest appearances in dreams leading to me thrashing about like a lizzard in a tin, but in real terms, finally, he can't touch me. He did wreck my life tho, and occasionally, my gentle soul finds itself baying for retribution. But that kind of closure can't happen. It's better I let him drive himself into the ditch he's spent 60 years making and burn his black heart out without my help.

I'm still deeply hurt by the lack of support from freinds. I'm not sure I'll ever trust anyone again really. When people you've gone the miles for won't so much as pick a phone up when you are so close to the edge you can see clouds below you it leaves the mother of all bad tastes in the mouth.

I now have a quite small circle, people who understand what happened and believe in me when I need that, and empathise when I start to flag. People like that are rare.

The real challenge for me now is easing myself into the new life I've made, sometimes made without noticing. Largely, the pronounced symptoms of C-PTSD have gone, leaving sharp deppressions that come and go in three-day cycles. I'm working them through now. I think the restrictions of lockdown meant my life wasn't full when I really needed it to be expanding, that created stagnation, and I think stagnation is kryptonite for me. That said, the frantic push to rebuild has exhausted me and frankly, I've done enough. I've paid out tens of thousands in debt repayments, worked fantastically hard but the strain of thinking my way out of trouble has to end now. It's hard to stop. I'm like a rescued sailor who can't stop swimming even after they put him in a bunk, the terror of going downhill in isolation with nothing but condescension from your peers will stay with me forever.

But it IS over. I just can't make my deep mind understand that. I'm still looking for threats.

It's a long, long road.

Thought I'd update as much as I could.

Can't really elaborate still as it would give too much away, but it does appear that this issue is fading without dragging me into it.

It's been a bit like watching an asteroid pass by the earth so close you could see all the craters.

Deep breath.

Let it out.

Move on.

It's early days for me really.

It's been hard to admit just how ripe for exploitation I'd been, but also how my paradigms were flawed in the first place. I'd set up a series of belief systems I thought might make things work within a very messed up family and superficially they did give results, but at huge cost to me in the long term.

Luckily my new partner now breaks a lot of these patterns for me and is very keen to see me develop along what I would have once considered unthinkably selfish lines. Taking care of your own needs is not wrong.

It sounds mad to say that but it's a hard hard lesson.

What is much clearer to me now is how I carried on these passive traits into adulthood and developed relationships that cemented things in place.

Changing habits is hard enough for anyone, for us changing habits creates a lot of anxiety. I'm finding it very tough, but I'm working hard at it. Creates huge depressive dips at times, quite different to C-PTSD.  It's that looking back at time wasted and hope lost thing mainly, I feel sick realising how easy I made it for people with zero integrity and empathy to use me as a human shield for their own warped paradigms.

But you can't blame other people forever, changing and growing take a lot of effort and a lot of self awareness... and honesty. Right now I hate who I was, not because I was bad, but because I was naive. It's a stage that will pass. When you learn about yourself there sometimes has to be a short period of revulsion just to signify real change. Compassion to that person can come later.

For now, it's about rebalancing withing new relationships without over compensating and about filling life with new adventures.

Very much a male-biased topic this, tho many symptoms are universal...

Nice guy syndrome... anyone else feel this has been a factor?

https://mindandpractice.com/nice-guys-a-background-common-traits-the-psychology/

I definitely swung into these areas once the pressure mounted.

Anyone else?

Holding pattern...

I could hear any time... or not. Am assuming not.

Enough is enough I think, I've done enough life events by any measure, and I've suffered enough... it will come, and it will go.

Another thing...

Because the new issue is so odd and ripe for gossip, I've had to break a habit of a lifetime and not seek second opinions. If I share it, then it's everywhere.

This has forced me to re-evaluate my tendency to involve people that should be kept out of the loop because they are either so judgemental they will weave it into some destructive narrative, or they'll feed it up the chain to my abusers. I've had to keep silent.

It's a good exercise.

Careless talk costs lives, as they used to say in WW2.

I think a huge part is letting go of the injustice vibe. I was undoubtedly wronged on an industrial scale, and those that didn't wrong me left me out to dry, or delivered the predictable condescension reserved for mental health sufferers, but so what? It's done. It can't be undone.

And yes, while at my worst I stumbled around blindly making all sorts of mistakes. But look at the symptoms of this thing, you are not making sense, you take risks, trust the wrong people, hit the bottle, the pills, the wall. You rack up debts, you get sick. You lose jobs, relationships, time. Your concentration evaporates, you forget stuff.

Criticising yourself, or feeling shame for the resulting mess is as daft as blaming yourself for walking slowly after a broken leg. Of course, someone with C-PTSD is going to struggle to keep a straight path. Sadly, most people lack the empathy or intelligence to understand any of this and instead of helping, they stand at the edge of the pitch judging your decline.

So... you want that reversed, of course you do. So you try to gain their understanding, empathy and intervention, but it has the opposite effect and you just feed this skewed image of yourself to your detractors and your self-esteem and public face nose-dives.

Learning to live with that is tough. People you not only need, but crave, push you back down the rope, oblivious to the simplicity of what you need from them. A small word of encouragement and understanding would go so far but somehow it's rarer than dragon eggs.

I've had to decide that this doesn't matter. You have to. Yes it's unfair, but it WON'T change.

That's a big thing right now. I've been pushing it a while but with a bit of space to rationalise it, it seems to have reached a tipping point.

Don't live your life dependant on the validation of others, it's asking for trouble.

Since the new issue popped up there's been a bit of a seismic shift for me.

I think because it's so off the wall, (sorry, can't share as per usual), it's forced me to take action in a more dynamic way to push down the old habits.

Firstly, because my stress hormones were going bezerk, I went to the doc and after dodging the anti-depressant route, we agreed I'd increase my beta-blocker dose and take them on a set daily pattern. This has worked wonders frankly. My cortisol levels (I'm guessing that's what it is) dropped dramatically to the point where I'm clearer-headed than I have been for at least three years. Without that constant hormonal alarm bell ringing in my brain, I'm able to get back on the horse very quickly and start looking around me to see where I've washed up with an improved clarity.

Part of that has been to flatten down the story and start dropping some of the luggage and oddly, with that there is a kind of rejection of my old self. This is new, and I'm not totally sure I get it yet, but I've started to feel kind of angry with my old self for allowing things to get so bad without making any attempt to protect myself. This doesn't mean I'm beating on myself, this is more an objective assessment of how it panned out and my role in that.

To change we have to be able to see ourselves clearly, and to want to move away from one state of mind into another. If there wasn't a problem then why would you change? Yes the problem is that other people had a field day with your old pliable, lovable self, and that old self isnt an idiot, but that old self was wide open for abuse. That's how it feels suddenly. The weakened me isn't where I am now, so looking back at the damaged self gives me new emotions I can only have by being further down the road to recovery.

Life isn't repeating itself right now, but it is rhyming very loudly. It's as if I'm being given a second opportunity to see how human interactions lead to the dark places, and how victims and abusers take well trodden paths to exploit the kinder, gentler people around them.

To be someone new, you have to let many things go. To change you have to let some parts of yourself go, parts that seemed right and just once, but which don't fit the world we actually live in. We can't be innocents anymore, we can't advertise our weaknesses to the monsters in the forest if we wish to be happy. I was simply too kind, too accomodating and I gave too many people the benefit of the doubt.

Now it's a more measured view of reality, and of the benefits and flaws in a world at large. There are monsters, and there are songbirds. Both are rare, but the majority are in the muddy middle. You build your patch and you insulate against extremes. That's the only logical way to live.

I've obviously crossed a big line on this, it's a lot to digest.

Will let you know.

That's the thing... it SEEMS normal. It isn't.

My brother dominated our family when Dad died and shaped the entire thing around himself to suit his own cowardice and self aggrandisment. It didn't result in success or fulfilment, it just dragged everyone down with him. But they enabled him. That's the mindblower, isn't it? The way these dismal, useless people trigger this cuckoo's victim reaction in people they are destroying incrementally. They were so far gone in this death dive that they turned on anyone who challenged his status as the heroic misunderstood genius/ perpetual bad luck magnet with real venom. I got the worst of it. Eventually they were at least coherant enough to fess up to his abuse, "he was just too strong".

Bit late that.

These dreadful messed up little bunker dramas feel real to the people inside them, but the real world is very different. I see that very clearly now.

But the oxygen on these fires is drama, hence this current crisis. So here I am, firehose in hand, waiting.

It makes a change to have hypervigillance for a good reason for once, eh? I feel like the starship enterprise with every single scanner turned on. 360 degree, total coverage.

Bring it on.

Papa Coco... absolutely... the threat is always worse than the delivery. Most narcs are all puff, because unless they go physical, what's the worst they can do?
Took me a long time to get that into my thick head.

It's all about social exclusion I think. I read something about this which made huge sense. Social exclusion is bad enough now, but imagine it in prehistory. Some small group of hunter-gatherers, you get the cold shoulder and that's it... you are on your own. And on your own means dead. It's a death threat in that context.

Now... looking back, being driven out of the cuckoo nest madness of my family was a gift. My only regret was that I didn't stay gone. I wanted back in as a type of redemption, some mad stab at validation. When I did get in it nearly killed me.

Get out, and stay out. Only way.

Well, uneasy wait now.

I've done all I can do to prepare, it's just a question of waiting.

But I do seem to be balancing quite well now. There was a bad 2 weeks of catastrophising, mainly around what the reaction will be if it's all confirmed, but that's settled now. Really, what can people really do? There will be the usual theatrical grandstanding, the public displays of outrage and righteousness, but so what? These things only matter if you let them matter and frankly, they don't matter one jot.

In narcicisstic families you are trained to fear these moments and the theatre around them, but in reality, they mean nothing. If you deal with them rationally you will be labelled 'cold' oe unfeeling because hysteria is basically the norm.

The only norm is your own reaction.

Anyway, I'm as prepped as I can be. If the worst happens I'll throw a legal log across the railway and retire to a safe distance.

I have a life to live no matter what has happened.

Thanks Papa Coco, much appreciated.

Let's see.

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.