Personality Change

[bruisednotbroken]

The part that hurts most is losing my belief system, the way I understood humanity, how I thought I should behave, what I thought the answers were.  I wonder at my former "kindness".  I used to just react in a way I thought was kind and humane.  But just reacting rather than responding with wisdom and reflection isn't true kindness.  It can be self-indulgent, it can be unhelpful to others,  far too often it was self-defeating.  So I feel unkind, I feel selfish, I feel cynical and harsh.  I stop myself and watch where once I acted with generosity.  Even when I see someone else's sorrow, I stop myself from blindly reacting because I still don't know how to respond in a way that is truly kind and compassionate, to everyone concerned, including me. 

Well said! This really strikes a chord with me.

[bruisednotbroken]

Contessa,

I recently went through a "do not apologize" phase of life. I feel like I have reached a good middle ground with it now, though. Now I refuse to ever apologize for my feelings. I will however, apologize for my actions if necessary. Sometimes I have to stop myself and analyze the situation... is this a "feelings" issue or is this due to my "actions"?

For me, it's a good rule of thumb to only apologize for my actions. It gives me permission to finally have feelings and express them freely. I need that permission, as it's something I've never had in my life.

[Contessa]

Bruisednotbroken,

Just checked over my old posts to see where I'd written that too, but I hadn't. Definitely went through that phase too!

Sinse being on this forum i've begun to settle - heading for that middle ground! Very wise words bruised.n.b. Good way to keep those actions in check too which was something I also lost control of for a time.

[Gentian]

Yep. Absolutely.  In fact I often lament privately that I used to be so much more patient and "nice".  I think I was better liked in general, though I'm not sure if this is true or just seems that way now.  I was really good at placating troublemakers.  Now I have been accused of being intolerant. I used to joke that I didn't have an anger "button".  Now I feel silent flashes of rage during which it's all I can do to not smash something (haven't done it yet lol). I seem to have lost some of my ability to fake I'm "ok" effectively. It goes way farther than this, but you get the idea. By way of backstory, I grew up in abusive homes but seemed to do alright, I could fake normal and even "happy" so well that people would comment on how envious they were of me, and I was always blown away by this because I'd been miserable with what I now know were cptsd symptoms for as long as I could remember.  Then, in my early 40s, an event which I refer to as the "Blitzkrieg" happened, during which I was taken down by two psychopaths in my family--I didn't know what psychopathy actually was until then--and lost nearly everything. I mean everything.  Home, job, reputation, marriage, multiple animals dead.  I went No Contact with both of them and by necessity most of my other family, and have not been the same since.  I am quick to anger (though I stuff it), I mistrust everybody, I lost confidence in every area of my life from my profession to my appearance to my hope for the future.  I am far, far more afraid and sometimes don't leave the house.  I catastrophize constantly.  It feels like my entire life prior to the blitzkrieg exists on the other side of a wide chasm. So, again, yep.  It's weird isn't it.  For me, It's like my memories of myself are of someone I used to know, and I'm not sure who I am now because it hasn't been long enough ( a few years).

On a brighter note, I'm trying to use this as an opportunity to create a truer, more honest life for myself and my chosen family.     Thanks for making it through this long post. 

[Contessa]

What a story Gentian. Sorry that you have gone through so much hurt. Thank you for sharing.

On a brighter note, just by having the understanding of others in this forum (finally somebody gets it), my anger has lifted amazingly. There hasn't been a resolution as such for the reasons why, but the empathy of this community has given me much needed peace. I hope the same can happen for you too.

[Danaus plexippus]

I have suffered similar losses thanks to bat $hi+ crazy people in my life. I likewise no longer know who I am, now that so much of my former identity has been stripped away from me. It's a terrible feeling of groundlessness. Torturous days and nights of ruminating on how easily I could have dodged their bullets and the hyper vigilant state of not knowing what's coming next. I feel for you buddy. This is no way to go through life and right now my meds seem to be making everything worse. Panic, anxiety, blowing little things way out of proportion, mistrusting my own perceptions. It sucks! Right now I wonder why I'm alive.

[radical]

Gentian,
Please don't thank me (can't speak for anyone else) for listening to your story.  I wish I could delete that last sentence you wrote, especially that awful blah blah blah.... emoticon.  I used to feel like that.  Sometimes I revert to it, out of habit, I'm not sure?

Anyway, you never have to apologise for who you are, thank people for paying attention to you. I had a previous series of traumas years ago and it led me to become pathetically grateful to anyone who treated me with the most basic courtesy or kindness and afraid of my own shadow.  Weirdly, after this latest "blitzkieg", (which had the most bizarre echoes of the last one - like a kind of repeat, but shorter and with a different set and cast)  has led me in a different direction. I feel less afraid, less apologetic.  Yet I get so little sleep.  I have terrible emotional flashbacks in which I can't think and can't deal with people at all, and yet...  I said to a friend that it was like the scene in old cartoons where a character hits their head and loses their memory, and they don't get their memory back until they hit their head again.  I'm sure this friend doesn't much idea what I'm talking about, but she cares about me, she tries to understand. She tries to understand what happened to me, but within her belief system it does not compute, even though she was a bystander to some of it. 

I have horrible experiences yet I'm not as afraid of them, myself, or of other people.  I know there is no-one I would not walk away from, which is almost the oposite of my previous 'loyalty' mindset.  It's not that i have no loyalty, it's just that I'm also loyal to me.   Somehow I never learned that before. 

[Three Roses]

Gentian, welcome! We're glad you're here

As radical said, you don't have to apologize - we are here to listen to each other, and hold each other up. Glad you've added your voice to the mix! 

[Gentian]

Wow thanks everybody for the kind responses.  Contessa, didn't mean to hijack your thread...I do understand where you're coming from.  You're the first person I've encountered besides myself who's raised this question.  This is an amazing community. 

[Contessa]

You have hijacked nothing Gentian. Its what the post is here for 

I for one am glad that this is something I no longer struggle alone with, and I hope others feel the same way.