now the good news

[JamesG]

Hi all.

Last week I woke up and the thing just wasn't there. The mood was up, the fatigue vanished and I was whizzing around doing stuff. Bingo. It's back today having crept back in last night, but I was expecting that. The thing is that for the first time, I felt what it is like without it.

Now, it's a muddy picture, as always, because I have been throwing everything I had at it. So the best I can do is to list those factors and see if it makes any sense to the rest of you. I'm dividing it into catagories, psychological, diet and habits.

Psychological.

Counselling got very intense of late with some big realisations about earlier traumas in the home and the effect on me as a kid. Things I thought were just me, were clearly trauma effects. This is big. I also seem to have reached a point where I can no longer sympathise with any of my four horsemen and know that I was just plain right when they were very, very wrong, as in right about how you live life around emotional issues. They gaslighted with the message that I was over emotional and theatrical in my response to events, but now that the tide has gone out, it is clear that they were living in unhealthy denial of serious unresolved issues and my more open and honest approach to the expression of feelings is the healthy route. The vultures have come home to roost on that one. I have no doubts on that now so I suspect the effect of the gaslighting just petered out.

I think I also was able to remember some of the good stuff about my father which had been buried under the dissacociative response to his battle with my "we need to talk about Kevin" brother. Dad was a man of his age, certainly no new age parent, but he was a kind and loving man who died too early. I have now retrieved a stack of good memories from the dustbin where my brother slung them and that is counterbalancing some of the negatives. My brother killed him, I have no doubt about that, he was an ill man and my brother harried him into a third and fatal heart attack at the tender age of 54. Remembering all that has been painful, but it needed doing.

Understanding the full mechanics of trauma and the effect on the brain has been big. I increasingly see my story in physical terms and also as part of a process that many experience in a very similar way. Trauma varies in cause, and the stories in here are diverse, but the way that the brain seems to react chemically and physically is suprisingly uniform. I take a lot of comfort from this because it is suddenly much easier to fight. It's a bit like finding that magical cleaning product that actually works. PTSD literally alters the structure of the brain, the hippocampus shrinks and it screws up short term memory. That vagueness that I found so disturbing isnt me, it's an effect, and given some peace and quiet, some normality and stability, I won't just get back to normal, I'll be better than normal. I have lived my whole life with one hand tied behind my back and that is about to end. We all struggle so much with C-PTSD because we have only one tool to fix the brain and that is the brain itself, that's tough. We see everything through a foggy lens so it's no suprise it is a huge struggle. Fighting it takes more effort than it gives back, so it is exhausting. Understanding that is MASSIVE. But the answer is quite simple in reality and it is this.

The brain is like any other organ, if you you use it the wrong way it will break. Abuse and trauma break the brain and alter the way it works. This clouds the way that you perceive the issue itself and makes a straight road a tangle. The emotion becomes bigger than the objective truth that everything you feel is natural, an understandable reaction to the injury. Instead of unencumbered thought and life, you have a heap of scar tissue that is warping perceptions. None of that is fair, true, but fairness aside, it's simple cause and effect and it isn't YOU. More to the point, take any other human being and put them in your shoes, and the same thing would have happened. There is no weakness; you are not a failure and fated to be sad, depressed and jumpy. This is simply your mind doing what it needs to do, trying to make sense of the senseless.

Abusers are keen to gaslight of course, so they will supercharge the doubts they have created, but it simply is NOT YOU. Never was. We are not perfect either, no human being is, but we are sure as * not as imperfect as the people that injured our brains. The guilt, all the clouds of swarming shame and the judgement they threw at you,  that won't go overnight, it may take years to settle, but they are merely a symptom of the sickness in the minds of others and you do not need to give them space to grow. Accept that they will flare and die in waves, that's normal. There is no success and failure in this recovery. Be good to yourself and let it wash over you from this point on, your mind is your friend, don't fight it.

That's the point I have reached on the counselling.

Ok, Diet stuff. Well I'm still on my anti depressant and I am still drinking a bit over the limits so I think I can rule out those as factors. What is new is a number of supplements. I now take:

vitamin D
Siberian Ginseng
Ashgawandtha (look it up)
cod liver oil
Multi vits
one ibuprophen per day (200mg)
plus my usual blood pressure  and cholestral treatments

when I sneeze, people form conga lines

My diet is different too:

Muesli and nuts
Chicken and fish over red meats
Caffeine is way down.
lots and lots of water

LIfestyle:

Well, I've very much taken on board that I have to treat the fatigue with respect. I now plan for it and factor it into my activities. There seems to be a distinction between physical activity like walking or yoga say, and anything stressful. So work can bring on fatigue if it is troublesome but a walk in the sun actually generates energy.

It is really important to understand cortisol, adrenalin and the adrenal system I think. Live in constant stress and these will be hugely effected. Post trauma, the adrenal system can go into spasm and just shut down, robbing your body of get up and go. Don't be angry with it. It's earned some time off. Tbe fatigue is a sign of the body resetting after years, decades or even lifetimes of trauma. Read up on it and know that it is natural. Part of the effect is poor concentration, mental fog and a lack of interest in life. ALL NATURAL.

The difference between a task with people or without people is marked. I am actively avoiding contact with friends who don't get what I'm experiencing. It is hugely destructive to be dismissed so why risk it? I am concentrating on the good contacts and avoiding the emotionally inarticulate.

I am now learning to stop pushing myself forward when I falter, it simply backfires and much of that pressure comes from the echo of old abuse and dubious philosophy. What suits me, is what suits me... end of story. C-PTSD is a serious condition, make no mistake about that.  If you had cancer you would react accordingly. Mental injury is invisible and public understanding is lamentable. It is only 100 years since shellshock was recognised, General Patton was slapping PTSD sufferers 70 years ago. PTSD in non-military situations has only really been looked at since the 70s and even then, the majority of the population still form their understanding of mental illness from the movies. This is not our problem. If they don't get it then damn them, there is nothing we can do about that and the quest for recognition, especially from the people responsible for our trauma is a habit we need to break. If they are capable of understanding it now, then they wouldn't have been capable of creating it in the first place. What matters are the people that DO understand and the people that accept you for who you are now, not what you were or what might hopefully become. Now is what counts.

I accept the ups, and I accept the downs. It's all healing.

No contact means no contact.

People pleasing is reserved for the people worth pleasing, the kind hearts, the gentle loving people and those needing support. I am not going to waste another second of my time pleasing a narciscist. Nope, nope, nope. Not going to happen.

Being good to me. There is nothing wrong with this. If you have been brought up around narcissists they will have indoctrinated you with myths about duty, obligation and shame. None of that is true. Unconditional love is a green light for abuse and it is inflicted through repetitive programming that any time or energy you use on yourself is selfish, irresponsible and criminal. Total garbage. Every human being on this planet is entitled to live the largest percentage of their lives in pursuit of contentment. Relationships are contracts we make with people that make life better for us all collectively. Abuse happens when people seek power in relationships to pursue base needs, sick desires or to defend themselves from their own weaknesses; using those closest to them as a human shield against risk, responsibility or failure. So I am making a contract with myself for now, feeding myself validation and doing whatsoever gives me the tiniest hi upwards. Even with drink, it isnt about outside judgement whether I drink or not, it is my own sense of whether it serves me or works against me that matters. If I want to drink, I'll drink. If I want to stop, I'll stop. This applies to any other issues too, including sex, TV, what I eat, what I wear, or in the case of sex, don't wear etc etc etc. There is only me in this equation for now and my needs are paramount. This does not make me a narciscist. Don't even start to go there! There is nothing selfish about making yourself content in your own skin. So my habit is to go with the flow... MY flow.

That's where I am. Last week was unmistakably the first indicator that I can beat this thing. I am doing something right, tho of course, its hard to pick a single cause from the above. Half the supplements will be placebos, but then, who cares? If it works it works. If I can get a higher dose of a placebo, I'm on it! That stuff rocks!

I can beat this, we all can. Learn, research, act... and be defiant with the knowledge that so many of those doubts and fears are illusions that can  be outwitted in time. We deserve life. Let's go get it, eh?

[helliepig]

I LOVE THIS

[Three Roses]

Big stuff, great news! Awesome, wasn't able to read it all but def coming back to it when I'm more awake!!

[Blueberry]

  James, this is powerful!