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Can_I_decide_later
31-01-18, 01:04 AM
I'm Tom. A 43 yr old who is going through an awakening. Sounds New Age I know but it's the simplest way to start I can think of.

Having come out of a catalytic and toxic, narcissistic/co-dependent relationship 4 years ago I have been battling nihilistic attitudes, behaviour which sends into a hibernation state where I can't focus on activities which will improve my life and end up relying on escapist activies like lots of film and tv viewing.

I was in therapy, privately, for about 2 years, after which I started a gardening business in order to earn while doing something enjoyable and give me some agency with the aim of becoming self-sufficient (I moved back with my parents after the relationship in which I succumbed to suicidal thoughts and the flight side of fight or flight. through this processI have learnt much about how I ended up in such a precarious situation and gained tools which are useful to prevent me heading there again yet I am still affected by that time and also my life up to that point and unravelling reasons why I became the man I was and partly still am.

Negative terms such as gullible, failure, fraud override any positive image I have in the good times which can seem fragile in fleeting yet I am determined to get to the bottom of this and enjoy the remaining years I have among good, understanding and loving people and also to manage my encounters those who aren't such a positive influence. they're unavoidable after all.

The feeling of loneliness is also a big sticking point and trip hazard so another aim is to learn to accept that lonely feeling and turn it on its head by finding occupations which stimulate and counter those feelings.

I arrived here after a recent hurtful event and opening up to someone who advised me of this forum have expressed a desire find a support group. Though I hoped this would be locally available and so could have human interaction as well, I hope this will provide a good place to find this and also give me the opportunity to express things in writing which I am really beginning to see the benefits of. I wrote 1500 words pretty quickly today as a draft for the first post of a blog I have an idea to start. That may end up being one of those good ideas I come up with often that get left behind. If I can maintain a little of the fire I have after beginning the healing prcoess again, it should come to life. I am happy to post those words here after this introduction if anyone would find it interesting to read.

So, that's a brief summary of what I am here for and I look forward to what unfolds.

Suzi
31-01-18, 09:23 AM
Hi and welcome to DWD. Have a look around and jump in where you feel comfortable!

Paula
31-01-18, 09:59 AM
Hi and welcome!

TiffanyyO
31-01-18, 06:20 PM
hey there Tom, welcome aboard :)
you have come to the best placed ever.

Can_I_decide_later
03-02-18, 11:11 PM
Thank you for the warm welcome. I thought I'd add an update (or should I start a new thread?)

I am really learning the benefit of opening up emotionally to family and friends. There are much fear and pain in doing so and it can often be an explosive act spurred on the back of a moment of great emotional pain. As I said, I live with, yet separately in an annexe, with my parents. A couple of days ago I overheard them discussing what I should be doing with my day, just as I did when I was a late teen. This is not a good thing to hear so I decided to go and politely ask them not to do that. This then ended up in an incredibly long conversation in which I did my best to explain why and what would be of help to me as I process everything I am unravelling. Through this, I learned some events of the past and was compelled to put the following in writing (the 1500 words I mentioned above)...

Can_I_decide_later
03-02-18, 11:14 PM
Blog on the subject of an anxious, depression-prone, and at times a nihilistic
Written by someone who has buried his voice for decades and is fighting to find a reasonable (one in his own eyes) while also
attempting a (possibly futile) societally accepted balanced result while hoping for acceptance for those of us who suffer.


“… when I’ve been treating people with depression, for example, or anxiety, they have existential issues, you know? It’s not just some psychiatric condition. It’s not just that they’re tapped off of normal because their brain chemistry is faulty, although sometimes that happens to be the case. It’s that they are overwhelmed by the suffering and complexity of their life and they’re not sure why it’s reasonable to continue with it.”


“…One client who’s a very brilliant artist and as long as he didn’t think he was fine because he’d go and create and he was really good at being an artist, you know, he just, he had that personality that was continually creative and quite brilliant, although he was self-denigrating. But as soon as he started to think about what he was doing, then, it’s like a drill or a saw, or something like that. He’d saw off that branch he was sitting on because he’d start to criticise what he was doing, even the utility if it, even though it was sort of self-evidently useful and then it would be very, very hard for him to even motivate himself to create. He always struck me as a good example of the consequences of having your rational intellect divorced in some way from your being. Divorced enough that it actually questions the utility of your being. And it’s not a good thing. It’s really not a good thing because it manifests itself not only in individual psychopathy but also in social psychopathy and that’s this proclivity of people to get tangled up in ideologies, which I really do think of as [sic] crippled religions. That’s the right way to think about them. They’re like religion that’s missing an arm and a leg but can still hobble along… that’s how it looks to me anyway.”
Jordan B Peterson: Biblical Series 1: Introduction to the Idea of God (lecture)


Wow, is what I felt after reading that. I am no psychologist. I have had no training in the field. What I do have is personal experience of, what seems to me, an extreme difficulty in getting along in this world and managing to be self-sufficient and has avoided addressing these problems since my teenage education. About 7/8 years ago, at the time of the financial crisis, my marriage fell apart, I lost my job, entered into a destructive relationship which resulted in an attempt on my life and “psychotic episode”. This was the catalyst to finally seek help through therapy which I spent 2/3 years in. Privately because my attempts to seek help through the NHS system failed. I felt let down. Abandoned in the no-mans land of being too suicidal for IAPT but not dependent enough on narcotics to be seen by the higher level of therapies provided by the other NHS mental health team. The result was that I spent thousands of pounds unravelling my feelings and history, learning root causes of my problems and was diagnosed with PTSD, not only from my traumatic relationship with a woman who was described as being the narcissist to my co-dependency, but also from the bullying I received in my teenage years which stunted my personal and educational development and went un-noticed and unaddressed even though I distinctly remember mentioning it at the time though obviously not strongly enough. I haven’t yet worked out why I had the personality which didn’t dare speak out loudly enough and complain. Instead, I mentioned it a weak manner which simply encouraged the attitude of those around me as something I should just ignore along the lines of sticks and stones will break my bones etc. The kind of thing that those who have difficulty in addressing the emotional needs of the sensitive person whereas my sibling apparently, who had a much stronger way of expressing himself from a young age, had one of my parents visit the dad of his bully.

Can_I_decide_later
03-02-18, 11:14 PM
To me, this period of my life installed in me a notion that I was alone in dealing with all this. I had no champion. I should have fought my bullies physically, possibly. That would have created outcomes that either would have made those around me realise that I wasn’t going to put up with this abuse, create some kind of self-respect and empowerment and maybe get the attention of teachers and parents, therefore, providing a forum in which I would have been able to truly highlight what was happening to me. Instead, my poor performance at school was put down to being a day-dreamer who had potential and would succeed if only he applied himself more. The onus was on me. I fully agree one has to take responsibility for their choices in life though I have to say that if that individual feels as though they are abandoned and has to deal with the pressures of such a vulnerable time in life when all your future depends on the outcome of the grade you receive in your GCSEs. I managed to scrape 4 Cs and a B but the gap between secondary education and 6th form was massive and by the time I went to 6th form college I had no transferable skill to bring to studies in areas I really wanted to understand. The main one being Sociology as I thought that this area may be a great route to understanding the human condition and therefore an acceptance of it. My experience in the first few weeks had my anxiety levels raised through the roof, not having a voice and the fear of being ridiculed by my classmates and/or the teacher, a fear I doubt had any real basis in reality as I didn’t know them from Adam and quite probably were very intellectual, curious people. Just the people who could have provided the forum I would have enjoyed to discuss in had I had the confidence to do so.

So, I pushed on, ending up with one A’ level grade in music. I got an E! That took me an extra year to achieve and was the only A’ level I completed as I found the environment a comforting and expressive one and the fact that I had been introduced to hash which provided such a seemingly enjoyable place to hide in. I still didn’t address issues and so went on to attempt university which after two years and a break down I quit.

It is only now I have some kind of strength developing, at the age of 43, that I can start to speak my mind but to do so comes from a place of anguish and, if I’m honest, anger. Yep, it seems I am one angry man some call entitled and self-absorbed. Maybe I’m narcissistic in some way as well as being susceptible to co-dependency. What I do know is that what Peterson said above rings so true with me. I relate completely though I am not self-indulgent enough to compare me exactly to the artist he mentions and that I am brilliant in any way. I am one of those who he describes elsewhere as having potential. His truth bombs hurt. From hurt can come learning. This is where I am at. I have no outlet to express any of this without being forceful or having to pay someone to listen any longer. Last year I started my own business soon after my therapist agreed I had reached a stage where we could shake hands; something he wouldn’t do until he was happy my need for more sessions with him was no longer there (though I could always make contact if needed in the future) I need to but can’t afford it so back to the NHS I go with more understanding of my condition and needs and the will to make my case for assistance. It’s what the NHS is there for. I won’t get into my absolute despair with what Politian’s are doing to the service that the people of this country pay for. I will just say my gratitude to Hawkins and JR4NHS for their recent court case against Mr Hunt and leave it at that. This is meant to be divorced from any political discussion.

Like I said at the beginning and you, reader, have probably noticed having read this, I am no academic and this is completely a personal anecdote. My hope is that whoever reads this and has something constructive to say will enter into some kind of discussion from which I, and we, can learn from and through. Trolls are certainly not welcome. Ill-thought comments are equally unwelcome as I don’t have any answers. I fully admit that. So, should you. We are far too complex to be so assured we have definite answers. What we need, as those who suffer from this kind of personality, is a place to speak freely with love and understanding. Not respect as I haven’t earned any. Just the decency to be heard and seen.

That’s all for now.

Can_I_decide_later
03-02-18, 11:31 PM
I'm not sure why the first part hasn't been posted and awaiting moderation. Thought I'd say this in case someone reads this before the complete prose is available.

Suzi
04-02-18, 12:15 AM
Like I said at the beginning and you, reader, have probably noticed having read this, I am no academic and this is completely a personal anecdote. My hope is that whoever reads this and has something constructive to say will enter into some kind of discussion from which I, and we, can learn from and through. Trolls are certainly not welcome. Ill-thought comments are equally unwelcome as I don’t have any answers. I fully admit that. So, should you. We are far too complex to be so assured we have definite answers. What we need, as those who suffer from this kind of personality, is a place to speak freely with love and understanding. Not respect as I haven’t earned any. Just the decency to be heard and seen.

That’s all for now.
Just wanted to highlight this - Firstly I find your uses of language really interesting - especially for someone who is adamant that they aren't academic, but it proves that academia and intelligence aren't necessarily aligned..

Secondly, there are no trolls here, you also won't find that making statements saying that "ill thought comments are equally unwelcome" as that immediately puts people on the defensive. Here you will only find honest, genuine people who have all got their own understandings of depression and mental health illness so kindness is always expected and I never tolerate "troll" like behaviour or accusations.

Your post was moderated due to the length of posts that you are posting and the time span in which you are posting them. Also due to the large amount of bold text. I have deleted the duplication and approved your post.