‘Why do you want to talk to me?’ This impeccably dressed, well-spoken woman, sat in my lounge with a provoking gaze reaching deep into my soul making me squirm.
I shrugged, ‘I don’t know, Sam thought it would be a good idea, I don’t know why though, I feel okay.’
But then I didn’t know what Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was, and that I had it!
After leaving home, making my own way in life, it wasn’t until I was 43 did I realise my view of the world was entirely perverted. I had drifted mercilessly through my twenties and thirties with no regard for my health or the consideration of others. It was here my wife suggested I just sit and chat with Jane, a cognitive therapist, and see what comes up.
Of course, why did I need to have therapy? I was fine, right?
‘Why do you want to talk to me?’ Jane sought.
Jane is a master of leverage with talk. In a couple of well-phrased sentences, my world bottomed out, manifesting that pit in your stomach, actually creating a feeling, something which I later realised I was totally immune to. The feeling had always been there. We don’t feel our heart beating every second of the day, only if we sit quietly and dial into the lub-dub of the beat, it’s a noisy old thing, the heart. This was similar. Jane had shone a light on what was wrong inside of my head, which had physical consequences.
It was obvious to Jane and the rest of the world I was in poor health. Morbidly obese, diabetic with a growing list of the regular chronic conditions.
But in my world, I was fine, chipper, tip-top.
Jane opened a door which was to become a rollercoaster of emotional trauma, despair, and pain.
Was it worth it?
Truthfully, I don’t think I would be here on the eve of my 52nd birthday if Jane hadn’t come into my life. And yes, I still see Jane every month, and sometimes once a week and when an active flashback uproots my mental health, we talk daily.
She prophesied the treatment is something which would require and long game strategy. ‘how long?’ I inquired. It was her turn to shrug.
It’s been almost ten years, and this, I have come to learn was, just the tip of the iceberg. So damaged is my conscious mind. It will need a lifetime of coaching.
Crazily, I thought the psychological damage I had was from the army. I had seen some stuff, done some things any human shouldn’t, and these are bound to have affected me on some level. But curiously, it was my childhood.
My childhood was the deep-rooted cause of my pain and like the pit in my stomach, or the every-second-of-the-day beat of my heart goes unnoticed, the treatment I received from my parents was wrong. So wrong that I left home at 17 to join the army, already ravaged by serious levels of C-PTSD.
Pete Walker classifies C-PTSD as a more severe form of post-traumatic stress disorder and has five categories which lie beneath this title. Emotional flashbacks, toxic shame, self-abandonment, a vicious inner critic, and social anxiety.
At this stage in my treatment, I was still in contact with my mum and dad, oblivious to how, in particular, my father treated me. Even in adult life, I would fawn in his presence, something which I didn’t know I did. It petrified me of him, something he would revel in.
I was a man who wasn’t designed to fit in; I was designed to stand out, but in the presence of my father, I’d shrivel; wilt like a dehydrated wall flower, and I was oblivious of my behaviour, not until Sam would mention it.
She and I would have, let’s call it friction, for want of a better word, because of it, it was never an out-and-out argument, just her arguing my corner for me and me isolating because of it. With family get together’s, my father would make some misogynistic comment or racist jibe, my sister, mum and myself would all chuckle to the comment — now I understand it, an act of preservation under the critical eye of the narcissist, unelected and undeserving, patriarch of the family. My wife and brother-in-law would sit stony faced in the comment or behaviour, not getting it or understanding the joke. I just didn’t see through the abuse, so immune to his behaviour to deflect his abuse elsewhere.
The hard thing for me to realise is my father disliked me. This isn’t just indicative of my symptoms. He said it, on my 15th birthday, that he hated me — how does a 15-year-old boy process this? How can this not affect me in later life?
The tough diagnosis I had to come to terms with was the extended period I was verbally, physically, and emotionally abused by the one person who should show nothing but love and patience. Looking back, I felt his contempt, which had a low threshold for violence. This all came under the guise of corporal punishment. I was so alone in my home, the level of loneliness I felt through my childhood makes my guts twist even after all this time.
The ongoing abuse I received had a physiological effect on me. This kind of ongoing, unrelenting abuse changes the neuroplasticity of the brain. I would start echoing the words of my father. I wasn’t good enough; I was too fat; I am worthless, stupid…
It was unending. Nothing I did had any credence to this man.
This kind of external programming wired my brain to think in a certain way, linking to my own emotions. The sense of self-loathing becomes so strong, my true identity becomes buried in the untruths of who my father believed I was.
Take an apple computer, you introduce a Microsoft software program, and the apple computer rejects it. This, on some level, is the same thing. Re-wiring of the brain is possible, but it will take years of confronting this inner critic and changing the inner narrative and this starts with forgiveness.
One thing my inner critic cannot fathom is forgiveness. The critic who has the voice of my father is unrelenting. He discarded me from the earliest of memories, which adds to my pain. What did I do wrong? How could I have changed things? These are not the right questions. Even just why?
He was and is damaged himself, caught in his own cycle of unwellness. In some weird Stockholm syndrome, my mum falls in step to his beating drum.
Today, after finding the courage to cut him off and remove his cancerous behaviour from my life, it was only going to be a matter of time for my mum to cross the fence and side with him. As much of a victim in all of this as I am, my mum has made her choice and I have nothing but love, light, and forgiveness towards her. But for my self-preservation on a healthy level, I must exclude this behaviour from my world.
What am I doing here sharing my experience and business with you? Well, I know I am not alone and even if a part of what you read here resonates through the wilderness of your pain, you can come to learn you’re not alone too. I have lived it and I am going to be honest with you. I am still drifting through alternate non-realities. The road is long, challenging and requires effort that needs you to dig deep. It needs guidance too and unless you reach out and find your own Jane, the pages of a self-help book won’t cement the genuine change you’re going to need to achieve in order to be free.
For me, I now can see the end of the tunnel. When the emotional flashbacks happen, I feel them. The isolation I sense is a realisation I must get out of the funk the isolation causes. This is an enormous step in the recovery. As the inner critic starts and the spiral of darkness descends, I hit it off at the pass. I think about what I have and the gratitude I feel for my actual reality. I forgive myself and reassure my inner child, self-talk myself to a place where the burden of his pain dissipates into nothing. It’s here where the isolation ends. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, I have a lifeline. Well, a couple. My wife is the first person I go to. The embodiment of patience and common sense, my wife does the trick. If she can’t, then it’s the bat-phone to Jane, and this knocks it on the head.
I want you to know you’re not alone in this. You are not the bad person here; you are a victim in this entire process and there is no need for you to drift through your non-realities and play your role as the victim.
Live your life, be free and focus on the one thing we should all focus on, finding the love within us for all of us.
I would love to hear from you in the comments section below.
Thanks for reading Jon Biddle ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
