Feeling Crazy
PTSD and Complex PTSD
This blog is written for female survivors of male perpetrators.
PTSD and Complex PTSD (the variant that is the result of compound trauma over a lifetime) can make you feel like you're completely nuts. The jury of 'experts' is still out on whether an emotional trauma can actually cause the same condition as being shot on the battlefield or surviving a plane crash into the sea. How could it, they say? But when the man you've invested your whole life in suddenly sheds his skin to reveal the snake he was all along, the shock is something else, man! It's as if a Trojan has taken over your normal computer operating system and begins to infect and devour your hard drive. Your limbic system kicks in, floods your body with fear hormones and adrenalin and you can shift between wanting to fight, freeze or run for your life, but you just can't regain your normal composure from that moment forth. Your body won't let you.
It's in your body.
Your hands can shake. Your palms can sweat. Your knees can give way. Your heart never stops racing. And your heart beats so hard it feels as if it is going to break through your chest at any moment. You suddenly feel as if you've been swallowed up into a time warp or a black hole or some other spooky inexplicable vacuum. You function on auto-pilot. You have no choice. Everything sounds different, looks different, feels different. You try to get some control. We are used to the illusion of control. But the wrong random cue can send you back into panic. Your fright response is on high alert 24/7. You can't sleep. You can't eat. You can't explain it to anyone. You think it'll never end. You have to soldier on. And on top of all that, you judge yourself to be completely entirely over-the-top crazy and you hate yourself for it. You hate the narcopath for sending you to this terrifying place right when you were expecting some reward for all your hard work and sacrifice in the name of love.
And nobody gets it. Almost nobody. The eggshells you walked on before he left are nothing compared with the cut glass under your feet as you spend each day in the grip of post-traumatic stress. It is exhausting. And if you get the wrong shrink or try to open up to the wrong person, your judgement of yourself can drive you even further into despair. You have fallen into Hell and the fortunate souls who haven't will poke and prod and judge and criticise and shun and blame and send you down every garden path in search of enlightenment until you finally discover that the only person who can save you is yourself. The drugs help, when you succumb to them. When and if your anxiety develops into panic attacks. Huge holes start appearing at the bottom of your memory, and the things that remain are all the slights, all the wrongs, all the betrayals and lies and ugly stuff. I started to wonder if I had Borderline Personality disorder. I got shrinks to test me for it. But no. Every shrink will give you a different diagnosis of some sort of anxiety disorder, but PTSD obviously carries some special sort of weight in the divorce court, so court-reporting shrinks are reluctant to call it that for some reason. That's just for soldiers or victims of a siege.
But PTSD is most likely what you've got. If you want to put a name to it, which we do. You've Googled it, you've read the books, you've printed out and handed out the helpful hints for friends and family of people with PTSD. And nothing has changed. You still can't get a grip. You still can't get over it. Here's the really bad news. It might be with you for life. Trauma stays with a person, and goes in and out of remission - just like cancer. You can stop thinking in terms of a pathology that you can fix with therapy or the right medication so you can get back to the way things were before. Things will never be the way they were before you were idealised, devalued and discarded or destroyed by a narcissistic sociopath. From here on in it’s about management of your PTSD symptoms. But there is every reason for hope. Trauma can be helped into remission and stay there. You need to learn a new way of being. You need to learn how to become a human being instead of a human doing. The good news that you may not appreciate while you're busy beating yourself up for being crazy is that you DO have the internal resources to get yourself through to the 'other side'. You DO have the strength resilience courage to create a whole new you. You can do it. Seek out an ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy) therapist and start working on trauma recovery!
There is no hurry. The sense of urgency is just another layer of illusion that your own mind has imposed on you. It's just another part of trauma. Sure, you need to deal with the possible homelessness, financial devastation or confusion and misery of your kids and yourself NOW. But you can do it. If you say the wrong thing when your body goes into fight mode, let yourself off the hook. Your anger is understandable and not the terrible crime he conditioned you to believe it was. If you do the wrong thing when your body (and mind) goes into freeze mode, let yourself off the hook. If you try to suicide or do something risky and crazy when your body and mind go into flight mode, let yourself off the hook. You can apologise later. You can atone for your bad behaviour later. Decent people - the people you want in your life going forward - will accept your apology and stick with you while you fight your way out of this quagmire. The rest is just collateral damage. There will be lots of collateral damage. The life you built for yourself up until the moment of world collapse is OVER. Dive into recovery!
Let yourself grieve. Be kind gentle compassionate towards yourself as you grieve over and over for one thing you thought was solid safe secure after another. Let yourself grieve for the person you thought he was, the person you thought you were, the world the way you thought it was. There will be lots of grief. The anger, the disbelief, the atonement – they are all a natural part of grief.
Two years out from my betrayal and abandonment, I still struggled with PTSD every day. My body and mind still woke me with the ugly memories. My body still flooded with fear hormones at unexpected triggers, and my mind still imposed layers of shame and self-recrimination. Some victims report tens of years of this stuff. Best be prepared for it. My poor shrink had to listen to me complain that this should be over by now every time I saw her. It is almost impossible to comprehend how deep the scars are. The wounds to the soul. It's easier to hop on board the shipload of people who don't believe you! Who wants to accept that this is what life is going to be like now? Brave people, that's who! Awakened people! This is living man. This is the suffering that the Buddha spoke of. The courage to overcome. The resilience to endure. You have it all inside you. It's not 'out there'. Everything you need is right there inside you. You're not crazy. You have PTSD.
Further Reading…..
BUDDHIST WISDOM FOR THE MOMENTS AFTER WORLD COLLAPSE
“When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times ", Pema Chodron, Shambala Classics, 2000
A BRILLIANT GUIDEBOOK FOR MANAGING YOUR PTSD SYMPTOMS
“Healing from Trauma – A Survivor’s Guide To Understanding Your Symptoms and Reclaiming Your Life”, Jasmin Lee Cori, De Capo Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008
A BOOK FOR ‘NORMAL’ NON-PATHOLOGICAL BREAK UP GRIEF
“The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Turn the End of a Relationship into the Beginning of a New Life” , Susan Anderson, Berkley Books, NY, 2000
That mountain you are carrying?
Teach yourself to put it down.
Then climb it.
Techniques & practices specifically for Narcissistic Abuse Syndrome recovery
A BOOK FOR RECOVERY FROM PATHOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIPS
“Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving”, Peter Walker, Azure Coyote, US, 2013
REDISCOVERING WHO YOU WERE BEFORE YOU WERE TRAUMATISED
“The Drama of Being a Child : The Search for the True Self” , Alice Miller, 1995
ONLINE HELP FOR PTSD FOR VETERANS – STILL RELEVANT FOR RELATIONAL PTSD
PSYCHOPATH-SPECIFIC CAUSES OF PTSD EXPLAINED BY A SHRINK ON YOUTUBE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3di1ipBkmgc
MISDIAGNOSES OF NARCISSISTIC ABUSE SYNDROME EXPLAINED BY AN ACT THERAPIST
https://www.nickipaullcounsellor.com/blog/why-narcissistic-abuse-syndrome-is-misdiagnosed
UNIVERSITY RESEARCH CONFIRMS THE ONLINE COMMUNITY’S CONTENTION THAT NARCISSISTIC ABUSE CAN CAUSE PTSD
https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2023/01/relationships-with-narcissists-can-cause-ptsd-symptoms-a-new-research-study-finds/
