Workplace bullying might end up as Complex PTSD

 

Dear Bloggers,

As some of you might know that my wife is suffering from Complex PTSD caused by her managers over a period of three years and then something in her brain just snapped. Since this event she has been in therapy and until today there is no way to cure her fully. This means that there are no opportunities for her to do any kind of job. As there are to many triggers out there and she might be harmful towards other people. Instead of working she is going two mornings in a week to a farm with care for people with mental challenges and she is learning to do some light tasks and learns to ride a horse.

Complex PTSD is a traumatic experience due to workplace bullying or sexual abuse. But as more attention is paid to these kinds of experiences and exactly what they can do to victims, we are beginning to understand more about this condition. And this increased understanding should, in turn, give hope to the hundreds of people who find themselves subjected to workplace bullying every day.

Because the victims of C-PTSD do exhibit some of the same symptoms seen in standard PTSD, it can easily be misdiagnosed. But C-PTSD sufferers also exhibit some other symptoms that are more specific to the condition. These can include difficulties regulating emotions such as prolonged sadness, inability to control your temper or inhibited temper, and even suicidal thoughts. My wife became a victim of workplace bullying by her manager.

Other symptoms of complex PTSD include either forgetting or consistently reliving traumatic events; feeling detached from your own body and thoughts; overwhelming feelings of helplessness, shame, guilt or stigma; a distorted perception of the bully. Workplace bullying is so much more than just making your job more difficult. It is a very real form of abuse that can undermine a person’s entire sense of well-being.

By understanding the realities of C-PTSD, we can begin to break through the wall that surrounds workplace bullying and begin to let victims know that they are not alone and healing is very much possible. It will not work after three years of constant abuse at the certain point you might just snap.

Just an example of what you encounter with a partner with C-PTSD

All of a sudden a loud scream and she is sitting straight up in our bed her heart is pounding, I am fully awake at 2 am. She is totally panic-stricken and consumed with terror in her eyes. And mumbles: “He is throwing me out of a window”.

Our bedroom is quiet. There are no intruders, only our faithful hairy friends Fedde and Heiko are standing on the other side of the bedroom door.

I wonder if her loud screaming has scared any of our children.

After 5 minutes, maybe 10 minutes as I lie in a snoozing mode again, I feel her and she is terrified in our darkened room. I try to decide if I should call a doctor to give her something to calm her down… perhaps I’m having it wrong and is it only just a bad dream. I am both afraid and confused. I know that it is safe in our bedroom, that there is no immediate threat, but her body and emotions are hijacked, and without my consent I find her immersed in past horrifying events.

Thankfully I do know now, from more than 8 years of experience, that a panic attack will eventually pass.

It feels like it’s going to kill her, but it won’t. but her body and emotions are hijacked, and without my consent I find her immersed in past horrifying events. I have to wait it out.

PTSD is typically the result of a specific, horrifying event, Complex PTSD is the consequence of numerous traumatic events, over a longer period of time. CPTSD is frequently caused by childhood abuse and neglect or, in my wife’s case, being trapped for many years in a very abusive workplace.

Complex PTSD and PTSD share symptoms, but there are some symptoms unique to CPTSD. If you are interested in a somewhat detailed list of symptoms for both PTSD and CPTSD, you can scroll to end of this post.

When I look objectively at the symptoms of PTSD and Complex PTSD, I can check off 99% of them (anger isn’t a symptom for her and also low self esteem has never been an issue) but still she tries to live in denial that she has CPTSD… until she is triggered and panicking so badly that she is struggling to speak’

Every morning she is waking up and begins her day with limited emotional energy. Our children are priority so she does everything to work around her limitations with PTSD to be available for them. She carefully plans her day tasks and she is trying to avoid crowds when she has to go to the shop.

One crowded, overwhelming event can sideline her for several days afterwards, so she is choosing her activities carefully, mindful of the probable fallout.

Still, 8 1/2 years after escaping her abusive managers, she still has nightmares and panic attacks. She is having huge gaps in her memories of the past years.

CPTSD is basically an emotional injury ~ an invisible illness. Since it isn’t as tangible as a broken bone I frequently have to remind her that living so much of her life being on “high alert” and in “panic mode” is both emotionally and physically exhausting.

According to my wife: “For me, being triggered causes a level of overwhelm that is very difficult to describe. Research done by PTSD patients has shown that when someone with PTSD is triggered and panics, the right half of the brain “takes over” and the logical, thinking left side of the brain is sometimes almost totally “shuts down.” When this happens to me it becomes almost impossible for me to speak and I can’t think. All I am aware of is the panic and a desperate need to hide. If I were walking with someone else, we would have to stop talking until the truck has passed because there would be no way to hear each other over the noise of the truck. For the minutes that the truck is roaring past, there is only the truck. I am totally consumed by the noise and vibrations of the passing truck. 

I’ve been told repeatedly that in many ways my situation was (and continues to be) somewhat extreme and unique. I am still struggling and doing little steps forward.”

There’s no way around it: PTSD sucks. There are ways that she has improved a lot in the past 8 years though. I can now write about it here on my blog. As horrible as CPTSD is, I want you to know this: there is still joy in the midst of the struggle.

I still laugh with my children. We have so much fun together. Our girls love to make us laugh… it’s become a bit of a competition between them to see who can show the funniest memes each day.

I have been blessed with two Shetland Sheepdogs, one of them is being a service dog for me. They bring all of us so much joy. Truthfully, I am not sure that She’ll ever will totally “conquer” her CPTSD but she is slowly but surely learning to manage it.

Instead of actively working she is trying to learn new ways to heal and better manage the symptoms of PTSD while she embraces her weakness and struggles. Many people do recover from PTSD and even CPTSD. There are numerous healing resources to explore. Perhaps you are also in the thick of PTSD or CPTSD.

CPTSD is a more severe form of Post-traumatic stress disorder. It is delineated from this better known trauma syndrome by five of its most common and troublesome features: emotional flashbacks, toxic shame, self-abandonment, a vicious inner critic and social anxiety.

• CPTSD emotional flashbacks do not typically have a visual component. Emotional flashbacks are sudden and often prolonged regressions to the overwhelming feelings of past abuse/abandonment.
• Fatigue with symptoms of or similar to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• Numbness, both physical (toes, fingertips, and lips) and emotional (inability to feel love and joy)
• Clumsiness
• Hyperawareness and an acute sense of time passing, seasons changing, and distances travelled
• Feelings of worthlessness, rejection, a sense of being unwanted, unlikeable and unlovable
• Social isolation, avoidance of relationships
• night terrors, chronic insomnia
• Variations in consciousness, including forgetting traumatic events (i.e. Psychogenic amnesia), reliving experiences (either in the form of intrusive PTSD symptoms or in ruminative preoccupation), or having episodes of dissociation.
• explosive or extremely inhibited anger (may alternate)
• Changes in self-perception, such as a chronic and pervasive sense of helplessness, paralysis of initiative, shame, guilt, self-blame, a sense of defilement or stigma, and a sense of being completely different from other human beings

 

If I could share one thing with you it would be this: please be gentle and take care of  yourself.

The Old Sailor,

They call it a conversion disorder

Dear Bloggers,

The recent discussion between me and the caretakers of my spouse are a difficult case and is leading to speculation and misinformation about the nature of psychogenic illness. I therefore thought it would be useful to discuss the concept of a conversion disorder in general.
 
According to one of the doctors who tried to explain me about dealing with the disbelief of most of the patients they react many times like this: “So you’re telling me it’s all in my head?”

The concept of what are now called conversion symptoms is a tricky one for various reasons. There is an unfortunate stigma attached to the notion that our brains can cause physical symptoms. Making the diagnosis is complex. Outcomes are variable and are hampered by the difficulty in communicating the diagnosis to patients. Conversion disorder symptoms often mask underlying physiological disease. And the risks of both false positives and false negatives are high.

This complexity leads some to argue, in essence, that a conversion disorder symptoms do not exist at all. The diagnosis is tricky as the patient might feel it like a way to blame the patient for the failings of the physician.
What are conversion disorder symptoms?

Various terms have been used over the years to refer to symptoms that are generated by psychological stress or other factors. Hysteria is an unfortunate term which was invented to refer to the uterus, as if such symptom were uniquely female. For obvious reasons the term “hysteria” is no longer used. 

Psychosomatic is still a proper term, meaning physical symptoms with a mental cause, but the term does have a bit of a stigma attached. The term conversion disorder is most widely used today, or psychogenic simply meaning having a mental cause.

As my wife has been diagnosed with complex PTSD with anxiety related problems and has a psychogenic overlay. In this case there is an underlying physiological disease or disorder which then results in stress and anxiety which further generates the conversion disorder symptoms on top of the physiological symptoms. 
 

Psychogenic signs and symptoms are real the patient really experiences them. A conversion disorder is a real disorder, it is just that the problem is with the brain’s software, not hardware.

Sometimes my wife is overtaken by her anxiety disorder, which may be reactive or may be primary and due to a biochemical disorder in the brain. Anxiety puts a lot of stress on the body and can absolutely manifest with physical, and sometimes very dramatic, symptoms. Stress itself can also manifest with physical symptoms. My wife is living like she is constantly being scared with very hectic moves

So we all have psychogenic symptoms at some point in our lives, and we take them for granted. The fact that more dramatic symptoms can also result from purely psychogenic causes should not be that surprising.
How do we known when symptoms are psychogenic?

At times patients will have psychogenic weakness, either partial or complete paralysis of a limb. This happens to my wife when the tension gets to high at that moment she loses power in her right hand and she is dragging one leg around. The first times I was very worried and thought she was having a stroke as she didn't feel her face on one side as well.True neurological weakness has certain features which cannot be simulated (voluntarily or involuntarily) and there are techniques they use in the neurological exam to look for these features. And strange enough there was nothing found.

Further still, without a detailed knowledge of neuroanatomy, patients with psychogenic symptoms will tend to display distributions of symptoms that do not follow anatomical pathways. Or they will display patterns of movements that do not correspond to any part of the motor system.

To summarize, there are cases in which patients exhibit neurological symptoms which seem to defy neuroanatomy, reveal features of effort, do not correspond to known systems in the nervous system, and lack any hard or objective finding that should be present. Even in these cases, they're likely to do a full workup looking for an underlying problem (as stated above, psychogenic symptoms may simply be overlaying a physiological lesion or disease). In psychogenic cases thorough neuroanatomical scans are normal, as are physiological tests for nervous system function.

It is not a negative judgment about the patient, it is simply an attempt to make an accurate diagnosis.

Sometimes patients are simply uncomfortable with this situation (perhaps because it was not communicated to them well). They may seek a diagnosis until they find someone willing to make one, and then they will blame their previous doctors for “missing” the real diagnosis. Sometimes the actual diagnosis is missed, and patients were right to seek other opinions. But at other times the new diagnosis is the fake, but it is more acceptable to the patient than the stigma of stress or anxiety induced symptoms.

It should also be pointed out that sometimes there is an underlying disorder causing psychogenic symptoms – serious anxiety or depression. These are just as much “real” disorders as anything else.

Patients who have disturbing symptoms due to psychological stress or anxiety will often seek multiple opinions.
In some cases the patient has what can only be called mental illness, and needs to be redirected toward psychiatric treatment.

Conclusion

In a perfect world the unfortunate stigma attached to the psychogenic and conversion disorder diagnosis would disappear. It is very counterproductive. We need broader understanding that the brain is also an organ and can manifest symptoms in a variety of ways. Psychogenic causes are just another item on the differential diagnosis.

The Old Sailor,

Trying hard to win the war within yourself

Dear Bloggers,

My wife is going through some traumatic times as she is emotional abused for almost three years in a row by two psychopathic and narcissistic persons (managers) that did everything to bring employees down that didn't fit into their profile. The company gives them a lot of freedom and it is a very sick atmosphere. A lot of former employees signed for their resignation and got a few months pay so they agreed to keep their mouth shut. My wife wasn't in the flow for leaving the company as she enjoyed what she was doing and this was against all the expectations of her manager. He was not amused with the fact that she was putting up so much resistance to keep her job. 

She kept up the fight for three years and dragged herself to work everyday. I pulled the plug in February of 2014 and she was tired and mentally so beaten up. In the last two years we have been trying to get her back on her feet with psychological help and psychiatric assistance. She has been checked on a medical scale by a neurologist and she was tested on defects by a neuro psychologist, lucky enough that there is no damage found in the brain. She is diagnosed with Complex PTSD with a panic and a anxiety disorder. Our wonderful future has been destroyed by two bastards that should be held responsible. 
 
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is mostly associated with soldiers returning from war. After the horrors witnessed in such an unnatural setting, many wo/men have a difficult time returning to “normal” life, often suffering from flashbacks, panic attacks, and severe anxiety.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Acute Stress Disorder (or Reaction) are not typical responses to prolonged abuse. They are the outcomes of sudden exposure to severe or extreme stressors (stressful events). Yet, some victims whose life or body have been directly and unequivocally threatened by an abuser react by developing these syndromes. PTSD is, therefore, typically associated with the aftermath of physical and sexual abuse in both children and adults.

Any traumatic event can trigger it. Rape, assault, acts of physical or verbal violence, even repeated emotional abuse or the sudden split of a significant relationship, especially if abuse was involved.

Repeated abuse has long lasting pernicious and traumatic effects such as panic attacks, hyper vigilance, sleep disturbances, flashbacks (intrusive memories), suicidal ideation, and psychosomatic symptoms. The victims experience shame, depression, anxiety, embarrassment, guilt, humiliation, abandonment, and an enhanced sense of vulnerability.

My wife is rather ashamed to admit that she has experienced them all. These last few weeks have made me realize just how deep the managers have traumatized me, she said. It was my husband who noticed, actually. He said that I was exhibiting symptoms of PTSD, and he was right. How embarrassing to be experiencing PTSD because of such a short-lived work-relationship. But all of a sudden there it is.

However, this reaction doesn’t reflect her or her ability to cope with it, as much as it speaks to the depth of the abuse. The depth of the trauma caused by emotional, cruel verbal, and even narcissistic pressure abuse, not to mention the sudden change in her personality and subsequent abandonment.

The first phase of PTSD involves incapacitating and overwhelming fear. The victim feels like she has been thrust into a nightmare or a horror movie. She is rendered helpless by her own terror. She keeps re-living the experiences through recurrent and intrusive visual and auditory hallucinations (“flashbacks”) or dreams. In some flashbacks, the victim completely lapses into a dissociative state and physically re-enacts the event while being thoroughly oblivious to her whereabouts.

In an attempt to suppress this constant playback and the attendant exaggerated startle response, the victim tries to avoid all stimuli associated, however indirectly, with the traumatic event. Many develop full-scale phobias (agoraphobia, claustrophobia, fear of heights, aversion to specific animals, objects, modes of transportation, neighbourhoods, buildings, occupations, weather, and so on). My wife has somethings the other way round for example she has no more fear of heights and isn't afraid of spiders anymore. Strange how the brain works

Her fear has been so great, that an email from him throws me into a panic attack, knowing that it just contains more pain. She doesn’t read them when they come in. In fact, she does not longer know if they are coming in or not, thanks to email filters that just delete them before we will even see them.
Thank goodness for technology.

Emotional abuse, like gaslighting as well as so many other insidious forms, is hard to recognize and even harder to prove. Let me first of all explain the gaslighting effect: “Gaslighting is an insidious form of emotional abuse and manipulation that is difficult to recognize and even harder to break free from. That’s because it plays into one of our worst fears – of being abandoned – and many of our deepest needs: to be understood, appreciated, and loved. The abuser is usually a very insecure person. He has a need to put others down in an attempt to make himself feel better. He must be seen as right at all times.” Often, the only indication that your partner is causing emotional damage is to trust yourself and how you feel.

• Are you asking yourself if you’re crazy?
• Are you questioning reality?
• Do you feel blamed for everything in the relationship?
• Do you feel unsafe to talk with your partner about anything? 
  
  
  
   
  

Certainly not all charming people are predators or abusive, but it is something of which to take note, especially if they are particularly charming. Please, please look closer, or perhaps, take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Find out about their past relationships. How many? How did they end? Do they take responsibility for their actions? Their words? Are they relatively consistent in their words/actions?
indication: They don’t take responsibility for their own actions.
Please believe me when I say that these actions are insidious. I mean it. They are so subtle and often covered up by grand gestures of love and excessive affection. It is very intoxicating and convincing, but beneath it all there might be a constant assault on your sense of self through gaslighting and other forms of covert abuse.

The first step is recognizing abuse as abuse. One very surprising thing I learned about this over the past few weeks is that some types of emotional abuse feel like love. Another reason the trauma is so deep: it’s not just the damage , but it is unhealed damage from a lifetime of emotional abuse.

Research PTSD and Emotional Abuse. If you are exhibiting any of the signs, you might be trapped in a betrayal or trauma bond with the abuser. This makes it even harder to get away and heal.

Let us all learn how to protect ourselves from such people, for in this society, there is no other recourse. No way to prove it. No way to make them accountable for the damage they cause. Our only hope of defense against this type of abuse is to recognize the danger early, reinforce our armor, and get away before a trauma bond can be created. Slowly we start with counseling. To me it’s an interesting one, and it might be helpful to you, reading this blog, as it shows how one is in so much denial at first because of the shock and disbelieve, and how, if you commit to healing, you can uncover some pretty horrific things and extensive PTSD.

My wife quotes: “I might never be working again and damaged for life. Still, I’d rather know, accept, and heal than to fall into the same trap with another predator”.
Let's hope the future brings better times.



The Old Sailor,

PTSD is often a life sentence

Dear Bloggers,

PTSD is often a life sentence

Where are the therapies, the support, the compassion for those dealing with trauma?

Victims suffering from post traumatic stress injuries are not only members of the police or armed forces. Victims can be anyone; man, woman or child. Most of them struggle every day with their trauma. Many women who have suffered rape and other forms of abuse, suffer further from treatment from the courts. Interestingly, they are said to have post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) while soldiers are said to have post traumatic stress injuries. 

Post traumatic stress disorder is a wrong name. It is an injury. Disorder suggests the victim is somehow responsible for not functioning normally. PTSD victims are frightened and powerless but not responsible for their injuries. Many (sexual) assault victims suffer from PTSD and seemingly insignificant incidents can trigger panic attacks and create difficulty in functioning. When someone with PTSD commits suicide it is because they can no longer cope with their injuries. Unable to receive satisfactory treatment they take the only way they see out of their suffering.

We like to make others believe that we treat everyone the same. We don't. In my own surroundings I did a bit of survey about 49 per cent said they would socialize with a person who they would call in their normal life a friend with a mental health issue. Only question is did all the respondents gave honest answers? About 51 per cent of people around us would avoid “friends” with PTSD.

Trying to have a normal loving relationship with any man is nearly impossible. Innocent of any wrong, they suffer for the rest of their lives. And even you have been together for many years they simply cannot trust you fully anymore.

People cannot gauge the victim's suffering. Even some doctors have difficulty dealing with patients with PTSD and only offer prescription drugs as a cure. Instead of being supportive, we compound their injuries.

Talking about the trauma may be an attempt by victims to heal, to be accepted back into society. They turn to friends and family for help, but all too often the emotional impact of the trauma isn't understood and victims retreat into their shell for self protection.

A simple incident, a voice, a word, a car, anything, can bring on flashbacks and trigger the victim into a panic. Days and nights are filled with nightmares, lack of sleep, sweats, and rage. The stigma attached to victims often prevents many from seeking help until it is too late and there is little or no chance of recovery.

Most serious is the risk of suicide. When every waking moment is spent feeling rejected and alone, in fear and exaggerated alertness, ready to run in an instant, thoughts turn to suicide as the only way to find peace. This is most of the times in the first phase of the traumatized person.

Unable to work, some eventually receive some social assistance, but it's seldom enough for them to live comfortably. Reduced to below-poverty existence and forgotten, these once-productive citizens become a troubled group in society.

Recently, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) a relatively new treatment has shown some promise. But where does a victim get this help? Only a few specialized psychologists and a couple of psychiatrists are registered with EMDR

Many victims, are losing their job and after two years of sick pay they will get unemployed and they are struggling to live on disability allowance. Instead of having a social life, they continue suffering, unable to contribute in any positive way to their own care, they depend on the care of their children or their families.

Where is the equal treatment for PTSD victims? Lucky us our insurance gives us kind of free health care? We cry out against human rights abuses in other countries but deprive our victims of their right to proper health care, to a life without fear, to security of their person? It's time we helped these innocent victims instead of adding to their abuse.

Traumatic life-threatening events often leave emotional scars, which, like physical scars, remain with an individual for the rest of their lives

I’m so tired of having PTSD…in fact I am so tired of forgetting for a moment that I have it only to have it come back and smack me in the face. That is what my wife tells me after a period of making a step back. I hate acknowledging it’s presence because then I have to accept that it is never going away and that's though as a spouse.

No matter how hard she tries, no matter how much work she does, PTSD will always be there. On some level I know it is about managing symptoms but tonight is a not to good one and I just wish it would go away.

She complained the other day to her therapist: I am so afraid of silly things and I am jumping at the slightest touch from my partner. I am not sleeping during the night and I am walking around the house. Either way if I sleep or walkabout, I wake up exhausted. I’m eating everything in sight that contains sugar and I am quickly rebuilding that wall that exists between me and the rest of the world. I want to return to old ways of coping…anything to feel comfortable in my skin. My partner is very patient but I am tired of him needing to be. I am tired of working so hard to do the right thing to only end up needing his help and support.

Luckily the racing thoughts are not back as full force as they once were and I am still able to outrun them by a bit. I am tired of living each day wondering is today the day I wont be able to manage the symptoms. Is today the day I have the meltdown that let’s the whole world know about my struggles with PTSD?

She does sometimes get to a point where life is good and she feels strong and in control of her symptoms. Today is not one of those days. I do understand that the PTSD is the result of managers abuse that I endured for 3 years. I also understand that the psychological abuse was not my fault. And in this case I could not see what was happening and even though I advised her to knock on some persons doors, none of them stopped the abuse as nobody did stop the psychological abuse he was such a “good guy” he had a free hand. What I don’t understand is why it came with a life sentence.

I think PTSD is different for everyone who experiences it. All the emotions that accompanied the original trauma were as fresh as the day you experience them. The worst part of PTSD for my wife are the nightmares, the hyper-vigilance, the adrenalin rush and the stress of always being focused on my surroundings. PTSD is, more than anything, an in-your-face realization of your own mortal nature and of the fragility of life itself. Headaches, fatigue, discomfort in places where there are large numbers of people (7-10 and up), fully hit by panic attacks, anxiety disorders, emotional numbing and inability to have close relationships can be a problem as well.

Typical phrase from my wife: "Therapy, re framing, EMDR, and a variety of techniques have worked well for me, but I admit, there are many days it is just a relief not to have to leave the house."

The Old Sailor,

What if you became the victim of a manipulator

Dear Bloggers,

What if you became the victim of a manipulator on your job. If your manager is one of those kind of bosses what would you do if he picked you as his victim.

Loads of people would flea and others will pick up the fight. But fighting is difficult and it might take more than you ever could imagine. My wife has always been someone who wasn't scared to tell you if there was something wrong work wise and you had a tough time when she was sure that she was right.

She could be pretty much point out were the problem was. She lost the three year long battle against two managers and has ended up with a mental state of mind as the last one did every thing in his power to make the kill and that she would leave without any hassle. I am pretty impressed that these people get that much freedom from the higher management to do that much damage to a happy personality (I've seen people that were that much destroyed as they had been captured and tortured by kidnapping something that you could expect.)

 

I am often asked how a person can get to each other through the process of picking up the pieces and overcoming the scars of an abusive or manipulative workplace once they finally found the courage to end it.

In fact, I’ve been asked several times to consider writing a book, on this topic alone. It seems that dysfunctional work relationship survivors often experience some unique kinds of emotional and mental turmoil. And although I’ve written about the fundamental ways these individuals can empower themselves and start over, I haven’t written very much on the kinds of things they typically experience as they’re trying to heal their wounds and put their lives back together. 

Most families fall apart after the abuse as the partners can't cope anymore. The one that has been victimized has trouble to trust people including their own spouse and children. It is a bumpy road to get your life back on track. 

Many people have told me about how hard it was for them to stop blaming themselves and engaging in a lot of self-doubt and reproach. ”How could I have been so blind…. or so stupid, or why didn't I walk away from this?” they ask themselves. It’s difficult for them to reconcile the way they saw things in the days before their toxic relationship and the way they have come to view things since their painful experience. They sometimes question their rationality as well as their sanity. 

 
But the truth of the matter is that while they might indeed have had some personality characteristics of their own that made them particularly naive and vulnerable (most of us do), the fact is that covert-aggressors are generally quite skilled at what they do, and the more seriously character disturbed social predators among us (i.e. the psychopaths/sociopaths) are extremely astute and talented when it comes to the “art of the con.” And in their very nature, manipulation tactics are often hard to see until after the fact. 

Besides, it’s relatively pointless to play the self-blame game. Lovingly reckoning with your vulnerabilities and vowing to become a stronger, better person in the aftermath of a troubled workrelationship is one thing, but doing an emotional hatchet-job on yourself just because you happened to fall prey to a good con artist is quite another.

And after years of being manipulated it’s easy to get into the habit of doubting yourself. This can be an even bigger problem if you tried counseling the manipulator at some point and the disturbed character who is wanting the ultimate power managed to con the therapist as well. Still, as hard as it might be, the one of the most important tasks for any “recovering” person has before them is to end the destructive cycle of self-doubt and blame.

Some folks have a lot of anger to deal with after their abusive relationship is finally over. They can harbor resentment that their former abuser seemed to “get away with” being such a Son of a gun while they (and perhaps their children as well) had to pay all the prices involved. To make matters worse, some possessive controllers as in my spouse her case do their best to make the ordeal of manipulating their husband as well which might lead to separation or divorce and make their live like a living hell on those who have finally had enough and found the courage to walk away. And the collateral damage that can be done to otherwise healthy relationships with others who might possibly have been sources of support can also make a survivor angry, bitter, and resentful.

For the reasons mentioned above as well as some very important others, especially for purposes of healthy information-sharing, I’d like to invite all of the readers who can identify themselves with these issues to comment on the various things they might have gone through when ending a job or even worse a relationship with a manipulator or other character-disturbed person and trying to start a new life. 

And I’ll might be writing some more on this topic in the coming months.

The Old Sailor,