Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts

October 4, 2016

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,

October 11, 2015

What if you cam't figure out what your dream is

Dear Bloggers,

I have to make a lot of decisions at the moment and find hardly any time to follow my dreams. And I think it’s a lot less about “What if and more about “Why don’t I know what my dream is?” and probably more importantly “Where can I find my dream?“.


If you don’t have a dream and don’t care about not having a dream – well then you probably aren’t reading this anyway. If you don’t have a dream and you do wish you had one. Then I believe that wish for a dream is actually a sign that you do have a dream… it’s just buried under some other stuff right now.



I’m going to share some possible scenarios of what could be happening here and some ideas for what to do with them:
Scenario 1: You know what your dream is, but you are scared to admit it to yourself or to others. This is completely understandable! Having a dream is scary. Having a dream and going after it means everything in tour life could change. Having a dream and going after it means taking big risks. By not admitting that you have a dream, you can avoid all of this change and risk and uncomfortable stuff.




And yet...well, it’s still uncomfortable, isn’t it?
In avoiding change and risk you also avoid the joy of the dream come true. Mostly you avoid doing the thing you really want to be doing.
Your dream isn’t a superficial thing. It’s important. It comes from your heart and your soul. It’s tied to your purpose for being here on this planet. Avoid the dream and it will not go away. It will only grow more and more difficult to avoid. But all that stuff you are avoiding? It’s real too. And it’s scary. Pretending it’s not there is not a good plan. 
 

What may work here: Admitting it very quietly by writing it in your diary or your agenda. Start to give the dream just a little bit of space. You don’t have to tell anyone else about it and you certainly don’t have to do anything about it. Just give it some space to be and see what comes of that. Baby steps.


Scenario 2: You know what your dream is, but don’t believe that you can have it, so it’s kind of uncomfortable to think about it.
Awww. First I just want to give you a hug. Everything I said above about your dream is true: Your dream isn’t a superficial thing. It’s important. It comes from your heart and your soul. It’s tied to your purpose for being here on this planet. And also: Avoid the dream and it will not go away. It will only grow more and more difficult to avoid.


That last part is even more true in this case. Your dream is really important and it is asking you to work through your fear that you don’t deserve it or can’t have it for some reason. It is asking you to believe. What may work here: Asking “What if?” What if it was OK for me to pursue this dream? What If if was OK for me to have this dream? What do I think I deserve? What would have to happen in order for me to believe I deserve more?


Forcing yourself to go after your dream won’t be helpful here, working on changing your mind about what is possible for you will be helpful. Taking some slow baby steps towards your dreams may be helpful too. Sometimes that “I don’t think I can have it” starts to fade when it sees evidence that you really can have it.


Scenario 3: There is so much that you want to do, that you can’t pick just one to identify as “your dream”. Well this is actually a fantastic situation to be in, even though it doesn’t always feel like it. I really believe it’s better to have too many ideas than too few. I always have way more ideas and dreams than I can possibly work on.


Sometimes this “I have so many things I want to do I can’t commit to one thing is just a way of sabotaging yourself, usually due to one of the fears mentioned above, so you may want to check those out and see if any of the ideas there feel like they may be helpful to you. If that’s not it, then what is happening here is a bottleneck. Too many ideas, too little time/resources and nothing can get through. You relieve the bottleneck by choosing some dreams to work on now and putting the other dreams aside for now. If the thought of putting some dreams aside makes you freak out a little: look at what is really happening here.


If you focus on one or two dreams for now, and actually bring them to life, then it becomes much easier to go back to those other dreams and bring them to life as well. With each dream come true you become more experienced at bringing dreams to life and you open up new possibilities for how to bring your dreams to life.


But still, choosing can be hard. What may work here: Asking yourself Which dreams am I most passionate about? This might help to narrow it down. If you start to work on the dream that you are most passionate about, all that passion can help to make it happen faster, so you can get back to the other dreams.
Or you can ask yourself Which dreams feel the easiest to work on right now? which is, of course, the easier way to go. Pick the low hanging fruit. Start with the easy dreams and work your way up. It could be that nothing feels easy but something is bound to feel easier than the others.


It can be hard to put some dreams aside. I have a desktop computer that is my place to put all of my opinions, ideas and dreams in. This way it doesn’t feel like they are lost, they are waiting for their right time to be brought to life. And sometimes, because creative dreams are magic, those dreams sitting in the notebook come true all on their own. Because they’re been taken out of the bottleneck! Dreams stuck in a bottleneck tend to not come true.


Scenario 4: You really just don’t know what your dream is:
Ask yourself: If I could have anything you want, what would it be? If you had no limits. None at all. Where would you live? How would you live? What would you do? How would you spend your days? How would you feel? What kinds of hobbies would you have? What would your social life be life? Your romantic life? Your finances? Your health? Your creativity? Your spirituality?



Somewhere in all of that there must be something you dream of. Something you want to build in your world. Your dreams are about so much more than wanting things to be different than they are. Your dreams are how you express your purpose and authenticity and uniqueness. Your dreams are healing. Your dreams can make a huge difference.


You don’t have to know what your dream is before you start working on it! I know, that sounds kind of crazy but it’s true. You can make finding your dream the dream you work on! Give your dreams a chance and live them you will be so much happier.


The Old Sailor,

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