Multigenerational Abuse

Posted on December 30, 2019 by Donald Wilson

Child abuse doesn’t just affect one generation. It often spans many generations and triggers numerous dysfunctional relationships over time.

People who have been abused as children have a really hard time as adults, especially as young adults trying to formulate romantic relationships. Without a solid foundation established early in life, emotions can feel like quicksand and you soon feel like you are drowning. People become desperate for love and accept all sorts of inappropriate behavior that seems like it must be some kind of love, or it wouldn’t be so intense. So this is the story of one such person, after an abusive and destructive marriage

Even after years of counseling, he still feels the desperate self-criticism of his youth, pulling him back into depression and suicidal thoughts. At the end of his first marriage, he actually tried to kill himself by sleepwalking in front of a bus

The transit bus driver drove his bus into the side of a building to avoid hitting the patient, most likely saving his life.

He went to see a doctor after this because he felt that he was in danger because of his actions. He consciously knew that he was a danger to himself and potentially others, but so deeply depressed about losing his wife that he was wandering around in a complete daze.

This was despite the fact that the relationship was fundamentally dysfunctional, and she used and abused him virtually every day from the very first moment he laid eyes on her. His self-worth was so low that he actually believed that everything that ever went wrong was his fault. He allowed himself to be her emotional and physical servant, charged with somehow making her feel good about herself.

Although she was highly intelligent and won many academic awards she required constant affirmations of her intellect, and couldn’t accept any opposition to her opinions on any subject at all. To whatever degree he differed from her point of view, she called him out and accused him of trying to undermine her and make her look like an idiot to their friends or families. He also took on responsibility for taking care of every aspect of her life, including paying all the bills, providing her with funds to pay for her advanced education, and a constant stream of extravagant gifts. Their life together was one of extraordinary social adventures, with a stream of her unusual friends variously moving into and out of their home and their lives together.

They were together for nearly ten years and had a daughter. Their divorce was highly acrimonious and as a result of an emotional breakdown, she intimidated him into giving into virtually all of her demands, including extremely restrictive access to their infant daughter, who is now almost forty years of age.

Because of his blindness to her faults and unwillingness to acknowledge her abusive behavior, He simply was not in any position to provide adequate co-parenting to their daughter, who ended up with her being physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by his ex-wife and her mother, who had previously done the same things to his ex-wife.

It wasn’t until their daughter ran away from her mother’s house to live on the streets that he became aware of all that she had gone through in her mother’s care.

The daughter suffers from multiple psychological disorders including acute anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, PTSD as a result of multiple sexual assaults starting with her grandmother as early as five or six years old. After she ran away, at thirteen years old, from her mother’s home when she came to live with his current partner and him. It was only then that he heard her story and got her into counseling. The road was very difficult, and they were not very successful in helping the daughter overcome her many conditions.

Never in all the years he had been married to his ex-wife did he realize how destructive her constant personal attacks and total narcissistic behavior had been to him. After he more or less recovered from his breakdown and hospitalization after their marital breakdown, he still blamed himself for everything that had gone wrong in their marriage.

But no more. His daughter suffers from many psychiatric and emotional defects, some of which would have been there no matter who raised her as a young child. She also has many physical disabilities including muscular and skeletal problems that have resulted in her living life in chronic pain, and incapable of independent mobility. She also had two children, which he had to have taken from her because she is incapable of providing the minimum care level necessary for their physical and emotional health. He doesn’t blame his ex-wife or her mother for all of it, as it would unfair to do so.

Gaslighting is an insidious form of abuse, but when combined with sexual and physical abuse can lead to almost untold self loathing in its victims.

But what is fair to say is that without the abuse by her narcissistic mother and a grandmother who barely survived Nazi rule in Holland as a young girl before abusing her own daughter and granddaughter, their daughter didn’t have a chance at any reasonable life. Despite years of counseling himself, He still knows that he has blinders on regarding his ex-wife and still has hard time understanding what he allowed to happen in his marriage, or what really took place in all the years she had total control over their daughter’s care and custody.

He had even blamed himself for that restricted access, and his lack of involvement in his daughter’s life. The extreme anger his ex-wife expressed towards him made a more normalized co-parenting arrangement impossible. Even spending thousands of dollar on legal fees trying to get better custodial arrangements failed.

If you are a survivor of an abusive relationship and have gotten out, don’t try to deal with this all on your own. Find a good counselor and make every effort to deal with your own demons before they drag you into yet another dangerous quagmire.

Unfortunately, you may find yourself repeating your mistakes, over and over again. Learn to recognise the cycle of abuse in your own life, and take action to change your circumstances. Leave.

bipolar living

Posted on October 3, 2019 by Donald Wilson

with or without medications

Manic episodes occur with amazing regularity in my life, so I surround myself with folk you care enough to support me in avoiding the worst consequences of mania. https://www.self.com/story/bipolar-manic-episodes

I’ve been bipolar all of my adult life. I equate being bipolar, in some ways, with being out in the weather. Some days it is sunny and bright, all things are possible, nothing can get me down. Some days are stormy, threatening lightning and thunder, and I’m afraid to get out of bed. So in addition to having to deal with diabetes, I also have to manage my emotional state. One of the best things about Intermittent Fasting is that it is another way I gain positive emotional feedback, by taking control of my health, as well as my emotional life.

Years ago, after several years of psychiatric medications, I decided that I couldn’t live with the “deadness” I felt while medicated. I felt like I was living in a fog, without any connection at all to the real me inside. I’d given up everything that made me “me” and was stuck inside a pseudo human being, without flavour, without emotions, without any reason to live at all. I don’t want to live that way, and so I’d rather live with my extreme emotional roller coaster than depend on meds to keep life in balance.

Before you decide to abandon your medications, and go it alone, consult with your doctor and make sure that you have a professional to provide you with ongoing care, just in case things don’t go the way you think they should.

Building mastery gives you a sense of accomplishment, Van Dijk said. What activity you choose “will just depend on where [you are in your] life and what will create that feeling of being productive.”

For instance, she said, this might mean volunteering, getting out of bed at 9 a.m. instead of noon or going to the gym three times a week. Or it might mean checking “the mail if that’s something you’ve been avoiding, … gardening or going for a 5-minute walk.”
Bipolar disorder is a serious illness. The illness itself along with treating it can feel overwhelming. But by taking small steps every day, you can effectively manage and minimize symptoms and lead a healthy, fulfilling life. If you’re not involved in treatment, contact a doctor or mental health practitioner. The strongest and healthiest step you can take is to seek professional support.

https://psychcentral.com/lib/10-small-steps-you-can-take-today-to-improve-bipolar-disorder/

Self Determination applies to all human beings, and ultimately we are all responsible for our own physical and mental health.

So, what then? I can’t rely on emotions to be an accurate guide, either for behaviour, or commitments. I can’t maintain relationships as an on-again, off-again basketcase. So I decided that my behaviour would be governed by my personal values instead of my feelings at any given moment. Whether I’m happy as a kite, manic and unstoppable, or in deep depression, I choose to respond to external input based on what I really want in the long run. This means that I’m always willing to be supportive and listen to others, whether I feel like it or not. It’s not about me, it’s about them and the kind of a man I really want to be. My actions are governed by my intentions, not my feelings.

That’s not to say that I don’t completely “fuck-up” everything sometimes, either in my personal or professional life. It’s especially true when I forget what’s really important to me, and don’t live up to my higher purposes.

But the other part of living is that I have to be completely accountable for my actions. That’s easier said than done, but I own my mistakes and forgive myself, rather than going over things again and again and again. Instead of being proud of myself only when manic and ashamed of myself the rest of the time, I accept myself, good and bad.

Neither be a God, (as I sometimes thought of myself when in a manic phase), no nobody, (

which is how I often saw myself during a serious bouts of depression. Instead, I’m just a human being striving to live my highest and best life. I no longer live in judgment, either of myself or others.

I feel for your pain, I really do. But live with it, and have a life worth living, regardless of temporary emotional states that come and go without any useful purpose. Ironically, over time you’ll come to be a lot happier with who you’ve become. Self respect and personal accountability trumps bipolar, at least, for me.

It’s the journey, there is no end point

Aside

Whenever religion is used to suggest that there is a certainty: about the nature of God, if any; the nature of humanity, as if knowable; morality, if unconnected to pertinent circumstances, then religion is dangerous because of instead of generating genuine reflection and a healthy quest for more information and spiritual growth, it postulates that everything is already known and not worthy of our intellect, our compassion, or our investigation.

The world’s great religions are aligned with the journey of discovery, the mystery of spiritual enlightenment, and the challenge of learning ethical conduct for all human beings.

It is not religions that fail, it’s religious people who seize upon an imperfect understanding of faith, and seek to impose it on themselves and all others.

This is as true of fundamentalist atheists as it is of Jihadists of all other descriptions. To assume that one person actually knows the true nature of the universe, including the total certainty that there can be no God or universal consciousness of any kind is as religious as an absolute faith in any other religion and is just as dangerous as fanatically believing in any other cant.

The Plan – Part Two

Posted on April 10, 2017 by Donald Wilson

The last Blog in this series was about deciding what you can’t do without, and getting rid of everything else. Well, maybe. In some senses it was really about deciding that it’s okay to eliminate stuff from your life that no longer serves you in a positive way. I stepped around it a bit, but ultimately came down to getting rid of people from your day to day life who either (a) are destructive to you, or (b) are not contributing in a positive way to the quality of your life.

I know that lots of people blog on the subject of toxic relationships, and its good to take advice that reduces unnecessary pain and sorrow. What about people who are merely indifferent or who make no contribution. Not toxic necessarily, but of complete indifference. Be brave, get rid of them from your life too. You won’t miss them a bit, and their absence might make room for you to add something or someone to your life that actually makes it better.

So that’s probably enough on that issue for now. Be careful that you don’t welcome stuff back into your life once you’ve got rid of it.

It’s a little bit like my problem with books. I always seem to keep everything I’ve read for the past ten years or so. I so envy people with empty shelf space on their one book case. I just don’t know how they can do it, really. About twenty years ago I screwed up my courage to the sticking point and threw away about 10,000 books that were clogging up space on shelves that lined all the walls of my very large family room and several other rooms in the house.

Even after getting rid of all those books I still retained a couple of thousand books that I couldn’t bear to let go. And lest you think I’m exaggerating when I say 10,000 I know there were that many because my kids at the time counted them, and gave up counting after reaching 10,000. They weren’t all just my books, I’ll admit, I’d inherited a substantial library from my mom, who had kept a lot of books from her dad. So not only did I inherit a lot of books, I also inherited their bad habit of being unable to rid myself of them once they no longer were likely to be read again, either by me or one of my family members.

However, that was more than 10 years ago, and I’ve accumulated numerous book cases full of books and magazines again, many of which I’ve read and won’t reread. I still find it hard to let go of books and magazines, especially if enjoyed reading them enough to think that I might want to read them again.

So, taking my own advice I’m going to clean out a bunch of books that I really don’t think I’ll read again. Don’t like doing it, but don’t like not doing it either. So wish me luck over the next few days and weeks while I get to it.

Anybody need a few books?