Toxic Abuse: When The Fog Clears

Learning can be painful. The pain that comes from experiencing toxic abuse can truly ache for months. Some would say that acceptance of those feelings and going with them for however long they last is the only way to grow. You want and hope to come out the other side a different person. You will. Those who have experienced toxic behaviors from others change. They change a lot. Some become a shadow of their former self. The blood and will, the drive to live, are drained from the body. Those people are the unlucky ones.  They are the ones who refuse to learn from the experience. But who can blame them? Sometimes the thick blanket muffles the brain, confuses, and disorients. Does feeling the pain and re-learning how to live again in a different way carve out a different path for you? Maybe it is circumstantial as well. If you have come out of marriage intact, that is a bonus. Some do not survive the escape. Some of us who came out alive cry for those we know who, through no fault of t...

When we are in a relationship with a toxic person, we make ourselves teeny weeny. We also make ourselves invisible, lukewarm, and always less than our full potential. We become a chameleon, changing colours to try and find the perfect shade to please the person whose admiration or approval we seek. Fear You are not fear, and it is not you. Fear is a shield that blocks us from being awake, deliberate, and able to deal with life. By that, I mean dealing with reality. It does not mean having an out-of-body hippy-dippy experience. You are not a balloon.  Fear is not us. We absorb it. It surrounds us and we shrink. It stops a person from speaking up for themselves and saying no. It also stops us from going ahead and fullfilling our dreams. There are many healthy responses to real fear, like running away from someone coming after you with a stick in their hand, calling the police. But when there is no real threat we are disabled by it. When we are swimming in fear as if it is t...

Many people who escape a toxic partner go through months of pain. Pain in your joints, in your head. In the end, exhaustion strikes.  The Waterworks Crying can be good for you. It relieves the pain, and after a good weep you feel better. For some victims of abuse, it is hard to cry. Why is that? Many victims of abusers go on to experience years of harassment throughout the divorce. It could be that you are stuck in survival mode.... The abuser calls in favour and uses any means possible to shut the victim up. If children are involved, the harassment campaign could include corrupt professionals. I was informed by a Private Detective that he had dealt with many cases of organized harassment that would see the victims' parental rights taken away from them. When they finally snap, and are sectioned. The abuser could bring in groups of criminals to help harass the victim. Some victims have their cars bugged and their ex-partners even reach out to family members who abused the victim as ...

Todays Thoughts. Adding up life?   That is something we are not taught in schools anymore, is it? In my childhood, I was lucky enough to attend a small Church Of England School in the seventies that was influenced by the work of The Waldorf system. As we headed out of the sixties, which had been heavily influenced by an alternative way of thinking, and an exploration of new ways of being, many teachers sought to bring their belief systems and what they deemed necessary into the classroom. This ethos lay a path followed by children.  A few years ago I met John, who attended the same secondary school. An extension of the school system I had been lucky enough to develop through. We spent two hours talking about the Persian rugs, outside English classes. Also, photography walks with our in-house art guru and teacher through the woods, along the high street, peering into shop windows and taking in the texture of brick walls. The school had left John with a love of books, learn...

The truth you hide from others, and yourself will ultimately break you. It is the covert part of the psychopathic/narcissistic attack. They know that. It is a win-win strategy for them. An internal and external time bomb for you. But it does not have to be so. I can see how this plays out in the many woman and men I have met who share lived traumatic childhood experiences. As a child, you are unable to defend yourself against violence and older siblings who try to molest you. With the abuse comes the words that attach themselves to the deepest parts of your brain. "There's something wrong with you" And then we have the violent physical attacks. One of my more interesting memories is of an older brother who tried to molest me under the guise of "Come and help me clean my room". I was around four or five and he was old enough to have left home. Looking back, it was a power play. I was the youngest and received attention for being bright and chatty.  In those earl...

Our story today shows what it is like to live with a madman. Have you ever wondered what it is like to live with a really toxic person? If you attend a Freedom Course in the UK you will meet many men and women who have endured similar experiences. As you attend the weekly meetings, your experiences have much in common with others on the course. You discover that they too had the unthinkable happen behind the happy outer walls of the home.   As the target becomes worn down over many years what would appear to be abnormal to others becomes normalized. Psychopathic Bed Manners: Suffocation Karen had gone to bed at ten the night before. Judy, the toddler, had not woken through the night. It was now three-thirty on a sunny October afternoon. Karen stood in the playpark, watching the other parents chat. She had left her husband Robert at home. He detested coming to the park and it was much easier leaving him to read his Dad's Army Script Books. When he accompanied them, he was ...