Digging deeper into the experience of the terror.
It’s more than just paranoia. There’s also a sense that someone or something is trying to manipulate me by influencing my thoughts, planting seeds for ideas of horror.
This is the worst part of it, when you “realise” that the terror is just a precursor, a preparatory state you believe you’ve been put into, to make you most susceptible to “remember” all the horrors.
And suddenly, they all come flooding back, and you feel a terrible shame for allowing yourself to forget. This state of mind has affected my perception of people so deeply that I see them differently now.
It doesn’t help that I become paranoid when I drink or take drugs, I always have. In a non-sober state, “remembering” hits you even harder because you feel physically vulnerable too.
So far I don’t think I’ve been able to override this, just wait it out and try to ignore the gnashing teeth of those dreadful concepts. It’s an impossible task, fighting an instinct developed to sustain your survival.
…
In hindsight, this is where most of the delusions came from: words someone spoke or a look I noticed that suggested something they weren’t explicitly stating but knew were having an effect on me.
This isn’t uncommon in daily life, unfortunately. Bullies and abusers use this covert-aggressive manipulation tactic to attack while remaining technically blameless, because to these people, the only proof of their intention is the actual words they speak. You’ll never know if that negative thought they wanted you to have came from them, because lying makes up their entirety, save for some small, unintended glimpses of humanity (but never the glimpses they intend for you to peek).
…
Perhaps this belief than I’m being manipulated is related to my childhood trauma, the emotional and psychological abuse. We should explore this more: the years of being manipulated by a partner, then a boss, then another boss. We should explore the bullying too, and my angry father.
[That bitter feeling I have reading that word “father”, the one that stopped me writing “Dad”, that’s the feeling I want to heal. Too many open wounds man; the paths I want to follow don’t include a history of abuse, but a future of hope. A normal life]