Tag Archives: C-PTSD triggers

The Current Political Situation (reblogged from Nyssa’s Hobbit Hole)

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crying_liberty

I’m sure my friend Nyssa from the Hobbit Hole won’t mind me reblogging this post she wrote today.    I think politics is dominating many of our minds these days, especially  for those of us who are survivors of abusive families or marriages and are triggered to the point of hypervigilance and paranoia by the constitutional chaos and hatred that seems to have suddenly taken over ever since Trump came into office.  It’s as if the world has gone mad.

Every day since this president took office is more WTF than the last.   Staying glued to the legitimate media (oh wait, I mean ‘fake news’) is almost an unconscious reflex that has its roots in our C-PTSD.    But our morbid fascination and vigilance doesn’t have to be in vain.  It can and should be a call to take action and (peacefully) protest and expose the truth, instead of listening to the shitstorm of hatred, lies (oops, I mean alternative facts), and national-level gaslighting and projection this Hitlerian president and his army of brainwashed ‘deplorables’ is engaging in, while they gleefully gut democracy in their attempts to turn us into a banana republic with a cruel and dictatorial ruler who wants to silence the free press, dismantle all regulations, build walls, shut down the EPA, and run our nation as if it’s a religious cult.

All I know is this:  If I have to die under this new regime (and many probably will, either through acts of internal terrorism and violence, natural disasters due to unregulated plundering of our natural resources, disease caused by “mythical” global warming, or because they lost their health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, or social security – those are all next on the table to be axed under this administration), I don’t want to die as a victim.  I almost did already and I’m never going there again.  I’d rather die fighting for truth and justice, whatever that might mean.   I’m not going to succumb and die as one of the scared sheep who did nothing.

So, here is Nyssa’s article.

The Current Political Situation.

Nyssa’s Hobbit Hole

So much is going on that I can barely keep up.  My friend Lucky Otter calls it hypervigilance, says that the abuse is now happening on a national scale…. We have the flying monkeys in large numbers….

I’m starting to burn out on news from the White House.  It’s nonstop crapstorm every day.  I spend hours just checking news feeds on Twitter. But I keep hearing that we should all be vigilant so we can protest through various channels and keep our voices heard.  But I do have other things to do….

Then I watch movies of the White Rose Society, and hear how Germans didn’t do enough to stop the Nazis, for various reasons.  We can keep the same thing from happening here, and it looks like we just might do so–but not if we stop watching.  But what about the other things I need to do?

I’m following not just American newspapers, but German and British ones as well, to get more global perspectives.  Der Spiegel is about to publish the English version of a scathing series on Trump.  That’s the magazine which also put a controversial picture on the front cover, of Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty.

It’s all maddening.  Those of us who have experienced narc abuse and other kinds of abuse, we can recognize what’s going on, but the flying monkeys call us “libtards” and laugh at us.

*****

Read the rest of Nyssa’s article here.

 

 

“This could never happen in America.”

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thingsthathappen

But it is.

I’m talking about the increasing feeling of unreality and foreboding under this new administration, run by a sociopath that even ten years ago wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance in hell of becoming president.

I sat, frozen in horror on election night, as I watched more and more states turned red, even states that have traditionally been blue.    I was upset, but I tried to talk myself down, almost convincing myself for a short time that maybe a Trump presidency wouldn’t be so bad.

But the days since his inauguration have been horrifying — and there have only been 7 of them.   One week of a four year reign.

Every day seems worse than the last.   As a nation, we seem to be on the fast track toward fascism, circling around  a looming black hole with little to no chance of escape.   Trump has been compared to Hitler. This is not hyperbole.  The comparison is being made even by intellectually respected sources who don’t usually stoop to sensationalism and fearmongering (or Godwin’s Law) to make a point.   If you doubt me, Google “Trump – Hitler.”    The similarities in both the men themselves and the tactics they are using to rise to power are chilling.

I’ve tried to stay away from the news, but I can’t.   I feel compelled to watch.  I know what this compulsion is:  it’s hypervigilance, a feeling I’m very familiar with.    I no longer feel safe here in America.   I feel like America no longer stands for what it once did, and its Constitution is being undermined a little more every day.  I am terrified, and feel like I have to scan the horizon for danger all the time.    But now I finally realize how someone like Hitler was able to rise to power.  I always wondered how that could have happened.  Now I know.  Along with the horror and feelings of dissociation, is a feeling of helplessness.   It’s incredibly triggering for someone already suffering from C-PTSD — only now it’s on a nationwide, maybe a worldwide, scale.

I can’t come home anymore and just relax.  Nothing is normal anymore.   I feel this NEED TO KNOW what Trump did or said.  During the day, I feel the same undercurrent of fear and hypervigilance I felt being raised by, and then married to, abusers.    And, like being married to an abuser, I never know what to expect.    With each new day, Trump seems to be getting bolder.  His outrageous comments, executive orders, lies, and hatred seem to know no bounds.   I’m very afraid.   I don’t think it’s exaggeration to admit that as a nation, America is in deep shit.

There seems very little that can be done.  We’re careening toward civil war, the removal of any civil liberties or even the right to protest, blatant discrimination and profiling of immigrants from “targeted countries,” even the possibility of nuclear war.   Information that has been freely available to the public is now being silenced, and facts are being denied.  We have a president who truly believes climate change is a myth and ordered the removal of climate change information, smack dab in the middle of the warmest winter on record — beating even 2016, which until this year held that record.

We have a president who lies constantly, who uses Orwellian “newspeak” to his own and his supporters’ advantage,  twisting language so that “lies” are now “alternative facts” and criticism and balanced reporting is “fake news.”    There’s no need for me to list all the insane, hate filled, and untrue things Trump has said, and all the unbelievably heartless and stupid things he is attempting to do, or wants to do.  He only seems to care about keeping his false self inflated, not at all about the American people or the country he’s systematically gutting from within as he claims to “make it great” again.   He is normalizing racism, sexism, authoritarian rule, and even the use of torture on immigrants under the guise of “rejecting political correctness.”

The man’s obvious malignant narcissism makes it possible for him to obsess over the small size of the crowd at his inauguration and then lie about it, and actually have the gall to order an investigation (paid for by the taxpayers) as to why was he didn’t win the popular vote.   Wah wah!   I guess winning the presidency wasn’t enough.   The man is an emotional ticking time bomb, and we should all be very concerned right now.

But I didn’t write this as a rant against Trump.   I don’t hate him because he is a mentally ill person who should never have come within 1000 yards of the presidency.   We allowed that to happen because of our complacency and apathy — and the way we have come to worship those who attained material wealth, no matter how they attained it.     I’m writing this because I’m scared to death. I know I’m not alone.   Every day I grow more afraid.  For all its faults, I never felt unsafe in this country before.   Like everyone else, I guess I took it for granted.  There were certain things that just wouldn’t happen in America — but they are happening now. Blatant fascism is becoming the new normal.   Things that would “never happen” are now more likely to happen than not.

Nothing can be predicted anymore.  Anything could happen.  There’s a new feeling of uncertainty and foreboding–and that awful helplessness–I never felt as an American.    There’s also a surrealness, a sense of dissociation and unreality.    It’s similar to the way I felt after 9/11, only this time it’s not an isolated event; it’s something that’s actually happening and will only grow worse if a miracle doesn’t happen, and soon.  This time we aren’t being brought closer together;  it’s a paradigm shift that will tear us even further apart.    Divide and conquer, is, of course, part of a malignant narcissist’s agenda to gain even more control and power. If 9/11 caused Americans to suffer nationwide PTSD,  a Trump presidency will cause a nationwide epidemic of C-PTSD.

We are so screwed.