The curse.

Just when I thought it was all over.

I honestly don't know what to do about what is happening. But this madness has to stop. Psychosis is understandable, it is human, it's fierce and terrifying, but it is immediate and alive. This - the thing I'm trying to deal with here and now is way worse...and I don't know how to deal with it. 

I fought one round with it (1988- 1990), and left my home burning (!) no, nothing was burning. I simply let him (my first husband) have everything, didn't ask for a penny. And I made sure that all blame could be levelled at me. This was important. I gave my first husband a narrative that side-stepped his lethal victimhood and inability to blame his abuser. I had to keep my daughters alive, I had to get out without causing him to blame himself. And I did it. I managed to create another life, and on we went.

With my second husband, with our open doors, home-ed and kids everywhere, people were amazed at what a happy family we were. Three children home-ed, my eldest stayed at school. Then each child got into university doing a course they loved...

Then my youngest, the 'service user' in this blog, broke all his personal rules, took cocaine and anything else going. Stressed out, ashamed. He tried to put things right, everything went wrong...he couldn't finish his degree, he'd got the wrong information and it was too late to catch up. Working until 3 am in a bar, living in a flat with mould and rats. Scared of the tumour in his throat (real) scared of his symptoms (of severe stress) scared of what the drugs had done to him and seeing that he'd taken stuff that could kill him. It was all way too much, and he just fell apart.

Trust me, this is how psychosis starts. 

Nothing difficult to understand, here.

A whirlpool of self-attack, chronic stress and no money, no sense of a future...it leads to panic and processing errors that become recursive and terrible feed back loops.

So why now is this awful thing from my first marriage, back?

And back with a vengeance.

Before I consider why I'd like to try to describe it. The lesson I took and can't refute is that my first husbands problems - depression, OCD, constantly buying the same things over and over, hoarding -  stemmed from his inability to recognise the damage abuse does...he hadn't turned against it. It was a part of him, it was off the radar. His abuser carried on abusing through anxiety and depression. Acknowledgment that rage is justified was out of the question. But, if there was any hint that what he'd done (spending money we didn't have, failing to read my signals) caused me to be upset - he became the victim. If I did diagnosis, I'd say this is probably narcissistic depression. 

I don't take well to people treating me as if my complaint is an attack. No one does! But I was brought up to believe that it is up to me to step forward and say when things are wrong and if nothing changes, I have to take action. 

So I did. 

I began to sleep in a separate room, not punishment, but because he overrode my body language, his needs justified his action... I said we needed to get therapy! And he didn't see this as a sign that I was unable to cope with his behaviour, he would cry and tell me that I was going to leave him, and my heart breaks because he is a good man. But...but there were serious problems and I couldn't pretend that I was OK

By Lockerbie, Winter solstice 1988 it was already too late, way, way too late...I've avoided telling this story so far for obvious reasons. Not for my confidentiality, because I don't need it. And you will never know who 'he' is in this account. But that has to change. Fundamentally I believe that being open and honest is strength, not vulnerability. 

But this is a horrible story, and so, so sad...

So, without going into too many details...

My first husband kept a family secret because he knew it would devastate his parents. 

Do my daughters know this? I don't know, but I doubt it. He justified protecting the secret by saying to himself - see, I'm fine, what happened didn't do any harm'. And because it was harmless, he did the same harm to me...

I said, 'we need to see a therapist'...

He would only see a therapist who was a friend of his family...friend of his abuser.

I couldn't ever be open and honest with her because this family secret was pretty tough to take. I thought I could talk about the rape I endured without ever talking about why he was so blind, and defensive. And the therapy contract ' if you tell me that someone you know is suicidal'. 

He was. 

How could I tell her? My blood runs cold as I remember how it used to make me feel when he'd talk about it. If I'd told her, what would have happened? So I was agreeing to see the only therapist he'd talk to because he knew I wouldn't risk devastating his parents. And I was caught up in his feelings of shame and secrecy...but what else stopped me? The therapy...this is the real reason. I couldn't trust her. I told her what he had done to me, and she minimized it and left me believing that in her eyes what he did was fine, because we were married and marriage isn't always going to be sweetness and light, and besides which, perhaps he hadn't understood why I was crying?

As he did it.

I mean, what planet was this woman on! A client says that she feels that she was raped and you as the therapist make out that if it had really been rape the victim would have fought back. 

Excuse me? 

And because I was unable to speak - as I'd been sexually assaulted when I was 14 and all that was coming back to me... no wonder he had thought doing to me what had been done to him was fine! I'd told him about my attackers, and he told me how his abuser hadn't listened to him, and that it was OK. No damage...Hearing this, seeing this, experiencing it, I was in a hall of distorting mirrors

And, dear reader, things were to get a thousand times worse. 

In retrospect I think now the therapist was a psychologist - does that make a difference? Think Skinner boxes, think 'The kitten carousel'. A kind of soulless disregard for the right to autonomy, and a devaluing of the individuals perspective? I had walked out of my psychology degree years before because basing everything on animal experiments seemed mad beyond words!

So, how did things get even worse than a therapist telling a rape victim that in effect, it couldn't be rape because you didn't fight. You turned to stone and cried silently - so no real attempt at communication then! 

I mean, that is the implication of her view...And yes, she managed to make things a whole lot worse. Elsewhere I talk about Fanita's English's description of 'The Hot Potato'. 

The therapist picked up my husband's worst fears about himself, colluded with him that I was entirely to blame (because if I didn't get upset, or want things to be different everything would be fine!) and she amplified them. He is a man who does not own his uncomfortable feelings. His outrage and being told that I'd felt abused came from what? He feels uncomfortable because something is very wrong and he can't accept that he's acted like his abuser. He also knows that he is a risk to himself and his children. 

I have no idea how he made out that I was dangerous? 

Except there was a danger that I could try to tell the therapist the truth? 

But to be honest he managed to believe that everything he had done - without telling her anything that he'd done -  was justified...justified because? I think he must have seen me as dangerous because I wouldn't 'be told'. And therefore I was a threat?

Anyway the therapist wanted to shock me (this is how she explained it later) she wanted me to 'wake up'. and she told him not to tell me - knowing that he wouldn't be able to resist...and in this way she successfully managed to do what he could not do. She (as a powerful, truthful voice) created the power dynamic required for me to have to take what he'd told me seriously. 

She told the man who had threatened to kill his children, that I might be a danger to our children...well obviously it was me! Of course I am so powerful, 

How is it possible for an intelligent person to believe things like that?

Mostly because I never defended myself, any defence was dangerous, upsetting him was dangerous.

I agree I was not skilful in how I said no, to him. I could have done it all better, but honestly I tried my hardest to be as stoic and kind as possible.

And because the accusation the therapist made, or rather the 'kind truth' designed to make him feel protective? I'm guessing now! It was so impossible, I couldn't challenge it! Apparently I was a danger to myself and others...His evidence for me being dangerous was, I think a horrible and troubling incident that had happened to me. A man standing behind me in the supermarket queue had followed me home, blocked my car on the drive and walked into the house behind me. I was carrying my daughters, aged 4 and 2 into the house. The fact that I was terrified, kept my head, and I was prepared to throw boiling water over him if I felt even more threat, counted for nothing. When I told my husband he said I must have invited the man to follow me, I must have wanted it to happen.

And I think, because I had tried to express how awful and terrifying that experience had been, and I'd been called a lier, I don't think I felt any desire to fight my case.

In our last, individual session, the therapist apologised to me for 'dropping the bomb shell' she said that she hadn't thought that I was a danger. She said she had done it to shock me into seeing him as an ally, so I'd stop being apparently wilful and wayward. 

Fine, I certainly do not forgive!

All I can do is write it so that you can think about what happened, and so that I can remember to be damned carful about my opinions! If I'd done something like this to a client....I would have to do more than apologise. I'd need to get the whole story. Because surely what happened in our sessions didn't add up!

She had fed his fear, increased his sense of entitlement and amplified my self doubt, my insecurities, and devastated my capacity to trust myself, even to function. 

I could not challenge it.

I could not challenge something for which there is no evidence.

14/8/25 am I over it?

I don't think so...

The effect her words had were catastrophic. This is the same catastrophic bind people find themselves in as a reaction to shock and grief following the sudden unexpected death of someone integral to their lives. Death is implacable, it is impossible on a human level to understand. The desire to put everything right is impossible. The voices start, the intrusive thoughts begin to dictate OCD behaviours. The sufferer watches, powerless to break the irrational belief that unless they 'do it right' another loved one will die...

Anyway, I got out of all of that. 

I locked myself in the bathroom with the phone and all my friends supported me. But, if they had not...

And so after that I really had to get out!

I believe that I navigated the situation pretty well. No one died. And this was my first time of thinking that I could be murdered, or my children....killed to punish me. I took all the blame so he could let himself off. I agreed that I was dangerous. I agreed that I couldn't be trusted. Whatever awful thing he wanted to think. And my aim was, just be happy OK because I don't want my daughters to attend your funeral before you are an old man....

Carrying the blame affected me though. And now the core misogyny at the root of my first husbands shame and guilt is back. And no, it never faces me directly, it only ever meets me through the agency of others.

By 1993 I was out of it.

And suddenly here it resurfaced in 2019.

My youngest daughter was a true believer in the authority and righteousness of psychiatry. And, I would have agreed with her, if I hadn't seen psychiatry in action. At this time service user was in hospital after his suicide attempt, he was pleading to God to protect him from the Devil, pleading with us to prevent him being locked away (sectioned) and I found prayers for him, trusting that at least he now believed in goodness and had hope in something more than destruction. The mental health nurses who watched over him every night, prayed with him, and I wrote a letter to the Catholic priest who lives in our street to request prayers. Bear in mind that I'm a Buddhist, this is hardly my mania, belief or direction. 

I simply trust in good things.

My daughter told me that talking with him about redemption, about the love of God and salvation was making his madness worse. I gave him a tiny silver crucifix and it helped him to sleep safe...helped to keep the daemons at bay. And when I think of it it breaks my heart, why would my daughter imagine that this, the first good thing he'd thought of for months. why could she believe that hope and love should be taken away?

On this day, the day of its return, we had arrived to have an interview with the psychiatrist. We wanted 'service user' to be sectioned at the hospital he was now in. We didn't want him returned to the other one. His first experience there had not been good.

Unfortunately my daughter also wanted to be at this meeting - no, she hadn't told us this.

Before we could begin to explain why service user would be better off staying in this hospital, my daughter said to the psychiatrist, "Will you tell my mother that her behaviour..." and my blood froze. She spoke with my first husband's tone of voice and the same phrase he had used. The floor fell out from under my feet and I was back with her father screaming at me to do what he said or he'd put the children into the car and drive into a wall...

You might call this coercive control?

You would not be wrong...

The horror of that evening is seared into my mind....

And how he used to tell professionals such as teachers that they should "Tell her (me)...how to behave".

To be honest I've no idea why it came back with such force and venom through my daughter. I guess it was because I stopped her 'rescuing' her brother? She had wanted to protect service user, to get a friend to put him on a train so he could journey the 290 miles (with a change of trains!) to her home where she would make sure that he got the mental health care he so needed, being as I was lying to the mental health team about his SSRIs. 

Why would she assume that I had a problem with SSRIs, I wanted him to take the bloody tablets. I would have agreed to anything to help him out of the hell he'd fallen into! 

But, he didn't want to take the meds. And he was being sensible because he was still using. 

He was being sensible.

And I hadn't known about his drug use. So regardless of my wish for him to take the meds, I sided with him. My daughter knew that I was supporting him in not taking his meds, and so she asked service user to come and stay with her. Because she has faith in mental health services - in a way only possible for someone who hasn't experienced them!

When service user spoke to her on the phone he sounded sane, only very upset, and only a little bit mad.

She did not see the full repertoire...

I prevented him going. 

I was not going to let him anywhere near a train!

And after that, she came to the hospital on the day we had booked to talk with the psychiatrist. I get it, it makes sense, her concern for him was love. But...he was in hospital because we don't have any rail tracks close by....I'm serious. His attempted suicide would have been successful otherwise.

And at the hospital, she used the phrase, that phrase.

It was a direct link to my first husband's coercive control.

I didn't respond well. I haven't seen or spoken to my daughter since. I went to look for her...she has a daughter now, too...and yes, my heart is breaking as I write this.

But, this isn't the worst of it.

2025 - My elder son has allowed the coercive control narrative that I accepted, that I am dangerous and harmful to my children - to be his rationale for his brother's psychosis. I don't know why? It isn't classified information that THC causes psychosis. Add taking anything anyone offered...my son set out on this course because this is what artists do! In his mind he was living the life until it crashed and burned.

 And it appears to me now that my elder son is allowing whatever beliefs about me I accepted to keep everyone safe, to organise his own fears, his own pain, to eclipse all that is good in him. And he wants me to agree that yes, I am responsible for all his sadness and all his suffering. In short that I must be responsible for service user getting overwhelmed by life and a lifestyle that includes drugs. So I must have caused his difficulties too! 

But there doesn't seem to be anything beyond his need for me to agree? 

I have apologised, I have agreed tentatively, but it feels like my first husband's thing. That the pain my elder son is going through is a self-fulfilling, self-sustaining black hole monster that can't be satisfied. I fear that like my first husband, way back in 1993 that nothing I could say or do would be enough to make up for his own absence of love for himself. That played out with my first husband wanting more and more, more apology, then to strip me of all control over anything, until I reached a point where I had to stop his process. It was bullying, it certainly was coercive, it was absolutely crushing and shattering for me. I stopped it by saying that we had to go see the 'trusted' therapist, because enough is enough. Because though I walked out saying, keep it all! I needed a car.. By 1993 it got to the point where I'd had to move out because he'd threatened to hit me. I had left my children with him because he said he'd kill himself if I didn't. I was going there every morning before they woke up, and leaving when he came home in the evening...He had my car, my house, my kids. I didn't fight for anything...I just kept on, kept on, kept on showing up. 

But I needed my car, hang on? It was my mom's car...my mom had just died...and he had her car...which doesn't make sense to me now. How was that possible? Did my sister give it to him? Oh, I remember, he'd gone round to my mom and sister and told them exactly how terrible I am and they had agreed with him (because in my family you never play victim - especially if you are one!) and perhaps that accounted for the car. He is a fine, upstanding citizen, and me? I was now on the verge of going mad myself. I remember how the summer solstice felt like a force intensifying everything...I could feel the universe spin. I was no longer in my right mind. I was living as a refugee in a Buddhist centre, and working in a fruit and veg shop.

So, at least I got good food.

My mom and sister thought I was out of order, that I'd driven him to it? Driven him to what though? And no way could I find my way back to my previous professional career, I was broken. absolutely broken. But no way would I tell my mom what had really happened - which is really sad isn't it.

But then when I'd stood in a phone box and tried to tell my sister she had said something like, 'it's your own fault'. She was nine years younger, what did she know really...but nevertheless.

OK...what am I not seeing?

I'd seen, take it or get out - and I'd got out.

No doubt the therapist thought that I'd brought all this on myself? My fault because? She had a point. If a person wont blame the other, I had not told her any details about the threats to drive into the wall, and other awful things. Too, too awful to write here. But I'd tried telling her and that hadn't gone well. 

So when I needed a car, I remember sitting on her sofa in 1993 and forcing myself to use his strategy, to use his words. After all, seemed to work for him! I cried. And eventually I managed to say "tell my husband (!) this has to stop...this isn't fair". I was by this point almost hysterical as I described how I had to give him more and more and.. And because of the therapy contract - about harm to self or others - I could not say...because if I don't he threatens to kill... 

Because if I'd said that, he'd have done it...

That's the truth I was not going to gamble with.

And now it is back.