The Bookshop

[Abstract]

Not sure if anyone has watched it or not. Sometimes messed up interpersonal behaviour is hard to relate to others. Some aspects of this film represent some of the interpersonal stuff that has been happening to me at work in the last 2 years. The conspiracy and agenda stuff that you think can't be true and must be your paranoia and yet in truth there is more going on than you suspect. The misrepresenting of the truth. Trying to make you doubt yourself. The amount of people involved. Even when they don't realise they are. Now realising how much clever planned gaslighting was also part of the agenda. It only stopped when I started recording things.

In some ways I have managed quiet well. I am not depressed. In other ways it has totally pulverised me and set off all sorts of stuff. I was fairly switched on and fairly proactive. I didn't win. I lost. I didn't have much of a hope. I hate that. Even though I for once wasn't frozen, dissociated, stuck in endless self doubt and I was assertive, they won. I know losing is part of life but I don't like the world when dishonest wins. Dishonest protecting world isn't somewhere I want to be. I know wanting and having problems with it doesn't change anything and I have to grow up and accept reality. Just tired of destructive people and destructive systems accepting and protecting them.

 

[Friday]

Sometimes messed up interpersonal behaviour is hard to relate to others.

One of the tricks I’ve found is downgrading other people’s exaggerations into things they’re familiar with. Whether or not they’re actually exaggerating, they think they’re exaggerating. It’s still in the realm of absolutely true, it simply means they’re filling in the blanks with “f*ck that’s brutal” (their own experience & understanding, which is all anyone has anyway) instead of calling bullshit and blowing it off, because it’s just an exaggeration.

So its a conspiracy?
- God no! Just standard, run of the mill, stalking by an ex. His asshole friends “helping a bro out” do not rate black helicopters and shit. I’m sure they’d love to think mom’s couch in the basement is their super secret underground base, but c’mon.

- It’s just my ex and his friends. 1 wifebeater, and 4 idiots who think hitting on women and kids is cool with them? We’re not talking deepthroat, here. Just little dicks with a grudge.

You think they’re gaslighting you?
- Pfft. I think they’re stuck in high school playing bullshit emotional games & mean girl politics. Some people just never grow up, do they?

The more you downplay things into what other people are familiar with? The worse they actually think it is. Because they relate to it. It becomes real to them. Even if the reality is worse than they imagine, they have to be able to imagine it; or it doesn’t make any sense to them, therefore nonsense, therefore bullshit.

 

[Abstract]

Thanks Friday. Yes it is real and I do believe what I have lived for the last 2 years.
CONSPIRACY | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary
and it did turn legal.

 

[Friday]

Just to be clear... you get I wasn’t saying I didn’t believe you, right?

 

[Abstract]

Sorry @Friday My heads still quite messed up with this stuff. I'm not sure I understand what you meant or if what I wrote was maybe confusing.

other people’s exaggerations into things they’re familiar with

Who's in this case?

Whether or not they’re actually exaggerating, they think they’re exaggerating

Again who?
That might help me understand more.

 

[Ronin]

Okay so...

What of it do you need to be concerned with, and what tools do you need to yourself be safe, what is the worry?

Is where I would start. Not who is doing what, I might have f*ck all luck dealing with them for the moment whether they are just a stupid area boy or a well trained sniper, but where I am right now, how much is it messing me up, and how to get somewhere that is not tripping me up as badly.

Whether that means having a cup of tea with a friend in a town eeeverybody knows them, good peeps :inlove: or calling emergency contacts of folx one was not talking to for decades. :ninja:

 

[Abstract]

he more you downplay things into what other people are familiar with? The worse they actually think it is. Because they relate to it. It becomes real to them. Even if the reality is worse than they imagine, they have to be able to imagine it; or it doesn’t make any sense to them, therefore nonsense, therefore bullshit.

Thank you @Friday. I'm so sorry I didn't understand before. Looking back the words were swimming around and there was so much stuff in my head that my cognitive abilities had gone missing. I'm normally quiet good at just stepping back when I'm not functional until I am but think had been non functional for so long that week that couldn't even see that clearly. I understand what you are saying. Shall give it some thought. My usual way of discussing things is that I don't. Pathologically private for one. Don't trust people with anything that is me vulnerable for another. Thanks for the posts. ?

 

[Abstract]

What of it do you need to be concerned with, and what tools do you need to yourself be safe, what is the worry?

Thanks so much @Ronin I appreciate it. ? The whatever I need to be safe is no longer needed. Much. I am not totally out of the environment but the the incident is a done deal and hopefully over. Other than finding ways to make some changes the rest is a fait accompli. I am physically safe and the damage that was done is done.

For once I was actually good during it. I did look at what I needed and did it. I didn't freeze up. I did what I could. I can't really see anything I could have done differently that would have been better. Sort of just looking backwards and assimilating it I guess. Trying to make sense of it and accept it. In the past I have usually frozen up in one way or the other. Dissociated through most of it. Not noticed pathological behaviour for too long. Not been assertive enough. I did all the right things this time. I lost.

I guess this is partly about trying to accept a world where systems, people and situations can win when they are crooked, pathological. People abusing positions of power, privilege. I guess me even still battling with that exposes this naive streak I have that always somehow stays in there. Its a new experience for me to have done all I could.

How to have the energy/trust to take steps and go into new situations.