CraftyCath
VIP Member
Nothing to excuse Anni, thank you for your help. I guess I knew the games these people play but needed to clear it up in my mind. They are very sick individuals to single the vulnerable one in the herd and hunt them down relentlessly.
A smear campaign is when they spread lies and rumours about you to turn others against you. A bit like politics!
I think just starting this thread has helped a lot of people, including me Lizio. The post you wrote (one before last) sums up where I am now. Just a year on from therapy, I have my hiccups but I'm doing so well.
When I was a student nurse, the senior nurse persecuted me for the whole time I was on her ward. She turned the other staff against me by making them terrified that they would be next if they didn't carry on the bullying when she wasn't there. I never got a break and was being bullied by another student who I lived with who turned the rest of the students against me - bar one. I had no where to go and no one to turn to.
This woman took my fragile, vulnerable self apart bit by bit. I had to cope with the abuse from my childhood and a serious sexual assault when I was 16 and I coped well. She was my final straw and she broke me. The accusations were terrible. I was late when I was early, my uniform was untidy when it was perfect, I was lazy when I worked far harder and longer than the others to try to impress her. It ended up with a patient dying (I'll spare you the gory details but it was horrific) and she blamed me, publicly, told me I had killed him.
I had been so conditioned by my childhood to take the blame that I just stood there and said, 'Oh God, I've just killed someone!' I believed I had and I thought I'd go to prison. I was terrified! I want't called to the inquest and she made out that she was doing me a favour by not reporting me. She said he had an asthma attack and I hadn't kept his airway clear and given him oxygen but the inquest said he had had a massive heart attack and choked on his own vomit which had filled his lungs so there was no way I could have saved him.
I wore his death like a yoke or a crown of thorns for over 20 years until therapy. I carried the guilt like a cross and believed I had killed him and could not/did not know how to forgive my self, accept I had done my best and let it go and move on. I wasn't even qualified at the time. I did not kill him he died, it was his time. i went on to qualify but I just kept thinking I would kill someone and every accusation made against me would trigger me and every medical procedure triggered me too.
I had a major breakdown and left work, I never went back and was undiagnosed for 20 years BUT I am now moving forward. I have cut ties with other so called friends who continued this abuse and am now able, for the most part, to see this kind of person coming. You can't always avoid them but if they try anything they are making a very big mistake.
Thanks for sharing Lizzio. x
