mostly david ephgrave

For a long time, I've had a complex about giving presents. I often leave gift shopping until the absolute last minute, not because I'm lazy but for fear that I'll choose something that isn't good enough and cause offence. I get extremely anxious about it and second-guess my judgment. I can trace this paranoia to two events. One Mother's Day when I was twelve or thirteen, I decided to write a song for my mum and record it on my four-track recorder so she could have a nice version to keep. I spent a few days methodically preparing a demo, recording guitar parts and then overdubbing vocals and percussion. It wasn't my finest work, but I took the time to get it right. I can still remember the moment I played it to her. We were in my bedroom when I gave her a card and the tape. As she ripped open the package to reveal the cassette, I felt tense. I put it into my Hi-Fi and we listened in silence. Suddenly, the whole idea felt wrong. She looked irritable. And her respo...

There's a real fragility to my life at the moment as I carefully navigate the depressive trough I find myself in. It's so hard to express the damage a narcissist does to you. They present themselves as guiltless, while they're endlessly hypercritical of you. They're cruel, bitter, dishonest people who feel they owe you nothing and are incapable of processing criticism, however justified, without blowing up like a petulant child. And they see every interaction as something to win. It's all black or white with no shades of grey, so you're either toeing the line or a villain. And they'll lie without flinching and then seem to forget the difference between fantasy and reality in an instant. I read a tweet the other day that hammered home the problem I face: (Link to the original tweet.) That's my situation in a nutshell. My mother shows little remorse for the damage caused by raising me in such a toxic atmosphere and expecting me to conceal it. Her likely re...

I'm forty in three months and very conscious of all the negative self-talk I still do. And I'm worried that if I don't address this habit soon, it will start to define me (if it hasn't already). That may sound melodramatic, but it's meant sincerely. The fug of depression frequently slows me down and affects my sense of self-worth. I work on this with therapy and meditation, but the recent fallout from a difficult familial relationship that I had little control over knocked me sideways while  filling me with enough projected responsibility  to feel like I'm rebuilding from scratch. Add my dad's death to this - along with the financial implications of my mum's unyielding approach - and it's like I'm running on empty.  I can't help but compare what my parents were doing at my age. When I was born, my mum and dad were 35 and 34 respectively and had been married for nearly thirteen years so they had time on their side to have a baby (though they w...

I'll breathe a sigh of relief when Trump leaves the White House tomorrow (presumably throwing a handful of smoke pellets to the floor so he can sneak out before Biden's Inauguration).  My heart sank when he won the 2016 election. I was staying at Center Parcs on the day they announced it, so my pretty surroundings at least cushioned the blow, though I couldn't look the bald eagle in the eye at the bird of prey demonstration I attended that afternoon. Four years yawned ahead like a tetanus-fuelled bout of lockjaw while my face resembled a cross between Edvard Munch's The Scream and Macauley Culkin after applying aftershave in Home Alone. It's hard to imagine a person less suited to the job of President; something that only played out during his time in office, to be compounded by the storming of Capitol Hill that his outright lies stoked last week. The only person Donald J Trump cares about is Donald J Trump; that's very J evident. But that's only a fraction ...

While I'm slowly coming to terms with the abuse I suffered within a toxic family relationship and am learning tactics to cope with it, it's still hard to counteract the mental burnout. I'm dealing with many layers at once. Firstly, I'm receiving therapy for narcissistic abuse, which has specific and nuanced characteristics. One of the most painful aspects of recovery is learning you'll never rationalise with a narcissist. They'll never empathise, acknowledge or apologise for their behaviour. They can't be wrong. And they deliberately create drama to feed off; hurting you has an impact, and that's the best retaliation to hand if they can't compete with the truth (though if they can distract and deflect from their actions in the process, that's a bonus). And they have little autobiographical memory and endless double standards; it's one rule for you and another for them. On top of this, I'm gradually accepting that the person I thought they...

I spend a lot of time ruminating over the events of my childhood and those surrounding my dad's death. It returns, repeatedly, without choice. That's the nature of trauma from emotional abuse. And the impact when it's at its worst is frightening and can put me at risk. Recovery's often a case of one step forward, two steps back. You occasionally make leaps apparently from nowhere, though progress is fragile, particularly when you've been conditioned to take the blame, or made to feel your pain's only real if the person who causes it can see it. I hope this doesn't sound conceited, but yesterday, as I lay in the garden mulling it over, a statement came fully-formed in my head. And though I'd heard it before, at that moment, it had clarity:  "It's not your fault. You did your best. And if your dad were here, he'd see it." I can't understate what a massive shift this is. And last night, I had a glass of wine to celebr...

I'm at the very early stages of planning a new podcast about narcissistic abuse, and I'm quite excited about it. It's a subject I'm still getting to grips with, though the act of reading up on it (and talking to other people who've experienced it) is helping me come to terms with it. Every day, I learn little details that put what's happened into perspective. And while I'm still delicate, there's been progress. Just today, I had a mini-revelation that took a little weight off. I was watching a video from a series recommended by a friend that was discussing toxic logic when the penny finally dropped on the common point that narcissists have no empathy and no rules apply to them. While I'd read that frequently and even remarked about it, I hadn't processed it, because it's such an alien concept when you  are  empathetic. So much of the pain comes from asking the question, "Why me?" and "Why wasn't I enough?"...

I'm struggling with dark thoughts at the moment; a familiar territory reinstated by my circumstances. The best way to manage difficult emotions is to approach them kindly and without judgment. Being hard on yourself for being hard on yourself is counterproductive. The physio I see for my vestibular migraines uses the analogy of keeping a glass topped up to prevent my vertigo attacks; if tiredness, stress or caffeine trigger symptoms, the trick is to minimise exposure to reduce the chance of it. With depression, that's more difficult, as with recovery from emotional abuse. You may have strategies in place to combat it, but when the problem's less tangible, it can be harder to identify the triggers, and therefore easier to blame yourself. And, like anything, the tools might not always work, particularly when you're challenged considerably. And if it's severe, you somehow have to keep yourself safe, which can be very hard when you're in a pit. The othe...

I'm struggling to process the loss of both parents; one to cancer and the other to end a cycle of emotional abuse. My nerves feel utterly shot. The past year saw my relationship with my mum unravel through being built on unsteady ground. Whenever her expectations tested my boundaries, I still did my best to meet them. Some of my earliest memories are the lies she made me tell - to hide four affairs from my dad when I was a child, right up to her secretly getting married seven months before he died, yet refusing to tell him, and insisting I lie about that too. And though it wasn't fair to repeatedly put me in this position, I met her terms, because I loved her.  I was a witness at the wedding to show forgiveness to the two people who'd made my childhood so traumatic, yet within months, I was accused of homophobia by a solicitor my mum refused to correct. And she walked off from my dad's burial, seconds after I'd lowered his ashes into the grave, disappearing a...

I currently feel like a bomb's gone off in my head; the energy to work past my low mood isn't there. It's like there's a hole where my drive should be. A load of last-minute admin relating to the online interview we're doing in place of Mostly Comedy next week flew in both yesterday and today, which lifted my anxiety to accentuate my sense of worthlessness. It's like I'm racing to meet deadlines for something I'm no longer interested in, which isn't strictly true, but when depression's at its worst, that's how the world looks. Of course, I know why I'm feeling like this. It's the fallout from a year's worth of watching a close relative illustrate they care less about me than they care about money or maintaining the lies they'd built up. It's learning they never understood what they put me through as a child, then as an adult, and that their temper is such they can't process the truth if it paints them in a n...

I've got to break through the fug of my current mindset to get my comedy-writing mojo back. My ideas pad (mostly full of bus times and general admin). It's hard to find the energy or will to write at the best of times when procrastination looms & lurks like a loom-lurker, without the current circumstances ramping my lethargy up a gear. It's not that my sense of humour's gone, though I now need dowsing rods to detect a joke. And even when I find one, my bastardly depressive mind kicks in to scupper it: "What's the point, David? No-one will pay you for this." When Glyn and I started renting an office six years ago , I'd get into the routine of going down there first-thing to work. But before long, I'd be swamped with admin of running a comedy club without the joy of something creatively worthwhile to offset it; at least when I was writing a show I had a place to run it - albeit a tiny one - though, in time it became another isolatio...

I'm navigating a situation at the moment that threatens to overwhelm me if I'm not careful.  (Thankfully, I have support, and I'm approaching things mindfully, but it takes a lot of careful management to keep my panic at bay...except I shouldn't have to do that.) To make matters worse, the other party's never careful. If they feel wronged, they lash out. And they feel wronged always. That's not hyperbole; if anything, I underplay it. And in their world, a lie's as good as the truth if it has the desired effect. And what's the difference? Now's the only reality and everything else is projection. And nothing is sacred if it strengthens their point. (With that mentality, years of abusive behaviour can be dismissed in a few seconds, because it didn't affect them negatively; not for me though as I lived through it with awareness.) Yesterday was a struggle. More than once, I felt on the verge of giving up. At one point, I looked at one of...

Everything has been in such a state of flux since my dad died that I try my best to ground myself in the truth. There's nothing much more unsettling than having reality questioned when that's an oxymoron at heart. While it's easier to accept a person holds a different opinion to you, to be an opinion, it has to be a concept you can debate, and not an undeniable event. Having to defend whether a tangible thing happened moves the goalposts, as you're then dealing with a person who's happy to shift the unshiftable to make their point, which means they'll use lies as evidence of their version of the truth. Half of the problem I've had with a person lately is due to that paradox. While it shouldn't be this easy, blank denial is almost an impervious argument, as you can't get anywhere near to the point. And if someone is prepared to say black is white repeatedly, it's not a conversation; it's a stonewalling exercise. But if you know so...

This may sound ludicrously simplistic, but today I came to the startling therapy-assisted realisation that from now on, I genuinely don't have to worry what one person thinks.  This shit could change my life. It's the one good thing to come out of an awful situation, though ironically, it was a right I should have had anyway, that had long been overwhelmed. A sentence I've often used to explain the nature of our relationship was that I always felt a step away from disappointing this person as a natural starting point; so even if I did what they wanted, that moment had passed with the next potential let-down just around the corner. And I often couldn't predict what their expectations would be, which made it relentless. You also couldn't discuss the problem without making things worse; at best we'd argue without progress, and if we were on the phone, they'd often hang up. (But I don't want to make this about them when this realisation'...

I've had some difficult things to deal with in my lifetime, mostly at the hands of the same person, which are being compounded in a way I just don't know how to navigate. The problem is I can't say anything without them laying the blame back in my direction; their instinctive response is to compete: "But what about me ?". It's a mantra I was hearing long before I realised they were abusing their position, yet despite the fact they experienced similar things when they were younger, they won't link it. I worked hard to fight the demons left by their treatment ( "How can you say that?") and kept secrets that weren't mine to keep ("But I'm your --- "). The first eighteen years of my life were a vortex of toxic stress, confusion and fear ("How can you put this in public? It's embarrassing") but because of they were in a position of authority with a duty of care I thought it was my fault or saw myself as the gl...