mostly david ephgrave

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...

The fact I'd hired a skip the same week I approach the end of my therapy while also taking part in an online meditation retreat was metaphor-tastic, to say the least. A skip forces you to consider what to throw away and what to keep, in the same way that therapy helps you discard or come to terms with some of the rubbish in your life. Sometimes, it's hard to let go of detritus, whether you want to or not. You can also remain attached to things that brought you no good and served no other purpose than familiarity. The brutal choices presented by the circumstances offer an opportunity to move on. That's not to say this will happen instantly, though it stands as a gesture towards it. There's nothing quite like throwing something huge away for taking a weight off your shoulders,  leaving a  sense of uplift and relief. (That paragraph was either profound or just collection of vague, circular sentences; answers on a postcard, marking the left-hand corner, "Dick".) T...

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'...

Yesterday, I used the example of Star Trek's "redshirts" trope in my therapy appointment after my therapist suggested I'm too intent on trying to solve my current problems myself, instead of handing them to someone more qualified to deal with them (in this case, the solicitor I've taken on to negotiate issues relating to my dad's estate). If you're not familiar with the principle, it's simple: whenever the crew land on a mysterious alien planet, it's always the cast-members dressed in red and not blue - the actors with a handful of IMDB credits as opposed to Shatner, Nimoy or Kelly - who walk headfirst into danger to meet a sticky end. This happens often enough not to be a primary-coloured coincidence and is so common a plot-point to have inspired a comic novel of the same name.  While I'd usually agree with this summation, I know it doesn't apply in this instance, as things have been so terrible since my dad's death, I crave d...

Tonight, I cashed in my first metaphorical therapy-dog-chips of the season. I should probably explain: I haven't literally turned my dog into fries and then attempted to barter by using them as a grisly form of currency; I'm pretty sure that would result in a prison sentence. But I did use him as a therapeutic aid after an argument left me overwrought and overloaded, and definitely felt the benefit, with my four-legged friend (the dog) gaining in the process. Sometimes, a breath of fresh air is the best cure for what ails you and a dog-walk is the perfect excuse for this. I usually take Elwood out in the morning for an hour while my wife's at work and she'll do the evening dog-shift (careful how you spell that) but today I took him out twice, and that second walk was just what the doctor - or vet - ordered. One of the biggest advantages to walking him in the evening is I get to see the night skies I'd otherwise miss, and this is particularly the case when I cros...

The song on the radio as I left today's therapy appointment was 'I'm Still Standing'; anyone who saw my Edinburgh show will understand the significance. For those of you who didn’t see it - who must surely be in the minority - there was a sequence in which I talked about my weekly appointments at the mental health unit in Stevenage, which has to be one of the bleakest addresses on the planet, and of how my mood there would genuinely be affected by the songs that play on the radio while I’m waiting to be seen, that seem to be allowed to play through with scant regard for the state of the nervous systems of some of the patients there. While I don’t want to steal the thunder of my own material (and my God, it’s thunderous) some of the songs I’ve heard whilst waiting to be seen at the mental health unit are pretty much the last thing you’d want to hear when you suffer from depression; some of the favourites in Jive Bunny’s depressive megamix include All By Myself, Fre...

I went to my mum’s this afternoon to visit her cat while she’s away, which ended up being a nice mood-lifter after a pretty unproductive day. It’s funny how the simple act of spending time with a pet can be good way to clear your head and effectively press the reset button (go on: LAUGH ). I left for the village where my mum lives later than I’d intended, so was already stressed, but all it took was half an hour’s cat-fuss (as opposed to cat-fuzz) to undo some of my frustration at not using the day as I’d intended; it didn’t go completely, but things certainly improved. My mum’s cat is huge - he’s easily twice the length of my cat, though strangely has the same size head*, so I don’t know what’s going on there; perhaps he’s part-liger - and stupidly friendly. It took a while for him to pluck up the courage to sit next to me on the sofa (well, not so much pluck up courage as deem me acceptable to deign me with his presence) but once he did, he wa...