health - Ina Disguise

Narcissism and other Pop Diagnoses

September 19, 2017 1 Comment

I wrote the above story this week, and duly punted it for a couple of days. The first four copies were poorly edited, so if anyone got one of these, my apologies.

Having spent the last week or so investigating the matter, I have come to the conclusion that you can easily get sucked into a vortex of extremely complex self-evaluation as a result of investigating this topic. I would just like to reassure any potential readers of the above free story, that it is not particularly heinous or ‘victim’ orientated. In fact, Kate responds reasonably well to her 18 months or so. I did leave out some stuff, but it was more about poor self-management than drama.

So, today the mild panic was over whether I am an Inverted Narcissist – someone who seeks relationships with narcissists because they know what to expect and seek validation from tolerance of narcissistic behaviour. Given that I am drawn to complicated relationships, and that I have had a few narcissistic people in my life, I wondered whether this was a possibility.

Whilst I certainly don’t seek to cure people of whatever their problem is, I have probably shown too much flexibility in terms of tolerance in the past, and should be valuing my emotional and physical safety more highly. I am also highly practiced at managing the feeding of narcissists, evidently, which is why I have managed fairly long term relationships with some very difficult people. I do also suffer from flash rages, which are, I think more evidence that I was brought up in a large house where I could easily go and chuck a tantrum and avoid dealing with problems face to face, rather than evidence of CPTSD. I could go down the other road, and investigate whether I am suffering from dependency issues etc, but I think it is healthier to develop a harder core and go ahead and do what I am capable of.

Therefore, I would like this blog post to be a warning to other people like me, who discover that the answer to some unanswerable questions is that you are dealing with people suffering from a variety of personality disorders. Your trauma is yours, and you do not necessarily require intervention or company. As I have said to many people in the past, feeding the sharks is not necessarily a good idea. Sometimes it is a good idea to starve your particular shark and go and do something else. It is not so much a question of avoidance, as a willingness to say OK, I think I will close that chapter and move onto something else.

In the more distant past, I moved on successfully from being an angry teenager to being a highly productive twenty something, and a stupidly caring thirty and forty something. I got some answers this week, as to why I was so angry to start with, and why I am taking the very odd path that I am currently taking. I do not think that this is justification to question or alter that path, as I think it is a positive development. In many ways the Wolfe project is continuously positive. I have rarely been so happy to avoid hating someone on the grounds of it being obvious to do so.

This does not mean that I will not be carefully considering the new information that I have, yes, I have been ‘mobbed’ by my family for several years, yes, I have made a lot of mistakes with people, and yes, I have developed some symptoms of trauma. However, the knowledge of this does not change the validity of what I am currently doing or plan to do, especially as it does not involve harming anybody and might help a great number of people if I can pull it off. Even a few years ago this would have thrown me a bit off-balance, as I would have sought to ‘fix’ the problem. Now, I think ‘meh.’

Feel the fear, and do it anyway. Additional information is a good thing, using it as an excuse to stop moving forward is not.

health, motivation

A complicated question

September 16, 2017 4 Comments

This is going to be a complicated post, complete with hideous scenarios and consequences.

The question is whether I should take a gamble on myself, in the form of tolerating a social situation I do not want to be in, in order to see a person that probably does not want to see me.

Risks of attending

He does not want to see me. There is significant evidence to suggest that this is the case, and no evidence at all that this is not the case. I tried emailing in advance, and my messages were both ignored by the company dealing with it.

I become irate within minutes of attempting to listen, because I currently cannot bear listening for a variety of historic reasons.

I have to speak to people.

I am ridiculed.

My mother would have to go into care, risking her diet, and my cats would have to go into a cattery for a couple of days whilst I locked the house up. This is also complicated by social services involvement. It is also a very expensive operation.

I look hideous and this affects the purpose of my attendance as the person certainly gave the impression of being extremely superficial and undervaluing me on my last futile attempt at contact or rational conversation, which is what started this project in the first place.

I am regarded as some sort of monster and am treated like dirt. (again)

Possible pay-offs

I resolve a problem that has been crippling me and my work for the last seven years. If so, I instantly gain about thirty life points in terms of confidence.

He might actually be pleased to see me. (unlikely, but possible)

The people might be OK.

I need a break anyway, and maybe this is sufficiently selfish to make up for a few years of garbage in the past.

The fact that I have a life outside this situation might shock a few people into behaving like humans.

My mother’s health is unlikely to improve, and so it is the last chance to do it for probably five years or so. Also my own age is a factor due to this person’s probable attitude.

Why do I even want to do this? I didn’t before. I just think I might regret it if I don’t. He has had ample opportunity to speak to me, and been given ample reason for doing so. Why should I not expect to be treated like an adult?

On the other hand, maybe I need to take control of this situation in order to stop thinking about it.

Should you wish to give an actual answer, the comments box appears below. You do not need to give a real email address.

health, motivation

Is your happiness the most important thing?

September 15, 2017 659 Comments

If my happiness was the most important thing to me, everybody around me would be worse off. My friend ‘Leon’ would have never seen me again after the assault, my health would be better, Wolfe would probably have met me by now and would certainly have had a large present that he did not want, his agent would have had sore ears from my dealing with her, the avocadess would not be very happy, the book would be written, regardless of market, my mother would be dead due to her children’s behaviour, this house would be gone, my siblings would have no inheritance, my old friend Aldous would never have experienced shooting, my cats would still be waiting for a home. I would not have bothered making any more art.

Is your happiness really the most important thing?

Right now, if my happiness was the most important thing, I would be out trying to find some unsuspecting male, which, given the attitude of some men would not be a particularly joyful or interesting experience. I was told only today that women over 35 are a waste of time. I guess we are too challenging for this dude. All the more for me, I replied.

Maybe the pursuit of happiness itself is a risk not worth taking. Low risk living is, however, in itself not a happy or brave experience.

Perhaps we should take it from this that avoidance of regret is more important than happiness. You do what you can live with. As I have said before, life is a series of trade-offs. Maybe that is the answer.

Maybe being polite is a bad thing. Maybe we should all take the motivational attitude that you keep pushing until you get whatever it is that you want, at any cost. This would make for a deeply unpleasant and unstable world, but at least we could say that we have gone after our bliss at any cost.

The problem with this is that our bliss changes from minute to minute, and what we think will make us happy is not necessarily what genuinely will. Therefore we have a margin of risk aversion to stop us from being too impulsive.

I find that medium to long-term goal setting stops me from being too impulsive, whether happy or sad. If I am sad it stops me from doing anything too damaging, and if I am happy it stops me from being too selfish or smug. I am still not sure that I rate happiness highly enough. I am just happy not to be a shit.

creativity, health

Am I a covert narcissist?

September 14, 2017 39 Comments

Am I a covert narcissist?

I have just spent another few hours investigating narcissism, and began to wonder in the course of this if I qualified as a covert (shy) cerebral narcissist. To cut to the chase, I failed to make the grade.

Why? I failed this test Are you an undercover narcissist?

I qualify as self-centred, but I am a dismal failure as a narc.

It is a bit miraculous, given my family background. My eldest sister is an overt narcissist, my mother has some narc qualities, but is more complex. My father was strongly empath. I have at least two exs with strong markers for covert narcissism. My brother is an undiagnosed depressive (the NHS prefers to diagnose professional depressives as having ME), and my other sister is so twisted that I have not even begun to figure out what her problem is, beyond the alcohol.

So, from the perspective of someone who has, one way or another, always had to deal with at least one narcissist, it is no wonder that I am always on the look-out for the familiar.

Youtube is a hotbed of information for people who would like to qualify as the victims of narcissism. Reasons vary from actual abuse, to simply wondering why their text messages are not returned.

Whilst diagnosing your friends and family with personality disorders is always a fun way to spend the afternoon, it does not mean that you can actually do anything about it. I do not plan to bother telling any of them, since it is not something that you can do terribly much about. As my father demonstrated, the only thing you can do is avoid them if you can and keep working.

In the event that you are the victim of a narcissist and become aware of it, the best thing to do is get out of the situation, rather than assuming that you can do anything about it or force them to change. Any self-respecting narc will then simply move on to a more fruitful target, rather than making an endless tit of themselves completing any creative or pop-academic projects. (as I have been doing)

One day, I will be free of this situation and will probably live in penury in a cottage in the middle of nowhere. I will then struggle to feed my cats and keep a car on the road in the course of putting some work out. In the meantime, whilst I have access to the university library, I am going to complete the next two big books – both of which require actual research – whilst I finish the Best Ever project.

I have, in the meantime, been getting used to the idea of people looking at me, so I have made a stack of youtube videos, which thankfully few people are watching. This should desensitize me to the extreme intolerance to people which I seem to have acquired over the last five years or so. I did not always cringe quite so much, but then I did not always form irrational attachments to people in public. (see previous posts)

I am trying to think how to improve my presentation skills, which I will work on further later on in my rebuild project, as I am still very unhappy about my looks at the moment. I think it is a case of making a bad video, and then remaking it until it looks better.

As the ‘victim’ of narc abuse since I was about three, I would agree that it can affect your health and self-image, but if it is your family you do not have the option of crumbling and running for help. You basically grow up knowing that something is wrong.

The head narc in my family used this to indicate that something was wrong with me. She is still doing it. The only thing I have been able to do to counteract this is cut my siblings out of my life entirely, since the delusion is so deeply engrained (it was also encouraged by my mother) that there is just no point in even trying to discuss it with anybody.

The point I am trying to make is – you don’t need to choose to be a ‘victim’ of a narcissist. You can choose to accept that you are dealing with an entirely unreasonable and irrational individual who hates you and lies about it. Then you can take appropriate action to preserve yourself and any available loved ones as necessary. I have been saying for many years that if I had any sense I would have got as far away from these people as possible. If I had done so, there would be nothing left for them to fight about, including no mother and no money.

What does alarm me, is that I have chosen at least one best friend and two boyfriends who were narcs with added violence. This indicates that I have to select on a more deliberate basis than mere attraction as I am likely to make poor choices. I have also shown some narc tendencies, as I have seen this afternoon. Led by example, I presume, although unlike the narcs in my life I am entirely capable of being reasonable. I can also assure you that there is nothing wrong with my empathy or ability to form intimate relationships. I am no angel, but as far as listening to problems is concerned, if anything I have wasted far too much time and energy on it, to the point of taking years to figure out I am being played for a sucker by yet another covert narc!

To conclude, don’t get hysterical about selfish people who throw tantrums and turn the conversation back to something that went wrong long before they met you. They aren’t all actually monsters. Sometimes the histrionics can be extremely entertaining. It is all in your attitude. If you cannot handle it, you are probably best to just leave.

https://youtu.be/xcosL-JohCI

health, motivation

In memory of my father

September 12, 2017 4 Comments

David Wolfe post in memory of my father

Ten years ago, nearly to the day, my father’s life was ended in an NHS hospital. The hospital in question used to exist to terminate elderly and terminally ill patients, so that the statistics were all at the same location. Whilst it was a superficially nice place, it was the equivalent of taking your pet to the vet for the last time.

My father had vascular dementia, which I knew very little about at the time. Nevertheless, I made sure that he was able to stay at home for as long as possible. My mother, not the most proficient of carers, would not have lasted as long as she did had she not had someone there. She still lied about the help I was providing until she was not listened to by the rest of the family anyway.

A lifelong socialist and pacifist, my father rebelled by marrying my mother, whom he met on the shores of Lake Geneva, despite both being from Glasgow. His family were very well known communist/extreme trade unionists in Glasgow. My great grandfather was behind the revolution that had tanks in George Square.

A large proportion of my father’s family rejected him when he bought this house and married a militarist Conservative, although my mother was not the most thoughtful of political thinkers. He never told her, she was quite shocked when I broke it to her a couple of years ago.

During WW2, he and his friends were conscientious objectors. One was jailed for it, but later had a very respectable life and did quite well. This would not happen now, of course. My father was sent to work in the forests as he had defended himself in court and it was established that he had rather obscure religious reasons for his communitarian beliefs and seven single widowed aunts from WW1 to support.

His interest in natural health was so obsessive that it cost quite an astonishing amount even when I was growing up in the 70s. We had a dehydrator going and sprouts along the window sills.

He was a very quiet, humorous individual, who you did not get to know unless you showed some interest. Therefore I was told the family secrets even my mother did not get to hear. I have to say, since his death I have become more and more like him. My attitude to Wolfe has been much like my father’s love affair with this house. When he failed to secure it on the first attempt, he shuffled around muttering “that was my house” until the person who had bought it changed his mind and sold it to him.

If anyone deserved to be saved by my persistent interest in natural health, it was my father. I did try to extract him from the clutches of the NHS, but to no avail as my mother had just had a stroke and was considered ‘a handful,’ although there was no question of my having any support at the time. I was just expected to manage, regardless of anything going on in my life.

What really gets me annoyed is the fact that within two days of being in that hellhole he was drugged because he was considered difficult. When I challenged this, I was flatly told that he was suddenly in pain. He was still capable of speech and eating normally prior to this. Within three months he was less than half the weight and we were told that he must not even drink anything.

The figures for Alzheimer’s deaths in Scotland indicate that this is deliberate policy. I can see that the NHS regard aging as an unacceptable burden, and that they are trying to take quality of life into account, what I do not understand is why the alternatives are so frightening to them. I am still suffering from an invasion of nurses who appear to think I should be burnt as a witch because my mother is still alive, despite their best efforts.

I am, rather helpfully, very angry about what happened to my father, and about the continuous bitching and battling I have to do to protect my mother. Anger is a useful energy. I daresay it is considered negative in some circles. Personally I think it is the best fuel ever.

health, motivation

What happened to the last decade?

September 3, 2017 No Comments

Over the last decade, I went from being a Senior Banking Consultant, government researcher and corporate researcher to now being a fledgling author and artist. During all of this time I was renovating and maintaining a mansion which will never belong to me and taking care of my parents.

At the beginning of this period, I had around six ex-boyfriends who used to come and visit, thankfully missing each other in the process and helping out if they felt like it. None of them were particularly keen to get me out of my shell, they kind of delivered themselves like pizzas as and when they were not busy.

Overall, the crucial years from the age of 25, a long time ago now, were taken up with my parents and family. I had previously been a successful chef, and was out-earning the rest of the family when I was told that I was to take care of things as nobody else would do it. I could have ignored this, but it turned out to be a statement of fact.

I only really realised that my life was over at around 33 or so, when it proved impossible to get decent employment locally, and I could not leave my mother to take care of my father alone as she was not a natural carer by any means.

So, from being absolutely work-obsessed, driven and very keen on pretty poor quality relationships with equally lazy boys, I have become a loner, who slowly moves towards a life of self-expression, for good or ill.

My friend from Slovenia, who I got to know when building the island in Second Life, is now married and is contemplating, at 40, having a child. I am contemplating the fact I will never have a child as I do not leave the house and have no prospect of forming any new relationships. The old ones were curtailed as a result of my overwhelming feelings for Wolfe. I do not regret this at all. In many ways he was an excuse to move on from a rather stagnant life. Nor do I genuinely envy anybody. I just feel rather despondent at the moment and am struggling a bit with the idea of moving on with no goal in mind.

As it is evident that I will never trust anyone enough to have a child with them now, I am inclined to focus on my appearance as a major project that I can spend a lot of time thinking about. I also need to resolve some of the issues that caused my current problem set in the first place – the fact that I never felt that I looked good enough, the fact that I have insufficient real emotional support to let things go easily, (my reaction to Wolfe was most uncharacteristic) the fact that I have failed to get any of the things I wanted – life in a rural location, career, children etc. A major worry is that I have no real way of building a pension.

I always have at least half a dozen plans, which I usually carry out within five years or so. A former friend recently commented that it was always worth dropping in on me every ten years or so because it is never boring and there is always a masterplan. This is not the problem. The problem is that my heart really isn’t in it at the moment, and I feel as if I have been swimming around the same bowl for the last decade. I can handle being wrong, I have been wrong countless times. I just don’t know quite how to break out of the cycle of being wrong over and over again.

One good thing about the Wolfe era was that it forced me to give up a lot of things that were holding me back, and it forced me into a situation in which I had to express myself publicly since there was no way of doing it privately. For this I am strangely grateful. Every step I take at the moment, however, is tempered with a feeling of impending doom. I am sure that this will pass, but at the moment it is rather sad.

None of the people that I have left behind over the last few years did anything unusually wrong. There was more of a generalised wrongness that meant that I was constantly feeling suppressed or undervalued. Wolfe was very much the last straw in that lengthy period. I was insulted, under-valued and not listened to, not directly by him, but by his associated entourage, and after the experience of my family stabbing me over and over again in the hope of gaining money from my parents, enough was enough.

So, although I am numb, lonelier than ever and again forced into a situation in which I have to come out of my shell or perish, you will not catch me genuinely hating Wolfe or his crappy idea of business practice. I have learned and observed a lot that I would never otherwise have noticed, and I am overall better off as a result. despite my almost total destruction in the course of my latest metamorphosis.

business, health

David Wolfe Haters Updated 2017

September 1, 2017 2 Comments

Just before I go for my walk – I just had a quick look around the newer, calmer, more measured haters of Wolfe on Youtube. Most interesting. Things have moved on by quite a bit since five years ago. Wolfe has developed his crowd gathering strategy by quite a bit, and the offended vegans making videos appear to be a bit calmer than last time I looked at this.

I only found one offended customer, and this was an offended 801010er who had gone on one of his courses, only to get crap customer service and lose 800 dollars. So, then, Wolfe evidently still needs to upgrade his staff. Sigh. Were I to show you my emails, which I have no intention of doing, I could show you some far more extreme material from far angrier people, including some people from the Icke camp.

Right then, to inject some rationality into this:

Pros of Wolfe

Wolfe is the most useful person the entire alternative health industry has, because he is utterly shameless about crowd-gathering, can muster enthusiasm about the most obscure topics, and has an extremely tough shell as a result of doing this for more than a couple of decades.

He is the most successful marketer in the business, and there are many businesses that are nothing to do with him making money off his work. He gives away more work than most people do in the course of a full time week.

Yes, a proportion of his recent work is quite far out, but it keeps the audience awake, entertained and interested in learning more, whether this is from him or on their own. The point is that listeners with more than one brain cell gain confidence from his work, not that listeners who are not so blessed follow blindly. That is not the point of Wolfe at all, although I see that there are several such people milling around Youtube.

From someone who had a lot of knowledge before I had ever heard of him, I can tell you that his work is extremely useful in terms of making you more committed to fighting your corner and dealing with problems conventional medicine cannot manage. I tend to disregard quite a bit of what he says, but other things are quite useful.

Cons of Wolfe

He keeps pissing people off, including me at times. Arrogance is not a virtue.

He is too self-interested, but that is in the nature of successful people, so it is probably a useful affectation.

He doesn’t seem to look after number 1 terribly well because he is too busy having a good time.

He relies too heavily on esoteric role models such as Rudolf Steiner. Yeah, Wolfe, we all have our Steiner moment. Most of us grow out of it at age 17 and stop wearing the stupid hat. Over-use of this stuff makes you appear to be a shill, which is not helpful at all to those concerned about such things WHO ARE AN INCREASING PART OF YOUR MARKET. This is one area in which you can easily be defeated so you need to sort that out.

HE STILL HASN’T SORTED OUT THE STAFFING ISSUE. GET A GRIP WOLFE!

Whoever is now running Longevity Warehouse – yes, I see why the prices keep escalating – because people keep buying – but perhaps a budget or wholesale range might make you look a little more egalitarian? If you want to build a true society, you have to cater for people other than rich people with no knowledge or time to go elsewhere. In the meantime you are losing business from everybody else. What is he working for if not to make yet more money?

Personally, I have gained a lot from Wolfe, without spending a penny on anything, but then I decided fairly early on that it was more useful to me to like him rather than not like him, no matter what he did. Nevertheless I was also very critical, as I do not think being nice is necessarily being a good friend to anyone. (we aren’t, just to be clear – the website represents a lengthy period of stress and upset) He has been a major thorn in my side, and I do not owe him any more favours than he has already had, although I am sure he would say the same or worse about me were he to say anything at all.

You can waste a lot of time on picking holes in people. Wolfe is a royal pain in the ass, but he is driven, successful, very good at coming up with more strategies for increasing his community, who then become irritated and go to someone else. Therefore everybody is depending on his being successful. Be careful who you shit on, because that goose is still laying the golden eggs in the alternative health market.

health

Intellectualism and Science – a dangerous correlation?

September 1, 2017 2 Comments

As a historian, I have to take information from a wide variety of sources. You will find any social scientist doing much the same thing. I studied history both from an arts and a social science perspective, so I do a little of both, although I have to say I err on the side of social sciences. I simply find the arts side of an intellectual pursuit of history a bit flowery and a little bit too much like guesswork.

In the last few years, I have seen more and more posts saying that ‘if it isn’t scientific, it isn’t true.’ I think this is just as dangerous as saying that creativity is insanity. It is a very dangerous precedent. Where, I wonder, do people imagine knowledge comes from, if not from testing a ‘mad’ idea that popped into your head?

The vast majority of new science is funded – someone paid for the pursuit of the knowledge. As such, it seems to me, that it is very much tied up with our corporatist future. If the public are led to believe that only a wo/man in a white coat can tell you the truth, then no alternative knowledge is to be respected, and you are automatically a crank, even when you are right.

Not to denigrate the strides made in the pursuit of scientific research in relation to health, but we are seeing more and more previously discredited knowledge being hijacked in the name of science. Only yesterday, I was reading that a company had ‘discovered’ that inflammation had an impact on health, and were researching it. Anyone who has ever been involved with natural health has this as basic knowledge.

Therefore, the scenario I described in Best Scandal Ever is swiftly coming true. It is a very difficult thing to combat, without making an impact on culture. I see more and more advertising reminiscent of the 1950s, ‘scientific’ replacing ‘natural’ as being highly desirable. Sooner or later, in our march towards our genetically engineered and very unhealthy, both economically and literally, future, we will be told that natural is dirty and not good for us.

Having dealt with a lot of jealous middle-aged men over the last few years, who all kept telling me that my new found health was invisible to them, that my diet was a disorder, and that eating properly was unscientific because it did not fit in with what they had been told by our corrupt board of nutrition, I have direct experience of how dangerous this is, and how narrow minded it makes people. Therefore, when I see articles suggesting that anyone arguing against commonly accepted ‘science’ I feel quite sorry for the person who has mistaken science for intellectualism, and who is no longer capable of free thinking research or objective testing.

The example of my mother is a case in point – if I had not had the experience of the last ten years, with my father having been starved to death by the NHS under the Liverpool care plan, to make life more convenient, a common practice, (deaths from Alzheimers in Scotland leapt up by a whopping 31% in one year, for example)followed by my own spectacular recovery from a condition regarded by the NHS as not worth bothering with not once but twice now, I would not have had the confidence to stand up and fight them off when they began the process of drugging my mother to death. As it is, I did, and she is doing very well and has made a good recovery from her stay in hospital. The point is, that the possession of authority does not translate to correct or morally right. The point is also that low denomination understanding of centuries of knowledge is likely to be pretty damned basic.

The real question is – why are these so-called intellectuals rejecting knowledge that has been acquired over centuries for corporate-sponsored information delivered by a man in a coat? Have they lost their capacity for imagination or open mindedness? The hostility is astonishing. At one point, my aging friend was drinking a product entirely composed of chemicals just because it looked more ‘scientific’ than my highly technical natural diet. He sat and watched me reverse my age by at least ten years, and still fought me every step of the way.

There has to be some way of stopping this rot and encouraging imagination, open-mindedness and selective information gathering before it is too late. All that this current climate of science worship is fostering is a lack of enquiry. This is not good for the future of science, never mind the future of humanity because without imagination, without independent thought, and without alternative knowledge sources, the pool from which to draw will become very narrow indeed.

health, motivation

On being kind to others (obesity)

August 29, 2017 4 Comments

In the course of a relatively short life, I have been everything from 98lb to 311lb. (150lb is probably about right given my build) In my case, any attempt at a normal diet after the age of about 9 or so ended up with continuous weight gain. (following glandular fever) I do not eat entire packets of biscuits or fries and now have an extremely high level of nutritional knowledge. I just cannot eat ‘normal’ food or engage in social eating of any kind.

It has taken, for a variety of reasons, decades to accept this and put myself first. Even when I found the answer, something came along to cause me to ignore it.

As you can probably tell by the website, my second love is men. Food is more of an obsession. I was a Michelin level chef for a few years, and following my education became very interested in food politics.

Causes of self-neglect have varied. From avoiding men, to being upset by men, to trying not to be assaulted by men, to ignoring my own needs for either gender, I am guilty of having put myself last at every opportunity. I used to think that this was a virtue. I have now, finally, thanks to the Wolfe era, accepted that it is my biggest failing. With the exception of my mother, who is 90, I will no longer be doing that.

So, one of my theories about why people like me put on so much weight is that they have the following issues:

lack of self-confidence caused by bullying because they have forgotten how to assert themselves
lack of awareness about gut health – eating badly causes you to eat even more badly
poor ability to prioritise themselves over other people in order to survive
crippling social anxiety caused by reactions to their appearance

To be fair, in my case, the issue was complicated by a lengthy battle with my love of smoking, which, being orally fixated, helped for a while, however the real basic problem is the repulsive comments made to me at an early age by my sisters. For those who do not understand the effects of bullying at an early age – all those nasty comments you make stay with the person forever. Be very careful what you say to people. I will probably never choose to spend time with women because of this, because I am always looking for the next negative comment to cling to. That is my problem, not theirs, but it is a fact.

So, in the spirit of empowering a few people who hide in their homes as I do, please remember the following:

If anyone tells you that you don’t matter – run.
Sometimes people are just horrible – it isn’t you its them – it took me until I was 39 to accept that.
No problem ever got better because you got fatter.
Walking is a better way of dealing with emotion than stuffing it down along with some food.
Everything you put into your mouth affects your health. Everything.
You deserve to feel good, no matter what you imagine you have done or failed to do.
Repairing the damage starts from losing the guilt and putting yourself first.

Being a kind person is very nice, but it may well be killing you. Having been put through a lot, you may regard your kindness as your best feature, but in terms of your own health, it may not be. Learn to make space for yourself, and avoid anyone that will not let you do that.

If you have any questions, feel free to use the comments.

health, motivation

Ina Disguise build update 1

August 28, 2017 No Comments

The Story so far:

In early July, I realised I was again at risk of a stroke. I never usually suffer from headaches, but my chest pains and headache combinations were getting worse again due to the stress of having to fight off the NHS as I saved my mother’s life. They and social services objected to her new raw diet despite her having previously stopped eating or being awake for very much of the day. I was exhausted, very stressed and was starting to struggle even doing shopping for my mother.

She had been sent home to me painfully thin, with teabag skin. She a low chance of survival after a spell in hospital because I had sent her in to have a clot scanned. I thought this would take one night. Due to changes in consultants, infections and other problems caused by her normal diet and some well-meaning but rather daft staff, she ended up stuck there for two months. Hopefully we won’t be doing that again for a while.

After having had to explain her diet in low-to-moderate detail to a variety of so-called professionals (there wasn’t one that fully understood how her diet worked or how it would replace four medications) I eventually won out, and have now been left in peace again.

Because I was prevented from doing much of her additional therapy and my artwork by a series of bitchy nurses, progress on the artwork side of the project has stopped for the moment.

This has caused me to do a lot more writing again, since nobody can complain about that, and I stopped eating garbage around about early July. I went low carb until my gut recovered from the inevitable imbalance of normal food, then went back onto Supermix only about three weeks ago.

Progress has been slower than in the past, however it has been about 8 weeks now and I have lost 42lb. My face is in recovery (I have some delightfully hideous pictures to prove it.) I am now doing 2x5k walks per day, and I have taken up cycling, although it will be some time before I am even able to do half an hour as I have never regularly cycled in the past. The last time I had to shift this amount of weight, it took about 5 months to get to this point with exercise, so I am still getting the benefit of my previous raw diet.

Taking into account that last time I had decades of toxic refuse instead of about three years, this does not seem like bad progress so far to me. Much of the struggling when you are taking up exercise after hiding for a long time is actually just phagocyte activity, as in shaking things up in order for your body to get used to the idea that you are going to be doing it all the time. It is disappointing not to have the same spectacular occurrences of 21lb weight loss in one week this time, but is probably a good sign in terms of my body having worked better despite the abuse of a normal diet.

I have never been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, but I suspect that if the parameters were not so strict I would be, as I have low blood sugar to start with. Therefore when they do a fasting blood sugar test, it comes up normal when for me it is actually sky high. I do have a marker for fatty liver, but no GP so far has been remotely concerned about it. I am also blessed with low blood pressure, so I do not get hassled about that often.

The last time I was raw, my blood work was outstanding, so I am waiting until my weight goes down some more before I go and re-verify that. I can tell you that from a prognosis of ‘nearly dead’ my mother is now the subject of monthly tests because they cannot believe her recovery. From constant UTI infections and a state of decline, she no longer requires antibiotics because of her raw diet. Even I was impressed, and I had taken this radical action because I knew what the NHS had done with my father at a similar stage in his illness.

It was not until I saw this, that I realised that the raw foodies are completely correct. No other form of nutrition would have pulled her back from quite so close to the brink. I am not saying that anybody could have pulled it off, her diet is really quite technical, but certainly low carbing, paleo etc would not have done it. Therefore I am somewhat more committed to raw than I was previously. 7 years ago it was a fabulous cultural curiosity, now it is a matter of life and death, to put it bluntly.

From a personal perspective, what was a casual attempt to stop my health declining in July, became more motivated when I discovered Wolfe was coming over in early August, which seems to have reengaged some hormones (nuff said) and certainly improved my motivation. I basically conned myself by thinking about going even though I knew it was an extremely bad idea in reality. I have now switched over to focusing on re-modelling Ina Disguise to become an actual person, so it is more of a professional interest. I ain’t no fangirl, and I am not the type of chick that thinks it is cool to chase married people. It would have been nice to sort out the work issue, but that is really up to him, and he is way too lazy/vain to bother finding out. Therefore Ina will be taking over the original project in the fullness of time.

So, in terms of fitness recovery, compared with my last foray into the world of raw food, this time is a massive improvement. Supermix is, of course extremely comprehensive now, and I am a lot more savvy about the whole raw food concept than I was 7 years ago. When you are new to it, you get caught up in a lot of bullshit and self-doubt. This time I doubt nothing, which is immensely helpful and less stressful.

The fact that you need so much sleep to start with is a bit annoying, but apart from that the inch loss so far is even more impressive than the weight loss. I will keep hammering at it until the job is done, now that I have no further concerns about:

whether it is the best diet possible – it is
whether I am bothering anyone – I’m not
whether I will ever have any options in terms of family and career – I don’t see it

Therefore, I figure, I may as well devote myself to creating a beautiful Ina. Whilst I do that, I will be creating a persuasive, technical, political and economic argument for Ina to present. I have no idea whether I can do it in terms of dealing with the public, but I will give it a damn good try. Wolfe, in the meantime, is welcome to enjoy his semi-retirement. (waves)

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