Okay Richard Grannon was talking about a conceptual prison camp where they hit you and at the same time shout "aw!", as a metaphor for how CPTSD is formed. What if they were hitting you just after appearing to give you a friendly hug, and then still saying "aw!"? As this was exactly the pattern at my home. After many months of that what happens when someone wants to hug me? I feel hurt, and I feel guilty. Simple.
I'm listening to music I used to listen to some years ago and it brings up memories of how terribly other people have treated me. But what is scary is that I see that those emotions I remember have nothing to do with those people or the actual events we were involved in. It was just this hug effect.
A non obvious example:
Someone clearly expressed that they didn't want to see me after we have broken up and had a chance to meet.
Reality: it's an uncomfortable situation, it's not wise, it's been him communicating his boundaries and he did it very clearly and calmly.
My interpretation: he must have planned the breakup knowing there will be this chance to meet that he will then be able to refuse. He just wants to hurt me more. The whole relationshit was planned to hurt me. And then he tells me with zero emotion that he doesn't wanna see me, and probably enjoying that I'm upset, fucking sadistic pig! Why does it always happen!? Well probably that's all I deserve because I'm totally worthless.
Someone is giving me something: communicating their state in a respectful way. And I feel hurt and I feel guilty. And just to be clear: I was not so much hurt because we didn't meet, I was so hurt because he made the effort to talk to me - because I interpreted it as an effort to hurt me. And I felt guilty too, that he had to bother at all. Ah, it's so clear.
I have so much work to do still.. I'm scared to go into the men-women topics as it's at the moment almost incomprehensibly complex for me. For so many years I've been escaping into black and white thinking, splitting and dissociation. I have no clue, I just have no clue how to see another real person and interact with them. It's really scary.
I remember this "scary" feeling. It was when I was maybe 8 years old and realized I don't know how to talk to other children, that I just don't see the point of it. That would mean that my CPTSD was definitely caused by my family not school. I now know what I'd have to do back then to solve this problem: to understand that other people exist and are real. This is what I did not know back then, and I'm only realizing now.
Actually since I know when I felt it as a child and how I should have solved it, it's a good candidate for a visualization exercise..