Last issue, we held up a mirror. You saw the signs — maybe recognized yourself in some of them. Now we go one layer deeper: not just that something shifted in you, but how it shifted. What it actually looks like from the outside. And why what you’re calling your personality might be something else entirely.

You want to know why you’re feeling so damned alone, misunderstood, and hopeless?

First, it's family and friends who don’t understand why you are so withdrawn. Then you question yourself: “How can I go from having a great day to ballistic in the blink of an eye?” The last hit to your emotional stamina: a therapist, who's following all the guidelines and diagnostic manuals, misses by a mile.

We’re labelled, sometimes appropriately, only by outward actions, not inner drivers. The source of your behaviors.

Hothead? Yep, you lose your temper at nothing. Did you just go from mingling cordially at a family get together, only to be found isolated in the back yard or a spare room later? “Oh, he’s just depressed.”

My favorite: it’s just an episode, he’ll be fine in a few minutes.

Then we finally give in and go to see a therapist—despite the failed previous attempts, or hearing horror stories from friends with PTSD.

You answer the intake questions, tolerate another battery of 2–3 hour long “assessments,” and *poof* the system kicks out your diagnosis: you have obsessive compulsive disorder with narcissistic traits.

Wait. What!?!? I’m not narcissistic, am I?

“Well, Mr. Joyner, you fit the diagnostic criteria.”

“Meaning?”

“You’re exhibiting the correct symptom clusters.”

“Okay, what now?”

“We begin treatment immediately.”

Only the treatment isn’t for your trauma or PTSD. And it’s wrong. Real wrong.

Why? They never asked if you’d ever been through anything that rocked your world. Everyone—family, friends, doctors—concluded what is wrong with you relying on your behaviors and never bothered to look inside.

That, my friends, is what I mean by garbage out…garbage in.

I said mistreatment is bad…real bad. Read on…

OCD with narcissistic traits gets treated with Exposure and Response Prevention — ERP. The premise is that your obsessive thoughts are creating a false alarm, and your compulsive responses are feeding the loop.

So the treatment pushes you toward the thing that scares you, holds you there, and waits for the anxiety to burn off. The idea is your brain learns the threat isn’t real.

Your nervous system didn’t get wired for false alarms. It got wired under actual fire. Childhood that felt like a combat zone. A relationship that dismantled you piece by piece. Deployments where the threat was everywhere, the body counts added up, and your “decompression” time from 6–12–18 month-long deployments? Honey do’s and never ending questions: What was it like? Did you kill anyone? Did you see any get killed? Were you SCARED?

ERP tells your nervous system the alarm is broken. Trauma therapy understands the alarm was installed correctly — it just never got the all-clear signal.

So when they run ERP on a trauma survivor, they’re not quieting a false alarm. They’re pushing someone who’s already been through hell back toward the edge and calling it treatment.

You probably already know…just another load of manure piled on top of the misunderstandings of you. And here’s the kicker—you start believing the shit:

I am broken...nothing can help me.
I’m worthless, unchangeable.
Maybe my partner is right, I’m too lazy to change.

What’s the point of going on, if it never gets better? (They treated for narcissism incorrectly, which can make you a nihilist. Good deal, yeah?)

I’ve got a better solution for you…

How about we learn to understand what PTSD/CPTSD actually is and how to engage it. In our language, not the unnecessarily scientific, pretentious, aloof language of professional psychoanalysts, therapists, psychiatrists, and licensed social workers.

Would this mean anything to you: It seems you’re utilizing Experiential Avoidance to maintain your current Homeostasis.