Dear Cat:

I read your recent posts attentively. I have a few comments and suggestions:

1. Clearly eating healthily, regularly is a good plan. So is limiting or avoiding alcohol altogether.

2. Congratulations for going back to work, a good thing.

3. That night when you attacked a young woman, you were “overwhelmed with emotion… felt like my heart had been ripped out… like I was defending myself from… emotional betrayal, humiliation”-

You felt and believed that night that the girl was the offender, that she offended you by talking to Noel. So  you defended yourself, so you felt, by attacking her.

You wrote: “They think I’m bad news, but truth is… I’m a good, honest, spiritual, loving, caring person… who only has good intentions for people/the world… being honest… connect with people on an authentic and understanding level. It’s just whether or not people you are being honest to can see that.”

Please consider my following point:

The “emotional betrayal, humiliation” that you felt that night was your real life experience way before that night. It was triggered that night, but it didn’t happen that night.

Something happened that night: Noel was paying attention to another woman and it was distressing, yes. But that night there was no emotional betrayal of the kind that you experienced. What you felt and experienced that night happened way, way before that night.

In reality, you were the offender, she was the victim. Not the other way around.

There are many people in prison who murdered others while under the influence of … the untrue belief that they were attacked and that they were only defending themselves. Sometimes the attack perceived was something about the “attacker” that reminded them or a real life attacker long before.

anita