Neither?

Both?

In truth he can’t be bothered thinking about all this stuff. He’s scared of it. And he’s bored of it. And Grannon doesn’t believe there’s any point in trawling through old memories to work out why everything’s fucked up. It takes too long. And it’d be confusing. Although it depends where you are on the Cognitive Post Traumatic Stress Response scale (yes, a ‘Response’ – they don’t call it a ‘Disorder’ any more because Grannon believes these behaviours can be unlearned). If you are over 5 on the CPTSR scale (the scale runs 1–10) then you should probably also be seeking therapeutic support in conjunction with the course. Charles hasn’t entirely processed this idea yet.

He isn’t sure where he is on the scale. He hasn’t got around to working it out.

There are four basic responses to trauma: fight, flight, freeze, fawn.

Charles runs from life/conflict (flight) and freezes under stress (retreats into his imagination).

Oh. And he over-intellectualises instead of simply feeling.

He certainly isn’t warlike (fight).

And he isn’t really a people person (fawn).

He only very rarely offers compliments.

Hardly ever.

Never.

It’s just a question of calmly and systematically re-patterning the way that you think. It shouldn’t take long – a couple of months, at most. In fact some people have reported feeling a giant weight lifting from their shoulders after only two or three days. The material is so effective. It’s revolutionary. But as soon as Grannon uttered the dread words ‘after only two or three days’ Charles knew that he was now set up to fail. Because there was no way he would ever feel better that quickly. He is too damaged. And he is hyper-competitive. And he is a sore loser. And even if he did feel better that quickly then he probably wouldn’t actually realise because he can never really tell how he feels because he is emotionally illiterate, and automatically over-intellectualises or disappears into fantasy when things get too challenging.

Charles’s father is a recently retired fisherman in Conwy. Charles’s father fished for plaice, mullet, whiting, codling and dab off Conwy for over forty years. Charles’s father had a brief affair with Charles’s mother (Branimira) but then chose to stay with his wife of seventeen years. Charles’s three older half-brothers still crew Charles’s father’s boat. Mainly they use it to take tourists out on jaunts and to ferry the wind-farm workers back and forth. The boat is called TRI BRAWD, which is Welsh for THREE BROTHERS.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Richard Grannon has emphasised that it is important – nay, vital – to find a vocabulary with which to describe how you are feeling.

Words are the harbingers of feelings.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Even if you aren’t feeling. That’s okay, too. You just need to check in, every day, and ask yourself a couple of simple questions about how things are going.

Jot down some notes in a pad.

Charles immediately paused the recording and went online and spent several hours trying to find the perfect pad to jot down notes in. He ended up buying five pads with nice, hard covers in a special Amazon Prime deal. They were a good price but they were unlined. After he had placed the order he realised, to his horror, that he doesn’t actually like unlined pages. They seem …