“Thoughts - just mere thoughts - are as powerful as electric batteries - as good for you as sunlight is, or as bad for you as poison.”

Thoughts & The Power Of Our Brain

Cptsd is a more severe form of Post-traumatic stress disorder. It is delineated from this better known trauma syndrome by five of its most common and troublesome features: emotional flashbacks, toxic shame, self-abandonment, a vicious inner critic and social anxiety.

What Is CPTSD 

Emotional flashbacks are sudden and often prolonged regressions to the overwhelming feeling-states of being an abused/abandoned child. These feeling states can include overwhelming fear, shame, alienation, rage, grief and depression. They also include unnecessary triggering of our fight/flight instincts.

What Is An Emotional Flashback 

When fear is the dominant emotion in a flashback the person feels extremely anxious, panicky or even suicidal. When despair predominates, a sense of profound numbness, paralysis and desperation to hide may occur.

Fear During A Flashback 

Tyrannical Inner &/or Outer Critic Toxic Shame Self-Abandonment Social anxiety Abject feelings of loneliness and abandonment Fragile Self-esteem Attachment disorder Developmental Arrests Relationship difficulties Radical mood vacillations Dissociation via distracting activities or mental processes Hair-triggered fight/flight response Oversensitivity to stressful situations Suicidal Ideation

CPTSD Symptoms 

I have Complex PTSD [Cptsd] and wrote this book from the perspective of someone who has experienced a great reduction of symptoms over the years. I also wrote it from the viewpoint of someone who has discovered many silver linings in the long, windy, bumpy road of recovering from Cptsd. I felt encouraged to write this book because of thousands of e-mail responses to the articles on my website that repeatedly expressed gratitude for the helpfulness of my work. An often echoed comment sounded like this: At last someone gets it. I can see now that I am not bad, defective or crazy…or alone! The causes of Cptsd range from severe neglect to monstrous abuse. Many survivors grow up in houses that are not homes – in families that are as loveless as orphanages and sometimes as dangerous. If you felt unwanted, unliked, rejected, hated and/or despised for a lengthy portion of your childhood, trauma may be deeply engrained in your mind, soul and body. This book is a practical, user-friendly self-help guide to recovering from the lingering effects of childhood trauma, and to achieving a rich and fulfilling life. It is copiously illustrated with examples of my own and my clients' journeys of recovering. This book is also for those who do not have Cptsd but want to understand and help a loved one who does. This book also contains an overview of the tasks of recovering and a great many practical tools and techniques for recovering from childhood trauma. It extensively elaborates on all the recovery concepts explained on my website, and many more. However, unlike the articles on my website, it is oriented toward the layperson. As such, much of the psychological jargon and dense concentration of concepts in the website articles has been replaced with expanded and easier to follow explanations. Moreover, many principles that were only sketched out in the articles are explained in much greater detail. A great deal of new material is also explored. Key concepts of the book include managing emotional flashbacks, understanding the four different types of trauma survivors, differentiating the outer critic from the inner critic, healing the abandonment depression that come from emotional abandonment and self-abandonment, self-reparenting and reparenting by committee, and deconstructing the hierarchy of self-injuring responses that childhood trauma forces survivors to adopt. The book also functions as a map to help you understand the somewhat linear progression of recovery, to help you identify what you have already accomplished, and to help you figure out what is best to work on and prioritize now. This in turn also serves to help you identify the signs of your recovery and to develop reasonable expectations about the rate of your recovery. I hope this map will guide you to heal in a way that helps you to become an unflinching source of kindness and self-compassion for yourself, and that out of that journey you will find at least one other human being who will reciprocally love you well enough in that way.

books

Books

I have Complex PTSD [Cptsd] and wrote this book from the perspective of someone who has experienced a great reduction of symptoms over the years. I also wrote it from the viewpoint of someone who has discovered many silver linings in the long, windy, bumpy road of recovering from Cptsd. I felt encouraged to write this book because of thousands of e-mail responses to the articles on my website that repeatedly expressed gratitude for the helpfulness of my work. An often echoed comment sounded like this: At last someone gets it. I can see now that I am not bad, defective or crazy...or alone! The causes of Cptsd range from severe neglect to monstrous abuse. Many survivors grow up in houses that are not homes - in families that are as loveless as orphanages and sometimes as dangerous. If you felt unwanted, unliked, rejected, hated and/or despised for a lengthy portion of your childhood, trauma may be deeply engrained in your mind, soul and body. This book is a practical, user-friendly self-help guide to recovering from the lingering effects of childhood trauma, and to achieving a rich and fulfilling life. It is copiously illustrated with examples of my own and my clients' journeys of recovering. This book is also for those who do not have Cptsd but want to understand and help a loved one who does. This book also contains an overview of the tasks of recovering and a great many practical tools and techniques for recovering from childhood trauma. It extensively elaborates on all the recovery concepts explained on my website, and many more. However, unlike the articles on my website, it is oriented toward the layperson. As such, much of the psychological jargon and dense concentration of concepts in the website articles has been replaced with expanded and easier to follow explanations. Moreover, many principles that were only sketched out in the articles are explained in much greater detail. A great deal of new material is also explored. Key concepts of the book include managing emotional flashbacks, understanding the four different types of trauma survivors, differentiating the outer critic from the inner critic, healing the abandonment depression that come from emotional abandonment and self-abandonment, self-reparenting and reparenting by committee, and deconstructing the hierarchy of self-injuring responses that childhood trauma forces survivors to adopt. The book also functions as a map to help you understand the somewhat linear progression of recovery, to help you identify what you have already accomplished, and to help you figure out what is best to work on and prioritize now. This in turn also serves to help you identify the signs of your recovery and to develop reasonable expectations about the rate of your recovery. I hope this map will guide you to heal in a way that helps you to become an unflinching source of kindness and self-compassion for yourself, and that out of that journey you will find at least one other human being who will reciprocally love you well enough in that way.

Pete Walker

ComplexPTSD : from Surviving to Thriving

Complex PTSD

“The current technology and venture capital structure is broken. It rewards quantity over quality, consumption over creation, quick exits over sustainable growth, and shareholder profit over shared prosperity. It chases after unicorn companies bent on ‘disruption’ rather than supporting businesses that repair, cultivate, and connect.”

Why Zebra Companies Are Different 

An extract from the new book, Starting a Revolution, featuring some of the world's most progressive female founders. It's a business book for revolutionaries.

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

business

Business

startup

Startups

Don’t be a Unicorn, be a Zebra

A zebra company is both black and white - it is both profitable and works to improve society. In this way, zebra companies are defined as having a “double bottom line.” This business model is framed as an alternative to the disrupting and profit-focused unicorn model.There is also a play on words in that zebras are known to move in groups, and zebra companies are characterized as mutualistic, tending to band together to support and preserve each other. Rather than butting heads and having a 100% competitive relationship, zebra companies cooperate so that their individual inputs come together <warningtag>to produce a greater synergistic product. </warningtag>

However, unicorn companies, which are centered around maintaining that exponential growth no matter what, tended to make their gains from monopolies, and disrupted the existing social infrastructure and crushed rival companies. This sort of irresponsible management has come to the attention of the media and unicorns are being reevaluated under a more critical light.As a result, the zebra model was developed as a modern, more thoughtful approach to business. Zebra companies are now gaining worldwide support for their management style, which emphasizes social responsibility, sustainability, and <warningtag>coexistence with other players on the field - areas in which unicorn companies did not consider that important. </warningtag><warningtag>This depends on your product and on your central values as an organization. If you’re disrupting the status quo with revolutionary technology, then it makes more sense to be ambitious and aim for a unicorn model of growth. However, if you want to play it safe, invest your time and energy into giving back to the community and staying accountable for how you affect the environment, then you may prefer to choose the zebra model and build sustainable growth. </warningtag>

How the zebra movement developed

Our first example of a zebra company is <a href="https://www.patreon.com/ja-JP">Patreon </a>, a crowdfunding platform for musicians, YouTubers, and web-comic creators. With the concept of creating an economy where money circulates multiple times, Patreon has built a system where over 6 million Patreon viewers make monthly donations to more than 200,000 creators. By using Patreon as a payment intermediary, they have created a new system that allows creators to use their money for creative activities and patrons to enjoy them on a regular basis.

Why Patreon Is A Zebra

A zebra company is both black and white - it is both profitable and works to improve society. In this way, zebra companies are defined as having a “double bottom line.” This business model is framed as an alternative to the disrupting and profit-focused unicorn model.

product

Product & Design

What is a Zebra Company and How Does it Differ from a Unicorn?｜MAツール「BowNow」

In my time of working with innovative companies in the investment landscape and helping them during <a href="http://startupfundraising.com/">startup fundraising</a>, I have noticed that the most successful investors take an active role in their investments to help drive value for the business, and ultimately, returns.

Being an active investor

In a previous post, I wrote about investors increasingly turning to alternative investments in an effort to generate uncorrelated returns, hedge risk and diversify their asset allocation. This trend is highly likely to continue into the later part of 2014 when the implementation of Title III of the JOBS Act becomes [...]

communication

Communication

I Invested In A Startup - Now What?

A growing list of wealthy families are now looking to profit from the Silicon Valley tech boom

Traditional family offices emerge as unlikely venture capitalists


Wealth advisers say family offices increasingly are devoting resources to operations such as Aurum that have the look and feel of venture capital firms but do not have to manage the demands of outside investors. Families that first dipped into start-ups by investing with blue-chip venture capital firms and evaluating deals arranged by business acquaintances are realising they can set up their own operations. “They need to have a team that can do diligence, that can source,” Sachdeva says. “Basically, they’re professionalising a mini venture fund within their family offices.”

What makes family offices different?

Jed York, owner of the San Francisco 49ers football team, is an early investor in dozens of technology start-ups. The 42-year-old owes his wealth to sports and shopping malls: his grandfather made his riches in Midwest property before buying the 49ers in 1977. In the decades that followed, the 49ers became one of the dominant National Football League teams, bringing home five Super Bowl championships.

Family Offices example (Jed York 1)

A shrewd $16.5mn investment became the basis of a family fortune worth about $4bn, according to Forbes estimates.York decided to diversify into technology investing and break into the tight-knit world of Silicon Valley. “My parents didn’t start a computer company in the 1970s . . . That’s not the make-up of my family,” says York. “There’s a level of entrepreneurship, but it’s not necessarily in what Silicon Valley would look at as tech.”

Family Offices example (Jed York 2)

The fresh-faced York had to work hard to win access to deals after he started a venture fund called Aurum Partners in 2014. To help run the fund, he recruited Brano Perkovich, a technology investment banker with Barclays in Silicon Valley. As one of its first investments, the fund started a ticketing and food-ordering app for sports stadiums that quickly received backing from Twitter’s venture arm and other strategic investors. Aurum also made an early investment in DripDrop, a rehydration drink mixture with backing from Hall of Fame football quarterback John Elway.

Family Offices example (Jed York 3)

Aurum struggled to get into deals backed by top-tier venture capital firms, according to its principals. Instead, it heard many pitches from start-ups in stagnating areas such as advertising technology that had found little success raising money elsewhere.Now, says Perkovich, the fund has few problems securing access to attractive deals — thanks to tight relationships it has developed with top venture capitalists. He says Aurum has returned more than four-and-a-half times the money it has invested in more than two dozen companies since 2014.

Three-quarters of family offices surveyed globally by SVB (Silicon Valley Bank) and Campden Wealth said they made venture investments in 2021, about double the share that were striking deals a decade earlier. The average family office in the survey held direct stakes in 17 companies and 10 investments in venture funds, which accounted for 12 percent of its portfolio.

Growth of family offices - 1

York says his family is “probably more overweight [in] venture [capital holdings]” than other US family offices, but not compared with those in the Bay Area that have made their fortunes in tech. Shailesh Sachdeva, managing director of the family office practice at SVB Capital, suggests the York family is not alone: there has been much more participation from ultra-high net worth families whose wealth did not come from technology.Some family offices have even begun taking the lead position in venture deals, making the largest investment and taking a seat on a young company’s board.

Growth of family offices - 2

Mousse Partners, which manages the wealth of the family that owns French luxury fashion brand Chanel, recently helped lead a $32mn investment in Butler Hospitality, a US start-up that operates delivery-only kitchens catering to hotels. Tarsadia Investments, which manages money for the southern Californian hotel mogul BU Patel, earlier this year led a $140mn deal in credit card start-up Petal.

Family Offices example (Mousse Partners - Chanel) 

One of the most active family offices in venture investing is Lauder Partners, managed by Gary Lauder, a grandson of the founder of cosmetics group Estée Lauder. Its website lists 58 private companies in which it is invested and 41 that have returned the family’s initial investment through sales or public listings. Investments that “did not turn out OK” and missed the cut-off for the website “are the expensive tuition we VCs pay”, it reads.

Family Offices example (Lauder Partners)

Helps me have an overview of how many family offices are in US, who they are, and how they are operating. 