Messages

I feel disconnected
As if there is a disconnection between me and the world
It's like I'm not made of the same stuff as everyone else
I've always felt this way.. from a very young age
Like some alien walking among everyone but with so many questions
So much fear
I wanted to feel like I belonged
And even in the moments when I finally thought I belonged, I found out very quickly that I was wrong
Always walking around feeling like I'm here by mistake like my dad told me
Sometimes I feel that my feelings and sensations are so strange that I can't say them and I can't explain them even if I wanted to
So much loneliness
So much sadness
It's disturbing that I will have to spend the rest of my life with the person I hate the most..
myself.

Rizzo

Your ability to hold no contempt for your father says a lot of good things about you as a person. I'm just now, after 40 years of therapy, I'm JUST NOW losing my contempt and hatred for my abusers. It feels good to let it go. And when I read posts like yours I feel encouraged to continue to let go of more anger. I still have trauma triggers, and I still have trauma EF flashback reactions, but the hatred is waning away. I just can't stand that feeling of the poison of hatred coursing through my veins. It's been said that hating someone else is like drinking poison hoping it will hurt them.

People like you, who have found forgiveness, are the heroes that I try to emulate.

I can see the beauty of who you became despite all that has happened.I'm super touched by your post. I'm going to be thinking about this post for a few hours today.

Thank you for the kind words
The truth is I'm not sure I forgave him, I know I don't hold a grudge against him.

When I was little, things happened to me with my father that I am still not ready to detail.
But.. we are still in touch. I can say that he kicked me out of the house at the age of 15 and I was homeless for two weeks. He cursed me, humiliated me and despised me. He told me he hated me. When I was a baby, other things of a different kind happened.
I feel that maybe something is wrong with me that I am able to put everything aside only because I value a relationship with him.
I understand that I am a person who values family very much and it is important for me to stay in touch with them.
That's one of the things he taught me as a child.
But my father did terrible things during my life and so did my mother who allowed him.
I'm trying to figure out why I'm like this.
In therapy it is difficult for me to talk about my father.
I've had a lot of things happen to me with bad people in my life who aren't my dad.. I've been sexually assaulted many times. My life felt like it wasn't my life, it was other people's.
But what I had with my father was the most complex.. Makes sense.
I feel no anger or contempt for him, no hard feelings at all, which makes me feel like a very strange human being.
Sometimes I imagine what it would have been like to be born into a normal family, but there is no such thing, I know.

From a young age, things happened to me that I would not wish on anyone.
The feeling of disgust burned through me.
Today all the time the feeling of disgust is in me, does not give rest
This is tiring, I want so badly to be normal.
Does anyone relate to the constant feeling of can't stop feeling disgusted?

I wish I didn't feel it was my fault..
Like I deserved it.
I guess there are things you're right about.. I just can't really connect to it

I often think and ask why did this happen to me?
Why did I deserve it?
So many years of suffering.. the cycle of violence that never ends.
I guess many of you know exactly what I'm talking about
I just want to understand sometimes why?... Just why?

Hi need some advice
I'm doing bypass surgery.. I wanted to know if anyone knows someone who has or has done this surgery themselves
I am very stressed and would appreciate someone who knows this situation.

Rizzo, I hear your pain. I am feeling for you.. with you. I send you support and love. You are not alone here.

Thank you, I wish you to feel the same compassion for yourself that you gave me.

I'm here, Rizzo.
Here, alone, with you.
Thanks for posting this so we can be alone in pain together.

What comes to mind is a little story from the movie The Abyss.  As the diver goes down into the depths of the bottomless ocean, dark and alone, his still-loving ex-wife recalls -- through the radio -- when the power went out and there was a candle lit.  She said she felt alone and he said he would light a second candle and put it next to hers so she wouldn't be alone.  She assures him in the ocean that he is not alone.

Two candles and self-hugs for us.
   -Cascade

Thank you very much, I'm going to see the movie now!
sending hugs.

I have just cried reading your poem Rizzo    I'm so truly sorry for what you have suffered. I understand your feelings and that you will never be the same again. Right now, I'm grieving - among other things. What keeps me going and helps me endure these dark periods is knowing (because a part of me does actually know!) that at the other end of this healing journey I will be a stronger, happier person who will be able to live the remainder of my life without carrying this pain permanently inside. I truly wish that for you and for all of us on this forum. Stay strong  and be gentle with yourself 

Thank you so much.. now I feel not alone

I can't see any bright spots, everything is dark for me.
I can't take it anymore, I feel like everything is falling apart.
I'm falling apart, I'm broken.
I don't want to live like this, not the way it is now.
I wish it would just end.
I want quiet, peace.. I will never find them.
Everything is so black, there are no shades of gray..
And I'm alone,
i am so alone.
This loneliness is eating me up inside and i am so lost.
I have so many anxieties that it even scares me..
I feel like someone wants me to suffer.

This is a song I wrote about a friend I lost..

feet in the water
We were once sitting,
Two friends
Friendships that I thought would stay with me forever.
We would put our feet in the water
And suddenly the anxiety disappeared.
We guessed what he was thinking and why is she crying?
Maybe because it gave us a sense of control.
feet in the water,
head in the sky
We gave them our own story,
We didn't really know
We just imagined.
"Maybe it will help me understand humans better?" I thought,
Many of these moments I saved.
I didn't think you would go like this,
like everybody.
I felt abandoned,
I didn't think this would be the end of us.
Suddenly I was missing a friend
Her family was also my family,
And so quickly I lost my family,
The sleepless nights where we would think
on our feet in the water,
just us and the sky
And the worst..
that I lost a friend

The tree I nurtured is all lost
The tree I nurtured is all gone
You took the hoe and arranged all the fallen leaves in a nice pile.
I thought you cared a bit.
I saw you looking at the tree,
Little by little I discovered that everything was going to explode.
took a knife and stabbed him,
tear off a leaf,
flower and flower
You said it was for my benefit,
But the tree is still ruined,
My spirit has fallen.
It's in front of my eyes now,
The tree is lost,
And my heart too.
I will never be the same person again.

[Narcissists are good at teaching us how to lie down and take their abuse without fighting back.]

Rizzo,

This has been a huge problem for me.  As a child I was punished if I ever showed anger. The longer anger was not allowed, the less chance I ever had to become skilled at using it productively. Meaning, as I grew older, when anger did pop out, it felt completely out of control and people would laugh at me for how ridiculous I looked.

I am afraid of my own anger. I have been taught by my FOO, and all of the churches I used to belong to, that expressing anger is a sin, and a joke. My family was riddled with narcissists who knew how to make me ashamed of myself if I got angry.

Narcissists are good at teaching us how to lie down and take their abuse without fighting back. As children, it's easy to outshout us. No matter how angry I could get as a child, my narcissistic elders could get far angrier. They taught me to cower at anger--mine or anyone else's. They humiliate us when we get angry. In my family, if I ever got angry as a small toddler or a young child, Mom would instruct the family, "Don't anybody look at him. Just ignore him until he behaves himself." I know now that IGNORING A TODDLER AND A YOUNG CHILD IS ABUSE! ABUSE! Then when I became older, like 10 or 12, Mom convinced me that if I ever get angry, I'll die of a stroke.

I'm terrified of my own anger. My family taught me that I will hurt people if I get angry. In a narcissist's world, getting what I want means (to them) that they don't get what they want.

Every second of every day, narcissists compete for the win. It's the black and white behaviors of narcissists who consider every conversation and every interaction with anyone as a competition. They don't make concessions, they either win or lose. And they hate to lose. So, they teach their kind-hearted young children to stop getting what we want, so they can stand in the winner's circle longer. To a narcissist the world belongs to THEM and we, the good people, are just toys for them to play with, and they'll pretend to love us for as long as we don't fight back.

My FOO proved it a thousand times. Any time I got what I wanted as a child and an adult, I was either laughed at and humiliated for how stupid I looked, or I was blamed for making their lives worse for getting something I wanted. There were never win-win scenarios. They only understood getting what they want instead of me getting anything I might ever want.

Anger is there to help us get what we want. It's a self-protection mechanism meant to help us move out of difficult situations.

The reason Complex-PTSD is called Complex is because it's multilayered with more than one issue. It's complex. And my fear of anger has a complexity of different reasons:

1) If I get angry I imagine I'll explode like  grenade and hurt everyone around me (because that's what my FOO and churches taught me would happen)

2) If I get angry, I'll just open myself up to being abandoned, ignored, laughed at, humiliated.

3) If I get angry I'll die of a stroke (Again: Thanks, Mom. Way to teach your son how to be a strong man who gets what he wants in life).

4) If I get angry and win an argument, that win leads to a trap later on in the month when whomever I was angry at eventually tells me that I've ruined their life and I now need to feel crushing remorse for my anger from a while back.

Even though I understand why anger is such a problem for me, I haven't had much success in getting past it. If anything, I'm learning ways to ignore life's problems more and more. I'm learning ways to avoid situations where anger is required to get what I want. I'm still good at just giving up what I want so as to avoid conflict and anger.

Rizzo, you are not alone. This is one of my top 10 issues that I wish I could resolve, but don't know for sure whether I ever will.

I understand you so much.. I feel we are in a very similar place. thank you for making me feel less alone 

Rizzo, I feel no anger towards my abusers either. It seems all my anger is reserved for me. I think I should feel anger towards them, but it never seems to come.

thank you, i need to know i'm not alone in this..