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I have friends, various of them in fact, who have got to know FOO, more particularly my parents. I know that 2 of my very good friends are loyal to me first and foremost. One I asked about this at the time a few months ago when I was considering going NC. Now I'm just doing a slow withdrawal and probably will remain VLC  or VVLC. Another friend, when I was talking to her about the nasty FOO happenings last summer and how I'm progressing and changing in the type and amount of contact I have with FOO, she came out and said how shocked she'd been at a reaction of my parents' towards her about me, along the lines of 'Crazy Blueberry' and without the slightest realisation that they themselves might have had some influence in the way I turned out and in fact in the development of CPTSD. She didn't tell me that until I showed that I'm withdrawing from FOO. She waited till I was ready, and that's great.

But I have another friend and her husband who have somewhat more contact with my FOO, even though FOO is in a different country. I finally broached the topic with this friend today, because I think it's possible FOO might send a Flying Monkey to them at some point and my request was: please ask FOO to contact me directly. (I haven't forbidden my FOO from sending emails, I've just made it clear I don't want phone calls and I do want everybody to deal with their own problems rather than F emailing me about 'hurting' M.) I don't want FOO fishing for information from others. This friend couldn't quite deal with that. She could imagine my parents might worry etc. so I got into a bit of justifying unfortunately. And now feel worse. As if I'm this dumb person who could sort everything out if only I could manage boundaries more like a normal person and wasn't so sensitive etc.

I know cognitively that's not the case. Well, live and learn I guess. Learn not to JADE especially the Justifying part. It hurts to think there are friends who will say: it's not our problem / dispute, we want to be loyal to both of you.
I spoke to one of the other friends who professed her loyalty to me a few months back and she suggested I might like to talk to the 'loyal to me and FOO friend' and say how difficult that position is for me atm. The very idea of doing that - I feel even worse. It feels like I would lose as usual, as I did the last times I tried to discuss anything in FOO. Another topic for therapy in a couple of weeks? The topic might evolve before then too, since I've started working on it here, just by writing it out.

Aaaargh. The rest of FOO (whole extended family) and FOO friends will stick to FOO. They don't seem to have conflicted loyalties. (I have been NC before so noticed what I noticed last time.) FOO first, me second. But some of my friends do because apparently they can understand my parents' "worry" about me. 

OK now I know what it's triggering: remarks from B1 and M in my childhood about how useless my friends were (losers like me). And those weird feelings of "I can only trust my family" whereas really I couldn't trust them at all!! Look what they did to me! Look how they didn't protect me! Look at what they all dumped on me! I've been loyal to them so long, and only now am I really pulling away, am I really seeing them for what they are.

Sorry for the long rant. It helps me. And I didn't do any bad coping skills while writing.  Which I might do however if just thinking this out.

[This is the way I am]

I have "have to" over in the Employment section.

More is coming up of what FOO thinks I "have to" do. Like last time I had contact with FOO altogether I was told I "have to" put up with the rudeness of one SIL. The reason: that's the way she is and she's not going to change. But actually the one who passed on that gem admires the rudeness, sort of a bravado thing. SIL says what she wants when she wants to whom she wants (people who are unprotected like me, the family scapegoat). She's very clear on what she is permitted to say to whom in whose presence. SIL is very capable of making it quite clear who is acceptable to her, who she includes in her little circle, and it isn't me. (There's more behind this than you might think, but I can't write about it yet, so comments on this last sentence not useful.)

The other example of rudeness: she kept slipping "mental health issues" into the conversation. Pretty obvious she's targetting me.

Anyway that's the way she is.... This is the way I am and although I am trying very hard to change some aspects, I am working very hard on some things, I shouldn't have to change in order to be accepted by you, FOO.

I wasn't even asking her to change substantially, just give me a break. But no, her spontaneity was more important apparently. When I made a spontaneous comment, I was immediately shut down by both sibs. Can't write more on this.

When I looked at this issue last year with my T, he encouraged me to see it not just as an issue with my SIL but with FOO in general. I think now SIL is taking on a role (or roles?)  that's somehow vacated in the extended family. Power vaccuum? In she goes to take up the slack. But she's clever. She knows how much she's allowed to offload on her MIL (my M) or how much not. She knows that M(IL) is somewhat protected from her. She knows how much she can divert onto me instead; she knows nobody in FOO protects me unconditionally from anybody else within FOO. Whereas she herself is protected from me by not just her husband but my other B too; F thinks he is there for me and thinks he was in my childhood too but if he can rise a laugh with some remark (e.g. about me) he will do so, which goes down well with SIL - she does this too. Nobody stands up to her. She doesn't do it about everybody, just about people in a noticeably weaker position than herself.

Probably all "classic scapegoat", but I feel a need to write down what's coming up.

SIL can do this because she gets away with it. Same as B1 in my childhood (and later). Possibly somebody outside my extended family could see a solution here, other than NC. They do, one person said recently "you have to get over this" but she didn't say how. To which I answered: "Or slowly give up on contact, which is what I'm doing." She actually accepted that. At least she didn't argue anyway.

Last fall I did a visual representation of my extended family and both therapists recommended I keep my distance so as not to get sucked back into the vortex, and that if I ever have personal contact with FOO again then not alone, take somebody, a trusted somebody with me as a psychological body guard.

As for solution, maybe some giant moving pieces around the board could work a solution... It became clear through the visual representation that the whole family is mucked up (what a surprise, Not.) I'm sure everybody would 'have to' change, not just me. That's exactly what they seem generally not prepared to do.

This is huge progress! In a nutshell: MINE! MINE! MINE!
Excuse the caps, part of that is a relatively small inner child yelling. My little Blueberry is allowed to shout after years of being silent or at best whispering so that nobody would hear.

I live and work in the same building. My office is on the ground floor and everybody else in the building goes through the area outside my office to go upstairs or to other parts of the ground floor. As is the case in my country, it's clear to everybody that I'm responsible for keeping that area clean and changing the lightbulb. But it also seemed clear to most people that they could leave whatever they want(ed) in this space, like bicycles and garbage and furniture, and it never occurred to them that they could sweep the floor even, after using my space for however long they chose to.

It would be useful to me to have a little waiting area with a chair outside my office. In the past couple of weeks I've dared to think more on that. First I started with putting a poster up which is related to my area of work. 10 days ago or so I got two matching chairs and I even stuck my business logo and name on them. Didn't matter. A neighbour moved them so she could put some large items of garbage and broken up furniture there. It did take me a while to figure out how to approach her best, but today I did on the spur of the moment: I simply told her that that wall and the space immediately in front is my area, could she please move her stuff somewhere else. After an initial: "everybody else puts stuff there too", she backed down and moved her stuff right away.  I hadn't been expecting that and I would've even given her a few days. But this is fine too!

Now I've had the energy and courage to put up a sign for my customers complete with business logo designating my waiting area, and a separate sign to all neighbours in the building saying: please put your stuff somewhere else.

I know I had the energy for it because I finally had the courage to do it. When I'm frightened my energy disappears.
I probably have more courage tonight because I was able to feel anger towards M and F today, which I posted somewhere else. Maybe in my Journal, maybe under Employment.

Even if nobody else on here understands, which is possible, this is huge for me. 

The messages I got as a child, teenager, and even as an adult, and probably also as a baby were: I'm not meant to exist, I'm a burden, I'm in the way, everybody else is more important and everybody else is right. And here I am saying: No, my neighbours are not more important, they don't have more rights than I do! They're not allowed to simply walk into my area and use it as if it were theirs. With writing this comes the memory of my B coming into my room, invading my space as a teenager to hit me or threaten me or just yell out of control. I had no safe place, when he was in that kind of mood. And I was constantly rebuffed and ridiculed by FOO if I attempted to complain. No wonder it's been so hard all my life to even stand my ground, never mind stake it.

    I'm so excited and so proud of myself.

[want]

This is a small excerpt from my Journal plus further thoughts / realisations.

Considering asking the client if she could wait till Wed. instead and I'll give her a bit of a discount. The job has been particularly useful for the above realisations rather than for the pay.

Client accepted!

Between sending my request and receiving her answer, I kept on working little bit by little bit since I didn't know if she was going to accept, but strangely enough I felt under no pressure whatsoever. But now that I have an official deadline again, I can feel internal pressure returning and with it a kind of panicky feeling. If I didn't have a deadline, I would possibly never do the work, but a deadline seems to put me under a lot of stress. Though I suppose it's actually the work itself that puts me under so much stress. Not the deadline.

The deadline just shows me there's no way out of it. I have to complete the work and since I seem allergic to the concept of  'have to" (could it be a trigger, even?) the only way it will function is if I actually want to do this type of work. I don't really. By the time I've struggled through it my hourly rate is abysmal. Not because I'm charging too low for piece work, but because it takes me so long to do in between various types of EF e.g. brain fog and struggling with Word and other computer-related stuff. Some of these struggles are actually related to EFs too. As I've mentioned before sometimes I know how to achieve this or that with my computer and then the information in my head goes AWOL for a few days or even weeks and then suddenly returns out of the blue.

So I was wondering up above, Is "have to" a trigger? Then I heard a FOO voice in my head saying "You'll just have to put up with it." Although it's obviously good to learn to put up with some things in life so you can compromise with other people and so that you learn to work instead of just playing, putting up with abuse should not be included in that. But it was. "Put up with it, it's your own fault anyway. You bring it on yourself." I know this memory is true, I know this phrase "You'll just have to put up with it" was said to me again and again in different situations sometimes with "own fault" or "you bring it on yourself" added. Even when it wasn't said, I'd heard it so often that it was clear when M and F refused to protect me from B and refused to believe me when I said I was frightened of him, that they thought I had to put up with it.

I can feel sadness at this and prickling of tears, which is pretty big for me atm. After sitting with the sadness for a few minutes, I can feel anger rising too. Anger at M and F that not only did they expect me to put up with B but in fact with the whole dysfunctional system! They expected me to put up with their own rants at and totally over-the-top and untrue criticisms of me. I wasn't stupid! They said I was. Their constant criticism led me to shut down my brain almost. I often didn't dare ask questions about the world the way children do out of interest and curiousity, a normal way of learning for them because I knew FOO would ridicule me for 'not knowing'. If I attempted to debate/argue which was common supper-table conversation in our household or in fact most other times too, they'd tell me to stop being 'so stupid' or to 'talk sense'. How are you supposed to learn that when you are being slammed down emotionally and verbally? That's a bit of a side rant. Example of untrue criticisms that I had to put up with.

So "have to" a trigger? Very probably. That's why I keep lists of things I could do, rather than lists of things I have to do. There's just a bare minimum of things that I highly recommend myself to do daily because these things keep me stable. Not even they are a "have to". Work is never included in the Highly Recommends, it's always in Could, as is therapy interestingly enough. Most days I do a lot of the stuff under Could, but if it was under Highly Recommend, the pressure would backfire on me and I'd get less done. Highly Recommend used to be called Must, and occasionally still is, but usually puts me under too much pressure.

Sorry for the long post, but it's an important realisation to me that only came bit by bit as I wrote.

After I sent a payment reminder to a troublesome client and heard my email ping, I presumed it was this client replying and pointing out a mistake i.e. that she had paid. I reached up automatically and pulled a few hairs out.

I've written more about the incident under Employment, but the self-harm needs to go here.

I have worked a lot in T both inpatient and outpatient over the years on this type of self-injury, but without stopping much or for long. I know I'm self-punishing for making the teeniest mistake or for having conceivably made a larger one. But without any real evidence of the latter. It's more: there might have been a mistake here and it would have been me who made it because I'm the only one in the whole wide world who makes mistakes. For "whole wide world" read "FOO". And mistakes are unforgiveable, a question of total shame, sink to the floor in fact right through the floor into the basement kind of shame.

Just reached up again to my hair but realised it before pulling out. The reason: maybe I haven't written the whole picture in this post, maybe I haven't covered everything, maybe I haven't used the correct or even 100% best word every time, and also I've been writing based more on my emotions than any kind of logical thinking, so even more reason to think I could've made a mistake.

I have an appointment very soon, and it will do me good, so I'm stopping writing this and going.

A new realisation: in the country I mostly grew up in I had tons of problems getting jobs, even basic minimum-wage student jobs. I'd be pounding the pavement (as you did back then) for weeks. I knew that most employers thought 'No way' the minute they saw me. When I moved far away to a totally different country, getting basic student jobs was much, much easier. Up till now I've always thought that because I'm a foreigner here they couldn't really put me immediately in some category. That may still be a part of it, BUT part of it is surely that now that I'm at least geographically outside the perpetual FOO sphere of influence, I look less hunted than I used to look. I often look stressed these days, though I might not have as a student in my early years in this country, but I didn't look so self-conscious, I didn't look as if I wanted to disappear into the woodwork. People didn't look at me and immediately think: there's something wrong there.

[Note: I appreciate comments, or even just a mark of sorts,]

 
    Note:  I appreciate comments, or even just a mark of sorts, to show you read my latest non-sender FOO letter. It's important to me to have witnesses. A few of you on here were helping me not send letters to FOO in about April-May 2017, and someone asked if I'd be posting on here when I write those letters, as non-senders. As of Sept. I've started writing again, adding on to the bottom of this thread. It's been cathartic and healing already. 
Blueberry   

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Dear M and F,

Thanks so much for teaching me not to set limits, any limits at all. No limits to women, no limits to men. Thanks for the sexual abuse. Thanks for blaming me for not entering into romantic relationships. Thanks for not seeing the connections between not being allowed to set limits and not entering romantic relationships. Thanks for making fun of me for avoiding rom.relationships like the plague. Thanks for teaching me not to trust my judgement at all. It makes functioning in the working world super easy, NOT. Thanks for allowing B1 to beat me up. Thanks for not believing me. Thanks for calling me a liar perpetually. Thanks for not protecting me. Thanks for telling me I was a useless burden. Thanks for continually telling me I was stupid. Thanks for making fun of the way I moved, the way I looked, the way I dressed, the way I ran, the way I stood, the way I laughed. Thanks for making fun of my very existence, right down into the core of my being. Thanks for leaping in to correct me and all my ways of expressing myself before I even had time to reflect on them myself. Thanks for criticising me for being self-conscious. Thanks for not noticing how I got so self-conscious.
Thanks for teaching me that making a mistake is life-threatening. Thanks for being so unpredictable. Thanks for disallowing emotions, except your own. Thanks for not hugging me. Thanks for using me to your own ends.  Thanks for not forgiving, not even normal childhood misdemeanours. Thanks for telling me how fat I was (though I wasn't). Thanks for setting me up to believe that my muscles were fatty tissue. Thanks for blaming me for being favoured by a geographically very distant relative, especially since it wasn't even true. Thanks for taking up the issue with me as a child rather than with the adult relative. Thanks for leaving me to lie cold in bed at night and threatening to punish me when I tried to rectify the situation. Thanks for putting B1's feelings above mine, always.

All the realisations I've been having today about work are bringing things up... I know the theory is you should try and work and earn your keep even if you have C-PTSD and the theory is you shouldn't remain dependent - financially or otherwise -  on your parents or any other FOO members, and I also know that comparing ourselves is not generally helpful. But still I'm thinking about it today.

In retrospect I have always thought it's a good thing my parents didn't throw me out once I left high school, I stayed at home with them and went to uni. I have been told that had they said: "Move out", I would've managed somehow. But even in the years immediately following, I didn't think so. I think I would've thrown in the towel, completely and utterly. Or gone crazy. Or had a complete breakdown.

The realisations coming today make me want to eat, which I have been doing, and self-injure which I've managed not to do. The self-injure impulse is pretty strong though. It's as if I can see my M going ballistic and I'm turning her rage inwards on me. There is no rational reason for her to go ballistic, nor was there in the past, but she did.

So if I manage another post this evening and mention that it's difficult or put an asterix, this is what I'll be referring to: self-injury / throwing in the towel life-wise rather than work-wise. Sometimes there's a voice in me that says, translated: "The best thing for you would be to kill yourself." I don't know whose voice it is, apart from mine. It's not even in my native language, which makes me think it's not actual words from FOO but what my present day adult has surmised from the memories that have been re-surfacing over the last 12-13 years.  A lot of the memories have been non-verbal, and when i've been asked to express what's going on, often I've been speechless and could only scream / feel an internal scream. Whether or not I expressed it that way.

P.S. I'm not in any danger of suicide, not even when I get the 'voice'. It's not a pleasant state to be in, putting it mildly, but I can manage it in a number of ways from pretty unhealthy like eating, to pretty depressive like disappearing under the covers and sleeping, or dissociating.

Dear M and F,

Re: money. You've asked what my monthly expenses are. I'm going to give you my monthly deficit instead. It's about 200. It is not going to go down significantly, if at all, if ever. There are reasons for this, eg. when I earn more, my pension is reduced, and/or my health insurance will go up significantly.

- - - - -- - - - - -

That's all I can write. Brain blanks out. Some of this info actually does need to reach FOO because they will help me financially, and the work I did today shows me that earning enough money to live off is illusory for me. There is welfare of course, but it wouldn't permit me to work in my profession at all (for reasons which are too complicated to explain here). Anyway it's good for me to write a bit here and see how fast my brain blanks. Wouldn't send a letter anyway without discussing with my T first.

Hello M,
I got your email. For someone for whom correct language usage and precise vocabulary was of utmost importance, precise wording when it comes to emotional issues is sadly lacking. I imagine you feel sad that I don't want contact with you. If you want to feel sorry, then I'd prefer you to feel sorry for what you did to me over the years. You're not going to of course.

Let's see. F sent me an email mentioning how I'd hurt you, now, as a mature adult. Too bad nobody thought to protect me from hurt when I was a child. Nobody protected me from you; you didn't protect me from older brother - no, you even wanted to protect him and his feelings from me, like when you said we wouldn't tell him I didn't want him at my graduation, because 'we' wouldn't want to hurt his feelings! "We??" You were including me in that?!?  You were oblivious to the fact that he was hurting my body at that time, that's why I didn't want him at my grad. Of course, you were right, it wasn't often. But it was often enough. One time is one time too many at that age.

And as for you, you think it's alright to tell a child things like there were no problems in the family till said child's birth?? It wasn't even true!! Now, the family gathers round, protecting you from any possibility that  I might hurt you by setting a limit. When I was a child nobody was there to protect me from your tongue. Of course, you had problems with your husband and your ILs and even your first baby before I was born.
_ - - - - - - - - - -

Don't worry, fellow OOTS members, I won't be sending this! I was hoping it might be cathartic, but I can't tap my anger at all. I'm writing on a cognitive level only. Sometimes, including a couple of hours ago,  I can feel the anger at these and other things my M did and said, but it seems I can't connect the emotions with writing right now.

I'm working on believing that I deserve my pay. Deep down I don't believe it.

I have trouble writing my invoices, then trouble sending them, even if that just involves attaching it to an email and clicking Send. In the past I've mentally blocked how to turn a Word document into a pdf (advisable so the invoice can't be tampered with) even though I actually do know how. But that's one of my problems - suddenly part of my knowledge or one of my skills disappears. So far I've had no control over such things returning either. Suddenly occurs to me now that I maybe block this particular skill (converting Word doc to pdf) so that sending the invoice is impossible?

Even before I write my invoices, I often have trouble just seeing how 'expensive' my services are. Yesterday I was re-calculating a client's monthly fee for May to July because the person has already doubled the amount of time I'm working for her. In this type of work, double time means double price. But still the doubled price took me totally by surprise. It was a shock! OMG! Am I charging that much?? That's a ton of money! I can't possibly ask for so much money. (Even though the client has no problem with it.) While these thoughts were coming tumbling out, I felt this was an Inner Child?/Teen? reacting, but I can't yet feel which one. That will come when I'm ready. The 'double price' is 3-digit, whereas my original price was 2-digit. In the scheme of things in my country and this line of work, that's not an exorbitant amount of money, but I guess that it would be to a child or teenager.

This is progress  A majorly important realisation for me so that I can develop a more successful business and earn more of my own money. 

Can anybody relate to this kind of problem? Whether you're self-employed or just a regular employee?

Among other things, I work one-on-one with school students to help them improve their marks. I am self-employed but can only work very part-time because of health, why else.

One woman who sends two of her children to me is a pain in the neck putting it mildly. I'm wondering if she maybe has narcisstic symptoms. I'm not asking whether she does, but just so you know what I'm dealing with here. She hardly ever gets back to me the first time, I almost always have to send a second reminding email or try to phone her. And I really mean 'hardly ever' / 'almost always'. That's not an exaggeration.

The latest problem is, she's been paying later and later. The monthly payments are meant to be in my account by the third of the month. This is in my contract, which she signed.  March payment came around the 15th so I emailed her if that happened again she'd have to pay a 'late fee' of not very much, actually. Answer - she wants to pay middle of the month from now on and is happy to pay a 'late fee' for that (this from a mother who can't afford more lessons for one child though said child needs it desperately). Overly generous as usual, I said so long as I know the payment is coming by the 15th of the month, I won't charge a 'late fee'. Did the payment reach my bank account by April 15th? No. Of course not. It came on the 20th. So I emailed her that she has to hand over the late fee in cash and send it with one child the next lesson, which was today. Neither child had brought the money, although the mother had even specified which child she'd give it to. They're both teenagers BTW, so capable of being in charge of a few coins. There are reasons why I want it cash. So next thing is to send an email charging double the amount of those few coins - that's how it works in my country.

It's so inconsiderate it makes me angry. This woman with all her shenanigans causes me more admin work than most of the other parents put together. As a self-employed person, I'm not being paid for the time I stick in here. Of course I know that you have to calculate that kind of crxp into your price but a) it's a bit of a cutthroat market and b) raising my price and in fact even invoicing are a bit triggering for me, they destabilise me, even though they are of course necessary. I know that. But knowing that sort of fact doesn't help me combat the amygdala highjacks that come when I consider raising prices. So I have the prices which I have. Not dirt cheap/self-exploitative, but not super-high either.

The idea that she may have narc symptoms is actually helping me. That means: it's not my fault. I haven't explained too little or this or that. I'm not expecting too much. It's really this one parent who is pretty unreasonable. Other clients thank me if I go out of my way, bend my contract rules a bit in circumstances where I decide to be flexible, or even just e.g. answer a query particularly quickly. 'Thank you' seems not to exist in this woman's vocabulary. I'm taking this woman's behaviour less personally now.  to myself.

Now to stand up for myself in a concrete way by sending my next reminder email demanding double payment. Keep breathing.

[do]

It's time I wrote FOO letters: to F, M, SIL2, B2, B1 not necessarily in that order. I do intend to send these letters. My goal is to finally as an adult-on-the-road-to-recovery express anger (instead of fleeing), set limits, give them and me one last chance before I go VVVVLC or NC with those not willing to work on contact with me under my conditions.

The recommended route of basically saying nothing and going NC doesn't seem to be working for me. I realise now that my various addictive habits, strengthened in last little while, and my depression of the last weeks, which is paralysing me, are there because I am denying myself this wish to finally say something, come what may.

I do welcome feedback esp. when I'm JADE-ing too much or setting myself up for too much emotional hurt / injury from FOO.  I'm especially interested in feedback from those of you who feel they have moved out of the FOG and actually pinpointing a sentence or words where I'm starting to set myself up for emotional hurt from FOO. This will enable me to review and change my letters before sending them.

Thanks very much for taking any time for this! Nobody should feel they have to read letters to all my FOO members.

I was reading in 100 Traits of Personality Disorders since I'd be kind of interested in figuring out what F is, though maybe he just has fleas. Anyway, Favouritism and Scapegoating caught my eye. Yes, I am a family SG, the main one, though sometimes B1 played the role. M played us against each other. She told me my problems were due to him and told him his problems were due to me. That came out though, in M's presence. That didn't seem to bother her at all, no embarrassment, no need to explain. Just sat there in the air. More me feeling stupid for believing it, or me feeling betrayed.

But when I see this word "favouritism" instead of Golden Child a rush of past stuff comes back. M was constantly harping on to me about being 'favoured' by her MIL and BIL (so my GM and uncle). Because she couldn't get back at them about it or maybe it wasn't even true, she took it out on me. They'd accused her of favouring B1 over me (at least this is the story....) so her 'logical reaction' was to blame me and continue to favour B1 even more. It just went on and on. We actually lived on a different continent from GM and uncle, so it's not as if I saw them much and they didn't 'favour' me in any overt ways, like bigger presents or more money or anything. No, it was just they suggested to M and F that M and F should maybe look at what was going on, that maybe I wasn't in a good state (after a visit at my GM's). I was so hurt by hateful remarks from M being directed at me: "You're so gullible. You believe anything anybody says to you." "Favouring is nasty." For crying out loud, I wasn't favouring anybody!! And even if I had been being favoured by GM, that wouldn't have been my fault. I was 9 years old!! I didn't cause it. I couldn't have changed it. But it got worse, my M decided that since I was favoured by GM and U, she 'd favour B1 to balance things out.    Good parenting skills. Not. Good relationship skills. Not. (As I've mentioned before, sarcasm played a big role in my FOO, and I revert to it in my head when things are painful.) Sounds like tit-for-tat in the playground. And where was F during all this? Apparently didn't notice. Or as he said a couple of years ago, the idea that he (along with M) could possibly have favoured B1 was ridiculous because personality-wise he felt closer to me. It was nice to hear, but it doesn't really add up. It's still a case of: he'll support me so long as M's interests and B1's interests don't get in the way. Enough of this rant.

Does anybody else do this? I often feel that I 'owe' friends for help they give me, although they negate this. One reason is I regularly forget things I have done for my friends. It's like it doesn't register with me, it doesn't really count. I'm presuming this is at least connected to FOO's constant harping on about my being "a burden" on the family, "not pulling my weight" (when I was 7-8 years old!) etc. It's not that I think I owe friends money, it's that I feel I'm not helping them enough.

TRIGGERS      for whole post

As I've already posted, sexual abuse in the family I grew up in had a lot to do with M's fascination with buttocks. (I choose a word hardly used in FOO, because words commonly used in my childhood trigger me). Anyway, other than M sticking her hands down children's (under)pants and all that, when she spanked (an action she seemed to take pleasure in), the sexualisation was palpable. Not just in her looks (which I also mentioned in previous post) but somehow by touch from her hand to my skin. So a reason to behave myself the way FOO and in particular M deemed appropriate was not just to avoid physical pain and humiliation, but to avoid this sexualised feeling. It has followed me to this day: fear of setting any kind of limits towards people in a position of power over me. Although I don't usually re-feel the sexualisation immediately any more, I do have all these other reactions like forgetting to breathe, throat tightening, going numb, skin all over my body itching etc.

All that just because I've just sent F a limit in an email, because of an email he sent a few days ago, implying that I'd hurt my M with my behaviour. I told my T this week what I was intending to send - just one sentence - and T OK'd it. A clear limit, he said. No JADE, I say.

OK, that 's enough for today. Now I need to go and push off walls and maybe move to some music to bring myself back from my semi-dissociated state.

[do]

While writing in Just a Difficult Day, some realisations on my type of self-harm briefly flashed into my mind. I'm going to see if I can find them again. I didn't want to flood Just a Difficult Day with them. Realisations are almost always useful to me in some way, this one I even felt - hey, that could be the key to me stopping, and then the realisation disappeared again. But that's normal for me.

Sooo my type of self-injury is non-bloody.
I pull my hair out, hair by hair, compulsively. Writing and thinking, especially intellectual thoughts where I'm not connected to my emotions is especially conducive to hair-pulling. Is that really self-injury???, people have asked. YES, even though not potentially lethal.  It does hurt your scalp after a while, and it's pretty self-destructive for your appearance. And the myriad situations when I do this show me the symbolism behind it - constant self-destruction, overwhelming lack of self-esteem, constant inner critic, uncertainty,  deeply ingrained in my system. Uncertainty came from being so much criticised in FOO. Whichever way I chose or decided, it was wrong. Even the most minor things. like I was to buy large size packet at grocery store, but it was out-of-stock so do I choose small or go back home without??? Stood there deliberating for minutes on end, and eventually chose 2 small ones. WRONG!!! And then an incredible amount of blaming and shaming on my poor little approx. 8 year old self from M. So much dinning into my head that I was completely stupid and incapable of thought      That made such an impression on me that about 4 years later (I know from the aftermath that I was 12 or 13) when I was sent to the grocery store to get a packet of something else and there was S, M, or L to choose from, I deliberated agaaaaaaiiiiin and chose L. WRONG!!! I ought to have taken into consideration that we were moving within the year and wouldn't be able to use up all the contents by then and it would take up space in the packing. By the way, it was a tin of baking powder, not a hundredweight of coal. As I'm sure everybody knows, a single tin of baking powder takes up sooo much space    I'm a little bit in touch with Inner Children right now, and of course they don't understand the  They're more      and maybe some  and     So of course my comment about baking powder taking up soooo much space isn't really useful. Maybe not damaging, but it doesn't help on the emotional level at all.

In my Just a Difficult Day post, I was writing about my difficulties with getting on with the freelance work I'm meant to be doing. What is partly so difficult about this type of work I do is that I constantly have to make minor, nit-picking distinctions and decisions. A mistake could potentially cause me quite a lot of money (by my earning standards)  and/or client annoyance if the work were rejected, but I think it's more the completely over-the-top criticism, verbal abuse and rejection I experienced as a child due to my decision-making. Yes, the Inner Children are nodding. So that's a realisation worth having, and something concrete I can work on with my Inner Children. There is more than one involved, I can't feel yet how many i.e. could be more than two, an Inner Helper I last had contact with about two years ago is now appearing on the scene, she represents inner strength especially in the spine. What is also clear to me is that this inner work is so much more important than getting that freelance work done. Maybe I can find another freelance colleague to take over at short notice. Yikes. But it might work. So I wouldn't earn my 70 mojos, well tough. The inner work is more important.

_____________________________
This is the rest of the post, from before I figured out the middle bit, but I'm leaving it. They are my thoughts, my truth about myself.

I also do it (hair-pulling) in order not to disocciate as well as to bring myself back from disocciation. So much of it is semi-unconscious, or even completely unconscious. At some point I become aware, but have probably pulled out any number of hairs by then. Sometimes I do catch myself before my fingers have pulled, for which I give myself a  It has taken a lot of work even to get to this stage.   Nobody was meant to notice I had any problems in childhood and teenage years so I guess unconsciously I 'chose' methods which are not very visible. Cutting would've been a bit more visible. I would've got into trouble with FOO over that. My hair was always a mess, which happens if you constantly run your fingers through your hair, pulling it out, and I did get a lot of ridicule over that as well as being yelled and screamed at and shamed, but I don't want to imagine what else would have happened if I'd taken up cutting....

Also I do think it's a little disgusting for other people, having my hairs floating around, like when I'm sitting in a waiting room or on the bus. I get so easily grossed out myself by other people's odd hairs (from their scalp) floating about.

I posted this, and more, somewhere else today, so I'm copying it in here too. I've edited it a bit because some of it's not necessary on this forum in the sexual abuse section - everybody on here probably understands more than where I last posted.

It just finally came out so I guess it's time for it. Also when I think it might be useful for somebody to know in order to protect a child, I can be more outspoken about it. Here I'm probably speaking to the converted, so to speak, I mean those who wouldn't abuse and don't need to have explained what it all is and could be.

TRIGGER WARNING  through to end of post !!!


I'm a woman who was sexually abused as a child by my mother. Not just me, my brothers were too. I saw it happen on various different occasions. My M has an unhealthy fascination with buttocks, and children's ones are the easiest to reach, I guess, and children least likely to be able to defend themselves, especially when brought up to not do so. Adults are right, children are wrong. Though I did try to defend myself as a child with the remark "That's mine." but M not subtle enough to understand that.
There were looks, there were steadfast gazes, there were hands down the back of (under) pants, there was gloating and oogling over own or other people's children being "spanked with their pants down", there were words related to these activities some in this sentence, some not, spoken in a really creepy way, there were really weird remarks sometimes where even the other members of my family looked bemused and or taken aback at these remarks, and I was trying my best not to disocciate (though I didn't know the terminology at the time).

There was more, but I can't write it. All in this semi-subtle way. Some people say: that doesn't sound so subtle at all, whereas others discount it, even therapists have discounted it in the past.

Years later before the first grandchild appeared, I told my siblings, I warned them. I didn't want this stuff to get passed onto the next generation. My sibs both said they could accept that this was the way I felt but they had no memories of it whatsoever and "we will protect our own children as we see fit, butt out".  A lot of denial in my family. And even with emotional abuse, beating up etc a lot of nit-picking over what's 'real' abuse, and what might have been provided by my over-active imagination    , or dreamed up, or maybe I was convinced by some T at some time 

I've been dealing with this topic on and off in therapy and/or counselling over the last 15, no wait, worse, 20 years (often the emotional or physical abuse/neglect have taken precedence) but these past couple of weeks I'm finally back on this topic in trauma therapy, putting it on the mini-screen behind all sorts of magical reinforced tinted glass so that nothing can get through to me. They call it confrontation with the trauma in this country. 

I remembered too during the course of the day why I was worried deep down inside about posting some of what happened to me (or other children in my M's vicinity) on here: I've come across other survivors who on hearing what I went through said pretty unfeeling things like: is that all that happened?? i.e. not enough, doesn't count. I'm in a stronger place now though. I can think to myself "YES, that is all, and it was quite enough!"

I know this isn't a judgemental forum, so these remarks won't come, but those comments from the past have left their scar too.

Just making the commitment to stop reading on here (or anywhere else) for the next few hours and go and do one of the things I really need to do. 

My dreams sent me for a loop today, but reflecting on them, I realised there has been progress. For months I've had on and off dreams about suddenly being at the FOO family home unable to move out because I couldn't find a job to pay the rent. In those dreams I was always pretty confused: What on earth am I doing back here??? And I felt hopeless and stuck and like I'd felt as a teen or young adult. Certainly not the way I feel now.
Last night was new. I went round to where my parents live now, peered in the windows and decided "No, thanks." and left. I felt like the adult I am now. The rest of the dreams weren't quite so peachy. But progress in one topic is good!