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In so many ways, we're all in this together.

I find so much comfort in that, after spending a lifetime believing I was alone with it all.

This really is a safe place for me too.

Cascade,

From my heart to yours, here's a nice, safe, distance hug just because we have felt some of the same things. There IS an end in sight.

Pisa,

Your intro really tugs at my heart. I'm very glad you reached out to the forum and to a therapist who was wise enough to introduce the CPTSD diagnosis.

I'm 63, and my story has a few similarities to yours. Parents who want to compete with their kids instead of nurture them absolutely baffles my mind.

I've gone No Contact with my family, which has greatly increased my healing, but I've noticed, as you have, that as I get older, it feels like my triggers are more obvious than they used to be. I sometimes tell my therapist that I think I'm getting worse, not better, but he responds with a lot of reminders that I was far more out of control when I started therapy. It's like I recognize my triggers now, so I think I'm having more of them. But in reality, I'm just better at recognizing them, and dealing with them.

The road to healing is a journey where we seek progress rather than perfection. This forum has been a great help to me for a couple of years now, and I sincerely hope it brings some comfort and comradery to you as well.

Welcome to the community.

Sunny

Welcome to the forum. I'm glad you are here.

Your story resonates with me. I went No Contact with my FOO in 2010, and my story sounds like yours: 4 siblings and a dad and a long list of cousins and nieces and nephews who all participated in 50 years of gang ups, smear campaigns, scapegoat + narcissistic abuse. I used to say "Every word I speak can and will be used against me eventually." It did me in. I'm VERY Sorry it happened to you too because I truly understand the constant hypervigilance that a family like that gives us.

While I'm sorry it happened to you, I'm glad you have the strength and wisdom to reach out and find support. And I think it's wonderful that you find solace in helping others who suffer under emotional distress. That sounds like a successful way to take your less than positive history and give it a positive present-day purpose.

My T often reminds me that it takes wisdom and courage to reach out, rather than just give up. I'm glad you have that wisdom and courage.

Welcome.

Cascade,

I'm so sorry to hear that you are in the middle of this probate process with your brother.

For me, when my family was closing out the estate, any contact with my siblings exploded in my brain and heart like fireworks. Receiving even the most benign text from my cold-hearted siblings was able to fully open all the wounds from all the decades of abuse from the entire family.

So, I resonate fully with you, in that I know that just receiving a text, no matter how benign, is like opening the door to the storm in all its fury all over again.

You mentioned that are aren't sure, but you suspect your brother may be a narcissist himself. Obviously, I can't know if he is, but my own personal rule about narcissists is: if I even remotely suspect someone is a narcissist. They are. I would be disturbed too by your brother's response that it was okay for him to manipulate someone as long as it was for "good."  (To most people "good" means to get what he wants). To me, a skilled manipulator IS a narcissist.

I went 100% No Contact with my family because my life depended on it. But even though it was my move to escape, I still hurts to be no longer with any family. But then I remember that if I were to ever connect with them again, they'd make my life as miserable as they did in the past.

I hope you can find peace between the texts and that the post-probate world will be a little easier for you and the triggers.

I can look in the mirror sometimes but I feel like I am disassociate or detached at those times. I hate getting my picture taken 99% of the time and when I catch a glance of myself in the mirror in a public place I am mortified and disgusted too.

I have always felt exactly the same way. Before internet shopping, I used to go to the malls and avoid any stores that had mirrors where I could be seen while in public.

Kizzie is 100% right, this is the fault of those who put this trauma trigger into us.

I resonate wholly with you though. Knowing that this isn't my fault helps a little, but the trigger is still there. I still avoid mirrors when I'm in public, and I'm always embarrassed at having my photo taken.

I hope it helps to know you are not alone with this "public mirror affliction."  It hurts more when we feel alone with an affliction.

Blueberry, this is helpful. Thank you for posting it.

I was a VERY thin young man. I was known for being overly thin. (I was 6 foot tall and weighed 140) Until I hit my middle thirties. During my 50s I lost 60 pounds in 60 days three times by simply counting calories. Note, in order to lose 60 pounds three times, that means that as soon as I got to 190 pounds, I obviously started eating badly again, which is why I had to do it again and then again. That's yoyo dieting and I'm told it's very harmful to the body to do it.

Your note above made a lot of sense that I should go back to my mid-thirties and explore how life was changing then. What made me change my eating habits? Why do I now find comfort in food and not in anything else?

Also, I see you writing about tapping quite often, and I have never taken it up. But you know what? I think I like what you said here and I'm going to explore tapping.

I just looked up yoga for people who hate yoga. I watched a youtube video put on by a young, thin, flexible woman who said she was going to show us yoga-haters how to do yoga. Within a minute or 90 seconds I already hated her and her yoga. She started bending her skinny little frame in ways I cannot now, nor ever will, be able to do. For one thing, my knees hurt so bad from arthritis, that I can't even stand the way she says to stand, let alone do the complicated moves she started doing in just the first 30 seconds.

Summary: I don't care how they frame it, I still hate yoga, even yoga for those who hate yoga, and have no desire to even try.

But tapping. Hmm. That might be doable. I'm going to start my research on tapping right now.

Thanks for sharing this post. It hit home with me today.

One week ago today I met up with a person who knew my FOO before I was born. She told me things nobody had ever disclosed to me before. Dad, who was a son to Norwegian immigrants, came back to the farm from WWII after a massively traumatic experience. He had 8 sisters and a brother. Mom was a 15 year old Catholic girl. They got together. Mom got pregnant.

Here's the part I did not know: Dad's family hated her. They treated her horribly for being pregnant and young. She had the baby, married Dad, and over the years, made general peace with most of Dad's family, but there was always tension.

Mom had 5 more pregnancies, (4 live births) after that. Each pregnancy made her go crazier than the last one. She would go into severe anxiety and Dad, who was 100% non-violent, but extremely strong, would have to hold her down to keep her from hurting herself or others until she could calm down. This was the 1940s and 1950s so there was NO help for a woman who had these anxiety spells.

After my discussion with this friend, I went into some deep meditation and I realized the true story of all that had happened. Mom, who, I already knew had almost died multiple times from a kidney disorder when she was 10 years of age, had a fragile emotional connection to safety and the world, and was then seriously shamed for being pregnant when she was way too young to know how to process the vulnerability of being attacked by an enormous family.

I now believe that each pregnancy acted as a stronger trigger than the one before it. She had to feel at serious risk of being abandoned or hated for being pregnant. We all understand how irrational these triggers can be, and how powerful they are. She was unsupported and probably felt like her anxiety was her own fault. I was in Utero 13 years and 4 pregnancies later. This person I talked with last week remembers Mom being in a severe anxiety chaos for parts of each follow-on pregnancy, including her pregnancy with me.

I was born HSP. Stories I've heard over the decades are that I was an anomaly in the hospital with the nurses who couldn't get over how alert I was. Staring at every person and jumping at every noise. Well of course I was born hypervigilant. Somehow, in utero, I already felt the terror that the world I was about to be born into was going to be a world of danger and hatred and shame. I was the subject of that shame. I came into the delivery room watching to see who was going to hurt me first.

It now makes clearer sense to me why I have lived a life unable to feel like I'm welcome on the earth. I watch every face, and read every word, trying to spot who is going to hurt me next so I can adjust or run.

After reading It Didn't Start with You, I can clearly see that Mom's trauma of being attacked for being pregnant with her children, translated to each of us 5 live births as a feeling that we are not wanted by the world. SHE wanted us. The world didn't.

For 40 years I've been angry at how Mom reacted with each of my wife's pregnancies. Each time I told her we were having a baby, she'd instinctively go into anxiety and yell into the phone, "OH NOOOO!!!!!!" It would take several conversations with her to get her to stop thinking that our babies were the worst things that could happen to us. I have been angry about that for 40 years, but now, after hearing what she went through, I, at least, understand why she did it, and why each of us children felt like the world is a dangerous place for us.

For the past week, as I've been pondering, reading, and meditating on this new information, I've been reaching all new levels of forgiveness for both she and Dad. I'm starting to hear a new voice in my head whenever I feel like the world isn't fair or isn't welcoming to me. The voice says, "this is Mom's trauma playing out in me." The old voices would have just said "This is Mom's fault." I'm still struggling, but I have a new voice now helping me see my struggles from a different perspective. I can now see a longer arc in the wave of abuse in my FOO. It didn't start with me, but it didn't start with Mom or Dad either. This is a longstanding multigenerational trail of racist hatred that attacked the little Catholic French/German girl for infiltrating the Norwegian family.

One reason I never knew any of this is that by the time I was born, we had left. Dad didn't speak to, or about, his family. Mom only told snippets of them, never really saying she hated them, but never connecting any love to them either.  I knew nothing about them because nobody had any good things to say about them.

I don't hate her anymore. I don't hate Dad anymore either. I still know what they did to bring me so much grief in my life, but I'm not taking it as personally as I always have.

I'm so glad you came back, Cascade!

HI Juliannmhall

Welcome to the community. I'm sorry to hear of your struggles but very glad you found this community. These folks have been a huge help in my life since I joined. It just feels so good to know there are people in the world who are enough like me that I can share my struggles with them and they understand where I'm coming from.

I hope the community is helpful to you as well.

Again; a warm welcome to you,

I hope this doesn't sound preachy: but kindness is something I work very hard at, so I just want to share how I use small acts of kindness to offset the horrors of this world. I'm not preaching. I'm just sharing.

Of all the attributes of this world, the abundance of selfishness and evil in this world is the most difficult thing there is for me to accept.

My wife and I are kind and friendly people. We treat everyone the same. From the president of the company to the janitor that cleans the toilets we see human beings who deserve the same respect.

I can't count how many times restaurant or hotel staffs have said things like "Whenever you come in, please sit in my section again." or "whenever you come to town, please stay with us again." It used to really confuse me why they would bother to say things like that, but then we started working with the general public and that's when we realized...there are a lot of selfish, mean people out there treating cashiers and teachers and janitors like they're inanimate parts of the building.

I used to host a huge recurring 2-day event where we catered in coffee, snacks and lunches for about 45 participants. We did this for over 5,500 students, and were crazily organizing event halls, guest speakers and food deliveries. One morning, when the food truck arrived and the young, underpaid staff were bringing in the food, I just said, "Hey, it's my favorite visitors." One of the young men, a struggling father, took me aside and said, "We (the delivery staff) fight over who gets to deliver to you every day." My jaw dropped. "Why?" I asked. He answered, "You're the only customer we have who treats us like we're human beings."

I can actually remember only three adults who ever made me feel like a human being when I was a kid. I can't remember the hundreds who treated me like I was just a stupid kid, but I remember those three adults with deep, deep gratitude.

I guess that what I've learned from people who thank me for just being nice, is that we each have the power to inject kindness into this cruel world. And being kind can be as easy as just calling someone by their name or smiling when they say something.

I feel like there's a teaspoon of joy for every barrel of pain in this world, and I work hard to try and be a part of that teaspoon. I truly believe that kindness spreads and the more we can spread it, the more we can tip the scales.

Sometimes this isn't easy. Other times It's not so hard. I have my moods too.

I also remember a quip some teacher once told me. It was a story of two men walking on a beach. For some reason thousands of starfish had washed up onto the sand and were dying in the sun. ONE of the men reached down, picked one up and tossed it back into the ocean. As he reached down for a second starfish, his friend asked "What are you doing?" He replied, "Saving a starfish." The friend chuckled. "There are thousands of them here. Your not making a difference." As the first man tossed the second one in he said "I made a difference to that one."

Sometimes I get so frustrated because I can't save the world. I can't save all the abused children or all the battered wives or all the parents who've lost their kids to ODs. I have to try and remind myself, maybe I can bring a little joy to just one person today. That's one more than none. And for me, if I can make someone smile, it works magic in my own body and mind. When I get too depressed, I often force myself to go to a store and buy something like a head of lettuce or a stick of gum just so I can say something nice to someone in the store. It really helps ME feel better. I honestly do nice things for selfish reasons. I feel better when I know I mattered to someone, even if it was just holding a door for them or offering to take their shopping cart to the cart return for them.

We have no choice but to accept the hatred and anger and fear in this world, but we do have some ability to positively influence those sufferers who are within an arm's reach. And, like I say, when I take a moment to say something kind to someone, I reap the benefits just like they do.

I feel like I'm on a soap box. I don't mean to be. But I wrestle constantly with the massive amount of pain and fear and suffering. Sometimes I sit and cry when I watch the news and see how people are being treated by other people, and I can't do a darn thing about it.

This is one of my strategies for how I manage my own fear and anger and disgust at the cruelty that surrounds me on this planet.

SavanahCarey,

Well said.

I agree completely. It seems that since there isn't yet a strong cure, that learning how we can best manage it is the wisest strategy.

Sharing on the forum is big for me. Not being alone with the triggers gives me a lot of relief. Mindfulness is helpful too.

[NOTHING angers a bully more than when their victims stand up to them. So our FOOs, being bullies, had us in their control from birth and intentionally taught us to never stand up to them.]

To Rizzo, Kizzie, and Dalloway, and anyone else who felt they weren't allowed to be angry, I have this one last comment:

NOTHING angers a bully more than when their victims stand up to them. So our FOOs, being bullies, had us in their control from birth and intentionally taught us to never stand up to them.

Just a little something to consider as we try to figure out why we were taught to never get angry.

Hey Rizzo,

I hope you are doing well with your understanding of anger. I remember believing I had no anger at my family also. My T told me I had rage in me. I was insulted. "I'm the calmest, kindest person I know."  Years went by as I learned that my inner rage was coming out as self-deprecation, self-destruction, dissociative trances.  I learned that every time I refused to let myself be angry, I would go into a dissociative collapse. My face would pale. Mouth would dry. It took my T some work, but I finally learned that I definitely did have anger built up.

When at age 50, my family was cutting me out of the will and making me so afraid to visit or help take care of my dad, and then telling people I was not helping, (forgetting to mention that it was because they kept attacking me every time I'd come near), I finally cut myself out of their lives. I went No Contact. That's when I started to say "My FOO finally became so ugly that even I couldn't love them anymore."

That single sentence has helped me to digest that I definitely did have a problem with not feeling the anger I needed to feel for 50 years.

Hi L2N

My T has helped me to recognize the difference between my unhealthy anger and my, what he calls, "Good anger."  When the anger is justified and is helping me to release pent up energy, he applauds it. Anger, when it's appropriate and not lashing out or hurting anyone, can be a physical release of pent-up anxiety or depression. And "good anger" doesn't really hurt anybody. Lashing out is bad anger. Self-destruction is bad anger and only prolongs or escalates the distress. But admitting when someone has been horrible to us, and blowing off a little steam is a release of bad energy.

When my FOO was at their very worst, I actually went to the craft store and bought some cloth dolls. I made small voodoo dolls and photographed them being caught in ceiling fans and stuff like that. Nobody got hurt. It added humor to my rage. Laughter and anger are not so different from each other. Both are releases of anxiety. Making a joke about it really helped me release a lot of pent-up, 50 yearlong rage against people who cannot be dealt with. My FOO was never going to change. They were 100% convinced they were right to abuse and blame me for all their failures. So, I took out my anger on some $1 dolls. Had some fun and moved on with my life.

I hope your anger gives you a little bit of a feeling of being alive and self-supporting.

If it's good anger, enjoy the feeling of release.