Out of the Storm

The specific memory is that I had offered to help my mother clean up after a dinner party.  She sent me into the kitchen to non-specifically "do dishes".  I was quite young, maybe 10 or 11, and I never had any chores at my mother's house so I didn't know much about how to do that.  I guess I was probably afraid to ask my mother for further instruction?  So I must have looked around to see if I could figure out something to do, and seen the dessert cups.  They were round and made of amber glass.  My mother had made flan for dessert for the party in these cups, and I saw that the flan had left a thick sugar residue stuck quite solidly to the bottoms of the cups.  So I decided to clean those.  It was a pretty difficult job and it took me a while.  I thought my mother would be pleased that I had taken care of such a bothersome task.  I don't think I was ever acknowledged directly one way or another, but I remember hearing her complain to my stepfather that I had said I would help and all I had done was wash those glass cups.  I think I heard her say that she thought I would at least load the dishwasher or something.  I don't remember if she specifically said I was useless or something similarly derogatory, but certainly I remember feeling that way.  Maybe I didn't even succeed in getting the sugar residue out of the cups?  I don't know.  But it wasn't my fault that I wanted to do something nice for my mother, and not my fault that she expected me to know what to do without my ever having been guidance. 

I wish I could say to young Bach, "Thank you so much for cleaning those cups. You took on the most challenging job with the sugar cooked onto the bottom of those cups. I appreciate you. You are kind and thoughtful."

Bach

That story kind of breaks my heart a bit. I picture a helpful 10-year-old doing her very best to try and teach herself to help when no one had ever given any instruction. I'm proud of that 10-year-old. I can feel her heart trying so hard to give the gift of service to her mom. I can see the little hands trying to do their very best without anyone ever showing them how. I can feel the emptiness of hearing her ungrateful mother complain later that you weren't able to please her well enough.

And since I'm well versed in toxic parents, I have NO doubt that she was lying to your dad about you offering to load the dishwasher. Trust your own memory, Bach. Toxic parents lie. Always. ALWAYS. Toxic parents always throw their own children under the bus any time they want attention for themselves. So don't second guess what you really remember. I will always believe you over her any and every day of the week.

All I can do from here is send a virtual hug.  :hug: I've put a lot of myself into this hug. I hope you can feel it. It's more than just a meme; it's me sending the only gift I have to send you. If, ten-year-old you had tried that hard to wash the dishes in my kitchen I'd have first given you some direction on how to do it and then I'd have thanked you profusely and even bragged to my friends about what a great kid you were.

I'm sorry for the weight of this for you for all these years.  My experience is that we certainly must be taught how to do things like "do the dishes." 

Big big hug for little Bach who worked hard to clean those cups  :bighug:   You did a great job and whilst your M didn't acknowledge that we do and I hope adult you will too.

Joining in on the hugs for Little Bach. I've made flan and that caramelized sugar can be like concrete if you leave it. I would have appreciate your doing that very very much!

Not Alone, Papa Coco, rainydiary, Kizzie and CactusFlower, your responses made me cry a little.  I don't remember much from my past and most of what I do remember is vague, incomplete, and lacking emotional charge.  Like it's something I'm watching through a thick translucent pane of glass.  Something that might not even be happening.  It's confusing to be so disconnected from my own life and to have so little memory.  Thank you for understanding this better than I do  :grouphug:

The lack of memory is a source of consternation for me.  I lived a life, why is so much of it blank?  What really happened to me?  I've spent many years trying to find memories, good memories, bad memories, anything that would prove I really was that child, I really did exist.  I can't find much, and I don't know if it's real.  Today is my birthday, and all I can feel is a void. 

Happy Birthday.  :grouphug:

I resonate with blanks and wondering what my life was.  My body remembers or it wouldn't hold on to so much.  I hope the coming year brings something you are seeking.

Yesterday I was out walking with My Person.  There was a cold wind blowing.  He for some reason grabbed my hoody sleeve, and held on when I tried to pull away.  I didn't understand when he didn't let go, "Hey, what are you doing?", and he answered in an agitated voice that the wind was making his eyes water and he couldn't see where he was going.  We stopped walking so he could get a tissue and wipe his eyes, then as we continued walking I realised that I was very uncomfortable, that I had been triggered in some way.  There was no specific thought or memory attached to the angst and distress that surged through me when he pulled onto my sleeve but there's no doubt something was going on in there.  I told My Person what happened and that he mustn't do that.  I guess he understood?  As much as he can, anyway, which is limited.

When something like that happens and I explain it to him, he listens but he doesn't reassure me that he understands and that it's okay, and the lack of reassurance always makes me feel that he disapproves in some way or that he's annoyed with me, that he thinks I'm being silly or dramatic, or thinks that I could control the reaction but choose not to.  That he's annoyed with me.  That probably isn't what he thinks.  He probably just feels sad for me, or maybe angry on my behalf.  In any case he'll probably forget not to do it next time because I can explain a million times but he still doesn't really get it.  Lucky soul, he does not live with his own chronic trauma.  Only with mine.

Bach, I relate to the questions/thoughts coming up from this interaction. 

bach, i first want to echo the sentiments of the others in saying to little bach, thank you for helping in the kitchen.  you did such a careful job and i appreciate you so much.  i'm sad your mother did not give that to you.

secondly, getting triggered like that, from out of nowhere, can really shake us.  and trying to explain it to someone who doesn't know trauma firsthand can be very frustrating.  i hope he remembers and doesn't do that to you again.  love and hugs :hug:

Trigger warning:  Sexual content








I wish I had done more with my life.  I wish I had known enough to do more with it instead of thinking that sex was the be-all and end-all of human life, and spending all my time and energy for so many years trying to find it even though a lot of it wasn't very satisfying or life-affirming even when I did.  I'm 99.5% sure I wasn't sexually abused when I was a child, but I was exposed to sexual concepts at far too young an age thanks to my mother's obsession with it.  My mother and grandmother discussed sex in my presence quite a lot, mostly in the sense of people's sexual motivations and who was sleeping with whom or who wanted to sleep with whom.  They must have discussed their own sex lives as well, as I can remember my mother saying something about how the only reason my grandparents had stayed married was because they had good sex.  I heard about the old boyfriend my mother was tempted to cheat with, and I fairly frequently heard sung praises for my stepfather's sexual abilities.  I don't think I was intentionally included in these conversations, but I do remember at least one occasion on which my mother and I had a one-on-one exchange about her relationship with my stepfather in which I remarked on her liking the song "Nobody Does It Better" because it was her song for him.  That song was big in 1977 which means I was 12.  I suppose maybe she might have started actively including me in those conversations once I started puberty.  I remember telling her when I was about 11 or so and had begun growing breasts that my nipples felt strange when my shirt rubbed against them.  I remember her asking me to pull up my shirt to show her (she was sitting on the lid of the toilet in the front bathroom sorting laundry), and her telling me that having sensitive nipples was good for sex.  I don't know how I felt when she said that, but looking back I realise that there was a lot going on there, especially because my mother was also obsessed with breasts.  Hers were very small and she was very insecure about it.  She wore loads of padding in her bras, and was always talking about women's bodies.  Thinking about it more, I kind of remember feeling that I had some kind of power because my nipples were sensitive and that would made me good at sex.  None of that can possibly be good or normal, can it?

That's a lot for a child to carry.  I wish sex had been less relevant for me too when I was younger.

rainy, thank you for reading my post.  It was hard to write.  I really appreciate being acknowledged.

I'm glad to read Bach.  I wish I always knew what to say, but I am here even when I say nothing.

I feel that way too, rainy  :hug:

I'm trying to not post while security cert issues are still pending but I read Bach. And I'm sorry you went through this. It isn't developmentally appropriate and I've heard these types of things referred to as being under the umbrella of sexual abuse. You have every right to feel disgusted, hurt, angry, sad, or however else you feel. It set you up to live life in a way that you now carry some regret over. That is worthy of anger and disappointment. It wasn't ok what your parents did to you this example and many others. You suffered and you suffer and it's not your fault.  :grouphug:

Hey Bach,

I'm sorry you had to go through that with your m. It made me uncomfortable to read as an adult and can imagine your confusion as a child.

For me, I've come to realize that sex can be a way to avoid intimacy and all the uncomfortable emotions that come with it, which is kind of like a bypass for thoughts about abandonment, revealing my real self to someone and thinking they might not want me/I'm not good enough etc.

My understanding of sexual abuse has widen recently after reading the Bradshaw book, Healing the Shame that Binds You, written over 30 years ago. His definition of sexual abuse is much, much wider than inappropriate touching. It sounds very much like what you experienced would fit under his definition.

Sending you support,
dolly

Gentle hugs if you want them, Bach. That was completely inappropriate for them to do/say around kids. They don't have to touch for it to be abuse. It was not okay. We're here for you as you process. <3

I read your post too Bach and agree with those who say that SA can take place w/o any touch. I agree from own experience of what was done to me, but I have also read that that is the case.

Thank you for the replies, friends. It makes me so angry I can't stand it. It low-key ruined my life, really. I don't know what to do to even begin grappling with it.

Bach, you've made the first steps in grappling with it by writing on here, by sharing with us, by feeling your anger. You'll find the next steps too.

 :yeahthat:

It is the first step, seeing and feeling the damage done. It needs to be honored.

Those were conversations that a child should not have been exposed to.

I just want to scream and throw a tantrum.  IT'S NOT FAIR.  IT'S NOT FAIR.  IT'S NOT FAIR!!!!.  There's nothing in my life she didn't ruin, nothing.  There is NO PART of me that is healthy, that isn't bogged down by shame and guilt and fear and frustration.  The one thing about me that I thought was okay, the one thing I thought I had figured out and was comfortable with.
------------------------
I wrote the above last night and didn't post it.  My take on it this morning is that for most of my life I was heavily invested in the idea that the one thing about me that was basically healthy and positive was my sexuality, and it's a terrible blow to my self-image and self-esteem to look back on my life and realise how mistaken I was about that. 

I was in my 40s before I realised through therapy that I had been abused as a child.  When I was young, always thought of "child abuse" as being physical violence or sexual molestation, and I remember that I used to think to myself "Well, my life sucks, but at least I'm not abused."  Realising that I had been abused messed with my mind in all kinds of ways.  Emotionally, it's still very difficult and painful to accept.  Even though intellectually I know that the way I was treated by my family was abusive, I often still find myself trying to minimise it, trying to credit myself with being dramatic and being attached to the victim identity I have always fought against embracing, trying to blame myself somehow, instead of being able to look full-on at the ugliness and the truth of the fact that there was absolutely nothing I did to deserve the damage that was inflicted on me. 

This is just as bad.

Bach, I resonate with being an adult before recognizing my childhood as abusive and how fracturing and surreal that can be. 

bach, i so very much relate to having such fundamental realizations about the reality of our lives.  it's been a tough one to see it all for what it truly was.  i've often minimized my abuses, as a kid and as an adult, and as you say, it's just as bad to understand and accept the truth of it and what it's done to me, my perspective of me, the world, others . . .the list touches everything in my life.  i'm with you on this, bach.  standing right beside you, maybe sitting on a porch swing in cool spring air, just allowing mother earth to awaken and soothe us.  love and hugs :hug:

rainy and san, thank you for being there and understanding.  san, today at my house the weather suits your beautiful thought, and I am seeking to bring that energy into my troubled mind.

I spoke during therapy today about the sex stuff and it was horrible.  So harrowing and difficult and painful.  I've been really disturbed and troubled about it ever since I wrote the original post (before that, really, because I think that post was brewing for a while).  There are a few people in my life that I would usually talk to about something if it was bothering me that much, but I haven't been able to talk about it at all.  I read to my therapist the posts I made in this thread.  I also told her that the responses in this thread identified what happened to me as sexual abuse.  She validated that.  I cried about how trapped I feel by it, how I don't want to deal with it because dealing with it is going to be painful and make me suffer, but I have to deal with it because not dealing with it is also going to be painful and make me suffer.  And how now I don't even know who I am anymore.

my dear bach, i so get it.  while those validations are important, as you say, they also bring their own brand of pain and suffering along.  just hate this crap, hate that you're having to go thru this.  naming things for what they are/were is a big first step.  i hope you can be gentle w/ yourself.  it sounds like this may be a grief situation, too, grieving for what you believed and now found out otherwise.  always a messy time.  still sitting next to you.  let's let Earth Mother Spirit do her thing for us, even if only for a little while.  it really is grounding energy.  love and hugs :hug:

Bach, I read your post from today and I'm sorry that you're in so much pain. I get it too. I used to have realisations about things that were done to me, about how bad they really were and what they meant and I'd go sprawling.
Sitting with you.

Bach, I'm sorry for all the pain you are going through. You did brave work in therapy. Give yourself a lot of nurturing care.

I talked some more about this and its implications in therapy today, and told My Person about it, too. Friends, your understanding, validation and support have given me the courage to attempt to confront this but right now I feel so completely awful about myself I wish I could be erased. I don't know how I will ever be able to feel okay about who I am again.

Standing with you, Bach. I am so sorry you are going through this and having to process all of this. It is heavy. I get that feeling of not knowing myself, and of wanting to be erased. I believe someday we will rise from this mess and find ourselves, but right not it just sucks. You aren't alone

i believe in you, bach.  i know who you are and also know erasure is the last thing i'd want for you.  you're vital, important, and wonderful.  love and hugs  :hug:

I know these feelings, wanting to be able to erase myself, to not exist. I agree with San.  :grouphug:

Perhaps what Papa Coco often reminds me would be helpful? He says his therapist always tells him when we claim what is ours, what isn't ours falls away (something like that). I take that to mean that the more you fully claim what your parents and grandparents and others did to you, and the impact on you, you will come slowly to know that you are not bad, the people who did this to you are the ones the negative feelings belong to.

You do deserve to exist. And to exist without the self-hatred that is so common to us trauma survivors/victims. As I came to understand what happened to me and how badly it had affected me and the ways it altered my life, slowly that self-hatred and acts of self harm shifted from being directed at me to me understanding those feelings are feelings that were to be directed at the people who caused the harm, not at myself. It was a slow process but it happened and has mostly taken root.. I trust that shift will happen for you too, the more you claim the truth of what happened.

I cannot handle this PAIN :fallingbricks:

Bach - I am sorry you are going through this. Please try to remember that who you are is not defined by how the people around you have treated you. It defines them.

You are wise and brave to be on this forum sharing your pain with people who understand and accept you for who you are and know that you are enough.

Being here and sharing your pain means that you are on a healing journey. Healing journeys, unfortunately, take time - often more time than we believe we can handle. I have the below quote on my whiteboard and see it when I wake up in the morning to remind me to appreciate all the little steps along the way (which include experiencing the grief and tears we feel as we get back in touch with our painful feelings).

"A new moon teaches gradualness
and deliberation and how one gives birth
to oneself slowly. Patience with small details
makes perfect a large work, like the universe."

― Rumi

Once I got back in touch with my pain/feelings, it felt overwhelming. In hindsight, I realize that was a necessary step I had to go through in order to release those emotions from where they were trapped inside. My tears set them free. I began to welcome the tears, knowing that they meant that I must be doing something right since for so much of my life I had denied they existed. It's kind of a double edge sword. I hope you are able to honor your pain and see that it is ultimately a gift and a necessary step on your path. Your pain is valid and there are many others here who understand what you are going though very well and support you.

My hope is that your tears ultimately release you from your pain.  :hug:

I am here supporting you.

This is important. Today I realised that I was brought up to believe that I didn't have to be beautiful if I was sexual. Because I was physically unattractive, I latched on to being sexual. I thought it was enough. I thought being sexual was something about me that was attractive, AND I WAS RIGHT, but I always ended up making myself repellent because my lack of socialisation meant I didn't know how to use it appropriately.

Another problem is that I never really developed anything about myself other than my sexual nature.  No wonder my writing career never went anywhere.  I was stuck in the world of the oversexed popular novels of the 70s that my mother let me read. 

Sending support as you go through these painful and difficult realisations.  :hug:

There's one good thing about the fact that I grew up thinking that being sexual was enough: I never believed that my weight or appearance precluded me from being desirable.  I never carried myself with the assumption that I would be rejected for my complete and utter lack of conventional feminine beauty or gender performance.  This is a complex topic that I will have to write about some more at some point.

To all who have read and responded, THANK YOU.  Please know that you are giving me the courage to address this  :grouphug:

yeah, bach, such realizations can bring along great pain which we now have to feel and deal w/.  it's so unfair how you were taught to believe about yourself.  desirability is great, but like you said, there are other facets of us which are just as great and contribute to who we are.  so very sorry you're going thru this.  as i've been told here many times, and for me it was helpful - this, too, shall pass.  hang tough until it does, ok?  love and hugs :hug:

Bach, what you are realizing is really significant. I hear you. I care.

I appreciate you sharing your reflections in this Bach.  I hope these reflections will bring some peace and ease.

Thank you for bringing up this subject.  I also confused sex with love.  Sexuality was one of the few powers I felt I had and so I pretty much slept with anyone I could, looking for someone to save me, validate me and take care of me.  Now I realise being an intelligent female who respects herself and believes in herself, for who she is inside and her talents and dreams is what makes a strong women.  I'm really hoping to still get there one day, throwing off the mud that enabled me to know that.  Growing up in the 70-80-90's, there weren't many role models were there ?  I hope you find your way back to writing.

Hi Bach,

I'm reading your reflections now and it strikes me how much of a deeply personal (right word?) experience sex is and how deeply it is tied to our experiences of shame, boundaries, self worth etc. It is such a potent form of intimacy that no wonder you are feeling what happened so deeply and are distraught about it. It can feel like the strongest boundary violation I think against our sense of self.

Just some thoughts. Sending you support,
dolly

There's a continuous flow of thoughts in the back of my mind that come from my mother and from my twisted upbringing.  Some of them are sex thoughts, some are money thoughts, some are mean and petty, childish and selfish, jealous, spiteful, etc.  None of them are actually mine.  None of them are HOW I REALLY FEEL.  But they're so familiar, so everpresent, I recognise them from every single stage of my life and have cringeworthy memories of times I have acted on or expressed them.  I can see them all so clearly now and I know better than to take them seriously, but still they don't go away.  It's a good thing that I've had My Person all these years, because it is he who has helped me discover my true nature as a kinder, more generous, more compassionate and more level-headed person than I would have ever known how to be on my own, given the terrible example I spent my formative years with.  I hate myself thinking of times in my life that I have spoken or acted from the mother part of me.  I think I've always been a better person than she ever was (this, for some reason, is very important to me to believe), but not always by very much, and always run through with the ingrained bad values that I have had to ferret out over the years because I never even knew I had them until I noticed them.  I've spent my whole life transforming myself from a bad person into a good one.  That should be enough for me, should be enough for anyone, but I still can't help wishing that I had done more with my life. 

my dear bach, we can only do what we've learned, how we learned to do it.  please don't beat yourself up for what you didn't know in the past.  i've made some mistakes from a place which i'm no longer at as well.  just want you to know you're not alone with this.  as i've learned more about my background, about me, about what perspective i want to have, i've changed into a better version of who i used to be.  it sounds like you've done the same.  even if there are wishes to have done more or differently, may i sit w/ you for a moment  and celebrate who we've become in spite of our backgrounds?  i'd like that.  love and hugs :hug:

I want to give you credit  :cheer: for recognizing that many thoughts are not truly yours, but are really your mother's. That is a big step. The realization doesn't automatically make the thoughts/beliefs go away. Those are deep ruts, but you are forging new paths. Good for you. Please try to be kind to yourself as you do this hard work.

I don't know how to feel good about myself when I have all this ugliness in my nature.  I fear that I will never be able to feel good about myself because I know that underneath it all, I will never be free of all of her bad programming.  My heart, my brain, my gut, my very liver, all full of her transactional toxicity.  I've managed to establish a pretty good veneer of civility, and even something very vaguely resembling socialisation, but the inside of me is rotten.  No matter how many times people tell me I'm good, no matter what justifications I can come up with for my existence, I still can't figure out how not to feel that way.

dear bach, personally, i don't believe that ugliness is part of your nature.  i don't think as a baby you were mean, thoughtless, or ugly in any way.  this is a tough one to get thru, for sure.  keep at it, ok?  and we'll be here with you while you do.  love and hugs  :hug:

san, you're right that I wasn't mean, thoughtless or ugly as a baby, so maybe I wasn't born bad.  But as soon as I was born, I became a vessel for her ugly thoughts, her amorality and her narcissism, and no matter how much I consciously reject them when I notice them, they are always there and never very far from the driver's seat.  It hurts having to constantly be on guard against them, and it's exhausting to keep my face on when they're churning away in there.  I also often wonder how I can possibly be good when I come from something so inhuman. 

I'm sitting with you Bach and I'm sending you kindness.

I just realised this evening I'm in a huge EF and I'm sorry if I'm stating the obvious, but it sounds as if that's where you might be too. Because that's a place where things seem hugely difficult and we/you/I feel particularly bad-as-a-person. Just because your M treated you badly and she was mean to you, doesn't mean that you are bad or mean or ugly.

bach, i think the easy answer is that we're not our parents.  everyone here, including you, has made the decision that they do not want to be the same as their parents were.  however, that's just logic, and doesn't necessarily cut thru the emotional wounds that we have carried because of their damaging behaviors and words.  your concerns about yourself are proof that you are not your mother, nor do you want to be like her.  unfortunately, those wounds run deep and have defiled our own thought processes about ourselves.

keep going, ok?  it's difficult to muddle thru trying to heal wounds which have cut us so deeply as to make us question the beliefs about ourselves.  you are battling against them, and your determination and perseverance will win through eventually.  i'm just discovering how badly those wounds have hurt us, whether it be from parents, partners, family, or friends.  we have always been good people even when those around us have done their utmost to convince us we aren't.  with you all the way on this.  love and hugs :hug:

Why am I making such a big thing of non-physical sexual trauma anyway?  I was a kid in the 70s when everyone was talking about sex and how great it was, and came of age right when the AIDS epidemic started.  My entire generation was traumatised by sex!

Why are you making a big deal? Dear Bach...it's because it was massively damaging and as you noted before affected many aspects of your life. Whether it was normal for the 70s or not...it was not appropriate and it was damaging.

I was raised in the 80s so I personally can't speak to whether those were normal conversations to have. I suspect your family took it to the extreme of whatever was normal. On top of that, other things were not right too in your childhood and with your family. This was damage on top of damage. If you feel disturbed it's because there's good reason to be disturbed.

I do this to myself too, as a way to protect myself from the pain. Either I'm wrong to be upset. It's not big deal. Or nothing even happened and I'm just wrong. That doesn't lead to healing though. Looking at it, accepting that it's true, and then incorporating it into the fabric of your life narrative and putting it in its place in the past seems to help the most. But for me it's still a back and forth.

One day at a time. It's normal to feel upset it's normal to want to deny it and protect yourself from it. I'm trying to learn to see the bad and to take the good forward. Yes this happened, here are the bad parts. This is the positive part as tiny as it may be. I'm a work in progress though because I waffle and I have yet to feel much of anything. So this post is offered with a grain of salt or several hundred.

I wish I could write the way I used to when I fancied myself an aspiring novelist, abundantly and without reservation, but  about all the real stuff going on in me now in my head and especially in my body.  My body is still largely foreign to me, and most of what I know of it is tension and discomfort.  Being "in my body", as they say, always feels like something I want to escape from.  So I try sometimes to find and hold onto good feelings in my body, as the somatic therapist I was seeing briefly about a year and half ago suggested.  Sometimes I'm able to feel brief small relaxations in places like my shoulder or my neck or my abdomen and experience them for a moment, but the holding onto it part eludes me.  Sometimes I get the vaguest and most fleeting flashes on periphery of my senses of a deeper feeling of calm or comfort or peace, but that I can't get hold of at all.  Oh how I wish I could!

The whole process exhausts me.  It takes a lot of energy so I can't do it much, but it's interesting and strange when I succeed in connecting with my body.  Last weekend I got a massage from a highly skilled practitioner.  Usually when I get a massage, I focus on relaxing my mind and thinking pleasant thoughts, but this time I did my best to dismiss my thoughts and focus on my physical experience.  I must have tuned in well, because I was conscious of distinct emotions from different parts of my body being worked on.  I felt quite riled up emotionally when the therapist was working on my upper body and even though the massaging objectively felt good, it was difficult for me to enjoy.  On my lower body it was completely different.  There was calm with hints of happiness in my legs, and there was actual joy in my feet.  That was startling in the midst of the heavy depression I've been experiencing for the past several weeks.  Joy!  In my feet!  Who knew?  I don't know what any of this means or how/whether it's leading anywhere, but it IS interesting. 

Armee, I very much appreciate your response and your insights.  Thank you for the open and thoughtful reply.  I'm sure it would be very helpful if I could accept, as you say, but honestly, I can't get around feeling like I'm being a big whiny baby by making this a thing for me.

I know. I do the same thing to myself.

I want to tell you it's a big deal but also respect that right now your mind is telling you it wasn't as a way to protect yourself from how bad it feels. It's a lot to navigate both the traumas and the defenses we have against them.  :grouphug:

and i grew up in the 50's, bach, had the reverse experience.  was sexually stunted.  it was traumatic in its own way. i've asked my t several times how i can react so much emotionally when i've heard far worse stories of physical abuse from others.  she's always told me, it is often more difficult to deal w/ the mind manipulations (such as making like sex was ok everywhere in the 70's, even w/ children present).  just cuz it was the norm then doesn't mean it was any kind of good or right.  yep, generations of people growing up w/ distorted sexual beliefs about themselves, relationships/ casual sex, committed sex - there are so many angles to it.

you were traumatized by it, and that's what counts for you.  doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, it was traumatic to you, even if you didn't realize it then.  i think realization is one of the first steps to healing.  love and hugs :hug:

 :cheer:

Amidst the other posts I don't want to miss celebrating that you felt joy in your feet!!!! That's amazing! Wouldn't it be great if that joy started to spread?

(And I totally get how miraculous this feels! I remember finally being able to feel my feet and how amazed I was that this was possible. My T was always telling me to feel my feet. "Feel your feet, ground." Uh ok I'd say and dig my feet into my shoes and he'd laugh and say "not like that!" But I didn't know there was another way you could feel your feet without touching them. When I figured out how to sense them after about 1.5 years I was ecstatic! Like whoa! That's possible??!)

Quote from: Armee on April 14, 2023, 09:04:57 PM
Why are you making a big deal? Dear Bach...it's because it was massively damaging and as you noted before affected many aspects of your life. Whether it was normal for the 70s or not...it was not appropriate and it was damaging.

I was raised in the 80s so I personally can't speak to whether those were normal conversations to have. I suspect your family took it to the extreme of whatever was normal. On top of that, other things were not right too in your childhood and with your family. This was damage on top of damage. If you feel disturbed it's because there's good reason to be disturbed.

:yeahthat:

The only change I have to make is that I was raised in the 70's (and 80's) and in my experience not all families treated the topic of sex the way yours did, Bach. There were undoubtedly more families than just yours who did since it is assumed that far more children and teens are subjected to CSA than anybody wants to admit, but that still doesn't take away from the damage that was done to you! There was CSA in my FOO too btw, a kind of covert type, but tons of damage. So that's a further reason for me to agree with what Armee wrote:

Quote from: Armee on April 14, 2023, 09:04:57 PMIf you feel disturbed it's because there's good reason to be disturbed.

(Thanks for giving me words Armee. I really really wanted to reply to Bach the first time I read her post, but my mind was blank as in frozen.)

I remember that girl's name, but I don't remember what year it was or where I met her or for how long we were friends.  I think it might have been when I was 10 but before I met V (who is a long, long story, could I even write about it?).  I do remember that the girl and I really hit it off and that after we hung out together for the first time she said something about "the beginning of a beautiful friendship," but then after we had been friends for however long (not very long) she didn't want to be my friend anymore.  I don't remember how this manifested, but I do remember that when I confronted her about (avoiding me? being too busy to hang out? not coming to the phone? What?) she said that I was "not her type."  I remember her reluctance to say it, and the squishy expression on her face when she did.  I went away baffled and hurt.  As an adult, I have faintly recalled something about having some playing cards and putting the king and queen cards face together and saying they were having sex, and have surmised that I made her uncomfortable with sex talk and that perhaps she asked her mother about it and her mother thought that I was after her sexually.  So unfortunate.  I'm absolutely certain that I had no such intention because for one thing, I am no predator, and for another, even though I started masturbating somewhere around that age (I got the idea from one of those 1970s novels of my mother's) it didn't even start to occur to me that I could have sex with another person until I was a few years older than that.  I was a kid, and sex was for adults the same way driving a car was for adults. 

It's a difficult memory, probably the first ever of many friendships lost throughout my life because of my sexual inappropriateness.  I wonder whether she remembers me, and whether it's a difficult memory for her from the other side of things.  I hate thinking about the pain and bad feelings and squishy expressions I've no doubt left in the blazing wake of the fascinating awfulness of my sexuality. 

These kinds of memories are so uncomfortable for me, too.  I get it!  I get so uncomfortable that I use the "container" tool
My T suggested to deal with at another time. The only thing is I seem to be putting a lot in there. I hope with time I will learn about other ways to deal with these thoughts.  There are so many of them for me yet. 

I wish I could be of more help other than relating. 

Thank you for relating, Moondance. It does help.

Bach, I'm checking in to say I've been reading and am here supporting you as you untangle this.

fascinating awfulness of your sexuality - what an interesting phrase.  when you're brought up inappropriately, you learn, then do, inappropriate things.  you've learned differently now.  we are products of our upbringings, which we never asked for.  it was thrust upon us.  please, be gentle w/ yourself, bach.  you didn't know any different.  love and hugs

It's very complicated to write about V.  She was my best friend from the ages of 10 to 13.  It was, for many reasons, a formative relationship.  I was deeply attached to her.  She was a little over a year older than me, and I think she may have been the first person I ever really felt loved by.  Her father had died in Vietnam, and she lived with her mother P, and BJ, her mother's boyfriend (they married several years later).  P and BJ were hippies, and their apartment was a cluttered smoky mess.  They didn't have much real furniture in the living room, mostly large pillows on the floor, and for years, that was my idea of cozy.  They loved her and were kind to me, but she was almost as neglected as I was in terms of lack of supervision and guidance.  Looking back, I really wonder what their story was.  It's impossible to know.  With an adult perspective, I think it's likely that V was sexually abused but groomed to believe that the sexual activity was her own choice, because I remember her telling me about having had a "boyfriend" where she lived before I knew her, and having sex with him.  I think she may have even mentioned him being older, but I might be making that up.  Either way, she was 11 when I met her, so...whatever that means.   I also think it's possible that V's mother was involved in an abusive relationship before she got together with BJ (who was a total sweetheart), but that's based on very vague memories and lots of supposition.  As I said, it's impossible to know, and probably impossible to find out.  V's mother died young, only 52, back in 1997, and V died in 2011.  There's no information about what V died from, but my guess would be a drug overdose.  BJ is possibly still alive, but considering how inaccurate I've found those people search websites to be, especially for people with surnames as common as his, he might not be.
Even if he is, it's not like I'm going to call him up after 25 years to ask him about his dead wife and stepdaughter.  I expect that he would remember me, both because I spent a LOT of time in his home during those years, and because I used to visit P somewhat regularly during the couple of years between when I returned to the area in which I'd grown up and when P died (probably of emphysema or the like, she had an oxygen machine during that time, and she was a hardcore cigarette smoker.  She used to ask me to bring her cigarettes when I came to visit, and at one point when I put up a little resistance to that because of her condition, she told me that it was her choice and that if I didn't respect it, I shouldn't come by).  I also had a couple of frantic spates of contact and renewed friendship with V over the years, more weirdness, all weirdness, everything is weird.

I feel that it would be important for me to explore and write about V, but it's very difficult.  This post alone has taken my whole morning, and involved a trip down the rabbit hole of Internet searches, including the finding of a Facebook page with pictures on it that V's ex-husband apparently made for her, not sure why, last I knew they weren't speaking, but they had two children together and it appears that they may have renewed some kind of friendship before she died.  Seeing pictures of her made me ache for her, for her life, for my life, for the innocent connection we had as children, for the untold realms of dysfunction that surely underlay our friendship.  I suppose if we had remained in contact I would have discovered more, but we lost touch years before I started to figure any of this out.  Ugh.  I need to stop now.

you know, bach, things were sometimes weird back in the 70's as far as childrearing went.  i knew several sets of parents who had their kids hitting bongs at a very young age (one was 5), and parenting/rebelling from the 'establishment' was often way too free-flowing, undisciplined, few boundaries.  There are a lot of adults who got messed up as kids during the 60's and 70's cuz of such a lifestyle.  looking back on it, well, i know a lot more now than i did then.

your story about you and V is beautiful but sad.  i'm glad you found each other and have those memories.  love and hugs :hug:

 :hug:

I wish I could find my tears.  Feel my grief.  For V, for me, for a thousand other things.  I know it's in me, I know I'm absolutely full of it, but it seems almost like a dead space within me, like my life and my day-to-day feelings and my consciousness are some kind of thick plastic skin enclosing all that grief, keeping it inaccessible, trapping it inside where it can't really hurt me but perpetually stops me from rising.

Something I have realised over these past few days of, well, rather dwelling on it, is that V was not a very good person, and was quite a bad influence on me in a lot of ways during our original friendship.  This doesn't make it okay that she's gone, that I ache for her, that for whatever reason we slipped away from each other for a third and final time after our last reconnections in the 90s and then when I looked for her again, back in 2011, she was already dead and I had missed her by only a few months.  Dead!  V is DEAD.  At 47.  And I missed her by only a few months!  I discovered that twelve years ago, but I don't think it ever really hit me until this. 

From further exploration of her ex-husband's Facebook page, I discovered that BJ is indeed dead.  I haven't been able to determine exactly when he died, but it would seem to be within a year or so of when V died.  He would have been in his mid to late 60s.  PT, V's second husband, who she was with the last time I saw her, also died some time around then, at 53.  It's haunting.  There are a number of pictures of V in those Facebook albums, mostly poor-quality snapshots from many years ago, a few from shortly before her death, several with her daughters, a few with P, a few with BJ (Interestingly, none with the ex.  Who I also met a couple of times!).  Looking at them, it struck me that it felt like looking at old pictures of departed family.  Abstractly, I know it hurts.  I know the grief is there, and it's deep.  But still, I can't really feel it, and I can't find how to mourn. 

Hi Bach,

I'm so sorry for all of your losses Bach.

:grouphug:

I had a horrific emotional flashback this afternoon.  It was brought on by smoking a joint after work and thinking about how it was V who introduced me to smoking pot lo those many years ago (hippie parents, san!  Though I don't think she was allowed to smoke until 13).  My history with pot as with so many things is very up-and-down.  Sometimes it helps me with living my daily life and with processing my trauma, but at other times I use it as a substitute problem so that I don't have to do either of those things.  It's hard for me to talk about, because on the one hand I feel the shame of an addict, and on the other, the defensiveness of a user of an often misunderstood medication. 

But anyway.  I carelessly smoked a little more than I should have, and I started thinking about the first time I ever got stoned, which was not the first time I ever smoked.  I had smoked a few times before than and not really felt anything.  This time, V and I were smoking with my brother, and my brother's friend M.  I don't remember exactly how this went but at one point, M and V started making out.  I don't know what my brother was doing at that time, but somehow, I was left with the joint, which I took several puffs off.  Then later my brother and M had taken off somewhere, and V and I were playing cards in the living room when I suddenly realised that the room was gently rocking back and forth.  It felt like being on the fulcrum of a see-saw, where if I leaned to one side or the other, the room tipped in that direction, and I had to balance in the middle.  I was a little weirded out by that and didn't know what was happening, but V said "You're stoned!  Enjoy it!"  The after a while there was a Sara Lee chocolate cake that I may have eaten all of.  I've always said I ate all of it, but honestly, I don't think I did.  I ate some of it for sure, but I think I've always said I ate it all because I thought that made the story funnier.  I don't think I did actually enjoy the whole thing very much.  I suspect that the only reason I smoked pot enough times to start enjoying it is because V liked to do it, and I liked to be with V.  I've always, quite frankly, been a follower.  Smoking pot, shoplifting, writing graffiti all over the city...no, V really wasn't a terribly good influence on me at all.     

None of that is actually what the flashback was about.  The flashback happened after I realised that I am almost out of the HRT and thyroid medication that I receive in the post.  I requested it almost two weeks ago and it should have been here by now, and when I realised that not only did it not arrive today, but it was already too late to call the doctor and ask where it was, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of not being able to get what I need.  I tried to think calmly about it, but I'm under a lot of pressure with my job right now and feeling very trapped by it, and the idea that I might have to deal with it while withdrawing from HRT and thyroid treatment put me in a state of absolute terror. Catastrophising and raw, mortal terror.  I've been halfway into an emotional flashback since Friday anyway, keeping it under control but being keenly aware at all times that some part of me was back in 1976 at V's house with the pillows and the loft bed and a mother who said "I love you" to her daughter and actually meant it, but this was too much, TOO MUCH.  Just in the nick of time I remembered the Instagram post I read the other day about "shaking it out."  So I stood up and started to dance around, singing "Shake it out.  Shake it out!  It's okay, it's TODAY, shake it out!"  It helped, to some degree anyway.  I still feel atrocious, but I was able to make dinner and watch a TV show with My Person like normal, have not broken down and stuffed my face with chocolate, and am calmly understanding that, uncomfortable though this is, it will pass and I will survive it. 

Bach, I resonate with the visceral experience of the EF.  I hope that you feel as grounded as possible now and later.

Hi Bach,
I am glad that you got some benefit from 'shaking it out' - that EF  sounds really horrible.  Sending you a hug of support  :hug:
Hope  :)

rainy and Hope, thank you for reading and responding  :hug: :)

Today is really brutal.  I dreamed last night and as usual remember only a few elements.  There was someone I asked for a hug who gave it to me and I thanked them.  Then there was V in a purple shirt somewhere a little ways away or maybe partly behind something, and I was thinking how I was glad to see her again because she was going to be dead soon, and then I realised that she was already dead.  I woke up with my gut riled up, really feeling the physical sensations of the stomach upset.  I thought I would feel better after I went to the toilet this morning, but I didn't.  It hasn't gone away, and emotionally I've been back and forth between "I know what this is, I feel awful but I can tolerate it and it will pass" and "I can't handle this life, it's always going to be this way, if I could choose to die right now I would."  I guess "I can tolerate it and it will pass" is my sane adult self, and "It's always going to be this way" is poor Little/Middle B unable to understand why everything has to hurt so much.  It doesn't seem fair that all my years spent figuring out WHAT ALL THIS IS and coming to understand the process so well still hasn't made this any easier. 

Hi Bach,

I feel angry that we have to keep going through this, it is unbearable a lot of the
time. Sometimes it is hard to believe it will pass.  I empathize with you.

Thank you for mentioning "shaking it off" as a way of grounding or stablelizing.  I will try to remember this. 

I send you a safe virtual hug  :hug: one that helps each of us support the other.

dang, bach, i totally get it, and go to that dark place frequently.  i wish it were not so, not for you nor me.  this pain seems unbearable at the time, yet here we are, today, after having made it thru what seemed impossible to bear.  i don't get it, i don't want it anymore, either.  i just know you don't deserve to be going thru this time after time.  i wish i could take your pain away.   love and a hug filled with pain reliever :hug:

I'm sorry Bach, just read your post now.  :hug: :hug:  How are you doing now? A little better I hope. You don't have to answer.

Moondance, san and Blueberry, thank you for the support and hugs  :hug: :grouphug: :hug:

Things are very hard right now.  I'm extremely stressed out about work.  The project I'm working on is very complicated and I'm afraid I won't be able to finish it, but I must because I have already been paid for it (not my choice).  It gives me a childhood feeling of being trapped and unable to do anything right.  I am chipping away at it the best I can and trying not to panic about it.  My Person is helping, but I feel guilty about that because he already has too much work of his own to deal with.

I am full of emotional hunger.  I thought I had realised and accepted that I cannot get anything I need from my mother, and yet I can't stop wanting something from her.  I had another one of those text conversations with her yesterday that leaves me marvelling at the utter lack of self-consciousness with which she communicates to me that I don't matter to her.  Other made me feel small today too.  I know he didn't mean to but there are ways in which he's a lot like my mother.  Stuck, I am, with feeling unimportant. It hurts.

Bach, I hope that some of the stress and emotional hunger (I appreciate that description as I crave something emotionally too) ease soon.  I am here supporting you from afar.

Bach, I wish I had words of comfort. I could relate to many of the thoughts and feelings that you expressed. Super hard to be in the middle of all that.

 :grouphug:
You are important, Bach. To me and others.

Hi Bach,
Sending you a supportive hug, if that's ok  :hug: 
Hope  :)

 :hug:

rainy  :hug:
Not Alone  :hug:
Armee :hug:
Hope :hug:
san :hug:

Everyone gets their own hug today because I appreciate every one of you so very much. 

I've had a lightbulb moment about what's going on with me lately, the depression, the self-destructive behaviours, the weird physical symptoms, all of it.  Now that I've seen it, of course, it seems very obvious.  THIS is an emotional flashback!

Here's the thing:  I don't matter to my mother.  I never have, and I never will.  I'm at best an audience and at worst a nuisance, but I have no real significance to her life.  It's still exactly the same now as it was when I was a child.  Her (now dead) husband is important to her.  Her husband's children are important to her (even though they hate her now and don't speak to her since their father died).  My brother and his children are (sort of) important to her.  But me?  I don't matter to her.  I never have.  She tells me so every chance she gets, in a million little ways that she doesn't even notice or care about.  I think I'd probably like to believe that she does it on purpose, because that would indicate that I matter enough to be worth hurting, but I really don't think so.  I think I just don't interest her very much, and the oblivious cruelty is nothing more than a natural manifestation of her psychopathy.  I understand and accept this.  So now how do I make it not hurt me?

Thinking of you Bach.  I resonate with that hurt and hope that it eases some for you.

quite a realization, bach.  i can see how it would be very painful in itself, let alone the pain from being 'unimportant' all this time.  perhaps you're beginning to grieve?  sending love and a hug filled w/ pain remover.  :hug:

Hi Bach. I'm sorry. It's terrible. I also had to grapple with the same realization that I simply do not matter to my mom other than as supply for her bottomless needs. But I myself did not actually matter at all, or her grandchildren. It's really painful. I feel for you. It's wrong that this is how it is. People who don't know parents like this will want to tell you no she really does love you! She just doesn't know how to show it!

I recall that when I fiinally had that realization that I did not matter to her at all, that she did not care how she hurt me, that was when my anger came pouring out and i just  couldn't anymore. I became mean and calloused toward her. It felt really bad until the end.

Once she died, which was maybe 3 years after I had that realization...once she died it stopped mattering that I didn't matter. It was done. She had proven who she was. She was not capable of changing not even on death's bed. Once that hope for something different died it stopped hurting. I imagine people who go no contact may have the same relief eventually. I think what causes the suffering (????) is our hope that maybe something will change, or maybe if we just do something differently it will change.

So perhaps truly truly accepting that this is the truth, and that she isn't going to change, and there's nothing you did to cause that and there's nothing you can do to fix it, maybe that's the path to relief?

:bighug:

You deserve better. You deserved better. I'm sorry.

Bach

I know the sting of realizing I never mattered to a parent. It's a pain that has its own category. A lifetime of believing they cared, and would one day apologize for all they'd done to me, is not something I can walk away from quickly. It eats at me all the time. The more I learn about the science of narcissism, and all the anti-social disorders, the more I'm able to shed the ties that bind me to that old belief that I mattered. The more I realize how sick these anti-social people are, the more I can accept the chill that they gave me instead of love. The more I study them, the more I see this is their mental illness, not mine.

But I'm not tied to my parents/siblings with a single chain that can be unlocked with one key. It's more like I'm tied to my bad family with a thousand small strings. Each time I address how they treated me, I untie one more of those strings. I get "a little bit" farther from their abuse with each string I cut. It helps me to talk with others who have the same strings to cut. Once again, our inability to fully accept that we were not loved, is more proof that we are loving, good, heart-felt people who DO understand that all humans are connected. The fact that it's so difficult for us to realize that our own family doesn't understand that we're all connected, is what proves we know the truth. And if you ever study the true heroes of history, such as Buddha, Jesus, Mother Teresa, Ghandhi, etc, the more we see that they came from miserable situations too, but rather than becoming narcissistic bullies themselves, chose to become loving heroes. I'm no Ghandhi, but I, like you, have chosen the higher path, and we give our love to those who deserve it.

It's easy to be a bully. It's mature to be the one who stops the bullying before lazily, selfishly passing our pain on to others.

I'm sorry you had to go through what you've been through with your M. It's against nature for a parent to not love their child. There's something seriously wrong with parents who do this to their children.

Hello, Bach.

I have just read all of your posts in this thread. I have not had time to read all the replies. But I came to the end of the thread first and your posts resonated with me so I went back to the beginning and what you wrote just resonated more and more and more. I hear all that you say and I have direct personal experience of several things similar to what you describe. It is so very tough to deal with.

You say "I understand and accept this. So now how do I make it not hurt me?" I wish I knew. My guess is that it is the inner child hurting.

 :wave:

Hi Bach,

Quite the realization.

I send safe  :hug: if okay

rainy, thank you for your thoughts and understanding :hug:

san, I've heard this before, that I need to grieve, and have not been able to come to very much understanding of "grieving" other than as a sort of intellectual concept and as something that happens to you rather than as something you can consciously choose to do.  I have at times tried to figure out "how to grieve" and not had much succcess.  However, after I wrote this entry the other day, I had a brief moment, literally only maybe a second, in which I felt a TREMENDOUS wave of grief, deep grief, an actual tangible feeling.  In that one second or so, I thought I was going to cry, but then the whole feeling vanished and I had a yawning fit instead.  Strange and not immediately helpful, but at least now I sort of know what it feels like? 

Armee, I think what hurts the most for me with all this right now is that my mother isn't even particularly interested in getting supply from me.  I suppose I'm better than nothing now that her husband and many of her friends are dead, but honestly, I think she barely even remembers I exist until either I text her or she sees something I post to my Facebook wall.  With my conscious mind, I fully accept those truths you speak of, but clearly some deeper part of just isn't there yet.  I really hope that I can figure that out on my own and don't have to wait for her to die for relief  from that pain, though, because she's obscenely robust and could live for a long time yet.  I worry sometimes that she will actually outlive me and I will never know a world without her malignant presence.

Papa Coco, I never had children because I was too afraid.  I wish that I could have had children, but the risk was too great that I would simply pass the dysfunction on to another generation.  So I console myself with the knowledge that at least it stopped with me.  As painful as it is, I understand that the most loving thing I could possibly do for my children was not have them.

NarcKiddo, I very much appreciate you reading my posts.  They are challenging for me to write, and most of the time I don't even want to write them, but I know I have to face this stuff and I can't do it without witnesses.  Thank you for your empathy. (:hug: ?)

Moondance  :wave: :hug:

I've got so much to write about.  Maybe tomorrow.

Bach, I'm sorry.  :'(

Gentle hugs if you want them, bach.  We're here with you.

 :hug:

Thinking of you Bach

Not Alone, CactusFlower, Moondance, I just realised that each of your names evokes its own comforting image.  I appreciate each of you so very much  :hug: :hug: :hug:

So today what's sparking is not any of the things that I was (am) going to write about "maybe tomorrow", but a left hook out of a casual conversation.  I had one of those moments today when I think I'm telling a cute funny story about myself as a child, when suddenly I realise that what I'm doing is illustrating my gaping, flaming trauma wounds.  That happened today in a text chat.  The person I was talking to almost surely would have taken it as a cute funny story, but when I realised that the whole thing was screaming 'WOW WHAT'S HER DAMAGE?" I had to erase it instead of hitting Send. 

Bach, I find it so difficult to speak about myself as a child...or about myself generally because of feeling like I am speaking from wounds.  I hope the feeling that brought up eases soon.

I most always feel like a walking wound, where everyone can see each and every one of the wounds.  Your post resonates with me.

That's really interesting. I'm sorry you had to deal with it, of course, and hope you are feeling a bit better now. But it's made me think about stories I might tell about myself as a child. Actually, I can't remember telling any. Which is no great surprise as my memories are limited until age 6 and then the stories I remember have always made me feel pretty bad so I don't tell them apart from one that can be made to appear funny.

I've started wondering now about stories my parents might tell about me, though, and how that feels. My father comes up with a couple of memories (always the same ones) from time to time. I might think about that and journal it. Thank you for the idea.

 :hug:

Thank you for the kind replies, friends  :hug: :grouphug:

NarcKiddo, my mother has three stories she tells to “prove” that she loves me, paid attention to me and had good experiences with being my mother. Two of them are from before I was 5 years old. The third I was a little older and it’s the tiniest most insignificant thing.  She has many, many more stories she tells again and again about “when you were a child, B” that either don’t actually involve me at all or that imply a negative light on me. Lovely.

This feeling of realising that I’m a mentally ill child and will always be a mentally ill child.

bach, those kinds of realizations can be brutal.  with you on that - i can think of several major memories that proved abusively traumatic and they triggered and haunted me well into adulthood.  as far a s being a mentally ill child, i wish i could do more than send a big hug  :bighug: to wrap up little bach, that sweet precious little bach, and protect her from the damage she's experienced.  love and hugs, dear bach :hug:

Today in text messages, my mother gave me a particularly ugly display of her narcissism and sociopathy.  It was bothering me all day, especially because my head was full of the thought of "Why can't she just die already?"  I even imagined myself telling her I wished that she would die.  I've been told it's okay to wish that she would die, or even hope for her to die, but I have some idea that it's the ultimate karmic bad cause to wish death on someone.  I talked about it with My Person this evening at duck feeding time.  I told him that I've always worried that if I want her to die it's because I want the house or the money or the photos, but I'd realised that's not it at all.  I want her to die so that she can't hurt me anymore.  This evening when I was chanting I had a thought that it's not just reasonable but sane and healthy for me to feel that way, and for fleeting moment I felt the truth of that in my body.  So I guess this means I have to own that I wish she would die.  I guess it's okay.  I guess anything is okay as long as I don't actually kill her myself.

I completely identify with wishing she would die. I wish the same of mine. You said in an earlier post that you fear she might outlive you and I have had that fear, too. I would consider it viciously unfair if I never get to live part of my life without her in it.

This is partly what sought me to seek therapy. My T has said it is OK for me to wish she would die. It is understandable. I felt there might be some danger to me in getting so wrapped up in the desire that when it finally happens I will be hit by some surge of guilt, or even disappointment that life is not suddenly kittens and rainbows without her in it.

Like you, I also have an idea that it is bad to wish death on anyone. I think I may be trying to kill her off in my mind, so that the actual event becomes a bit of a non-event, emotionally. I have no idea if/how this might work or even if it is a sensible idea. But it feels different to wishing actual death on her, so it is easier to justify to myself.

Sending you good thoughts.

Bach, I appreciate what you shared and it resonates with me.  I recently saw this message going around on my social media feed about how everyone deserves kindness and it irked me.  We need boundaries, including permanent ones, with some people. 

Thank you for your understanding reply, NarcKiddo.  I have had so many of the same thoughts you express in your post.  It's not a happy place to be.  But I guess an intrusive thought of "I wish my mother would die" is healthier than one of "I wish I was dead." 

rainy, thank you, too, for responding.  I'm irked by those kinds of messages as well.  I don't think my mother deserves kindness.  She certainly hasn't ever shown it to anyone else that I know of!  But of course social media is chock full of that kind of thing, and sometimes I have to resist posting how I feel about it because I know that if I do, it only makes me look like a jerk.  We really have to keep a lot inside don't we. 

I agree it is much healthier and putting the feelings where they belong - on her. Not sure if it's helpful right now but I wrote an article for the oots blog on this topic of wishing for a parent's death. https://www.outofthestorm.website/guest-bloggers/2021/11/13/navigating-the-death-of-an-abusive-neglectful-or-traumatizing-parent-by-k

Thank you for sharing that, Armee.  It was helpful.  It also made me very thankful that I won't have to take care of my mother.  You must be made of incredibly tough stuff to have survived that, my friend!  :hug:

 :hug:

Not tough. It destroyed me. I was just stuck. Luckily it ended. There was one period of time when she was in the hospital and I thought it was the end. Then I found out she was going to make it. I sobbed for days. I thought it was over but it was going to keep going. I don't cry but I bawled nonstop when I found out she wasn't dying. That will make you question your sense of kindness like nothing else. I'm so sorry you are going through this.

bach, i've also had death wishes for my ex, and my T said it's not a bad thing, i'm not a bad person.  i think it's a way we are trying to protect ourselves from further harm.  wishing won't make it so.  i've also stopped having those thoughts lately, but who knows if i won't pick them up again at a later date.  trauma brain just wants our abusers and their abuse gone.

as far as karma goes, hmm, i don't know if that would pertain here.  your goodness, what you show to people every day, how you act and interact has a lot of karmic weight, to my mind.  as humans, we are going to have less than perfect thoughts at times.  i don't know that one thought is going to tip the karmic scale against us.  just my thoughts.  love and hugs, bach :hug:

I just wrote a whole thing and then hit the wrong button and wiped it all out.  I guess I didn't need to post that anyway?  ??? :stars:

 :yes:

Ohhh gosh Bach that is so frustrating.  I have done this as well.  And felt exactly as you did, I guess I didn't need to post that anyway.

Especially when we put all our energy, our effort at the time, exhausting ourselves at times to type what we typed and then it's gone.

Sorry that that happened for you,  frustrating to say the least.

:hug:

Maybe you just needed to get it out of you, as opposed to out into the world.

Annoying, for sure.

:hug:

i've done that too many times, bach.  sometimes it's felt worth it to rewrite, other times not so much.  i like the idea of needing to get it out of you at least.  love and hugs :hug:

I've done the same thing.  :stars:

 :hug:

Me too, especially replies others.

You are all wonderful :bighug:  :hug: :grouphug: Thank you for the support!

The thing that got erased the other day was my recounting a day on which I was in a very deep trough mentally, emotionally and physically and was unable to feel anything good at all, no pleasure to be had in any productivity or accomplishment, or even the ducks at the river, and then realising what a taxing week I had had, and how well I was functioning considering my heavy burdens of pain and sadness.  For some reason it feels unsafe to say that, unsafe in my body.  I wonder whether subconsciously wiping out the post wasn't really an accident.

I've been interacting with my body a lot lately, tuning in to the feelings in my body and trying to simply experience them without trying to change them or run away from them.  That is wildly unfamiliar to me.  I've spent my whole life trying to avoid feeling my body, because so much of what my body feels is tension and pain and fear.  I'm trying to learn how to feel other things in my body.  Trying to get to know this stranger that I've been occupying all these many years. 

Bach, I resonate with getting to know one's body.  For me, learning about interoception has been helpful and I've especially learned a lot from Kelly Mahler. 

bach, this concept of tuning in to your body struck 2 chords w/ me - 1: i'm always knowing what my body is saying/doing and 2: i've not been aware very much in my life of the same thing.  quite a contradiction, but interesting to me since you brought it up.  thanks - another something to ponder.  i'm glad you're getting to know yours, tho.  i think it's a good thing.  love and hugs :hug:

Why could I not have been NORMAL?  People say "But what's 'normal' anyway" and I never had an answer, but now I do.  NORMAL is having a mother who loves you and at least tries to protect and certainly doesn't try to KILL you.  NORMAL is having a flawed human mother who makes mistakes, but is not a narcissistic sociopath and at least loves you and tries her to nurture you.  The bar for "normal" really isn't that high.

rainy, thank you for the Kelly Mahler reference.  I looked up her site, and it's very interesting.  This sentence " Or what if your internal sensations were so overwhelming that your body feels unsafe on a daily basis?" describes my experience exactly.  I will read further soon.

san, I have never had much of an idea of what my body was saying or doing.  Learning how to notice and interact with it is difficult and tiring. I am having to be careful not to overwhelm myself or let my brain interfere.  I know this is a good thing but wow I wish it wasn't exhausting getting there. 

Yesterday I went to pick up some furniture from the apartment in the city that my mother is selling.  I asserted boundaries and it went well, but today I have mom-sickness.  I struggled through a therapy session of trying to put into words things that defy explanation and understanding.  The most painful and difficult thing about having this mother is that even though I know she is incapable of loving me or truly connecting with me, I crave her.  I crave her like a bad drug.

I get angry sometimes thinking of all the times I've eroded my nervous system freaking out over things that were literally nothing, no threat to me at all.

I feel this way a lot too, Bach. 

Quote from: Bach on June 05, 2023, 05:17:41 PM
The most painful and difficult thing about having this mother is that even though I know she is incapable of loving me or truly connecting with me, I crave her.  I crave her like a bad drug.

We were meant to need deep bonding with our mothers. What you wrote makes a lot of sense.

I'm tired of anxiety.  I'm tired of hunger.  I'm tired of tension and fear and sadness.  I'm tired of inertia and immobility.  I'm tired of not being able to express myself.  I'm tired of not being able to connect with people.  I'm tired of non-restful sleep.  I'm tired.

Hi Bach,
I am hearing that you're tired.  I send you a hug of support, if it's helpful  :hug:
Hope  :)

Thank you, Hope  :hug: It does help.

Bach, I too have a sociopathic sadistic narc "mother".  I don't consider her my mother anymore.  I'm very sorry you too have this experience. 

It makes my heart sad to hear this:The most painful and difficult thing about having this mother is that even though I know she is incapable of loving me or truly connecting with me, I crave her.  I crave her like a bad drug.

I'm also very weary of all the pain and exhaustion that CPTSD causes me.

 :bighug: if that is OK. 

I want her to die so that she can't hurt me anymore.

I feel the same way about my "mother".  Even though I haven't laid eyes on her, nor had anything to do with her at all in over 2 years, I still have this uneasiness deep down inside that somehow, she will find a way to get to me.

I don't care much for my mother and have not been in contact for 4 yrs. 

I'm sorry Bach - I can so relate to the craving though.  Craving to be loved, cared for by the one person that should have but didn't.

 :bighug:

bach, this whole mother thing sounds messy, sounds like it's made you feel messy.  it's a terrible place to be, a terrible way to feel.  no wonder you're tired.  it can be a struggle just to put one foot in front of the other when dealing w/ FOO issues.

i also really related to your statement about 'eroding' your nervous system over nothings.  i do that so much, often many times a day.  it totally sucks.  i'm sorry you go thru that, too.  i wish i knew how to stop it.  love and hugs :hug:

My feelings and thoughts and emotions are so horribly problematic. I have no words for anything or anyone. I can listen and hear but I can't communicate. Can't respond. Can't express. I'm locked up in here. I used to be able to write and speak and cry and laugh and connect and all those things. What happened? I can't live all shut down like this.

I am thinking of you Bach.

I hear you, Bach. I do.

As do I Bach, as do I. 

It seems to either be totally shut down or in an EF which is loosing it for me.  One extreme to the other.

Thank you for being here, friends  :hug:  :grouphug: I hope that soon there will be more to me than this awful...whatever it is. 

Sending you caring thoughts and prayers (if OK).   :bighug:

Bach, you are enough just as you are.  :)

I'll say it for all of us, we are enough just as we are. I hope that doesn't offend anyone.

 :bighug:

bach, i echo moondance - we are enough as we are.  you most certainly are.  i'm thinking of you, standing in your corner w/ you as you go thru this.  keep taking care of you as best you can, ok?  love and a big, embracing hug :bighug:

To a great extent, I simply can't avoid buying into the notion that it is my job to manage problematic situations by adjusting my reactions and my behaviour in order to get along and make the other party comfortable, regardless of what the problem is or how much of it is actually my fault or whether the other party is being unreasonable. Thinking about this makes me fear that I will never be happy or comfortable or well.

 :bighug:

I'm sorry. Feeling this way really sucks.

I feel the exact same Bach.  I think that is what I meant when I posted in my journal today that I don't believe I can look after myself, my needs in any given situation with others.

I really get it and am so sorry that you were treated in such a horrific way to get you to this place, to believing, at the core, that it's your job to manage these situations regardless of your needs.  We have gone so long believing this and we were "taught" , our brains were taught to believe this. 

I really hope that somehow we can learn and believe differently.

 :bighug: 

I totally understand this, Bach. I am a constant people-pleaser. The situation does not even have to be problematic. If they want to do something I will just go along with it to the best of my ability and try to enjoy it. Or at least appear to enjoy it. And then if it ends for some reason I often find myself quite shocked at how much I don't miss it and am glad it ended. I was reading a book that touched on this issue and it suggested making time to do things I like to do. The problem is, I don't really know what I like to do! All I want is for everyone around me to be happy or comfortable, and then I at least feel safe. Except I don't really feel safe, because that situation could change in an instant and them I am on the pacifying carousel again.

Do you know what makes you happy, Bach? Do you know what you enjoy? If not, like me, then I guess that is something you could try experimenting with. I've been trying out new activities. Simple things like adult colouring books have proved a great success.

Moondance said "I don't believe I can look after myself, my needs..." and that resonates. But if we don't even know what our needs are, because they are buried so deep, then how on earth can we go about looking after them?

 :grouphug:

Bach, I appreciate you articulating this - it resonates with me.

bach, i agree w/ those who said we were taught to do this 'fixing' thing, to make sure everyone else was satisfied/content, to take care of or manage situations.  if we're taught this from little on, our neural networks were formed to fire in this way.  as someone once said to me, it's easier to form a neural pathway than to re-form it.

a lot of us are fighting this very same thing, including me - you're not alone in this.  it's a tough one to battle and overcome.  hang in there, bach - i'm hangin' right beside you.  love and hugs :hug:

Lately I have been discovering so many difficult things about my brain wiring in conducting my relationships.  They all cluster around what I wrote about above, and also around the sense I have that I identified several years ago and still cannot figure out how to change that I have no real self.  The sense that I only exist in relation to others, that I have no mechanism for self-motivation, and that my life is spent more-or-less passing time waiting afor someone to want me or need me.  I think this is a big part of the reason that I can no longer write well, nor pursue any of the creative activities I long to do but find myself persistently blocked from. 

But you do write well, Bach. You paint a very clear and vivid picture of what you are experiencing in just a few words. I understand that it is probably not what you want to write, and it must be very frustrating for you to feel you don't have that creative outlet at the moment. I hope you can find some ways of scratching that creative itch that feel helpful. Sometimes one just has to set aside some time to do it, even if you don't feel like it. Motivation is unreliable and not having it is not unusual.

I'm so sick of my addictions.  I'd like to write about that but I'm having trouble with words lately.  At some point I need to write about a particular social media problem I have, it is small and specific and was good for me once but has become toxic.  Phew.

A few weeks ago, someone was talking with me about paradigm shifts.  I googled it and it seems like a fancier way to say "change your inner monologue via affirmations".  Affirmations.  Ugh.  Like I haven't travelled up and down that road a hundred million times.  I have finally, though, come up with an affirmation that doesn't sound like a lie:  I CAN IMPROVE.

Okay, so, my social media problem is a 'Influencer' family I've been following on the internet for about nine years.  By this point the material shared on social media over the years by this family could be used to make an illustrated textbook of narcissistic neglect and abuse, and generational bad parenting.  For many years, following this family and participating in an online forum discussing them was useful to me because it helped me fully understand what it means to be gaslighted by an abuser, and illuminated how many so seemingly unremarkable day-to-day things about my childhood added up to a hive of continual trauma.  But now after all these years, the life of this family has become a trainwreck that is happening in slow motion every day right in front of me, no one is doing anything about it, I've learned all I can from it, and it's toxic to me but I can't seem to look away.

I've really been regressing in the past few days.  Can I stop it before it goes too far?

I hear you Bach - I have no words of wisdom as I'm struggling too.

I'm hanging on by reading posts here, working at being kinder to myself.  Part of being kinder to myself is working at accepting  exactly where I'm at in the moment or as soon as I realize what's going on.

For me this is no small feat as my trauma brain doesn't necessarily want to cooperate at the best of times. 

I wish I had more but please know there is support and resources here.

I stand with you Bach if that helps even a little.

 :hug:

I identify with not being able to look away. Has it become a habit? Are there people here who could maybe help take your mind off it? I'd be happy to try.
 :hug:

I am thinking of you Bach.

bach, that stuff can become addictive, for sure.  like any addiction, tho, even after the high is gone, we keep chasing it.  we want it to keep giving us what it gave us in the beginning.  i hope you can one day say 'no more' to that toxicity.

sending love and a hug filled with finding your way out  :hug:

Bach.  :grouphug:

I relate. When I stepped back from interacting with my mom because she was psychologically destroying me, I was still compelled like an addiction very much so, to think about her every second almost and to obsessively check her health records to know what was happening.

It took a long time for those impulses to recede. Maybe just anytime you have an impulse toward that scenario you could walk away and do something else for just 5 minutes and then come back to it. But also. It's OK that you do this. It's understandable to need to distract yourself from your internal world.

These celebrity updates are designed to do this to people, to hook them on drama. It took a long time for me to learn to live without my mom's drama...it was this constant hit. Now that she's been gone for 2 years and there's no drama, I've finally gotten used to the quiet peace in my head. It's such a new way of being. It's nice. It's peaceful. But at first it was super boring!!!!

I don't even know how it happened that it became ok. Just time.  :grouphug:

Reassure myself again that I'm going to be okay, that whatever is going on I'll deal with it, but will I?

I'm so tired of being me.

bach, i have no doubt you'll manage and deal w/ what needs dealing with. sending love and a hug filled w/ extra reassurance :hug:

 :grouphug:

 :hug:

And Amen to that Bach. So many times I've been tired of being me. I wish that were enough to change everything! I hope that feeling changes for you soon though. I think you're pretty special.

I resonate with the questioning while also having a part of me knows that I most likely can handle.  I hope things work out.

 :hug: to you Bach. 
Hope  :)

Moondance, NarcKiddo, rainy, san, Armee, Hope, thank you for your thoughts and hugs and support.  I've been thinking that this has been a very hard summer, but it occurred to me that the height of summer in general is often a bad time for me.  Some of it is the weather, but a lot of it is childhood memories.  Just like everything else in my life. 

I had a couple of good days earlier this week.  I keep reminding myself of that as proof that it's still possible.  Also on the good side, Other has been very sweet lately, and my mother hasn't been in touch.  What do I have to complain about, really?  Not much.  My life, objectively, is pretty good.  I see that and I appreciate it, but sometimes I am just furious about how often all the stupid crap from 50 years ago hanging around in my nervous system stops me from enjoying it. 

You just summed up what tics me off the most about this stuff. Present = good so why does it feel so bad still?

It is the worst part of all of this.  I hate it so much and am filled with anger and resentment that it has to be this way.  I've worked so hard for so long to have a good life and enjoy, and it's just not fair.  The injustice never ends!

This morning in therapy I was reminded of how I used to wake up My Person in the middle of the night freaking out and crying about nothing in particularly that I could identify.  I would would wake up formlessly distressed and he would be asleep and I would cry with hot tears rolling down my face, trying not to make any noise because I didn't want to wake him, and then I would wake him because I would be freaking out just from the strain of trying so hard not to.  I don't think I noticed that every time that happened it was following a visit with my mother until one night that happened, and while he was comforting me, I asked why he was comforting me and why he wasn't angry about being woken up in the middle of the night to deal with  my hysterics.  He said "It's okay.  I understand.  And I kind of knew it was going to happen, because it happens every time you visit your mother."  That confused me, because it was at a time when I thought that I had learned how to get along with her and have a pleasant time when I visited, and I thought I genuinely enjoyed those visits.  That was, of course, years before I knew anything about any scorekeeping bodies.  It all makes sense now, though.  After the freaking out in the middle of the night phase came the self-destructive bingeing myself sick phase.  It took me way more years than it should have to notice that, too.

I'm going to have to visit her in September when my brother and nephew are here from Australia.  I've got to start preparing myself for that now.  Maybe make a list of things I need to be on guard for, stupid careless little things like last time when I forgot to bring a suitable snack to the beach with me and then forgot to shower after going in the ocean on a very hot day because I was so eager to escape that accursed house, which resulted in a dizzy, scary drive home that featured sitting in my car with the air conditioner on for at least half an hour drinking bottled water at a rest stop.  My brain doesn't really work very well at that house. 
 

 :hug:

Oh bach, I am so so sorry. It sounds so awful. And my sister would break out in hives when she would drive home from a mandatory visit with our mom. It's real what has been done to us.

If there's any way to not visit...it's not worth the damage...

bach, it doesn't sound like something i'd anticipate with joy, that's for sure. the things you mentioned - wrong snack, running from her house, etc. - sounds simply awful to me. is there a chance you could visit brother and nephew somewhere else? like a lunch away from the house, away from her?  i hope so.

as to the injustice and unfairness of all this crapola we continuously go thru - we should be happy, right? so why aren't we?  our minds got smacked so badly by our pasts they just can't right themselves yet.  i know this one, too. just remember, this is not your fault, ok?  you didn't do this to you - you are surviving what was done to you, scrambling and scratching your way to make your life as best it can be.  can you hang onto that? your courage and determination?  love and a hug filled w/ velcro so that your reality sticks w/ you. :hug:

Quote from: Bach on July 31, 2023, 10:32:20 PMMy brain doesn't really work very well at that house. 
 

I am so glad you said this. Of course I am not glad you had to write it, with all the experiences that go with that, but it dovetails completely with something that happened at the weekend visit I have just had at FOO house. Long story short we were trying to find the source of an annoying intermittent beeping and concluded it was one of the smoke detectors needing a new battery. We all agreed it sounded like a phone rather than a smoke detector. But none of our phones was making the noise. I got up a ladder to get the cover off the detector but couldn't, though I tried for ages. In the end mother called a neighbour who had changed the battery in another one some weeks ago. The beeping did not stop and in the end it turned out to be a phone that a different neighbour had lent them which was in the vicinity of the detector and had low battery. When I recounted the story to my husband afterwards he said "But when you were up the ladder with your ear right next to the detector, surely you could tell the beep was not coming from there." I just stared at him and said "No, now you mention it. I was simply trying to survive the visit. My brain was not functioning."

I hope you can find a way to see brother and nephew without having to go to that house. But if you can't, then I think you are right to prepare yourself. A checklist sounds good. The more you can consult something without having to rely on your brain working normally in the moment, the better. Even just having compiled the checklist and having it with you could help. I have to go to FOO house armed with snacks because  I lose my appetite at meals and then need to eat something later.

These problems visited on us by others are so pernicious and awful and it is viciously unfair that they continue to taint our lives despite our best efforts. But you have come a long, long way and that is something to be proud of.

 :grouphug:

I too have become angrier about all the mess hanging around in my nervous system too Bach. It's just supremely unfair that we go through the abuse or neglect and then live it for the rest of our lives. I thought one day I would be rid of it but I don't think that anymore. I think instead I just need to learn as many ways of possible of managing the trauma, like knowing what triggers me. Connecting with all of you is one tool in that toolbox  :hug: 

Maybe you could do as NK suggests and meet them away from your M's house?  Maybe go out for a lovely meal to change the trauma dynamic? Or have them to your house where you have control of things?

FWIW, both my brain and my heart do not work well at my NM's place so I just don't go anymore.

I think I have figured out why sometimes I find myself thinking "I hate my life" and then thinking "No, how can I say that? My life is full of good things that I love!  I love my life!"  and knowing, really knowing it with no toxic positivity involved, and not understanding why I can't feel it.  Today it occurred to me that it might be because my unconscious assumption is that the phrase "my life" describes what can be seen from the outside, i.e., all the "things" in my life that I like, such as my house, my garden, my partner, my job, my pet, the town I live in, my comfort things, etc., and discounts the shadow life inside me being lived by my perpetually confused nervous system.

I appreciate you sharing this as I do this too. 

That is a very interesting insight, Bach. I think you may be on to something. It certainly resonates with me. My life, too, is full of good things that I genuinely appreciate and am grateful for. I'm not sure whether I actually like or love them all, though. You say your nervous system is perpetually confused and I can identify with that. Possibly because I don't really know me. Sometimes I wonder if there is actually a me or if I have become an automaton, dutifully liking the things others say are likeable and doing the things others say I should do. And that must be confusing because the dissonance is huge. The logical brain is genuinely pleased (hence no toxic positivity) but the emotional brain is not so much displeased as simply cannot fathom it. I don't know if any of that makes sense to you, but that's what your post made me think about so I throw it out there in case it's useful.

 :hug:

Quote from: NarcKiddo on August 04, 2023, 11:20:40 AMSometimes I wonder if there is actually a me

It's interesting that you would say that, NK.  Five or six years ago, I had a realisation that I have very little self.  Left on my own, there's very little that I think or do or want for myself.  I never really do much of anything unless someone else wants or expects me to.  The only thing that motivates me is the possibility of approval from someone else, and I pretty much spend my life waiting around for someone to want or need something from me, feeling (alive? real?) until I've fulfilled that, and then going back to waiting.  I have not figured out what to do with that.  Still, though, you say you're not sure whether you really like what you like, or whether you only like it because you're expected to, and I wouldn't say I feel that way at all.  I'm good at being interested in things that people around me are interested in, which serves me well in my job, but there are definitely things in my life that I like or love in ways that feel genuinely that they belong to me.  That feels important and valuable, but I'm not really sure what to do with that, either.

dang, bach, i was thinking so many of these same thoughts today.  it's an awful way to feel and i wish you didn't.  love and hugs :hug:

Quote from: Bach on August 04, 2023, 11:37:33 PMthere are definitely things in my life that I like or love in ways that feel genuinely that they belong to me.  That feels important and valuable, but I'm not really sure what to do with that, either.

I totally get all of what you wrote. I was very pleased to read the quoted section and I agree it is important and valuable. Maybe that is all you need to do with it - enjoy what you enjoy. Although I guess there might be some benefit in considering why you like what you do because it might spark inspiration of other things you might also like. Then you might have more opportunities to fill your time with nice stuff instead of with the endless waiting for approval (I am familiar with that). I am starting to make a conscious effort to find out what I like and also to reclaim some things I like but which have been tainted by mother, which is harder. Unexpectedly finding I like exercise was the start because that has literally nothing to do with my FOO. They despise exercise and fitness and consider the people who engage in it too stupid to be able to do anything else.

I would second this, Bach, Maybe look at what you think you *don't* like and ask yourself why? For example, I thought for the longest time I hated strawberry ice cream and lime popsicles.  When I started therapy and examining my relationship with Male Parental Unit, I remembered he loved those things, but god help anyone who had some without his permission. So I got some and intentionally ate them... And now I love them. I've also reclaimed liking the color pink. *shrug* just a suggestion, hope it helps. Hugs if you want them! :)

Quote from: NarcKiddo on August 05, 2023, 12:04:02 PMI am starting to make a conscious effort to find out what I like and also to reclaim some things I like but which have been tainted by mother, which is harder. 

I'm feeling terribly insecure and unsafe today. I guess that's child me, and was probably triggered by the last-minute visit yesterday morning by my (half) sister, her kids and her mother. Nothing bad happened, it was fine, nice, blah blah, but it always brings stuff up. My sister always waits until the last minute to call me up and say "Hey, we're going to be in your area on our way to______, are you around?" And I always resent being an after thought but I suck it up and say Yes and the visit is always pleasant and it always kind of hollows out my soul just a little bit. Her mother (my stepmother) being along was rather a shock, I haven't seen her in probably five years. Lots of complicated history. I tend to shut out that particular set of pains, not really even let myself know it's there at all, I mean, jeez, it didn't even occur to me that might be why I woke up feeling so defeated and gloomy this morning until I talked almost my whole session with my therapist about other things before even quite remembering the visit happened.

I hear you Bach.

I don't WANT to be haunted by all my past selves! NO! What is this life for anyway?!?

Ugh. That sucks. Royally. I cannot abide last minute visits being sprung on me. I mean, I can't bear any kind of visit being sprung on me. Last minute is just the cherry on the icing of that particular cake.

Hugs.

I'm so afraid that people won't like me anymore if they get to know me too well. It has happened so many times that the fear has probably become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Geez I really struggle with this as well Bach. 

My confidence level is zilch.  I also become a rambling idiot and a total clutz now when meeting someone new.  I actually think I experience dissociation  or perhaps it's an EF.  I avoid it at all costs.

This feels just awful and I'm so sorry you experience this Bach.

I hate myself. I really do. I'm so sick of my stubborn self-destructiveness and my inability to be a responsible parent to myself.

I like you Bach.

There were reasons for the stubborness to develop. By writing on here, reaching out, giving voice to what's going on, you are being a responsible parent to yourself rn.

I also can be self-destructive. But I'm not always like that. I don't believe you always are self-destructive either, Bach, because I see other sides of you on this forum.

This will pass. Gentle :hug: :hug:   If don't feel safe, ignore.

OK - this is your journal and I know we are supposed to hear you and not be combative. Well, I do hear you, and what you say resonates. But I have to say this, too. You are NOT unable to be a responsible parent to yourself, even though it might feel that way.

You did not have any of that modelled for you, which is what should have happened. So you are now having to work out how to do it. That is tough and you will not always get it right. But you absolutely have the ability: of that I am completely sure.

My experience of parenting was so tainted that I had a most peculiar idea of how it should work. I have not had children so they have been saved from my ministrations. But when I started therapy and the concept of parenting myself came up I realised I had no clue and started to doubt my ability to look after anything. I began to worry to my therapist that I had been a crappy carer to my dogs and the long line of pets before them. I bewailed the "fact" I could not keep a houseplant alive. What hope, then, for parenting myself?

She is trying to get me to show compassion for myself and actually recognise and own a situation where I do something right. I am beginning to accept that I was a good carer to my dogs. I have dared to buy some houseplants. One threatened to die on me but I think I have pulled it back from the brink.

The point I think I am trying to make is that if you don't have the confidence to parent yourself, maybe you could come at it from another direction. Look at what you do look after. Pet. Husband. And pat yourself on the back for a job well done. Then maybe you can gradually start holding onto the feeling of nurturing them and try turning the focus on to you.

I agree with everything Blueberry said. And I like you, too.

 :hug:

 :hug:

I like you. And I understand those days of hating yourself. Sucks. But safer than the alternatives.

Thank you for the hugs and kind words, friends :hug:  I was having a really bad mental health day yesterday. 

I like you Bach.  I relate to how your feeling as well.

 :hug:

Bach

I'm glad you gathered the courage to bring your darker thoughts to the forum. It feels like you trust us when you are willing to open up and be vulnerable. And I grew up being distrusted, so your trust in us feels respectful to me.

Whenever I'm feeling like I shouldn't be bothering everyone, I remind myself that we are all here to be supported and to be supportive. There's an old saying that the reason we have two hands is so we can give with one and receive with the other. That's how empathy and energy flows. It's common for us with CPTSD to be terrified to ask for help, or care, or concern, or comfort. We like to give it, but we're afraid to ask for it in return. I'm the same way. When I bring my darkest moments to the forum, I feel like I shouldn't. But more and more, I'm realizing that the people here gain benefit from helping each other. It actually feels more genuine and respectful to come to the party and be open about what's really going on inside. Too many of us weren't allowed to tell the truth about being unhappy inside, so we tend to put on a happy face. Putting on a happy face isn't being authentic. Coming to the table each day being honest about our state of mind is authentic.

Bach, I like you very much. I have ever since I joined the forum. You've said many kind and supportive things to me when I needed them, and I feel honored to be able to say kind and supportive things to you when you need them as well. Two hands. One to give with, one to receive with: It keeps the healing power of love flowing from person to person.

I am thinking of you Bach.

I appreciate you all so much!  :grouphug:  I have read and taken to heart all of your support and wisdom.  Thank you  :grouphug: 

I realised today that my recent self-disgust and fragmented emotional state is probably the result of having had an unusually high level of social activity and interaction for the past few weeks.  It's frustrating and distressing to realise how taxing social activity is for me.  I'm always wishing that I wasn't so isolated, that I had friends in real life and not just in the computer, but dealing with people drains my energy and leaves me feeling awkward and uncomfortable with myself.  This is a huge problem.  Being isolated and feeling lonely is uncomfortable, interacting with people is uncomfortable.  I feel like I really just don't belong in this world.

Hi Bach,

Again I can really relate...

Being isolated and feeling lonely is uncomfortable, interacting with people is uncomfortable.  I feel like I really just don't belong in this world.

 :hug: if helpful at all - if not please disregard.

Moondance  :hug:

I can't cry if I'm alone but crying in front of people makes me feel shame and fear and self-loathing. Even my therapist, even just on the phone.

Earlier in this journal I wrote about the inappropriate exposure to sex I was subjected to early in my life, and how I regret that I've spent my life focused on sex at the expense of everything else I did or wanted to do. That also makes me feel shame, fear and self-loathing. I spent my therapy session talking about that today. I started with my realisation that I always had a subconscious belief that my sexuality was my only real value and recounted most of my history with sex and relationships and heard how crazy it all sounds in that context. Thought about how yesterday I was happy because Other was texting me his desire all afternoon. I really don't even know who I am or why I'm here except for that.

Yesterday, my mother texted me.  I hadn't heard from her since the 25th of August, after a spate of contact over about a week and half, first concerning her discovery that there were bats in her house (I know, the jokes write themselves), and then various other dramas that I resisted being drawn too far into.  When I saw her text I was wondered if she was going to ask something of me, but I think she was just feeling lonely and wanted someone to talk to.  Stil though even in a casual conversation, she could not help but push my buttons.  When I pushed back a little bit, she came out with this gem:

QuoteIt would be nice, if we are having a conversation, if you could repress your resentments. That way for whatever time I have left, we could be friends.

Gotta love it, right?  I told her that I'm never looking for opportunities to air my resentments (that was not true two years ago but is now) but that if she stirs them up I'm not going to repress them.  I said "You want to be friends?  Well, my friends don't say things that hurt me and then expect me to keep my mouth shut."  She defended herself and then tried to pick a fight but I fended that off, and she stopped responding.  I felt good about standing up for myself like that, but it still gave me a physical trauma reaction that left me feeling anxious and out of sorts, and before I really noticed it happening, I had binged three or four days worth of snacks.  That's a classic response of mine to being upset by my mother.  I know it happens and I should be able to stop it, but somehow I can't.  Or at least I couldn't yesterday. Now I am suffering the mental and physical discomfort that follows a binge, feeling hopeless and trapped and like no matter what I do nothing will ever change and I will never be able to live the comfortable and productive life that I dream of.  If I can take good enough care of myself today maybe I will feel better tomorrow.  That's my eternal refrain: Maybe I will feel better tomorrow.

I think that's a brilliant response, Bach. I never ever had the presence of mind to say something that true and real to my mother. Love it.

I think it's a brilliant response too Bach! :cheer:

But I also know very well about managing one thing really well and then heading to the snack cupboard... I think some time you will know why you are doing that. There are theories as to why - but whether those theories apply to you, only you can tell.  :hug:

I agree with the others. You dealt with her really well. I'm sorry you're upset by the binge. Be kind to yourself.

As for the previous post, that resonates. I'm glad you talked it through with your T

 :hug:

Dealing with my mother still messes me up, but not as badly as it used to.  I still get all the same symptoms and act out in all the same ways, just a little more moderately now.  So that's fine, but I feel really out of touch with myself, unable to be present, unable to do anything except struggle through, internally lost in the world of my 8 or 9 year old self who was just starting to understand that something was very, very wrong.

I have so many things I wish I could write about, but words don't come.  Or they do, and they make me hate myself.

The thing about dealing with my mother is that she brings me right down to her own level. It's my own damn fault that I give her the opportunity to say things like "repress your resentments". I may not have been CONSCIOUSLY looking for opportunities to air my resentments, but underneath it all those resentments are SEETHING, ready to burst forth at the least whiff of the slightest implication of "My sufferings are more challenging  and important than anyone's but especially YOURS" in anything she says. Even if that implication is there, do I have to react to it? It doesn't hurt anyone but me!

Also: I'm craving her like a bad drug again. I hate this feeling. Of all the feelings, I think I hate this one the most  :'(

 :hug:

She is very much like a bad drug and it's not your fault. At all. A mother is supposed to be there. You are supposed to crave love and connection with her. Except when there is any connection at all she harms you. That's HER and only her. You are not bad for craving the affection of a mom. I'm sorry, Bach.

 :yeahthat:  :hug:

And I really resonate with what you're going through Bach because it's similar for me with both parents.

Hi Bach,

Your mother, or at least how she makes you feel, sounds exactly like mine. For more or less my entire life she has been nothing but atrocious and vindictive towards me. The feelings you express, I mirror very very closely.

If I could suggest my opinion; perhaps the reason why you find yourself "craving" her (like a drug) may actually be a craving to fix her, or wishfully hoping that she will change - simply because you crave a normal, healthy, and loving relationship with her? This is absolutely nothing to feel rubbish about - it shows how much heart you have. If I've completely missed the mark, then please ignore me.

I say this because this has been a painful realisation I've made in my situation. Beyond all doubt, my own mother is (and has been for my entire life) the most distressing component of my reality. The way she makes me feel, impacts every department of my life.

I recall when Coronavirus was at it's peak in the UK, and we were forced to isolate, etc. There was a period of roughly ~6 months where my contact with parents was very minimal / non-existent. I also recall this period being me at my most emotionally-resilient, and peaceful... I guess that says a lot right?

It's nice to connect with you Bach, and I hope you can share a few things with each other. I hope you're feeling okay today :hug:

I know that craving. Like a bad drug, my mother had the capacity to make me feel oh, so good. Fleetingly and unpredictably. I am terrified of feeling that again.

I also know how hard it is not to react to the provocations. They know just how to press the buttons. When, and how hard. Of course they do. They installed them. Training yourself not to react is a very hard job indeed. I have got better at not outwardly reacting, but that takes so much emotional bandwidth. And the reaction is still underneath, roiling away.

Take care of yourself. You are doing hard, hard work every time you have to deal with her.

I'm having a genuine existential crisis feeling like I finally understand what all the key problems in my life are and where they came from, and having to deal with the fact that even all that hard-won knowledge doesn't give me the first dang clue about how to solve them.  I feel lost and hopeless and like it's time for me to accept that it's too late to fix this chronic mental pain.  There is no way to keep from having part of me always somewhere else, wanting something else, yearning underneath all the motions of wellness I go through for something that can never be. 

I used to write and write and write.  Why can't I use my words anymore?

 :hug:

Maybe your words feel tired, too. They are good and hard-working words and I think they serve you well. But neither you nor they can be expected to work at 100 percent all the time. Rest and recuperate.

Quote from: NarcKiddo on October 02, 2023, 08:23:26 AM:hug:

Maybe your words feel tired, too. They are good and hard-working words and I think they serve you well. But neither you nor they can be expected to work at 100 percent all the time. Rest and recuperate.

Interestingly, in the past few days I've noticed that my voice is tired.  It feels obstructed in my throat.  It cracks and I can't speak loudly or sing well.  I'm trying not to hear that my voice has started to sound a bit like my mother's.  I am full of new difficulties expressing myself.  My life must be trying to tell me something but I'm stumped on what it is. 

I have read quite a lot of stuff online suggesting that voice difficulties (and indeed other issues surrounding mouth, throat and neck muscles) often go hand in hand with stress and anxiety. And if CPTSD isn't stressful, I don't know what is! As you are having a particularly hard time at the moment, perhaps it is showing up in your voice, too. I have no idea if there are any particular exercises that can relax those muscles, but it may be worth doing some research. Of course that is treating symptoms rather than cause, but it may help.

 :hug:

Sorry to hear you are struggling, we are here to support you.

I'll share some of my personal experience in the hope it might help you and others.

I have done a lot of "work" around getting my voice back, also getting my handwriting back. May sound a bit crazy, the loss of handwriting, that used to actually happen. My life force was so blocked that I would come to a place where I couldn't write.
Almost the same thing with my voice, almost couldn't talk.

Over years as I uncovered the truth about the events of my young life and faced them in safe therapeutic settings and started to release those trapped emotions/energy my voice got steadier for longer periods of time and my handwriting got steadier and my signature actually evolved to one that is actually me.

So my voice and my handwriting have been great indicators to signal me that is time to go back in and work on what darkness presents. I'm just coming off a 4 day couples retreat. My wife and I did a piece of work together that was powerful and the learning for me is that all this time, about 30 years of out 37 year marriage I was trying to shield her from the horror I experienced as a child. I've actually been running a story that somehow I would contaminate her and my kids, that the darkness was contagious. It has taken huge amounts of my bandwidth for decades.
I feel so free tonight as I write this, it's what I've been yearning for for decades.

Bach, I don't know if any of my lived experiences are helpful , I truly hope they are.

Quote from: Bach on October 03, 2023, 04:24:36 PMInterestingly, in the past few days I've noticed that my voice is tired.  It feels obstructed in my throat.  It cracks and I can't speak loudly or sing well. 

I've had problems with my voice similar to this too. I often used to have a large lump in my throat. Not so often or so big anymore but when it's there, it feels like an obstruction. My previous therapist of the past 8 years taught me to be aware of that. It was like this obstruction was tamping everything down, all emotions underneath it, energy, everything.

Sometimes I've tried to tell a T or somebody else about an incident or symptom and found I could only whisper. But at least I could say it at all. In fact I've said that bit out loud e.g. in group work when others said they couldn't hear me.  A bit like SteveM - I lost my voice in early childhood and started gaining it back in safe therapeutic settings.

Voices crack with emotion, even in non-psycho speak...

Bach says: I am full of new difficulties expressing myself.  My life must be trying to tell me something but I'm stumped on what it is.  Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure it will become clear to you when the time is right, e.g. when you can handle the emotions and memories mixed in with it and when you can start on the baby steps to change whatever-it-is even if that's just accepting it really was that bad etc. Well, that's how it goes in my experience anyway.

Sitting with you, sending support :hug:  :hug:

Bach,

I feel the struggle you're in. Just know that I'm sending my support as well. You're not alone in this.  :bighug:

I am fussy and anxious like a small needy child.  A grubby frizzy little mess casting about for a safe warm place.  Only on the inside, of course.  I've got my face on.  My functional human shell, which covers all that up just fine as long as no one looks too closely and no triggers get inside it.  What an exhausting way to live!

When I was a child, I was always looking down at the sidewalk when I was walking.  I think I remember hearing my grandmother the psychotherapist saying something about it indicating that I had low self-esteem, but I think it might have been more that I was always hurrying to keep up (I don't think it ever occurred to my mother to slow down to accommodate a small child) and I was looking down to make sure I didn't trip over anything.  It could also have been that I lived in New York City and hurrying through that environment was too overwhelming for a small child who had no secure attachments and was never soothed with kind words or physical affection.  I think that there were times that my mother did try to engage with me in those ways, but when she did it confused and scared me because I never knew why it was happening.  Looking back (very few specific memories, just vague random flashes of people or places or things and waves of chaotic feeling), I think that my mother remembers herelf as having "paid a lot of attention" to me as a child because she would bring me along with her when she was doing whatever she was doing (shopping for dresses and costume jewellery and make-up, having her hair done, going to the bank, to the knitting shop, to the health club where I did pencil puzzles and word games in the lobby while she developed short-lived biceps, to the grocery store...what else? ??? IT'S ALL SO BLANK!) and she would talk to me while riding the bus.  I imagine that she talked to me a lot when there was nothing else to do.  I think I spent a lot of time waiting around for her to talk to me.  I guess this is why all I ever want to do when I visit people is go along with them while they do whatever they want or need to do.  Also why I have spent so much time waiting around for Other.  Maybe even why I spend so much time distracting myself and have so much trouble being present.

Bach,

I feel you.  Not having an adult take into consideration your physicalness as a wee one.. Similar situation with my adoptive mother. she would take me along on her jaunts but it wasn't like I was "with" her. If you know what I mean.

Sending you support if ok.

Wishing you all the best

Quote from: Bach on October 11, 2023, 02:07:58 PMI think that there were times that my mother did try to engage with me in those ways, but when she did it confused and scared me because I never knew why it was happening.

Sounds like it was all about your mother, with her bothering to engage you at the times it suited her to do so. By which time any discomfort you may have exhibited which she eventually got round to addressing had long since been addressed by you with whatever coping mechanisms poor little Bach had at her disposal. It makes me think of dog training in reverse: the owner comes home, finds poop on the floor and punishes the dog. The dog, of course, pooped ages ago and has no clue why the owner is angry.

Your post resonates with me. Of course it was better to have my mother being nice to me than in a screaming rage, but it didn't feel any safer.

Hi Bach,
I also resonate with the things you've written in this entry.  Your post really resonates with me. 
Also sending you support, if that's ok.
Hope  :)

Thank you for your comments, friends.  They are always appreciated.  Be assured that I do read them and take them in even if I don't respond to them directly.

I feel so fragile, and yet I am holding up pretty well?  I'm getting my work done even though a hundred things about the job trigger me every minute.  I'm leaning more on cannabis than I wish I was, but I'm also leaning on some healthier coping methods like physical exercise and going out to the river and making another faltering but heartfelt attempt to learn how to play the bass guitar.  I'm eating too much food in general, but not crazy too much, and not much junk food.  Go me.  But inside I feel so awful most of the time, so tired of the struggle, so much like I don't want to be here, so trapped between the unhappiness of living and the fear of death.  And the guilt of even thinking about dying and leaving My Person on his own.  My Person and his generous mystifying unconditional love for me.  I have to keep living and have to keep trying to live my best life, because he needs me to, and the only thing I know how to do is do what other people want or need me to. 

Quote from: Bach on October 13, 2023, 12:35:43 AMI have to keep living and have to keep trying to live my best life, because he needs me to, and the only thing I know how to do is do what other people want or need me to.

Bach, I resonate a lot with what you wrote. One difference: I don't feel that anybody needs me to keep living far less live my best life. So although it might not feel that good to do what other people need or want you to do, if that keeps you going, I'd say it's a good thing, or at least less bad than not wanting to keep going.

I hear you're feeling fragile. Hugs if you want them.

Bach, I resonate with much of what you said; feeling fragile, yet coping and appearing fine, exhaustion, staying alive for others.

If I ever want to be happier and more comfortable with myself, I will have to get better at doing things I don't like to do that I like the results of. 

Quote from: Bach on October 25, 2023, 09:10:48 PMIf I ever want to be happier and more comfortable with myself, I will have to get better at doing things I don't like to do that I like the results of. 

You could well be right. You may also find, if you do some of these things you don't like, that you start appreciating the process. I am not suggesting that you will ever come to love it, but you might. I am thinking here of my own approach to exercise, which for a time when I started taking it seriously was a necessary evil and nothing else. I started to like aspects of it quite soon, which helped, but other aspects were a hideous grind. Yet I can honestly say that with time I have even found things to appreciate in the less pleasant aspects. Mostly because I like the results.

 :hug:

My Person is away on a work trip.  He left on Tuesday and won't be back until the 9th, and I am not doing well alone in the house.  It's pathetic how much trouble I have functioning when there's nobody around to see.  I have enough trouble when there IS someone!  I really just want to be a functional person living a decently productive life, but I think it might be too late.  I don't think I can even blame my trauma.  I think I'm just lazy and shouldn't even be here.

That is the trauma talking.

I'm sorry you are struggling.  :hug:

 :yeahthat:  The trauma is talking, your ICr is talking.

I'm glad to know you.

 :bighug:

I agree with BB and NK. That is very much the trauma talking. I'm so sorry you feel like that now and so sad that little Bach felt that way so long ago. Those people damaged us all pretty good. We are all of us strong to still be here. You too, Bach.

 :hug:

Lately, instead of my intrusive voice saying "I want to die" or "I wish I was dead", it has been saying "Why didn't anybody love me?"  Is this an improvement?  It doesn't feel like one.

 :hug: I think it is. Because that thought I want to die is there as a mask to cover up the deeper pain that is too hard to feel. But until we uncover it we can't heal. Congrats? Sorry? You can do it? Lol I don't know what to say. Hang in there? I definitely felt like it was an improvement when I could hear the message under the mask myself.

Yeah, I think Armee's right. It sounds like that part of the healing that hurts more than the thing itself, but only for a while. Because healing, by definition, gets better.

{hugs} to you, Bach.

Bach, I can imagine that might not feel like an improvement but it sounds like a step forwards to me.

With questioning why nobody loved you, you're potentionally opening up to others, even if just another part of yourself or to us on here whereas if your intrusive voice is wishing for death that sounds to me as if it's more closed off. I don't know if that makes any sense.

I had an intrusive voice wishing for death for a long time. It has got better.  :hug:  :hug:  to you

I think it is a sign of hope rather than resignation. It may be the start of a path that is rocky but it seems like it leads up to life rather than down to the abyss.  :hug:

The people who didn't love you? I'm guessing they may have had no genuine love to give to anyone.

Armer, Chaos Rains, Blueberry and NarcKiddo, thank you for this perspective. It makes a lot of sense. I think something in me must be fighting against any further healing because today the death-wishing voice is mostly back. I'm also having physical symptoms that I can't connect to any logical physical cause and this morning the thought popped into my mind that lately I have been functioning more-or-less normally even though I have been feeling emotionally AWFUL most of the time, almost totally unable to experience pleasure or feel joy and in the kind of disastrous mental state that usually significantly disables me. So maybe I am actually getting somewhere although now I am fearful that the "better" I get the worse I will FEEL and that is just not what I bargained for.

Hi Bach,
I am a little late in responding to what you wrote before about the two voices, but I agree with what the others said about it. I think it's progress for sure.  But I also see that both voices are perspectives that are important and wish to be heard.  Not sure if that makes sense.  Anyway, wanted to send you a hug, if that's ok  :hug:
Hope  :)

Bach

I too am sorry to come in late. But I agree with others, this sounds like a big step forward. The old comments, "I want to die" are statements spoken by you about you to you. But the newer words, "Why didn't anybody love me?" Are a question from you to the outside world about those who caused all this pain in the first place. You're putting the accountability onto those who need to own it. Most of us in our healing journeys have intellectualized the truth, that we are struggling because of unfair things that were done to us by others, but in our hearts, we still harbor a lot of ownership for our struggles. I think your new question is a sign that your heart is starting to understand what your head already intellectualized: That someone did this to you, and you are struggling to accept it so you can move on to the next level of healing.

I think it's a great step forward and out of the self-destructive announcements "I want to die" to the reaching out to the world asking, "why did they do this to me?" Healing can take a new foothold when our hearts start to soften and realize this was not our fault. NOT YOUR FAULT.

This hug is sent with deep love, my friend. I hope you can feel it.  :bighug:  If you can't, let me know and I'll send a thousand more until you can feel me with you in this struggle.

Hope and PapaCoco, thank you for the encouraging words and the hugs  :hug:  :grouphug: I need that stuff. 


On my mind today:  About a month ago, my therapist told me she sees my difficulty in motivating myself to do absolutely anything without having to react against an antagonist as a self-regulation problem.  For some reason, that sounds more like a solvable problem to me than however I was thinking about it before.  Self-regulation is something that can be worked on and improved.  I've been working for years on improving my ability to self-regulate emotionally, and rarely does a day go by that I don't notice and appreciate improvements I have made there.  So if I can improve my emotional self-regulation, it stands to reason that I should also be able to improve my behavioural self-regulation.

Bach,

That sounds like some good forward motion. It's good to hear therapy is giving some new ways of experiencing where you do have some power.

Sometimes I fall back on the Serenity Prayer when I need to put into perspective those things that I do (and do not) have control over. It's so easy to feel that lack of control that we were raised into by other people. So sometimes I just like to make little lists on scratch paper of what I might have some control over right now.

I hope you are doing well today. Self-regulation is the best thing we can be taught while we work to regain control over our reactions to this chaotic world.

One of the ways I can self-regulate is I need to close my eyes and think about the people who care about me enough to feel what I'm feeling. My therapist, and my friends here on the forum. I carry you all around with me in my consciousness, and when I feel like I'm going to explode, I hold onto the knowledge that you all care about me. I imagine you all sitting around a table with me, agreeing with how difficult the situation is, but that I'm not alone in it. My therapist is with me in spirit, and so are all of you. It really helps ground me and give me the strength to calm down and accept a little bit more, that I'm not alone in this lifeboat.

We're stronger together. Just knowing that helps.

PapaC, thank you for being there  :hug:

Quote from: Papa Coco on November 25, 2023, 04:33:52 PMmy friends here on the forum. I carry you all around with me in my consciousness, and when I feel like I'm going to explode, I hold onto the knowledge that you all care about me. I imagine you all sitting around a table with me, agreeing with how difficult the situation is, but that I'm not alone in it. My therapist is with me in spirit, and so are all of you. It really helps ground me and give me the strength to calm down and accept a little bit more, that I'm not alone in this lifeboat.

We're stronger together. Just knowing that helps.

Bach,
What PapaC wrote here, I think it is incredibly special and I echo what he said.  I also tend to think of everyone here when I am summoning up the need for support - although in my imagination we are all in a lovely leafy garden together. 

Just wanted to also add that I am very glad that you and everyone is here. 

Hope  :)

Hope, I love the thought of us together in a lovely leafy garden.  I'll keep that comforting image with me.  :hug: if it's okay.

My brother and nephew are here from overseas visiting my mother, and I've been able to visit with them without seeing her (I set the heck out of that boundary), but I still can't escape her evil.  She doesn't like that my brother and I are close, so she's been trying to drive a wedge between us by lying to him about me, and by inappropriately trying to involve him in a bit of business that should be between me and her only.  In the scheme of how I have handled things like this in the past, I am handling this very well and not doing stupid things that would make it worse, but it's weighing very heavily on me.  That's a polite way of saying that I'm depressed to the point of being able to do hardly anything, and my intrusive thoughts are jumping back and forth between "I want to just (*^%^&%*^& die" and "Why can't she just (*&%^&%^*(& die?"  It hurts so much.

I've got a lot to say about this, especially about how fed up and outraged I am with her lying and being a horrible person and getting away with it by screwing with my mind, but I can't right now because  :aaauuugh:  :doh:  :blink:  :stars:  :'(

That's tough. I am so sorry that your mother is able to work her mischief, but I am glad you have at least been able to see your brother and nephew without her. I hope your brother is able to see her machinations for what they are.

It is really, really hard work to handle this kind of thing and I congratulate you for being strong enough to keep your wits about you as you navigate the latest grimness.

 :hug:

 :hug:

I'm so sorry Bach. They play such mind games on us. I'm really proud of you though for seeing the depression and thoughts as direct reactions to her behaviors and not as something about you. Those reactions happen after any form of contact with them. Just remember in the coming days that there have been triggers and what those tend to do.  :hug: 

NK, thank you :hug:  :hug:  Fortunately, my brother doesn't fall for it.  He knows enough not to believe the crazy things she tells him about me, and I spoke with him today and made sure we are on the same page regarding his total non-involvement in the business matter.  So I feel good about that part of it, at least.

Armee, that is such a great reminder, exactly the one I need, especially because I know there's drama coming regarding said business matter.  Particularly distressing is that I don't know WHEN the drama is coming.  I'm debating whether there's anything I can do to take control of that situation, but man things are dumb and complicated and confusing when you're dealing with crazy old sociopath.  Anyway, thank you for that.  I might paste it to my clipboard. Thanks for the hugs, too  :hug:  :hug:

 :hug:

I recently saw this on Facebook:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53378552663_3b76f0105f_b.jpg

If I ever need a living illustration of this, all I have to do is review my text message history with my mother.

Ain't that the truth!

Something I've noticed:  I always feel like people will think I'm insincere and that I'm pandering to them if I express gratitude or love.  I guess I must have had to really kiss my mothers #$% when she did anything nice for me.

love and hugs, bach :hug:

 :hug:

 :hug:  :hug: to you, too, san and Hope.

Last week when My Person was travelling, I got sick, and in looking back I wonder whether it wasn't a sort of self-inflicted sickness.  I didn't consciously do anything to make myself sick, but I realise now that I wanted a nice long break from everything, from all obligations, real or imagined, to myself or to anyone else, and I can't do that without being sick.  So I did some weird little things to mess myself up.  Timed some activities wrong. Indulged both sides of my eating disorder a little bit.  Messed around a touch with pain meds.  Nothing big, nothing serious, but sufficient to mess me up just enough to justify my lying on the couch watching TV all day and ignoring everything I'd planned to do to have a healthy functional week I could feel good about when My Person came home.  Heaven help me, I enjoyed it, at least up to a point.  Probably not as much as it seems from the perspective of now working to get myself back into the rhythm of my "normal" life.  I've been holding it together well even though I'm not really okay.  I mean, I AM okay, or I'll BE okay, I'm not going to act out in any horribly self-destructive way like I might have when I was younger, but the thing is, I'm just so tired.  I'm tired of struggling through my life, negotiating all my broken mechanisms and miswired circuits.  All those sparking things.  I'm tired of feeling like I should be further along, like I should be able to actually LIVE my life and not just cope.  I want to feel some joy, dang it.  Or at least some contentment.  The relentless grind of self-improvement, well, there's nothing else, really, and no way to be excused from it, but shouldn't it all at least hurt a little less by now?

Quote from: Bach on December 12, 2023, 10:02:17 PM...but the thing is, I'm just so tired.  I'm tired of struggling through my life, negotiating all my broken mechanisms and miswired circuits.  All those sparking things.  I'm tired of feeling like I should be further along, like I should be able to actually LIVE my life and not just cope.  I want to feel some joy, dang it.  Or at least some contentment.  The relentless grind of self-improvement, well, there's nothing else, really, and no way to be excused from it, but shouldn't it all at least hurt a little less by now?

I really resonate with this part of your post!

Once I started my healing journey approx 25 years ago I don't recall ever having to do much to get sick so that I could have a rest. My body did that all on its own. If my body could have used words, I think it would have said "BB still doesn't get it! She doesn't understand that she needs a break to recuperate and she needs this break regularly, so I'm going to have to arrange it for her! Ear-ache, slight temperature, general weakness, tiredness should be enough to get her into bed for a few days. Oops, unfortunately not. Then it's going to have to be a full-blown cold and a bit of a higher temperature in addition to ear-ache etc. and then she'll be flat out in bed for 2 weeks." It's taken a long time but idk exactly when - in the past year or two - I have EFs where I feel incapable of doing normal stuff and I lie around a lot and do crosswords or read and just sleep or else watch cute animal youtube stuff and it's sort of OK. I can sort of allow myself to do this w/o too much haranguing of self. It's still not easy but I'm grateful that at least I've got to the point where I might feel a bit or much emotionally messed up (the EF) w/o needing to feel awful physically as well in order to allow myself a break.

I hope you get to a point where it's OK to rest and even OK to enjoy having a rest (of a few days or a week or... - not just a couple of hours!) w/o needing to self-inflict.  :hug:

Quote from: Bach on December 12, 2023, 10:02:17 PMNothing big, nothing serious, but sufficient to mess me up just enough to justify my lying on the couch watching TV all day and ignoring everything I'd planned to do to have a healthy functional week I could feel good about when My Person came home.  Heaven help me, I enjoyed it, at least up to a point.

It does not sound to me like you had external obligations you were shirking by lying on the couch all week. I wonder why you don't feel good about doing something you enjoyed and clearly needed. Maybe you would have enjoyed it even more if you had not made your plans for the healthy, functional week. I hope this does not come across preachy or critical because I well understand the desire to do xyz and the feeling that only illness will be a suitable excuse. My T is always on at me to be kinder to myself. And if she read your post, I think she would have asked you what is wrong with giving yourself a week of vegetating on the couch watching TV? There are always more productive things we could be doing, but actually they are not necessarily what we need in the moment. I also wonder whether, had you permitted yourself to make no plans, you might have felt refreshed after a couple of days of vegetating and ended up doing some of the healthy things anyway.

I think you spent your time doing what you actually needed to do during a period that you knew would be stressful because you were left on your own. I am proud of you for doing that. I think you did a good thing. I am sorry that part of you felt the need to make you act out a little to achieve it and I am sorry that you are now not feeling all that good about it. Looking after yourself is a good thing. You are important and you matter and you are worth it.

 :hug:

I'm having such a hard time right now.  I can't anything.

 :hug:

 :hug:

I hope things get a bit easier for you soon.  :hug:

right beside you bach with love and a gentle hug :hug:

This journal, proof that I was falling to pieces even before the two big floods.  Really, I suppose I've spent my whole life falling to pieces, simultaneously scrambling to pick those pieces up and put them back together in an eternally frustrating and fruitless attempt to make myself whole.  I've gone through some better times when more pieces were in place, when either there were fewer pieces falling, or the pieces weren't falling so fast, or they weren't careening around as much, or I was able to pick them up and put them back more quickly and easily or...Okay, I've stretched this metaphor until it's screaming, you get the idea.  Now there are so many pieces and so little me that I don't know if I can ever come back. 

 :grouphug:

Breaking into little pieces is part of rebuilding. Feels scary as heck though.  :hug:

I'm sorry you are so shattered right now.  :hug:

i agree w/ armee, bach. hang tough, ok? as long as you still have some pieces, you've got at least a bit of a foundation on which to build.  this stuff is crappy as all get out at times.  right with you, tho.  love and hugs :hug:

This may sound glib, and I don't mean it to be, but kaleidoscopes are beautiful, you know. Even if you are in that many pieces. we still love and appreciate you.

 :grouphug:

 :grouphug:

Bach,

The floods you've endured are huge events. HUGE events. I once had a leaky patio cover that ruined the carpet in one room of my house. That's it. It cost a couple thousand to get the walls dried and the carpets replaced in ONE room and I was a mess for months. What you've been through is a real trauma that would distress anyone, even a person without CPTSD. But you have a history of dealing with trauma, so the added stress of a serious problem: TWO flooded homes in one year, means that you have every right to feel like you're falling to pieces. I would think you were a narcissist if this didn't eat at you with this much upset. I probably wouldn't be handling it even as well as you are if my flood had been worse than it was.

Logically, we know, the flood damage will eventually be fixed and the whole ugly incident will become part of the past.

Meanwhile, I hope you can feel the love from your friends here on the forum and are able to take some loving care for yourself now, knowing that not many of us could go through what's happened in your home with this year's weather any easier than you are.

You are loved, my friend.

Thank you, friends, for being here, for reading and replying and offering your love and support. I'm trying not to wallow in my pain and angst but also trying not to negate it with apologies or false positivity. I'm a mess. I am frustrated and suppressed and afraid and angry, and the only thing I know how to do with those feelings is turn them inward, into shame and despair and  depression. Make excuses. Fawn. Grovel. Hate myself. Take blame for I don't even know what. For having feelings, maybe? For taking up space and breathing air? GOD I HATE THIS. I feel like breaking things.

Oh man. I kicked my garbage bin hard the other day. Sure wish I could stand there with you and throw plates madly until we laughed and cried.  :grouphug:

Add me to the breaking things party. My boxing coach is going to GET IT tomorrow morning.

 :grouphug:

Bach, Here's a big hug:  :bighug:  I hope you can feel it, because I don't send these lightly. I mean it when I send it.

Let's all break things.  And hug!  :grouphug: Thank you, friends  :grouphug:

Meanwhile, I'm over here trying to find a self.  I don't know if I ever had one.  I may have sort of had one when I was younger, but there's really almost nothing now that I can put my finger on as being ME.  The other day someone asked me what my hobbies were and I couldn't answer.  I am empty.  There is NOTHING in here. 

Bach, you are not alone.  I can only say I am also trying to define my Self.  I started a journal entry a few weeks ago called, "Who is [Name]?"  It didn't feel very helpful or satisfying when I was done.  Wish I had more wisdom or encouragement to offer.

Count me in for the breaking party.  :yes:
Maybe through destruction, creation can emerge.

I'm like a child or a prey animal, scared of everything, all the time. It's getting worse, not better. For a long time it was getting better but I feel like those days are gone.

I'm sorry that's the way things are for you atm.  :hug:  :hug: if helpful Bach, otherwise ignore.

That's horrid. I hope you have somewhere cozy and safe, even if it's just bed, where you can spend at least some time to regroup.


 :hug:

Yesterday in therapy I had a pretty intense session talking about some things regarding my mother and my brother.  After the session I felt good, like I'd freed myself from something.  But today I am very low and I don't have that feeling anymore.  I really want to write what I talked about but now the words won't come out. 

  :hug:

Bach, I have been there myself. My thoughts are with you.

I've been there too Bach.  :hug: