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I've been writing songs for over 20 years, but I almost never share them with anyone. Last year, I shared a song I wrote at a women's centre group therapy meeting for survivors of child abuse. The other members of the group therapy were moved by the song, but only 6 people at the women's centre and one of my best friends have ever heard it. These are the lyrics to the song. I hope it finds someone who needs it.

Former Daddy's Girl

I was a daddy's girl
He pushed me on my swing
Told me about astronauts
And listened to me sing

I was a daddy's girl
His dream was to fly
And I wanted to watch him
Soar across the sky

He told me that he loved me
And I always believed it
He told me when he hurt me
He couldn't control it
I'd never let another man treat me that way
But I was a daddy's girl
So I looked the other way

He said the reason why
He threw me on the floor
Was just the brandy, no
He wouldn't do it anymore

I'd climb the tree out back
Look up at all the planes
For college I flew five hours
To be somewhere I was safe

He told me that he loved me
And I always believed it
He told me when he hurt me
He couldn't control it
I'd never let another man treat me that way
But I was a daddy's girl
So I looked the other way

He finally got his plane
I never watched him fly
In all those years he'd done too many things to make me cry
And in that final year
Before I left for good
I let go of the man I thought I knew in my childhood

He told me that he loved me
And I didn't believe it
I knew that when he hurt me
He could've controlled it
I'll never let any man treat me that way
Now I'm not a daddy's girl
I won't look the other way

Now I'm not a daddy's girl
I won't look the other way

I finally have found family who love me and who I truly love. I thought this would make everything better, but it doesn't. All of my found family have biological family and I never will. There is a special kind of deep seated wound that can truly never heal when it's too dangerous to have any biological family. Every single blood family member I have is either a violent monster or an enabler of a violent monster. I don't want to get married or have kids (I'm autistic, aromantic, and asexual), so I will effectively never have any family.

I always wanted a family so badly that I tried to force myself to be someone I'm not and almost got married and had kids because I wanted a family so badly. But that was never what I wanted and I was so miserable that I needed to leave the relationship. The pain of not having parents, siblings, or anyone is so overwhelming that I feel like I can't bear it. I wish I could be part of a family through my friends but none of them live in my city, and even of they did, I would never be on the same level as their family and partners.

I'm lucky to have my dog but she'll be gone in about 5 years because she's getting older. I wish I had a family.

Hi all    I was extremely sick last weekend when I needed to prepare for a big upcoming exam. I ended up getting the medicine and rest I needed to heal, but I'm very behind in my exam preparation. I still have enough time to do decently well on the exam, but my inner child is terrified. She's convinced that it's her fault for getting sick and that she's going to be screamed at/spanked/punished for falling behind with homework.

I've been reassuring her for days that she's not in trouble, that I'll protect her, and that no one will hurt her, but she's still afraid. I've tried focusing her attention on all her wonderful qualities and all the things that make her feel safe. For some reason, nothing seems to work. She's convinced that someone (not me) is going to spank her and yell at her. She has an intense phobia of spanking as being harmed this way was such a huge and long-term part of her life; it's baked into her understanding of how the world works. No matter what I do to comfort and reassure her, the fear sticks.

Any advice would be much appreciated. 

I am so incredibly angry that so many people did so many despicable things to my body for so many years. It started when I was at most 3, and the last time it happened I was 30. In my entire life, there was only one person who ever touched me who saw me as a full human being and had genuinely positive feelings toward me. And it was men AND women. As a kid and as an adult, it was men AND women. We need to talk about how anyone can do this of any gender. I've spent a lifetime being sad and I'm ready to be angry.

Last night I was studying psychology, and I learned the definition of human trafficking. For something to be human trafficking, there needs to be an act, a means, and a purpose, with the intention of profit. For years, I haven't had language to describe what my family did to me for about a year of my life. Now I know the right term for it was human trafficking. The act: transfer. I was transferred from one family member to another. The means: deception and abuse of vulnerability: I was deceived into thinking they would help me get a real job and I had almost no money, resources, or other support system. The purpose: forced labour. After I was transferred, I had to labour for no pay. I wasn't allowed to say no and I was physically prohibited from leaving the premises. And by forcing me to work for no pay, they made a huge profit. My family human trafficked me. In suburban North America. For a year. And I had no idea what was happening.

My wrists were never bound with rope. My mouth was never sealed with duct tape. I was bound mentally. With brainwashing, drugs, and alcohol. I was so abused that I thought I was lucky that they were protecting me from homelessness. I was so abused that I thought I was a shameful failure for not having a real job. I even had an online therapist at the time and I described everything that was happening to her. She made excuses for the abuse because the abusers were my family. I was paying her over a hundred dollars a week to be told that everything was actually fine and that I was lucky to have somewhere to live "for free."

From the time I was 4 years old, I never had a place to live for free. I was expected to work, and manage emotions, and soothe egos, and solve marital disputes, and act as a free therapist. From the age of 4. I was human trafficked as an adult so I was doing 20 times as much labour for free every day. I didn't have a place to live for free. I was just working for no pay so I could never leave.

It feels surreal. Like I'm describing someone else's life even though it's mine. I know that I'm smart, and funny, and a whole complex person with friends, and goals, and good memories of times spent with good people. Memories of being seen and treated as fully human. And luckily I survived long enough to escape. Nowadays I'm safe and free and I spend every day of my life with people who love me and treat me as a fully human equal. But I'm also a survivor of human trafficking. That's not my identity, it's just a part of my story. But I am a full, complex, intelligent, brave, loving woman who is also a survivor of human trafficking. Committed by my family. In North America.

I know I need to work on coming to grips with the fact that human trafficking is just part of a person's story, not their whole story or their whole identity. And I think our culture needs to work on that too.

TW: NPD family, life endangerment, violence induced disability, sensory loss, severe flashbacks, failing healthcare & social service systems

Hi all,

I first got my diagnosis in January 2016, when I first joined this forum. Over the past 7 years, despite seeking help, paying for help, and reading a bunch of books, violence and abuse has just kept happening again and again in my adult life. In 2022, my life was in immediate danger more times than my frazzled brain can remember anymore. Just like all those years ago when I first joined OOTS, my body is newly out of being trapped in violence from family and I'm back to no contact. 7 years ago, I couldn't find a psychologist in my region qualified to help me. With 7 more years of life endangerment and resulting permanent physical disabilities, my body and mind are more destroyed than ever before.

I think my saving grace in all of this is that I've finally learned that my family are a pack of extremely dangerous narcissists who are completely incapable of change, and that I will literally perish if I don't stay no contact with them for the rest of my life. The biggest challenge mentally now is coping with all of the flashbacks of almost dying again and again over the past year - especially now that my disabled body now serves as a constant reminder of the abuse.

Now that I've been free for 3 months and am making friends I care about again, I've found a reason to want to keep living. But if I ever slow down working and socializing enough that I, even for a few minutes, stop being completely dissociated, I start to lose the will to live again. I've completely lost faith in the medical and social service systems in my region. I've been begging for help for the past 16 years, since the first time I called child protection on my parents when I was 14, and help just never came. The most real help I've ever gotten was from watching informational (ie. not therapy) tiktoks from psychologists and social workers in the United States, from connecting with social workers online who are in other regions of my country, and from a poster on the wall in a women's shelter that explained what the cycle of violence is and how it works. I don't have the money for a psychologist right now, and the types of therapy I'm interested in trying (IFS, EMDR, Somatic, Coherence) are barely available in my region.

Back in the good old days, I used to have flashbacks 5-10 times a day and still be able to function. Now, if my mind is not constantly, CONSTANTLY, busy, I have a visceral flashback to a violent, often near death, experience every 30-60 seconds. I have no idea what to do. It helps to just communicate with other people who may actually understand what I went through, instead of with practitioners and crisis line operators who have never in their lives heard of someone's blood family doing anything like this. My sessions with any provider usually just result in me answering loads of unnecessary and inappropriate questions, satiating the practitioner's curiosity, and not being given any sort of recommendations of what to do except toxic positivity, grounding tools that used to work and don't anymore, or requests for me to give my consent to be anonymously mentioned in a textbook or have my sessions filmed.

This is pretty much the only place I've ever been where I don't feel like a freak, an alien, or as though I have an otherworldly, incomprehensible life. Even if you don't have any practical tips, thanks for reading and thanks for just being here. But if you do have ideas or suggestions of things that have helped you, please feel free to share them. I will try pretty much anything at this point. BUT please keep in mind, I only have 2 remaining senses (sight and hearing). I can no longer smell, taste, or feel my body or skin, so techniques based on any of those 3 senses only give me more flashbacks. I also do not consent to being asked or answering questions as to how my disabilities happened.

Thank you all. 

At the end of January, I started therapy with a new therapist who does ISTDP therapy. She also does CBT and DBT, and I can attest to this because her DBT based group therapy is great. However, in our individual sessions, we do visualization exercises that I don't find helpful because they're quite repetitive and formulaic. I'm thinking about asking her if we could stick to DBT based therapy in our private sessions, but I'm worried she will react badly.

Have you heard of ISTDP therapy before, or know the books of Jon Frederickson? If you have, what are your thoughts on it? Do you think it's worth it to continue with this therapist if she practices this type of therapy?

I recently reached a point in my career where I missed doing good work that helps people. In university, I trained to be a teacher and I worked in that field for a few years and really enjoyed it. But I soon realized that if I ever want to have children and own a home, teaching would not bring in enough money to do so. So I decided to leave teaching, and for the last few months I`ve worked at the head office of a clothing retailer. The money was much better but I hated the feeling of participating in selling overpriced products to the few who could afford them. And the job didn`t provide health insurance.

For almost 50 years, my family has owned a business selling home health care products at affordable prices to people from all walks of life. Their business model is anchored in the belief that because we`re a family business, we treat all our employees like family. There are employees who are not family members who have been with the company for 40 years and are very happy there. The pay is more than fair and the company provides health insurance.

Last week, I reached a point in my job at the clothing retailer where my heart just wasn`t in it anymore. The job was starting to make me feel very depressed so I quit. I missed having a job where I felt like I was doing something that really helped people. So I decided to reach out to my mother, who I haven`t spoken to for two and a half years, and ask her for a job.

At first, I wrote her a letter explaining the situation and maintaining that I did not regret taking the time and space away from her to heal from my childhood trauma. In her reply, she apologized for being an abusive parent and for any harm she caused me in the past. That was the first time she had ever acknowledged any wrong doing on her part or apologized for how she treated me during my childhood. She also offered me a job which I have taken.

The job makes me feel secure because I`m now doing ethical work that helps people for a fair wage - a job experience I`ve never had before. My relationship with my mother is better than ever because I`m able to be emotionally authentic with her without fearing I`ll get shut down or invalidated, and the fact that we mostly talk about work related projects creates a type of safe distance. I  feel like I should be jumping for joy at how things have turned out, but because of my past experiences with my mother, I`m mostly just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts or advice about reconnecting with a parent who was abusive in childhood. Right now, I`m under the impression that my mother really has changed after not being able to speak with me for two and a half years, but I`m worried that I`ll eventually be disappointed.

This Tuesday I celebrated one month of sobriety. The day after, I had a very strong impulse to get drunk, which I'm still struggling with today. It's like my mind thinks: You've been sober for a month! You deserve a drink, you haven't had one in so long! But I know that if I have one drink, it will turn into downing a bottle of red wine as fast as I can... Any advice?

I have found so much support from everyone on OOTS so far, that I am absolutely terrified to post this because one of the things I'm hyper vigilant about is trying to protect myself from homophobia. I feel like I'm jeopardizing the support and safety I've gotten here in the last week, but I've decided to take this risk to try to get my ICr to shut up about all the horrible things that will happen to me if I tell people on OOTS that I'm a lesbian. If supporting the LGBT community is not your thing, please don't reply to this thread. If you are an ally or LGBT person yourself, I would really appreciate a reply that helps prove my ICr wrong.

I am intensely proud of the fact that I am a lesbian. The deepest, truest part of me knows that I've liked girls and not boys for my entire life. Some of my earliest memories are watching Disney movies and obsessing about how beautiful Jasmine, Esmerelda, and Ariel are. I used to think that this was because I wanted to be pretty like them, but my heart of hearts knows that I was attracted to them. I came out of the closet when I was 17 (as soon as I graduated from Catholic high school) and everyone in my life was much more accepting than I thought they would be - even my abusers. For the next couple of years, my M occasionally tried to convince me that I should try dating boys, but eventually she accepted me for who I am. Today, I am out to everyone I know and meet, and I speak and write about LGBT issues a lot in my work and personal life. All of my friends are 100% supportive.

My trauma around being gay mostly comes from the messages my parents sent me about gay people when I was a child - before they had any idea that I'm a lesbian. When I was very young, they never told me that gay people existed because they thought it was an inappropriate, far too "sexual" thing for small children to know. (I've watched hundreds of YouTube videos where little kids are interviewed that disprove this.) When I eventually found out about gay people from kids at school, gays and lesbians were always referred to in an insulting way. Throughout most of elementary school, bullies called me a lesbian (even though at the time I had no idea I was one) because I was always confident, forthright, and never liked boys. When I told my parents what the bullies said, their consistent response was "Well you're not one, so the bullies are wrong. Just ignore them." It NEVER occurred to them that they may be parenting a gay child, and they felt very comfortable expressing their homophobia in front of my brother and I until I came out. That's a major reason why I've become such a vocal activist as an adult.

Because my C-PTSD obviously makes me feel that everything is still as dangerous as when I was a kid, my emotions have not caught up with the fact that our current time is (while not perfect) a much safer, more open world for gay people than the one I grew up in. I constantly find myself terrified that as soon as I step out of the safe, liberal bounds of a university Humanities department, I'm at risk of being subject to homophobic attacks. I have been subject to several incidents of verbal violence from homophobic strangers, but nothing as bad as the kind of assault by ICr catastrophises.

Last year, I was retraumatized by one of my university professors - who herself is a woman in a relationship with another woman - when she (very covertly and manipulatively) implied that I was stupid for thinking that people are born gay. Because she is a high powered academic who has read more philosophy than I probably will in my entire life, for the past year my ICr has been telling me that I'm incredibly stupid because I believe that there is at least some biological component to sexuality. Ever since I came out, my ICr has been trying to convince me that the reason I'm a lesbian is because I was abused by my mother as a child, and never received the type of nurturing I needed from a woman, so I yearn for that in adult relationships. My ICr says that because I'm close to my dad, my need for emotional closeness with a man was fulfilled, and that's what made me a lesbian.

Logically, I know that pop psychology like that can be twisted around in all sorts of ways to prove what "made" someone gay. You could just as easily argue that a lesbian with a male abuser learned that men are dangerous and that's what made her gay. Because of my C-PTSD, I struggle a lot with trusting that my own inner voice is right, in spite of disagreements that authority figures may have with me. A huge part of me still believes that if an authority figure tells me I'm wrong, I am wrong, no questions asked.

The year I came out and started post-secondary school was also the year that I consciously dissociated from my childhood self. I have been able to be a confident lesbian adult because I've trained my mind to believe that I am a completely different person from who I was in childhood. But like all of you well know, memories of childhood trauma can't actually just be erased. So I've ended up being an incredibly out and proud lesbian activist, whose ICr is drenched in internalized homophobia. This is seriously messing with my mind, and I just want my ICr to shut up!

When I'm at my most extreme level of depression, or when I'm having an extreme panic attack, I get something that I call the sinking feeling. It's a physical sensation that overcomes my entire body, and it feels like all of my limbs and my torso are incredibly heavy and sinking deeper and deeper under water. It usually starts in my chest and then spreads quickly to my limbs. None of the doctors I've spoken to have heard of this before. Does anyone else get this?

Wow. I can't believe I finally found out my real diagnosis of C-PTSD from my psychologist this past Monday, and now I'm writing my first message on an online support group - something I've never done before but have thought about countless times. I feel so hopeful to know that there are others out there with C-PTSD, and to finally be able to put a name to it. But at the same time, C-PTSD feels like something so huge, and debilitating, and so deeply engrained into my identity that I'll never be able to heal. I really hope I'm wrong about that last part... I feel weird typing parts of my history onto the internet, but I guess this is what you're supposed to do here, so here goes nothing. I'm 22 years old, and I've been seeing psychologists off and on since I was 9 years old. No professional was ever able to give me a clear diagnosis that they could match to a textbook (since C-PTSD still isn't in the DSM... Yay us...), so I've been told I have symptoms of a whole gambit of things like Major Depressive Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder (which I found out I don't have when I was assessed this September).

From the time I was a toddler until I was 17, my mother was intensely physically, verbally, and emotionally abusive towards me. I never felt safe at home, I never healthily bonded to her as an attachment figure, and this has led to years of self-hatred and psychological disturbance. I had an eating disorder (extreme calorie restriction - just a wee bit safer than anorexia) from ages 12-19, and it was a serious battle to overcome, but I'm a lot better now. I still hate my body most of the time, but at least I don't engage in the self harming behaviors of near starvation and over-exercise anymore. The one consistently supportive person I had in my childhood, and still have in my life today, is my dad. He and my mom are still married, which makes things really complicated, but he's always been there to take care of me after one of her abusive episodes. My younger brother also suffered psychologically because of our childhood, but his problems have largely manifested as rage issues. He and I never had a good relationship, and ever since he grew bigger than me (a LOT bigger), he physically abused me on several occasions as well. Luckily, I was able to move out and go to university when I was 19. I've been living by myself ever since - which I thought would solve my problems because I'm physically safe now - but I'm learning that that's not how C-PTSD works.

A year ago, I started drinking and smoking for the first time to numb the pain, and over the past year I've become an alcoholic. I was hospitalized for 3 near suicide attempts in 2015, and my suicidal ideation is taking a serious toll on my father and the group of really close friends I'm so lucky to have. I started seeing a great psychologist in September, and my family doctor put me on Prozac in July, but nothing seems to be enough to help me. Because 2015 was such a bad year for me, I wanted to start 2016 with the best possible beginning. Just before the new year, I sent my mom a letter formally ending our relationship. That helped me feel a lot better and safer for a few days, but just like with moving out, it wasn't the cure-all I was hoping for. Now I feel more distressed than ever because I've created the life for myself that the terrified 9 year old me always dreamed of, but my C-PTSD symptoms still won't go away. I have so many good things in my life - my own apartment, my own dog, great friends, my dad, my psychologist, freedom from my mom, a job I love (when I'm feeling healthy)  - but I never believe that I have good things because I'm a good person. I always, deep down, think that I'm a horrible person who has manipulated everyone into thinking I'm good so I can get what I want. And that's the feeling that makes me want to end my life.

I almost ended up in the hospital again last night, and I know I have to take more responsibility for my well being than I have in the past, so I thought joining your group couldn't hurt. I hope your group is a place where I can learn self-care strategies from other survivors, and maybe get some more motivation to press on with treatment. I don't know how much help I could be to other people, but I'd be glad to share some strategies that have helped me in the past. To anyone reading this, thank you for taking the time to read my story. And if there's anyone reading this who is an abuse survivor and who hasn't reached out for any kind of help yet, do it today. You're worth fighting for.