Messages

I'm so sorry to hear about Parkinson's and your sister slipping into the influences of your family again. Parkinson's is so difficult! (our landlord and friend developed it, it's certainly something that requires support and can also cloud the mind). It sounds like we are both dealing with grief - only in very different ways. If you have more about it to write, please do; I can relate to it a lot and I'd love to be of any support or presence that I can; all I've really learned is that grief is a wild ocean tide that couldn't possibly be controlled....you just anchor yourself in and hope for the best when it hits you and then eventually passes, only to return again....having people present to understand and support is the only salve to the pain, people who don't want to solve, minimize, or take away from it. People who get it.

Hello dreamriver - boy have I been out of the loop! Just as a quick explanation (not an excuse) I was thrown off-track by series of events that came with the Covid crisis; my (grown) daughter came to live with us for a month - lots of EFs there. Then I was sick for literally the whole month of June, following a core-shaking subject in my therapy.  Since then I have been on the slow recovery, physically and emotionally.  So I missed responding to your (deamriver) very thoughtful response to me! I'm very moved by it - thanks!

I am saddened to hear what you have been going through, and glad to see your steps forward towards protecting yourself from FOO.

I also have not been getting notifications of posts, but found the right box to check, I hope, at the bottom of this page under Attachment and other options.  I hope that will help me to keep connected, which I really believe I will benefit from.  I am probably also struggling with the familiar reaction in me to distance myself, from everyone, when I am not doing well - grounded in defensive mechanisms learned early on in my life.  Sorry again, for the long gap in responding.  I will be glad to hear more from you 

Kizzie, yes, just posting my comment to dreamriver's post already affected me positively.  Even more than talks with my therapist (who supports me very strongly), since writing about my S yesterday, I experienced a great uplifting of my feelings about myself as a whole.  I am very grateful for this opportunity to be a part of this forum.  It is a valuable opportunity for me to be confirmed by others who know and understand these subjects.  Thanks!

Hello dreamriver,
I was looking through OOTS after a long time away, searching for something I could relate to, when I came upon your post.  I live in Germany and my FOO is in the states, for a good reason - the distance is very helpful for me.  I come from a large family, 11 children, and I am towards the end of the line.  Family has been the main part of my identity while growing up, with the family secrets keeping us bound together.  As a young adult I began to distance myself, sensing that there was something harmful in my contact with FOO members.  Finally I and my family (husband and three children) moved to Germany and it has been a relief to be so far away. 

There is one person from FOO, my younger sister, with whom I have renewed the close relationship we had in our childhood.  She is the only one who I have been able to tell about the CPTSD and the traumatic memories I have uncovered in the past ten years of therapy.  This has been a great comfort and encouragement to me and to her. 

About the time I began therapy, this sister was diagnosed with Parkinsons, suffering at the same time from symptoms of CPTSD:  In the past few years I have begun NC with all except this one sister.  Now, with the situation with Covid, I am faced with the very real situation of losing her, since she is unable to care for herself and since last year lives in a home for the elderly (though she is still in her early 60's).  Covid has in fact already been diagnosed in a few of the residents there. 

Besides the concern of losing this sister through illness, I see her drawing closer to the other FOO for support, which is understandable in this time of some crisis.  Now she wants to agree with their view of our family, and my telling of the truth, at the same time.  In this way I have the feeling that I may lose her and the support I felt we gave one another. 

In some ways I suppose I have already taken steps to remove/distance myself, and let go of the relationship I had there.  It feels like another area of loss, to add to the others that the CT has caused in my life.  I give myself more chance to grieve -

Wow - Brave is a wonderful word!  I think some of my parts are very brave - and I am proud of them.  Sometimes courageous responses come out of me that surprise me and may even worry me, because they are rather unknown to me so far in my life.  But I like it, I like to find that there is some part(s) in me that won't be afraid to say the truth, on my behalf!

I feel drawn to this God-talk, but not from an orthodox formal religious viewpoint. Except -- I seem to be more spiritual, in a broad sense, than many. This is due to many influences, but suffice to say it also represents a sea change from where I used to be.

The background of my childhood cptsd was not only abuse within the FOO, but in equal and sometimes greater forms of abuse from awful people who were part of a school run by a religious denomination. For that reason alone, I developed an intense fear of what they were up to, to where I couldn't handle the religious part at all. Many words associated with religion, including God, became trigger words guaranteed to produce intense shame, guilt, grief, and tons of mostly suppressed anger that roiled my insides and can still cause me to tense up.

The most surprising part of my adult years, however, has been an incredible attitude shift in how I've come to regard this. I seem to have had a part of me (perhaps it is of everyone) that carried different notions about the divine factor in play. Split up the word divine and one could imagine it as "dive in." In other words, I wanted to (mostly subconsciously, it seems)  get behind the essence, not the disguises, of what religion is capable of saying; but it doesn't due to lots of factors (like abusers being attracted to its power).

Diving in is what I've done, and my discoveries have included the notion that I did have something that seems to have survived intense abuse  that draws me not to a prescribed religion, but rather an open philosophy that can include parts of many religious outlooks, including what God is and/or isn't.

While much of the dogma remains triggering for me, I've developed my own vocabulary in some respects (e.g. I use Great Spirit instead of God). It doesn't matter, as any divine being wouldn't need a name anyway.

I'll stop, as it's actually a long story. I just felt an impulse to try to share a tiny bit of where I was/am with the vastness of how these matters developed for me. Plus the sea change I describe happened after I started my current therapy and during my time on this forum. Being that in my case I was badly abused and traumatised by those wearing the cloak of religious authority, this surprises, even shocks me.

I guess that's all I'm really saying -- to be open to surprises one might never expect on this long and winding trail we're traveling, looking for ways past the hazards that have blocked our path to this point.

So yes, I've come to some discernment regarding these matters, with more questions than solid answers. But maybe that's the way it's supposed to work?

woodsgnome,
I also think it is important to find new acceptable words for topics, like "God" that are loaded with negative or hurtful feelings or experiences.  My hope is that in avoiding connections with abusive situations from my past, I will be able to find new ways to recapture the faith, hope and love that used to have fuller influence in my life.  As you say: "ways past the hazards that have blocked our path".

Hi JRose, pleased to meet you.

hi Snowdrop, it's good to get to know some of the members here!

JRose,

I would be interested to know what experiences you have with talking about your relationship with God in Therapy.

A very big question! I am a Christian and my therapist is also a Christian, although there have been thoughts about God that we disagree on. I haven't talked a lot about God in therapy although I have some. God is a very important part of my life. Truthfully, I've been pretty angry at him for quite awhile now. When I do talk about him, it is pretty much the same as talking about any relationship. My therapist hears me and affirms what I am feeling.

Do you have specific questions or thoughts about this? If so, I'd be happy to hear and respond as I'm able.

notalone,

most of the time I feel like I don't know what to think about God.  I used to have lots of answers about how God helps us if we reach out to him, but after the past several years of searching and trying to understand my life, a lot of those answers seem hollow now.  Maybe in not trying to understand the hard things in my life anymore, I have let go of trying to understand God as well. 

Now I find myself trying almost from the start to decide what I believe about God.  I don't feel that I can depend on him in the same way that I used to.  But still I feel that the deeper trust I used to have in God was a great help for me and could be a great help for me now.  I just don't know if I can get back to that.

Notalone,

thanks for your encouraging words - it's so good to hear when others can relate to things I'm going through.  And it means a lot also that you take my story seriously - this doesn't happen very often when I try to relate some of my past to people that I know, except in situations like this, where there are people who know personally that these sorts of abuse really do exist.

I would be interested to know what experiences you have with talking about your relationship with God in Therapy.

[Trigger Warning!]

I am part of a very large family, five brothers and five sisters (the same mother and father).  I am one of the younger ones and grew up with two strong impressions about our family: pride of being a part of a large family, and a deep aching emptiness due to my early years of serious neglect.  The neglect could be seen as a result of the needs of so many children, because both my parents worked, and because of the financial crisis we were in during my early years.  But I can see now that it went beyond that, that I experienced no love, care or guidance from my parents, and grew up with a sense of being a burden for my older siblings who were put in charge of me and my younger sisters and two older brothers.

[/b]Trigger Warning!

(The neglect fit in with the broader purpose of the various forms of abuse pursued by my father.  At least some of my siblings, if not all, were victims along with myself of the repeated sexual abuse by my father.  The abuse came also from outside our home in what I suspect was organized ritual abuse and/or child sex trade.)

My personal memories of these things have only been uncovered by me in the past six years.  Before that I had and still have very few memories of my childhood.  I continue to struggle with accepting and believing these things, though two of my still surviving siblings have talked of these awful facts for many years.  But even though I have much evidence in my own life to substantiate this terrible history (as well as witnessing the brokenness in their lives of my brothers and sisters: psychological instability, serious illnesses, deaths and suicides) I still doubt myself even as I am writing this.

  It was my struggle with health problems that finally led me six years ago to begin to look into my childhood and reach out for trauma therapy.  In this time my husband and I went through very rocky times and only the willingness on both our parts to work hard at communicating, and our commitment to honesty with ourselves and with each other, has made it possible for us to still be together.  Still, I find marriage hugely challenging, though at the same time my relationship with my husband is the deepest bond I have ever experienced with anyone.  My relationship with my daughters is wonderful in many ways, but seems always to be in danger of a break-down.
Throughout my life, I feel that my greatest strength is what various therapist have observed in the past six years, that I have a personal connection with what I understand to be God. This has kept me stable and probably enabled me, together with my husband, to raise our three daughters without serious harm to any of us.

I am currently in the process of searching for a trauma therapist who can work with complex trauma at the level where I find myself now, of processing the new awareness I have about my life.  I continue to practice the methods I have learned about stabilization and leading a healthy life-style.  But I have an increasing need and desire (and hope) to build- up the parts of myself that were left behind all these years.  I am discovering more and more that there is so much more in me that wants to come alive, begin to have expression.  I the country where I live, in Germany, there is a growing crisis of a lack of well-trained trauma therapists to meet what seems to be an ever growing need here.  This means that my chances of getting good care probably depends on how much I am willing to pay for it myself.  I guess this is a crisis that many people around the world are facing, or do not even have the options that I do, to find effective therapy and be in a position to pay for it.  I guess I am pretty privileged after all.

In closing I will put in the chorus of a song that I wrote nine years ago, before I discovered the many things I know today. But it still applies for me today: 

Oh, I'm not givin' up - I'm not say'n it's over
I'm not thru, I won't STOP
I won't STOP - - no, no, no!