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Thank you. Hugs are always welcome when offered with kind intention 🙂

Why do I feel like a **** for writing this? Because she seemed to be this wonderful kind exciting person who actually cared. I really did adopt her and her family as my substitute family.

But it became impossible.

She's really suffering with what I'm 100% sure is CPTSD in some form, but the way it manifests itself means that she refuses to see negative things in case they break her, she refuses to see danger or bad intention in others even when I explain in detail that someone has hurt me or someone close, or her, or any of our kids.

I tried to only see good intention in her: in fact I could only see good intention. But all the good intentions in the world can still hurt and to be honest, I've felt like she is either blind and deaf to my cries for help in a very difficult and important situation, or she's completely uncaring about it, or worse, she's been vile on purpose.

Either way, it's time to protect my family.

Her bs has been going on 6 years. And other bs happened previous too.

I look back and see control and cruelty and neglect.

Grrrrrrr.

I wonder if you actually don't know how much you hurt me? I really do wonder.

I think you probably realise how angry I am with you. I let your inability to understand danger slide way too many times. I didn't let your inability to protect even your own children from danger slide, but you never listen. You waft around in a cloud of rainbow unicorn fairy dust flapping your broomstick and burying your head in a pile of other people's misery.

I'm sick of just being a sideline amongst your countless waifs and strays. I'm sick of having to stick up for your kids and my kids and my stepkids because of your Pollyanna enabling of a sweeping variety of nasty people you let into your life and therefore mine.

When I had to stick up for your eldest because your husband was treating her like a two year old when she was fifteen, instead of actually listening, you threatened to end our friendship. You and your husband have neglected and abused your kids albeit unwittingly, yet you preach like it's me in the wrong for pointing it out in a gentle and supportive way.

I'm not up for hanging out with someone who stays friends with paedophiles and chooses to believe them over witness accounts from myself and the kids. No. When are you going to stick up for your kids against your husband? Does he abuse you? An old mutual friend certainly thought he was nasty to you and I agree. If he's abusive I don't think you can see it because I have given you a thousand chances to speak out like I did to you when you refused to help me escape DV. Afterwards you basically told me you didn't believe me.

Is that why you passed on creepy messages from my diagnosed psychopath ex? You really are blind and deaf with perfect hearing and 20/20 vision to have behaved so disgustingly.

I fing loved you like a sister. You betrayed me over and over again and I kept letting it go because it's you and you're so lovely.

Thing is, you're lovely to ANYONE.

Our mutual friend who I went zero contact with used you as a conduit to hurt me and my family for 6 years.

SIX YEARS you pretended to be my friend so she could use you like a disgusting little flying monkey.

Well I'm writing this so I can drain the last drops of love for you out of my system. Wring them out in all their sorry, limp glory.

I can't help thinking of you as that happy cheerful person who I always forgave because we were supposed to be chosen family.

Well I choose to cut you off because you turned out to be just like my mother in so many ways.

No wonder most of your kids don't speak to you, and there was me like a divvy trying to see the positives from their childhoods. Sure, let's pretend nothing bad ever happened so we can waft round in fairy dust.

I hope you figure things out. I always said you only ever have good, kind, genuine intentions but even so, you can't love everyone. Some people need to be told to eff off because they're hurting you.

When you've figured out why I don't want people like you in my life and done a tonne of therapy, I welcome your reply.

 

I shouldn't have written that last one. I shouldn't have looked them up. It's cursed my attempt at getting any glimmer of a reasonable sleep pattern. Awake all night in a state of worry and insomnia. At least I didn't have nightmares but thinking about these C words (appropriate that so many of them actually have names starting with C). I'm so angry I could scream, so sad I could cry but my stupid meds won't let me. Aaaaaggghhhhhhh!

Maybe these particular people aren't awful people but I am going to trust my instincts that I shouldn't trust them or contact them. Better safe than barrage of DARVO.

Letter to cousin C

Hey C,

I tried and tried to message you and I on Facebook. Since my account was under a pseudonym with no photos, I never did know if you ever opened my numerous messages. I would have told you that I was so sorry for what I replied on the phone, that I didn't want to be friends. I did want to know you, but my ex was poking me and prompting me what to say. He sexually, physically, emotionally, psychologically and financially abused me for years. He controlled every aspect of what I did, who I saw, what I wore, where I went. You and I were allies: he had to get you out of my life and he succeeded.

I don't know if you've been privy to my mother's cruelty against me. Aunty C and Aunty J certainly have so your mum and dad most likely have too.

No one ever bothered to ask for my side of the story.

I have been looking you up online for years now, every so often. Every time I do it my heart breaks a little bit more because I'll never be "good enough" to be a part of my mother's family. You have no idea what my life was like: none of you have. My mother was cruel in so many ways. She had severe untreated mental health problems which she denied. She wouldn't even come to counselling with me when I asked, to try to heal our relationship. Instead, she told me:

"You're the one with the problem, not me."

Everything I tried to do, she took from me. She lied and lied and lied and I have proof of her lies. I have nothing as a result. She took everything my grandmother wanted for me, for herself, and blamed me.

I am the proverbial black sheep.

I don't even know what I hope to achieve by writing this. I don't think I will be believed or listened to or understood by them but I hoped you were different. I honestly don't know. All I know is that I was never wanted, that my mother has successfully turned her entire family against me and so be it. So be it.

I don't even know if I hope I'm wrong.

Everyone always thought I was shy. I wasn't shy: I was terrified. My mother was unable to love me because she never wanted me. She tried: oh, she tried. But I think she's the family secret, isn't she? The mad one with all the money: get the daughter out of the picture and the vultures circle.

That's how I feel when I get stone cold responses from family members, or stone cold silence.

All I ever wanted was for my mother to love me. I never wanted any of your fing money. Aunty C is a cold hard woman. What she did at yours offering a deposit for a flat and then laughing and saying "You didn't think I'd give you any money did you, you junkie?" That was nasty. I was genuinely homeless, had been drug free for years and was pregnant. I just needed a home.

I hope you are different.

Why do I do this to myself? So every once in a while I will look up my cousins online. I don't even know if I miss them or not. I barely knew them growing up. The only reason my cousin got in touch with me (after only meeting her a couple of times during childhood) was because she needed some backup on something. Which is lovely because obviously she saw an ally in me, but not so much because it would have been nice to have been contacted just because we're family, no?

So I started getting to know her a bit.

My ex was very violent, controlling and abusive. I turned to my cousin when my mother made me homeless but I couldn't be fully honest because my abusive ex was present.

My ex manipulated me coercivity controlled me to stop speaking to her. After I escaped I tried and tried to get in touch, to no avail. They'd moved home but she and my cousin in law never responded to my numerous messages on Facebook. I had an account under a pseudonym, no photos, so they might not have checked. I no longer use Facebook anyway.

But I was doing my usual today of searching for them online and I found them... and their kids... and it just broke me.

Because my kids missed out on having cousins their own age to hang out with. Because I missed out on having them as family. I do love them but I realised after my kids told me they're not interested in getting in touch with their cousins (why would they? They're just random people to them) that if I tried and was rejected I would feel awful all over again.

I try to be optimistic but they must have seen my messages. Surely? My mother has laid down so much poison about me that I know I'm sn outcast and I don't want to risk being treated like one, or worse, having my mother or her flying monkey relatives hurting me again.

Their cruelty, to them, isn't cruelty: it's perfectly justified.

I don't see why my cousins would be any different. They're doing very well for themselves and I'm struggling and hurt.

I don't know why I suggested to my kids to try to contact their cousins.

I just think that their generation has the right to start again but I don't want my kids to walk into a trap set by the elders.

So I'm going to try to forget them.

But I'll probably just carry on looking them up and wondering... do they even care?

That's a good idea and well needed. I will have a think about that.

 2.08am and again, not sleeping, took meds 3 hours ago... it's infuriating it really is.

I forgot to mention: friend did not have any reliving trauma from a different perspective experience at all, just random, completely irrelevant dreams.

Hi there, opening this thread back up because I've some experience of iboga. I knew someone who tried it for heroin addiction (due to childhood trauma including CSA) and it didn't work. Very high expectations, very unexpected results with a lot of pressure to give iboga a good press subsequently. I tried microdosing iboga and just one very small recommended dose absolutely floored me. It causes something similar to sleep paralysis (I can't remember the word, sorry) . I was trapped in my body whilst awake, feeling very, very nauseous, vomited a lot beforehand, couldn't function AT ALL. I also heard through said friend of an ibogaine treatment professional facing prison because of a patient dying during treatment. It's not something to be taken lightly and I would not recommend it unless you are very well educated on it and absolutely sure you want to try it.
You are promised an experience where you are able to relive your trauma from the viewpoint of a spectator in order to gain empathy, detachment and release. Reality can be very different and can lead to death during treatment, death by overdose afterwards by not realising how little of substance you actually need now (supposed cure for heroin addiction is not a miracle cure: those who have succeeded generally agree and there was a lot, a lot of pressure to say it was a miracle cure around 2012,13,14). I'm not saying it doesn't ever work or can't help, but it would need to be done in a very controlled clinical environment with exceptionally good aftercare, and proper bloodwork/blood pressure must be done first to determine whether it's suitable as some people aren't able to take it.

Benzos are so difficult aren't they? I had a fight on with the anxiety they caused me, I very much empathize. I honestly don't know how I didn't end up in hospital with my psychotic behaviour on SSRIs. I think it was probably because I was in a big city and also an IV addict. That seems to help towards not getting help...I guess I just blended in as another crazy addict at the time. Not sure if hospitalisation would have made things better or worse to be fair: it was a terrifying time and I ended up in rehab so it kind of worked out, for a while at least...
I get a lot of anxiety dreams too. They're really scary. Not sure where the line is between the two...
Thanks for your reply, Kizzy. Ugh, I've been on and off meds since I was 18 or 19 I think. I hate having to go back to them because of side effects and fear of dependency and them stopping working and having to come off them and the fear I will end up worse off than where I started before I took them...

I started thinking I'd been autistic my whole life so started taking online autism tests, which all said I was probably very autistic but that other conditions overlap.

I was selectively mute from as far back as I can remember, and no adults ever intervened. They thought I was deaf after I just sat blankly through hearing tests because I was too anxious and embarrassed to hit the table with the wooden hammer when I heard the beeps through the headphones.

I'm definitely neurodivergent. But my son explained to me that I was traumatized from before I was born, so I would have had CPTSD from a young age. And of course my mother did everything possible to make herself appear perfect so I was just considered a naughty child.

I do worry that a lot of traumatized children are misdiagnosed with autism, but at least if they have the autism diagnosis there will be things in place to help them navigate the world around them (I hope).

All my son's friends - every one of them has an autism diagnosis. Only one of them has no history of trauma. One specifically went through extreme DV in her younger years. Autistic or not, they all but one probably have CPTSD, undiagnosed.

I wonder if the UK prefers to keep its true abuse statistics cleanly hidden behind a veneer of autism diagnoses?

So many kids these days are diagnosed as autistic, when in fact the world itself is becoming overwhelming... and of course people aren't going to be able to cope with an overload of information and so much pressure to not only conform, but succeed in an ever changing, increasingly competitive, increasingly unaffordable world. Threats of war, so many refugees struggling to survive in a hostile environment, having fled war and famine...ugh... it's scary how little compassion so many have.

I was waiting outside a shop with my dog, for my partner to come out and an Afghan refugee offered me some money - he thought I was homeless: I was overwhelmed by his kindness. He'd lost EVERYTHING yet his compassion was greater than those amongst the locals who were campaigning to get rid of the refugees... making lies about them...they were generally very polite and frightened. I was sad to see them moved on to goodness knows where. Anyway... life's hard for so many.

Thank you for that article, Kizzy. It's well needed!

I finally got prescribed 15mg mirtazipine to take at night for CPTSD and insomnia. Prior to that I was prescribed promethazine 50mg which took at least 6hours to just about kick in, followed by vivid recurring nightmares and feeling drowsy all day. I feel exhausted all the time anyway, but they made nightmares worse. Prior to starting promethazine I'd been taking over the counter antihistamines (nitol type) which really did nothing. I wasn't sleeping much at all and when I did, I couldn't wake up in the morning due to absolute exhaustion. So I was very excited to try mirtazipine again after around 12 years as I remember they helped with nightmares.

Well, I must have remembered the wrong meds because my nightmares are worse than ever and every night. But the bonus is that I'm now not laying awake until it gets light every night, panicking and flashbacking and scared to fall sleep.

My nightmares have woken me up a few times but I've been eventually able to get back to sleep. To more nightmares.

The nightmares are more abstract than they have been previously: no actual abusers present, though representations of abusers are a thing. Which is a good thing considering I previously had a lot of nightmares involving my mother being abusive towards me in my childhood home and my psychopath ex chasing me. So it's a relief those nightmares seem to have stopped.


I'm not noticing the mirtazipine making me drowsy at all though after just over a week, starting to worry they're going to stop working like everything else always does. Last night I managed to get to sleep around 4am (which is actually good going for me) and managed to wake myself in the morning and not fall back asleep, which is unusual: I normally get trapped in nightmares I end up unable to wake myself up from because I'm convinced they're real and the need to escape overwhelms my brain's awareness that it's just a dream.

Hmmm.

I don't want to end up on higher and higher doses of any meds as I'm an ex heroin addict and obviously I have a very addictive brain. It seems to get used to meds after 3-7 days and ask for more 😔

Has anyone had any success training their brains to stop having nightmares?

The mirtazipine seems to have dried up my ability to cry easily, which is good in one way as I was crying over everything and anything, but bad in another way as now it feels trapped and unable to find an outlet (which I was struggling with for years, unable to cry, and my anger overwhelmed me)...

Now I just seem to feel slightly on edge, not understanding how I'm feeling. It's confusing.

I think it's helpful in some ways and not in others.

I can't handle SSRIs. They make me psychotic.

When I finished the first draft of my first novel, it was very kindly pointed out to me that the f word in its various forms was prolifically scattered over every single page... oops. I hadn't even noticed how frequently I'd used it. I was such an angry person back then!

Hey again Storyworld,
It's so good to hear you've only had one nightmare in the past month. That's so reassuring to hear. And feeling rested after sleep sounds miraculous (it would be for me, so that's also very reassuring). It's good to hear others' positive experiences because it gives me hope. I don't remember the last time I woke up actually feeling rested.

Hey, Nasturtium,

Thank you for posting about hidden brain. That sounds about right about trauma giving us a different chemical makeup so we don't get the restorative value of sleep. That's been distressing me since I can remember... I've always had terrible chronic insomnia and nightmares from a very young age- I remember many of my childhood nightmares too. That podcast sounds amazing. I've actually tried to draw myself without looking at the paper and I didn't know it was therapeutic...it was just to see the results (horrible!). I did notice that I hate myself when I look in the mirror when I'm at my worst, I barely recognise myself. But when I had a reprieve from CPTSD a few years ago (I was okay for a while, felt really healed) I actually felt self acceptance in the mirror. I don't hate myself in reality, not logically, but I think I have a lot to work on there. Thank you: you've given me a lot to think about.

I was just reading your comment NarcKiddo, on "war gaming". I do that all the time and it is absolutely exhausting. It started with planning how to appease my mother too. Oh, the unpredictability is horrible, isn't it?
The last time I had telephone contact with her, she answered the phone and started a tirade of abuse. I told her "this isn't working. I'm going to call you back" and she answered in a different voice, different regional accent, and promised things that never came to fruition. Both were abusive. I don't know if she was just being manipulative or if she switched. Knowing whether she has DID or not would help me understand, but wouldn't change that she abused me throughout my life so maybe I should stop trying to figure it out.

Storyworld, I really struggle with the worry that I'm "just making a big deal out of nothing" re. my mother, as she gaslit, denied, blamed, DARVO.Knowing about DARVO was like switching on a light in my head. It was absolutely real and very frightening. I think part of my denial was desperately wanting it not to be true and wanting to believe my mother had the capacity and inclination to change, admit, apologize. She doesn't.