Messages

I'm sorry. It's really hard to get through those periods of time. I'm really proud of you for keeping on trying the exercises. 

I do unfortunately relate. Luckily it happens less often now than it used to and lasts for less time.

Keep on practicing the things that seem to help a little. Keep on processing with your therapist. It's a slow process. It isn't that you aren't doing something right or aren't doing it enough. It just takes time and lots of practice to settle the whole system down.

Finding ways to really remind yourself and feel safe is super helpful to really truly orient you to the present. Identifying that what you are feeling is from the past has been really helpful for me.

I've also had a lot of luck recently doing neurofeedback focused on the vagus nerve. It's helped me feel safer and calmer and has helped me be able to breathe and calm down. I haven't tried the various exercises designed to activate the vagus nerve at home but you can do some searches for those and see if any seem to make a difference. It's probably the best thing I've found in 7 years of trying things.

Keep on hanging in there. It can get better, just not quickly. Truly just keep reminding yourself the difference between the past and present. Logically you know, but there are parts in there that are still reacting like you are still living in trauma.

I hope you feel better tomorrow. 

I don't know the cause but I understand the reason.

I do it too quite badly. Not smiling but laughing and making jokes. It's the only way to deal with the horror.

I once did a podcast interview on one of these dark subjects and what I noticed was that every part where it really got me to the point that I was on the verge of emotionality I would laugh instead.

I'm lucky because my therapist understands this so he has always understood that it doesn't mean there's something wrong with me or that I'm being untruthful. He understands the laughing means it's really horrific. Does your therapist seem to understand?

He'd tell me a story of when he was first starting off in the field and working on a psychiatric unit. There was a group of teens he'd lead and one - a girl - would laugh hysterically saying the really awful things that had happened. The other teens would gang up on her saying things like man that's messed up to laugh about things that are so horrific. But my therapist would tell them to stop and explain that she is laughing because the things she is saying are so horrific, and ask her "is that right?" And she'd nod her head yes while laughing.

He would tell me that story when I would laugh. So I would understand that it was normal and that he understood too. So I wanted to share it with you too.

You are very normal..what happened to you was not.

I was assigned this as reading tonight for a sociology class and I immediately thought of your situation with CPS Matilda. https://www.thefriendshipcenter.org/post/the-myth-of-mutual-domestic-violence

 

 

Thanks for the clarification Kizzie and I apologize for speaking too casually about this. I am 99% certain I have DID. I meant that to be reassuring to the OP because there are a lot of misconceptions and stereotypes about people with DID and I know from experience how terrifying and unsettling it can be to confront that diagnosis. For many years I did feel like having DID might mean I was or would be viewed as "crazy." I was only trying to say having DID doesn't mean you are crazy and it isn't something scary once you get past the stereotypes and its a really protectice and adaptive response to trauma.

I will be more careful with my words. Especially on this topic. I was also only trying to say you can have DID and not feel like you are plural or refer to yourself as plural but the phenomena and switching and amnesia can all still be there. I said that because on the internet it can feel like only people who refer to themselves as plural have DID but it can present different from that too. Again apologies for using cavalier language and for possibly insulting or hurting someone else. 

 

It is. A shock. For sure. But if that is what you are dealing with, or something less severe than DID...either way all this stuff was a really healthy way for our minds to cope with what was happening. I know I am fairly high functioning even with severe symptoms and if I didn't have the dissociative capacity I would have been an absolute mess. Eventually you'll come to see what a gift it was. I've never been handed an official diagnosis and have never asked for one by the way. I suspect it is DID, at a minimum severe OSDD. But I'm not crazy and I don't even refer to myself in the plural.

I haven't read the book but another forum member has mentioned it...called Dissociation Made Simple.

It would fit with DID but there are also lots of other explanations too. 

DID isn't as weird or scary as it sounds. Trauma does suck though.

Unless you've personally experienced the clutches of a narcissist its impossible to rrally understand. (And yes even though parts of you later deny his illness and protect him. He is a narcissist if not worse. Even if he is also traumatized and neurodivergent. All those can be true at once.)

So most people won't get it. You can't explain it. What you can do is keep it simple:

1. Kid has told me he is afraid of dad, even though he later denies this.

2. I understand why he denies it, because my father physically and sexually abused me and then threatened me to be silent. If you want to include a couple clear facts here about your past abuse, do so.

3. I want to be in my sons life as much as I am allowed but it is also not healthy for me to be around the person who has been and continues to be abusive to me. He, like many abusers, knows how to hide this. Please watch for the subtle signs with my son so you can step in and protect my son since that right has been taken by me by the same person who harmed me.

Losing a pet is extremely difficult and painful. I'm sorry. 

A thought just popped into my head as I was writing. A spatial image cause I don't see pictures but still I get imagery in the form of a physical sense of objects in space.

You were wanting to both feel emotions but not be overwhelmed by them. So you sort of split into 2 versions of yourself. First you took your therapist self and separated out the part of you that feels emotions now (Yay for that part!). Therapist you had this part sit down and just let that part sob and scream and gave her a stuffy, a blanket, a warm beverage and just let her be there in her emotions, supported by therapist you. Good. Let it out you say to her. Then this third part of you, mom part, sneaks off without those pesky emotions and tends to your daughter. Ah! And there's a fourth part! San-San sneaks out the front door and leaves the whole mess behind and is driving down the road, rocking out in the car, hair flying in the wind, free from it all.

May there be room, space, and time for all these parts of you San, including the joyful part. 

Yes what you described with your ex's family is normal. What you describe with yours is not normal at all. It is violent abusive illegal criminal

Just rest assured knowing nearly all of us here grew up with the same and fully understand what you mean. It may not ever be something you can explain well to cps. But it makes full and total sense here. And you don't owe others a detailed explanation. "There are sides of him he hides well and he is not healthy for me to be around due to some aspects of that behavior he hides. My religion and values don't not allow me to say more. It would just mean so much to me if you would trust what I am saying to be true for me without trying to convince me my experience is incorrect."

Guilt, shame, and low self-esteem are all common symptoms after CSA (and being raised by a narcissist).

They're treatable. But the trauma has to be in the past first.

My point being...there's not anything wrong with you other than that you continue to be traumatized. I'm sorry because there's not a solution right now unless CPS gets their act together and does what's right. But at least take some peace knowing deep down it isn't you. It was never you. 

Mathilda I want to reassure you that the things you say make 100% sense to anyone who understands what it is like to be stuck in a relationship with a narcissist, especially a parent.

And your behaviors and reactions make sense to anyone who understands trauma, as well as what child sexual assault does to the mind.

Would you be any of the negative things you think about yourself if you weren't stuck trying to make a relationship with your dad work for the sake of your child? If your dad were all the sudden just gone....what of your behaviors stay and what disappears with him?