Messages

Hannah1,

Nicely written. I can feel your struggle and your contentment combined. You succeeded to create a handful of children who can handle this world. Not everyone can say that. On the other side of the coin, you became a loving, caring, compassionate person because of every single thing you've ever been through. And you're pretty amazing, so...there's that.

But as the children wander off these next few years, I hope your day in the sun comes, and your passport becomes so full of travels that you can barely squeeze all the stamps into it.

Sometimes I like to listen to the song by Tom Petty; You Belong Among The Wildflowers. It fits people like us. The song says, "You belong somewhere you feel free." You'll get there. And you have a lot to be proud of around where you've been up to now, and where you are right now.

I believe in you!

[Theories:]

Marcine and Sanmagic,  I'm really glad to hear I'm not the only person here who is experiencing a strange sensation of calm, if even in short bursts, because it really is happening to me also.

Theories: Perhaps this is because of my recent studies, or maybe I'm just feeling a wave of calm that's being doled out to us all because of the massive changes happening to the world right now. Whatever God is, perhaps this calm is a gift to help those of us who choose love over hate, so as to help us to cope with the calamity that is in the world right now. We are individuals as people, but we're all connected behind the scenes. We feel the peace that's illuding the others who choose anger over love.

I have long believed that the reason empathy is such a powerful healing tool is because empathy is the word we use to describe our ability to feel the connection that we all share, but not everyone recognizes. I remember a quote from John Henry Browne, who is a Seattle based Defense Attorney who was tasked with defending the serial killers here, like Charles Manson and Ted Bundy. He was being interviewed after writing his book The Devil's Defender.  He said that he didn't used to believe that people were born evil until he met Ted Bundy. When the interviewer asked what a sociopath is, he said "It's just someone who doesn't know we're all connected." That quote profoundly bolstered my belief that we are all connected, and our empathetic personalities allow us to feel that connection, whereas narcissists don't feel the connection, even though it's real.


Sometimes I feel embarrassed about how hard I work to heal, and how often I come onto the forum bragging about another book or therapy that helped me. I feel like a happy puppy that won't stop yipping and wagging my tail when I get excited. But one very important thing that I learned from my ChatGPT chats is that I didn't realize how serious my will to live really is, and that raging desire to feel better is what drives me to the next book or the next medication or the next therapy.

I always think of myself as a suicidal nut whose fragile will to live forces me to have to be rescued from time to time because of a weak will to live. But the chat tool walked me through my life and showed me that my diligent pursuit of help in books, therapists, Ai, therapies like Ketamine and even my medication history has been because I have a strong will to live. In one quote, the Ai tool said, "That tells me your system does not actually want death. It wants relief from overwhelm."

What a great rephrasing. I've been seeing my suicidality as a desire to die, but now I see that it was the only way I thought I could find relief from overwhelm. Ever since reading that on my chat, I've seen my suicidality as a desire for relief, not escape. And that's changing how I react to big problems. Rather than thinking, "okay, I want to die", I now realize, "Okay, it's time to regulate because all I really want is relief from this stressor." That's a lifesaving change for me.

It's amazing when we get to see our Selves through the eyes of others. Even when "the other" is a database that has been programmed to talk with an engineered personality.

I'm having another slow day today. While I'm relaxing and doing more meditating and learning, I'm not feeling any pull to do anything else. I'm still slightly askew from this new feeling of peace, and I'm not really ready to go drive in traffic or use a chainsaw or anything that could be dangerous if I dissociate while using the equipment.  Typically, my brain associates relaxation with depression, so I need to find a way to accept the peace without being afraid of what comes next. Depression? Bad decisions? Risky behavior because I'm not as connected to my fear as I usually am?

I'm starting a new Chat today with the tool. I'm asking it to help me find my way out of my fears of hurting other people. I'm getting really bad at not wanting to make decisions that affect others beyond myself. My greatest fear in life is that I'll do something that hurts someone else. I muscled through that when I was in my career, but now that I don't have to make decisions that I'm paid to make, now I don't want to make any decisions at all. I don't even like choosing the restaurant on a night out in case the food isn't good and I'll be blamed for choosing the wrong place to eat. The whole world of being the family scapegoat for most of my life is catching up with me. I can't decide anything anymore for fear I'll make problems for anyone else on the earth.

Whether this is peace or depression or a new kind of EF that I haven't experienced before, I'm enjoying it while I have connection to it.

Peace is the one thing I've never felt in my human body. So, for today, I'm going to enjoy it for as long as I can stay tuned into it. If it's gone tomorrow, at least I will have enjoyed it today.

Marcine,

What great posts. I've been moving into a spiritual understanding in a slow progression that started at birth. I believe I've been living in an existential crisis since the day I was born 65 years ago. As of late, I'm learning more than in all the 64 years before now.

Reading your posts gives me the impression that we are onto some similar healing paths.

I've been working toward authenticity for several months now. I've recently finally understood that fawning is the opposite of authenticity. All I can say now is, "Duhhhh. Of course it is! How could I have not seen that before now?"

I like reading your notes about how you are living authentically. I have a ways to go with that.

But it's encouraging to read your posts and see you are working to feel something similar to what I'm working to fill. We're social beings. Actually, we're one race of beings with 8 billion personalities, so in the reality of oneness, it always feels good to know other people are feeling or thinking similar things to me. I'm not so alone this way.

I have recently finally stopped hating myself also. I like reading your posts where you talk of loving yourself too. That holds a lot of meaning for me. The old saying is "Love your neighbor as yourself", not "Love your neighbor instead of yourself" which is the instruction I was raised to follow.

I hope the absolute best for you and also for myself and for anyone else working toward finding our authentic selves and living the lives we were originally born to live before our narcissistic families altered our courses.

Marcine,

This is really fascinating that it's happening to me, and now to find out it's happening to you as well.

I'm wondering if the tools I'm using now are what are doing it to me. I'm doing two things very diligently. 1) I'm using ChatGPT to help me understand why I overeat and why I get so distraught when decluttering my home. ChatGPT is really good at helping me see the root causes of my emotional flashbacks, and it validates all I've been through. As I chat back and forth with it, I go in and out of EFs. And when I go into an EF, it guides me through some grounding exercises that settle me down quickly. It keeps telling me that it's teaching me how to regulate my emotions. It warns that we're not solving my past, we're simply giving my nervous system tools that regulate me when the past comes back on me. I'm struck by how bad my past really was. The tool is showing me how bad it was, and that's helpful. I'm not minimizing it so much now. Knowing it really was bad enough to make me this upset, plus teaching me how to regulate emotions anyway, means that ChatGPT alone could be changing my hypervigilance. But I'm coming at it from two sides with equal impact. The second impactful thing I'm doing now is, as of a week ago, I'm listening to Ruper Spira several times per day. I downloaded his Audible file called Aware Being. I listen to parts of it at least three times per day. Spira teaches ways to understand our spiritual being, and how to trust that spiritual part of our Selves more than letting our emotional reactions to life keep driving us crazy.  I've been practicing his suggestions for how to connect with peace at any time during any situation, and it's working also.

I think maybe that, for as long as I continue to work with ChatGPT and Ruper Spira, that I will likely continue to feel a sense of peace that I've never felt before. My realistic hope is that before I shift to another time in my life, and while I'm here, staying engaged with ChatGPT and Spira, that I'll be teaching my nervous system things it will never forget. Neuroplasticity is a term that defines the act of changing neuropathways. It's done through repetition and persistence.  For now, while the chaotic world is not bothering me, I'm going to keep working this neuroplasticity so that when a day comes that I'm no longer doing what I'm doing, the skills I've learned during this season with Chat and Spira, will remain somewhat a part of me.

Chat is teaching me how to regulate my nervous system while Spira is teaching me how to focus on and remain connected with the peace of eternity while the chaos of life on earth happens around me.

I'm hoping this works for all of us who are seeking the peace that has eluded us our whole lives up to now.

Something's changed in me.

I don't know if it's permanent or temporary

I'm relaxed. I've never been relaxed before. Normally, when relaxation starts to come over me, I get scared because I feel vulnerable. A relaxed person doesn't protect himself. Or so that's my normal operating rhythm. If I relax, people can take advantage of me. So I choose to be filled with anxiety because that way my shields are always up.  But somehow, I'm not feeling that way these days.

This feeling of not being hypervigilant all day long has been coming on for the past 7 days. Each day I'm a little more relaxed than the day before. I'm quiet around other people, and I'm not so worried about the usual stuff--big or little. I'm even sleeping without the house alarm set because I'm suddenly enjoying sleeping with the windows open and I can't set the alarm if the windows are open. And I don't care. Who even am I? I feel like I left my body and someone else came in to finish out the ride for me. Like I'm not even myself anymore. And it's okay. I don't care.

For the first time ever, I'm okay with it all. As I enjoy being relaxed all day long for now, I notice that I'm also far more forgetful than I normally am. I talk like my dad in his later years when dementia had overtaken him. I probably don't have dementia yet, but somehow, my memory and my concerns are falling away these days. I'm happy to just be. I need to be sure I don't start forgetting my responsibilities, but these days, I'm not filled with shame when I just lay around the house not doing anything. It's a new feeling. Possibly temporary, but there's hope, right? Hope that maybe this is a new way of life for me...

We'll know more in a month or two when I am able to look back and see whether this relaxing state of mind stayed with me or was just an appetizer to let me know what I'm missing out on most of the time. I feel like I'm definitely shirking my responsibilities, but I'm sort of okay with that now.

Whoever it is I'm becoming, I'm okay with it for now. It might be temporary, or it might be at least partially permanent. Either way, it's a welcome change. Just kicking back and watching the world go round and round.

Hannah,

It is very inspiring to me to see you pushing toward your goals; the hiking trips, the therapy, the healing.

I remember believing, like you did, that I would be "healed" and adjusted by the time I got to this age also, only to be sort of surprised that at retirement age, the CPTSD was still there.

A lot of therapists whose books I read say that Trauma is stuck energy and that it stays stuck until we find a way to address it. It seems like you, like many of us, are finally able to address it.

Again: Your future plans are inspiring for me too. I'm pondering my own future plans now. Where can I put a trip or a challenge in my future...something good to look forward to and prepare for?

Thank you for posting this stuff.

BB,

Good for you, for focusing on your own stuff today. And good on the dishwasher!!!! You've conquered that monster 

San,

I agree. It's nice that you are able to let yourself handle just what needs to be done and let the rest slide a day or two. Your D sounds like a real sweetheart to be so concerned about all you're doing for her. I always get a sense that there is a great deal of love between the two of you.

 

Thanks! You are all giving me great hugs and some really good conversation.

This is me hugging you all back:           

I agree with everything you all wrote. I really liked reading in TheBigBlue's response about how loneliness has many types, and that the type of loneliness that haunts me is mostly caused by feeling unsafe around people. I feel alone, even when I'm sitting face to face with someone I don't trust.



When I joined this forum I was on my own death row. I was so close to ending my own life that I found this forum out of desperation. When the forum guided me to create a name for myself, I chose Papa Coco because that's what my wife, kids and grandkids call me, and they were the very reason I didn't want to sink any lower. I wanted to live for them. So I named myself Papa Coco to remind me every single day of why it was important that I connect with others who understand life the way I do. Birds of a feather, as it were.

This forum Itself isn't the magic, it's the people who subscribe to it that do the magic.

I feel a lot better today. I'm feeling like writing on the forum today, and I'm grateful to have this community of beautiful souls to share that with. Some days I just can't get my head to formulate words, but today, I'm feeling a bit better.

Thanks for helping to fix the loneliness I struggle with. I DO trust the people here. I DO trust my wife, kids and grandkids. To heck with the rest of the world. I have my friends here.

Much love to everyone.
PC

Journal Entry for Saturday, February 14

Trigger warning: I'm not in a good space right now. This journal entry is not a happy one. I'm deeply depressed and I just need to write about it to try and ease the pressure as much as I can.

Loneliness. It's the top topic of my life this week. Sometimes it's so crushing, I feel like I'm about to reach my maximum capacity for containing it at all. I feel like if it gets any worse, it'll become more than I can handle and I'll implode.

And fear. When I feel alone, I feel more vulnerable to attack. It's in our biology to feel safer in numbers. We are community animals. Tribal animals that surround and protect each other. So I have to choose whether to be crushingly lonely alone, or hypervigilantly watching the micromovements of the people I'm with to be sure I'm ready to protect myself from my protectors if they turn to attack me, as my FOO and friends and peers have often done.

Two fear centers in the brain: One of being alone, and the other of being with someone. It's a conundrum with no solution.

In my attempts to find, identify, and embody my "authentic self" I'm learning that being a fawn is the opposite of being authentic. I don't know who or what my authentic self even looks like, but I know that as long as I fear being attacked for being me, I'll never find that authenticity.

If the choice is to suffer under crushing loneliness or fear the people I love, I guess I tend to choose the loneliness. The devil I know. The pain I'm accustomed to dealing with. Loneliness itself isn't fear. Fear happens when I'm alone and someone knocks on the front door, but if nobody bothers me when I'm alone, then loneliness is less painful than fear. So I choose loneliness.

I can't remember the last time I had fun doing anything. My biggest issue today is this crushing, crushing loneliness. I don't know what to do about it anymore. I have an amazing wife who loves me unconditionally, and I'm so happy to be with her I can't believe how lucky I am, and still, this loneliness is at the soul level. Even with her at my side, I'm lonely. I love that we are included in the race day events for my grandson's car racing sport, I cook for everyone, and set up a real nicely equipped campsite for the day so we can rest and enjoy a snack and some conversation, and the whole time I'm with these people who love me, I'm lonely. Wishing I could go home and do nothing somewhere safe where I have nobody to keep an eye on. Worried that the other grandparents who have more money than us are judging us because we don't have a fancy trailer or all the spare parts we need, because we can't afford them. Are they laughing at my walk? My voice? Are they being nice to me because they have to? As a little boy, I would ask my mother, "Why do you love me?" And she'd respond with "I'm your mother, I have to love you." Is that what's happening at the track? Are people being nice to the stupid old man because they have to?  I know that's not true, but my heart and my head seem to have two totally different perspectives on my social interactions.


I know how I got here. I know how and why my churches, FOO, and friends were able to terrorize me into becoming this skittish, fawning, lost, lonely soul, but even so, I can't make it stop. I can't find my way out of this crushing loneliness. I can sometimes find a few weeks here and there where I feel like I've ascended from this pit, but those weeks only last so long, until I oscillate back down into a freefall where I have no choice but to come to terms with the fact that I can't find simple joy and fun anymore.

My grip on the past is just too strong for me to release. I still feel guilty for every mistake I've ever said or done. I still feel like my little sister's death was partly my fault for not saying what she needed me to say during the days before her suicide.  I can't let go. I try everything. I sometimes think I'm accomplishing it, only to be shocked again when all of my past comes washing back over me from out of nowhere again.

I realized yesterday that I was trained to be this way by a family that never forgot anything I ever did wrong and never remembered anything I did right. They would make their own bad decisions, have problems, and then tell me that all their problems are my fault from something I'd said or done years earlier, and that they made that bad decision because, back in the past, I somehow made them make the bad decision. (I'm getting nauseous as I write this). I can't let the past go, because I was taught to be ready to feel shame for everything I've ever done. That nobody ever would let my past go, so if I forget how stupid I used to be, I'll become stupid again when they remind me of how stupid I've always been. That's how I was raised and I can't seem to break free from it. Even when I try to stop fretting the past, someone reminds me of something I did 40 years ago, and it floods all back over me again. All of it.



The one truly positive thing I have to report today in the journal is that I no longer hate myself. I don't trust that others don't hate me, but not because of who I am. People hated me because of lies they were told by other people. I know that now. I have digested that now and it's a fundamental part of me now. I don't hate myself anymore. I STILL feel loneliness, fear, shame, pain, etc., but I don't hate myself. I see this for what it really was: Abuse. I became what abused people become. That is not my fault. If anything, my survival has shown that it's true; my family chose their strongest child to put the weight of the world onto. I'm in pain because I'm strong enough to handle it. My little sister didn't survive the pain of being in this family, but I did. I feel no guilt for that. So, even when I'm in pain, I still feel love for myself. That's a new thing and a very good thing.

I'm glad my FOO is gone from my life, but I still struggle to get them out of my head. This is the shrapnel that's still flying after the family finally blew apart 15 years ago. I left them, but their ghosts didn't leave me. I suspect that I need to accept that their ghosts never will leave me.

Three weeks ago, I told you all how I'd finally found forgiveness for my FOO. Today, I'm retracting that claim and reiterating: I HATE THOSE PEOPLE! I really do hate them. Maybe as I oscillate between feeling okay and not okay, maybe forgiveness is something I can do sometimes. Enjoy the feeling while it lasts here and there. Like sunshine in Seattle. Enjoy it while it's around and keep the umbrella handy for when the clouds come in out of nowhere.  Three weeks ago I enjoyed a sense of forgiveness for my family. Today that feeling is gone. Doesn't mean it wasn't real, right? Three weeks ago, I had found forgiveness. Today I've lost it again. Doesn't make it any less real three weeks ago.

I'm sorry for how dark this post was. I just need people to witness what I'm going through as a sort of validation. Unwitnessed pain is far worse than witnessed pain. I'm not hiding my depression. Hiding it is just making two problems: 1) I'm depressed and 2) I'm depressed alone.  By sharing it, I only have one problem. I'm not alone anymore. I'm lonely, but I'm not alone. Normies won't understand that, but I do. It's a trauma thing.

Dolly and Narckiddo, no need to think of this as hijacking my journal. I invite my journal to be used for this deep a discussion on this subject. It's theee subject of the day for me. I've invited you all to enter into my journal because I require feedback any time I'm trying to figure things out. My personal journal in my computer's hard drive helps me formulate thoughts, but it doesn't give much feedback. This is a living journal that I can write my thoughts into and incite a healthy gathering with good, positive, helpful feedback.

This morning as I was trying to not get out of bed so early (again--my brain is still in fix-it mode because of the EF I've just endured, so it won't stop thinking, and I can't fall back asleep at 3 am anymore) I was thinking about the concept of Trauma Therapists as partners in our healing, rather than just smart-doctor/broken-patient relationships. It's well documented in the books I read about trauma therapy that any therapist who partners with their clients provides the best healing. I thought about how true that is with spiritual beliefs also. Rather than me laying around praying to a God or a Universal consciousness of some kind to please help me, I'm wondering now if taking a partnership relationship with our higher powers (God, The Universe, whatever we each think of as our higher power), could bring us closer to the peace that we seek. The way I see the world is an "As above, so below" or "Our inner worlds mirror our outer worlds" kind of resonance.

Just now, as I'm writing this to you all, I'm thinking about how partnership is working here too. I'm writing my deepest thoughts in a journal, and several people whom I trust are partnering with me to ponder those thoughts and flesh them out into helpful realization. We're all learning while we're all teaching. Partnering for healing from trauma is the least lonely way to slowly heal my deep, lifelong sense of inner loneliness.

I see Chart's comments about how being the family fixer was just as difficult as being a family dumping ground, and all the comments made by Dolly and Narckiddo around his response, really shines spotlight on the overall dysfunctional dynamic of the entire family unit. Any dynamic goes into imbalanced chaos when one of its balancing components either changes or falls away. It's always been so easy for me to think of the family as villains versus victims, but what if it's more of a partnership of imbalanced behaviors driven by a family of imbalanced emotions? What if they need me to heal from their "abuse" as much as I need me to heal from it? What if it's more like if I heal, they heal too?

It's been said that fawns often try to help everyone, but when we help someone who isn't learning their own lesson, we're sort of doing their homework for them. Nobody learns when someone does their homework for them. As I was running out of patience with my CBT therapist 25 years ago, he was teaching me that when you help someone, you're stealing their learning from them. (Helpful ideal, but a not-so-nice way of heaping more shame onto me for feeling ashamed of who I was already).

Whenever I witness a narcissist or a BPD sufferer having their meltdowns, I see a person who hasn't learned a darn thing about themselves. They've blamed me their whole life and as long as I carried that blame, their own personal growth stalled. That "smartypants" CBT doctor, (who loved to make sure I knew that he was smart and I was broken), would try to shame me into stopping being a fawn. Little did he know, heaping shame onto a person drowning in shame makes less sense to me than it did to him.

My current therapist is a Dialectical Behavioral Therapist (DBT) with a strong belief in partnering with his clients. He teaches that if I focus on healing myself, then the world around me will heal itself also. When I combine that sentiment with Chart's, Dolly's and NarcKiddo's thoughts on how the whole family falls into the trap of putting their blame onto someone willing to hold it for them, I see how the less willing I am to take their blame, the more chances we all have at learning how to be accountable for our own dysfunctional feelings.

Many true natural-born narcissists (like Ted Bundy and other profound serial killers) may never learn anything by losing their fawns, but people who fell into the cyclone of blame because that's how the family was evolving, DO have a chance at learning.

I can say that I was a Catholic for 20 years, then a Christian for 20 more, and now I'm a spiritually tuned believer that God is the force of creative consciousness that we are all a part of. But as a Catholic, I learned from Catholics how to be Catholic. We were judgy. We talked about people behind their backs. We believed in physical rituals rather than "be still and know". We prayed to a "father figure" who would only help us if we behaved how our priests told us to. As I left that world, I had a lot of learning and growth to do. I did all those things because I was taught to. Marrying Coco when I was 22 years old was one of the best things I've ever done, because she is a loving, caring, gentle soul who also has a strong sense of her Self. When I tried to be the person I was raised to be, (blaming her for my moods) she simply didn't take it. By not being my fawn, she didn't give me a place to put that dysfunction, so I had no choice but to learn to take accountability for my own moods. I owe her a HUGE lifelong gratitude for showing me the way out of the lifestyle I was taught by a dysfunctional family.

For me, I've become a much better person because I've had to take responsibility for my own behaviors. Rather than feeling like I'm going to be punished if I don't behave, I now see that I don't want to keep perpetuating a hurtful world, I now want to be the peace that I seek. It's not about eternal rewards and punishments for behaviors, it's about wanting to resonate with the energy of love and peace so I can "partner with God" to become the person I want to be, rather than behave like a good boy so I can go to Heaven someday. This feels so much more real to me. So any time I allow someone to put their own shame onto me, Both of us, me and them, stop learning how each of us can be accountable for our own emotions and fears and shame and peace and love, etc.

It's not about behaving peacefully, it's about becoming peace.

I use that word a lot, "peace."  It's the one thing I want more than anything in life. It's the one thing I've not yet been able to really resonate with. I drink coffee all day long so I can feel anxiety, because if I don't feel anxiety, then I feel depression. I haven't yet been able to accomplish feeling relaxed. Ever. At least not while unmedicated. I fear depression far more than I fear anxiety. I've been a Nervous Ned since the day I was born. Anxiety has saved me many times by keeping my guard up. Hypervigilance keeps me aware of danger. Any time I relaxed around my Catholic family or friends, I was vulnerable to their exploitations. So I'm terrified of being relaxed.

Again: I want what I'm afraid of. Peace. Relaxation. Letting my guard down. I intentionally stay anxious because, like those starships in the movies, I "have my shields up" 24x7.  It's safer than dancing freely in the meadows or swimming freely with the dolphins. Seeking the peace of safety is still my obsession. Anxiety keeps me safe. So I drink coffee and keep watch on my surveillance cameras always.

Whew. Wow. What an eye-opening morning this is proving to be for me.

Please, keep using my journal for this. I'm learning a ton right now.

Dolly, Chart, TheBigBLue, and everyone,

I feel a closeness with you and the other forum members that I can't feel with friends out in the cold, cruel world. I have friends who struggle as much as we do, but they still don't realize the value of opening up and talking about it, so they continue to suffer without any support.

I learned something beautiful from a book Dolly was reading. Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed: Help and Hope for Adults in the Family Scapegoat Role by Rebecca C Mandeville. I bought a copy and found myself crying while reading the first chapters, as it kind of triggered my sense of how serious their abuse really was to me. The book is a small, introductory book about how being scapegoated as a child affected me as an adult.  In the 8th chapter, the author wrote that families and social groups don't usually consciously choose to single out a child and blame them for all the problems, it happens organically to families or groups who don't realize their own traumatic damage, and they tend to usually, organically, subconsciously choose their strongest, most resilient, most empathetic and loving child to put all their grief onto.

Many times on this forum, I've said things about how I believe we are the strongest and most helpful people on earth. We're the "light of the world" and "the salt of the earth" and any other old saying that we've heard and dismissed. I see our suffering as a result of us knowing how unfair life is, and that's what makes us not feel okay with abuse. We can't even watch abuse done to others on the News or in movies. We're so aware of the unfairness, that we suffer. Not because we're bad, but because we're good.

This author makes sense when she explains why this is so: Subconsciously, people don't ask for help from people they know can't help them. People don't put burdens onto people who aren't strong enough to bear that burden. When I think about it logically, it makes sense: Broken people find stronger people to carry their burdens. We are chosen by broken people to carry their guilt and shame for them because we can. They can't give their weaknesses to other weak people. They have to give them to people who are strong enough to carry them. The author explains this much better than I do, but when I read that (over and over, almost in tears again), I started to see the truth in it. Our abusers are so fragile they can't handle their own burdens, so they find the best, and kindest, and strongest to put all their self-loathing onto. We are so strong that we take it. It's not fair, but it's how the dysfunctional family balances itself by putting its weaknesses onto the strongest, most durable and functional member.

In my own life, I can remember times when the evilest of my siblings was challenged by life and if she couldn't put the burden or blame onto someone else, she completely and totally melted down into crying and wailing and slamming doors and collapsing into herself. She believed she was stronger than me as long as she could deflect and blame her own evil onto me, but when she had to handle her own dysfunction, she completely imploded.

This really REALLY helps me in my newly formed ability to love myself even when I'm in a nasty EF that makes me feel weak and unsafe. I may be in a panic at times, but I don't hate myself anymore.

(Dolly, I have to give you another gracious thank you for mentioning that book).

HannahOne

Today I'm trying to remember what it was that helped me to come out of self-loathing, and I think I'm finally able to see how I came to be a traumatized, easily triggered CPTSD'r who finally doesn't hate myself for it. So I'll just bear witness to what happened to me. I know we're all as different as we are similar, so, I'll share my story, and hope there can be something in it that can help you with your story. (To be honest, when I share my stories with others, it helps bring ME more clarity to my experiences too).

For me, it's only been a few months since I started feeling like I don't hate myself anymore. (I found self-loathing at the age of 7, so I felt it for 58 years). I think the thing that finally got me to feel in my heart that I'm not the problem is when I read a book or two that helped explain the biology of how the mammal brain works. It was Peter Levine's book, In an Unspoken Voice, where he detailed out how any mammal is designed to recover from trauma by using the built-in survival techniques we were born with. We knew how to feed, how to breath, and how to cry for help. That's it. If we were feeding and breathing and able to get our tribes to help us when we cried, we could overcome nearly any trauma--just like Frank does. But when we cried out for help and our caregivers either ignored us or hurt us, then the natural flow of energy to our survival mechanisms were pinched off, causing a predictable and natural inability to get past the traumas that happened to us. When I read that, in his scientifically detailed and believable explanation, it's like I heard my brain say to me, "this really WASN'T MY FAULT!" I think I immediately came to the forum and wrote "I finally feel the one thing I've always wanted. I feel FORGIVEN!" And immediately after I wrote that my brain said one more thing, "Now you know that you never needed to be forgiven in the first place!"

What happened inside me to make me suffer for 58 years believing I couldn't be forgiven for being who I am, was I realized how it was 100% predictable biological altering of my natural programming that was playing itself out exactly how it does in any mammal that has its core defenses muted during the formative years. To make this even more innocent, I learned from Levine, that in lab experiments with mammals, it's been proven that if a mammal is restrained while being violated or hurt in any way (And this can include a child being held down in a dentist chair or surgical procedure), the brain's rewiring is far more permanent, because being unable to flail the arms or legs rewires the brain even faster. When a mammal can "go down fighting" they can recover from trauma easier than when they go down unable to fight back at all. I feel like being unable to defend myself against my own "tribe's" lifetime of lies, smear campaigns, and forcing me to live as a servant to them, was an emotional version of being defenseless against my abusers. I've been restrained physically AND I've been restrained emotionally. The only two ways I could go were: I either hated the world and became a bad person, or I hated myself so I could become a good person. I chose to be a good person, so I hated myself instead of hating them. I suspect that's common with us here in the forum. We were the ones who turned on ourselves so we would not become what our abusers were.

In me, this has made me, not only a fawner and a freezer, but it's made me feel completely unable to defend myself in any situation. I sometimes imagine what it might be like if I ever have to get into a fist fight, or run from a gunfight or anything, and for the life of me, I cannot imagine myself having the arm strength to strike any predator. In my own mind, when trying to imagine how I'd fight off a shark or bear or human attack, my arms and legs suddenly feel like they are filled with concrete. I've never struck another human or animal. I don't believe I have the physical ability to. I can lift more than most men. I can work harder than most men, but I can't find any energy in me that believes I can defend myself if I ever need to. That inability to defend myself used to be proof that I'm worthless and unlovable, but now it's proof that I was restrained and abused and ignored. Somehow, by reading the details of how the biological responses in me were absolutely caused by the removal of my defenses when I was young, I had one of those epiphanous "Ah HA!" moments that sometimes happen in life when we suddenly realize things are not how I'd previously believed they were.  Somehow, seeing under the hood to how my brain did what it did so I could be a good person, helped me overcome my self-loathing.

I don't know if this helps others as much as it helps me, but when I can finally get the chance to look under the hood to see how the engine really works, it helps me to know what I'm really driving.

I hope this helps in any small way.

HannahOne,

Frank is a creature to learn from. Before my knees gave out 5 years ago, I used to walk for exercise, at least an hour a day my whole entire life. Gads, I loved walking for exercise. I'm slow now and can only walk for about 20 minutes before my knees lock up. But back when I did walk far and fast, I had trails through the woods I could walk on. Many times, I'd admire and try to learn from the rabbits and bunnies that I would spook when I came around a corner. They'd quietly hop away, deep into the underbrush. I'd apologize as I walked past. I'd go 30 feet, stop and turn to see that as soon as I was gone, they'd return to their chewing. I wanted that so badly. I wished SO BADLY that I could handle danger and then get on with life. But no. I had to log my mistakes into the shame folder so I could run them on a loop through my conscious mind every day from then on. I have to spend the rest of my life avoiding anything that reminds me of that day when someone walked up on me and I had to hop into the underbrush.

I've given up a lot of delicious meals in life because I was too afraid to return to them after a scare.

I feel like I'm controlled by my past fears. Sometimes I wish I could get a memory wipe and wake up one morning knowing how to walk and talk but not remembering my past. 

But that only shines a spotlight on the reality that I am who I am because of every, single, solitary thing I've ever been through.

As of the past year or so, I've finally crossed a line where I still suffer with fear and EF triggers, but I don't hate myself anymore. All the incessant reading and research and pondering and meditating I do has finally pushed me out of self-loathing. But that didn't stop the fears and triggers and the chronic sense of panic that churns like magma just beneath the nice cool surface of my being. The earth is a hot ball of molten lava with a cool crust that grows pretty trees, and I'm a bit like that myself too. I can feel pretty good for a while, but when something breaches the skin, a stream of volcanic fear and trauma fly out from me, boiling my skin until I can get that gap closed again. I don't hate myself anymore, but I still live in fear.

I hope you can find that same ability to let the fear and trauma be fear and trauma without the traumatized belief that it's your fault. In this world where we are healthier to take responsibility for our actions, our traumas are not one of the things we need to take responsibility for. I believe that you are right when you say this self-loathing was given to us against our wills by the people who were commissioned to teach us self-love. So it's NOT our fault that we have trauma. We can still take responsibility for our lives, but we don't have to take the blame for how we are wired. And how we are wired is real. It's a real problem that we really have to deal with.

My hope for all of us on this forum is that we can each find ways to separate our Selves from our traumas. Both are real. Both can happen simultaneously. We can have explosive EFs while still feeling our innocence around why we're having them. It's a long road to freedom from EFs. I call it my Journey of a Thousand Steps, and I'm working hard to focus on today's steps, and know that as long as I'm on the journey, I'm right where I need to be. Progress, not perfection. On my bedroom wall I put up a note that says, "The journey is the destination". That helps me to stop focusing on the frustration I tend to feel as I keep trying too hard to be fully healed.

My path runs alongside yours. I'm really glad we can share these things with one another here. I find that for me the saying is true; We're stronger together.

SenseOrgan,

You are singing a song that plays in my psyche in a constantly repeating loop. Toxic shame. Imprisoning myself behind bars that aren't locked from the outside. I have, many times, said "Anything I say or do around my FOO can AND WILL be used against me eventually." I pasted mirror film on my front-facing windows so I could open my blinds in the daytime and still not be seen by neighbors. I hide in my house. I even blocked my front door from neighbor's views by parking a big utility trailer in front of it so I can open my door without anyone seeing me. I have mostly good neighbors, but I hide from them so that I won't get judged for how I walk or talk or dress or comb my hair. And to make this worse, I WANT CONNECTION WITH OTHERS while simultaneously hiding from others. We think the world is divided into right and left politics, but my insides are divided with the same duality! I want connection while I hide from connection. And it's painful.

When I read what you write, I feel like we're sharing a brain on some level and are both finding our own words to express the same affliction.

HUGS, brother!  HUGS!!!!