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You didn't. You said it well.

Intentions matter but do show themselves with how someone reacts to being told of the hurt. If the intentions are good and honest, there will be accountability, respect, and a change of behavior at least to some degree.

And yes, a lot of traumatized people don't hurt others. I've spent a long time and lots of effort to actively heal from the trauma and I've purposefully chosen to think kindly of others and if I find out I've hurt someone, it hurts me deeply and I try to make it right. No one is perfect. But some try actively to be good, and to fix what they broke by mistake. Others don't. And I think this is the clearest signal I will keep an eye out. How does the person react to being told things didn't go exactly perfectly.

My mind also switches fast to fawn or freeze at the earliest sign of danger. I'm now learning to identify when I clock the signal and then trying to remove myself from the situation and not agreeing to anything. It's really hard as the instinct to freeze and/or fawn is so immediate.  It is hard to learn to trust the instincts survival needed me to ignore earlier.

I think here's the part where it finally starts to make sense that the person I had to become to survive is not the one that can take me further and I have to grieve her too. She did such a good job of carrying me all the way here through all she survived with such grace and tremendous strength. So she's allowed to rest now. I don't want to banish her or speak to her unkindly. She's been through enough. But she does not have to be the strong one anymore. She's allowed to put down her armor and rest. I've got all parts of me and I'll keep us safe.

This is the breakthrough I made this Christmas. I vowed to myself to keep myself safe. I'm done serving others at the expense of myself. I've done enough. I will participate and learn to handle safe and mutual relationships that honor the boundaries and resources of both. I wish everyone here a safe and happy Season where there is the least amount of light and most darkness but where the light increases a little each day going forward. 

As I was processing this quite deeply I had a new thought about this that I want to share. I've been looking at this from the wrong perspective, the thought of if it was bad enough.

If we look at when things go wrong, we can look at the consequences of it. F.ex. it was a bad car accident if people got hurt.  It was a  bad financial crash if it hurt peoples savings and livelihoods. What if we use this same thought to think about our hurt and trauma? What if we look at the impact of the event or thing and base the determination of "bad enough" on that instead of how we feel about it or how well we can justify it for the benefit of the other?

So here, I can firmly say that it had very bad consequences on me. I have nightmares, I felt very unsafe for months, I had to self-abandon to keep things going. it impacted my kids by proxy but they also heard some of the shouting. They also had less resources from me as I needed them to survive this. So in a way it does not matter how I think about if it was justified based on his previous life or anything. I can just look at the outcome and effects on me and the people around me. And that helps me take that small step back from myself, that I don't yet know how to keep safe well enough, and say that it was bad, because the consequences were bad, because it hit multiple people in bad ways, and it will take time to heal from. The intent of him doesn't really matter here like it does not matter if a drunk driver just had the intention to drive home but he hits someone on the way. I think I will start to determine how bad something is/was based on the consequences of it and not on the intention of the other.

Thank you all and  to everyone who finds comfort and strength in it. I firmly believe it was a betrayal so deep and profound I can only process it a bit at a time. Thank you all for witnessing it, and me as a survivor of it.

For me, it's so hard to shake the idea that I have to be a nice person. Like it just throws my world off if I do not adhere to this, and healthy selfishness is something I'm working on. But I get how something so normal for others can be so outside my sphere of relating.

Dolly: I totally agree with this point. I used to state it as "I've been broken to serve others". Part of it is intentional and relates to religious trauma. I'd like to propose another way to look at this, if it also would help someone else: What if it isn't selfishness at all? What if doing that is an integral part of being a healthy human being? My mind runs from any hint at selfishness as dangerous due to my past. So I am learning to think that it is not that but the fundamental right of human beings to notice their limitations, boundaries, resources, and needs. And to communicate them in a respectful way to others. As well as then limiting the access of anyone who does not agree to them.

Because to ignore my needs and boundaries, isn't it to ignore my humanity and my value? And anyone repeatedly doing this would then inherently be unsafe to be around if they do not stop and repair? What do you all think?

I did some profound trauma releasing this week and am having these kinds of brand new thoughts on the topic.

My PTSD was recently triggered and that actually helped hit something home. And looking back over the last months there has been a theme of self-abandonment. It's in the songs I keep listening to on repeat. And this is actually quite hard to write about as it is so fresh a realization. All my life I've been the one to hold everything together even as I was taking an emotional beating. It's unfortunately a repeating pattern. I am the one keeping things together while I am in agony and no one sees the pain, even as a child.

I experienced CSA at the hand of my uncle as a child. My parents knew my sister had the same fate some years before me but they kept taking me there. For that and for all the other traumatic things there is a theme that always a few people knew about it, but no one came to help. So I grew up as the person who tries to save everyone because no one came to save me. They just watched me hurt, and get hurt as if it was nothing. As if it was meaningless, as if I was meaningless. So I grew up believing I was less than human. That I had to earn the right to exist and it had to be earned by being useful, kind and helpful to others. If everyone around me were fine, maybe it was ok if I existed just a little.

This led to a lifetime of people pleasing and enabling the abuse that ensued. Now I sit here having cried for some hours and just see the damage done. I don't have a question. What I am asking is to be kindly witnessed. That I exist. That I matter. That I'm allowed to be human.

That is very ok

You're right NarcKiddo. The thing that kept me "taking it", so to speak, for so long was precisely because I understood him so well. I know the trauma, and the damage, he refuses to handle. I see the avoidance, the pain, and fear in him. I also know it has nothing to do with me. He's running from his own demons. For a long time I wanted to help him to do so because I struggled alone for so long. I had no one so I didn't want that for him (or anyone).

I think you said it very well here though that you needed the fear and the anger so you wouldn't allow further abuse. I think I'm at that point too. I allow unhealthy behaviors from others that hurt me so their journey would be easier. Because I know how hard the journey is. But I think I've done all I can on that front and now only my kids are allowed to express their trauma past with me in unhealthy ways. But for me to be a safe place for them for the work they have in front of them due to history, I cannot accept it from anyone else. And maybe this thought helps me, so I protect myself for them until I can do it for me.

I still have these "was it bad enough" thoughts this time too I remember from the shelter. At the same time everything around me feels unreal and nightmares are almost nightly. It was bad enough. And until I can keep myself safe with safe boundaries fortified with swift consequences I'll keep my fear and anger. And the absolute heart break I feel as I see the damage. He's an adult. Actions have consequences. Hurting me like this should have consequences like no access to me.

I'm noticing how much guilt I feel over being traumatized. Every time I have a trauma-based reaction, the moment I notice how badly I've over-reacted, I'm hit with a  of guilt. It's guilt of being a burden on the person who supported me. It's the feeling of I'm not all here as I am a quilt of pieces of a personality thanks to the life I have lived. It keeps impacting people who had nothing to do with the original thing and I feel so much guilt over that. What ways have you come up with to alleviate this feeling? Because if I then ask for support for the guilt, then it's another spiral and it's a never-ending loop.

Yup. The amount of bad ideas I've had to do and follow along with to keep the people around me either directly hurting me or facilitating the hurt to happen... It can have been as simple as just being the less threatening of the two evils at the time.
The BigBlue, it does not come of as preachy. I think you are right. It doesn't really matter. I think I'm intellectualizing it because it's easier than feeling it. I think it is also a survival mechanism I use. If I understand the behavior, I can live with it. As a child I had to live with it, so it made sense. Now, though, I no longer have to. So now it does make all the sense to just look at the outcomes and act accordingly.I think I need to learn a new pattern here of interrupting the intellectualization and the trying to make sense of it every time I catch myself doing it. And just focus on something else.

Thank you all!  (for all who find it appropriate)

I considered bringing a friend with me, it's a good idea Kizzie, and am trying to find one now who could. Unfortunately it is the time of year it is. Luckily I'll have many there I know. But it is the location of some of those events. Oh yey, I found someone who can come .

NarcKiddo, it's a very good idea to reduce all stressors. I hadn't even thought of that. It's really not good for the triggering events to come this fast one after each other. But I think I can reduce all activities between now and then and also I have nothing big planned afterwards. Still, just knowing in advance that Saturday is going to be bad most likely will help me. This saturday I completely lost track of time, as in hours had just vanished. I usually don't have that, or not that I've noticed as clearly as now.

I still don't know which is worse: the bad things happening, or the pretending nothing is wrong as one is having those reactions and situations ongoing. I had considered the happenings to be bad, but I think the pretending is actively harmful also. What do you all think about this?

Armee, a good idea. I might make a trigger bingo card for myself and see if I can make it a full bingo.

My body and mind is fully convinced it was exactly very bad. Going there is like walking up to the dragons den with a trumpet blaring. I tried so hard to keep him calm and functional because we were doing a business project. Now I'm thinking if any business is worth that or what I am now dealing with. It had the lot: the coercive control (my way or the highway kind of negotiations), gaslighting, manipulation, aggression, yelling, dismissing boundaries. I think my mind oscillates between what I feel to be true (it was rightfully exactly that bad) and the image he gave of himself.

I was already on sick leave with exhaustion for a while in the summer (2,5 months actually) and while on sick leave he pushed me onto a new project he promised to contribute on. He didn't in the end do the parts he had promised and that led to the yelling. But I find it very hard to forgive that he pushed me in the project in the first place. I was told, by the doctor and I told him this as well, that if I keep pushing myself like I was, I might lose my ability to work completely and permanently. I told him this. As I told him about my exhaustion and such and yet he kept pushing me forward for the gain of his company and his business prospects. From what he told me it seems that to him, ability to get to an event that the work I did enabled, was worth more. So basically he risked my health and ability to keep functional to attend a prestigious event. I have kids.

I knew it would be a bad idea. I did it anyway. i still don't fully understand this.

While I delivered this thing that took way more out of me than I had to give, he did make me food. And this he kept bringing up as how useful he is and good to have around. That somehow the food should have made the rest of it ok. It didn't.

My mind is still trying to make sense of if he is a monster inside. Or if I just see him as such. As if making sense would help at all here. Did he mean to do this or did he do this because he's nearing total burnout himself and is fairly desperate to have his company succeed. So my question to this group is as follows: Should it matter to me why he acted the way he did? Should I now just focus on healing the consequences?

I was doing so much better already. I saw a reduction in the PTSD symptoms of flashbacks and such. And then a relationship I was in turned bad. It had not been good for a while already at this point as it was filled with uncertainty. But it turned bad in the last year. While I don't want to go into unnecessary details, I do want to touch upon a few instances to describe the level of bad.
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TW

We were participating in the same project and he had promised to do some parts of it. We were running out of time and I asked him for help and finally voiced my disappointment that it wasn't happening. He reacted by breaking his hand against a wall while yelling at me. And then repeatedly told me in the following month how I pushed him into it. I was so proud I just walked out on the evening when it happened.

On another point a friend of his was visiting and this friend was actively shunning me when my friend had actively arranged I f.ex. help drive them around. And at one point I told him direct that this behavior will trigger bad trauma in me, but he didn't change behavior and just enabled this to continue.
 
My final point was when yet another time he had not delivered what he promised and I was the only one in that project still talking to him. So he decided to yell at me during 2 phone calls each lasting 45min-1h. I repeatedly asked him to please stop yelling at me but he did not.

And as I pulled away, he kept poking and speaking unkindly, attacking etc.

End of description of bad behavior
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I have systematically removed his existence in my life, but I think I let it go on for too long. I had work-related reasons but already in the summer I wrote this detailed plan on how to exit the relationship safely that I then executed. But finding myself again in the position to have to make this kind of a plan (my marriage ended badly), was not good.

Once I had executed my exit plan far enough I told him that his behavior caused damage. At that point he just took a lot of distance from me. Which I appreciate even if I am fairly sure it is joined with a large level of victim-hood and zero accountability but it still makes things easier for me.

But after that point it seems my PTSD is back in full force. For about 6-8 months I've kept this person stable around me, I exited calmly(ish). And now, example: I returned some hardware to his place yesterday knowing he would not be around so no danger of running into him. I've had a trauma spiral since then. It started with nightmares all night long about running from dangerous people and trying to hide,

He is not the worst I've known. And the strength of my reactions causes shame because he's not _that_ scary. But I seem to react as if I'm in acute danger. And we do run in the same circles, and I had this event we both attended a week ago and spending that evening in the same very large room, I was constantly aware where in the room he was and after I spent some hours just crying. Just being that state of hypervigilance and pretending everything is fine, when it really isn't, was not good.

If anyone has ideas why in my mind he is this terrifying suddenly, I'd love to hear with the hope it would alleviate the shame. Because the shame is bad. It makes me feel I will never be all right and I'll just keep hurting everyone around me as my family again pay the price for me being triggered.

He is also still in a family group in one app I use. I'm paying for it and I would rather he not be there, but I'm scared kicking him off would get another nasty reaction from him even as I believe I would never see it. I don't know if it's an unnecessary poke to a bear. or if I just handle the discomfort.

I will have to see him in a week again. So any ideas on how to make it easier on myself and how to tend to the after effects and aftercare are most welcome. Based on the previous two things in past weeks I'll react very badly even if nothing goes wrong.

I understand on a logical level how hard this is. I promised myself the first time I had to make a safety plan that never again and here I was yet again in a situation that needed a safety plan. Maybe it would not have needed but I felt it did and that's the thing. How do I support myself through this when all I want to do is lament the fact that I have to AGAIN? He knew exactly how bad it had been and he'd seen the struggle I'd gone through to walk the healing journey. The level of betrayal of him putting me back through it is still coursing in my veins.

The worst thing he ever told me was that seeing how de-stabilising the healing is, he'd decided not to go for it. He has traumas in his background. But to have my healing journey used as a reason not to handle his issues... It still stings.

They are kind of neither. But I have removed myself from their circle. I have this quite strong feeling I cannot ignore this anymore. That I have to face this. Has anyone felt this? If so, what did you do? Did something help?

I accepted that I had CSA in my, well, childhood. I still can't bring myself to say some words or even write them. About a year ago I came to accept this about my past. But then my mom died and it all came too overwhelming and I had to just focus on remaining functional for my kids, so I pushed it all down again. At that point I had also asked two of my friends and my therapist to help me handle this and they were all unable to do so. So I knew if I asked another person about this, I'd break if it goes even a little bit wrong.

Oh, I did tell my sister about this. She has same, from same person. And she pushed me to give consent to her to tell my siblings and father with whom my relationship is strained to say the least. I felt quite betrayed. So, anyway, I pushed all of this down to just get from day to another.

Lately I've felt pulled towards this topic through music, tv series, and then I listened to a talk in a conference about this and all the walls I had built crashed down. For the first day I felt like engaging in turn promiscuousness, self harm, etc and was just spiralling hard. I did manage not to do those things. of which I am very proud of myself.

But I do feel it coming up. It is rising to the surface probably because now I have so much more resources to handle it and am in a better situation.

But I don't know how to get started or how to protect myself as I go through this. Because when that part of me comes up, I feel myself like a 5 year old to whom A Very Big Bad Thing has happened. I can wrap myself in my weight blanket and cuddle my stuffed panther. And I am trying to find safe people whom I can discuss this with. I am also looking into finding a new therapist, but the last one avoided the topic like the plague and that does not give me much trust. So this is a kind of call for help. But I am unable to even know what help I would need.

Maybe just to be acknowledged, seen, to know I am not alone.

One song I just found that describes this journey so well is Some Days by Brent Morgan. The lyrics are:
Some days I feel I'd make a good sunset
Some days I just don't wanna give up yet
Some days it's hard to breathe
Some days I'm over being me
Some days, some days, some days
Some days I try my best to seem happy
Some days this place seems better off without me
Some days I'm overwhelmed
Some days I'm lost inside this *
Some days, some days, some days
Some days I wonder what it's like
To live an ordinary life
Maybe I won't feel this way
Some day
Some days I feel like everyone hates me
Some days I question, "Why would God create me?"
Some days I'm holding strong
Some days I'm barely hanging on
Some days, some days, some days
Some days I wonder what it's like
To live an ordinary life
Maybe I won't feel this way
Some day
Some days I wonder what it's like
To live an ordinary life
Maybe I won't feel this way
Some day

I'm so happy to hear the progress Armee 

I also could not figure out why this time there were flashbacks. It is odd. But I am very happy I have someone to help.