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Thank you Dutch Uncle and Lizzie for your replies. Thankfully I have found a wonderful therapist who has a lot of C-PTSD knowledge (from personal experience) and is helping me develop techniques for healing.

Thanks for the guidelines link. I truly appreciate the work you guys have put into this site - it's so thorough and thoughtful. I will do my best to respect these guidelines.

Greetings OOTS community,

I have recently been diagnosed with C-PTSD and have felt great relief in this diagnosis as well as a large sense of overwhelm. Part of the overwhelm is no doubt that right around the time of my diagnosis I also went NC with my NPD parents and mostly personality-disordered FOO. But after carrying around a "Major Depressive Disorder" for 20 years, which felt somewhat amorphous, the C-PTSD diagnosis really answers a lot of questions and fills in missing pieces of the puzzle. I am in therapy, have read Pete Walker's book and "Childhood Disrupted" by Donna Jackson Nakazawa, and feel I am at the beginning of the journey of healing that my whole life has been leading up to.

A little background: 44 yr old female, married for 17 years, no kids. Youngest and smallest of 4 siblings. Malignant UNPD mom and uNPD/BPD dad. Target of bullying from older siblings, especially older GC uNPD/BPD sis. She and NM were a team and used humiliation, backstabbing, gossip, and fear to control me. Men in my family were all pretty passive and to this day utterly controlled by NM. From the outside we were a "perfect", educated (parents both have advanced degrees), middle class family. As many of you know that doesn't usually add up to what the reality is. There were secrets none of us could ever speak of, nothing was ever discussed - no one was allowed to express feelings about our parents behaviors. Keeping the good face on bad behavior began to make me feel like I was going crazy.

Physical abuse was there (mostly from bully sis), but the verbal and emotional abuse was worse. I think my depression and anxiety really started when I was a teenager. Social anxiety was horrible - I had been brainwashed to think that nobody liked me. But I made friends and spent time with their families and the truth about my family started to reveal itself little by little - other families actually supported and (gasp!) seemed to LIKE each other. My parents seemed to despise and were openly hostile to one another. But stayed together "for the children" which never made a lot of sense to me.
I believe my mother dealt with my dad's philandering by subjecting whichever kid was around to emotional incest. I was always uncomfortable having to hear her side of their marital problems when I was just trying to cope with adolescence.

I tried to get away from them as early as 16. I was accepted to a prestigious art school in another part of the state but my mother would not let me out of her sight. Likewise when I applied for college I wanted to go to a different part of the country but wound up staying in state because they wouldn't assist me financially otherwise.

I saw my first therapist in college and with her help and guidance, was able to graduate. I moved back home into the insanity (recession of '93) and after 4 years of collegial independence saw their dysfunction with new eyes. I spent day and night plotting my escape, saving every penny to amass enough to leave. They were crazier than I had been able to grasp. Everything was always in crisis, falling apart - they didn't seem to want peace, only drama. I wanted out.

I got out - it took me 3 years, but I found a job in another part of the country near the man I was dating who would become my husband. As I became more independent, my toxic family became more enmeshed, controlled by my mom, and unable to see their own misery or do anything about it. She destroyed their marriages and relationships. None of them (all close to 50) have ever been able to sustain a love relationship. nM and GCsis go on vacations together, spend every weekend together and talk multiple times a day - no boundaries, totally enmeshed - it's like they are married.

My life improved when I got away from them, but the pull of FOG was strong. I tried to have a superficial relationship with them, VLC and MC. For awhile it worked, but they continued to be miserable NF resentful of my minuscule participation in the family.

I got back into therapy and went for 6 years. I took a cocktail of Xanax, Lamictal, and anti-depressants and was working in healing myself. But I also had relationship problems (big shocker): trust issues, anxiety and debilitating depression. The meds and therapy helped somewhat but I didn't know just how deep my and my husband's individual issues went. Eventually we lost our health insurance and could no longer afford therapy or medication. I self medicated with alcohol instead. But I also used exercise and a healthy diet to fight my depression, read as many books as I could to stay on top of things, and journaled, journaled, journaled about my feelings and experiences.

My husband and I love each other dearly and have always been committed to making it work, but we have had a rocky road. He was a parentified child at a young age, was forced to choose which parent to live with in the divorce, and is super codependent. His parents are decent people, but they are emotional children who are terrible at emotional support. Alcoholism nearly destroyed him, and there were multiple traumas during the period of a decade of trying to get the drinking under control. We were highly functioning alcoholics until he became physically addicted, developed pancreatitis, and it almost killed him. We both got sober a few years ago and began the difficult work of healing.

Around this time when we individually and together were focused on healing and things were improving in our lives, my FOO started to stir up drama and tried to pull us into it. i was honest with my sister about how our family needed healing and she turned into a raving, screaming lunatic and told me never to call her again. I didn't.

For 6 months after that I called my mom once a week and she never really mentioned it, even though they tell each other everything. Eventually she began to find reasons to contact me and drag me into whatever drama du jour. calling me multiple times a week ( we had talked 30 minutes a week for 20 years), stressing me out, asking for favors, being a general pain in the *. I started having panic attacks for the first time in many years. Every time she would contact me I would have a sharp pain in my chest and feel nauseous.  It got more aggressive as the holidays neared and after a particularly egregious stab in the back and knife twist, I said "no more." DH called her and told her not to contact us or his family.

That was 2 months ago. I blocked numbers and email, as did DH. She, my aunt, and my sister have aggressively hoovered us every single one of these 8-9 weeks, going so far as to call my in-laws. Mail, emails, voicemails. I have listened to none, opened no packages or letters - just three them away.

But I am having horrible flashbacks, which take a few days from which to recover. I am learning to deal with them, but they are excruciatingly intense. I am self -employed but my work is suffering. I have no motivation - recovery and healing are all I am interested in. DH is supportive but struggling, as it's bringing up a lot of his own trauma. Every week right now is difficult and exhausting.

I have been off meds for 12 years and do not necessarily want to go back on them, but have entertained the idea. The intensity of what I am experiencing daily feels like it will consume me. Everything has felt like a struggle for years and years - is this just my life? One struggle after another forever? I feel like there is no escaping the constant crisis mode I was raised with, and the peace I have had at different times will never return ....or last.

Trying to just make it through winter, keep working on myself, stay healthy, and keep my eye on the prize. OOTF has been a wonderful resource and I am glad I found OOTS too. Bless you all and thanks for reading.