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I've not read everything in this thread by any means but I wanted to add to it.
I was very frightened of my mother as a child and still am.
My memories of spanking involved my mother commanding my dad to pull down my pants and smack me on the bum. Sometimes she commanded him to use the belt. He never did this independently of my mother commanding him to do it.

My mother took me into the attic and whipped me with a horse whip. My dad wasn't aware of this.

The paedophile who paedoed me from age 5 to 15 started his abuse by asking me "Does your dad pull your pants down and spank you?"

I nodded yes. I wish I hadn't.

Every single week he'd pull down my pants, put me over his disgusting old man knee and spank me and grope my private parts and more. I fing hate him.

He told me that if I didn't do what he said he'll tell my dad so my dad would spank me too because I'd been a naughty little girl.

If my dad hadn't spanked me, I would have said no wouldn't I? He'd probably have just found a different way to abuse me.

But I know abusers test kids to see if their families will go to the police. He groomed my dad and my mother too.

Disgusting paedo.

My mother later told me my dad was abusive because he smacked my bottom, with zero concept that I remembered that she was commanding my dad to do so. I was never scared of my dad and I have zero memory of him ever hurting me, but when she whipped me it hurt so badly.

I was absolutely terrified of her.

When I went to the police about the paedo my dad supported me and my mother was defensive and weird.

My mother blamed me for being paedoed and raped and called me a prostitute and a little slag same as the paedo did.

I think I actually hate my mother.

I wonder what it is! I've always had these weird electric shock feelings, since I can remember. I've never mentioned it except to doctors but there doesn't seem to be a name for it.
Thank you Narc Kiddo 

Thank you Dalloway and I'm so sorry little you went through that too. I don't understand why this world can be so cruel. That letter you wrote - I have a whole box of unsent letters to my mother. So many that I can't send.  You deserved to be loved and cared for too.

When I feel myself having the cry feeling that won't come out I get electric shock feelings down my fingers. It's weird. I've always had weird electric pains when I feel overwhelmingly sad. Maybe it's the sadness trying to get out like a lightening rod.

Thank you all 

I was watching Shtisel yesterday, episode 1 of season 3. Quite near the beginning, Akiva picks up his baby and talks about how his father told his mother, "Children need to be left to cry for a bit so they don't become spoiled" and how his mother replied that the greatest danger is the feeling no-one cares about you. I don't understand why my mother didn't understand that.

Thank you for your reply, Francis. Reading "I bet our inner childs would be friends" made me smile a lot 

I'm sorry you just had fear from your mother: me too. Even when she was being nice there was always that fear that horrible mother would come out and I never knew when nice mother would disappear. Or whether nice wasn't really nice, just manipulative.

I always have the feeling like I need to cry- just overwhelming grief - when I think about little me. Poor little person. I have a lot of sadness about not having emotional warmth or connection or stability or safety. I find it very hard to cry. There's a massive block. I'm actually scared to cry because of what I'm not sure.

I don't think I got notifications for this thread so apologies that I didn't reply. I may have done but I don't think so.

I HATE being micromanaged SO MUCH! I get a physical sensation of... it's hard to describe... overwhelming horror and grief and panic. It's because my mother micromanaged my life, for years, every minute detail, even after I left home she tried to continue this control. Then my ex husband commanded me to do everything for him,controlled everything I did, everyone I saw, down to what I was allowed to wear and when I was allowed to sleep. What I was allowed to eat. The control and abuse was MASSIVE but at the time - because obviously, it started with "tiny things"- otherwise I wouldn't have married him - and they weren't really tiny things at all, looking back they were enormous bright scorching glowing RED flags. BUT  probably because I was gaslit and DARVOed a lot as a child, I never learnt to recognise when someone/something wasn't right.

Now I mostly have nobody telling me what to do (well, nobody bossing me around at all) I feel a bit (actually, a lot) adrift, and that's a HUGE RELIEF - in many ways - and it's also very frustrating that I'm incapable of having any sort of actual physical routine/time schedule.
When I was working I was self employed (and not making ends meet) so it suited me to do things in my own time. I was able to work to deadlines so long as I was able to. When I started losing money because I'd sent several people things for different people - because my brain couldn't figure out who ordered what - and when I started cancelling orders because I couldn't cope with the thought of walking to the post office - that was devastating because I was so proud of myself for working for myself.

Seemingly a minor thing...

Yes so many "minor things" built up into an avalanche. I learnt to pretend (to myself as well as others) things were minor when actually they were part of a bigger picture.

I feel extremely overwhelmed and unable to think straight, let alone have a routine, and I'm not sure if I want one (I haven't paid for the NYT crossword and I've got used to just doing Wordle, but it's still sad).

Thank you 

Thank you Blueberry, that's very helpful stuff and thanks for the love and hugs SanMagic. I very much appreciate you and all of you 

I thought it was my first therapy appointment but it was actually part of the assessment process, with a therapist who talked with me about what type of therapist I needed, how long-term (ongoing or a set period) what kind of level of experience and speciality I would need them to have etc so on my next appointment I'll be meeting my assigned therapist for the first time. So I'm going to talk to them about trying EMDR and I'm thinking after reading all of your posts that it's something I can work towards rather than deciding to try it straight away.
I'm feeling unusually hopeful because the therapist I spoke to explained how they aren't going to go faster than I can cope with, so it'll be at my pace and also she mentioned that it can take a while to know whether the therapist is the right person to be working with me, to build up a rapport, if that's the right word. So let's see how it goes.

Thank you Hope 

Yes- performing for her. That's what it was. I was my mother's performance artist too, Hope . It's just horrible, isn't it?
It is difficult, so difficult,to find a way to love the little ones because they were shown that they didn't deserve to exist in the first place... maybe that's why?

I'm sitting at the circular white formica kitchen table on my high chair. Not a high chair with a built in tray- but an adult chair with very long legs which enables me to sit at the table alongside the adults. I've not started school yet.
My mother writes in a book and I have to copy what she's written.
I pick up the pen with my left hand and copy her writing.
"No, you're doing mirror writing again"
I've written what she's written just right as far as I can see.
She tries to take the pencil out of my hand but I'm gripping it really tight. I can feel her trying to get it out of my hands and it's uncomfortable. I don't want to let go of it.

I copy what she's written with my right hand.

I discover that if I hold a pencil in each hand that I can write the same thing at the same time. I start in the middle and work outwards and write the same thing simultaneously with both hands.
I like the mirror writing best.

I don't know what inner child work is.

I know that I hated being a child and that it's been very difficult being an adult.

My mother never wanted children and she treated me like a school pupil rather than a daughter.

Whilst I genuinely value the academic things she instilled in me, the fact that she taught me to read and write before I even went to nursery school, I felt like my only value to her was that if I could learn things she wanted to teach me, my success or failure was her success or failure and she hated me if I failed. My ability to succeed directly correlated with her ability to like me. I never felt actually loved by her. I don't know if I felt loved by my dad either, but I felt at least cared about.

My dad didn't change the way he related to me on the basis of anything. He got mad at me sometimes but I understood why generally. I didn't understand why when my mother did, or why my dad was mad at me because my mother was mad at me.

I remember him saying things like "try not to upset your mother" but I didn't know how not to upset her.

She had post natal depression and she never did bond with me.

I was a difficult child.

Because I wasn't wanted.

If I'd have been wanted I'm guessing I would not be on this forum now trying to make sense of things.

I know that little me is still crying and crying and crying in a small bedroom in a separate wing of a big old house with three doors closed between me and my parents' room, and no matter how much I cry, nobody comes.

I know that I sometimes hear my mother's angry voice shouting "No, you must leave her to cry, she has to learn"

But I never did learn.

I can't tell if I'm autistic or if it's just CPTSD or both and I'm not sure if it matters.
The thing I don't know if I relate to or not is routine.

I can't cope at all with routines that are imposed by others, not at all. They fill me with a sense of dread and foreboding.

But I have my own routines. One recent example that really upset me was the NYT mini crossword puzzle being suddenly stuck behind a paywall. Then they did the same with two other puzzles.
They were part of my daily routine.
The fact that the way they lured me in by offering it for free then taking it away hoping people will pay to subscribe feels incredibly manipulative.
And I hate feeling manipulated.

So I was wondering, is my extreme emotional reaction to that very minor thing autism, or is it CPTSD, or are the NYT puzzle people just mean spirited? (or all three?)

Maybe it depends what "successful" means to the individual. I can't imagine 5 years being enough for my mountain of horrors. I'm also wondering about expectations. I try not to have any, but maybe it's impossible not to?

I can't even imagine anything ever actually "curing" single PTSD in 5 hours but I don't think anyone really "gets over" trauma, rather learns to live healthily in spite of it? The idea of a "cure" seems completely alien to me. Maybe that's just realistic. Or maybe because I never had the help I needed early on and because my trauma involves so many things from such a young age and those things I guess caused a domino effect of not ever learning how to safely navigate life, therefore getting caught up in more and more new traumatic situations.
Maybe because I've always tried to pretend that I'm okay and I'm not. Just to try to get through life.

I tried self hypnosis tapes that I got out of the library years ago - for insomnia - now for some reason, I have a massive aversion to anything like that. Just the "calming" voices make me angry and disgusted. Possibly because I was in a really bad place back then and I wasn't getting any help, had a very chaotic life. Trying to help myself without a therapist hasn't been helpful.
 

Hey thank you sanmagic and SenseOrgan

 

I've just realised my appointment is tomorrow!!!
How did that sneak up on me?

Thank you both so much for your encouragement and sharing your experiences.

I fawned and tried to do everything "right" and how the different therapists I tried wanted too.
I'd not realised fawn response was the description of what I'd been doing before so thanks for sharing your experience of that.

With my last therapist although she did help in practical ways ie) I managed to leave my abuser thanks to her, so she's absolutely amazing - I didn't even realise why I was pretending to be okay just to please her and make her believe she'd "healed" me.

I didn't realise that was a fawn response until now.

I'm going to have to remember to explain that to the new therapist I think.

Let's see how it goes.

I'm either going to love them or hate them -

Going to listen to my gut on this and make sure this therapist is the right one for me before committing long term.