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My reaction on reading this was it reminded me of similar situations in my past.  In my family, my M was a toxic narcissist and my F was absent.  With time, I now realize he couldn't take her, but it left me alone to fend for myself.  In many ways, that was the harder relationship for me.  I spent many years bonding in a limerent way (thanks Kizzie, I'd forgotten that word!) to older men looking for a father figure.  It happened with several bosses, and ultimately cost me the job when they didn't (couldn't) live up to my expectations and things went south.  There have been others, like professors in college, and even online friends.  I get hurt when I don't get back what I feel like I need.  These days, I am aware enough of it that  I am less susceptible - but I still fall into those traps.

Ultimately, what I've never learned how to do is love myself.  I understand now that no one else can love me if I don't love myself.  And no one else can be the F that I needed but never got.  But, if I don't trash the relationship, I can get something else - friendship.

I second what Blueberry said (or maybe third, since Armee seconded technically).  I say this as much to remind myself as to remind you, but with our upbringing we were taught that we should 100% give and take nothing for ourselves.  It's OK to not have to give all the time.  You are valid and you also deserve to receive healing - that's how we all heal together.  Sometimes we give hugs, and sometimes it's OK to receive them (and sometimes it helps the other person to be the giver too).

You're describing something I've been realizing lately, too.

As a child, I stuffed all my feelings.  They weren't going to get me any care anyway, and only negative attention.  I was completely emotionless for most of my life, adopting addiction and dissociation as a way to continue to keep those emotions at bay when I got older.

Since I started healing, the emotions come fast and furious now and are OVERWHELMING.  I cry at movies when someone is kind to someone else.  (Ironically, the part everyone else cries where the hero dies and the heroine is left alone or whatever, I'm completely stoic about.  But if someone is kind to someone, oh forget it.  I need a tissue).

I've been working on - and made a lot of progress on - both my addiction and dissociation issues.  I'm not better, but I'm better than I was.  But as those go, the feelings are coming back.  It's not unlike when my hand goes to sleep and it hurts like bloody heck when the blood comes back.  That's where I'm at.  I hurt like bloody heck most of the time.  On bad days, I think about the Matrix and ask myself why oh why didn't I take the blue pill.  Sometimes I wish I'd never started down this path because it hurts too much and it's too overwhelming knowing I'll have to deal with this for the rest of my life.  Fortunately, that's not too often, and the horse is out the gate so to speak, so whether or not I wish I'd ever started this, I did, and there's no way but forward.

Anyway, sorry, that was a long response.  I need to try to be more economic in my responses.  I wanted to just validate what you're feeling.

My family structure was EXACTLY the same.  Narcissist mother (I have no doubt), golden child sibling, I was the scapegoat.  Father was co-dependent/absent, and is dead now.

My mother also plays the guilt card really, really, really well.  There are different types of narcissists, and it's worth reading about them because it helps you to see their strategy.  (The waif gets attention by being the victim - not saying your mother is, but I see some of that).

The fact that you say you could take or leave her says a lot about your relationship.  And I agree with everyone else.  You need to focus on you.  Especially if your brother still lives with her, then you're not even in a position to have to be responsible for her in older age.  (In my case, unfortunately, my brother and I haven't spoken since my father died almost 10 years ago, and he lives across the country so the expectation falls to me to take care of her - fortunately, that hasn't arisen yet, but I dread the day when it does).

I'm starting to learn that labels are helpful to start healing, but they become a roadblock down the road.  I (and from what I read, many of us) question if we were even abused.  We were gaslighted into believing we were the problem, shamed into looking into any other families to see how unhealthy we were.  The labels help me to see its not normal, but at least for me, I get stuck on the labels and then I don't move past it into healing (is it A or B is less valuable to me than how do I heal from what I experienced).

But I can validate that your experiences were the same as mine, and most days I'm pretty sure it wasn't healthy.

I'm kind of late seeing this thread, but this was my house too.  My mother used corporal punishment a lot, and maybe it was and maybe it wasn't abuse, but I don't really carry scars from that.  What I carry scars from was the neglect, contempt, and invalidation.  My parents proudly told me they let me "cry it out" so I'd be stronger, but I still disappointed them because I was still needy.  Whenever I try to talk about how I feel, I'm invalidated - it's not that big a deal or you're just too sensitive.  And contempt for any choice I've made - what I chose to do with my life, who I chose to marry, even what I buy.  I was heavily bullied as a child (my life was even threatened once) and it's like it didn't even happen.  Never even discussed or acknowledged.  Same with when I was SA.  Didn't happen.  Never happened.

That's what hurts the most.  I have spent my whole life fighting just for the right to exist.

For what it's worth, I can relate to a couple of things in your post. 

First, it is so true that people only understand the physical part of the struggle.  I present as a reasonably functional adult; I have a family, I have a job.  I am lucky and I know it.  I also struggle with crippling anxiety, panic attacks, emotional flashbacks, toxic shame, and existential loneliness (even though I have a family, I feel completely alone in the universe).  No one sees that and I get no credit for the days when getting out of bed is all I can do.  I've heard others have problems with vets who take issue with C-PTSD because "how can you have PTSD when you never got shot at).

Second, I had a similar experience at college.  Panic attack in the middle of the night (thought I was having a heart attack), and called my parents.  Back then, I still thought they gave a hoot about me.  My father answered the phone, asked me why I was bothering him in the middle of the night and (my recollection, but it's a bit hazy because I dissociate pretty bad most of the time) hung up on me.

And I get the lump as well.  I've had it for a few years now.  I thought there was something wrong like cancer, but it's "just" a form of armoring.  Makes it hard to swallow sometimes.

I did see the college therapist for awhile.  And it was helpful.  I'm not sure there's a point to my sharing except to say I hear you and can relate to some of what you wrote, and Kizzie has some really good advice.

Hi Desert Flower.  I'll second what Chart said.  What I read was someone in pain.  Someone who has a lot of confusion about how to feel about what happened.  I can relate to that.  I find that I go round and round in circles trying to think my way through something and can't.  The only thing that ever helps me is sharing it, and having others reflect back what they hear and then processing it through that filter.  That's what you're doing here.

What happened to you was not OK.  No matter who did it.  You were abused and victimized, and then gaslighted and discarded.  That's not OK, and I'm sorry that it happened to you.  (It always feels so trite to say I'm sorry, but so many of us - me included - never got apologies).

Oh my gosh, LilBrokenFae.  This is me, to a tee.  "I don't have a baseline personality to get back to."  "I'm a person built of reactions and self-soothing."  I can so relate to this.  Thank you for writing this.

NM = narcissist mother.

Sorry - didn't get my whole reply.

I am at a point in my recovery where I no longer believe or internalize the lies I was fed to ensure compliance.  It's taken me a lot of work to get here, but I feel pretty good about where I am.  I still get emotional flashbacks that set me back, but I no longer live there.

What I still struggle with is replacing who I was told to be with who I want to be.  I've removed the programming that told me who I should be, but at the moment, I'm trying to write new programming.  Nature abhors a vacuum, so I fall back to unhealthy ways of filling time.  But I've made a lot of progress with internalizing, thanks in no small part to everyone here. 

For me, at least, the thing that would have made the biggest difference was knowing I wasn't the problem.  I spent my whole life being told how worthless I was.  Balancing between failing (and embarrassing my NM) and succeeding (and overshadowing my NM).  I learned that I was the one that was too sensitive, too flighty, too whatever was most useful that day. 

The one thing I want my kids to know is that it's not their fault when I'm not in a good place.  I lost my temper a lot more when they were younger (not physically abusive, but I can yell - though I work hard to keep it from becoming a personal attack).  As I've learned more about CPTSD, I now understand my triggers better, but I still have days. When I make a mistake, I own it. I don't let them think it's their fault when I'm messed up.

That would have meant the world to me.

[Chart]

Chart: This is something I firmly believe as well.  Well said.  Does my parents' messed up past excuse their behavior towards me?  No.  Does my messed up past excuse my behavior towards my kids?  Also, equally, no.  Like you, I have made it my mission to try my hardest, and apologize when I fail and lash out.  I've gotten better as time has gone on and I've understood my own triggers better.  My ultimate goal is for them to know that when I'm the problem, I'm the problem not them.  And when they're the problem, I let them know so they can fix it and grow.  If I'm 100% screwed up, my goal is for my kids to be 50% screwed up.  And then theirs are maybe 25% screwed up.  It's a generational disease, and this is why.  But I want my kids to at least have the tools to do their own healing.  I don't owe my parents anything, nor do my kids owe me anything.  Hopefully, we can heal together.

Thank you Armee and Lakelynn.  I appreciate your thoughts. 

Thanks for all the responses. 

Armee, I have thought similar things on good days.  On not so good days, not so much...

Dollyvee, I had not thought about it that way in so many terms.  But you actually put words to something I've kept thinking about in the back of my mind.  One of the things I keep holding on to and thinking about and then realizing that I don't want to think about it anymore is what I studied in college.  I hated it then, I hate it now.  I convinced myself then it was to get a good enough job but I realize now it was to appease my FOO's idea of who I should be.  If I think of it in terms of I'm losing that self that was never me in the first place, it makes a lot of sense.

Thank you both!

I rejoined the board a few days back after having been gone for a couple of years. 

By way of brief backstory (trigger warning, and again, for anyone who remembers me from before), I grew up in a neglectful (on the best days) and soul-crushing FOO.  M is an angry narcissist who grew up in her own abusive family.  F was absent and left me to contend on my own.  Have been no contact with B (golden child) for nearly 25 years.  I was the scapegoat.  I believe I was abused by a neighbor when I was young - I say believed because I only have fringes of memories and no proof it happened, so maybe it didn't and I invented it.  Bullied, and with no support from parents even when I received (literal) death threats from kids at school.  College was a rough time as I had no coping skills, and I went looking for love in all the wrong places.  Developed addiction(s) that took on a life of their own.  I got ghosted a lot, in hindsight because I was too intense and probably scared some people - I never, ever, once hurt anyone.  But I was dark and moody and needy.  Getting ghosted was in some cases the worst thing that could happen to me, because it left me guessing about what I'd done wrong.  Guessing turned into ruminating and obsessing - even though the person was long gone and that for the best.

Since I've last been here, I've worked through a great deal.  I am NC with FOO.  I have worked through the wreckage of my past, and been able to accept many things.  Most importantly, I'm finally able to accept "I don't know" as an answer.  Though there are still some ragged edges, I no longer EF back to that part of my life.  (I do still EF, mostly back to feeding my imposter syndrome).  That's all to the plus.  To the minus, those addiction(s) still afflict me.  I thought that might be why I came back, to try to get some sanity.  After all, things are all good.  Right?  I don't need those addictions anymore, they're not serving me.  I'm All Better.  Right?

I haven't posted since I rejoined, partly because I haven't been sure what to say.  This morning, I think I finally figured it out.

Things are a lot better.  Truly.  I am grateful.  I am at more peace than I think I have ever been in my life.  I can actually breathe, and I don't take that for granted.  But I think in doing so, I've lost my way.  I spent most of my life trying to figure out "what was wrong with me".  Therapists and doctors and meds and reading and reading.  I also spent most of my life trying desperately to hold together a "sense of self".  I had a narrative, personally and professionally.  I knew what I was doing with my life, and every choice I made, every thing I did, was to move that narrative forward.  Like I was a story.  A big part of that narrative was the mystery of what made me broken.  A lot of the rest of it was intense, focused workaholism on a particular career goal.  It held the broken pieces of me together, like a bits of debris swirling around and all held together by the low pressure center of a tornado.  My life has been a tornado.

Since I've "figured out what was wrong" and since I've been able to make so much progress, I've felt the winds of the tornado lessen.  My workaholism has subsided enough for me to recognize that I'm burned out, and I hate what I do for a living and always did.  I have taken some steps back professionally and gone to part-time - still have to work to pay the bills, but it no longer moves the narrative forward the way it once did.  I am no longer as obsessively driven as I once was to fix myself.  I'm not even sure how I define myself anymore - for a long time, I defined myself by my C-PTSD.  That was my identity.  I needed my pain.  It is still a part of who I am, and it still informs my reactions to things.  But it no longer defines me.  I just have echoes of bad coping strategies, like addiction(s) that keep me coming back for more.

I think the problem is that in lessening the winds of the tornado, I have also lost the center.  There is no longer enough force to keep the pieces of me aloft, and they are crashing to the ground.  The addiction(s) serve as a last ditch way to get one more spin of the vortex, to keep enough crisis and drama going that I don't lose myself completely.

I don't know who or what I am without crisis.  I have no goals anymore, no bucket list.  No interests, no hobbies.  No purpose or reason for wanting to get up in the morning or fight through the day.  I feel the pieces of me floating away, and I no longer have a narrative to move me forward.  And no real drive to overcome the addiction(s) if I am being truly honest.

I feel like I am losing myself.

Thank you all.