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Hello SteveM, nice to meet you! Your recent post has helped me realize the value of my own relationship with my sister. I've kinda always taken my sister for granted. We were terribly close when children, then grew apart over the decades as each of us went our separate ways (and dealing with our trauma in whatever manner we were able). But in the past two years I've come to more deeply appreciate the common experience shared with my sister regarding our trauma. And I'm happy to say that my sister came through our family trauma without turning her pain outward as so many narcissists do. I'm very glad you kept your balance with your sister but in the final moments affirmed your independence and autonomy. You kept a healthy relationship with your sister no matter what she tried to do to that relationship. Bravo! And your story has helped me appreciate my own sister even more. We have in the past few years grown closer, communicating more often. I am happy for that and hope for it to continue.

Thanks for sharing your story!
Chart
 

Sometimes what we're really grieving isn't just the person, but the hope that this time it would be different.

Wow, that really hit me hard... that describes so much of the pattern of childhood trauma/abandonment... that hope that the parent will change and start giving the thing that we need, or the reverse, realize how much they are harming us with their behavior... We carry that hope into adulthood and so many of the relationships we establish are just extensions of that primal trauma. TheBigBlue, I'm sorry for that betrayal you faced, you are worth so much more than that. We all are.
 

Dear Prefrontal Cortex,
I am struggling and searching to understand your relationship with "our" sub-conscious. Popular perception and running belief indicates that despite taking up nearly 100% of our conscious thinking, you in reality only represent a small percentage of our actual brain activity. I equate this situation as being similar to my trying to influence international politics... by visiting the vegetable garden of one my local council members of the relatively small town in which I live... and even! I doubt I have even THAT much perception or influence over my sub-conscious.

And so therein lies the rub of my frustration and the purpose of this letter... I should like a little more "help" from our sub-conscious regarding the current state of affairs of which we find ourselves.

To be plain: Would it not be possible that our sub-conscious starts communicating with us in an ever so slightly more clear and explicit manner? As opposed to releasing gas-bubbles of sadness, futility, uselessness and depression, to slowly waft and rise at their leisure into the domain of consciousness, couldn't we rather somehow "meet half-way" so as to...
1) Get the messages FASTER and CLEARER!
2) Have a better idea of to what these "feelings" are actually linked!
3) Perhaps give an advance-warning of the Potency of the upcoming "state of feeling" that is potentially subsequently going to shut us down like a blizzard locks-down sunny vacation spots in the south, totally unprepared for snow...

I would be doing you a disservice, my dearest Sub-Conscious, by NOT iforming you that I'm getting a little pissed off... It's as if you are subtle... subtle... subtle... and THEN you drop a forty-ton ocean-going steamliner on my sorry excuse for a corpse... What On Earth Is Your PROGRAMM here?

Please? Seriously, I've had dysfunctional relationships with people in the past, but YOU take the cake of all of them. Let's cut the crap! I can take it! But just please give it to me straight!

Signed, an extremely fatigued mind-body...

It puzzles me I lasted so long with her, and that she was one of the first people I opened up to about my issues.

I can't count the number of relationships that went awry in my teens and twenties. Looking back, I see all these interactions as extensions of the "normal" relationship pattern established by my mother.

This friend also came "back" a few years later when she heard what I was doing, that I must be doing well etc, and wanted me to use my skills to do something for her when I didn't even get an invite to her wedding. I think the issue was not being stood up for that made me feel so emotional in the dream, and I'm glad that you're doing that for yourself.

My interpretation of this "friend's" behavior is simple selfishness, that is, only thinking about themselves and advantages to themselves, without seeing or analyzing their own actions nor any ability to empathically understand what someone else might be feeling. This is what I have often found to be "unconscious hypocrisy" and I have seen it often, though almost always, I figure it out days, weeks, months, or years later.

This was completely the behavior of my mother, which, no matter the situation, was gauged to suit her own emotional or physical needs. As such, my own selfish self-occupation was always denied or punished when it conflicted with these primal needs of my mother. (Other behaviors however, were not instantly condemned, which has led largely to my years of confusion trying to sort out what exactly was the toxic behavior that effected me... this was consequential as it made it very hard to put my finger on what the trauma actually was...)

Such a pattern in my early childhood has gone a long way in explaining to me why I function the way I do today with selfish, self-centered, manipulative, mocking, etc etc types of people. Still being relatively "unhealed" (imo) I avoid people of this sort completely. I refuse to even get close to any kind of situation where I might be mistreated or exploited, and the slightest hint of it appearing causes me to abandon the situation almost immediately.

 

However, I think her discussion of accountability is a good blueprint for what to look for when you have never had that in your life as well as it's not wrong for people to be accountable.

As a Fawner that's a very poignant idea for me...

Ok, I did it. Did abdominal strengthening, cardiac breathing and PMR. I "cheat". I "trick" myself. I "make deals". No matter how warm and cozy I am in bed, I will always find the energy to make myself a big strong coffee (or tea). So I organize how I'll have my coffee/tea ready and waiting for me when I finish PMR (reward). My routine is usually very early in the morning before going to work. I take over an hour to wake up, so it's not unusual for me to set my alarm for 5am. After it goes off, I doze for at least 45 minutes. I call this the transition. Classically, there is a LOT going on in me at this time. I'm horizontal for starters and that changes everything for me. It is both a period of anxiety AND safety, but the safety has a time limit: I know that it won't last. It's got nothing to do with getting up. Actually, when I do go to a vertical body position, my anxiety plunges, almost to "normal" levels. I can function and usually get on with my day. No, the "safety limit" has to do with my infancy, in my crib, and what was going on outside my room, downstairs, etc. So for years now, I have been exploring this morning "feeling". And as of two years or so, I interact with my inner child at this moment, specifically talking, thinking, imagining I'm hugging him, explaining. All this is imaginary-tactile. I'm dealing with a baby and that baby's capacity of "understanding" their environment is nothing at all like my adult-me capacity. This "translation" of feeling and love and comfort is difficult and weird. Loving others has always been fluid and easy for me. Loving myself on the other hand has taken real effort. It felt totally plastic at the beginning, corny. But I very much appreciated Pete Walker's phrase, "Fake it until you make it..." very much... and took it to heart. I can pretend with all honesty, and over time I've learned... I've learned that that little baby really really suffered, was confused, was terrified and really really wanted "that man" to pick him up and interact with him. He never did. My biological father never gave me any love, quite the reverse. I had a talk with my sister a few months back and mentioned that I always feel like I'm being watched... she confirmed that she has the same feeling, always being observed, someone, somewhere looking questioningly at her. It's the exact same for me. That was our biological father. He was always watching us, like a wary-angry cat who doesn't quite trust anything.

So I did my PMR this morning. It was a little more difficult than usual, but once begun it's only fifteen minutes, so I don't struggle too much. Also, I know the benefits now. Abdominal strengthening is more annoying... I do that first of all, get it out of the way. Cardiac breathing is easy, five minutes usually. Sometimes I do ten. It's just the length of time needed for my tea or coffee to cool sufficiently that I can drink it, check the forum and/or the weather for the day, then PMR.

PMR often gets me crying. That's to say, emotions and tears often well up and come out. Regardless how long I've been doing this, it still comes as a surprise. I usually pause the audio and let it flow the time it needs. I use an audio file I downloaded on my phone (ripped from YT) so I can still be "led" and don't get too lost. Two years I've been doing this and I still feel that I need the person's voice and support (the guy has a German or Austrian accent that totally relaxes me and I really appreciate him...)

So today, during PMR I "sensed" the abandonment wound. I felt it in relation to my last relationship. As I did the exercises, the thoughts of lost love came to me, as they come to me often. That Love that is absent, not there, ungiven... My last relationship was with a woman for whom it was very difficult to give anything, and probably impossible to give emotionally. I remember sensing regularly the situations where aid or support WAS given, it was with resentment and she was not at all at ease doing so. I remember seeing her this way not only with me, but with friends as well. She often wondered aloud to me why she didn't have very many friends. Looking back, I still have feelings of anger... she had a genius-level IQ, but looking into a reflective object, she was totally blind. She was the "construct-to-perfection" to awaken my deepest trauma-wound, abandonment, desperate need for love, ridiculous expectation of understanding or change. Like the million cuts that bleed you out, I woke up one day, off Prozac for nearly a month, went into a panic about a situation with my ex-wife and got a severe reproach from my partner that my behavior was inappropriate for her and that we needed to have a serious talk to correct the situation. I broke up with her. Something in my head said, let's go... let's dance, bring on the chariots and horses and chaos... I surrendered to my inner-child that couldn't stand the humiliation and aloneness and ignorance. You know it's wrong, though no idea what or why. I split in two. For four days or so I reveled in my freedom, feeling a power of decision and control, until one night I awoke in a panic I have never known. I wrote her a text the next morning, and asked for forgiveness, asked that we get back together and try again... even though I knew it was impossible. For four months we "discussed". She showed all the old behaviors and all the evidence came back up into my face. But the pain of the abandonment wound had swallowed me whole. I knew she would never accept me back in her life... I knew I was in for a long haul of suffering and work... I heard an internal voice tell me... years... you're in it for years and years, perhaps forever. I wrote my ex-girlfriend and asked her to not contact me for a year. She has respected that demand and more. After one year, she failed to respond to an email regarding some of her stuff that I wanted to no longer store at my house. I spoke with her mother to organize the situation. I intuitively knew that she was breaking up with her new boyfriend. In hindsight, I know all. But "knowing" doesn't really help much. Now, I want to "feel" something different. And that comes through my body and nervous system... my brain is a sidenote, a distraction, a carnival... Back to life, the present moment, and the fact that nothing is separate. The truth is, I am not wounded at all, I just don't yet know gold when I see it.

Thank you HannahOne and SenseOrgan.

Extreme exhaustion at the moment. I passed my physical limits Monday and Tuesday. Yesterday it snowed, not much but enough to paralyze the school and much of the transport system. My daughter stayed at home, and me too. We had a lovely day together, made a cake, took a walk in the snow, played scrabble, watched Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail, made a pizza... she loves the knights who say "Ni!" But I ate too much sugar and carbs, this morning I broke down in sudden tears in the kitchen, sobbing as the kettle boiled. Made my way back to bed with a tea. I slept like the dead, and still awoke exhausted. Didn't even get up when my daughter went off to school. Normally I do... I feel the eyes of the inner critic peering in at me through the window. I can read his thoughts: he sees a spoiled, lazy, crybaby...  And that makes me scared... I need to move my butt... I need my body back, my energy. I'm seeing things coming and it requires a certain amount of action on my part. Picking up the phone is like moving sacs of ciment. How much longer is my psyche going to function like this? I never understood... it indeed can take years to recover. Cptsd is a MAJOR injury. Why is that fact so hard to completely integrate?

Aller, fait ton PMR Chart ! Un petit coup de pied aux fesses... comme HannahOne fait aux prêtres :-)

especially when someone is making money off of it

... and therein lies the rub.

Cptsd is a business for a lot (all) of folks... Not sure how I feel about that... It's also a question of degree. A lot of these people give me the creeps sometimes. But even those I don't like, I've learned things from. I think the value of ideas can be independent of their source.

And as for Trust... geez, what a Funhouse. 2 and 1/2 years ago, I flipped out over "betrayal" from my partner, then the same thing occurred with one of my closest friends a few months later. But I learned so much. Losing the illusion of love to discover a deeper sense of who I really am... Everybody gets suckered in this life. I believe if we survive, we learn, the best stuff grows out of sh*t. It's hard, but that's the kind of pain that turns golden once we understand it. Golden Pain doesn't repeat.

Maybe, unconsciously, so I could kick any wayward priest in the behind if needed.

It depends on the priest of course, but there's a much more appropriate place to kick them (imo :-)

I don't know how to bring all of this together, or how to begin to communicate it with another person. Today was certainly quite an epic fail. But maybe I just need a person who is not so locked down herself. My poor friend. May she find happiness, safety, peace, joy.

I disagree that this was a "fail". To the contrary. Or maybe your objectives were different than what I understood. What a fantastic experiment you did. Everyone changes. Some a lot, others less. But change is fluid, and process isn't "on-off". We "transition" into new things. It's a learning process, like getting a doctorate. As we evolve, how great to pause and look back over our shoulder. There's nothing wrong with having one foot on each side of the river (so long as you're flexible :-)

Ultimately I believe this: it is "okay" for me to be 100% who I am at any given moment in time. So long as I am being "healthy with others", who I am and how/what/why... is okay. Anyway, the present moment will change and I have the future before me again. To change or not to change... interesting and beautiful either way.

I came up with a concept years ago. I've since heard the same thing in other forms, but I love this idea and fall back on it very frequently: 100% of Judgements are false. That is to say, "judgements" are opinions influenced entirely by beliefs and feelings. A judgment, viewed from another perspective or a different context easily becomes the reverse. I'll leave off a bit, but this idea gives me freedom. I can have my opinions AND see my "flaws" in those same ideas but still understand that that "judgment" is part of my "composed self" at that particular moment (now or whenever) and I can continue or change as I sense/feel in that experience I'm currently having called "life". I become "god" but a god who is only another part of a deeper greater truth.

Sorry, kinda rambled there... :-)

And I gotta say (admittedly a judgment on my part) I've run across a few Evangelicals... happy to hear you saw through it and got out. Huge win imo. Gotta love yourself for that.
 

Thank you HannahOne, Marcine, Armee...

I'm in awe of your ability to cry and feel, Chart! 

I have always felt... Only recently have I begun to cry. But I find the word "cry" inappropriate. I don't believe that's what I'm actually doing. For all appearances it's crying, but I'm slowly slipping towards an understanding that the tears are not only water, they are truth-understanding coming and settling into their rightful place. I am a (mostly) Pre-verbal Trauma survivor. There are no personal memories. I have stories and the amazingly off-cuff memories of my mother... I also have an older sister (who probably went a long way to dramatically minimizing my trauma, but she couldn't be the parent I actually needed, and she was as terrorized by him as I was). No, tears are the lenses through which I see more and more clearly what actually happened.

And so I let them roll now. I've searched my entire life for these memories. I've begged god for them as only an unbeliever can beg a usesless god of whom he's never bought into. I revel in the stories that now float into my left brain... and boy are they coming. Not in mass, but more the subtle waftings of piano heard through an open window. But my ear is trained and I listen and pick up on it straight. I remember what was said, and more importantly, what was not said. I remember his tone of voice, and now understand why certain men have terrified me all my life, why I've never liked the actor Jack Nicholson, why ignorance coupled with insensitivity brings forth often severe anger.

But I need to say something else. The understanding I have found in the past two years has cost me a great deal. I am EXTREMELY low energy. I have a hernia now. I can no longer tolerate many many foods. Sugar plunges me into depression. My body hurts. I no longer have full strength in either of my arms and am currently in a bad way because I threw tiles up on a roof for two days. My wrists are currently out of service.

Realizing the extent of my trauma has been incredibly debilitating. I'm managing to work, but it is just the minimum possible. And I do very little else besides work, take care of my kids, and do my nervous system exercises, emdr and write on the Forum. (Is that in order of priority? maybe...)

And now I'm pooped :-) And one more thing... Every single time I write on the Forum, I feel a little voice in me that tells me I'm wrong, bad, egotistical and selfish. It's incredible. It's there every time. I overcome it, but it's still there.

Healing is the path, not the goal...

I deeply truly madly love you all.

 

I'm with you on the horrible memory Chart, and it being a handicap in professional and financial life

Dalloway, I so wish I could take your inner child in my arms and hug her... she deserves all the love and support and attention and caring... that she never got. It truly breaks my heart. My biological father made one single attempt at contact and that was to try and end my existence. There is no comprehension of this kind of behavior, of our parents and caregivers who did nothing parental nor giving of care... And so we have to hold ourselves, we have to hug ourselves, we have to care for ourselves. I refuse to let my father win. I have promised my inner child that he will have love and care and attention... from me. I see him for what he is. I see him for what he suffered. I know the injustice that nearly crushed out his life. And I've stated clearly and explicitly that all that was wrong. I tell him over and over and over. I hug him over and over and over. I think about him, talk to him, love him. "We" are working together now. It took us a long time, he was scared, he was hurt, he was jealous and confused... But slowly, ever so slowly, he has raised his little head and looked at me, and I felt his trust growing. It was not desperation, it was love through understanding. I understand what my child-self experienced. And now, he understands what I have to tell him. He's getting better. He still doesn't laugh. But he suffers less. He cries more, but now it is tears of release as opposed to anguish. We are holding each other. Nothing in the world could move me to let go of his being, his essence, that which is the best part of me. I love me, and will never stop. Our inner children deserve so much. I'm still learning, but the start is now behind me and I'll never stop. Love will have no end.
 

By the way, I've read about Rufus May's views on psychosis, and they seem very explanatory and assertive. It seems very natural that the content of psychotic episodes is deeply connected to the trauma. Unfortunately, he has experienced it himself.

This made me think of a supposed quote by John Briere:
"If Complex PTSD were ever given its due, the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) would shrink from its dictionary like size to the size of a thin pamphlet."