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My therapist keeps reminding me that I couldn't leave... at 5 or 10 or even 15. "It's not like you could go and check yourself into a hotel, right?"  Right.  But now, a few weeks shy of 50, I can.  And I'm trying.  Packing and re-packing my bags, trying to figure out how to get out and where to go.  Figuratively, of course.  The escape from the hellscape of my childhood home is one that has to happen in my own heart and mind. 

There are days when I don't know how I can endure this pain, and I see why I've kept so busy all these years:  Perfecting, planning, performing.  All to avoid THIS.  This feeling, right now, of crippling desolation.  A caving in, a collapse of all hope.  Utterly alone.  THIS feeling that I have been running from for decades.  Here it is.  I can finally feel it.  Finally hold it.  Endure it.  My therapist says I never could have survived this feeling as a child.  She says I would have developed a chronic illness, possibly died.  This may be true. 

I have tried, for a while now, to go back and get myself out.  I've always had an active imagination, an alternate fantasy life I dip into when things are too dreary to endure.  Lately, I've used my imagination to time-travel.  Back to that time, when I was 10 or 12 years old, when the really scary things were happening and I had no one to tell.  In my imagination, I try to imagine a way out for myself.  What if I just ran away?  What if I told someone?  I walk through these scenarios in my mind, but they never work.  If I tell, they lie and then berate me, maybe beat me.  I can feel the blows.  If I run away, where do I go? I have no money.  They bring me back, and then maybe they send me away to get me "fixed" like they did with my brother.  I lose the mother I believe I adore.  She turns away from me, cold, like she always is if I complain or get sad or angry.  She's done with me.  And without her, without her love, I would die.  All hope would go out like a candle being extinguished. 

My therapist says that there was no escape, back then.  She says that I managed to survive through the only possibly avenue of escape that was available to me:  To bury all my needs and feelings and pain, and become the golden girl of the family, the caretaker for all of them, the over-achiever whose accomplishments would serve as proof to the world (and to ourselves) that we really were OK after all.  Better than OK, in fact: Special, not like the others. 

The world seemed to agree that I was special.  I made sure that I excelled at everything.  That I looked right and that I won the right awards and knew the right people.  I became the little narcissist that my narcissistic father wanted me to be.  And then, one evening, a few years ago, I was standing in a glittering ballroom, having been nominated for a prestigious award, when the world collapsed.  I was actually walking on a red carpet (yes a red carpet!) when it hit me and and I finally heard my pain.  It was just a little voice that said, "You are garbage. You are nothing. You are loathsome." So I drank myself into a blackout and remembered very little after that.  The glittering night that might have been the pinnacle of my life/career became the night when I started waking up to everything.  And everything has been better/worse/so much harder since then. 

Each day, each week, each month, I uncover new layers, dig deeper, deeper, deeper.  I hear myself.  I actually hear myself.  It's incredibly confusing at times, trying to figure out who I actually am and what I actually feel and think and need, when I've spent a lifetime in a sort of foggy dream that my family spun around all of us.  In that dream-fog, you play your part and you keep quiet about your fears and your feelings.  You play your role.  Mine was golden child.  My brother was the scapegoat/rebel.  Mom was the martyr. Dad was the hero/bully.   And you get so good at playing that role that you no longer realize that it's a role; you forget that it's not actually YOU.  When I first started reading about this, in Alice Miller's book, "The Drama of the Gifted Child," it was like a lightning bolt of truth shearing open my world.  She wrote about a "false self" that is created, because the parents are unable to mirror the true self - the one with needs and feelings.  And we believe that we ARE this false self.  Shedding the false self, for me, is a slow and painstaking process.  Totally uncomfortable and strange (but also wondrous, at times), like learning a strange new skill, a new language, or writing with the wrong hand. 

But I keep going, because I know I can't go back.  I can't un-see what I've seen.  I can't un-hear what I've heard from my deepest, saddest self.  So on I go, on this strange, strange journey, hoping for a break in the clouds here and there, hoping to eventually find a new and safe home in my heart to settle down in.  Hoping to find others who would dwell with me forever in truth, even when truth collapses us in grief, who will hang on with me while the pain runs through us and eventually leaves us, still standing, finally aware of how perfect and beautiful we actually are.

Feeling incredibly set off after spending 2 days taking care of my mother.  I've been doing so much intense work in recent months (working with my excellent therapist), and I've been keeping my FOO at a distance in order to have space to heal.  But my mother needed help with a surgery, which meant I had to spend 2 full days and 2 nights with her.  And now, back home in my safe place, the backlash is fierce.  Such emotional pain that it's hard to move, hard to focus, hard to keep going.  I have no impulse to harm myself, but the days are long and brutal.  I stopped drinking over a month ago, which removed one of my major crutches.  I believe this has helped me make some big strides in my healing (facing my feelings rather than numbing them each evening), but I would not call this fun.  I keep saying, "Not drinking feels easy.  Facing myself feels HARD."

Without alcohol, my mother's brutal, callous gaslighting was even harder to handle.  With more healing under my belt, and more access to my own feelings, my FOO's emotional abuse is laid bare in all its horror.  As my T said, there is no way I could have coped with this level of pain as a child.  I would have died or becoming terribly ill.  So I became the perfect, golden child, proof to the world that we were indeed a "good" family, and not a toxic lie:  A loveless marriage, my narcissistic father cheating for years with a neighbor (my best friend's mother, and I was the only one who knew), my terrifying older brother abusing me in every possible way (acting out his own pain and rage at being emotionally abandoned by our parents), my mother anxious and depressed - the eternal "child" who could cope with nothing and mocked or criticized or shamed or fled from us if we expressed any feelings that challenged her fragile ego. 

When I finally fled my childhood home, after college, it was because my brother was so terrifying in front of my friends that they refused to stay at my house.  My parents were out of town, so I went to my aunt and told her.  She just smiled and shrugged.  So I went to a friend's mother, who heard my story and insisted I stay with her.  I went home and packed my bag and moved in with her.  When my parents heard that I had left the house, they were furious:  With ME.  Not my brother, of course.  He wasn't the one spilling the family's dark secrets to others, so he wasn't to blame.

Fast-forward a few decades: My brother now lives a marginal life of addiction and rage, appearing now and then to ask for money or verbally abuse us all.  My narcissistic father eventually spiraled into full-blown bipolar disorder, after losing all their money (they had been quite wealthy) on risky investments.  He also lost the beautiful family home, which broke my heart. As the uber-responsible middle child, it was my job to rescue them.  I worked for the past several years with lawyers and banks, cleaning up my father's disasters and fearing that he might go to jail for criminal activities.  I now care for my two frail, fragile, depressed parents - my father now a sad old man (prematurely aged at only 78) living in assisted living and stable only with lots of psychiatric medications, my mother a demanding, entitled child of 77 in an elder apartment.  Both are well-cared for.  Both live in the dream of denial they have always inhabited.  My sister is my only ally in the family, the only one who views this nightmare for what it really is (she is also the only one other than myself who is getting therapy and working on her s***) .

I struggle with guilt for not doing more for my parents, even though I manage all their affairs and medical care, with my sister's help.  I am enraged at these now-pathetic old people who had such power over me and abused that power so egregiously, warping me into a perfectionist robot who hated herself and felt none of her feelings for decades.  And there will be no reckoning, no release.  They will never "see" me.  They will never comprehend what they have done.  They will just die one day, and I'll be sad and also free.  And my pain and rage is my own, and I have to find a way to heal it. 

I'm working with ideal parent figures lately, and finding this to be a great solace.  I need someone - even an imagined someone - to hold me in this crippling pain.  I can't hold it all myself.  It's just too much.

Hello to all.  Just wanted to post here about a change I have recently made.  I stopped drinking a week ago, following a health scare which I know (in my gut) is related to alcohol, even if my doctor has no clue (of course I didn't admit to her that I'm drinking like a fish!).  I have spent most of my life self-medicating with food and perfectionist over-achievement, and then switched to alcohol when I became a single mother to a very high-need three-year-old, working full-time and coping with a very angry ex-husband.   Ten years have now passed, and I find that I'm drinking more and more, even though life has become much better and easier in many ways.  I am remarried to a loving, supportive partner and have a much better relationship with my ex.  My child is healthy and happy (if a moody teenager!). But the CPTSD that permeates my cells is not resolved.  Interactions with my FOO, though I try to limit them, often send me into a dark and dissociated place.  The urge to squash and avoid my feelings and body sensations is powerful.  And I don't want to do that anymore.  I want to be here.  I want to exist, feel my feelings, hear my thoughts, have choices and clarity.  I don't want my evenings to revolve around how I will locate the next drink, and how I will manage to stop drinking and go to bed.  And how I'll hide all this from my friends, husband, and daughter.  I want to model health and self-love, not the self-annihilation that I learned from my own mother.

I've been reading the work of Annie Grace, and finding her perspective very helpful.  I wonder if any others in this forum have found her approach helpful too? I'm guessing she is somewhat controversial, because she is somewhat critical of traditional 12-step recovery programs, but for me, her words and approach really resonate.  (I also was abused as a child by my older alcoholic brother, who used his AA "recovery" against me, so 12-step groups are huge triggers for me. I know there are many good people in AA and that it helps them heal, but my brother is not one of them.) 

The other thing that is helpful is finding new things to replace the regular evening "activity" of drinking.  I'm focusing on cooking healthy meals and really pausing to listen closely to (and appreciate) my daughter, my husband, and... my dog!   I'm also joining in some online meditation and bodywork/breathwork classes. And, of course, now I also have this group of people who will listen, not judge me, and possibly even relate to me. 

Thanks for listening to me, believing me, relating, and caring.  And thanks for telling me about your own struggles and healing.  It helps so much.

Just needing to have others know how sad I feel today.  I saw both my parents yesterday. I generally avoid contact, but they are prematurely aging and frail and my sister and I share responsibility for their care - financial, medical, etc.  My mother is a pancreatic cancer "survivor," but we don't think she will last much longer.  Thinking of her as I saw her yesterday - thin and pale and helpless, and - as she always was - like a frightened little bird, so full of her own lifelong trauma (starting with her abandonment by her parents at age 5)... her sadness just breaks my heart.  At the same time,  my young self is filled with rage that her trauma meant she could never be there for me and instead asked that I take care of her.  She could never let me know that I was safe, worthy, of value in this world.  And she could never protect me from my narcissistic father or my brutally abusive older brother.  If I complained or was anything other than good and sweet and quiet, I was mocked or criticized or simply abandoned by her, because she could not cope.  So, little me is racked by lonely rage, so furious with a mother who did this to me, who didn't meet my needs.  But also heartbroken because I have always been able to see how much pain she is in.  She's like a little lost lamb whom I have been comforting for as long as I can remember - likely since the day I was born.  And for all my efforts, I was never able to save her.  And I think she'll die soon, and it's just so sad and unfair.  She didn't get a chance, or never made use of what chances she did have(?).  And so she handed all her pain to me.  And now I do have a chance.  And I am working so hard to heal my pain, to end this generational pattern of trauma.  But oh lordy, it hurts.  It just hurts that my mom is so very sad and broken and I can't fix it.

Saw my father, too, but that's another very long story.   

It seems like most people struggle with not being able to sleep, and I have so much compassion for that.  During the times I've had insomnia, it was terrible.  These days, I feel lucky that once I fall asleep (not always easy, due to my nighttime anxiety), I sleep well and hard.  And long.  Lately, like REALLY long.  As my recovery work has become more intense over the past year, delving into the dark corners I have avoided for decades, my dreams have become more and more vivid  - and they are mostly neutral or slightly positive, with few nightmares.  Sleep, once I get there, is actually feeling like my refuge.  Almost like a parallel life that I live while asleep (I keep thinking of the movie, "Inception").  I feel like my sleep is actually serving as a counterbalance to the intense, often agonizing work of healing that I'm doing while awake, and that my brain is trying to process everything by sleeping for long periods.  It's extremely hard to wake up from this sleep: Even if I've been asleep for 10, 11, 12 hours, I know I could roll over and sleep more, possible for the rest of the day.  I am trying to see this as a temporary situation in which my body and brain are trying to compensate for the relentless pain and struggle I experience while awake.  I think my brain is trying to knit itself back together, into new patterns, trying to incorporate the mind-bending, life-altering ideas that I am finally encountering and truly absorbing.  And while I feel like this is probably a good thing, it also is strange and disorienting, to find myself sleeping so much.  It also feels "wrong" because I keep reading that most people with cPTSD have the opposite problem  - too little sleep.  Has anyone else experienced a period of prolonged sleep during recovery?  I know that depression can lead to a lot of sleepiness, and I may be somewhat depressed, but this sleep feels more activated and, well, "productive" than just sleeping to avoid the world. 

I thought I'd share a memoir I recently read, as I haven't seen it posted here, and it was a very powerful read for me: "Just Ignore Him," by Alan Davies.  He writes about childhood abuse by his father.  I listened to the audiobook version (which he narrates beautifully).  His honesty and vulnerability was extremely helpful to me.  He also expresses a lot of anger, which I found helped me as well.  If you're like me and find solace in memoirs written by other survivors, I'd highly recommend this book. 

Thank you so much for this forum and for being here and reading this.  I have been working hard with my therapist for the last couple of years on acknowledging all my childhood trauma, and exploring ways to heal from it.  My therapist is excellent and I have also been immersing myself in books and podcasts about attachment, trauma, and various theories and healing modalities (IFS, IPNB, ideal parent figures, self-compassion, meditation, somatic work). All this is transforming my life for the better, and I am beginning to feel as if I am waking up from a lifelong sleep. My therapist and I have determined that I fall mostly into the dissociated (freeze) category, and I've spent my whole life being an ambitious perfectionist who always feels like a fraud, imposter, and just plain "bad" person no matter how hard I tried to be "good."  So far, I've done this work only with my therapist, and although trusting and relying on others is very scary for me, I want to feel less alone in this process.  I have good friends and even a supportive spouse, but none of them can really speak the language of healing from CPTSD.  I'm here to find fellow travelers on this profound journey through trauma to healing.

More specifically, I'm seeking support around sibling abuse.  Although my parents were neglectful and narcissistic (setting me up to parent them from an early age), the most horrendous abuse came from my older brother, who terrorized me throughout my entire childhood.  It can be hard to take my abuse history seriously because it was "only" my brother - not my parent - who enacted the most obvious abuse.  So I'm struggling to give weight and validation to the fact that siblings CAN do great harm to us.  And I the fact that our parents allowed such abuse to occur is, at least in my case, also a form of abuse. I would love to connect with others who have also experienced sibling abuse. 

Wherever you are when you read this, I hope that you are safe and receiving the love and compassion you deserve.  I'm sending you my warmest wishes and hopes that we can all heal from the traumas that limit us.

Thank you.