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One of the most difficult aspects of my recovery has been mapping out the ways I was abused by my BP-mothers emotional blackmail and the subsequent damage on my own being. Both the subtle and explicit.

Susan Forward's book was a great read and she describes the worst form of emotional abuse and blackmail being the threat of suicide. I realized that she said that within the context of her examples; All of which were adults in relationship with other adults. Which means there is a worse form of it and I experienced it.

I was a child when my mother threatened suicide as a means of coercion. Her numerous episodes, abuses, suicide attempts, and hospitalizations all served to galvanize her threats as genuine to me as a child and young adult. Threatening suicide to emotionally blackmail is worse for a child, since it also means real, not just perceived abandonment. The child simply has no defense against it; I had no defense against it. The child simply cannot be safe or loved while forced to carry the death of his mother on his shoulders. Her life was not his birthright. His life was his birthright.

Given her instability and extreme violence during fights with my father or she beat me, I had to believe that she was capable of killing more than just herself. She routinely broke things, slamming doors, cupboards, stomped about, yelling and screaming; sometimes at herself in the mirror. After she first incested me, she threatened in a low and venomous tone "If you tell your father, I will take him away from you!" Why would I ever believe she would stop with just herself?

That ends the grizzly portrait of the seriously ill stranger who was supposed to be my mother. This was the entrapment I suffered daily. The obligation to keep her alive, the fear that she would succeed in suicide, and the guilt that I wouldn't be present to stop it because I was living my own life. Of course, she never killed herself and I still deal with the consequences of my sacrifices and her abuses. I have been no contact with her for 10 years and glad of it.

She still lives and she is a stranger to me now. I realized recently upon reflection that my mother died of suicide long ago, just not all at once.

I found this site after a search for "Complex PTSD". It's been a number of years since I've read the list of symptoms and I specifically wanted to refresh the distinction between C-PTSD and PTSD in my mind. I felt compelled to write after reading it. Journaling has been a crucial part of my own recovery process, but there is something to be said about sharing; especially in the later parts of recovery. Specifically gratitude and pride. I am proud of the work I have done and thankful for it, yet I have no outlet with which to express it.

I was impacted when I read of the symptoms of C-PTSD which I once keenly felt daily; grief bubbled up like ripples in a reflecting pond. I remember vividly how murky those waters felt and I've spend the last eight years plumbing those depths and pouring myself through them to cleanse and un-dam them. Once there were tsunamis from the raging storm in my life, huge tremendous crushing waves, engulfing, suffocating, drowning, unending; filling every room in the house I grew up in with feelings that were not my own. I have achieved a great measure of peace and stillness since then and I have attained a depth of self few seem capable of grasping or understanding unless they've been through what we have.

My chronic abuser was my uBPD/uNBP bipolar mother who was worst during my foundational years and my non-BP father was unable to protect himself let alone me. I am twenty-seven years out from when my abuse was the worst as a child. I am twelve years out from when I first began to be crippled by the symptoms of C-PTSD. Ten years since I cut her out of my life. Nine years since those symptoms overtook me and forcefully ejected me from my college experience and eight years from when I started intensive professional therapy and I began my commitment to recovery. I now look forward to the future and creating a life for myself now that that I have a self, capacity, and growth required to care for it.

For me, recovery was inevitable and inexorable once I started it. When I finally made that connection to myself, it guided me to all the nooks and crannies where I hide my pain and grief for so long and insisted I tended to it with fervor and tenacity. The wisdom and serenity gained was worth the pain, effort, and time of recovery. Thanks for reading.