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So funny, I was searching in my google drive today and found John Bradshaw´s book about shame that I forgot about (I downloaded it some time ago, planned to read it, then forgot about it  ).

Welcome to the forum, Magpie.    According to what you shared, you went through a lot of challenges and hardship alone, that´s why I think you´re in the right place. This forum is a safe place, at least for me and I hope it will be something similar to you, too.
 

Thank you all for your kind words and support, it means a lot to me knowing that people do care and are here for each other. Being part of this beautiful community is one of the best things that ever happened to me and the best therapy one could ask for. I´m grateful and proud of us all 

This feeling is stuck with me, well, all my life as far as I can remember. Recovery work, healing and learning, awareness - these are the things my life is centered around, I couldn´t find anything more meaningful if I tried, but this feeling, this unease and burden is stronger then all the healing and learning, at least I feel this way right now. I´ve always been very impatient and gave up immediately after the first problem or challenge appeared, so maybe that´s why I feel hopeless in this case, too. Because the bad things were present in my life more persistently and for a longer time than healing.

This persistent feeling is that I don´t belong anywhere. Especially now, in the summer, when I look out my window or have a walk outside, I can see that everything is calm, bright and beautiful, it feels like everything is in the right place. Everything but me. 

When I think about it, the rational part of my mind knows that it´s not about my worthlessness, but about my trauma. That I was forced to grow up very early, be an adult in a child´s body, without being able to go through all the important steps which the child needs to the healthy development of her individual self. I was thrown in at the deep end and had to swim, but now I don´t feel like I learned how to swim. I learned only how to survive, but that´s not swimming, it´s just instinct. So yeah, I know that I´m confused and can´t find my place in the world because my self is a distorted mass of traumatic events and hard feelings I cannot understand from the child´s perspective even if I´m an adult now - but understanding doesn´t make it go away.

And now, it feels like it is the other way around like it used to be -- I was and adult child, but now I´m a childish adult. Of course I am, it was unhealthy to take on adult responsibilities before the time was right and now   I´m stuck with these two versions of me -- a child that was not allowed to be a child and an adult that didn´t learn properly how to be an adult. 

All my life I´ve been jealous of people who seemed to stand on the ground firmly, certain of the fact that THEY BELONG. I never felt that. And I think this is something that is at least partly responsible for lots of other unpleasant things, for example my lack of self-esteem and self-confidence. How could I have those things when the "self" part is something I never knew - I don´t even know if I have a self (I don´t think about it in a Buddhist sense of selflessness, more in a psychoanalytical way, in which there IS a self - in normal circumstances), because I was never taught that I have one, that I´m an independent person with boundaries and all. And without it, I feel like I´m not able to face the challenges and the uncertainty of the life, which leads me to shy away from life itself. It manifests in inability to take risks and chances and it makes me feel SO DESPERATE. Because I know that I´m smart and capable and eager to do good things for myself and for other people in the world, I just can´t make the first few steps. I´m stuck with this burden and feel like I´m a prisoner of my own mind and traumatic memories. 

  Sorry for the long post, I just wanted to get this off my chest a little. Also, I will be glad if you decide to share your thoughts with me on this. 

Hello and welcome (back)!  I hope you will find the support and unconditional acceptance I found here so far 

Rizzo, I can relate to the things you are describing here. All my life I´ve been struggling with perfectionism because I was taught that I don´t deserve unconditional love and respect, so I tried to earn it (still try). And yet, sometimes, when I have a bright moment, I pause and think to myself: wait a minute, what is going on in here? I am a worthy person and deserve love and respect. Period. (Personally, this "period" really helps me to emphasize that I´m stating facts here  )

Soo, I just want to second everything that was written so far and tell you that even though sometimes you don´t believe it, you ARE a beautiful person. 

Beautiful allegory, thank you very much for sharing  The patience and will that is required to keep going and digging and planting and harvesting this garden is already in all of us, maybe more covered with old leaves and mud in some cases, but present and still, waiting to bloom.

Indeed, beautiful. 

Woodsgnome,

as I was reading your reply, every word resonated with me so much, like I was reading a random excerpt from my journal. You captured this emotional state, this helplessness I´ve been feeling all my life and the pang that it will never get better and all I can wish for are some "pretty good" periods in the deserted and unhappy years, decades, life. It´s so hard to accept and try to find good things in life when you have this burden of life-long suffering, knowing that things that happened in the past will always shadow my present and future to some degree.

The "at least"-s hurt so much and maybe this is what makes me tired and helpless the most - this road full of bumps and downs and sadness and anxiety and fear and struggle. The fact that I have to be content with those small joys and victories I collect on the road. But as you also mentioned, I am really far from the wreck I was and I´ve learned so much and sometimes I forget how blessed I am that I have me as a wingman during this journey.

This whole life is blurry and ambivalent and maybe it gets better over time but I think it will never get easier. But I want to thank you for your kind words, reading something that describes my mental state this well gives me so much hope that I am not alone in this. 

Hello people,

it´s been a long time since I posted something here. Life was going on, I started a therapy which is going pretty well and I have really nice moments of self compassion and pride towards the things I have achieved and done for myself and my recovery.

But in the past few weeks I´ve been feeling overwhelmed and anxious. Am I doing it right? I mean - the whole "life" thing. And as I have experienced before, every positive period is followed by this depression-like state, where I start to panic and "ruin" this little joy of small good things. The scheme is always the same - I am happy about myself and then comes the realization: fine, fine, but you know you still struggle very much in general and there are big issues unresolved in your life. And then the magic is gone and it´s the sad, anxious and pessimistic me again.

Today I was experiencing this above mentioned process while sitting in a park and watching happy people with their loved ones and suddenly, tears started to fill my eyes and a thought popped to my mind that was wanted to be said: "Why is this happening to me? I am a nice and worthy human being, I didn´t hurt anyone, I just want to live a normal life but the chance was taken away from me by the way I was raised and the way my mom behaved to me. IT´S SO UNFAIR.

And this last thing, this very deep feeling of unfairness towards me, that I didn´t have the choice, didn´t want to become an adult who struggles this much, and the chance to a more fulfilling life taken away from me, this is so very hard to accept.

I just wanted to ask if you had similar experiences and if yes, how do/did you cope with them.

Thanks is advance 

I couldn´t agree more with you Papa Coco, especially the fourth one on you list, I can relate to it SO MUCH.

In general, emotions and their healthy manifestation is an unknown land for me. I never had access to them because as long as I can remember I was punished for feeling and emoting,  being angry meant that I was "bad" and causing problems to my mom so I learned that I have to be quiet in order to not to get in trouble because I am responsible for the wellbeing of my caregiver, for the wellbeing of an adult as a child. I know, it´s crazy.

So being angry for me means two things:
1. it´s something very selfish and people will eventually abandon me for that
2. anger is dangerous because in a world where dogs eat dogs (my world was always that way) people can and will seek revenge for that sooner or later

I think the hardest part of this for me is accepting the fact that there is no right answer to this, it was just unfair and not my fault and it´s so frustrating sometimes. I guess I just have to learn how to live with uncertainty and questions that cannot be answered as a part of the life. I know it sounds a bit like a mystical b.s. but at this point I don´t have the answer...maybe later I will 

Hello Mercy,
I joined this forum recently, too and I can confirm that it's so wonderful how helpful and welcoming people are. It really returns and strengthens my hope in humanity 

I can also tell that I am very familiar with this one step-two steps dance and that I always thought when I was feeling down or not doing any progress that I am at square one again but then I realised it's so untrue and also very unfair from my critical inner voice to say that because I am not starting over in a sense of forgetting everything I learned so far, I am simply having a hard time cause I am human. There are times I have to remind myself of this fact because I also have a tendency for pessimistic point of view for understandable reasons but I'm trying my best, even if it means trying my best to accept that I'm not okay 

Sorry for long reply but welcome anyway 

 

Yes, that´s the way of looking at this inner voice thing I can relate to more, too. It´s so interesting how much not listening to my gut feelings affects my life, even just by reading a chapter and wanting to ´get it´ and be a good student who understands everything and ignoring in the process my natural feelings about that particular thing.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me 

Hi everyone,

I am in a big dilemma about this thing right now and I would really like to hear your opinions/insights about this.

So I just finished reading Pete Walker´s book on CPTSD - From surviving to thriving and there was this concept of the inner critic. He writes that this bunch of negative thoughts and negative self-talk and self-shaming mechanism is not part of ourselves because it´s projected into us by our parents/caregivers/perpetrators. He also writes that sometimes it is useful to shut it abruptly when we recognize that we have an inner critic attack and just say like NO, SHUT UP and stuff.

BUT

I also think for some reason that every and each part of us belongs to us in some way, like in the internal family system theory, that the critical voice was useful at some point in our lives even though it´s unhelpful right now. So I can´t help but to think that if I was you know harsh or aggressive to that critical voice, it would be to some degree as if I was rude and aggressive and violent towards myself via that part that also belongs to me. And I was raised in a household with constant verbal abuse so maybe it would trigger me into a flashback every time I used that technique.

What do you think?