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[better than]

I woke up in the middle of the night worrying that I may have a personality disorder and I am flawed, defective in a deep way and ... no one will want me or love me because I am flawed.

This seems to be compulsory thinking for those of us raised by PD parents. I have it every so often, and I know it can floor me.

I know perfection does not exist so I suppose I want to be okay just as I am, to be loveable just as I am. 

You have to believe it. I hope your "beautiful meditation" tells you you're better than okay just as you are, and infinitely lovable no matter what. These are good affirmations to make, whenever you think of it, plus any other uplifting things you can include such as "people like me, I'm smart, I'm beautiful, I'm kind" etc.

Those kind of thoughts get rid of those fleas that make us justifiably criticise ourselves. But after realising we've gone wrong, we can say "I'm lovable anyway" and get back on track faster (much faster) than if we go on beating ourselves up.

I don't know why she gets the program and I don't.  There seem to be resources for her that are not available for me.

Can you ask her what care package she has, and how she qualified for it?

I have issues with feeling I am less worthy and less important than others.  Now, I feel like I don't count.  Some people count more than others and I just am not one of them.

As others have said, I'm the same way. When I read or hear "you matter as much as anyone else" I think: "Pssshhh, you're just being kind. And you don't know me, how horrible and useless I am...  "

I am about to write my therapist and tell her to stop.  I know she has spent a lot of time on this and I don't want her to spend anymore time on it.

Obviously it's your call, but waiting lists being as they are it's probably better to leave her beavering on. I was told four weeks till I see a trauma counsellor. It's been four weeks and no sign of anything. But I need to have a slender hope for the future...

Anyway, I wish you luck no matter which way it goes.  Hugs, Dee, and STAY WITH US.

My husband tries to understand but I can see from some of his comments that he gets it intellectually but not completely. It seems he still thinks it's something that will go away if I just learn to put it behind me.

Yes, I get that too.

he came from the school of hard knocks - don't go back there, leave it alone, don't keep bringing it up, don't be so sensitive, etc. ad nauseum.   

Martin, it's probably a sad truth that with the best will in the world, no one can understand C-PTSD unless they have it.

It's not something you can just put behind you, or we would have done that already.

Yep. No one is more invested than the sufferer in "putting it behind us". I've made real efforts in that direction more than once. The physical damage (in the form of brain lesions) to unloved infants, plus the faulty programming and negative ideas we've internalised mean we constantly second-guess ourselves. I myself swing from impulsive to 'frozen' in decision-making as well as interactions with others.

We're not making excuses for 'bad' behaviour, we genuinely need someone IRL to understand. When the majority of 'therapists' still don't, can we expect more from our partners?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "welcome action-replays by anyone who would find it helpful" but I sometimes don't understand the obvious.

I thought it might be cathartic for me and others to write about overt abuse and change the ending to what we wish we'd said or done.

Another example: As a teenager I'd just caught up with a school friend. I told my mother: "R's still at [name of school]. She's such a little lady." Mother's response: "R would have been a lady whatever school she went to. And you would have been... what you are."

My response at the time was, once again, a stunned silence. I wish I'd said: "What's that, Mother?" -- forcing her to say it.

IOW, I wish I'd called her on horrible things she said to me. As it was, I realise I was defending my own belief that she 'loved' me. Sigh.

there are so many different situations, circumstances and scenarios i can think of where, if i'd known better, been different as a person, or understood what i was in the middle of, i'd certainly have done something different.

That's it, in a nutshell.

I'm thinking my main problem now is that all FOO have ostracised me. I'll never get to have my say to any of them. It leaves all kinds of unfinished business running round in my head.

So yeah... like many of us here, I regret I didn't wake up sooner. If I refused to see what was happening at the time, how can I expect other people to see it now? I know OOTS friends get it, but what about this trauma shrink I haven't met yet?

There's more than a whisper of Who Am I? in all this. I seem to be a collection of people-pleasing behaviours, interspersed with keeping my mouth shut in the face of overt hostility. That's something I want to work on.

[you]

The only claim to those 2 I wish to make is I got away. Sorry if that offends some, but it's how I survive, and I deserve that too.

You surely do. So do I. And both us us deserve so much more than endlessly writing about what went wrong for us.

I never heard the love word via the m, either (or from the f either; he seemed, though, to care a wee bit more).

M said "I love Candid" in front of witnesses but I never heard I love you. F definitely cared more and was fairer, but he still saw me as the difficult child... because M said so.

emotional abuse was the core, but sexual abuse from female teachers happened in grades K (first day), 3, & 4

I'm so sorry to hear this. After parents, I think teachers must be the chief source of self-esteem. :huh:

... the emotional part escalated and ranged from overt to covert to abandonment.

I know all about that! Now that I'm stronger, and clearer in what happened back then, whole-FOO abandonment pains me. I'd like a chance to tell them the way it is, but clearly they're not interested.

I won't mention later stuff with male teachers, given this thread's theme, and my bottoming-out mood in reciting this horrible litany.

I feel the trigger, and hope you're able to post about it elsewhere.

I identify unequivocally as the Scapegoat. It still reverberates. I'm in a total mess now and pinning my hopes on trauma counselling that hasn't started yet... after about 35 years in the MH world and things getting worse all the time.

Thanks for starting this thread, DutchUncle.

[all]

As far as I can tell, the number one regret for people posting here is that we didn't get our eyes open earlier and start standing up for ourselves. That isn't our fault; humans are hard-wired to believe parents know best and that safety lies in family support.

But I have lots of secondary regrets for the things I didn't say. I'll start with Christmas 1983, when Mother took me aside (of course) to tell me she wished I hadn't come, because "you always cause so much trouble".

My response: I was gobsmacked, said nothing, went through the motions knowing this was my last FOO Christmas. It was dismal.

What I wish I'd done: Got her to say it again, or repeated it myself, in front of my father, my sister and brother, and asked for their response. Did they all want me out of their lives?

Possible results: Mother had to stop being covert and expose herself.
The others agreed with her and I got out a whole lot faster than I actually did, with everyone being clear on why.
The others did not all agree and I found out who my allies were.

I'm self-medicating with alcohol as I write this, but I would welcome any action-replays by anyone who would find it helpful.

I'm approaching the place emotionally where I feel I'll be able to say NO MORE. I won't let myself believe the lies anymore. I will see myself for who I truly am - a human, flawed individual with a ton of compassion for others, worthy of being respected and treated well.

I wish I could believe the same about myself. Again, it's something I've got intellectually but not viscerally. My response, or lack of it, is what comes up first. Trained to be a quiet doormat, not give offence no matter what, etc.

The damage over time is horrendous, our disorder is radically worsened. 

Indeed. It's what puts the C in CPTSD: having our innate self-esteem eroded out of existence so we become a target for every kind of nasty out there.

we let ourselves be chosen, and felt we were lucky if someone was nice to us. [...]  Is this how it has been for you?

Very much so. I'm a fawn-freeze type. I've said inappropriate things to good people, turning them off me, and my first instinct when someone's mean to me is to be 'nicer' to them. Ugh.

[1.]

Mother's callous disregard for my emotional needs made me more vulnerable to further trauma because I was (and to some extent still am) either unable to detect dangerous situations or unable to protect myself if I do. Examples:

1. At 15 I went to visit a school friend. When I was walking back -- a long walk on a hot day -- a man stopped and offered me a lift. I got in, and didn't make a murmur when he drove straight past the end of my street. I was stuck with him in his car for several hours. At one point he stopped for gas. Naturally I thought of getting out and approaching an attendant, but I didn't. I thought my father would have to come and pick me up, a couple of hours' drive each way, and I'd never hear the end of it. (Would he even have come?) Not getting out was a message to the abductor that I had no one to call.

I was lucky he didn't rape and/or kill me. When he finally dropped me home, there were stiff lips all round because I'd missed lunch without letting Mother know, and was late for dinner. I didn't tell them what had happened. They had not called my friend's house.

Only recently did it occur to me that if I'd got out and told someone I'd been abducted, the police would have been called, the man questioned (at least) and I would have been taken home.

2. A few years later I was not so 'lucky'. A workmate and her fiance called in to invite me to a party nearby. I didn't want to go, but Mother (bless her kindly heart) came to the door and insisted I get changed and go. An hour or so into the party, my friend and her man had a fight and left. The man of the house said he would drive me home. I told him I was fine, I could walk it in 10 minutes. He headed me off at his front door, grabbed my arm and said menacingly: "I said I would drive you home." I got in his car, he went straight to an out-of-the-way place and spent the next few hours hitting and raping me before dropping me off outside my parents' home.

Had I not been instinct-injured I would have shaken his arm off and yelled: "Get your hands off me!" If he'd followed me out, I would have screamed at him until he backed off. I've seen lots of literature about how rapists choose their targets; they pick up cues to take a girl who's unlikely to fight back.

I could go on with more examples, most of them either in intimate relationships (first husband used me as a punchbag) or the workplace, but I've just triggered myself. 

I can't tell you how angry I am at the so-called mother who set me up to be a victim everywhere I go. The result is I'm scared of everyone and everything... and distraught that my life is so empty.

I feel like I am quite deeply traumatised from my life. I need help. I don't know how to find a therapist that is really good with child abuse cases because on the counselling directory they all just seem to tick everything, so everyone is good at dealing with abuse apparently.

I had two years of EMDR and got nowhere, so don't worry about not being able to afford that. The next therapist (in a long line) told me the EMDR expert had breached all sorts of boundaries, chiefly by getting me to edit her writing instead of paying for my sessions. But then the next therapist refused to see me any more because I wouldn't also have regular sessions with a psychiatrist to medicate me. I'm a difficult client, apparently. My mother would be so pleased to know that.

I'm about to try again because I feel I have no choice. I intend to ask the new therapist whether s/he has experience with adults traumatised by their own parents. If s/he isn't familiar with at least some of the studies we on OOTS know about, I'll probably walk.

For heaven's sake, Harry Harlow's cruel experiments with baby monkeys, cloth 'mothers' and spiked 'mothers', were in the Fifties. How does anyone get through a psychology degree without knowing the results???

Ooops, foaming at the mouth a bit. Good luck with finding what you need.

It cut me off from any avenues of family support.  I suppose, from her point of view, it was also a pre-emptive strike against anyone ever listening to me and posssibly critiquing her behaviour towards me.

Yes. It also made me very reluctant to tell anyone what was going on for me. The fact that she pulled the wool over my father's eyes and convinced him I was bad was, I thought, the saddest thing... until my siblings dumped me.

Thanks for those links. I will check them out.

eventually I could not hide the truth from myself.  My mother did not love me.  That was the hardest truth to admit, process and then let go of any hope of ever having the mother I needed and deserved.  I had held onto that wish for decades. 

The Motherhood Myth is as pervasive and enculturated as any religion. As helpless children, we figure if Mother is always right, we must be very wrong. I know I always believed I was deeply flawed but no one would tell me why. Relationship was hard for me as far back as I can remember, because I was hesitant to inflict myself on anyone. Alas, I still feel the same way... not because I was born flawed, but because I'm so damaged. I find it virtually impossible to engage in normal conversation, and hate meeting new people.

Personally I hope as Complex PTSD becomes better known that we can come out  more, that people will not say things like "Your M must have loved you" when we talk about our experiences.  Until then you can be both candid and Candid here 

Thanks, Kizzie.  When I meet this trauma therapist, I expect to ask early in the piece whether s/he has experience in treating clients who were emotionally abused as children. If the answer is no, at least I can do some educating before I run for the exit.

My fear is especially that I have been "fooling" everyone who knows me into thinking I have any good qualities, and that once I let anyone in they will see me for what I am (which I think is more like what my parents TOLD me I am...)

Hahaha and yeah,  me too. If I learn that someone likes me I think "why?" or "don't get excited, it's early days and my real self will soon show up".

Picturing my parents being genuinely kind was not something I could do. If i tried to imagine sincere love or sincere anything on their faces, they looked like different people. Disconcerting to say the least!

Yes again. It's bad enough that I can imagine what they would say about me now; in fact I can't seem to prevent Mother getting into my head most days... and being horrible. 

Oooh, yuk. And yes, my mother went to great lengths to suggest she wanted to 'help' me. Because I'm quite mad, you know.

You might like this http://www.kellevision.com/kellevision/2009/05/the-scapegoat-as-truth-teller.html as validation.

He told me the point of the exercise was to give some reassurance to my inner children...

Karyl McBride, author of Will I Ever Be Good Enough?, recommends creating an 'Internal Mother' who reassures you and praises you. I can see the value of that (added one to my imaginary friends list!) but I have to say I too would have been uncomfortable with the exercise your therapist wanted you to do. Like you, I'm long estranged from all my FOO and prefer to leave them out of it.

That being said, I expect people to dislike, disapprove and be angry with me. If that could be operating for you, it would be a good idea to raise it with your T. The idea of bringing your real parents into your head is horrifying in that context. I imagine what mine would be saying: "There she goes, being difficult again. No wonder no one likes her..." and 

we can actively seek health and stability here in the present. We can work for ourselves to build, layer upon layer, a new and brighter future for ourselves. Loving ourselves is the greatest gift we can give ourselves. The rest will fall in place, following that.

I can't get on the starting block, feel as though I've given up although my presence at OOTS says otherwise. My living conditions are dire. I think I'm waiting for a miracle.

Being able to drop the toxic shame and doing as you suggest above would certainly qualify as one.

ParrotMyPain, your post was a bit cryptic, to me. Can you elaborate?