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Hi Chessa
Just wanted to say I have had symptoms like this Have woken up about to die and feeling literally like I was. Sudden terrifying jolts in my chest or unable to breathe and hanging on to survive. Or wakening up upright but part of my body numb or unable to speak,
As those nightmare and sleep terrors have been processed I have seen the terror that drives them and they have slowed down.
As body memories of my abuse surfaced I have had, at different times,palpitations (echo and ECG normal, tinnitus and vertigo one ear (MRI normal). feeling full up and unable to eat  I lost so much weight (endoscopy ulcer) anal pain and aching (normal sigmoidoscopy)abdo cramps and periods of being unable to breathe, intense migraines with screeching pain in my head and once, double vision, terrific  back and neck pains, and tingling in my arms,

As the body fragments have cleared all this stuff has stopped. It was all very sinister because it was imbued with the emotional terror underneath and it made me intensely afraid of being dead or crazy - it was my mind trying to resist the horrors my body had endured and had stored in its tissues

I'm basically a very fit and normal, down to earth person. I have nothing wrong with me, I do Insanity and am fit as a fiddle. I have no medical problems and take no medications. If this hadn't happened to me ( Or before I knew I was dissociative and abused ) I wouldn't have believed it. I searched for hours on the internet to find accounts of trauma doing this. Pseudoseizures and non ulcer dyspepsia was about all I could find.
Trauma and dissociated body memories can do some very very weird *. All you have to do is feel it and go through it and it becomes processed and it goes away.


I don't know if this helps you but I wanted to share, Maybe read The Body Remembers of Pete Levines book about the tiger.- how to shake off body trauma.

I hope realising you're not alone helps xx

I'm noticing something  else today. I realised today in a meeting that I noticed when someone dissembled or got defensive or started posturing.  I could own and trust what i'd noticed. I actually felt clear and confident instead of confused and looking to someone else to tell me what to feel or think.

I think I've always noticed but it would confuse and upset me.

Before, I'd be unable to separate out what I'd seen happen in them from my innate projected sense of badness and shame. In other words, they'd behave weirdly and I'd think they were reacting to me. I could never see the vulnerability in them .

Today I noticed it happening and was detached and secure in myself enough to think "wow he's pretending to know what I'm talking about to cover his feelings of inadequacy" Whereas before I'd think " he's sneering at me and putting me down or competing with me " now I was able to see "he is threatened about what I was talking about and has to pretend to be more than he is". I'd still have picked up the incongruity and the small change in the person but be unable to see it as their thing. always it was about my badness,

Suddenly I myself has been removed from the equation and can see self doubt defences and such behaviour happening in others.
It's always been there, I've always detected it, but I've mislabelled it - picked up the bad vibes and only been able to see one possible cause - ie me.
I realise how acutely tuned I am to any nuance. I spot things in others that most don't see. A lot of the time I've reacted to it or battled against it.
I think my perceptiveness must be quite scary - but it comes from a hypervigilance, reading the smallest nuance for threat.

This is such a wider theme too. How long did it take me to realise that the feelings of "Badness" in me with my ex were actually my insides screaming blue murder at how dangerous he was to me, but because it was such a familiar feeling in my family I had labelled it as "love".  How insane is that really? That toxic combination of those feelings were what  I felt as familiar and mislabelled as home and comfort and attraction drew me inevitably to dangerous narcissists with the calm assurance of a sleep walker.
How long have I felt sinking feelings and interpreted them wrongly - when all I was feeling was an inner part warning me something feels wrong. So disconnected from any true meaning,  those inner gut feelings were never been labelled or supported as feelings or instincts by any loving adult. Never nurture or trusted. I made sense of them in the only way I knew how.

All the time I was told what my feeling and motives were by people who yelled their projection at me. "you're jealous!/insecure/blah blah blah" Those people were projecting onto me as their scapegoat and never stopping to listen to or even care what my thoughts feelings and motives truly were.  So I couldn't trust my judgement couldn't trust myself. I really thought ( and still do) that there was this badness in me that they all saw that I couldn't, even when I wasn't being bad or so I thought. So confusing!!!
They couldn't have cared less anyway. I wasn't a person to them, they didn't care how much I hurt or cried, I was their punchbag.

My sister provides a good example of this. I hadn't spoken to her in 10 years because of a series of awful things she'd done and said to me. We tentatively met for lunch and she started pouring out her troubles  - assuming i'd be back straight into my role of caretaker, carer, punchbag and person without any value other than what I do for her.
She then proceeded to tell me we could get on as long as I didn't talk about my son as it was too painful for her.
Oh and my job too, cos she finds that threatening.
Hey and I won't be interested in your successes as a photographer but come over and do some photos of my friends but hey you have to do it at a special rate, Gee thank. what an attractive offer. (But hey don't forget i'll be watching you like a hawk and will be jealous of everything you do or don't do and will start screaming at you and accusing you of stealing my friends or showing off or something)

So I went home and emailed her and said - in as many words - that my son was my life and who I was and that her assumption that I would give up being me and the things that were important because somehow having a relationship with her (someone not interested in me ) was more important.
That i'd sit and let her slag off the job I do and have worked damn hard on for years, really helping people and making a difference, somehow that was ok, because, come on, we all know she is more important. And we just KNOW I am not allowed to matter.
And that she can use my skills as a cheap entertainment for her friends and I should be pathetically grateful for her meagre interest and attention to my hobby but hey lets remember it's a huge favour to let you do this so you have to do it really cheaply. And don't expect me to be interested in any part of it, not really.
I said i'd had to live with my son not knowing a loving family and the sadness I'd suffered at holiday time knowing they didn't care about either of us, and that i'd had to bring him up alone and that somehow I was supposed to not expect acknowledgement of this hurt much less an apology   - but great idea! Let's just play let's pretend he doesn't even exist.. That's so much freaking neater.

We didn't talk again for months. Now she is more wary of me. And I see no real value in a relationship with her because she is sooooo shut down and emotionally dead and self referencing and empty. She just doesn't get it.
Those are the people I grew up with.

These are the freaking crazies I grew up with. Oh, when the scales fall off your eyes.

Now I need a lot of time learning to be with nice people. Sane people. And reprogram the whole damn thing.

Hi Sceal,
I hope so too!  Thank you for reading my post and commenting.
It only comes when you're ready doesn't it. You have to put the leg work in on the trauma and the covering stuff, then one day you  are ready to dare to look at the core, and that's where the real change happens.

Fingers crossed.

I've spent a few years fighting this trauma lark and of course I understand that " feeling your pain" is the way through. How many times do you repeat that with your therapist beside you?
It's funny though, how you can relearn something over and over or in a deeper way.
For years I've been doing EMDR tapping and child work for complex PTSD and polyfragmented dissociation, and yes a lot has healed and improved.
But this year I felt such a weariness. Just didn't believe in it anymore. All this work and nothing really seemed to change deep down. I was still on the cycle of finding something exciting to work on ( dressage, keep fit, photography) getting really into it and being successful, then everything crashing at the emptiness behind it.
This year something inside me has kind of known that that is not enough any more I can't keep doing that.
Initially it manifested itself as a sort of depression - hopelessness, with funny stabs of regret tagged onto random things and an urge just to eat sleep and get drunk. I stayed in bed a lot and put weight on. It got rough.
My get up and go had moved out and it just felt, well, mwerrrr.

I carried on seeing my therapist and carried on working on stuff, but kind of getting cross with her too.
So meanwhile, planning a holiday with my son he wanted to spend some time in Wales so he could see some mates from a previous holiday, and I found myself drawn to going back to where I'd lived as a teenager,  near Bristol and "showing" him.

Just before we went I got a verbal lashing from my ex (NPD bully) and instead of turning the other cheek I let myself sink into the rage I felt. Actually allowed myself to decide enough was enough even though it was hard for me to give myself that permission - I have normally kept a distance but tried to be civil "for my son" but also because I was afraid - he was still controlling me in a way I hadn't really understood til that moment.
So this time I sat with it. Hard on the heels of the anger came immense shame, the shame he'd put into me but also the shame from my childhood. From a lifetime of narcissitic and borderline people and bullying
So I sat with it. Squirmed with it. For days.
In the middle of this we went down on holiday and I was hit by how much I'd loved where I'd lived and how happy I'd been as a teenager and how everything since felt trashed and wasted - it was intense. For a few days I imbibed the lovely memories and feelings and then wham, full on grieving, For who I'd been that I'd lost, for all the hardship and rubbish since, and for the way people, notably my ex, had treated me.
I suddenly saw clearly through the release of my shame that he'd been awful to me just after I'd lost my parents and my family home  and how none of it was because I was worthless and weird at all. That it was about his need to destroy me and make himself bigger. He'd yelled at me that I had no one and no one loved me within months of losing my mum

It was odd, my body releasing that grief. I realised I had never grieved properly for anything. I was humbled by that inner wisdom that had drawn me down there and led me to face what I needed to.

A few days later I got a text to say my aunt had died - someone I'd lost contact with when she developed Alzheimers and her daughter had whisked her off to Belgium and refused any interest. And wham, there I was crying and grieving all day all over again.
And afterwards... I felt softer, clearer.

It lasted for a couple of weeks then the magic of what i'd felt on holiday left me, and the "usual *" in my life and my frustrations built up again. Then I walked into a situation with my narcissitic colleague at work.
Instead of shame and self blame and angry emails, I sat with my rage. Boy did I rage to myself for 2 days, not knowing what to do with it and how to let it go - and then through sitting with it I once again I started to see how out of line he was, the pattern that had been going on/ He'd behave badly, no one would back me up and Id retreat in a cycle of shame and embarrassment and confusion. How I always, feeling so inadequate and wrong inside, always blamed myself and got drawn into his arguments as if I was trying to prove him wrong. all the time believing it was me.

And since then I've looked at some of the really horrible stuff I feel at home or with intimacy, places where I often get badly triggered and dissociative. Places where the complex trauma of my early family life and abuse flourish. And instead of being terrified of those feelings I've turned and said "come on then". Sitting with them has been hard... and you dread the descent into madness that you believe will inevitably follow. But instead all I've seen has been a morass of confusion, hurt, rage, terror and fear of being crazy. And a fear that this stuff could just burst out and shame me at any moment as it was not under my control.

I'd tried to think my way through it so many times but got nowhere as it was contradictory and crazy. SO just sitting with it and talking to those parts and letting them rant... it's starting to clear. I've started to feel more connected and softer with people. I've even had the strange experience of noticing that someone seems to like me, seemingly I am enough - usually I think everything I say or do is wrong somehow.

Yes so now there's more grief welling up. At all the horrors I've put up with and the way my world has been so warped. I can't feel it clearly yet. It's in there. I can trust it will find it's way out.

It's early days and  I have to keep reminding myself to listen inside, to try and find what I think, what I want, how I want to act which is hard as I've been so busy performing and hiding the real me.  Trusting that whoever is still in there holding this yukky stuff will trust me and together we can let it go.
It hasn't been as hard as I imagined in some ways ( my therapist says things that terrify a child are not as terrifying to an adult) and in some ways it's been the hardest thing.
Until I'd  said ok, what do those deep down parts, those parts I try and ignore, what do they feel, until I'd done that I couldn't see an of this, Until I'd faced the shame and the grief none of this was accessible
Now I notice I feel bad when I start acting or caring about how I come across instead of being centered and with myself. Noticing when I abandon myself, I suppose.
Living for me feels sad, lonely, empty, pointless and a really odd concept but I believe now that it is the start and it will get better.
There's more to do, I know it, but i'm slowly starting to trust myself and daring to start being with people in a different way - learning who I like and what I like rather than trying to dodge the perennial disapproval and shame I carried internally.

There was a big shift when I allowed myself to say, this isn't working anymore.. Something deep inside is so unhappy.  Going "home" and remembering when I'd felt alive and belonged reminded me of how it can be, that it's MY LIFE Daring to feel what's inside means I can let mood swings happen rather than chasing happiness and defending against the pain. I can be authentic rather than trying to be the best at things, or chasing affection that never fills the holes.

Listening to yourself and daring to live really from yourself is hard but so liberating.

HI Juliette, I am just 50 and I do have a child. But what youask about how do you heal the pain of all the hurt is a current thing for me. It doesn't matter what your age or circumstances, I think it's a similar battle for all of us.

I guess you heal bits and are ok for a bit then come back and rework them. It's a process and one of ups and downs.


I couldn't process any of the awful hurt and fear of my abusive marriage for 12 years - until i'd healed some of the underlying trauma, because opening up the boxes of rage and grief were too painful. I wasn't ready because the trauma got in the way. I wasn't strong enough to grieve for a long time.

Sometimes this process is about trusting the order in which it has to happen - like there is an inner wisdom. I guess it takes as long as it takes.

And it can be hard to trust the right thing is happening when you want rid of it now! Plus also the different phases can feel just as hard and make you feel you've got nowhere, but you have. Things come when you are ready to deal with them, when you have the inner strength or the support and strength.
Right now it feels like I've gone back to ground zero with my ex and it is really affecting me. If this is grieving it sucks! It's mixed up with shame and depression and hopelessness and a fear that somehow he was right about me and he's won. I'm seeing myself through his eyes again when I thought I'd turned away from that.  It's like a terrible bad smell that tarnishes everything and you can't get away from.
But on some level I know I need to bottom it out at this level to really heal it - it's so mixed up with the trauma from my childhood I have to be ready to feel both to make any real inroads with either and that's where the real hard stuff is.
You have to just trust yourself and keep doing little bits that you can.
As I often say about any difficult task... how you do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

I so relate to your posts. The emptiness, the battle to fight. The way your family undermined you, all of it.
It's so hard isn't it. I endured similar and I feel all the time I am not enough, saying or doing the wrong thing, out of control. shameful.
Facing the emotional wounds at the core is scary because It is a maelstrom of rage, hurt, confusion. I am touching the edges of it too and scared of unleashing it. Both on me and those around me!
I think it's fab you have turned your brother into a villain and you can be creative. That's the hub of you that knows the truth and can testify to it but still as yet needing validation to really think you are entitled to your world view.
It's horrid how it makes you doubt what you know and what you feel and see happening in front of you because they all play the same game.

Rooting for you!

We most certainly are! In my better moments I find it so exciting. Then the clouds cover the sun again...

But at least once we've seen the path it's not the floundering we were doing before. We aren't doing the trained monkey thing, getting the same results by doing the same thing over and over. We can question our self attacks and self defeating beliefs and hang onto the glimpse of the way forward.

Sounds like you have been doing some incredible work.

Thank you James for you lovely reply. You have such a depth of understanding and it's amazing to hear someone really getting it That doesn't happen much, like you say you need to have gone through this stuff to know what is what.
You have obviously come a long way on your journey and that is wonderful. You totally get the courage tp leap into the unknown that this deep stuff takes.

I am trying to allow connection with kind people, trying to notice and imbibe it, really trying to believe they are out there for me - eventually!
I am deeply scared of people though, in relation to me, (even though I work with people and get on well in that safe environment)  I struggle to believe they are interested in  me and feel what I am and do is always wrong, whatever it is  I do or don't do!

I know some of it is the abuse, the rest I thought was permament damage from the lack of loving mothers mirroring and attunement etc. But recently I revisited the place I lived at school when I was happy and remembered how it felt - what joy!. I realised that was the real me and THAT's what is missing =  since then I've lost it.  Touching it again made me realise it is about a damaged connection to myself hidden under shame and fear that I need to encourage and allow and build. Give myself permission to say THIS IS MY LIFE!!

I am still labouring under the shadow of the legacy of all the nasty, jealous and narcisstic people that have populated my life, even currently in the shape of my ex husband - I need to weed them out of my garden and let the good stuff flourish.

I saw this quote this morning "Maybe the journey isn't so much about becoming anything. Maybe it's about un-becoming everything that isn't really you... so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place." ~Unknown

It's hard to share here too because I don't want to bore people but I'll share a little to start with maybe, Toe in the water job.

I am a third child, youngest of 3 girls, my brother is younger. I now know that our family was very dysfunctional although on the surface we were intelligent, Christian, middle class, blah blah blah. Appearances being everything and all...

Mum came from a large family, lots of family rifts, all quite cold and distant and duty bound.
Dad was an only child and his mum was  sociopathic and manipulative - once begging him in tears on bended knee not to marry and leave her even though he was 30 something.

Mum was borderline, abusive and distant/unloving. She was a physio and didn't she just love the kids she worked with....... Just not those at home
Dad was probably dissociative, didn't know how to relate to women, a bit of a bully, Very strict and angry.

I was meant to be the boy that would let mum off the hook of more childbearing. When I was born the men at the pub toasted my birth with "better luck next time"
Mum never connected with me, took out all her rage and resentment at her disappointments on me, Hated me on sight. Even years later, with Alziemers she'd go from schoozing my brother to pummelling me with her fists and swearing at me

I got left with Dad's mum for long periods from being a young baby. She was a paedophile and had paedohilic friends, one of whom was our family doctor. A lot of stuff happened before I had memories... Go figure

There was no love in the family, no one to look at you, listen to you, talk to you. Give a * about you.

My sisters viciously fought for any of the scarce attention in the family and acted out mum's cruelty to me. I was the scapegoat. My eldest sister went from pretending I didn't exist to attacking me and sneering at everything I liked or wanted. Openly so - but no one "saw" it and I always got the blame for reacting, for "being jealous" or whatever... And then my eldest sister would do the whole drama queen, tears and innocent *.
Family mealtimes I would be attacked and then left for days and given the cold shoulder.

I coped by being the best at everything and trying so hard. I worried about everyone, tried to make them better, tried to play happy families, tried to be good enough for someone to care. I felt utterly unwanted, disgusting, useless and hated and pathetic for being upset, scared, needy etc.
The better I did the more they hated that. Even recently my other sister won't let me talk about my son or my career or anything I love as it makes her feel inadequate - and still thinks it's ok to expect me to give up who I am to make her comfortable -  as was my old role. (Even though she had treated me like * and we hadn't talked in 10 years) She does not know how to care, My family are like weird shut down automatons with no clue. I feel ashamed of them yet still, after all this time, hugely hurt that they don't care and I've never belonged.

I also got bullied at school because I was very insecure and scared of the world and too good at everything
Also I got groomed by a guy on the estate and something happenend in his house but as yet not recovered those memories.
And my paedo grandma got dementia and came to live with us.

Cue.. nightmares, anxiety, school refusal, bullying, depression.

Then we moved halfway across the country for dad's job and for a time I successfully reinvented myself. I loved the new area, had wonderful friends and got involved in everything, great at everything.... For a few years, apart from the odd episode (which I now know to be dissociative) I felt happy.
And then I went off to Uni to a place I didn't want to go to, to do a course I didn't want to do and it never occurred to me I had a choice or could say no. I had no sense of self.
Overnight the world went black.

Enough for now,gotta get some sleep.
Thanks for listening xxxxxx

Thank you Kat, you sound a very kind and wise person.
You so accurately hit the nail on the head, Isn't it funny how totally we believe we're awful, It does feel like immutable truth...

There were bits of what you write that really speak to me. The crazy carousel. The way everything hurts while you push yourself
I've realised how much I've run around trying to look successful and happy to deny the terrible internal critic all the while feeling lonely and shut off and an imposter inside
Recently I had a few days where I suddenly found me, remembered what makes me happy, it was such a relief to say "this is me, this is what I want" and experience a different way of being, to feel like I had a right to choose, a right to be on this planet the way I wanted.. All the activity and trying to live up to "their" ways seemed so stupid
But I've lost it now.
Guess at least if you find yourself, however briefly, it's a start
I get "the void" too. Hard to sit with that.

Hi guys,
I'm in throes of this stuff at the moment, it's very painful and it feels like a hopeless mountain = too much hurt in the past and too little in the present.
I've worked so hard for so long at this stuff and still feel so handicapped.
My therapist says I have to let myself go down to see that I am enough. When you're in the middle of it though, that's hard to believe.
What do you do when there seems to be nothing for you?
And when you feel so boring. lovable and shameful to your core.
You can' tell anyone as they either don't want to know or it makes you feel like you're weird and afraid of driving them away.
I get snatches of seeing the real me, and a bit of genuine hope and connection to something exciting but only briefly and only occasionally.
Life seems so disappointing and a pale imitation of what I wanted it to be,
The emptiness and coldness is immense takes my breath away when it hits.
I tell myself it's old pain but it's hard to believe I can deal with this alone. Just always feel so far behind what other's seem to do so effortlessly.
It sucks!

Thank you, both of you, for replying, and yes it is good how much you get it. It does help to hear it from other people even though I wouldn't wish anyone to feel the same!
The soldiers analogy Kat is a really good one, I hadn't thought of it like that. I guess I do need to find other soldiers... I shall give that some thought. I worry that sometimes contact with other damaged people becomes an exercise in naval gazing but sweeping negative generalisations are what I do to avoid the fear of finding out...

My son did seem to relish being home actually. It was odd to sit with how I feel inside and with the incongruity of him appearing to find something he likes in being home. Daft really- when he was little I had very few doubts and we were uber close, It's easier when they're little and look at you as their whole world. it's as he's got older and I can't be so sure I'm enough and when I get scared others are more important - the constant comparisions and doubts Three Roses, Yes and yes again.

Thank you for making me feel welcome and I'm looking forward to getting you know you all a bit better.

Hi I'm new here. Hello to everyone. Hope it's ok to share something. I joined tonight so I had a place to put this.

I've been working with a dissociation/child abuse therapist for years, I'm also in a gestalt group and I've done individual and group therapy before that.
I just mention that because I've worked so hard for years and yet right now things are very difficult.
My cptsd story "in brief" is hostile unloving mother, bullying father, sexually abusive grandmother I was left with as a baby,  horrible dysfunctional family and then some. I don't think I ever felt genuinely loved - or even knew what it was - until I had my son and even now I only feel it vaguely. I was severely dissociative with many many many fragments of me that we are still finding.

Lately I've been working on the real baseline stuff of abandonment, self esteem, the paralysing loneliness and the way "people" trigger me.
Just to say I work in a public facing job and get on with people great there... I can do it, On the face of it you would think I was really together.

But  I just never seem to find anyone for me in private or ever belong anywhere and I have a painful set of irrational but powerful beliefs that make finding myself a community or "family" very confusing and painful. Lately it has started to feel unbearable.

Just tonight I picked up my son from 2 weeks at his dad's - who has just broken up with his second wife and now has got a new girlfriend. Not that I care - other than I was suddenly overwhelmed with my inadequacy that he is so much better than I - even though he is a nasty narcissist and bully - and I felt an icy hopeless aloneness that is like shock.  How does a nasty * like him just walk into another relationship?  How do people just do that? I feel ashamed that I haven't had any relationship in 10 years, that I hide at home rather than go out and that I can't find anywhere to belong.  Going out to meet new people is really really hard for me , I try but it's easy to run away or give up....I feel inadequate that I have never had the family and friend support to do "normal things" and although I try - and have tried very hard for years - it all feels hollow and empty because this stuff deep inside never changes.

My son tonight seems really happy and I can't shake the belief that it's being at his dad's rather than being home has created this and that now  I have to hide from him how dreadfully useless and inadequate and empty and boring and UNABLE I am. I can't see that I have value.

I have friends - but no one  that understands this level of pain or really wants to know about it, in truth.  I never trust that there is anything in me that people really want, and I struggle to feel any connection. I try over and over to remind these parts of myself that this is the traumatised me and not the whole picture but the ferocity of these feelings literally take my breath away  - especially tonight - and show my little efforts, to "meet people" and live normally, almost laughable.  I feel ashamed that people will see how much I , a grown woman, struggle to do the thimgs that to them are so easy.....
I am brave and I have faced unspeakable things in my recovery but this feels too big.... no one able to help me as I can't even tell them. I feel trapped having to pretend to my son when I feel so empty and with the terror that it will turn out to be true that I am not enough and will drive him away. I know that is stupid as I write it but it feels so real.

I'm not sure any of this makes much sense. My therapist says putting things down "in writing" pulls it through the hippocampus and out of traumatic memory but just now I've been losing hope that I can do this. It just feels too big.  I feel very demoralised .