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My mother visiting has brought up a lot of feelings about our overall family dynamic. I wish I could talk to my older brother but we are all very traumatised and he has expressed he is now NC with my middle brother, who has severe mental health problems (as a result fo our abuse, I feel) and I feel like he has gone NC with me, which I don't understand but hope that it is for his own healing, as maybe I am asking for support that he can't give, or maybe it is just to painful for him to hear how unstable things can be for me at times, ie "moving house again" - nothing too major. I have been a ver caring figure for everyone in my family, and have helped all of my brothers at different times in very big ways so it is hard to feel everyone so far away and not in touch.

My youngest brother feels like my baby as I cared a lot for him when I was around 7 years old myself and used to protect him from violence from other family members, and he had a road accident yesterday and called me. I spoke to him in the reassuring way I always do, but wish I was closer to give him a big hug. We all live hundreds of miles apart and are not that old or far apart in age. It all feels so sad. At the end of last year my middle brother had a psychotic breakdown that I dealt with alone, willingly at first (as this had been my parent role) and then I asked for assistance after it became apparent he was very unwell, and I felt frightened. My mother did not come to help despite me saying I could not cope, and I ended up calling the police and an ambulance one night after looking after him for three days on my own - helping him cross the road, and witnessing as he was fully dissociated, experiencing different personalities and speaking aggressively to voices he was hearing.

My mum drove through the night after I has to call the emergency services, and from there on it just got worse, and he ended up voluntarily sectioned until he disappeared after the 72 hours was up. My relationship with him is destroyed now. He unfortunately believes that I tried to trap him and poison him, when I did everything I could to try to help, including taking him into my home. He kicked down my front door whilst he was here and the relationship with my neighbours broke down after this, leading to me being aggressively forced out of my home.

I feel a deep root of neglect for us all this year, since what happened with my brother. I feel like we are fractured as a family, and have been forever, just that the features are turning into deep ravines. I have tried to hold us together but I am forced to let go know, as my strength is incredibly depleted. I feel traumatised, exhausted and depressed. I worry for them all but I don't know what to do.

I miss my brothers.  xxx

My mum is visiting. She started by telling me within two hours of landing and unloading a huge load of her tat from her car into my flat that she had euthanised our family cat who was ill, and then described it in detail. I was so shocked, I dissociated and completely triggered as she used to scare me when I was little by telling me she had murdered kittens. She then walked off when she saw I was upset and then when she came back she argued with me and got angry that I was upset. I said that she has no thought of how the things she says affect her children and asked for space. I gave her my keys (we were in town eating dinner when she told me - needless to say I couldn't finish my meal) and said I'd walk back home later. I cried my eyes out, met with a friend and thought that maybe I should ask her to go back home. In the end I decided to drop it and look at it from the perspective that she was just messily sharing her trauma drama (as per). Yet again I had to suck it up and just put myself to one side in order to keep the peace. I just brave faced it when I got back. She said sorry but was still defensive. I just said I didn't want to talk about it. Terrible start to the mother visit... !

Since then it's been on and off. I feel like I have no order in my brain or in my life, I'm pretty much dissociated all the time and feel chaotic and messy. My flat is a mess with all her stuff in it. I just moved house and asked her to come help and she couldn't at the time so she came straight after. There's a lot of stuff everywhere and I just wish she wasn't here right now, tbh. She just takes over. She has asked to sleep with me in my bed a few times and I have said no. I normally let her but this time have stood my ground.

With my friends (who she is meeting for the first time) I have noticed that she has a lot of one upman ship with me and is very rude and critical of me in front of other people. She is trying to make a good impression of herself. One of my friends actually stood up for me to her (bless my friend!) by saying to her "actually, Sasha is really good at X, I disagree with you" and my mum shut right up.  It felt really good to hear my friend say that.

Mum had been harassing me about loads of things like how I do this and that wrong, criticising me and then making demands on my time. I don't know why she is here to be honest. I don't think she is having a nice time. Family dynamics have changed a lot in the last year as I have stopped playing ball in the way they are used to.

Today my mum told me to shut up in front of my new friends. It wasn't nice and wasn't called for. Do you know what it made me think? A lot of hypervigilance I have about the way I am treated in front of my friend's blatantly comes from experiences of my mum being rude and humiliating me, and also doing one upmanship.

I asked her, after we left, not to tell me to shut up in front of my friends and she got angry with me. She wouldn't talk to me about it. I said that if she didn't agree not to hold back from speaking to me like that then we would not able to hang out. She got more defensive and started telling me why I deserved it and so on. I held my hands up and said "okay, so all of your frustration is over here on this side  and over here on the other side is you telling me to shut up. The frustration is what it is, and I'm sorry you felt frustrated, but you telling me to shut up is not acceptable"

It has felt very weird since then. We are basically in silence now and I just can't be bothered to interact with her. She is here in my house. I just want to disappear. Or shut off. I feel like I don't want any of my family to visit me for a year after this. That makes me feel sad but I just can't deal with how much they criticise and throw me off kilter when I am working very hard to stay grounded.

Does anyone have advice for being around family and how to manage? I think we have another week at least left as we are going to a festival together at the end of this week.

I feel great. Right now. Sitting here, in a cafe after a brilliant meeting.

Things have been so incredibly tough recently. I went to a community project near me yesterday to take part as a beneficiary and I realised I felt so timid and nervous. What has been going on the past few months, even over the past year, has been pretty scary and shaken me up.

Last night I went for a swim in the sea, watching a thunderstorm a few miles away. I lay on my back, floating in the waves and opened my mouth for the rain. I felt like there was a change, and like it was the beginning of something and the end of something else. A turning point of sorts.

After this I went home, made bread, and cooked myself a lovely evening meal. I slept well for what feels like the first time in a long time.

At this meeting just now I have been asked to be a trustee for a local charity due to my expertise. I also have a new job, starting tomorrow, and my freelance work is going well.

Tomorrow morning I will hopefully sign the paperwork for a new flat. I feel anxious as for four years now I have not been able to settle in one place for long, however I think it will feel good to try again, and I just hope and pray for a better, more peaceful time.

Wishing the best for all xxx

Hi all

An NHS CBT therapist 4 years ago referred me on to longer term service as she identified that I had disclosed child abuse and neglect in my past. I accepted this and sought the referral for long-term therapy looking at core values and boundaries that she suggested.

Whilst this referral was processing I had to move, and then once I had set up home again I started a new referral in a new location. Since then I have had to move about 7 more times and have had my referral interrupted each time.

Years on I feel like I am reaching a dead end. I have read as much as I can, but feel like I am hitting walls and really want to work with a therapist who can help with my past trauma. I don't have an official diagnosis as of yet.

In my new area I started a new referral 6 months ago and am going through the process again. I plan to stay in this area for the foreseeable and have hope, however they keep bouncing me between services that can't help me.

I have disclosed to a number of assessment services and still feel no closer to help. Recently I have been losing days and cancelling work where my symptoms of tiredness, confusion and anxiety get too high to function properly. I called the CMHT team last week on a very bad day and they even referred me to someone else, who referred me back to CMHT.

Since then I have written a letter to PALS and am also considering writing a complaint to my GP, to the CMHT and to my MP about what is going on.

I feel fed up, exhausted and that having to retell and then being rejected over and over again is really causing me to struggle, bringing about feelings of hopelessness and feeling stuck, depressed and like I am never going to get help.

I can't afford to go private, and CPTSD is having a big affect on my work, income, mood and relationships. I feel like I am regularly losing days at a time - life feels so up and down and I am not able to achieve the things I want.

Please does anyone have advice or words of encouragement in regards to accessing support for CPTSD on the NHS and any clue of how I can push this forward?

Many thanks,
Sasha

I have developed a theory of Voice. The Voice that tells me how I feel, what I would like, what I do not like and when something feels wrong has been so trampled by others in my childhood and developing life that it has barely been there at times in adult relationships, often choosing to settle with someone with quite a Big Voice who would carry us both through.

My Voice was still there, however by matching up with a Big Voice it was continually not heard or dismissed when raised in even tiny ways. This caused me to shut it down and 'learn' to stay quiet, making me have quite a Little Voice. In some relationships it would be a bit bigger, however in my last big relationship it felt like a very small Little Voice, that grew even quoted as it felt like it wasn't heard or wanted by the Big Voice at all. For example:

Big Voice: "I think we should get some new cushions".
Little Voice: "Oh great! (Excited at opportunity for input) I think blue would go with the sofa. I could make some with my sewing machine if you want to pick some fabri together, that way we can both split the cost and it'll be cheaper?"
Big Voice: "I don't like blue. I've seen some that I like that are very expensive and of good quality. Please don't bring in anything second rate in the bracket that you can afford. I don't like anything second hand or hand made. Now I really don't want to talk about to again so I would prefer it if we no longer discuss it."
Little Voice: *shuts down*

That was a really tricky scenario for me, and it happened over and over again, with decor, holidays and any sort of making plans. He talked about wanting to marry me (what? Wow! How amazing!) however I was told not to talk about or get excited about marriage, as it was upsetting him. He said he was going to whisk me off to New York for my birthday (what? wow! So exciting!) yet I was told not to get too excited about it, and scolded for stressing him out when I tentatively asked, two weeks before my birthday, if he had looked at tickets. After giving holiday notice months before it was very hard to feel like I had no agency or knowledge, or room to get excited. It was very hard for me.

I felt powerless to assert myself with Big Voice but experienced a great deal of dissociation and frightening feelings of losing myself. He was so sure of himself, and on reflection I feel now that his experience of emotional and material privilege since childhood is what enabled him to develop an overwhelming sense of self-security. We might even call it unhealthy narcissism.

Here's how the relationship ended. Through what I see now as a fawn codependent relationship style, I had pushed myself into a corner. I realised that I had become very depressed through lack of agency and after a week staying with a friend I returned saying that to help our relationship I needed to start feeling like it was my life too, my living space too, and that I needed agency. The next day I was dying my hair and he was unhappy about me doing this in the house, even though it was already on my head. I used my Little Voice to express that I thought it wouldn't get on anything, but his Big Voice won and I ended up crying in the shower, washing out my hair, feeling very dissociated, lost and broken.

He helped me calm down a bit, but proceeded to continue to challenge me, saying that despite me getting upset we couldn't let that mean the issue goes away, and me dying my hair was an issue that needed discussing. It was here that I found my Voice. I put my foot down that he had been unreasonable and within half an hour of me standing up for myself he told me to "Get your sh*t and get out of my life, get out of my house! We are done!". So that was that.

Upended and homeless, within 24 hours of working out what to do whilst staying with a friend I worked out that I was pretty financially vulnerable but that I could also now do what I wanted. Big Voice tried to get me to go back to him after a little while, but I chose to stay away and start again. I decided to move away to a cheaper location where I could be independent. I also could feel how this had happened and the Voice theory became really clear to me. I began to learn more about my Little Voice and Essie it louder so that it started to become a Healthy Voice of awareness and assertiveness.

My Healthy Voice has had a few knocks, mainly  through allowing an ex who moved into the area to stay with me, plus overbearing neighbours. I am out of both situations, however realise that I put myself at the bottom of the pile again, making my voice small which lead to feelings of depression.

A new occurrence is that I have been dating someone with whom my voice has become very Big. My new Big Voice is frightening to me, as it comes with a lot of strong emotions, including anger, fight, self-defence and guilt for having a Big Voice at all. I find this confusing, however from what I understand it is likely to be the late development of narcissism denied during childhood. I am concerned as I think that this person I care about takes a Little Voice position, potentially due to a past that has been emotionally difficult but is unexplored, and I am trying to talk to them about this, although it is all very new to them. I feel at the moment that Little Voices are quite hard to navigate from the other side, and I am trying to find a balance. It feels very hard to get right especially while I am also trying to manage my new pair of lungs.

What are your thoughts?

Are you a Big Voice or Little Voice? Or is yours a Healthy Voice?

Have you been through all of these voices?

Does any of this makes sense to anyone else?

I'm struggling in a new relationship with triggers, micromanaging, huge levels of inner and outer critic and now slipping into what feels like a depression.

You know the expression 'can't see the wood for the trees?'. Well right now I just can't understand why on Earth I am with someone and why I am doing this to myself.

So, to anyone with an experience or thoughts to share on this - how have you managed to when all you want to do is be alone again?

Could space with N/C be a good a temporary option, while I sort my head and work out my next decision?

Am with someone who is more supportive than any previous partner by a huge margin. He is reading with me, supporting me, doesn't "chuck me away" when I am spinning out/lashing out and going through very difficult emotions and days. He has helped me to feel safe to talk about my experiences, my triggers and my feelings. However, I keep getting intensely triggered as he is naturally a very sarcastic person.

I feel that this is not an insidious NPD type of mocking, and I feel that when we get to the heart of things, after I have triggered, he is sad and apologetic that he has upset me. I have relayed this to him and asked him where his use of language comes from in him, as sometimes I wonder if he struggles to express himself in a straight way - perhaps due to his own experiences with people who speak with twisted tongues. He has acknowledged this and expressed that he feels grateful that I have reflected this as he has felt it has gotten people upset in the past, however it's not what he wants or intends.

I believe him, but I keep getting triggered as it is not simple to stop straight away, and what makes things more complex is that my trigger is to do with FOO sarcasm, mocking and ridicule. I am aware that when I am slightly up/high/bouncy I am quite dry and witty, and when together in this place it feels like I slip with him into a sarcastic banter that I sometimes have to stop, as it can become quite scary for me. In my FOO this would just intensify to the point of real anger and violence.

So is sarcasm something to be avoided overall? I'm not sure it feels good to me at all. I'm not sure it's funny. It feels so 'one upmanship' and even when I am bouncy and partake in this, I feel a great sense of inner and outer critic flare up.

I find sarcasm and conversational jokes incredibly difficult to process when I am not bouncy, and when I am: down, 'purple' (my way of describing waking up like there is a huge traffic jam in my brain), depressed, dissociative, flighty, sensitive, hypervigilant or in anyway struggling with other symptoms (this can be quite a lot of the time, as I can hide a lot, or be quietly harbouring feelings/moods that I haven't managed to articulate).

In these states sarcasm is a massive amygdala hijacking trigger. It feels like these sorts of comments force me to do loops in my head, working out what someone means, and really becoming incredibly worried that I don't get it, and that I genuinely do not understand why they said it and if they are trying to hurt me.

As a result my inner critic berates that I am ruining the conversation, and should 'just lighten the * up!', as well as feeling that I am not worthy of clear straight conversation. I usually freeze to a degree, as I start to process, and often consider just shutting up completely. However, this usually doesn't last long as I feel comfortable enough with my partner to challenge when this happens, and my outer critic quickly engages into a panicky fight mode ("why on earth would you say that to me? You are being sarcastic! I don't understand what you mean. What did you mean?"), often accompanied by intense micromanagement. I can start to raise my voice and monologue.

I wish my brain wouldn't derail - and I would love to gain a bit more control over this trigger so that I can communicate more healthily and effectively. Right now I am struggling to stay present when this trigger appears, and feel like I am being thrown backwards in a painful and confusing way, mid conversation.

Does anyone have any suggestions, advice or a similar story?

[My childhood was somewhat rootless, due to a number of things:]

I have been wanting to post in here for some time now.

A couple of years ago a friend showed me Pete Walkers book. What an invaluable resource. Since learning about the 4F's I can identify, thus far, that I am a real mixture of the types.

My childhood was somewhat rootless, due to a number of things:
• Overcrowded childhood home a 1 bed flat in a squatted estate with 1 adult and 4 children, no space or privacy. I shared a bed with mum and brother. Regularly had my stuff trashed.
• Regularly beaten and verbally abused from a young age, including a great deal of entrapping sarcasm and constant criticism amongst all the family.
• Depressed non-coping single mother who tried a great deal, but really was very dysfunctional and threatened to have us taken away or kill us a few times, and an alcoholic father was barely there.
• Often kicked out from a young age, stayed at friends for weeks at a time.
• Me and my siblings all made to leave home aged 15/16, mother made us each phone the council over and over again to ask them to house us.
• Grew up witnessing drug use, self-harm and mental health problems in a dysfunctional community.
• It never seemed to start, get better or end.... There is more but that is the gist.

I am 29 years old and have been trying for many years to learn and grow, to be stable, specifically looking at the following areas:
• Learning how to ground
• Recognising dissociation, including busy flight mode, overeating, body numbness and brain freeze.
• Stopping trying to 'save' people and start to save myself.
• Trying to stop 'throwing myself away' as if I am a piece of trash.
• Trying to learn how to gauge whether people are good or bad.
• Recognising the vacillation between inner and outer critic.
• Recognising emotional flashbacks, and trying to manage these.
• Trying to manage my outer critic and how I micromanage in relationships.
• Trying to hear my voice, and trying to feel comfortable to express this in an appropriate way.
• Trying to manage the intense urge to isolate, run away and push everyone away.
• Recognising Abandonment Depression.

I feel really tired as it feels like drama keeps coming my way. I am trying my best to live a peaceful life, however I keep repeating the following loops that I seem to get stuck in again and again, that have and still are re-traumatizing me, piling onto my pre-existing childhood triggers:
• Having to move all the time, due to rental insecurity in London where I grew up. I can't keep with the same doctor and have been chasing long-term psychotherapy for about 4 years now. I am now living in a more rural area, and hoped for peace and a long term tenancy, however I found out yesterday that I am going to have to move again, due to a false complaint by a rather vicious neighbour.
•  I find gauging things difficult in intimate relationships and have attracted a number of narcissists, where things seem very good at first and then I realise that my voice is not being encourage or is consistently rejected, however in these situations I have usually already given up all my rights and feelings, putting theirs first and avoiding conflict at all costs, in a fawn co-dependent manner.
• Struggling with money as working full time is quite difficult for me. I hate to admit this but I get very spun out, and sometimes can't read emails or function properly, like the words don't make sense. Sometimes I can barely understand people when they are talking to me, and I get headaches and affected vision. I also struggle to articulate to employers what my problems are, as I am learning them myself and feel incredibly ashamed, also don't want to trigger people. I don't want to be a victim, or a drama queen. I tend to take large numbers of days off for 'migraines', which seems the easiest way to explain.

I have to move again. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I'm trying. I just want peace and calm. I want to heal, with a garden and a dog, making bread and with loads of time to myself.

I don't know how to get there. It feels like the rug keeps being pulled from under my feet.