Recent posts

#1

Please Introduce Yourself Here / Mostly out of the storm

Last post by pelicantown - Today at 01:31:00 PM

Hi!

It's weird to be in a place where people even have the potential to understand you. I'm a writer in Canada with C-PTSD. I've been in therapy for 6+ years now, and it's gotten me far. I feel like I've healed immensely, and I feel like a different person, but as we all know, PTSD sticks with you forever... it just gets smaller and smaller as life gradually builds around it.

Although my former symptoms don't consume my day anymore, I feel like my C-PTSD has rewired my ability (and/or desire?) to connect with new people. It's so incredibly exhausting trying to mingle and speak to people I feel like will never understand me... I've cut people out of my life who I feel like don't remotely have the same worldview as I do...I feel like they're shallow...clouded...and I feel good about doing, but I've also realized how ruthless I am when I have to consider people I enjoy spending my time interacting with.

I also like:
- Animals (dogs especially!)
- Crafting
- Movies
- Sports
- Travel/Nature
- Music (playing and listening)
- Working out/Running

The list above keeps me sane.

PelicanTown

#2

Recovery Journals / Re: the next step

Last post by NarcKiddo - Today at 01:25:08 PM

I hope you're making good progress in finding a new T.

 

#3

Recovery Journals / Re: Papa Coco's Recovery Journ...

Last post by NarcKiddo - Today at 01:02:50 PM

PC, I am so happy that you are now able to love yourself even when you are in a nasty EF. That's so important and worthwhile.

The discussion about whether the scapegoat is weak or strong is interesting. I'm not even sure if a FOO would view it in those terms, were they to analyse it. After all, most of the time it is in their interests for the scapegoat to continue to be the scapegoat. If they are too weak to take it they may break. The FOO might not care about losing the individual, as such, but it is a lot of work and hassle to revamp the dynamics if someone drops out. I think that is why we feel such resistance when we start healing and behave differently towards them. They DO NOT like it, and I think a big part of that is because they have to adjust themselves in response.

And (also sorry to barge in on your journal, PC) the word "good" has been cropping up here too. The word "good" is generally used as an insult in my FOO, when used to describe a person. I am frequently called "good" and although they pretend that it is not an insult when applied to me, I am pretty sure it is.

#4

Recovery Journals / Re: Post-Traumatic Growth Jour...

Last post by NarcKiddo - Today at 12:36:50 PM

Well done SO. I hope you get your compost delivered.

#5

Recovery Journals / Re: Living As All of Me

Last post by NarcKiddo - Today at 12:34:24 PM

The ice was solid, if it held him, it would hold me.

Sure. But would it hold the both of you? Your concerns were always valid.

I hear you about your kindly therapist. My husband is like this. He tries to make things better for me, making all manner of assumptions along the way. Quite reasonable assumptions that don't apply to me because - why? I am not a reasonable person? I don't know the answer, but I'd have said "yes" to the tea, too. I'd probably have cracked at juice, to be honest.

#6

Recovery Journals / Re: Papa Coco's Recovery Journ...

Last post by dollyvee - Today at 12:28:25 PM

Did that make sense?

Yes, I get what you're saying and until I read Fawning, I would have said that being helpful is "good," and ultimately helping people is good, but there's a line where we are helpful, and then helpful because fawning is an ingrained trauma response that we're not aware of. Specifically, because of how we have been raised (ie the one to take it all on, not incite conflict etc). The Fawning book has really helped open my eyes to this (and there is specifically a chapter on Fawning in Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed) and think it is perhaps more prevalent in scapegoats.

Sorry to hijack your journal PC. I just thought this was an important distinction to make and am happy to move the conversation somewhere else.

#7

Recovery Journals / Re: Papa Coco's Recovery Journ...

Last post by Chart - Today at 11:48:08 AM

And now who is being "helpful!" I am writing about this I guess in hopes of getting out of this place that I have found myself in since being a child, and the path to connecting to my own more authentic self, anger included.

This hits a button for me. I have analyzed things my whole life, trying to decide if what I am doing is for me, or comes from my conditioning. Now, by trying to help people, am I just fulfilling a manifest destiny imposed by toxic caregiver dynamics?

Ultimately, no. I now understand that dynamic and although I'm not totally immune to it's influence, I still feel strongly that I make decisions and act on situations based on what I believe is "good". (And I'm not implying that anyone is suggesting the reverse, just that I find the dynamic fascinating, but complex enough that it's tricky to explain, especially without implications.) Did that make sense?

I'd like to add, I think, PC and DV, you are doing EXACTLY the same. Taking those parts that come from toxicity and then making them your own BECAUSE you've examined them minutely and determined that "being that way" is ok now, despite it's horrible origins. It's the idea of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. My mother trained me to emotionally take care of her. So for better or for worse, I got an intensive crash-course early on and quite frankly became darn good at it. Too many times in my life it totally backfired. I still have to continue being careful after all these years. Understanding limits and what's healthy is still not second-nature for me. I sometimes goof up. But overall, I sense that I can be very good at something that very often is very positive, a lot of which came from my narcissistic mother. So for that, I have to rejoice in the universal "process". The origin of all is one. Evil is only born out of a total misunderstanding of Love (imo :-)
 

#8

Recovery Journals / Re: Papa Coco's Recovery Journ...

Last post by dollyvee - Today at 11:31:28 AM

Many times on this forum, I've said things about how I believe we are the strongest and most helpful people on earth. We're the "light of the world" and "the salt of the earth" and any other old saying that we've heard and dismissed. I see our suffering as a result of us knowing how unfair life is, and that's what makes us not feel okay with abuse.

PC, I'm glad you found something in this book and I'm sorry that your family did that to you. I also thought it was interesting that she wrote about how the family picks the strongest, most empathetic etc etc member, which is different from Scapegoating in Families: Intergenerational Patterns of Emotional and Physical Abuse (which I was also going to recommend tho it's more about the constructs so far in the family) where she and has a polarizing view of taking the "weakest" member of the family, which I don't agree with necessarily. I guess the story is who the family sees as the weakest, which is not necessarily true.

To me, I find the word "helpful" really loaded because that's the story that they wanted me to believe, that I had to be "helpful" and take this on to help the family survive, which of course, needing the family in any capacity, I did. But being helpful is also something that is keeping me stuck in many ways, and keeping me from my authentic self and a connection to healthy anger. Everything I did had to be for someone else because that's how I had to survive in the family.

My job was to "save" the family. In that role I had "love privileges". I got all the love I needed from her as in line with my training. Probably, at minimum, I had a sense of relative value as a baby. Although, when I'd failed to produce the intended effect, my "role" took on a whole new dimension. It was subtle, insidious, but it was implicit and everyone knew it, I was the strong one, the adventurer, the popular one... special. But of course the half-truth held an ugly reality just below the surface

Chart, I would encourage you to look at the definition of scapegoat more, or the examples given in the Scapegoating Families book where the scapegoat is the precise one used to save the family. I also put a blurb in my journal this morning about the relationship between parents and children of the opposite sex where the parent heaps praise on the child until they no longer follow the "rules," and then the scapegoating begins. Not that I want to project my own experience onto you, I just perhaps noticed the similarities.

And now who is being "helpful!" I am writing about this I guess in hopes of getting out of this place that I have found myself in since being a child, and the path to connecting to my own more authentic self, anger included.

Sending you all support,
dolly

#9

Recovery Journals / Re: Post-Traumatic Growth Jour...

Last post by TheBigBlue - Today at 10:55:34 AM

Bravo SO. Bravo Chart. 

#10

Recovery Journals / Re: Papa Coco's Recovery Journ...

Last post by TheBigBlue - Today at 10:51:30 AM

Wow, thank you PapaCoco (and Dolly) for mentioning this book, and for explaining this so clearly (it can be overwhelming how much I still need to learn and understand). It was a real light-bulb moment for me. Reading what you shared helped me see my role in my family in a new way, as the one who was able to carry, absorb, and contain what others couldn't. That reframe matters a lot, and it helps loosen some very old self-blame. I really appreciate you putting words to this.