Recent posts
#1
Please Introduce Yourself Here / Hello! This is my story!
Last post by Flowergirl1967 - July 06, 2025, 06:57:58 PMI am thrilled to be joining this community of people! I have complex ptsd and would like to share a little of my story!
Since I was little I always questioned my families dynamic subconsciously. I have adhd and was raised with that not being acknowledged at all by my parents because they believed that "Jesus heals all" as a child this looked like calling pastors to "pray the demons out" and anoint me when I was showing clear adhd symptoms of being overstimulated.
This was common and my parents didn't have the patience, knowledge, or understanding to acknowledge my mental health.
I was locked in rooms while I stood there crying not understanding why I was scared but being so deathly afraid of something. That something was just anxiety.
I was bullied by many kids in my childhood and even kids parents. My mother told me that it was because people were jealous. I do have a very fun outgoing personality, but I never compared myself to others so I could never wrap my mind around why kids were so evil to me.
Fast forward to my teen years because of the emotional neglect of my adhd and my anxiety and overall emotions I started seeking out relationships with the wrong friends and romantic partners. I was very naive and thought the best of people. I was still the butt of every joke in highschool at the small private school I attended and it wasn't until my first boyfriend who I now know was a blatant narcissist, broke my heart.
He did many things to me like bully me and defame me but I still had hope he had some sort of emotional connection and that kept me chasing the beginning high I felt with him.
Chasing that high led me to be sexually assaulted by him and then he published a rap song about how terrible the sexual act was on my behalf. I didn't know I was assaulted until I acknowledged the incident with a better understanding of the world. This left me hurt and confused.
I was attracted to the broken kids because I felt as if they understood and listened to my struggles and had empathy for that. I was very naive and I will say that many times.
Another incident that happened in highschool was my two best friends wanted to do stick and poke tattoos, they had explained to me that it only lasts for two weeks and I was all for it because I genuinely believed they were telling me the truth.
They traced out a star on my back took a photo and I approved them to start tattooing. It was on my back so I could not see what they were doing.By the time the tattoo was finished they did a swastika and one of the girls initials, and they took a video of my reaction.
I was crushed and confused as to why they would do that and asked them to try to wash it off. My friend said it was late at night and that her mom was sleeping so I couldn't go try to shower it off. I was so hurt.
I steared clear of these girls for a while until they came to me apologizing asking to be friends again and I thought I could forgive them because I thought they were genuinely sorry.
Simultaneiously I met a boy who I liked and I had my first intimate relationship with him. He would ignore me and sleep with other girls and ripped the screen windows off my house when he found out me and my friends toilet papered his house as a part of all of the seniors getting their houses toes for senior tradition.he then lied to everyone about our 8 month relationship and acted like he didn't know who I was in public when I had known him for years.
Fast forward to the end of highschool it was when Covid started to happen we were cut off from the world, school being shut down was the first time I wasn't forced into a environment where I was in fight or flight constantly. This allowed me to have freedom and have sort of a weight lifted off my shoulders but at this time I hadn't processed anything I had been through. I would ruminate in my mind all day and I felt different because I couldn't get over things like my friends and was deeply emotional and hypervigilant.
I got back into the friendship with the girls who had tattooed me because I liked smoking weed and they did too. We would just sit around and smoke but for them they started bringing other drugs and would laced my weed with cocain without telling me. That is when I know I needed to look deeper into my adhd. One of the girls got into an abusive relationship where the guy moved in with her and abused her physically, Finacially, and emotionally. I was watching all of this happen not knowing that wasn't normal. They were actively using drugs while this man was running from the cops. One time he threatened me at gunpoint for asking what his intentions were with my friend, and after that we tried to get her out and we even did, but she went back three days later and that is what made me leave. I watched them for hours scream at eachother and even was there for a time he abused her but they both acted like she was in the wrong when this man was clearly manipulating us.
After I cut those friends off my parents still had a terrible image of me in their heads so they sent me to Florida. They thought I was a drug addict but I only smoked weed out of subconscious self medication. At this same time the doctors had me on an ssri, an antipsychotic, and a stimulant that put me into a periodic induced mania. I realized this and quit those cold turkey alone with no support not even knowing. This created a mindset that medecine wouldn't help me when I was just misprescribed and not taken care of.
Florida helped me for the soul fact I was there to heal. I didn't quite grasp everything I was healing from but I started doing EMDR therapy which saved my life. I still wasn't awaken in my mind and thought these bad things just kept happening with no connected pattern on my end.
My world started getting easier to manage and I had a good six months in Florida being introduced to emdr and processing through some of my childhood.
Not even 2 weeks of being back I had met this boy who I was attracted too and we hit it off. The first couple of months were amazing and then it reverted into him being an insecure person. I connected with him on the fact that we both had trauma. I didn't realize his patterns were BPD and then was sucked into three years with him.
Being with a dysfunctional person attached to a narcissistic family changed me completely. I lost weight and have become frail and weak from the stress of carrying his subconscious baggage. His mother was the narcissist and had cause many problems in our relationship.
I fell pregnant on the 4th month of dating him and he told me he would be with me through the abortion and comfort me, after a trip back home his mother had convinced him to break up with me and there he left me after promising to stay. This was my first sign that things were toxic in his family, like I said I was still naive.
We got back together shortly after but his insecurity and constant demand to his emotional needs while I just was there trying to fix them constantly projected his mommy issues constantly.
I started to notice patterns through him and his behaviors and became so in my head because I was embarrassed I wasn't in a relationship I knew I was being loved to the fullest. But I put my emotions aside and tried to help him heal because I had so much empathy and saw potential in him.
As I thought he was healing he just started getting better at hiding it. I was making it a priority for him to go to therapy and he did for a little bit but I still was seeing his patterns in everyday life that he wouldn't address.
I ended up weighing 94 pounds and left him out of fear, telling him that the stress of him not healing was getting to be and we needed space to grow. He made it apparent that when we were broken up he'd do the work. And we were apart for a couple months and he'd convinced me he was working on himself in therapy.
It took a couple weeks to realize that wasn't the case, but I loved and cared for him so deeply I wanted to see him succeed.
On top of his problems he had his family problems. His mother was a crazy malignant narcissist and my gut sensed that to me from the beginning. I would always feel so stressed around her before her behavior got worse. She was an alcoholic who adopted children, beat them, and gave them no guidance in life and that made me empathetic and angry for my ex.
Me and my ex planned a trip to go see his mother in the winter to visit her cabin. 3 days before we flew up she got a brain aneurysm and had surgery. We then changed plans to go and take care of her while she was healing.
We spent the week taking care of her every need and some of them were need that's didn't need to be done but she insisted on like re decorating her house.
She had snuck alcohol and got very drunk and started verbally attacking my ex and then started throwing things. I was already in the beginning stages of discovering my cptsd and was getting overstimulated. She starts breaking glass and the projecting insults onto me and that made me snap and tell her she was a verbal abuser.
She then lunged at me and hit me. Trying to attack me. Me and my ex try to leave her house in the middle of the night with our things and she continues to try to attack us and she eventually got ahold of the vehicle and was driving very fast with herself and all of our things in the car. We got police involved and I filed a report but did not press charges.
This incident is when my cptsd developed in full. I was unable to work and was in therapy every week trying to make sense of my life and why I attracted and have unknowingly sought out so many traumatic events in my life.
I've worked with my emdr therapist identifying the family dynamic I came from and the lack of understanding and identity which led me to be in the situations I was in, but I still dealt with the side affects.
I stopped drinking, going out in public, hanging out with my friends, and even felt scared when the sun went down.
My ex was being supportive because he knew his mother had hurt me to a deeper extent. She took away my sense of safety in the world.
He was always on my side and took care of me after that and I thought we were both gonna escape the dynamics of our families and break generational trauma together.
He had his own demons and ended up cheating on me with men after me having no idea he was bisexual. But by this time I did a lot of work in therapy detaching from his baggage I have just let it go and removed myself from his dysfunction.
Breaking up with him was liberating but sad because I understand the trauma bond that still exists between us. I just don't let it affect me anymore because his pain has nothing to do with anything I've done to him, because I have only ever been supportive of him.
I continue to heal from this everyday and don't have much support or understanding from my family. My friends try to understand and some of them do I just hate feeling like a burden. My family deflects this uncomfortable truth of my life and tells me not to be a victim and that I never progress in life when I am only 23 years old and learning the things and taking care of the things that lead me into these patterns.
C-ptsd has alterned my life drastically and I don't sit in depression about it I just try to take it day by day but feel alone because I've never had the emotional support of my family because I am the scapegoat and something has "always been wrong" when they deflect their actions and don't talk about anything with emotional depth.
I am thankful for the person I am and who I continue to be despite my episode and trauma that has happened but if I've learned anything about myself, it's that I needed these experiences to break the generational trauma cycle.
Since I was little I always questioned my families dynamic subconsciously. I have adhd and was raised with that not being acknowledged at all by my parents because they believed that "Jesus heals all" as a child this looked like calling pastors to "pray the demons out" and anoint me when I was showing clear adhd symptoms of being overstimulated.
This was common and my parents didn't have the patience, knowledge, or understanding to acknowledge my mental health.
I was locked in rooms while I stood there crying not understanding why I was scared but being so deathly afraid of something. That something was just anxiety.
I was bullied by many kids in my childhood and even kids parents. My mother told me that it was because people were jealous. I do have a very fun outgoing personality, but I never compared myself to others so I could never wrap my mind around why kids were so evil to me.
Fast forward to my teen years because of the emotional neglect of my adhd and my anxiety and overall emotions I started seeking out relationships with the wrong friends and romantic partners. I was very naive and thought the best of people. I was still the butt of every joke in highschool at the small private school I attended and it wasn't until my first boyfriend who I now know was a blatant narcissist, broke my heart.
He did many things to me like bully me and defame me but I still had hope he had some sort of emotional connection and that kept me chasing the beginning high I felt with him.
Chasing that high led me to be sexually assaulted by him and then he published a rap song about how terrible the sexual act was on my behalf. I didn't know I was assaulted until I acknowledged the incident with a better understanding of the world. This left me hurt and confused.
I was attracted to the broken kids because I felt as if they understood and listened to my struggles and had empathy for that. I was very naive and I will say that many times.
Another incident that happened in highschool was my two best friends wanted to do stick and poke tattoos, they had explained to me that it only lasts for two weeks and I was all for it because I genuinely believed they were telling me the truth.
They traced out a star on my back took a photo and I approved them to start tattooing. It was on my back so I could not see what they were doing.By the time the tattoo was finished they did a swastika and one of the girls initials, and they took a video of my reaction.
I was crushed and confused as to why they would do that and asked them to try to wash it off. My friend said it was late at night and that her mom was sleeping so I couldn't go try to shower it off. I was so hurt.
I steared clear of these girls for a while until they came to me apologizing asking to be friends again and I thought I could forgive them because I thought they were genuinely sorry.
Simultaneiously I met a boy who I liked and I had my first intimate relationship with him. He would ignore me and sleep with other girls and ripped the screen windows off my house when he found out me and my friends toilet papered his house as a part of all of the seniors getting their houses toes for senior tradition.he then lied to everyone about our 8 month relationship and acted like he didn't know who I was in public when I had known him for years.
Fast forward to the end of highschool it was when Covid started to happen we were cut off from the world, school being shut down was the first time I wasn't forced into a environment where I was in fight or flight constantly. This allowed me to have freedom and have sort of a weight lifted off my shoulders but at this time I hadn't processed anything I had been through. I would ruminate in my mind all day and I felt different because I couldn't get over things like my friends and was deeply emotional and hypervigilant.
I got back into the friendship with the girls who had tattooed me because I liked smoking weed and they did too. We would just sit around and smoke but for them they started bringing other drugs and would laced my weed with cocain without telling me. That is when I know I needed to look deeper into my adhd. One of the girls got into an abusive relationship where the guy moved in with her and abused her physically, Finacially, and emotionally. I was watching all of this happen not knowing that wasn't normal. They were actively using drugs while this man was running from the cops. One time he threatened me at gunpoint for asking what his intentions were with my friend, and after that we tried to get her out and we even did, but she went back three days later and that is what made me leave. I watched them for hours scream at eachother and even was there for a time he abused her but they both acted like she was in the wrong when this man was clearly manipulating us.
After I cut those friends off my parents still had a terrible image of me in their heads so they sent me to Florida. They thought I was a drug addict but I only smoked weed out of subconscious self medication. At this same time the doctors had me on an ssri, an antipsychotic, and a stimulant that put me into a periodic induced mania. I realized this and quit those cold turkey alone with no support not even knowing. This created a mindset that medecine wouldn't help me when I was just misprescribed and not taken care of.
Florida helped me for the soul fact I was there to heal. I didn't quite grasp everything I was healing from but I started doing EMDR therapy which saved my life. I still wasn't awaken in my mind and thought these bad things just kept happening with no connected pattern on my end.
My world started getting easier to manage and I had a good six months in Florida being introduced to emdr and processing through some of my childhood.
Not even 2 weeks of being back I had met this boy who I was attracted too and we hit it off. The first couple of months were amazing and then it reverted into him being an insecure person. I connected with him on the fact that we both had trauma. I didn't realize his patterns were BPD and then was sucked into three years with him.
Being with a dysfunctional person attached to a narcissistic family changed me completely. I lost weight and have become frail and weak from the stress of carrying his subconscious baggage. His mother was the narcissist and had cause many problems in our relationship.
I fell pregnant on the 4th month of dating him and he told me he would be with me through the abortion and comfort me, after a trip back home his mother had convinced him to break up with me and there he left me after promising to stay. This was my first sign that things were toxic in his family, like I said I was still naive.
We got back together shortly after but his insecurity and constant demand to his emotional needs while I just was there trying to fix them constantly projected his mommy issues constantly.
I started to notice patterns through him and his behaviors and became so in my head because I was embarrassed I wasn't in a relationship I knew I was being loved to the fullest. But I put my emotions aside and tried to help him heal because I had so much empathy and saw potential in him.
As I thought he was healing he just started getting better at hiding it. I was making it a priority for him to go to therapy and he did for a little bit but I still was seeing his patterns in everyday life that he wouldn't address.
I ended up weighing 94 pounds and left him out of fear, telling him that the stress of him not healing was getting to be and we needed space to grow. He made it apparent that when we were broken up he'd do the work. And we were apart for a couple months and he'd convinced me he was working on himself in therapy.
It took a couple weeks to realize that wasn't the case, but I loved and cared for him so deeply I wanted to see him succeed.
On top of his problems he had his family problems. His mother was a crazy malignant narcissist and my gut sensed that to me from the beginning. I would always feel so stressed around her before her behavior got worse. She was an alcoholic who adopted children, beat them, and gave them no guidance in life and that made me empathetic and angry for my ex.
Me and my ex planned a trip to go see his mother in the winter to visit her cabin. 3 days before we flew up she got a brain aneurysm and had surgery. We then changed plans to go and take care of her while she was healing.
We spent the week taking care of her every need and some of them were need that's didn't need to be done but she insisted on like re decorating her house.
She had snuck alcohol and got very drunk and started verbally attacking my ex and then started throwing things. I was already in the beginning stages of discovering my cptsd and was getting overstimulated. She starts breaking glass and the projecting insults onto me and that made me snap and tell her she was a verbal abuser.
She then lunged at me and hit me. Trying to attack me. Me and my ex try to leave her house in the middle of the night with our things and she continues to try to attack us and she eventually got ahold of the vehicle and was driving very fast with herself and all of our things in the car. We got police involved and I filed a report but did not press charges.
This incident is when my cptsd developed in full. I was unable to work and was in therapy every week trying to make sense of my life and why I attracted and have unknowingly sought out so many traumatic events in my life.
I've worked with my emdr therapist identifying the family dynamic I came from and the lack of understanding and identity which led me to be in the situations I was in, but I still dealt with the side affects.
I stopped drinking, going out in public, hanging out with my friends, and even felt scared when the sun went down.
My ex was being supportive because he knew his mother had hurt me to a deeper extent. She took away my sense of safety in the world.
He was always on my side and took care of me after that and I thought we were both gonna escape the dynamics of our families and break generational trauma together.
He had his own demons and ended up cheating on me with men after me having no idea he was bisexual. But by this time I did a lot of work in therapy detaching from his baggage I have just let it go and removed myself from his dysfunction.
Breaking up with him was liberating but sad because I understand the trauma bond that still exists between us. I just don't let it affect me anymore because his pain has nothing to do with anything I've done to him, because I have only ever been supportive of him.
I continue to heal from this everyday and don't have much support or understanding from my family. My friends try to understand and some of them do I just hate feeling like a burden. My family deflects this uncomfortable truth of my life and tells me not to be a victim and that I never progress in life when I am only 23 years old and learning the things and taking care of the things that lead me into these patterns.
C-ptsd has alterned my life drastically and I don't sit in depression about it I just try to take it day by day but feel alone because I've never had the emotional support of my family because I am the scapegoat and something has "always been wrong" when they deflect their actions and don't talk about anything with emotional depth.
I am thankful for the person I am and who I continue to be despite my episode and trauma that has happened but if I've learned anything about myself, it's that I needed these experiences to break the generational trauma cycle.
#2
Recovery Journals / Re: Healing journal (tw) Anger...
Last post by StartingHealing - July 06, 2025, 02:57:32 PMJuly 6 2025
I don't know if this is going to be a quick one or something more involved. Guess will see if I can somehow express what needs expressed and if I get there in a 5 sentence paragraph, great. If not then I'll go till it "feels" right.
Becoming really clear of late that having connection to a person is some important. And that I really really need to have discernment around that. There is a situation, ongoing actually with my daughter. It has become clear to me anyway that for her she does best with more of a arms length type of situation and to respect her boundaries, and getting to a point of acceptance with that on my side is at time difficult.
I am proud of her. Not just because of the "Dad" thing. She has accomplished a great deal in her life. Getting to the point of where the relationship twixt her and I is less "Dad - daughter" and more of a .. she is an adult, with her own preferences and outlooks, and to respect that, you know? That acceptance is something I need to lean into I think.
There is uncertainty on my part about myself. I mean most of my life has been spent in, for lack of a better term, reflection of what those around me expectations were. One of those things that is never mentioned when it comes to folks that have been adopted into non-genetic family structures. Maybe that narrative is changing now. At the time I went through that event though.. As born too .. Indeed complete and utter BS. I know that in many ways that happens because us humans are wired for family, then clan, then tribe. The idea of a nation-state is a grafting on to that base structure. Even in modern society, the
tribal nature still comes out. A sportsball team, a hobby, a location, genetic inheritance, are you a dog or cat person, shoot even whether or not you follow NASCAR. I know that because of my acceptance into a Native Nation (here in the USA) that has shifted my self-concept around a ton. Some reactions to external events, some aspects of myself now make a lot more sense, and then ... Even before this, since it's just me now, no reflecting back to others, I was fussing with acceptance of self.
Yeah, it's a thing with folks that have survived the adoption process. I know the saying "Be yourself. Others will adapt or leave you in peace." That is truth and also has some lonely attached to that in my view of it at this time. Who knows my opinion could change in the future.
There are times that being the lone wolf in modern society is overly propagandized as a {good thing}. At the same time having some sort of meaningful connection to another human... Or is this more propaganda that I have accepted as truth? Yeah. This to me also ties into previous questions about what do I owe society and what does society owe me? For the longest time, there was a purpose outside of myself that at that time was a valid purprose that I could drop my shoulder and put my effort behind. There were activities on the farm that absolutely had to be done or the entire family wouldn't survive. Then a family with people under my watch that I needed to provide for, keep safe. Now it's just me and the shift is proving kind of rough for me right now. Then again, I'm still learning me at the same time. What do I like? What don't I like? What do I do because I can, not because I enjoy it?
I'm also co-currently in the midst of attempting to get up to speed with how much has changed in the society that I find myself in. It's really bizarre to me right now. The amount of inroads that tech has made into the minestrone soup of daily life. Still blows me away that even a cheep smart phone has more processing power than it took to land people on the moon, and what is it being used for? Likes and clicks? The reduction of attention spans, the intentional crafting of interactions with platforms to engage the addiction circuits in the human brain? I do have to say though that the meme's can be really good. I'm not trying to be a Luddite here. It's that I'm seeing tech as a tool that cuts both ways and the stack of the tech has been in many ways weaponized against us humans by other humans. The pace of development is such that trying to keep up with it .. unless that's a full time endeavor, it's a situation where I find myself on the hind foot, and I am pretty tech savvy. And that's not including any physical effects that happen because of the interaction between the human body and all these EMF that we are bathed in without our consent. I mean come on.. stick and bricks places are tracking people via bluetooth to see what floor display gets peoples attention. Interference patterns with wifi in your residence is now being used as a alarm trigger for certain security companies?
On the other hand, the societal shifts that have happened are also bizarre to me as well. Having police roll up on you because of saying hello to someone in passing because that person was feeling a certain kind of way? Has happened. I can totally understand the idea behind having a personal body cam. That's still nuts. Or someone records another and puts them on blast in social media after heavily editing the video to present a situation that was 100% false for likes and clicks?
yeah.
Wishing all here all the best
I don't know if this is going to be a quick one or something more involved. Guess will see if I can somehow express what needs expressed and if I get there in a 5 sentence paragraph, great. If not then I'll go till it "feels" right.
Becoming really clear of late that having connection to a person is some important. And that I really really need to have discernment around that. There is a situation, ongoing actually with my daughter. It has become clear to me anyway that for her she does best with more of a arms length type of situation and to respect her boundaries, and getting to a point of acceptance with that on my side is at time difficult.
I am proud of her. Not just because of the "Dad" thing. She has accomplished a great deal in her life. Getting to the point of where the relationship twixt her and I is less "Dad - daughter" and more of a .. she is an adult, with her own preferences and outlooks, and to respect that, you know? That acceptance is something I need to lean into I think.
There is uncertainty on my part about myself. I mean most of my life has been spent in, for lack of a better term, reflection of what those around me expectations were. One of those things that is never mentioned when it comes to folks that have been adopted into non-genetic family structures. Maybe that narrative is changing now. At the time I went through that event though.. As born too .. Indeed complete and utter BS. I know that in many ways that happens because us humans are wired for family, then clan, then tribe. The idea of a nation-state is a grafting on to that base structure. Even in modern society, the
tribal nature still comes out. A sportsball team, a hobby, a location, genetic inheritance, are you a dog or cat person, shoot even whether or not you follow NASCAR. I know that because of my acceptance into a Native Nation (here in the USA) that has shifted my self-concept around a ton. Some reactions to external events, some aspects of myself now make a lot more sense, and then ... Even before this, since it's just me now, no reflecting back to others, I was fussing with acceptance of self.
Yeah, it's a thing with folks that have survived the adoption process. I know the saying "Be yourself. Others will adapt or leave you in peace." That is truth and also has some lonely attached to that in my view of it at this time. Who knows my opinion could change in the future.
There are times that being the lone wolf in modern society is overly propagandized as a {good thing}. At the same time having some sort of meaningful connection to another human... Or is this more propaganda that I have accepted as truth? Yeah. This to me also ties into previous questions about what do I owe society and what does society owe me? For the longest time, there was a purpose outside of myself that at that time was a valid purprose that I could drop my shoulder and put my effort behind. There were activities on the farm that absolutely had to be done or the entire family wouldn't survive. Then a family with people under my watch that I needed to provide for, keep safe. Now it's just me and the shift is proving kind of rough for me right now. Then again, I'm still learning me at the same time. What do I like? What don't I like? What do I do because I can, not because I enjoy it?
I'm also co-currently in the midst of attempting to get up to speed with how much has changed in the society that I find myself in. It's really bizarre to me right now. The amount of inroads that tech has made into the minestrone soup of daily life. Still blows me away that even a cheep smart phone has more processing power than it took to land people on the moon, and what is it being used for? Likes and clicks? The reduction of attention spans, the intentional crafting of interactions with platforms to engage the addiction circuits in the human brain? I do have to say though that the meme's can be really good. I'm not trying to be a Luddite here. It's that I'm seeing tech as a tool that cuts both ways and the stack of the tech has been in many ways weaponized against us humans by other humans. The pace of development is such that trying to keep up with it .. unless that's a full time endeavor, it's a situation where I find myself on the hind foot, and I am pretty tech savvy. And that's not including any physical effects that happen because of the interaction between the human body and all these EMF that we are bathed in without our consent. I mean come on.. stick and bricks places are tracking people via bluetooth to see what floor display gets peoples attention. Interference patterns with wifi in your residence is now being used as a alarm trigger for certain security companies?
On the other hand, the societal shifts that have happened are also bizarre to me as well. Having police roll up on you because of saying hello to someone in passing because that person was feeling a certain kind of way? Has happened. I can totally understand the idea behind having a personal body cam. That's still nuts. Or someone records another and puts them on blast in social media after heavily editing the video to present a situation that was 100% false for likes and clicks?
yeah.
Wishing all here all the best
#3
Recovery Journals / Re: starting over
Last post by sanmagic7 - July 06, 2025, 02:14:30 PMi'm having pretty good luck w/ the anxiety at bedtime - i continue to do my eye movements and telling myself i can rest, i can relax, i can sleep, i am enough, i've done enough (this one often goes to thoughts of D1, which has been one of the toughest), i am enough. unfortunately, last nite i was up most of the nite cuz i couldn't get rid of unwanted thoughts about the past. that sucked.
but wimbledon/the championships has been great - very interesting.
but wimbledon/the championships has been great - very interesting.
#4
Recovery Journals / Re: I Am
Last post by sanmagic7 - July 06, 2025, 02:10:56 PMhey, bach, and then there are the things our mothers didn't teach us were important, like taking care of ourselves, respecting our boundaries, and knowing we are enough. you are enough, what you've accomplished is enough, what you want is enough.
i wonder if that 'inner child' who you think might be your M could be just her voice, her expectations of you, her 'shoulds' she's laid on you.
we've gotten so much neg. from our supposed caretakers, and so little pos., i think it's really difficult at times to flip that switch. sometimes we can know to dig the neg. out, but find it hard to know what to replace it with. i'm with you. love and hugs
i wonder if that 'inner child' who you think might be your M could be just her voice, her expectations of you, her 'shoulds' she's laid on you.
we've gotten so much neg. from our supposed caretakers, and so little pos., i think it's really difficult at times to flip that switch. sometimes we can know to dig the neg. out, but find it hard to know what to replace it with. i'm with you. love and hugs
#5
Recovery Journals / Re: I Am
Last post by Bach - July 05, 2025, 06:06:56 PMThank you for these insightful and compassionate replies, friends. I appreciate your perspectives, and have been doing my best to work with them. It's really hard. Everything is really hard. I get so discouraged sometimes, feeling that nothing I can do is enough. NK, I really like your idea about engaging with those bad feelings, standing up to them, but it's difficult to challenge those underlying negative narratives. I think one of my inner children is actually my mother, always lurking, ready to attack and undermine me. My own worst bully seems to be built into me.
The other day, I realised that I have actually been fairly successful in life relative to the things my mother implicitly (and in some ways, even explicitly) taught me were important when I was a child. These things are, finding someone to take care of me financially, being sexually adventurous, and not being fat. Thinking about that really messes with my mind. I know I'm a "better person" (more compassionate, more self-aware, less narcissistic) than my mother, but that doesn't really seem like enough measured against the thought of all the things I could potentially have succeeded at if I'd had better examples to follow.
The other day, I realised that I have actually been fairly successful in life relative to the things my mother implicitly (and in some ways, even explicitly) taught me were important when I was a child. These things are, finding someone to take care of me financially, being sexually adventurous, and not being fat. Thinking about that really messes with my mind. I know I'm a "better person" (more compassionate, more self-aware, less narcissistic) than my mother, but that doesn't really seem like enough measured against the thought of all the things I could potentially have succeeded at if I'd had better examples to follow.
#6
Recovery Journals / Re: Hope's Journal 2025
Last post by sanmagic7 - July 04, 2025, 02:23:31 PMglad you're feeling better, hope. i understand how emotional peoples' stories can be for us, books/movies, cuz i've shed my share of tears throughout my life becuz of them. i also understand the feeling of not wanting to continue reading/watching something cuz it cuts too close to the bone. there have been several books i've had to stop reading, several movies i've had to stop watching for the same reason. too emotional in the wrong way.
once again, your progress with everything you're tackling is amazing. keep up the good work! love and hugs
once again, your progress with everything you're tackling is amazing. keep up the good work! love and hugs
#7
Recovery Journals / Re: Hope's Journal 2025
Last post by Hope67 - July 04, 2025, 12:16:13 PMThanks NarcKiddo, I am feeling a lot better today. 
#8
The Cafe / Re: The Potting Shed - Part 2
Last post by Blueberry - July 03, 2025, 08:37:34 PMI had some help finishing making a herb bed on Monday. It's quite shallow so not ideal but that's where LL said I could put my herbs. He plainly doesn't want me digging up lawn to make myself a proper new deeper bed. While my help was there, we went to the local DIY/garden centre and got a bunch of bags of soil, more than I could ever carry on the cargo bike in one go, plus 2 fairly small plastic raised beds. I know people make their own out of wood, but forget that, it would probably take me about 2-3 years to get round to that, or quite likely never get round to it. My help also removed my flowering plants from part of a bed that's in part of the garden that's in the process of being sold and will be a building site at the latest next spring, but maybe even this fall. I really needed help with that because I can't yet dig on account of my ankle which is still healing. Most of those flowers are now in my herb bed or in a mini-bed just beside it.
It's now Thursday and I've been doing more gardening on my own both today and yesterday. Actually apart from the necessary watering of newly planted or re-planted herbs and flowers, housework would have been much more important, but I prefer gardening. Must have been last week or so, I discovered a mini-plantation of wild strawberries on the property of the empty building next door and I've been picking and eating them, as well as the wild strawberries on this property. Nobody else uses them. Today I also picked some raspberries, since they're beginning to ripen. They're basically wild as well. They're mostly in the part of the property that is in the process of being sold and will be a building site. I like having berries to pick - good for my inner (hunter/)gatherer. I've done quite a bit of work in communal parts of the garden, mostly small jobs which LL tends not to notice and/or he notices only what I haven't done. Such is life.
My newly planted/re-planted herbs and flowers are doing well, which was not a given. Moving them in the middle of a heatwave is not the best time, but that's when I had arranged with my help to do so. Actually a self-employed guy who can help with handyman stuff, and did so for me after my move, as well as gardening plus some other stuff I fortunately don't need help with (yet). Anyway, filling watering cans and lugging them over has paid off. And LL had better be happy that that part of the garden looks much better now! I'm certainly happy, it was worth finally paying somebody to complete it. There are still some free spots including in most of the raised beds, where I can plant/sow more flowers or herbs or maybe even one of the quick-growing lettuces whose leaves you keep harvesting rather than the whole plant. It's probably not too late in the growing season yet.
It's now Thursday and I've been doing more gardening on my own both today and yesterday. Actually apart from the necessary watering of newly planted or re-planted herbs and flowers, housework would have been much more important, but I prefer gardening. Must have been last week or so, I discovered a mini-plantation of wild strawberries on the property of the empty building next door and I've been picking and eating them, as well as the wild strawberries on this property. Nobody else uses them. Today I also picked some raspberries, since they're beginning to ripen. They're basically wild as well. They're mostly in the part of the property that is in the process of being sold and will be a building site. I like having berries to pick - good for my inner (hunter/)gatherer. I've done quite a bit of work in communal parts of the garden, mostly small jobs which LL tends not to notice and/or he notices only what I haven't done. Such is life.
My newly planted/re-planted herbs and flowers are doing well, which was not a given. Moving them in the middle of a heatwave is not the best time, but that's when I had arranged with my help to do so. Actually a self-employed guy who can help with handyman stuff, and did so for me after my move, as well as gardening plus some other stuff I fortunately don't need help with (yet). Anyway, filling watering cans and lugging them over has paid off. And LL had better be happy that that part of the garden looks much better now! I'm certainly happy, it was worth finally paying somebody to complete it. There are still some free spots including in most of the raised beds, where I can plant/sow more flowers or herbs or maybe even one of the quick-growing lettuces whose leaves you keep harvesting rather than the whole plant. It's probably not too late in the growing season yet.
#9
Recovery Journals / Re: Hope's Journal 2025
Last post by NarcKiddo - July 03, 2025, 06:04:48 PMI hope the stomach pain eases off soon.
#10
Recovery Journals / Re: Healing journal (tw) Anger...
Last post by StartingHealing - July 03, 2025, 04:21:15 PMQuote from: Hope67 on July 03, 2025, 02:42:49 PMHi StartingHealing,
It is so frustrating when something you've written somehow disappears - I know you have a long weekend coming up, and would like to wish you some enjoyable times, and hopefully some great fireworks to watch.
I hope that your back will cooperate and go back into place, and that your BP is ok.
Enjoy your long weekend.
Hope
Thank you Hope. May your holiday be enjoyable as well.