Recent posts
#1
Recovery Journals / Re: Living As All of Me
Last post by HannahOne - Today at 01:17:58 PMTBB not too long, thank you for sharing your experience! I am so sorry for what you went through and the trauma you experienced. I'm glad you are on the forum now. We can find healing. 
You are able to state it so clearly and succinctly. I am not there yet. It's hard for me to do that.
I relate to the wider family system having been traumatized by historical events. Both my parents' family had trauma. And a very traumatized mother who did not metabolize it, so I had to.
I relate to the self-erasure, the enormous responsibility. So much we carried. How did we do it?! By using CPTSD, by developing CPTSD.
I also relate to starting out being treated with CBT for depression, for me many years ago now. "I'm depressed, I'll do CBT." Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.
How the turn tables.
One thing I'm noticing I'm feeling is a new objectivity. Just from two people sharing, I begin to place myself in a different context. Not so much "weird, strange, alien, crazy HannahOne with a backstory unlike anyone else that no one could ever understand and that I have to overcome immediately" to seeing the situation from a bit of a distance, as a fact that some people experience. Ie, not my fault. Not about me. Not personal to me. Not defining me. An accident of birth, not a character flaw or failure of me. A situation, not my soul.
I also notice even more compassion, for you as I read and then seeping over to myself. I admire TheBigBlue for how they navigated all this.... maybe I can also have some self-respect again. I navigated how I navigated. Maybe I can punish myself a little less. Or not at all. Maybe none of it was even about me at all.
Maybe that's the heart of the problem, nothing of my growing up was about ME. It was all about them. How can I make my life today about ME? Both kids are out today for the day, one at work, one at a friend's. Such a foreign concept, how can my life today be all about me, coming from inside of me?
Thank you for reading and sharing. I appreciate you and your understanding and your journey.
You are able to state it so clearly and succinctly. I am not there yet. It's hard for me to do that.
I relate to the wider family system having been traumatized by historical events. Both my parents' family had trauma. And a very traumatized mother who did not metabolize it, so I had to.
I relate to the self-erasure, the enormous responsibility. So much we carried. How did we do it?! By using CPTSD, by developing CPTSD.
I also relate to starting out being treated with CBT for depression, for me many years ago now. "I'm depressed, I'll do CBT." Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.
How the turn tables. One thing I'm noticing I'm feeling is a new objectivity. Just from two people sharing, I begin to place myself in a different context. Not so much "weird, strange, alien, crazy HannahOne with a backstory unlike anyone else that no one could ever understand and that I have to overcome immediately" to seeing the situation from a bit of a distance, as a fact that some people experience. Ie, not my fault. Not about me. Not personal to me. Not defining me. An accident of birth, not a character flaw or failure of me. A situation, not my soul.
I also notice even more compassion, for you as I read and then seeping over to myself. I admire TheBigBlue for how they navigated all this.... maybe I can also have some self-respect again. I navigated how I navigated. Maybe I can punish myself a little less. Or not at all. Maybe none of it was even about me at all.
Maybe that's the heart of the problem, nothing of my growing up was about ME. It was all about them. How can I make my life today about ME? Both kids are out today for the day, one at work, one at a friend's. Such a foreign concept, how can my life today be all about me, coming from inside of me?
Thank you for reading and sharing. I appreciate you and your understanding and your journey.
#2
Memory/Cognitive Issues / Re: How Trauma Affects Memory
Last post by NarcKiddo - Today at 12:09:29 PMThe reading I have been doing about memory deals with right brain and left brain. (It is actually in a book about accessing the right brain for artistic purposes but I was happy to find out how much neuroscience is in it. And this has caused me to do a bit more digging online about the subject.) The purpose of the art book is to suggest ways we can engage the creative right brain and bypass the left brain, because the left brain is not at all interested in the nuances of what we see. It is only interested in the practical ramifications.
Anyway, what happens in infancy, apparently, is that our right brain encodes all the early memories. The left brain does not start to come online until the age of about 3, after which it gradually becomes more dominant. As I understand it, it's not that the early memories are overwritten, so much as filed in a place we don't have logical access to. Once we become left brain dominant, which is necessary for our practical processes of living, language, understanding of linear time and what have you, we rely on the left brain filing system and can't access right brain information easily. So Slashy's description of a disorganised pile of snapshots makes total sense to me. What seems unusual about Slashy's experience is that he is more able than many of us to access (and maybe then to decode) right brain memories.
One of the reasons that EFs can be so hard for many of us to make sense of is because they are essentially a right brain flashback. The right brain has encoded the emotion rather than specific visual information and certainly not language information if the memory is pre-verbal or before much left brain involvement.
Anyway, what happens in infancy, apparently, is that our right brain encodes all the early memories. The left brain does not start to come online until the age of about 3, after which it gradually becomes more dominant. As I understand it, it's not that the early memories are overwritten, so much as filed in a place we don't have logical access to. Once we become left brain dominant, which is necessary for our practical processes of living, language, understanding of linear time and what have you, we rely on the left brain filing system and can't access right brain information easily. So Slashy's description of a disorganised pile of snapshots makes total sense to me. What seems unusual about Slashy's experience is that he is more able than many of us to access (and maybe then to decode) right brain memories.
One of the reasons that EFs can be so hard for many of us to make sense of is because they are essentially a right brain flashback. The right brain has encoded the emotion rather than specific visual information and certainly not language information if the memory is pre-verbal or before much left brain involvement.
#3
Memory/Cognitive Issues / Re: How Trauma Affects Memory
Last post by GoSlash27 - Today at 10:03:27 AM All,
I've recently discovered that I carry sensory impressions that I "shouldn't be able to" according to most psychologists. These are vivid, detailed sensory and emotional impressions of completely mundane scenes that date all the way back to age 1.
Where most people find a handful, I happen to carry hundreds. Psychologists say this is improbable due to infantile amnesia; the brain overwrites these memories as the hippocampus develops and even if I do somehow still have them, they're inaccessible due to their lack of context.
I had a minor identity crisis over this conflicting information. Am I crazy? Did I imagine these memories or confabulate them?
I've concluded that no, these memories are absolutely real. My ability to access them is way out of the realm of what is considered possible, but it exists anyway.
I now have a working theory of why I have this odd ability: The onset of dissociative amnesia coupled with the age at which it occurred.
My first traumatic experience occurred at almost exactly age 3. A DV event (Dad's suddenly gone and mom's suddenly hurt), then hiding (home is gone), then chronic child abuse from our babysitter (Mom is gone), leading to being taken away into foster care (separated immediately from my siblings).
This caused proximal dissociative amnesia as all memories of my family and home were quarantined.
The important part is that it happened right around my 3rd birthday. The early memories that should have been overwritten remained because they had been protected by the vault.
My memories associated with my family remained sequestered until I was reunited with them.
I wasn't reunited with my sister until late age 6; long after infantile amnesia ends for most people.
Thus, my early sensory impressions remained in place.
The reason I'm able to retrieve them is because I suffer from generalized dissociative amnesia. Many of my memories are formed with incomplete context and I've had to go back and examine/ contextualize them after the fact, stitching them into a coherent timeline.
The process works the same way for these earliest memories as well. In fact, those snapshots are in the same disorganized pile as all the rest.
So if you can do this too, you're not crazy and you're not alone. "Impossible for the average person" </> "Impossible".
Best,
-Slashy
I've recently discovered that I carry sensory impressions that I "shouldn't be able to" according to most psychologists. These are vivid, detailed sensory and emotional impressions of completely mundane scenes that date all the way back to age 1.
Where most people find a handful, I happen to carry hundreds. Psychologists say this is improbable due to infantile amnesia; the brain overwrites these memories as the hippocampus develops and even if I do somehow still have them, they're inaccessible due to their lack of context.
I had a minor identity crisis over this conflicting information. Am I crazy? Did I imagine these memories or confabulate them?
I've concluded that no, these memories are absolutely real. My ability to access them is way out of the realm of what is considered possible, but it exists anyway.
I now have a working theory of why I have this odd ability: The onset of dissociative amnesia coupled with the age at which it occurred.
My first traumatic experience occurred at almost exactly age 3. A DV event (Dad's suddenly gone and mom's suddenly hurt), then hiding (home is gone), then chronic child abuse from our babysitter (Mom is gone), leading to being taken away into foster care (separated immediately from my siblings).
This caused proximal dissociative amnesia as all memories of my family and home were quarantined.
The important part is that it happened right around my 3rd birthday. The early memories that should have been overwritten remained because they had been protected by the vault.
My memories associated with my family remained sequestered until I was reunited with them.
I wasn't reunited with my sister until late age 6; long after infantile amnesia ends for most people.
Thus, my early sensory impressions remained in place.
The reason I'm able to retrieve them is because I suffer from generalized dissociative amnesia. Many of my memories are formed with incomplete context and I've had to go back and examine/ contextualize them after the fact, stitching them into a coherent timeline.
The process works the same way for these earliest memories as well. In fact, those snapshots are in the same disorganized pile as all the rest.
So if you can do this too, you're not crazy and you're not alone. "Impossible for the average person" </> "Impossible".
Best,
-Slashy
#4
Recovery Journals / Re: The ramblings of an abused...
Last post by dollyvee - Today at 09:47:22 AMQuote from: GoSlash27 on February 21, 2026, 02:52:47 PMOf course, but this doesn't fit me. If anything, it demonstrates the opposite. All of 5 of us kids were impacted and I'm one of the only two ho survived it intact. I don't blame myself for any of it. I was just a kid and it's all the fault of the grownups, my mother specifically. Even the blame for all the other bad actors comes back to her because she should never have allowed them to be around her kids. It's not my fault, it's HER fault. She was an unfit mother, no doubt about it. But she's dead and I'm the one left to clean up the mess.
Hey Slashy, to me basic fault is more nuanced than that. I think that I can recognize that my m was at fault for providing less than adequate care etc and the things she did as her fault. However, how basic fault shows up is more through interpersonal relationships (ie attachment style) and my relationship to myself (ie what I actually believe about myself). So, in relationships if something happens, do I immeadiately default to, I am unlovable or bad? If something happens does it become a problem that I have to fix, or I am unloveable (and not that the other person is being selfish etc)? Can I show up in a conversation where I talk about my needs, and actually have needs because I learned that having needs is bad ie therefore I am bad when I have them? I have also "made out ok" despite the odds, but these are also still big issues of my self at my core.
I wonder what would happen if setting yourself this impossible task, which doctors have said should be impossible (if I understand that correctly), and having others depend on you (despite being an adult herself), that if the "missing piece" doesn't arrive, or fix things in the way you are expecting, how that would show up for you? Would it be turned on yourself for not being able to do those things? I think others on here who have experienced repressed memories have had a foundational base for those memories to come up so that they were ready to process them. In Dissociation and IFS, Joanne Twombly talks about the structuring that is needed before one starts to dig into the dissociation. For example, there might be really good reasons why your body/mind has dissociated these things in the first place and that there is some part that needs to be grounded in safety. Though, if you're working with a therapist, she may have started on this to proceed with the DBR.
Quote from: GoSlash27 on February 21, 2026, 03:40:00 PMI don't feel like I need to see her because I'm sure I already know how that conversation would go. "Doc, it hurts when I do this". "Then stop doing that".
Well, as I've learned there's only one way to know what someone else is thinking and that is by asking. I think she might surprise you with her answer, or at least provide you with information (I hope) to better qualify what decision you want to make in the future. That being said, I have recently left a therapist because they were very "certain" about how things "should" go in therapy, and although we did a lot of good work together, it wasn't the direction I felt I needed to go in. (I wanted to explore feeling more regulated in the moment, and when I suggested that, she said that you can't "be" in therapy week after week. Anyways...)
Sending you support. This is all really difficult stuff that you're willing to look at.
#5
Recovery Journals / Re: Living As All of Me
Last post by TheBigBlue - Today at 06:29:15 AMI grew up in a family system with fixed roles that did not change over time, but with different roles of the parents.
With my NF, I was the scapegoat - experienced as invisible and unlovable. My body was shamed early, my needs minimized, and my attempts at authenticity were quietly extinguished. Touch was largely absent. Safety came through perfection, compliance, and disappearing.
My younger S was my F's golden child. She looked like him and was treated as an extension of him. Over time, she absorbed many of his traits. Her emotional development stalled and she learned externalization rather than regulation. (something I now understand she did not choose).
My M was traumatized herself: born during WWII, lost her M at 5, NF. She was torn between attraction to dominant, narcissistic men (familiarity) and a strong drive toward authenticity. She eventually divorced my F.
Throughout my life, however, my M relied heavily on me to regulate her. For a long time, I believed my M loved me "too much." Only recently have I understood that what I experienced was not excess love, but asymmetric attachment injury - love that required my self-erasure. I became her emotional anchor: parentification, horizontally enmeshment, responsible for her stability and well-being.
So I grew up without protection, without mirroring, without a stable sense of being held, and with far too much silence - but with enormous responsibility as the family peacekeeper. On top of that, there were several unfortunate "big T" events, including a terror attack.
I learned to be competent, quiet, high-functioning, and hyper-responsible. I became a perfectionist and workaholic, surviving through performance - without a self.
Two years ago, medical trauma and another big T overwhelmed these survival strategies. A year ago, I entered CBT initially for what looked like depression. As safety with my T grew, the underlying system finally collapsed - revealing what had been held together by silence, compliance, and overfunctioning for decades.
(Sorry, if this is too long, I can remove it)
With my NF, I was the scapegoat - experienced as invisible and unlovable. My body was shamed early, my needs minimized, and my attempts at authenticity were quietly extinguished. Touch was largely absent. Safety came through perfection, compliance, and disappearing.
My younger S was my F's golden child. She looked like him and was treated as an extension of him. Over time, she absorbed many of his traits. Her emotional development stalled and she learned externalization rather than regulation. (something I now understand she did not choose).
My M was traumatized herself: born during WWII, lost her M at 5, NF. She was torn between attraction to dominant, narcissistic men (familiarity) and a strong drive toward authenticity. She eventually divorced my F.
Throughout my life, however, my M relied heavily on me to regulate her. For a long time, I believed my M loved me "too much." Only recently have I understood that what I experienced was not excess love, but asymmetric attachment injury - love that required my self-erasure. I became her emotional anchor: parentification, horizontally enmeshment, responsible for her stability and well-being.
So I grew up without protection, without mirroring, without a stable sense of being held, and with far too much silence - but with enormous responsibility as the family peacekeeper. On top of that, there were several unfortunate "big T" events, including a terror attack.
I learned to be competent, quiet, high-functioning, and hyper-responsible. I became a perfectionist and workaholic, surviving through performance - without a self.
Two years ago, medical trauma and another big T overwhelmed these survival strategies. A year ago, I entered CBT initially for what looked like depression. As safety with my T grew, the underlying system finally collapsed - revealing what had been held together by silence, compliance, and overfunctioning for decades.
(Sorry, if this is too long, I can remove it)
#6
Therapy / Re: Craniosacral Therapy (CST)...
Last post by TheBigBlue - February 21, 2026, 08:13:19 PMThank you all 
#7
Conferences/Courses / Re: Interoception & Trauma Sum...
Last post by Kizzie - February 21, 2026, 07:59:22 PMTks for posting these Dolly and BB!
#8
Recovery Journals / Re: Living As All of Me
Last post by HannahOne - February 21, 2026, 07:04:08 PMNarcKiddo, thank you for sharing your experience. Your username says it all!
I was both devastated and resonated with your description of your M treating you like a toy. I'm so sorry. That is horrific. And it resonates. Yes, we were like objects to them.
I see that in your experience it sounds capricious, like you couldn't often tell what caused the change. Somehow in my FOO the rules were more clear. Thank you for sharing how it was for you.
I also resonated with thinking one parent was an enabler initially. I also at first thought only one parent was a narc. Took more understanding to realize both were.
Thank you again for reading and commenting. I'm sorry for all of us. May you continue to find healing in yourself, outside of these toxic, unfair and limiting roles.
I was both devastated and resonated with your description of your M treating you like a toy. I'm so sorry. That is horrific. And it resonates. Yes, we were like objects to them.
I see that in your experience it sounds capricious, like you couldn't often tell what caused the change. Somehow in my FOO the rules were more clear. Thank you for sharing how it was for you.
I also resonated with thinking one parent was an enabler initially. I also at first thought only one parent was a narc. Took more understanding to realize both were.
Thank you again for reading and commenting. I'm sorry for all of us. May you continue to find healing in yourself, outside of these toxic, unfair and limiting roles.
#9
Recovery Journals / Re: Living As All of Me
Last post by NarcKiddo - February 21, 2026, 06:56:22 PMI didn't. My F was generally consistent in his disinterest - he left all the child rearing to M.
M was very capricious and we were flung around roles like anything. As I got older I got better at knowing how to play M so I could stay within a more comfortable helper/best friend role.
M remains capricious, but my life is steadier than my sisters so FOO theoretically approves of me more. Doesn't make me golden, exactly. Just less of a nuisance. But my sister, who is usually a problem, is not treated as a classic scapegoat. She is always bailed out, though my M will moan to me about it.
I am not sure of our roles, basically. They are not the classic textbook ones. I even thought my F was the enabler when I first came across all the theory but it turns out he is his own brand of Narc.
I usually tell my therapist my mother treats me and my sister like toys. Sometimes we are favoured and in the front of the toy box and sometimes we are flung in the back of the toy box. Sometimes it is possible to tell what has caused our position. What is clear is that we cannot both be in the back at the same time, though we can both be in the front for a short while. Never long because she is a great fan of 'divide and rule'.
M was very capricious and we were flung around roles like anything. As I got older I got better at knowing how to play M so I could stay within a more comfortable helper/best friend role.
M remains capricious, but my life is steadier than my sisters so FOO theoretically approves of me more. Doesn't make me golden, exactly. Just less of a nuisance. But my sister, who is usually a problem, is not treated as a classic scapegoat. She is always bailed out, though my M will moan to me about it.
I am not sure of our roles, basically. They are not the classic textbook ones. I even thought my F was the enabler when I first came across all the theory but it turns out he is his own brand of Narc.
I usually tell my therapist my mother treats me and my sister like toys. Sometimes we are favoured and in the front of the toy box and sometimes we are flung in the back of the toy box. Sometimes it is possible to tell what has caused our position. What is clear is that we cannot both be in the back at the same time, though we can both be in the front for a short while. Never long because she is a great fan of 'divide and rule'.
#10
Therapy / Re: Craniosacral Therapy (CST)...
Last post by HannahOne - February 21, 2026, 04:48:52 PMSo wonderful to read that you found cranial sacral therapy. You tried the massage at the spa, saw that it was not what you needed, and kept searching and tried something new. Hooray for persistence in getting what you need! 
And for learning your specific nervous system, coming to know more about yourself.
And for learning your specific nervous system, coming to know more about yourself.