Living As All of Me

[HannahOne]

Hello HannahOne, a belated welcome to you to the forum and it sure sounds you came to the right place. I'm very sad for you having had these experiences and feeling the way you do now as a result. And it makes so much sense to me. Most everything you wrote resonates with me so much it's unbelievable. Me, I have 'known' I have CPTSD for a while now but still part of me wants to forget that and reading your story is extremely valididating to me too, so I want to thank you for sharing. Yes, these are normal responses to a terrible upbringing.


Including what you wrote about your wardrobe, I have similiar 'interesting' features and feelings surrounding that, repeating patterns I know so well and that were useful/necessary before and other parts not wanting to do do that anymore. Stuff I used to wear for years, wanting to hide myself in them. And a tiny part of me not wanting to be so 'modest' at all! Stuff I still wear because I know my mother would have approved of them (if not of me) and even still I'm wearing her clothes too.

And I also do something similar to your counting things. I make lists in my head of houses I lived in, cars I owned, places I visited for holidays etc. And I really want to finish these lists in my head as well. It seems to be some coping mechanism, I'm thinking it's OCD-ish (for me that is). I recently discovered this and now, whenever I catch myself, I try telling myself I'm safe instead. (Not to be taken as advice, only sharing what it's like for me.)

Hope I'm not crowding your journal, please let me know if I am. I hope I'm not trespassing. It all just resonated to much I wanted to share.

I'm sending best wishes for you and a hug if that's okay.

Thank you DesertFlower for commenting! Thank you for sharing what resonated with you, it feels so good to hear what makes sense to others.

No I dont' feel anyone is crowding my journal but thank you for asking. I don't really know how these should be done or how I should be replying but I really value hearing what other people think and feel on here. I am trying to understand myself and I can only do that in the context of other people, because I am a people   I am trying to remember that I am a member of the human race. I am very happy to clutter my own journal with comments It's a community document and I hope it may even be helpful to others too.

I am looking for commonality with other people and also interested in their uniqueness so I appreciate hearing what resonated for you or how it differed, I learn from that too. Thank you for sharing your experience with taking delivery of what it means to have CPTSD, and your experience with clothes!

Thank you also for commenting about counting things. I was interested in what you said. I do think I have a touch of OCD, as hoarding and OCD run in my family. I also wonder about the relationship of OCD in my own case with trauma. There are many ways counting functions for me.

I think one reason is that in my early childhood years I experienced neglect. My parents were young. They told me they would go play cards with the neighboring apartments, beers. Fun, where was I? Oh, in my crib. For hours of cards and drinking. Standards of parenting were different then, but yikes. I was a three pound preemie, guys...My first memories are sitting at the sliding window in the apartment as darkness fell. Alone in the apartment, I must have been a late toddler. Seeing all the twinkling lights knowing there were people out there and I would find them someday. Add in that we were quite poor, my mother wasn't mentally well and also didn't drive so couldn't get groceries, my father was working 80 hour weeks on commission and extremely rigid and controlling about what could be purchased... there just wasn't much of anyone in the house even when they were home, and wasn't much food in general.

I count to have a sense of control. My narc dad wanted me to be a genius so he taught me things very young. My first memories of food is counting bites. Later I counted the apples in the fridge and figured if they didn't come back, I could eat one per day and survive four days. This was before kindergarten so I must have been about four.

I count because OCD was made worse by religiosity, which my parents got deeper and deeper into as I grew up. So I had fear and a sense that I needed inner control, to keep track, monitor.

I also think that I count because I am very concerned that I don't hoard. Counting makes sure it's a manageable amount of things.

I find that when I'm doing a behavior the causes are always multifactorial, and because it works for multiple reasons and for multiple aspects of me. You could say counting meets the needs of multiple parts of me: parts that want control, parts that want security, parts that want to make sure it's enough, parts that want to make sure it's not too much or fear being overwhelmed, parts that need to monitor. Those all sound similar but they're coming from different experiences, of lack, of hoarding, of religion, of fear.

You use parts language, and I do too. I've found it the only way to make sense of my contradictions, and the best way to be authentic about my experience. I need to be able to say, "part of me thinks this, but the other part thinks that..." if I just say "I think this," it's not true and it can't be, I have no way to be honest in that way of expression.

The poverty changed as I grew my father was able to pull us to the middle class and by high school I went to a private prep school (at which point my mother learned to drive, yay! began to hoard, boo!, and we had TOO MUCh stuff). The prep school was awesome and gave me my path out. However, it also made me hyperaware of class, and my place. I had to learn a lot of new customs, ways of speaking, topics to speak about and not speak about, mannerisms, ways to dress and do hair, BRANDS, lol.... and of course I couldn't ever pull it off, and not only because my father wouldn't buy me the expensive things. I think that's part of why I love the fashion mashup! I am a mashup myself, of cultures, class, place, style, values, a mashup of experiences of poverty and privilege, abuse and care, extreme neglect and extreme support. There are so many oddities in my life experience, I mean, who doesn't make sure their toddler has food, but buys them books and teaches them to read? A narcissist! Who knocks their kid down, then carries them to bed? A narcissist? Who sends their abused and neglected child to an expensive prep school!? A narcissist! How could such a frugal man who wont' turn on the hot water heater and made us take icy showers in a 55 degree house in winter spend money on private school? Because he's a narcissist! It's really a lot of contradiction to manage. Counting is simple

The clothes is how I'm trying to bring it all together right now, to express the contradictions that make up all parts of  me, so that I can make sense to others and myself...so I can connect. I can't be a person alone, we are herd animals