7 Years, Things Kept Getting Worse, Never Got Real Help

[GettingThere]

TW: NPD family, life endangerment, violence induced disability, sensory loss, severe flashbacks, failing healthcare & social service systems

Hi all,

I first got my diagnosis in January 2016, when I first joined this forum. Over the past 7 years, despite seeking help, paying for help, and reading a bunch of books, violence and abuse has just kept happening again and again in my adult life. In 2022, my life was in immediate danger more times than my frazzled brain can remember anymore. Just like all those years ago when I first joined OOTS, my body is newly out of being trapped in violence from family and I'm back to no contact. 7 years ago, I couldn't find a psychologist in my region qualified to help me. With 7 more years of life endangerment and resulting permanent physical disabilities, my body and mind are more destroyed than ever before.

I think my saving grace in all of this is that I've finally learned that my family are a pack of extremely dangerous narcissists who are completely incapable of change, and that I will literally perish if I don't stay no contact with them for the rest of my life. The biggest challenge mentally now is coping with all of the flashbacks of almost dying again and again over the past year - especially now that my disabled body now serves as a constant reminder of the abuse.

Now that I've been free for 3 months and am making friends I care about again, I've found a reason to want to keep living. But if I ever slow down working and socializing enough that I, even for a few minutes, stop being completely dissociated, I start to lose the will to live again. I've completely lost faith in the medical and social service systems in my region. I've been begging for help for the past 16 years, since the first time I called child protection on my parents when I was 14, and help just never came. The most real help I've ever gotten was from watching informational (ie. not therapy) tiktoks from psychologists and social workers in the United States, from connecting with social workers online who are in other regions of my country, and from a poster on the wall in a women's shelter that explained what the cycle of violence is and how it works. I don't have the money for a psychologist right now, and the types of therapy I'm interested in trying (IFS, EMDR, Somatic, Coherence) are barely available in my region.

Back in the good old days, I used to have flashbacks 5-10 times a day and still be able to function. Now, if my mind is not constantly, CONSTANTLY, busy, I have a visceral flashback to a violent, often near death, experience every 30-60 seconds. I have no idea what to do. It helps to just communicate with other people who may actually understand what I went through, instead of with practitioners and crisis line operators who have never in their lives heard of someone's blood family doing anything like this. My sessions with any provider usually just result in me answering loads of unnecessary and inappropriate questions, satiating the practitioner's curiosity, and not being given any sort of recommendations of what to do except toxic positivity, grounding tools that used to work and don't anymore, or requests for me to give my consent to be anonymously mentioned in a textbook or have my sessions filmed.

This is pretty much the only place I've ever been where I don't feel like a freak, an alien, or as though I have an otherworldly, incomprehensible life. Even if you don't have any practical tips, thanks for reading and thanks for just being here. But if you do have ideas or suggestions of things that have helped you, please feel free to share them. I will try pretty much anything at this point. BUT please keep in mind, I only have 2 remaining senses (sight and hearing). I can no longer smell, taste, or feel my body or skin, so techniques based on any of those 3 senses only give me more flashbacks. I also do not consent to being asked or answering questions as to how my disabilities happened.

Thank you all.