First post

[Anonymous]

Hi,
the member guidelines said to explain how I developed relational trauma and where I am at in recovery so here goes...I grew up in a family of  narcissists. My parents are narcissists. My grandparents are also narcissists. The same goes for many other people in my extended family. I don't know why this is the case, but it might have something to do with war/immigration trauma...My paternal grandparents were children in Italy during the Second World War, while my maternal grandparents had to leave their country due to  a revolution. The stories of my abusers were used to minimise my own trauma. Many people in my family are Kings and Queens of pain.

During my childhood, I was not loved or supported by any member of my family. Instead I was regularly subjected to emotional, verbal, and physical abuse. The abuse was carried out by several people. I was made to feel like a mistake. Like someone who could never be loved. A total screw-up without hope. If I was not perfect, I was hit. At the same time, if I was perfect, my parents would ignore me because I was doing "fine" and instead try to compete with me. It was a loose-loose situation where the abuse/neglect was always my fault. Perfectionism became my way of defending myself. I became a straight A student who spent every waking hour studying or pretending to study. I was miserable. Eventually I began searching for information on the internet, and realised that I might have something called CPTSD. That was in high school.

Today I am a university student. I am studying psychology, but I am not sure if I want to become a psychologist. I tried going no contact with my family  a year ago, and struggled a lot with being alone. I realised that I have been dependent on them my entire life and that I don't know how to live without them or have healthy relationships. After a severe struggle with my mental health, I contacted my FOO again. Right now it just feels like I am struggling to be my own person. I am joining this forum because I want to feel less alone and because I want to learn how to deal with my relational trauma. That is all for now...Thanks for reading this.

[Kizzie]

A warm welcome to OOTS Anon    You are in good company here and by that I mean there are lots of us who come from families where N abuse was the norm.  It means we will understand what you share and be able to provide suggestions, comfort, a sense of belonging - things you never got at home.

I am from an N family and was very enmeshed with them so it took me a long time to go low/no contact with them.  N families tend to be like a sticky spiders web, difficult to free yourself from because they need - attention, control, etc.  And they operate using fear, obligation and guilt (FOG) so which makes it very hard to distance ourselves.  We end up so caught up with them it's hard to know who we are and what we want and just how to be a separate person. 

I don't know if you've been to our sister site Out the FOG (https://outofthefog.website/) but they have lots of great info about PD's.  It's where I started and really came to understood what I was up against and how I developed CPTSD. If you haven't been you may want to check it out.   

Group hug if that's OK   

[Papa Coco]

Welcome to the forum, Anon.

I shiver to hear that you were surrounded by Narcissists. It's like having been raised by wolves.

I hope that this forum provides for you a safe place to begin learning about who you are apart from them. Your explanation of the struggles your family has gone through, which may be what made them narcissists, reminds me of my childhood in a predominantly Catholic family. I was surrounded by people who were always trying to protect themselves from each other. Even those who weren't born with narcissism in the brain, learned how to protect themselves from the others by behaving with narcissistic tools. I don't know if there are any psychological terms for people who are not narcissists by nature, but who behave as narcissists through training. (Nature v Nurture), but I believe it happens. The Catholics that I grew up with were mean spirited punishers. Gossip was the norm. I always knew that whoever left the room first would be the subject of gossip as soon as the door closed behind them. Which means I was always sure that if I wasn't in the room, I was the subject of their judgmental, mean, gossip.  It was the culture.

For as far back as I can remember, I wanted to leave my family in the dust and move on alone. But, like you, I didn't believe I would survive without them. As awful as they were, I believed I was stuck with them. They had me convinced that I was too incompetent to lead a life without their judgmental, cruel "caretaking" of me.  I was 50 years old when I finally did go No-Contact with every single person in my FOO and all their friends. I told my therapist that I wish I would have done it on my 18th birthday, but he proved to me that I was not the kind of person who could do that back then. I was too kind. I wanted a family too much to walk away. He was right. I was born in 1960. I was a teen in the 1970s. We didn't understand trauma back then. We didn't understand narcissism, and we lived in a culture where we just put up with bad parents and bad siblings and bad neighbors. If I were being raised today, and had the support of good trauma therapists and today's modern approach to victims of narcissism, I'm sure my life's story would be written with a very different angle.

I hope you are able to learn a ton of good stuff in your psychology degree. I believe there are other uses for that degree than becoming a therapist. If I wasn't so old, and so traumatized by school, I would absolutely get a psychology degree because it would help me become a better person, a better writer, a better anything. Understanding trauma, and how it affects people would be a boost in almost any career I can think of. 

Welcome to the forum. I hope the folks here are a comfort for you as they have been for me. These people truly understand me. sometimes I think I'm throwing in a problem so unique that no one could possibly resonate with me, but, so far, people have been able to comfort me through everything I've shared. Here, I've found a very friendly place to be myself. I hope you find this true for yourself as well.

[storyworld]

I am so sorry for the pain you experienced and the pain you feel now. I hope you find connection and support here and healing in your journey.

[Sprinkles]

Hi Anon, welcome to the forum.

I think you are brave to start a healing journey at your age. Especially with earning a degree and the stresses it can have.

I believe using education as an escape was a constructive way to get through some of the trauma. 

Despite having different experiences, I can empathize with your feelings of feeling unwanted and always at fault.

I hope getting comfortable with sharing your story and checking out the resources will help you find peace.