Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Topics - Erebor

#1
Ideas/Tools for Recovery / Re/Claiming Denied Interests!
December 09, 2019, 04:47:51 AM
Hello everyone.  A while ago another user and I were discussing reclaiming, or indeed claiming for the first time, interests and hobbies our abusers or cultic backgrounds denied us. We both thought it would be good to have a thread for people to share their journeys in re/claiming things. That conversation was a while ago but it stayed with me and I wanted a thread for sharing.

I am currently exploring body modifications and my feelings about them. I'm realising I have convincingly mimicked my mother's disgust and criticisms of them, because although I have never found them to be so unpleasant, I feel afraid of her knowing that... or rejecting me for liking something so ''wrong''.

I have convinced myself that these are genuinely my opinions, too. When I question that, I can feel my deep fearful submissiveness, how I am afraid that I must follow the rules. Interesting, I will feel and reflect more on this.  :disappear:
#2
Hello all,

I am currently trying to keep myself afloat amidst lethargic depression and increasing awareness of covert and overt CSA I have experienced. I was aware of some of my traumas, but I thought it was (edit: almost) entirely covert and that nothing 'really bad' could have happened to me . From adolescence I dismissed my great fear of CSA and inability to cope with it being talked about as hypersensitivity that did not relate to any personal exposure to it... writing this down I am not quite sure how I managed to sell myself that line.

I recently read the account of a survivor of attempted CSA. She experienced strange symptoms that I can relate to, and in therapy she discovered that they stemmed from the assault.  These symptoms included feeling afraid and unable to sleep at night if she did not have a safe adult in the house; compulsive, intrusive fears of 'something' waiting behind corners to jump out at her, or of terrible monsters lurking in the dark in her room. There may have been some other symptoms, but these are the two that really stood out to me.

I had (and sometimes still have) both of those experiences, along with many more that I cannot yet bring myself to share but that all share a repulsive and unspoken feeling of intended threat or sexual predation. If something 'really bad' did happen to me, is it possible I might not remember it but experience related fears, anxieties, shame, feeling sexualised, bad feelings in my body etc?

**Possible TW**

I am wondering if anyone else here has recurringly experienced crawling/prickling sensations in inappropriate places, that feel horrible and intrusive and like something to run away from? I experienced this regularly at a young age, and since going NC with my F it has ceased, unless I talk about him.  Since beginning to process more of the covert and overt CS in recent weeks, it returned with a vengeance.

It all feels quite overwhelming and scary, so I am hoping I might find some support here.
#3
Family / Ongoing enmeshment with mother
July 19, 2018, 01:48:46 AM
Hello everyone, I don't know how to go about rewriting this in a way that conveys the necessary information concisely, so I'm largely copying from my journal. Sorry for the length. If you want to read the longer but slightly different journal post, that might shed some further light on my situation. I have an NPD-F who I'm NC with, and a CPTSD-M who I live with and am financially dependent on. Now it turns out I'm also enmeshed with M, and there's an emotionally incestuous side to it too.

Both of us have raised concerns about being unhealthy for each other at different points in the last few years, but M always and immediately jumps to the drastic solutions of living in different houses (with her paying the rent for both, out of a finite and constantly shrinking amount of money) OR 'never seeing each other again' as a way of dealing with it, instead of a less drastic and more practical and constructive plan - that I now realise would have to involve working to build better boundaries and learning to live as separate individuals under the same roof.  We both have our own private spaces, so it's not like we're stuck in the same room all the time... however, she responds negatively to my spending time in my own room beyond sleeping (even reacts to my having the door closed - NPD-F didn't let me close my door so she doesn't see it as normal, I think).  She frequently complains of missing me, and as we used to live in cultic/isolating environments I'm the only person she has any real contact with.

Like I said, she has CPTSD too, but has lived with it and further abuse for a much longer time than I have.  We both attempt to support each other, but I'm beginning to question how much of this 'support' is healthy... there's so much to be said on it, more than any one post could contain.

My immediate concern is this:

1) Since an incident during my early/mid childhood when my rage was stifled (M couldn't deal with me asking her why she didn't protect me from NPD-F's abuse, she defended him, I said I hated her, she broke down in tears, and I felt so guilty I abandoned my own feelings in order to make her stop crying) I have largely been either 'happy' (beginning to work out that it's artificial, but it seems real when I'm in it) or depressed.  Outbursts of anger and pain paint the gaps between those two feeling states.  There are some memories of what must be real happiness(?).

2) Both parents glorified my 'happy' state and referred to it as my identity and true state of being, at all times - M still does.  NPD-F hated me being aware of my pain and would hound me back to being happy - M does something similar but more covert/passive and seemingly caring? Both parents have particular pet names/pet phrases they sometimes use to refer to me that solidify my identity as 'someone always happy'. M has long denied any comments I have made stemming from my occasional awareness that I'm nearly constantly miserable, in at least some part of my soul.  Instead she insists that I am a happy person.  (She says this, despite having at many points acted as my support and heard a great deal of how I've suffered.)

3) The 'happiness' (I refuse to give this state of numbed suffering the title and status of actual happiness as FOO chose to) is an automatic state of being, or mode, that triggers upon interaction with M. My true feelings disappear like mist when it fully activates. As far as I can tell, it isn't a dissociated part, but perhaps it is?  I've noticed that my voice can change to sound happier when I talk to her, even if the mode doesn't fully activate.

4) This is the worst bit. M either can't or doesn't want to deal with the discomfort and stress it causes her when she loses our 'connection' AKA enmeshment and loss of boundaries.  In other words, she can't cope with me leaving the Automatic Artificial 'Happiness' Mode (I guess that's AAHM for short - there must be a way of making a joke about 'an AAHM and a leg'). She responds by being timid, crying sporadically, asking me what's wrong, assuming (rightly, in one sense) that I'm upset with her, trying to 'fix it' so I go back to being 'happy'.  She can progress to being angry or outright rageful, and making threats about throwing me out.

What's happening now, is this. I left the 'happy' state out of a reaction to M refusing to change her stance on something I didn't agree with - it was a personal belief that should have had no impact on me, yet because of the enmeshment it does (I can feel my brain shifting my opinions to match hers, so the abusive dynamic of it is that there are some opinions/preferences/beliefs that negatively impact my mental health and in order to avoid them, I think I have to convince her to avoid them - distancing myself from her for the last few days has helped me to see this behavior and identify it as unhealthy and abusive.)

So I am now perpetrating the same abuse that she and NPD-F have inflicted on me - not allowing someone else to have their own preferences.  I refuse to do this going forward, and will work hard (not just for her - I really need to find myself and be myself!!)

Number 4 describes today.  M's been faking happy herself, as though to solicit the same response from me (to get me back into being what she thinks is 'me').  She told me I'm being distant - yes, I am. Because I don't know how to stay afloat in a sea of automatic reactions that threaten to steal away my independence and identity.  Usually the rage takes a while to show up, the acting nice has to fail at getting me back into enmeshment for that to happen.

For most of my life, I have sporadically had the urge to withdraw from her (interesting that John Bradshaw, in his book 'Home Coming', refers to withdrawal as the only weapon a child has... I may be paraphrasing). I can't tell if the withdrawal is the right way to deal with this or not, I'm quite physically tense and feel guilty about not talking to her - but I don't know how to broach this topic with her in a constructive way, and any harmless dialogue seems to trigger the AAHM (same thing used to happen with my F).  I've spoken to her a bit today because  of the guilt, but I can feel the AAHM starting up.

Any advice and support is greatly appreciated right now - this feels like a lot to wrap my brain around, and I don't yet have anyone else to talk to about it, apart from her.  For further clarification, M thinks she is codependent and faun/freeze.

Edit
QuoteChildren are often anxious to please their parents and a Parentified child will often take their responsibilities very seriously. They may even feel honored initially by being treated like a 'grown up' and entrusted with responsibility for other family members or their parent. However, the child will generally suffer from having his or her own emotional needs neglected and from being compelled to live up to the burden of expectation.
Parentified children may struggle with lingering resentment, explosive anger and difficulty in forming trusting relationships with peers, issues which often follow them into adulthood. Forming close, trusting romantic and spousal relationships may be particularly difficult.

Just read this on http://outofthefog.website/top-100-trait-blog/2015/11/4/parentification - that's definitely me.
#4
General Discussion / Assertiveness?
July 13, 2018, 09:15:42 PM
Hello everyone,  :)

I've wanted to make this post for a little while now. I'm gaining more awareness of the fact that I feel quite physically vulnerable and like a bit of a sitting duck.  For a while now I've tried telling myself the same things that Pete Walker suggests in his Flashback Management Steps, that I'm in an adult body now and can better protect myself... but no matter how much I tried to tell myself that, I can't believe I'm physically safer now than I was then.

*Slight TW, for physical abuse*


Actually, as I'm writing this I realise that when I was a child I was powerless to stop myself from being dragged about, but as an adult I'm not guaranteed to be physically helpless in the same way.  So that's good, if I can hold onto it - struggling with dissociation/flight/critic a lot at the moment, makes that difficult. But if I've got it written here then I can come back to it.  Though it's not enough.

Anyway, I'm a mostly freeze/dissocation type, and assertiveness seems to be a common and particular issue for people like me.  I have wanted to learn self-defense since I was very young, to protect myself and my family, and I keep wondering if that would help me learn to be assertive (in a healthy way) and further my recovery. I've heard people saying that it has brought up strong emotions that were difficult to deal with for some people, so it might be a bit tough.

I'm interested in hearing what other people here have experienced regarding assertiveness, what your journeys with it are like, what you've learned about it, and what has or hasn't helped you.

Thank you! :)

#5
Sexual Abuse / Covert SA from a 'friend' **TW**
June 08, 2018, 01:59:05 AM
My life is a neverending chain of things that overwhelm me but that I don't emotionally process right now (lots of feeling numb, not venting/crying/feeling).  The latest thing in the chain is someone who called themselves my 'friend' after only knowing me for a short time (I would never have called them this because I think I would need to really know and trust someone before I did that).  They charm bombed me very heavily for a very, very short amount of time at the start of our acquaintanceship. We're the same gender and I thought they might be a real friend.  We had a long list of things in common, which I was very surprised by but it didn't ring any alarm bells. Then they told me that they were interested in persuing a relationship with me.  I turned them down (I'm not gay or interested in dating at all) but I didn't want to offend them or lose a decent possible friendship and so agreed to their suggestion to meet up again soon (my subconscious felt like it was a way for them to get around me turning down).

**TW**

Not long later, I got more grounded in myself and I was realising what was going on and feeling like they'd been covertly walking me right into an abusive sexual relationship against my expressed will - like I was blindfolded, and the change in the relationship was happening TO me and they were trying to keep it hidden so that I wouldn't realise.  I feel horror having written that. It's sick.  They tried to guilt me into starting a relationship with them, they looked at me like I was a sex object and made it blatant! And I couldn't react! I didn't feel anything! I was just retraumatising myself and couldn't feel any of my real feelings! It's disgusting.  And now the shame is coming up. I don't even feel like what I've described qualifies as 'real' covert SA, perhaps it's my critic. I'm scared that people on here will say it there wasn't really anything sexualised about it.

They walked over almost all of my boundaries (they were all down anyway, because of the retraumatisating part of me), and tried to invade every area of my life - it's nuts. I know what abusive romantic/sexual relationships look like, I can recite many of the warning signs, but suddenly I found myself feeling isolated from everyone else and guilty about spending time with other people.  This disgusting, pathetic predator even tried to punish me for talking to other people - even if I was with them at the time. They turned out to be a horrible, spiteful, petty and manipulative pervert - but I kept thinking that they must have CPTSD too and they weren't really a PD person. It turned out they had been watching me for a while and plotting how to approach me, even talking to other people about me to find out what things to pretend to like - because all the things we seemed to have in common were lies and they turned to verbally abusing me quickly.

It's sick. So sick.  They acted like they were entitled to everything about me, and were so abusive. :( Thankfully the physical stuff didn't go beyond 'accidentally' bumping into me (and lightly hitting me with objects), but I still feel violated. I don't feel like I own my body, I don't feel safe, and I'm struggling to sleep because of how tense and vulnerable I feel.  All of my CPTSD reactions to being triggered by SA stuff were set off by this abuser but I didn't realise what was going on.  They treated me like I was dirt under their feet.

I'm sorry if anyone finds this too emotional or messy, I think writing it down is somehow unlocking my feelings more than when I've tried to talk about it.