Recent posts

#1

Parenting / Explaining your history to chi...

Last post by HannahOne - Today at 01:22:32 AM

I haven't shared anything near the extent of my childhood neglect and all types of abuse with my kids. I don't even think they think my childhood was particularly unpleasant or challenging, they just think it was a bit impoverished compared to theirs. They don't know I was ever struck.

My kids are 14 and 18 now. The 18 year recently said that they know I don't like my parents, but don't know why. We were very LC throughout their lives and NC the last few years, so they have met my parents but not seen anything like the full picture of who they are.

I want to share a little more of my history with my kids. I feel they need to know more who I am, and where I come from, as it's part of their own wider story. And the older one is asking. I would like them to understand better why I raised them as I did so they can make sense of their world. At the same time I am afraid that if they know even the bare outline, they would feel guilty/feel like they need to take care of me. Or that they would feel less safe in the world overall, knowing how bad people can be. Or even that they might respect me less somehow. It would have been better to tell them gradually over the years and it shouldn't be a big secret. Now I just can't find the words.   

Anyone else dealt with this?

#2

Please Introduce Yourself Here / Re: New-ish

Last post by HannahOne - Today at 12:52:41 AM

Hi and a very warm welcome to Out of the Storm Hannah    I'm so glad you decided to post and that it feels helpful to do so. I echo what Chart wrote about the aloneness disappearing or at least for many of us, decreasing once we realize so much of what we feel is common for others who have experienced abuse/neglect. I find it makes it more about what happened to us and less about us as being defective, weak or whatever negative things we come up with about ourselves.

I hope being here continues to help!

Kizzie

Hi Kizzie! Thank you so much for founding this forum and making the place so supportive! It's both sobering and a relief to realize for the first time concretely that I am not alone---many people lived through these things. I'm so sad we're in this club no one should have to be in, and also for the first time feeling like a member of the human race.

#3

Please Introduce Yourself Here / Re: New-ish

Last post by HannahOne - Today at 12:50:49 AM

Hello HannahOne,

I too seemed to find out and connect the dots at about the 40 age. I had already, 'escaped' and tried all kinds of 'help'. I am 53, maybe it was just that the resources were suddenly out there, online, around 10/15 years ago?

I too tried not to recreate my childhood with my family, but it is a struggle to know what is good enough with only a blueprint of what you do not want.

I am glad you are here.

Gromit

Hi Gromit!

Thanks for commenting. It might be that there was more awareness 10-15 years ago. I think for me I also just ran out of steam, hit a wall, whatever. It was a dramatic stopping of my former way of managing, that much I know!

I can relate to not knowing what is "good enough" in the family. It's night and day from my own childhood, but I didn't have an image or felt sense of "normal" and had to build the plane while I was flying it. I was lucky to have some really good therapists who would let me bring the baby into the office and coach and reassure me on our interactions, and I hired family therapists at various times to help communicate as the kids reached new developmental phases. I felt like I needed some supervision and guidance that my mom friends never seemed to need. Then again, they still had their mothers as adults to advise and support, and I didn't for obvious reasons.

Hope to see you around the forum!

#4

Family / Re: Left out

Last post by Blueberry - December 27, 2025, 09:57:03 PM

So if you do feel you might be happy to have some contact with the wider family going forward then it may be best to try to leave all baggage out of it and just see what these people are like now.

Thank you, I do try to give everyone a chance, until they show me that I should not. I would say the baggage was more attached to my aunt and uncle, and not my cousins, but there can be transference when people remind you of others, I do have to be aware of that effect.

Yes, I think you've got a big point here with the transference. That's one of the reasons I'm pretty wary of the whole extended family now. If you decide on more contact with some of extended family, then as we say on here: small steps, small steps, stop and feel/sense and maybe not leap right back in, which I have done in the past to my detriment.

#5

Recovery Journals / Re: Desert Flower's Recovery J...

Last post by Desert Flower - December 27, 2025, 09:19:23 PM

Janina Fischer wrote: "It cannot feel over if you are still taking care of those who harmed you [...]." (Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma, page 102, bottom) and that is what I had been trying nonetheless.

This has been the first Christmas without my mother (who died a little over half a year ago). I did not and do not miss her (I keep repeating this). It was the calmest Christmas ever in my mind. I did not know it could be so calm. Like clear water without even a ripple. No worries whatsoever about what she might think of me. None. I am clear. It is so radically different from a year ago, when I knew what was going on but still felt obliged to take care of her and I felt soooo stressed. And so different from all the years before, when I had no idea what was going on at all and of why I was feeling so bad all the time.

I am looking back on 50 years of being stressed out over everything, being the stress while now, sometimes, I feel what I call 'the baseline'. It is the way I feel when I am not stressed at all. It has been rare but it is here sometimes. And I felt it a few times these past couple of days. It is awe-some and wonder-ful to me. Utter calm. So strange to me.

Today, walking through town, I was observing the world. Being a spectator to the world, while being conscious of myself too. It feels so different. I seem to be here.

I have been dreaming:

(I have recurring dreams of pets needing my care and me being unable to adequately take care of them because they keep multiplying, running rampant etc.) I dreamt that one of the guinea pigs kept escaping, running away, and me being the only one able to catch it, me catching it repeatedly and the guinea pig becoming more and more bruised and battered every time I retrieved it.
This one, to me, means I'm trying to take care of myself, falling and falling again, making the same mistakes over and over. But I am the only one who can really take care of me.
I want to start learning from my 'mistakes' (that is, I want to 'catch' myself before I derail again, taking better self care, setting clearer bounderies to stay within my window of tolerance).

And another dream was made up of healing, nothing else but healing, being allowed to heal, taking the time to heal, in a somewhat hospitalised and safe environment. It is time to heal me.

(I think there was another dream that meant something, but I forgot. I may add it later.)


(I've been thinking about this 'No Contact' with FOO concept. I had not heard of it before I came here. But I had been NC with most of my family (except for my mother, different - more difficult - story) in practice for a long time already. It hadn't been a conscious choice but I really had never felt any need to see them, we had never been close or fit in anyway. And half a year ago at my mother's funeral, I saw the whole family again after many many years and it was so strange, we were all behaving so 'nicely', I was fawning of course, and now I don't think I'll ever see any of them again. We can now quietly let each other go our seperate ways again.)

#6

Family / Re: Left out

Last post by Gromit - December 27, 2025, 08:03:00 PM

So if you do feel you might be happy to have some contact with the wider family going forward then it may be best to try to leave all baggage out of it and just see what these people are like now.

Thank you, I do try to give everyone a chance, until they show me that I should not. I would say the baggage was more attached to my aunt and uncle, and not my cousins, but there can be transference when people remind you of others, I do have to be aware of that effect.

G

#7

Family / Re: Left out

Last post by Gromit - December 27, 2025, 07:59:34 PM

Beautifully expressed,  Gromit. Thank you, you have given me much food for thought in a situation very close to my own circumstances.

I hope you gain clarity.

g

#8

Please Introduce Yourself Here / Re: New-ish

Last post by Gromit - December 27, 2025, 07:22:18 PM

  Hello HannahOne,

I too seemed to find out and connect the dots at about the 40 age. I had already, 'escaped' and tried all kinds of 'help'. I am 53, maybe it was just that the resources were suddenly out there, online, around 10/15 years ago?

I too tried not to recreate my childhood with my family, but it is a struggle to know what is good enough with only a blueprint of what you do not want.

I am glad you are here.

Gromit

#9

Please Introduce Yourself Here / Re: New-ish

Last post by Kizzie - December 27, 2025, 04:55:29 PM

Hi and a very warm welcome to Out of the Storm Hannah    I'm so glad you decided to post and that it feels helpful to do so. I echo what Chart wrote about the aloneness disappearing or at least for many of us, decreasing once we realize so much of what we feel is common for others who have experienced abuse/neglect. I find it makes it more about what happened to us and less about us as being defective, weak or whatever negative things we come up with about ourselves.

I hope being here continues to help!

Kizzie

#10

Therapy / Re: Heart Opening Music

Last post by Kizzie - December 27, 2025, 04:34:47 PM

Here is my favourite:

It's kind of an anthem for Out of the Storm.