Messages

Hi San,

I can understand how your talk with your bro has put some doubt into you. If he was raised by the same people you were, and he says he's fine, what does that say about you? I grew up being "the broken one" and taking the blame for it every second of my life until I was 50. Personally, I believe your doubts are just that: Doubts. I agree with your thought that he is just not as open as you are to the truth about how things were.

I'm #4 of 5 kids. My elder sibs were 13,11 and 8 when I was born. My little sis came 3 years after me. We were two distinctly different litters to the same parents. I have experienced the same sort of thing as you did with your bro recently. When I was 50, my family fell apart finally. My oldest sister, who I really didn't know well, connected with me, and we had a long series of similar conversations as yours. It took me some work to help Sis understand that we did NOT have the same parents. Little Sis and I grew up in the shadows of their childhoods. #2 was a sister who is a demon by most descriptions. Toxic in almost every way. Murderously toxic. I put most of the blame onto her for our little sister taking her own life. After raising that monster, Mom and Dad became very suspicious, and treated me like I was a thieving, conniving monster like #2 was. #2 broke their trust in children. My room got searched every day while I was at school because Mom once found hundreds of dollars worth of stolen jewelry in the closet of #2 who had been babysitting neighbor kids and was helping herself to their bedroom drawers. There were so many reasons my parents were different to #5 and me. It was an epiphanous time in #1's life as she, at age 63, heard for the first time from my own mouth what it was like being raised differently than she had been. Her parents were young and vibrant and building a new life. My parents (Same people) were old and working toward their retirement plans.

Personally, I believe that we are born with unique personalities, and then are raised under unique circumstances, making our own lives unique, even from the lives of our own siblings.  Just look at litters of puppies or kittens. Born together on the same hour, these siblings all have unique personalities even before they are raised.

As I read your words about his different take on life than yours, I'm drawn to my belief that we, the members of this forum, tend to be the ones with our eyes open. We see the damage. We feel the pain that everyone is living in. People who are like your bro, just close their eyes to it and don't deal with it. (Spoiler alert: Ignoring it doesn't heal it. I like to say that if we don't face our dragons, they will eventually turn and face us. Who knows? Perhaps his day to face his own dragons may still be coming).

I currently live my life by this rule: The whole world is traumatized, and those of us who recognize the trauma are the ones who are working through it. Those who pretend it's not there (like your bro) are doomed to repeat their pain until the day comes that they finally address it like we are doing now.

There may still be a day when your bro will need to deal with what you've been dealing with. He's on his own path. You are on your own path.

For what it's worth, I enjoy chatting with people like you more than I do those who hide from their pains.  They're shallow. We're deep. we are far, far more interesting conversationalists.

San.

I'm going to totally get on board with your comments that maybe it's not worth figuring out which fears come from which source. We are who we are because of everything we've been through. Whether we remember going through it or not, we went through it and it shaped us and now we are who we are.

A bunch of today's most current authors on trauma are starting to teach that we need to stop dividing our internal parts within ourselves, and to love and embrace every part of ourselves, even the broken parts. My IFS parts, even the ones that give me trouble, want to be loved. And if I can love everything in my life, even the pain and suffering, then I'm gaining the love I need for my healing.

So I try to catch myself now whenever I get down on myself for dropping something, or losing something, or breaking something by remembering to love my clumsiness as a part of who I am. The holistic feeling of loving even the parts of myself I didn't used to love, is reeeeealy empowering. The love grows quickly. Even through my Autumn Anxiety, I suffer, but I love my suffering-self as much as I love any other part of my Self, and it seems to be giving me a new sense of inner strength and stability.

It feels like I've been broken into pieces my whole life, and those pieces are starting to come back together. I feel like I'm becoming less fractured, more like I'm being put back together.

I'll talk more about this as I get comfortable with it. I'm only just getting started on self-love. I need some time to practice it and see if it lasts or if it's temporary.  But I will say this: If someone like me can learn to love myself holistically, then that's a powerful statement on the power of love. Up to now I couldn't even muster up enough self-love to be able to stand looking at myself in a mirror.

 

San,

I'm glad you got your bison. My mom was like yours. She'd rummage through my room while I was at school and throw away my possessions. When I'd find them missing, I'd ask. She'd say "You didn't need those anymore." If I ever argued back (which I only did once, then learned not to bother arguing ever again), she'd laugh at me like I was an idiot. 

So I resonate with how your bison gives you comfort AND with your scars from losing the doll you once loved.

Even though they were our mothers, I still call it bullying. Bullying is when we use whatever advantage we have, (age, size, authority, wealth) do something to someone without their permission. And the one thing I hate most about bullying is that it works. They win. Bullies win. and I HATE THAT!

I'm glad your D loved you enough to give you a bison and I'm very happy to hear your spirit animal is with you physically now at slumber time.

PC

Dark.Art.Girl,

Wow. I'm feeling your post in every fiber of my being. This got strongest when you said "...It's like I'm constantly making connections to that time period now. Has anyone ever experienced that? A song, a familiar looking person, the way the air feels around you, a smell, and it's just brings you back to the same spot? Constantly? Kind of like a loop."

Yes, YES! I've experienced it. Big time. When I first started remembering my CSA, I was in my late twenties, and as we come into the time of year when my abuse happened, I started losing my ability to know what year it was. It still happens to me on a smaller scale now. When I'm in an EF about what happened in 1967, I start to be unsure of what is memory and what is current. One day, I was alone in my bedroom and I heard my wife talking to our kids in the kitchen. I suddenly wasn't sure if that was my wife in 1989, or it was my mother in 1967 talking. The past and the present seemed to be occupying the exact same space in my head for a few moments.

it still happens now. Sometimes, as you say, it's a song or a physical reminder that brings the past back to life, other times it's the pain today that feels exactly like the pain of the past.

In a novel I'm reading right now, the author starts one of his chapters with the quote: "Walking through peaceful grounds, years after the battle, the soldier can still hear the cannons."  Bingo! That's me, and it sounds like it's where you're at right now. You can still hear the cannons.

I am mortified when I read how you've just discovered justice was never served. That is triggering for me too. (Don't fret: I like feeling triggers that prove I am resonating with a fellow soul). there never was any justice in my case. My abuse in the 1960s was never reported, and the abusers are all dead now. BUT I felt some joy when you said yours had all been convicted, and then I felt your pain when you said you just found out they weren't.

I am of the belief that the one thing that did the most damage to anyone with trauma disorders is the sense of being alone with the trauma. Having the abusers convicted didn't erase what they did, but conviction does give some sense that someone cared enough to punish them and take them off the streets. To find out that never happened feels like being hit in the head with a shovel. It just makes us feel like nobody really cared what was done to us, and that's where trauma gets its traction. It's been said that a child isn't traumatized by abuse. The child is traumatized by dealing with abuse alone.

But here on OOTS, we're not alone. When we open up to each other we find the friendship and support that we've been craving.

I hope the loving responses you're getting from the other OOTS members here helps soften the trauma.

I've learned to not panic when the past is brought back into the present and I get confused as to what year it is. It plays itself out and eventually goes back to its corner of my brain. I think it's okay to feel it. Love the younger version of yourself. Be the adult who cares for her. Imagine her in your arms, hugging you. Maybe sobbing on your shoulder and be the person who loves her back and promises that everything will turn out okay.

Younger you wants to be loved and you want to love her. I'm finding that to be the place where healing starts. The one thing all of us want is to be loved and accepted. That's true for our IFS parts too. The magic is in the love we give to each other and to ourselves.

I'll be thinking about you all day today.

PC.

 
San, 

Your comments that I'm not alone in this, and that we're in this together mean a lot. The only passion I have left in life is to feel connected with other souls who I resonate with. And I resonate with your post big time.

Driving was my passion too until recent years. I've done a lot of cross-country road trips. It used to be relaxing to just take a drive when stress was bothering me. As a teen I even wanted to be a long haul truck driver so I could drive for a living, (and also, I had romanticized the life of living on the road, as many people did back in the 1970s). But fear has taken that joy of mine away also. I plan my entire life around traffic lulls now because I hate being in traffic so bad. Traffic ignites my Fight/Flight response really bad. I hate feeling trapped. And I'm fearful of all the things that can go wrong while driving: Mechanical issues, road rage, accidents, road closures, etc.

I have learned, over the last couple of years, that a traumatic childhood can lead to a glass-half-empty mindset for life. We, CPTSD sufferers can have a strong lean toward always waiting for the other shoe to drop. We know how bad things can get, so we can't forget that.

Again: the gray area for me is I'm still trying to find the line between natural fears associated with natural aging, versus Trauma fears that come from a difficult past.

Dark.Art.Girl,

That was a profound comment: When you're feeling well mentally, you try to control other aspects and get scared or agitated.

I'm going to ponder this one for a while. Good food for thought

Also, I just figured out a few minutes ago, that empowerment is a fear-buster. I've been in situations where to help someone else, I needed to go into the worst parts of town unarmed. During those times, I wasn't even remotely afraid. I was one of the helpers. I felt empowered. The more empowered I feel, the less fear i carry. I guess that makes sense, right? Empowerment is the opposite of afraid.

As I age, I lose more and more feeling of empowerment, so therefore, the fear grows in the spaces where the empowerment vacates.

Food for thought.

Thanks for the love from you, and also from StartingHealing.

I'm getting better and worse at the same time.

As I age, and participate in every CPTSD therapy I can afford, I'm getting better and worse at the same time.  I'm mentally healthier than ever. I can find firm ground in most situations now. My EFs are fewer and shorter and less frightening than ever. Meanwhile, my real-world fears are getting worse and closer to the surface.

I live in a community that has a newly formed family of very large bears in it. I have not yet seen one, but all my neighbors have. And I've had to pickup piles of their skat from my yard only feet from my bedroom window, and I've had to clean up my garbage can mess a few times. As Climate Change dries out the berries in the surrounding forests, these bears have moved into town and are now living off our garbage bins like smorgasbords. It's a community of mostly elderly people or beachgoing cabin owners. These elderly people walk the streets with tiny dogs on leashes at all hours of the night and day, and so far, nobody's been hurt by one of these 400-pound bears. But yesterday, I tried to go for a walk. I left the house, got to the end of the driveway, looked up and down the street. Nobody was anywhere. This is a very quiet community built in the woods just off the beach. I was too scared to take my walk. "It's autumn: Bears are in hibernation mode, fattening up for winter, and I'm all alone out here." I own bear spray, but don't trust it will stop a 400 pounder. So I went back inside and started inventorying all the ways I'm changing my life because of growing fears of everything that moves.

• The bears have made me afraid to walk or ride a bike in my neighborhood.
• My evil sister, the most abusive human I've known personally, moved to just a few blocks away from me and now I'm afraid to be in my own yard in case the old monster drives by to check on whether I'm home or not.
• I hide in my house now. I'm afraid of people casing my house, so I'm always hiding my car in the garage with the garage door always closed so nobody knows if I'm home or not.
• I'm afraid of criminals, ex relatives, bullies, trump supporters with guns, ICE, (and I'm not even an immigrant).
• I'm afraid of getting shot at in road rage or malls or public places.
• I'm afraid of bears and racoons.
• I'm afraid of the government.
• I'm afraid of the phone when it rings, or the doorbell.
• I'm now becoming afraid of eating food made in restaurant kitchens.
• My beautiful, quiet, woodsy community was wiped out 325 years ago by a tsunami and now they're really driving in the fear of another one coming at any time. So now I make peace with life each night at bedtime just in case I wake up under water.

I'm getting scared of everything.

I'm changing all my behaviors because my surface fears of survival are all heating up. Meanwhile, I'm getting healthier in other ways, so I'm confused. Am I getting better or worse? I think both.

I suspect some of my newer fears are not that uncommon for those of us who are getting older and less able to defend ourselves. (As a younger man, I would have believed I could outrun a bear. I couldn't, but I would have believed I could). I now know the reality of all the people dying in severe weather or geological events, car crashes, mall shootings, road rage, animal attacks, political attacks... My fears used to be of not being accepted or of being humiliated or insulted, or expected to do things I don't want to do. Now my fears of real-world dangers that are swarming around me more than they used to.

Some animals will go off and hide when they get sick or injured because they suddenly feel less able to defend themselves against their own herds. That's how I feel now. I'm hiding behind locked doors because the world outside is scaring me like never before. I'm afraid of my own herd and my own environment. My knees hurt so I can't run. I'm weaker than when I was younger so I don't know if I could even fight for myself. My reflexes are slowing, strength is waning, and my ability to know what the heck is even happening around me is dulling.  So I'm getting more scared as I age.

But I don't think nature is the only reason> I think a life of living in the trauma of fear is catching up to me. I've always been scared, but I've also felt stronger and faster. Now I'm still scared, but I feel vulnerable and unprotected.

I don't like this. Life is hard enough to enjoy without phobias, fears and suspicions. Adding those to an already stressful existence is making me scared of being scared.

I'm a phobia-phobe. I'm afraid of fear itself.

What's scaring me now is wondering, where does this road lead? Will I just keep getting worse as I get better?

Hi San,

I hope you continue to feel better and better. And I'm inspired by your decision to write to your senators. You are right, it feels good to do something, even something small. I haven't begun to do much politically yet, so that's why I'm saying you are inspiring to me. I'm letting the situation scare me into my hole. You're peeking out and doing what you can. I can see how that feels empowering. And empowerment helps with CPTSD.

Impressed.

Papa Coco.

Bach, and Little Bach,

I'm so sorry to hear of the long EF. (I just made a connection: We call periods of emotional flashbacks EF, and that's also how NOAA measures tornadoes, as EF 1 through 5). That's one of those anomalous coincidences that I think are helpful, because of what you said, that you don't know what brought this EF on, nor why it's hanging around. I've always thought of these EFs as weather fronts, which helps me a lot to not take responsibility for them as if I wanted them. After a lifetime of people telling me to "just get over it" and asking "Why do you keep letting it bug you?" I now see these EFs as storms that I didn't decide to have. I don't always understand where they come from, I don't know how long they'll stay, and all I can do is hang on until they subside and I can assess the damages. To me, EFs are storms, and we don't always know what causes them.

I'm very sorry to read that you're in one of those storms now. I hope you continue to lean on the forum for comfort. By the comments I'm seeing, you have a lot of friends here on the forum who care about you. I care about you also. I hope knowing that helps ease the frustration of the storm.

PC

Hope,

Good to hear you are getting things done today and that it feels good.

That's Interesting how AI helped you assess the notes from your mom. That AI is turning out to be quite a global gamechanger.

Enjoy getting things done! That is a good feeling.

PC

[Self]

Hi SH,

I am rereading An Introduction to IFS by Richard Schwartz. The more I understand the various personalities that live within me, the more I am able to love them. And as I love them, I somehow feel more love for myself now too. Actually, I should write it as my Self.  It's said the adult learner retains 15% of what we are taught. So, I figure that if I read the really good books 8 times--with breaks between each read--, then I'll retain 100% of the content. Sounds like a joke, but it works for me.

Once I'm done rereading Intro to IFS, I'm going to reread The Others Within Us by Robert Falconer. Falconer does a really good job explaining how these rogue parts can move about between people and how actual exorcisms done by actual therapists actually work.

We do seem to have similar interests and understandings. To me, quantum physics are bigger and more real than the Newtonian physics that define the Mechanical Universe are. Like Newtonian physics are a smaller subset of the larger universe.

Studies on ancestral trauma are fascinating. And on Organ transplants, and on twins separated at birth living nearly identical lives without even knowing the other existed at all. Paranormal, and energy studies are fascinating.  We are all connected.

This is fun stuff to talk about and ponder and it seems to be becoming a lot more mainstream reality than it used to be. I think more people DO believe in the paranormal things like ghosts and aliens now than don't. As for me, I've seen and experienced enough inexplicable things that it's all just becoming normal to me now. Which is good. We accept what we are able to accept. So the more I learn about the unseen realities beyond Newtonian Physics, the more increasing capacity I have to learn even more.

As for me on this topic of IFS parts and quantum entanglement:
These teachers are helping me continually shrink my EFs. My EFs don't last as long as they once did, and they don't come quite as often. To me, I was damaged in body, mind and soul. So, I need to heal body, mind and soul. These recent teachings by these trauma therapists are moving that same direction. Falconer says it anytime he speaks publicly, that healing from trauma works best with a spiritual component. Not spiritual only, but all three. Body, mind and soul. Speaking only for myself now, this holistic approach is proving very helpful as I work to gain control over my own agency.  For me, being able to finally accept the possibility that parts can possess us during times of weakness, dissociation, or anesthesia, has opened me up to accepting a lot more possibilities for healing.

PC

Narckiddo,

All I can do is shake my head when I read of your mom's antics. They would be funny if they weren't so sad. I am always impressed with people like you and many of the rest of us who came from similar environments and, rather than becoming like them, we took the high road and learned how to be better people because of them.

I'm glad you have this forum to vent this stuff on. It drives us crazy if we take it personally, (Which I did, and that's why I went crazy and then joined this forum to get some sense of reality to my life).

It's refreshing that you have a good clear eyes-wide-open witness to your parents and their not-so-loving ways. I hope our OOTS body of empathetic souls are a help to your sanity, (as this body of people is a help to mine).

Starting Healing,

Wow, your family dynamic is a bit like mine. I was not adopted, but I had 4 siblings from the same gene pool but so help me I swear we each originally came from different planets. Even our health issues are all over the map.

You said something above that really sparked my interest. You said, "I'm really thinking that perhaps the idea of spiritual possession isn't just lip service." I don't know if you were serious, but if that is actually a wonder of yours, it is brought up in Dr. Robert Falconer's book, The Others Within Us. He teams up with dr. Richard Schwartz, who invented IFS therapy, and expanded on our inner parts. This sounds crazy, I know, but he has evidence from his 40 plus years of providing trauma-informed therapy, to sound compelling. In IFS, we learn that we have many parts within us. Many, many inner children, each with their own influence over our lives. Always meaning to help, but often because of their limited compartmentalized views of life, they end up tripping us up by accident. Schwartz started out talking about them as if they all were born inside of us, but Falconer believes the ocasional IFS part comes to us from somewhere else. He references the religious beliefs of possession and says that scientifically, he believes it's true. I was most intrigued in his book when he said that we humans are sometimes left with our borders unguarded, like when we are under anesthesia, or in a seriously dissociated state, as many of us are during CSA. During the times when we are "out of our mind" our borders are open, and Dr. Falconer believes that's when visiting IFS parts move in. His claim goes on a bit deeper, citing that he believes the world lost a valuable practice when we stopped doing exorcisms. Those of us in western civilizations think this is religious stuff, but Falconer isn't religious, he's an experienced psychologist who says he's helped a lot of people who he believes had other people's IFS parts in them after a surgery or sexual abuse.

I, personally, keep my belief system open. I see the world as a salad of possible scenarios, and, at this point in time, we humans aren't fully able to know which scenarios are real and which are hooey. So I give every theory a voice until somehow one of them proves itself right or wrong. Until proven diferently, I'm a fan of Falconer's writing.

I just wanted to say, IFS part possession or spiritual possession is absolutely not off the table when talking with me. It's as possible as anything else.

My wife had a brother. A sick, narcissistic, severely alcoholic, drug addicted brother. He was my age. He was a huge problem for the whole family. At times he would be "behaving himself" like a decent person for a while, but when he started to become dangerous, we knew it because we could see his countenance change. His face would darken. The word that best described is Jeckyl/Hyde transformations would be Evil. He looked like evil was entering his body. We knew bad things were about to happen. So the idea of spiritual possession as a scientific reality rather than a religious belief is easy for me to believe.

I recommend that book to anyone who wants a deeper understanding of IFS parts and their influence on our lives.

Recently I also read Attuned by Thomas Hubl, and somewhere in his teachings, he stated that adoption doesn't necessarily remove us from the ancestral trauma that comes down through families. Even those who have been adopted into families can find themselves wrestling with the ancestral traumas of the family they were adopted into. 

I like to keep my curiousity turned on full. I like exploring all the possibilities and giving each one credibility when they come from credible sources. Hubl, Schwartz, Falconer...these people have proven themselves to have information that is helpful to us, so...it's entirely possible that spiritual possession might be real, even in non-religious realms.

Just sayin'.

Dalloway,

Your post touches my heart deeply today. Loneliness has always been my lifelong sorrow also. Being utterly alone in an overcrowded world.

I agree with you that I also know that this isn't my fault. The loneliness has a mind of its own and it stays with me no matter how intellectually I "understand" it as a symptom of trauma. But, like you say, my heart still feels lonely even though my head says there's a reason for it.

If it helps, your entire post made it deep into my heart today. I feel the pain of loneliness for you as well as I do for myself.

I've been on a rampage to learn as much as I can lately about trauma and healing. I've been reading book after book about it. Some of the modern psychologists that we all trust, like Richard Schwartz, and Thomas Hubl are homing in on the loneliness of trauma more than ever. In Attuned, Hubl says It isn't the abuse that traumatized us as children, it was having to endure the abuse alone that traumatized us.

Loneliness is the greatest pain I know. And your post really said it well and really touched my heart this morning. The letter you wrote to your mom at age 10 really hit me hard. I am touched by your sincerity and your desire to connect with other people. When I was a young boy, my mom did say "I love you" a lot, but she didn't behave like it. I was treated more like a chore or a problem she had to deal with. I would occasionally ask her, "Why do you love me?" She would casually respond, "Because I'm your mother. I have to love you."  That answer never made me feel very loved, but it does help me to connect my own drama with yours so that I can empathize and share this moment with you, even if it's over the internet.

One of the conundrums I deal with is I don't like the loneliness, and yet I intentionally isolate myself. I don't feel safe around other people. I feel safe alone. Nobody to criticize me or make me give up my life for theirs. The dichotomy is stressful. I feel alone so I isolate. I want friends, but I get nervous around them. So I bike alone. I kayak alone. I walk alone. I sleep alone. I want love but I don't feel safe unless I'm alone.

I'm following a lot of the current authors who are beginning to turn their attention on our connections to each other. Lack of connection caused our CPTSD. Like it or not, the loneliness became a defining attribute of our lives. So their new tack, as trauma psychologists, is to encourage me to love myself, and love my loneliness, and accept it as one of the things that made me who I am. They believe that as I learn to stop fighting against the loneliness, it will finally begin to heal. Accepting it as something we didn't want, but we got it anyway, gives us permission to start to let it go. I'm in the first week of practicing what they're teaching. I suspect that if I can keep it up, my own dark loneliness will start to ease up a bit. They say that what we resist persists. I resist loneliness so it persists. If I can accept it as a part of me, I can stop resisting it, and it will, in theory, dissipate.



This is the magic of this OOTS forum. We can be alone together. It still hurts, but knowing I'm feeling as alone as you are makes me feel not so alone with the loneliness. That statement probably only makes sense to us CPTSD folks.

Hi TV

I just read through your journal as you worked through the process of going No Contact with your family. I apologize for not being on the forum for a few months and missing all those posts: At one point you asked if others had gone NC with their FOOs and I just wonder if you are still curious about how some others have done this.

I went full NC with my FOO in 2010. It's been 15 years since I've technically not heard from any of them. (Technically meaning: Occasionally, I receive anonymous hateful birthday cards with no return address and I feel pretty sure I know which mentally ill narcissistic psychopath sibling is sending them to me. My wife and I laugh about them and we put them in a box in case we ever need to prove she's never stopped harassing me. I am only EF'd for about a week each time I receive one of those hate cards, but all in all, I feel REALLY GOOD that I don't care enough to let the EF get too serious anymore). I went NC without leaving a note. During a phone call with my aging dad who was screaming at me over one of the lies my sister had told him, I knew it was time to stop putting it off. In a calm, sober tone, I gently said, "I love you very much dad. Goodbye." I hung up, and after about a week of ignoring his phone calls, I simply changed my phone numbers and email addresses. I put mirror film on the front windows of my house so I could see out but they couldn't see in (just in case ANY family friend or relative might come to harass me, I could pretend I wasn't home).  In my particular family, a goodbye letter would have only given them something to bash me with. I took the advice of the authors that teach how to deal with narcissists, and I didn't announce my departure. I just hung up. Like that old joke, "I didn't go away mad. I just went away."

The first thing that happened to surprise me was: I've always wanted to write the story of my life, sharing the abuse I took for 50 years, but no matter how hard I tried, I could never get past the writer's block. A few days after going full NC with my entire family, including nephews, nieces, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and any family friend who ever knew my family, my writer's block crumbled like an overflowing dam. My creativity suddenly exploded into reality. It turns out that my fear of those miserable, judgmental monsters (aka; my family) were the source of my writer's block. I spent the next several years writing. I wrote three novels. My family had been my curse all along and I just didn't realize how deep their boney fingers could reach into my soul. The true depths of their abuse on my life became obvious when they were no longer a part of my life. That's when I finally began to flourish. It was a shock. A good shock.

The second thing I noticed about finally going NC, was my recurring nightmares of not being able to escape or keep up...ended. Ended. For 50 years I had recurring dreams that my legs were too heavy to move and a vicious animal was coming at me, OR my legs were too heavy to move and all the people I loved were leaving me and I couldn't keep up. (My trauma is defined by my sense of abandonment. I always feel unprotected and unwanted). Those dreams which were almost nightly for 50 years simply ended when I went NC with my FOO.

After 15 years of Full NC I have not experienced so much as ONE single thought of ever reconnecting with anyone. I have not only been glad I walked away, but I've been sorry I didn't do it sooner. I was 50 in 2010. I spent 50 years being their whipping post. I couldn't go to college because my traumas were so intense I couldn't complete a course. My life turned out okay, but it felt like it wasn't my life. I've retired from a lucrative factory job, but I never wanted to be a factory worker. I can't complain, because things turned out okay, but I'll always wonder what life would have been like had my FOO not dictated every moment of it for me. To me. At me.

I hope your experience with NC gives you the peace that you hope it does, or, like with me, I hope it even exceeds your hopes. My writer's block breakthrough and the end to my chronic nightmares were bonuses for me. I hoped I'd feel free from their lies. I got that and so much more.

When anyone asks why I went NC, I say "Because my family finally got so ugly that even I couldn't love them anymore."