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Wanted to send you some warmth and comfort, too, sanmagic 7.  I can relate to much of what you wrote, about escaping so completely into an alternate reality (for me, it was elaborate fantasies that felt real, and eased the pain of what was actually going on by simply leaving it).  I was also so struck when you wrote about "ninjas of trauma leaping out of the dark sweeping my legs out from under me..."  As the others have said, it is NOT something you can just get over (how could you possibly just "get over" unexpected attacks by ninjas?!).  Rather, our brains are reacting as any brain would, when it's been exposed to overwhelming experience.  I hope you can hear all the love and support here, and give yourself the compassion and gentle kindness that you absolutely deserve, and have always deserved.   

Thank you, Not Alone.

My therapist keeps reminding me that I couldn't leave... at 5 or 10 or even 15. "It's not like you could go and check yourself into a hotel, right?"  Right.  But now, a few weeks shy of 50, I can.  And I'm trying.  Packing and re-packing my bags, trying to figure out how to get out and where to go.  Figuratively, of course.  The escape from the hellscape of my childhood home is one that has to happen in my own heart and mind. 

There are days when I don't know how I can endure this pain, and I see why I've kept so busy all these years:  Perfecting, planning, performing.  All to avoid THIS.  This feeling, right now, of crippling desolation.  A caving in, a collapse of all hope.  Utterly alone.  THIS feeling that I have been running from for decades.  Here it is.  I can finally feel it.  Finally hold it.  Endure it.  My therapist says I never could have survived this feeling as a child.  She says I would have developed a chronic illness, possibly died.  This may be true. 

I have tried, for a while now, to go back and get myself out.  I've always had an active imagination, an alternate fantasy life I dip into when things are too dreary to endure.  Lately, I've used my imagination to time-travel.  Back to that time, when I was 10 or 12 years old, when the really scary things were happening and I had no one to tell.  In my imagination, I try to imagine a way out for myself.  What if I just ran away?  What if I told someone?  I walk through these scenarios in my mind, but they never work.  If I tell, they lie and then berate me, maybe beat me.  I can feel the blows.  If I run away, where do I go? I have no money.  They bring me back, and then maybe they send me away to get me "fixed" like they did with my brother.  I lose the mother I believe I adore.  She turns away from me, cold, like she always is if I complain or get sad or angry.  She's done with me.  And without her, without her love, I would die.  All hope would go out like a candle being extinguished. 

My therapist says that there was no escape, back then.  She says that I managed to survive through the only possibly avenue of escape that was available to me:  To bury all my needs and feelings and pain, and become the golden girl of the family, the caretaker for all of them, the over-achiever whose accomplishments would serve as proof to the world (and to ourselves) that we really were OK after all.  Better than OK, in fact: Special, not like the others. 

The world seemed to agree that I was special.  I made sure that I excelled at everything.  That I looked right and that I won the right awards and knew the right people.  I became the little narcissist that my narcissistic father wanted me to be.  And then, one evening, a few years ago, I was standing in a glittering ballroom, having been nominated for a prestigious award, when the world collapsed.  I was actually walking on a red carpet (yes a red carpet!) when it hit me and and I finally heard my pain.  It was just a little voice that said, "You are garbage. You are nothing. You are loathsome." So I drank myself into a blackout and remembered very little after that.  The glittering night that might have been the pinnacle of my life/career became the night when I started waking up to everything.  And everything has been better/worse/so much harder since then. 

Each day, each week, each month, I uncover new layers, dig deeper, deeper, deeper.  I hear myself.  I actually hear myself.  It's incredibly confusing at times, trying to figure out who I actually am and what I actually feel and think and need, when I've spent a lifetime in a sort of foggy dream that my family spun around all of us.  In that dream-fog, you play your part and you keep quiet about your fears and your feelings.  You play your role.  Mine was golden child.  My brother was the scapegoat/rebel.  Mom was the martyr. Dad was the hero/bully.   And you get so good at playing that role that you no longer realize that it's a role; you forget that it's not actually YOU.  When I first started reading about this, in Alice Miller's book, "The Drama of the Gifted Child," it was like a lightning bolt of truth shearing open my world.  She wrote about a "false self" that is created, because the parents are unable to mirror the true self - the one with needs and feelings.  And we believe that we ARE this false self.  Shedding the false self, for me, is a slow and painstaking process.  Totally uncomfortable and strange (but also wondrous, at times), like learning a strange new skill, a new language, or writing with the wrong hand. 

But I keep going, because I know I can't go back.  I can't un-see what I've seen.  I can't un-hear what I've heard from my deepest, saddest self.  So on I go, on this strange, strange journey, hoping for a break in the clouds here and there, hoping to eventually find a new and safe home in my heart to settle down in.  Hoping to find others who would dwell with me forever in truth, even when truth collapses us in grief, who will hang on with me while the pain runs through us and eventually leaves us, still standing, finally aware of how perfect and beautiful we actually are.

Just want to chime in with my support, too, Larry.  I am also trying to drink less, and it's NOT easy - lots of emotions emerging that used to be covered by numbing out with drink (and food, too).  I so admire your courage to walk this path.  I think most people would choose the easier (less alive, less aware) path.  But I think that is more like sleep-walking than living a full life.  My belief is that this harder path is going to lead to a far richer one.  I am sorry to hear about your nightmares.  For me, facing my demons has meant an extremely intense dream-life, with bizarre and vivid dreams emerging since I started digging deeper into my recovery.  My therapist said that there is a lot of processing going on while we dream, and she advised that I try to listen to my dreaming self, to learn what it was trying to tell me.  So I'm trying to do that.  My hope is that my dreaming self is working through some things that I can't do while awake.  And I hope this is true for you, too.  Sending you tons of support from someone who is on a similar journey....

Thank you, rainydiary, blueberry, and Armee, for the kindness and support.  It helps.  Armee, I'm so sorry for the grief you endured when your mother was in the hospital.  And that you also had to endure people misunderstanding you completely at that time.  I can relate to that so very much. 

Thank you, Armee.  It's nice to hear from someone who can relate, and I'm so glad for you that you have been released from this pain.  It's so good to have that validation.  Most people assume that I'm sad that my parents are ill, not realizing that I'm sad that they are still around to torment me, that I am stuck with caring for people who did not care for me. 

And yes, I will be sad when they are gone, and I am sad that they are suffering now.   But the true sadness is for the fact that they were such horrible parents to begin with, and that they robbed me of myself and my feelings for decades.  It feels taboo to say all this, in our culture that likes to pretend that all families that "look good" are actually good families.  NOT true, of course.  And it makes it all the more insidious, all the harder to put a finger on, because my family looked SO GOOD in so many ways (aside from my brother, the scapegoat and "identified patient").  And I helped us look really good, making all the right decisions and parroting (and believing) all the family lies... until something in me gave way and I just couldn't do it anymore. 

Feeling incredibly set off after spending 2 days taking care of my mother.  I've been doing so much intense work in recent months (working with my excellent therapist), and I've been keeping my FOO at a distance in order to have space to heal.  But my mother needed help with a surgery, which meant I had to spend 2 full days and 2 nights with her.  And now, back home in my safe place, the backlash is fierce.  Such emotional pain that it's hard to move, hard to focus, hard to keep going.  I have no impulse to harm myself, but the days are long and brutal.  I stopped drinking over a month ago, which removed one of my major crutches.  I believe this has helped me make some big strides in my healing (facing my feelings rather than numbing them each evening), but I would not call this fun.  I keep saying, "Not drinking feels easy.  Facing myself feels HARD."

Without alcohol, my mother's brutal, callous gaslighting was even harder to handle.  With more healing under my belt, and more access to my own feelings, my FOO's emotional abuse is laid bare in all its horror.  As my T said, there is no way I could have coped with this level of pain as a child.  I would have died or becoming terribly ill.  So I became the perfect, golden child, proof to the world that we were indeed a "good" family, and not a toxic lie:  A loveless marriage, my narcissistic father cheating for years with a neighbor (my best friend's mother, and I was the only one who knew), my terrifying older brother abusing me in every possible way (acting out his own pain and rage at being emotionally abandoned by our parents), my mother anxious and depressed - the eternal "child" who could cope with nothing and mocked or criticized or shamed or fled from us if we expressed any feelings that challenged her fragile ego. 

When I finally fled my childhood home, after college, it was because my brother was so terrifying in front of my friends that they refused to stay at my house.  My parents were out of town, so I went to my aunt and told her.  She just smiled and shrugged.  So I went to a friend's mother, who heard my story and insisted I stay with her.  I went home and packed my bag and moved in with her.  When my parents heard that I had left the house, they were furious:  With ME.  Not my brother, of course.  He wasn't the one spilling the family's dark secrets to others, so he wasn't to blame.

Fast-forward a few decades: My brother now lives a marginal life of addiction and rage, appearing now and then to ask for money or verbally abuse us all.  My narcissistic father eventually spiraled into full-blown bipolar disorder, after losing all their money (they had been quite wealthy) on risky investments.  He also lost the beautiful family home, which broke my heart. As the uber-responsible middle child, it was my job to rescue them.  I worked for the past several years with lawyers and banks, cleaning up my father's disasters and fearing that he might go to jail for criminal activities.  I now care for my two frail, fragile, depressed parents - my father now a sad old man (prematurely aged at only 78) living in assisted living and stable only with lots of psychiatric medications, my mother a demanding, entitled child of 77 in an elder apartment.  Both are well-cared for.  Both live in the dream of denial they have always inhabited.  My sister is my only ally in the family, the only one who views this nightmare for what it really is (she is also the only one other than myself who is getting therapy and working on her s***) .

I struggle with guilt for not doing more for my parents, even though I manage all their affairs and medical care, with my sister's help.  I am enraged at these now-pathetic old people who had such power over me and abused that power so egregiously, warping me into a perfectionist robot who hated herself and felt none of her feelings for decades.  And there will be no reckoning, no release.  They will never "see" me.  They will never comprehend what they have done.  They will just die one day, and I'll be sad and also free.  And my pain and rage is my own, and I have to find a way to heal it. 

I'm working with ideal parent figures lately, and finding this to be a great solace.  I need someone - even an imagined someone - to hold me in this crippling pain.  I can't hold it all myself.  It's just too much.

Just want to add to this chorus: I believe in you too, Larry.  And I'm thinking of you too.  Your courage to face what scares you inspires me, as I can relate SO much to just wanting to hide, drink to make it all disappear.

It is phenomenally courageous, as Papa Coco said, to move ahead even what you are afraid.  And when you seek out help despite the pain from your past - this makes you brave, not broken.  I'm cheering you on!! 

[Bach,]

Thank you, Dante, Papa Coco, and Bach, for the supportive replies! 

Bach, Annie Grace's website is here: https://thisnakedmind.com/  I really like her first book, "This Naked Mind," and I've also started listening to her podcast and it's very good, too.

Hello to all.  Just wanted to post here about a change I have recently made.  I stopped drinking a week ago, following a health scare which I know (in my gut) is related to alcohol, even if my doctor has no clue (of course I didn't admit to her that I'm drinking like a fish!).  I have spent most of my life self-medicating with food and perfectionist over-achievement, and then switched to alcohol when I became a single mother to a very high-need three-year-old, working full-time and coping with a very angry ex-husband.   Ten years have now passed, and I find that I'm drinking more and more, even though life has become much better and easier in many ways.  I am remarried to a loving, supportive partner and have a much better relationship with my ex.  My child is healthy and happy (if a moody teenager!). But the CPTSD that permeates my cells is not resolved.  Interactions with my FOO, though I try to limit them, often send me into a dark and dissociated place.  The urge to squash and avoid my feelings and body sensations is powerful.  And I don't want to do that anymore.  I want to be here.  I want to exist, feel my feelings, hear my thoughts, have choices and clarity.  I don't want my evenings to revolve around how I will locate the next drink, and how I will manage to stop drinking and go to bed.  And how I'll hide all this from my friends, husband, and daughter.  I want to model health and self-love, not the self-annihilation that I learned from my own mother.

I've been reading the work of Annie Grace, and finding her perspective very helpful.  I wonder if any others in this forum have found her approach helpful too? I'm guessing she is somewhat controversial, because she is somewhat critical of traditional 12-step recovery programs, but for me, her words and approach really resonate.  (I also was abused as a child by my older alcoholic brother, who used his AA "recovery" against me, so 12-step groups are huge triggers for me. I know there are many good people in AA and that it helps them heal, but my brother is not one of them.) 

The other thing that is helpful is finding new things to replace the regular evening "activity" of drinking.  I'm focusing on cooking healthy meals and really pausing to listen closely to (and appreciate) my daughter, my husband, and... my dog!   I'm also joining in some online meditation and bodywork/breathwork classes. And, of course, now I also have this group of people who will listen, not judge me, and possibly even relate to me. 

Thanks for listening to me, believing me, relating, and caring.  And thanks for telling me about your own struggles and healing.  It helps so much.

Thanks for your intro post, cynicalchicky.  (I like your name, by the way!)  My heart aches reading what you went through, but it (ironically) also helps me to read your story, because I know that I'm not alone.  The details of my story are different, but the pain and isolation of abuse by our families of origin feels the same.  I'm pretty new here, too, and everyone has been so incredibly kind and generous.  I look forward to hearing more from you.

Welcome (from a fellow middle child)!  So glad you are here.   

Hi Ronja. I'm so glad that you are here.  Your post really resonated with me.  Like you, I grew up in a family where emotions were forbidden.  In my case, they were mocked or ignored or angrily criticized (called selfish).  Or they were used against me by my narcissist father, who would be charming and sympathetic one moment, then turn on you the next.  I learned that emotions were dangerous, so I stopped feeling most of them.  I even found myself annoyed and critical of people who did express their emotions, because this seemed weak and even false to me (of course, I was wrong about this!).  When I started working on this in therapy, I told my therapist that I felt like a robot.  That's how cold and emotionless I felt.  Like a machine, not a human being.  I thought there was a piece missing in me, and that I was so different from other humans that I could never join in and be part of humanity.  I'm new to this recovery, so I'm still struggling to trust other people, and I'm still struggling to feel my buried emotions, but when I do, I find such peace and joy.  It's like learning a whole new language, or discovering a treasure that I could not have imagined existed. 

Just wanted to chime in to say that I'm so inspired by you, Larry, and your courage in just showing up and being honest and seeking help.  I'm new here, too, and I was nervous about it at first, but have been amazed at the wisdom and kindness in this forum.  So glad you are here, too.  (And I can absolutely relate about using alcohol to cope.  You are certainly not alone in that struggle.)   

Thank you, Kizzie! I'll definitely check out that book. So grateful to you for providing this safe and loving place to heal and grow.