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Thanks so much for your reply Blueberry, and I'm so sorry to hear that you were harmed by that form of punishment as well. Yes, I healed from being sick, took the exam yesterday, and it went very well. I was eventually able to calm my Inner Child down by finding a fan fiction story about two mothers who adopted a little girl who had been badly hurt. In the story, they promise her that they will never physically punish her and she eventually feels safe enough to believe them.

I also used another strategy that I had been wanting to try for a long time and it worked very well. I wrote out a list of "House Rules," laminated them, and put them on my fridge. One of the rules is that there are no punishments in our house, and another one is that everyone's bodily needs (food, water, sleep, medicine, etc.) need to be met right away, no exceptions. My IC and I read the house rules together a few times, read a few chapters of the fan fiction, and got in some good cuddle time with her favourite stuffed animal and then she wasn't so afraid anymore.

I'm so sorry you were harmed as a child Blueberry and I really relate to not being able to read about or hear about that form of punishment. For about 25 years, I wasn't able to see the word, hear the word, or say the word without having a full blown panic attack. But as you say, things get easier with time and now I'm able to read, hear, and say the word out loud without feeling afraid. For me, it's become sort of like saying the word Voldemort. If you can say the monster's name, it loses its power.

Thanks again for checking in Blueberry and I wish you the best on your healing journey.

Hi all    I was extremely sick last weekend when I needed to prepare for a big upcoming exam. I ended up getting the medicine and rest I needed to heal, but I'm very behind in my exam preparation. I still have enough time to do decently well on the exam, but my inner child is terrified. She's convinced that it's her fault for getting sick and that she's going to be screamed at/spanked/punished for falling behind with homework.

I've been reassuring her for days that she's not in trouble, that I'll protect her, and that no one will hurt her, but she's still afraid. I've tried focusing her attention on all her wonderful qualities and all the things that make her feel safe. For some reason, nothing seems to work. She's convinced that someone (not me) is going to spank her and yell at her. She has an intense phobia of spanking as being harmed this way was such a huge and long-term part of her life; it's baked into her understanding of how the world works. No matter what I do to comfort and reassure her, the fear sticks.

Any advice would be much appreciated. 

Thank you so much Maria, Kizzie, and Papa Coco. It helps to know I'm not alone in what I've survived, but it's always so sad to hear that others have been harmed in similar ways. Tonight I spent two hours on the phone with two different help lines for this kind of abuse, and I finally said the word out loud for the kind of criminal my mother is. I called her that by name and it felt surreal. It's been so much easier to tell help lines that my father is one. But today was the first day that I ever called my mother what she is for what she did to my brother and me. I don't know how to feel, I don't know what to think. The truth is inconceivable. I needed to take a sick day from work tomorrow.

Thank you so much Maria, it means a lot <3

I am so incredibly angry that so many people did so many despicable things to my body for so many years. It started when I was at most 3, and the last time it happened I was 30. In my entire life, there was only one person who ever touched me who saw me as a full human being and had genuinely positive feelings toward me. And it was men AND women. As a kid and as an adult, it was men AND women. We need to talk about how anyone can do this of any gender. I've spent a lifetime being sad and I'm ready to be angry.

Thank you so much for all of your kind responses. It means the world to me to have my story heard and to know that people are capable of seeing me as a full person who just survived a bad situation. I don't know if we'll ever be able to completely eradicate intrafamily violence, but I know that many cultures around the world have far lower rates of violence against children than white North American culture. I hope my culture will look outwards and learn to treat children as full human beings who are deserving of human rights and respect. Again, thank you all for hearing my story <3

Last night I was studying psychology, and I learned the definition of human trafficking. For something to be human trafficking, there needs to be an act, a means, and a purpose, with the intention of profit. For years, I haven't had language to describe what my family did to me for about a year of my life. Now I know the right term for it was human trafficking. The act: transfer. I was transferred from one family member to another. The means: deception and abuse of vulnerability: I was deceived into thinking they would help me get a real job and I had almost no money, resources, or other support system. The purpose: forced labour. After I was transferred, I had to labour for no pay. I wasn't allowed to say no and I was physically prohibited from leaving the premises. And by forcing me to work for no pay, they made a huge profit. My family human trafficked me. In suburban North America. For a year. And I had no idea what was happening.

My wrists were never bound with rope. My mouth was never sealed with duct tape. I was bound mentally. With brainwashing, drugs, and alcohol. I was so abused that I thought I was lucky that they were protecting me from homelessness. I was so abused that I thought I was a shameful failure for not having a real job. I even had an online therapist at the time and I described everything that was happening to her. She made excuses for the abuse because the abusers were my family. I was paying her over a hundred dollars a week to be told that everything was actually fine and that I was lucky to have somewhere to live "for free."

From the time I was 4 years old, I never had a place to live for free. I was expected to work, and manage emotions, and soothe egos, and solve marital disputes, and act as a free therapist. From the age of 4. I was human trafficked as an adult so I was doing 20 times as much labour for free every day. I didn't have a place to live for free. I was just working for no pay so I could never leave.

It feels surreal. Like I'm describing someone else's life even though it's mine. I know that I'm smart, and funny, and a whole complex person with friends, and goals, and good memories of times spent with good people. Memories of being seen and treated as fully human. And luckily I survived long enough to escape. Nowadays I'm safe and free and I spend every day of my life with people who love me and treat me as a fully human equal. But I'm also a survivor of human trafficking. That's not my identity, it's just a part of my story. But I am a full, complex, intelligent, brave, loving woman who is also a survivor of human trafficking. Committed by my family. In North America.

I know I need to work on coming to grips with the fact that human trafficking is just part of a person's story, not their whole story or their whole identity. And I think our culture needs to work on that too.

TW: NPD family, life endangerment, violence induced disability, sensory loss, severe flashbacks, failing healthcare & social service systems

Hi all,

I first got my diagnosis in January 2016, when I first joined this forum. Over the past 7 years, despite seeking help, paying for help, and reading a bunch of books, violence and abuse has just kept happening again and again in my adult life. In 2022, my life was in immediate danger more times than my frazzled brain can remember anymore. Just like all those years ago when I first joined OOTS, my body is newly out of being trapped in violence from family and I'm back to no contact. 7 years ago, I couldn't find a psychologist in my region qualified to help me. With 7 more years of life endangerment and resulting permanent physical disabilities, my body and mind are more destroyed than ever before.

I think my saving grace in all of this is that I've finally learned that my family are a pack of extremely dangerous narcissists who are completely incapable of change, and that I will literally perish if I don't stay no contact with them for the rest of my life. The biggest challenge mentally now is coping with all of the flashbacks of almost dying again and again over the past year - especially now that my disabled body now serves as a constant reminder of the abuse.

Now that I've been free for 3 months and am making friends I care about again, I've found a reason to want to keep living. But if I ever slow down working and socializing enough that I, even for a few minutes, stop being completely dissociated, I start to lose the will to live again. I've completely lost faith in the medical and social service systems in my region. I've been begging for help for the past 16 years, since the first time I called child protection on my parents when I was 14, and help just never came. The most real help I've ever gotten was from watching informational (ie. not therapy) tiktoks from psychologists and social workers in the United States, from connecting with social workers online who are in other regions of my country, and from a poster on the wall in a women's shelter that explained what the cycle of violence is and how it works. I don't have the money for a psychologist right now, and the types of therapy I'm interested in trying (IFS, EMDR, Somatic, Coherence) are barely available in my region.

Back in the good old days, I used to have flashbacks 5-10 times a day and still be able to function. Now, if my mind is not constantly, CONSTANTLY, busy, I have a visceral flashback to a violent, often near death, experience every 30-60 seconds. I have no idea what to do. It helps to just communicate with other people who may actually understand what I went through, instead of with practitioners and crisis line operators who have never in their lives heard of someone's blood family doing anything like this. My sessions with any provider usually just result in me answering loads of unnecessary and inappropriate questions, satiating the practitioner's curiosity, and not being given any sort of recommendations of what to do except toxic positivity, grounding tools that used to work and don't anymore, or requests for me to give my consent to be anonymously mentioned in a textbook or have my sessions filmed.

This is pretty much the only place I've ever been where I don't feel like a freak, an alien, or as though I have an otherworldly, incomprehensible life. Even if you don't have any practical tips, thanks for reading and thanks for just being here. But if you do have ideas or suggestions of things that have helped you, please feel free to share them. I will try pretty much anything at this point. BUT please keep in mind, I only have 2 remaining senses (sight and hearing). I can no longer smell, taste, or feel my body or skin, so techniques based on any of those 3 senses only give me more flashbacks. I also do not consent to being asked or answering questions as to how my disabilities happened.

Thank you all. 

Thanks everyone for your helpful feedback. Things have actually turned out very well with my therapist. I expressed that the ISTDP approach wasn't working for me, and she was very receptive and supportive. For the last month we've switched over to AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy), which she also specializes in.

Even though it has "accelerated" in the name, my T assured me we would take things as slowly as I need to. We've been doing Inner Child work, and working on strengthening our therapist-client relationship. I've also been reading a book called It's Not Always Depression by Hilary Jacobs Hendel and I've found it very helpful. It explains how anxiety, shame, and guilt block us from experiencing our core emotions of sadness, joy, anger, fear, etc.

Working with my T to help my inner child express her core emotions has been groundbreaking for me. If anyone reading is looking for another tool to add to their tool belt, I would recommend checking out AEDP to see if it's right for you 

At the end of January, I started therapy with a new therapist who does ISTDP therapy. She also does CBT and DBT, and I can attest to this because her DBT based group therapy is great. However, in our individual sessions, we do visualization exercises that I don't find helpful because they're quite repetitive and formulaic. I'm thinking about asking her if we could stick to DBT based therapy in our private sessions, but I'm worried she will react badly.

Have you heard of ISTDP therapy before, or know the books of Jon Frederickson? If you have, what are your thoughts on it? Do you think it's worth it to continue with this therapist if she practices this type of therapy?

I recently reached a point in my career where I missed doing good work that helps people. In university, I trained to be a teacher and I worked in that field for a few years and really enjoyed it. But I soon realized that if I ever want to have children and own a home, teaching would not bring in enough money to do so. So I decided to leave teaching, and for the last few months I`ve worked at the head office of a clothing retailer. The money was much better but I hated the feeling of participating in selling overpriced products to the few who could afford them. And the job didn`t provide health insurance.

For almost 50 years, my family has owned a business selling home health care products at affordable prices to people from all walks of life. Their business model is anchored in the belief that because we`re a family business, we treat all our employees like family. There are employees who are not family members who have been with the company for 40 years and are very happy there. The pay is more than fair and the company provides health insurance.

Last week, I reached a point in my job at the clothing retailer where my heart just wasn`t in it anymore. The job was starting to make me feel very depressed so I quit. I missed having a job where I felt like I was doing something that really helped people. So I decided to reach out to my mother, who I haven`t spoken to for two and a half years, and ask her for a job.

At first, I wrote her a letter explaining the situation and maintaining that I did not regret taking the time and space away from her to heal from my childhood trauma. In her reply, she apologized for being an abusive parent and for any harm she caused me in the past. That was the first time she had ever acknowledged any wrong doing on her part or apologized for how she treated me during my childhood. She also offered me a job which I have taken.

The job makes me feel secure because I`m now doing ethical work that helps people for a fair wage - a job experience I`ve never had before. My relationship with my mother is better than ever because I`m able to be emotionally authentic with her without fearing I`ll get shut down or invalidated, and the fact that we mostly talk about work related projects creates a type of safe distance. I  feel like I should be jumping for joy at how things have turned out, but because of my past experiences with my mother, I`m mostly just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts or advice about reconnecting with a parent who was abusive in childhood. Right now, I`m under the impression that my mother really has changed after not being able to speak with me for two and a half years, but I`m worried that I`ll eventually be disappointed.

This is a practiced suffering, we are prepared.

This line so perfectly reflects how I feel as a person with CPTSD. Your writing is so wonderful Artemis!!

I think this is a great idea for a thread!  Every time I hug my dog, I think of how happy I am that I stayed alive long enough to get her.

An overt anti-Narcissist rock anthem 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ-_lz7wkoU

Part of the chorus:
"He can't resist the paranoid delusions of a narcissist
It doesn't matter anyways cause he's a self fulfilling prophesy
Of make believe"

Thanks for the support both of you  I didn't drink today! Just stayed home and watched movies. Phew! One day at a time I guess