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It sounds as if your therapists have their own shadows to face, if they can't take somebody at their word as authorities of their own life experience that something like beauty is a dubious privilege.

I think it's brilliant that you know what you need, and I want to affirm that you do deserve understanding for it. When I had gone to a therapist, they talked over how I had no support system, insisting that I just needed to get out more, and what I said was, "I don't feel like you're really listening to me, so I want you to refer me to a colleague of yours who will."

It kind of reminds me of this rock star, Emilie Autumn, who's quite lovely--wrote a song about it--and self-injured as a way to warn prospective partners of her emotional instability.

I feel guilty that I find this important when there are real troubles in the world./quote]

That's like feeling emotionally guilty for having a bad flu when there are people dying of cancer or war. It's important because it needs to be processed, and it's important because it can be solved. Speaking from a Jungian (not a scholar of Jung, here, just a patient of a Jungian) perspective: if you deny the reality of your troubles, then your troubles will become real in a way that becomes out of the capacity of the psyche to recognize and manage.

I don't want to turn out like my mother who always talked about her past and how she was treated. Something I avoid telling my own children ( unless they ask).

That kind of reminded me of that Broadway show Next to Normal, where the daughter wonders if her parents "love each other or if they just fake it" which I think was a tragic side-effect of the parents holding back on a shared tragedy for which they basically had a baby to try to get over it: the daughter character doubted family love, fell victim to perfectionism just to feel worthy of existence, became drug-addicted and angry all the time...not that being honest to the point of telling her, "you should know we never really wanted you" would have been better; but being honest, and compassionate, some balance between that might have saved an innocent life a lot of grief. As these things do.

I also think my T must be pissed off for me mucking her around, it's about the 3rd appointment I've cancelled.

Would you be able to tell your T that, directly? "I keep thinking you must hate me for making appointments and cancelling." A good therapist would (having understood in the first place about mental instability from emotional inconsistency) probably be able to take you over to the real reason why.

When you work hard at becoming healthy, you realize what a small club you are in.

When you get so ill in the first place, that's already almost everyone out of the circle of empathic people. Narrowing that down to shared values and mutually beneficial chemistry...don't stop believing, I say. Compromise isn't required, especially if you feel that it's just not worth it. The best advice I ever heard about these transitions is to "love them on their way out of your life."

It ain't called simple post-traumatic stress disorder. 

I think it's a good thing that you can recognize the constellations of events, and articulate it so lucidly even if you do feel on fire. Hopefully that recognition can become a more helpful mechanism for the process or coping and recovery.

Thanks, everyone, for your replies! I guess that I intuited that my friend's narcissistic behavior was something that came about because of a lifetime of trauma, and that recovery in an appropriate space should be possible, or else I shouldn't be able to recover from all the grief and anger of my past either--where I also had needs that my family couldn't (or wouldn't) meet, and accused me of selfishness for not being willing to be frozen in silence for sexual abuse (in my mother's case, even though I was still silent about that specific thing, I did talk around it very loudly) or not willing to compromise my physical safety in my sister's case (since my mother was physically violent until, as my sister says, I'd gotten some "dirt" on my mother that apparently made my sister think that I had some power over my mother but really dirt just kept me feeling dirty--duh. )

Support was definitely too much to ask for. While I'm concerned for my narc friend's son, but not enough to bring myself to get into that space again...narc friend, I believe, didn't develop complex trauma for me to be post-stressed by.

But if there's some connection to the deep well of awfulness that childhood was or bullying at school, I don't now it yet. It's not even at the tip of my tongue or the corner of my eye.


I do feel better having typed it all out here, though. I also spoke to an offline friend of mine who knew her, and while she doesn't seem to understand that this very simple thing is distressing, she did mention that our mutual narcissistic friend was hospitalized earlier this year. If she was calling me for that kind of help, it's really not something that I have the resources, financial or emotional, or the time, or the energy for, even if I'm in a better position than she is by not actually being ill or injured enough to be hospitalized. I still feel ambivalent. If this is the reason, then she'll only contact and use me when she needs me, which is bad; but a need is still a need. But I couldn't take my needs being cast as wants.

[The following post may contain triggering material]

The following post may contain triggering material

So, a friend of mine called. I consider her a friend because she seemed to be the only one in the world the year before last who knew and remembered what it was like to live with emotional abuse and to have built up hatred for the person. I was trying to escape my older sister, who unlike me has a complete education and so more de facto rights to the money and property left by our mother. So, I obviously didn't have any plan or resources, and our social support only saw that I was angry and rebellious for no reason and would keep reminding me that she's family and we should stay together and I should make more effort to put aside my anger and reconcile because she's trying (when, in the way of becoming more honest and considerate and less silencing or robbing-of-agency or gaslighting...she wouldn't even begin to try.)

This friend took me in, we railed against the injustices of the world, mine with my sister, this friend with her drug-addicted ex-husband and a child that she had to support after the dissolution of that marriage and his wily ways of escaping paying child support or alimony...

And, I understand her "splitting" because shades of gray are what get us hoovered every time. I even understand too much to ever call her oversensitive, because the last thing anybody in the world needs is their perspective invalidated by the only person who can relieve their pain...

But the personal perspective that I stand by is that discouraging me from meeting with my extended family just because my sister uses the extended family to tell this friend of ours that I'm the one who's not right in the head...isn't as helpful to either of us as this friend thinks it is. It's not the extended family's fault that my sister annoys our friend. It's my sister's fault. And if our friend told me to be careful of the extended family in case they truly were being two-faced, then I would be careful. Instead, she went on for hours about how they extended family were such awful people...and she's only met them in person one time for a couple of hours.


There was also the matter that I was getting on my feet financially while I was sleeping on her couch. But whatever little I earned, I would spot for meals for all three of us when I could, and even the electric bill. I considered she and her son the family that I never had.

But when I mentioned an invite to a movie from another friend who was back in town after years of living abroad, which was why I would be gone one evening, and she snapped back that I should have asked my richer friends for help instead of the single mother struggling to provide for her son, but at the same time I shouldn't trust my richer friends because they're "rich" from having family support in bases abroad and wouldn't ever think of me as one of their family, so I shouldn't go to the movies with them, and it's selfish of me to keep on working all the time and cutting her off when she needs to complain about her husband more because she can go on for hours about that...when I could be earning money for us, for our expenditures, except that she "knew" that I wouldn't do that because I selfishly...bought a small pack of biscuits all for myself one time.

This was all so confusing that I left, because I had found a dirt cheap place with a phenomenally friendly proprietor.

A few weeks later, she calls me on my celphone because I don't have a landline, and asks if I'm okay. I lie, "I'm okay. How are you?" And she hangs up.

I lied because I actually hadn't eaten in four days and was stealing drinking water from the franchise cafes and fast food restaurants, because I didn't have money.

Things have gotten remarkably better since then, but it still really rubbed me wrong that she only ever wanted to have a one-sided conversation.

So, every time she calls now, I don't answer. She could send me a text message, and I have answered those.

This time she called, and I just don't want to answer in case it becomes a one-sided conversation again or a minutes-devouring rant. It could be her 13-year-old son borrowed her phone and called me (as a last resort, I'm sure) for the millionth time that she threatened to just kick him out and make his way out in the streets because he can't keep to house rules and she can't abide that after all she's been through, maybe, I worry, she's followed through this time and I can't help him because I think that it's her calling. Or it could be that she's furious that I texted another friend asking after the title of a book that she told me about three years ago, another mutual friend that she had "split black" two years ago. Or, maybe she really needs a little cash to tide her over...and what would I be if I didn't answer? She let me into her home and let me sleep on her sofa for four months, and I didn't pay rent. Although, nothing will convince her that it isn't my fault that she couldn't pay rent because she chose to help me, and now I'm not doing any favor in kind but just shut her out when I didn't need her anymore (more like when I couldn't handle her anymore, but four out of every seven days starving through my freelance digital writing jobs is, I predict, something that she'll turn into a competition of who suffered more rather than evidence proposed to the contrary of that I used her.)

I don't know. I just don't know. I'm not punishing her for conducting that previous phone conversation the way she did; I can't even bring myself to tell her why I won't take her calls anymore, which would rather be conducive to any lesson I wanted to impart someone. It's really just that I can't face the threat of another one-sided conversation, even at the risk that I could have done something to help.

Right now, I've held down the fort financially well enough for the past year, I'm eating every day quite well and don't even feel guilty about succumbing to my deviant biscuit addiction once a week (but no, I'm a monster...a Sesame Street Cookie Monster...), it's just that I can't quite afford another session with my therapist where I could possibly get a push in some direction to point out why answering her call is really so impossible.

As I said, she called again, and I didn't answer, but I still feel like a wreck that she called at all. Not really a wreck, more like a fender-bender.

I don't know about mixing meds, but I've been on antidepressants alone and my experience was that they do lower the emotional defenses so that if you're not in a safe, healthy, supportive environment or if you even continue to have memories about it that aren't processed in talk therapy, then the effect of the meds is really "worse before it gets better." Add to the complications that the symptoms of depression (oversleeping, forgetfulness, not only feeling emotionally bad) can vary in intensity for the antidepressant to target, and not everybody's biochemistry is the same...

I was able to feel the peak effects within about two weeks, though, I've read it takes three months for the neurological damage from depression to be repaired. The psychiatrist also said that you don't get high on zoloft, which is either a total lie or I'm a boisterously happy person by nature (I think it's a lie.)

Thank you immensely for the warm welcome This past year has actually been  ray of sunshine after the storm, and I would definitely want to spread that around where it's most needed.

Greetings, all! New year, new life.

I have actually barely noticed those significant markers such as new years, or even birthdays and anniversaries or any sort, because the past decade has been...a challenge, one that I can only say I was lucky to survive.

I've had the good fortune to start to get away from that, and maybe it started ten years ago with a new perspective on my family's dynamics, but only in the past year have I been able to strike out on my own. It's been difficult, though very well worth it, and I just want to be able to sustain this newfound whatever-is-this-it's-so-warm.

I've only been diagnosed and treated for depression, but am also given to disordered eating, imaginary friends (I'm in my mid-20's), dropping out of school even though I love learning and have a variety of academic interests, and going way off the rails in my career even though I should be doing everything to keep up with it considering that I'm too undereducated and unstable to lay the foundation for financial security (and I live in a nation with developing world standard infrastructure.)

Somehow, I'm happy and I get by.



I'd like to introduce you all, too, to my imaginary support team (except for those two, the creepy ones, they're jerks):

Mr. Foxglove oscillates between an urban survivalist and a romanticized pirate captain. He doesn't have a crew. I refer to him as my Animus because my therapist is a Jungian and Mr. Foxglove and I have a romantic bond. I guess he's the part of me that fulfills the need for unconditional love, but I keep wondering if he's a splinter of my psyche then where did he learn love from? It's just weird.

Captain Marigold is some sort of nobility but she takes to the high seas on her ship and does pirating anyway. Being the go-between the landlubbers and the outlaw seafarers, she's big on ideas such as Honor and Duty but isn't all idealistic and I hope to learn more from her, that is, if she (like all my imaginary friends) are going to be popping up as dissociated shards of my own psyche. If I can come to the same conclusion just by living life and holding the pieces of my mind together with spit and gumption, then fine.

Lady Hawthorn is a sort of psychopomp who seems to appear when I'm at a low. She doesn't talk. She's kind of creepy.

Rose has so many moods and faces that I can't fathom what she's "for" psychologically speaking.

Poppy is my pet dragon. It doesn't talk, either, it just breathes fire at my anxieties and eats up pieces of my heart before they float off to somebody else. (Which, horrifyingly, I can witness and have to find a way to act normal or translate it into real-life relationships with words and actions, not just, "My invisible pet dragon doesn't like you.") In a way, Poppy is my heart, or my personal boundaries, or something, I don't know. It has reactions more than it has a personality.

Rafflesia is my adversarial dragon. It's part reptile, part insect, part clockwork, and speaks insidiously destructive beliefs to me in the voice of my mother. I've gotten slightly better at winning arguments against it.

The names are all deliberately chosen by me to some extent, although they all have taken on lives of their own, so for example Mr. Foxglove had to do some insisting until I quit considering "Captain Kelp" as my name for him. I can't make them appear in my mind or before my eyes if they're not already there, I can't make them go away if I don't want them around, but at least I do know that nobody else can see them and, while I believe everything they say deserves consideration (even, or especially, Rafflesia, if only to engage in a belief-deconstructing debate) it's my responsibility alone to stand by what advice I follow in my life if that affects other people who aren't imaginary.