Messages

DU - Here is my thought.  Anything. ANYTHING that you can look at and see and begin to have compassion for yourself is good. Semantics be damned.  Victim, survivor, target, scapegoat, Call it what you want.  What you call it doesn't matter.  What matters is that you begin to have some compassion and caring for yourself.

This?  Is what we lack. This? Is what we need. We need to care about ourselves.  We have sacrificed our lives in the pursuit of unobtainable love from unobtainable sources and for what?

I cheer you on. ANYTHING that makes you start to feel some compassion and caring for yourself? Be it your friend's story and your most appropriate horror? Whatever can take us over the line and into compassion for ourselves is great and I applaud.

I am so sorry for your friend.  But learning to love and care for ourselves is not selfish, as we have been told. It is what is wrong with us.

We do not love ourselves enough because no one ever loved us so we allow the same cycle to repeat over and over hoping for a new outcome.
And it doesn't work.

Until we get off the merry go round, and say honestly: Okay.  I was never loved.  I think I am loveable. I am not going to hang around with people who treat me like I am not loveable anymore?  We will never learn to love ourselves and have compassion.

Keep going.

Love VF

Thanks Samantha 19 and I too wish that for all of us.  It is so unfair to have to do all of this hard work after already working so hard our whole lives.  But this time the work we are doing is on us and for us. Completely different than the past! But is it easy?  I would never tell you that.  it has been one of the hardest things I have ever done.  But just wanting to is the first step. Once you decide you want to? Then you will head in a new direction. Blindly?  Yes, in my case.  Everyone in my family is Disordered. Except for maybe one brother. But as V says if we start looking for help?  We will find it.

V - Thank you and I have some thoughts on forgiveness.

There is a website luke173ministeries.org that helped me clarify my thoughts on forgiveness. Even God himself does not forgive us unless we first ask for it. And then commit to not do that wrong anymore.

So I am at peace knowing I should not, as a human, be asked to do more than even God Himself. And it is s 2 person process, not a one person process, as new age psychobabble would have you to believe. There must be remorse, request for forgiveness, and finally commitment to change in order for true forgiveness to take place. 

Acceptance?  Yes, I can do acceptance, in order to free myself up in order to keep honoring my own gift of life, and doing the best  I can with the gift of life I was given. I cannot become paralyzed and unable to move forward in my own life just because someone has wronged me and does not feel remorse, want forgiveness, and does not commit to change.  But I can accept what is. I CAN do that.

You are so right - that we must call things right and wrong.  Many therapists are not willing to do that anymore.  They call it "different."  I am fortunate to have found a therapist who does call right, right, and wrong, wrong.

One of the MOST important things that has helped me lately in my brain reprogramming is to think about what I would do if I was the other person.  Would I ever act like that?  Would I do what they have done to somebody, and most particularly would I do that to someone like me?  If the answer is no? Well, it is starting to help me have a whole new perspective on things.  One that I needed very badly. And that is, if I would not do this to them, then why in the world would it be okay for them to do this to me?

I know my own heart.  I know who I am.  That was never in question. But I simply did not value myself enough. And I had been programmed to think it was my JOB to take up the slack for others. To carry their load for them. To put up with and tolerate unbearable treatment. But no more. if I would not do it to them?  Then it is NOT okay.  And I am no saint.

Bu KNOW I am not Disordered. And I thank God daily for that.  There are 4 living generations in my family. And I don't know how I escaped? But there but for the grace of God go I. And I know God must have better plans for me than just tolerating abuse. I could spend the time He gave me in so many, much more productive ways. So that is what I am belatedly trying to do.

As I have stated more than once in my posts here in Recovery, the one thing I have found quite difficult about this journey towards recovery is that I have yet to find an author who can tell you HOW to do it.

This nothing against Pete Walker or any other author. But mostly authors help me to identify WHAT the problem is, and where I need to be when I get better, but very little on HOW to address it. Most authors I read focus on me and me alone.  But that's not how I got here.  I did not get here in a vacuum.  Other people were involved in this process of getting me to this point.  So I need, like bread, water and air some information on how to deal with these people moving forward.

And maybe no one can tell you how to do it, because maybe it really is a personal journey each of us must take alone. But I feel strongly there must be some commonality in the steps that one must take, because?  There is commonality in how we feel, what we have experienced, and suffered, and how we got here. So logically to me, since we all got to this place we find ourselves in pretty much the same way?  I feel there must be some sort of a map for us to get out, some general sort of feelings and experiences and actions we could take that would help one to get out.

So, I write my little bits and pieces here and there, as they come to me for HOW to do it, what to do. And they are only hopefully something that will be a spark for someone else, something that will have meaning and touch someone else who is struggling with this terrible struggle of what to do to get out of the struggle, and get to at least a plateau of peace, and to a place of flashback freedom. A place to at least climb up to and rest before moving on to the next leg up of the journey.

There are more things I would like to cover, and I hope to write more soon on these topics as all of these have bothered me tremendously over the last couple of years  in my own struggle towards recovery:

How To Stand Up For Yourself and Protect Yourself From Abuse

How To Start Learning To Want And Learn That It Is Necessary To Want

How To Pay Attention To Your Intuition And Gut Feelings And Why You Need Them

Why We Need To Have Fun And Be Silly

Why Gratitude Can Rescue Us On Bad Days

How To Identify Unsafe People And Why it Is Okay to Not Love Everyone

All of these topics have consumed me over the last year. As well as what I have already written about which was, Boundaries and How To Set Them, and this one.

So maybe these topics belong in another category like Recovery Journal because these are only things I am doing, and it doesn't mean they will work for anyone else.  But I know I feel better.  I know I have not had a flashback in months. And so?  I feel compelled to share what I am doing in hopes it will mean something to somebody.

Any way you slice it CPTSD is a TOUGH road to walk down, and I know I wanted more than what I have gotten so far from reading and studying.

And I am glad if what I wrote had a little bit of meaning for you. It is my journey?  But if anything I learn can help anyone else? That would make me happier. I've always wanted to help people and it's part of how I got CPTSD. I was so busy not being me I forgot about me.  So if I could help someone remember or learn why it is important to be you?  How there will never be another you, and why it is so important to be you, and that you are needed, wanted, just as you are and that you are not an accident or a mistake? I would feel happier.

I feel strongly I was meant to give, born to give, but have so far been futilely giving to the wrong people, and not giving enough to myself either. If I could help one person stop doing that, and figure out there are people worth giving to, and that you are one of them?  I would feel happier.

When you have flashbacks, the last thing you want to do is to trust your feelings.  Because you KNOW, you KNOW for a fact nobody else feels this way, and you "KNOW" that what you are feeling is "wrong."  It's too much, too over the top, and you judge yourself, and you make fun of yourself, and you berate yourself for feeling SO MUCH. You push HARD to just get through the feelings, and to push them behind, down, out, somewhere, anywhere, and you just try to make them go away.

Because something bad just happened now in the present, and you have got to deal with it. And yet?  You are feeling so much terror, and pain, and humiliation, and anger, impotent anger in my case, that you are emotionally hijacked, and there is NO CONTROL.  So you fight!  You fight HARD!  Against what you are feeling and you tell yourself you are wrong to feel this way. You tell yourself that you are weak, and just like they say, just too sensitive. And you DON'T trust your feelings.  You rebel against them, and you feel so ashamed of yourself for being so freaking weak, AGAIN. And you try to find your brain, and you try to STOP feeling, and start thinking again. But you can't find your brain, it's been hijacked too.

But it's wrong, it's the wrong thing to do to fight it and argue with it.  Instead, if you for once, just once, accept it and say: Okay, if I feel this way? Then there is a reason.  Just saying that one thing, just that one thing, and giving yourself permission to feel what you feel, for once, however awful and bad it is. So you just say to yourself, "It's okay, I am giving me permission for once to actually feel as bad as I actually do." 

Well then?  That is:  The turning point.  From that day forward you start feeling again, and you start regaining a relationship with your own feelings.

And from that point on as you build a relationship with yourself, and allow yourself to feel your own feelings, and instead of fighting them, and trying to squash them or bury them or just get rid of them, and instead you fight back and say NO!  If I FEEL this way, there must be a reason?  From that day forward you start becoming your own friend and champion. And you slowly learn to trust your own feelings instead of stuffing them when they are painful, awful and paralyzing. You keep saying to yourself, like a whispered prayer, there's got to be a reason, there's got to be a reason. 

And there is, there really is a reason you feel this way. You're not too freaking sensitive, you're not a basket case, and you're not a crazy person.  Your feelings are SCREAMING for you to LISTEN.  And the only way they could get through to you after all of the awful years of stuffing?  Is CPTSD.

Your manifestation of CPTSD is caused from forced feeling stuffing and trying to make yourself numb and into a robot who feels nothing and it doesn't work.  They are still there. They've never been let out of their cage, and the more you stuff them, the bigger the manifestation of CPTSD.

But it's not your fault. You don't know anything else!  This is the way you were brought up.  Your feelings were NOT allowed!  Ever! And so you were forced to get rid of them. And now there is a hole inside of you where your own feelings are supposed to be.  But it gets worse, it's much worse than that.  Not only were you not allowed to have your own feelings, you were TRAINED, TAUGHT, and FORCED to allow their feelings, your parent's feelings inside of yourself, and to allow their feelings to take precedence over your own. You were forced to allow their feelings inside of you, and to tell you what to feel. You were not allowed to feel on your own. Ever.

And now you know, now you see it, and you know it's wrong. And now you know.  You have re-train yourself except hahahaha!  It's not even re-training, it's learning from scratch blindly through trial and error, because you've never even known, or allowed, or been allowed to have your own feelings!

All your life, you have had your mind, which is a pretty useless piece of equipment without feelings. Sometimes you had your body when you weren't depersonalized or derealized.  And that's all you had. And the rest of the gap?  The feeling gap?  You filled it in with other's feelings.  And worst of all?  You gravitated towards people who would treat you in a familiar way. Disordered people.  People like your family.

It's very HARD to train our brain. Very, very hard.  If you train your brain to pay attention to your own feelings will you never have another flashback?  I don't know.  But you will choose life.  You will allow the third part of yourself to have a seat at the table of life, as it deserved all along.

These days I see myself as Three.  Mind, body and spirit.  And my spirit is where my feelings live. And to deny my spirit is to deny a whole part of me. All three are needed for my life. To deny one part leaves a hole.   And when I left that hole?  When I denied my own feelings?  And tried to use logic alone? I still needed that hole filled. So I filled it in with other's thoughts, feelings and beliefs. Because it was all I knew!  It is what I was forced to do!  I allowed others inside of me to help run my life.  And it was the worst betrayal I have ever experienced.  Worse than any betrayal by a lover or a friend or a loved one.  To turn my back on myself and to ALLOW, yes, ALLOW others who were not me to have a seat at the table of my life was the worst thing I have ever done to myself.

But I was trained to do so as a child.  I was trained that this was the right thing to do.  That I had no right to boundaries or to my own feelings, and that I MUST allow others feelings to take precedence over mine.  And I was trained mine should not even exist...

But that is how I have lived most of my life and I am now 58. So now, belatedly, it seems the cure is believing in me, and allowing me, all of me, and my FEELINGS a seat at the table of my life.  There will be No More allowing others to tell me what I feel, think, believe, know, or don't know. And if they insist?  Then they are  going to be bid adieu. These people are toxic, and they are the ones who eagerly helped to keep my own feelings enslaved, caged, forbidden and forgotten, And tried to force their own upon me, as they saw the hole in me as surely as if I had shined a powerful floodlight upon the gaping hole within myself. And they were all too eager to fill it.

I think survival as a child definitely required me stuffing my own feelings.  But it doesn't explain the huge feelings I get nowadays when attacked does it? Yes I think it does.  I think you go along acting like a robot, and thinking if I don't feel anything, and if I hide my feelings, and if I smile and act nice, then nothing bad is going to happen to me. But you still have that gaping blind hole within you, and you still allow TOO MUCH from other people inside of you. And the only people who want to get inside of you are Narcissists. 

Most peace loving people DON'T try to get inside of you and manipulate your feelings. But the Narcissists do, they NEED to get inside of you. And because they are Narcissists they MUST have the explosion, the drama, the emotional reaction, and your CPTSD is PERFECT.

They "know" somehow that you have stuffed and refused and hidden those feelings, but they know it's in there. And once you let them in?  Because you have been trained to let them in, because you've been trained that you are "supposed" to let them in with their bad ugly awful stuff?  Well it's home free now! Now they can poke and prod and needle away until they get the explosion of YOUR pain that THEY need.  Because as hard as you try to hide it and conceal it?  It's still in there. And they find it, gleeful as children on Christmas morning when they find, open and provoke your emotional pain.

But not after you wake. Not after you decide you deserve and are entitled to your own feelings. And that nobody is going to manipulate you ever again. After you find and resuscitate and revive and encourage and support your own feelings?  And start setting boundaries to keep the Narcissists out? The people who want to provoke you and manipulate you and cause you pain for their own pleasure?  Well, it will never happen again. Or if it does, you will "see' it for what it is and you will LEARN to set the boundaries needed to deny them entry into your soul ever again.

And always remember, that real people?  Who are not narcissists? Would never pull this crap in a million years.  They want what you want.  A happy peaceful coexistence. They have always seemed so boring to you, and they just didn't give you a buzz. Well the buzz is poison, so wake up, start feeling your own feelings, and seek true friendship with those who AREN'T looking to blow you up, root around in your soul and manipulate you into excruciating pain.  And once you start having your own feelings?  You won't need the buzz anymore. You will shun it like the plague. And welcome like minded souls.

Thanks for reading it and I am glad it had some meaning for you. I started working on this earlier this year as nothing I found in the books I read really covered in a broad way what I felt I was going through. I needed a step by step path, and I read tons of books, and all of them helped.  But I still had to glue and cobble together my own pathway. Sort of patch it together from all that I learned from different authors and their areas of expertise and focus.

I was hesitant to post it, as it was something really written to myself for myself, so it's kind of "bossy" sounding, as that's how I talk to myself.  But everyone who has commented has graciously seemed to understand I wasn't telling you that you need to do this and you need to do that.  It really was just me talking to me about what worked for me.

I have to tell you all that every day of peace that I get under my belt of complete freedom from anxiety that is a direct result of cutting myself off  from Disordered people just amazes me a little bit. I can't even believe I lived like that for so very long.  Because it was normal.

And I can see I was addicted to it. That buzz. And I can also see that if someone had told me I was addicted to being abused 2 years ago I would not have known what they were talking about.  It was all I knew.  I lived with this buzz that could escalate into terror because it was all I had ever known.  So I looked for it in close relationships, because if I did not feel the buzz, it did not feel right or normal.

Losing the buzz is the best thing I have ever done for myself. Will it still happen?  Probably. When I meet new people who are Disordered.  And that is why I call CPTSD a gift.  I regard CPTSD as a special warning system that tells me this is not good for me. I just did not KNOW before that my own body was screaming at me to get out. It was all I knew and it was normal.

But having experienced the peace and learning to feel is why I now trust my feelings. If I feel the buzz?  I now know there is a REASON for it. Of course I will still use my brain and try to work through it reasonably and make sure I am certain before making a final decision. But I trust myself more by the day. And it feels good!

How Victims Without Boundaries Can Learn To Set Them

The first thing you need is Space. 

Time and space and peace lots of peace.  Safety. Security. I've seen so many books and articles that claim you can stay with a Narcissist and heal yourself at the same time.  Not me, it's not possible.  Clean house. I had to get rid of 4 in one year, plus one other who was similar except not abusive, but who had all of the other behaviors, grandiosity, verbose, selfish, emotionally unavailable. So I dumped my father, my boyfriend, my roommate, and my sister, and my youngest brother over the course of one year. I was able to actually keep one Narcissist in my life, and he's good for practicing my new behaviors on. It's my son, he's one too.  But he doesn't trigger me, so he was allowed to stay. But it's not easy to lose almost every single person that you were closest to in your life, and to recognize that they have nothing but more pain to offer you as far into the future as you can see.  You have been betrayed. By everyone, not just one person, every single last one.  You need, time, space and peace to understand, accept, and grieve, and deeply understand what has been done to you.

Second.  A willingness to be honest.

Your life is toast. You are miserable. The harder you try the worse it gets, especially if you are improving. They feel it, they sense it, it scares them, and they escalate their controlling behavior as a last ditch effort to get you back and control you. You have to get away from them and just think. Because the more you improve?  The more they will torture and escalate their controlling behavior. You have to be honest about what has happened, and be willing to open your eyes and really absorb just how bad it is.  You have been fighting for so long all alone, believing you could fix it if you just tried harder.  You have to stop trying and fighting, and accept that you can never fix it.  And not only was it bad, it was so much worse than you ever allowed yourself to even see or consider.  And it was not you.  It was them, all along.

Third. You have to be willing to change.

You have to commit to your own recovery. What you are doing is NOT working. And the harder you try the worse it gets.  So you need space, time, peace, honesty and self appraisal. When you look you aren't going to like it, what you see.  What you have been forced by the Narcissist to become in order to survive. You have forced yourself into a tiny box that is much too small to hold you, and you are in a corner, and it feels like there is no way out, and that life is hopeless. Everything you believed in has been destroyed. You have been told so many times that you are so much less than you really are that you actually started believing it.  Now you have forced yourself into this small tiny box that is much too small to hold you, and it is squeezing you, and cutting off your air, and your ability to breathe, and think, and do, and be.  You are going to have to decide the box is too small, decide it does not fit, and you are going to have get out. You can't change them.  But you can change yourself. You don't have to stay in the box.  You can get out. If you want to.

Fourth You need support.

And if you are like me, then you are in despair as every single person you were ever close to and cared about is gone, you had to get rid of them all, and your other friends?  Are also a part of that network too, and so they are either also Narcissist's themselves, or completely deceived by the Narcissists.  So often there is NOBODY left. So now you are out of the box.  And possibly alone, and friendless. But you still need support. There are on line support groups.  Who will take you in and embrace you and love you like the lost broken child that you are.  They will love you and care for you and understand you and your struggles. Outofthefog.net and CPTSD.org are the best I have found.  They are Wonderful people. You will also need one on one support.  No ifs ands or buts you need it. Get it anyway you can.  You need therapy with someone who is highly educated about Narcissism and the effect it has on other people. It's not optional, you need it. It's not a luxury, it's a necessity.  You need to work with someone who understands deeply the impact a Narcissist can have on people who are not Narcissists. Someone who can see you as you are.  Someone who can see that you are a good person who only wanted to help others, and who just got tangled up with the wrong people.  A person whose goodness and willingness to forgive and forget went too far, and so far that you forgot be loving and kind and forgiving to yourself.  You absorbed lies and started believing the lies, and they are not true.  You must relearn the truth and you must learn to love yourself.  One on one therapy can give you this, can help you get back or even learn for the first time about your healthy self love.

Fifth Education: 

You need to understand what happened to you. You have to learn everything you can about Narcissism.  This is important. This is your shield.  This is your new defense.  You MUST learn these behaviors, and be able to spot them.  They are difficult to learn.  It is foreign, bizarre, strange, inhuman, and awful.  But learn you must in order to protect yourself going forward. You will also need to learn everything you can about recovery and how to recover.  The most important thing you will have to learn is about boundary setting. You will also need to fully accept that there is nothing you can do for the Narcissist.  Their illness is incurable. You will have to accept this, and be able to walk away and know in your heart that staying is bad for you, and will destroy you, and that there is NOTHING you can do to help them.  Nothing. The only person you can help is yourself.

Sixth You Must Heal Your Past. 

If you have been involved with a Narcissist, there is something about you that attracted them and made you susceptible to their preying ways.  You will have to explore your childhood and heal your inner child and vow to protect her from now on.  She must become your reason for living, growing, learning, changing.  Because you must protect her.  No one else is going to do it. Get to know her. Listen to her, she will guide you to know where you need to focus and work to be most helpful to her moving forward. To help her feel safe. To help her feel hopeful about life and living.

Seventh Boundaries.

Most of us as victims of Narcissists have no boundaries.  And normally that works because normal people have boundaries, and we are nice people, and we want others to be happy.  We are pleasers.  So if a normal person tells us that when we act a certain way it makes them unhappy, then we are more than happy to change that behavior.  And normal people do not cross other's boundaries. So we have no problems there either.  Normal people do not try to take advantage of us and use us for their own amusement and cruel entertainment.  The problem arises when we meet someone who has no boundaries who feels entitled to everything they have as well as everything we have.  We have no defense system.  None.  And they are able to rape and pillage as they please inside of our souls. Learning to set boundaries will be hardest part of this journey towards healing.  Because we have no experience.  Often we were raised to believe we did not have the right to boundaries. That we were not allowed to resist or defend, or protect ourselves.  And that we had no right to our own feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. Nothing was ours, everything was theirs. It is very difficult to convince oneself that one has the right to something that one has never had.   The best map for this I have found in my searches is Pete Walker's Intentions For Recovery and his Bill Of Human Rights.  I read them every day.  I must believe those lists and I must absorb them as my new way of life. This must become my new religion. But even more than having a map is having a belief, developing, supporting, sustaining, reinforcing, building, growing, learning to BELIEVE.  Believe that we have equal rights to respect and decent fair treatment, and no one is better than we are, or entitled to more than we are. This belief must be hatched. While incubating it must be wrapped warmly in the feathers of our newly growing boundaries while they mature and grow, and eventually our belief will hatch, and take on a new life that will bring happiness, peace and order to our lives.

Eighth Accept and Trust Your Feelings. 

All of my life I have been hesitant to judge others. But I let them judge me.  I let every single word they said to me inside of me, and then I would mull it over and decide if it had value or not to me.  The problem with living this way is when somebody attacks you?  And if you have already let it inside of you?  What chance do you have if they are wrong?  They are against you, but you have already let their accusation inside of you to confuse you. You have no time to mull things over. You must make a decision NOW of what you will do. And as your heart thaws out, and you learn to love yourself, you are going to start having lots and lots of feelings. Anger being a huge piece of it. You will have to learn how to trust YOURSELF to tell you who you are and what you are feeling.  NOT other people.  You have allowed too many people way too much access to your insides, and way too much influence on how you felt about yourself. And you will need to learn to trust that if you feel angry?  Something bad is being done to you.  And you don't have to think about it or mull it over or decide if you are judging or not. Somebody said something, you are angry, so something bad happened, something not fair or wrong. And I have spent months and months wrestling with this concept.  I wanted to stop them, I wanted to control them, I wanted to be heard and seen and understood. So I would argue with them, which never solved the problem. Or try to control them which also did not work.  Or try to love them back to the relationship which only angered them more. Forgiving and loving someone who has not repented, and who has not asked for forgiveness is folly, and makes them hate you more and not less.  The answer is simple and not complex at all. Here is the answer.  Say it everyday, and get used to saying.  I don't deserve to be treated that way. When you can treat me the way I deserve to be treated, then let me know and we will resume this conversation. And walk away. When your anger sparks it is message to you from your soul. And your heart.  It is a signal that someone is doing something unfair that you did not deserve.  Listen!  Do not argue, control, fight, or defend.  Just say, "What you are doing, or saying is not fair, and I will talk to you later when you calm down."   Also people have taken things from me that I did not want to share.  I have always argued with them too. And told them what to do if they wanted what I had, and how to get it for themselves. I became the teacher hoping they would learn something, but they didn't.  They just took what they wanted anyway, and just pretended to listen to me.   For the first time yesterday I said. I don't want to share with you, these are my things and I don't want to share them with you and I don't have to if I don't want to.  Boom!  Problem solved. All along I was just not being selfish enough!  It was a foreign and strange concept. But when I said it, it worked.  I said what I felt, instead of just trying to tell them what they should do. It worked much better.

Nine I Thought I Needed To Know Everything.

I would never judge another because I was trying so hard to be fair.  I thought I had to know everything first. Every circumstance, every possible reason, every possible influence, like what happened to them an hour ago, today, yesterday, last week, or 40 years ago? But that is not true.  But, they would like you to believe that. Because if you believe that then that means you are willing to take responsibility for their behavior. It means you have decided to try to make it up to them for every bad thing that ever happened to them. That you are willing to take their anger and their criticism, and the put downs and the abusive behavior and all of the bad things that ever happened to them and you are willing to try to compensate for it.  You take away their power by doing this. And you bring their wrath on your head.  But you do not need to know everything.  You are incapable of knowing everything.  It is impossible to know everything another person is feeling, thinking, or has experienced.  There is only one person in the whole world that you can know everything about. Feelings, thoughts, beliefs.  An hour ago, today, yesterday, or the last 40 years.  And that is you. And you must act and live according to what you feel, think, and believe. If you act, feel, think, and believe based on what you THINK another person has experienced?  Then you are playing God. And you are stealing their life and their responsibility to act for themselves. And that is not fair to you or to them.  Each person must assume responsibility for their own thoughts, feelings and beliefs and ACTIONS. Really the most honest, fair, true friend-like behavior you can ever exhibit?  Is to understand YOURSELF and to share that person with the world to the best of your ability.

Ten. Be Willing To Fail And To Be Patient. 

You are trying to do something you have never done before.  You have no experience, no knowledge, not even any gut instinct of what is right to draw on.  You are learning to walk and you have no idea how to do it, as you have only crawled all of your life. You will stumble.  You will fall.  You will make mistakes. But you will learn.  And you will get better.  You will get better simply because you want to.  Because you will slowly absorb the idea that you will never be happy until you learn that boundaries are good for us and good for others. The Boundary books that are out there all assume you already have a well somewhere inside of you from which to draw strength and knowledge.  You may not.  I didn't.  But trial and error, and learning to nurture your Inner Child and making a commitment to protect her, as she is only a child, and needs someone to stick up for her, this will help you.  If you are a good person that Narcissistic vampires have tried to suck the goodness and the life from, then you will still have goodness and caring inside of you for that child, and your instinct to protect the helpless will kick in, and it will help you learn at last how to finally protect yourself. This will take a long time.  You will not learn it overnight or even in a month or two. It takes time, and space and peace, and patience, and practice, and a daily commitment to care for and protect that child going forward to the best of your ability.  And also we need to teach her how to have fun if she doesn't know how, and slowly eventually to find her friends that she can trust and rely on.  Don't rush it, slow down, and take your time. And learn to love her, as she is you.  Friends will be last.  Because you have to learn to trust yourself to make good choices going forward, and you won't have the knowledge or the skills you need until you finish your education on Narcissism and complete the construction of your boundaries and heal your child and prove to her that you will protect her going forward.

Eleven.  Be Prepared For Character Assassination From The Narcissist. 

It's going to happen. It is not a question of if?  It's when.  It WILL happen. Some of you may be "lucky" in that the narcissist will simply walk away when you shut them out.  They will be too busy looking for a new place to get the supply they used to receive from you. They will leave you alone, and be happy to dump you like a hot potato. But they will badmouth you to every Tom, *, and Harry that you ever knew. Every bad thing they have ever done to you?  You will be accused of. So we must accept that this will happen, and can only pray it will pass quickly. And if you hold your head up high, and let your light shine, then some will see you and some will not.  The weak people will be blinded by the grandiosity of the Narcissist, and will take their stories at face value.  If you are not lucky, and if you are involved with a Narcissist who is angry that they have lost their main source of supply? They will try every trick in the book to get you back. After they finish smearing you, then they may start trying to woo you back, trying to convince you and yet again that they are so wonderful.   Don't buy the milk.  It's poisoned.  But this is why the education piece is so important.  You must learn what these tricks are, and how to recognize them, and how to walk away anyway. And again you will still experience the character assassination. It's inevitable. It's a weapon intended to destroy you with falsehoods, and if they do get you back?  Then it will be used to illustrate to you what a wonderful person they are for taking you back despite all of your horrific flaws.  That are in truth their flaws and always have been their flaws.  They needed you to project those flaws onto, and without you they are lost. Don't buy the milk.  It is poison.

Twelve.  They can't kill your soul. 

They can defame and smear and rage and freeze you, and in worst cases they can kill you.  But they can't kill your soul. Unless you let them. Don't let these people who are not worth it destroy you.  You are worth so much more than that. Fight for yourself. You are worth fighting for and saving.  They are not, and they cannot even be saved.  May God have mercy on their souls.

Thirteen.  Forgiveness and compassion.

The first person you will have to forgive is yourself.  As you remember, and things over time become clearer to you, then you may become angry with yourself for all of the things you have allowed these people to do to you.  They have done plenty and most of it was concealed, or was supposedly "done for your own good."  Or, as in my case they were throwing sticks and stones at me as hard they could, and simultaneously screaming "can't you see how much I love you?"  I think that is what woke me up.  One day I figured out that all of the sticks and stones that were being cast at me, number one were not deserved, and two did not look anything at all like love to me.  I had experienced enough real love in my life to see the difference.  I had children, I had grandchildren, and this hurling of verbal sticks and stones, while screaming I love you in no way resembled love. So you have to forgive yourself first.  And eventually with time, and enough study, and enough knowledge, you will probably be able to experience some compassion and sorrow for all of the Narcissists that have used you and abused you in your life. They are sick.  They do not know what they are doing. If you tell them what they are doing, then they only use the information to convince themselves of how very sick you are.  And that is sick.  So you must walk away but also someday let it go, and feel some compassion for them, and some balm of relief as there is hope for you.  But there is NONE for them. None.

Fourteen. They are smarter than you and they will always outwit you.

They say good overcomes evil, and maybe that's why you try.  Maybe you were taught that, maybe you believed that. But what I say is that you do have to give people a chance, maybe even a couple, or even three. But eventually if you are a really good person?  You will be damaged. If you are too good to someone who does not deserve it?  You are injuring them. You are hurting them. Being kind and loving and caring to someone who refuses to do the same to you? Hurts them. Makes them sicker. And it makes you sick too, as the longer your love and caring is rebuffed, the more pain and unhappiness you will experience.  In this case good is not going to win, or triumph over evil. Because they cannot change. But you can, so save yourself. You have goodness inside of yourself. Do not cast your pearls before swine. Love the tiger from afar, and save your pearls for those who can see their true value. Who can appreciate what you have to offer.  You know you have a lot to offer.  You know these people cannot see it or hear you.  They live in their own made up world, and they cannot even see you or hear you. They see something else entirely that they made up in their own minds. It's not your fault. It's not even their fault. It's the just the way it is. And you can't change it. So save yourself. Accept you cannot win.  And walk away. Resolve to no longer live a life filled with anger, sorrow, frustration, misunderstandings, lies, putdowns, hurts, wounds and insults.  Instead resolve to start a beautiful new clean life full of love, happiness, joy and peace. But stop fighting them and accept they will always win.  Why?  Because they will stoop to levels and do things your conscience would never even dream of or allow you to do.  They have no conscience and they will do and say ANYTHING to win.  Just. Walk. Away.

First off congratulations C!  I know this is a big step for you to trust yourself enough to try again.  Go C!  Whoo-hoo!  Now to your questions. I am automatically transported when I see love questions back to all of the study I have done of John Gray's work (Men Are From Mars).
Some thoughts from his work, and not in any order:

1)    If a man has not overtly expressed any sort of withdrawal other than a slow down in response rate it generally has NOTHING to do with us.  It is usually something (not us) that is on their mind and taking priority, or circumstances we know nothing about that prevent them from making a rapid response.  In any case treating it this way - as HIS deal, HIS issue and nothing to do with you may help calm the fears.

2)   Another way John and his daughter Lauren suggest to get what we want from a person is to thank them and praise them and appreciate them when they do what we want, when they do what makes us feel good.  So the times that he DOES respond quickly?  Appreciate and point out how great it makes you feel, how special you feel to be high on his priority list.  It's reverse nagging.  Instead of complaining you compliment and highlight and appreciate the behavior you want.  Or even if he is slowing down, you can still smile and tell him how great it makes you feel when you hear back from him quickly.  So it's something to try.  There is NOTHING wrong with wanting to be important to someone!

3)   Another thing Lauren Gray suggests early on in a new relationship is to treat it like you would a pair of shoes you are thinking of buying. You are looking them over, so how do they fit?  Are they comfortable?  Are you looking for dressy and they are hiking boots? That won't work!  It's an experimental period for both people, and her point is you DON"T ask yourself if the shoes like you.  You ask yourself if YOU like the shoes. Putting ourselves first is a strange new way of acting for those of us with our past, but it is a part of healing.  Making what we think and feel just a tiny bit more important. So you can give genuine effort with what I suggested above, but ultimately you do need to be happy with the shoes!

4)   Last and not least is we need to have full lives ourselves and be happy ourselves to have a happy relationship. If we don't have lives that are full enough, sometimes we can over focus on things that are not "deal breakers". And make ourselves miserable "sweating the small stuff."  So I would encourage you to have a list of "deal breakers", and to live by your standards and what you want. You are equally important and deserve love care trust and respect.

All my best to you and I wish you happiness, peace and joy. You are a wonderful kind caring person who has a lot to offer and who deserves to feel safe warm and loved. 

Your friend, Vey Foggy

Thank you all for your very encouraging responses!

In another thread  - http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=991.0 I read an extremely interesting discussion on Freeze types and being untreatable.  I always thought I was a Freeze type because when I get triggered I freeze in fear, pain and terror and cannot think or move or speak. But maybe that's not a freeze type at all?  Because there is also much discussion about dissociation and NOT feeling.  But in my case?  I FEEL.  I feel so much emotional pain, and so much terror, that I turn into frozen petrified wood.

Anyway the discussion started me thinking of my own journey. And the first thing I did after being diagnosed with CPTSD and was able to start thinking again?  Is to almost immediately decide to start treating CPTSD as a friend, my best friend, and as a warning system that something was WRONG with the way I was being treated. Instead of fighting it or running from it, I embraced it as a friend that warned me when people were behaving very, very badly towards me. Because that is the only thing that triggers me – bad behavior towards me. Don't know if that makes me "lucky" but that is the only thing that ever triggers me into a small EF, on up to a tsunami sized EF.

Next up was slowly but surely realizing that maintaining my hypervigilance was impossible and would drive me crazy.  Sitting around in a corner watching everyone and everything was going to drive me bat sh** crazy. And finally accepting that there was NO WAY I was ever going to be able to predict all of these people's reactions all of the time.  Because even though I tried to be hypervigilant? They STILL managed to sneak attack me out of the clear blue sky, so hypervigilance was simply a waste of my time and my energy.  And a thankless, fruitless, and impossible task.  I had to accept hypervigilance was not the answer.  Also I found I simply could not remain on hyper alert every single moment of every single day, and sooner or later I was going to let my guard down and relax.  And it would be just at that moment that my relaxation was going to be sensed by the Disordered, and then it was going to be WHAM!  An unexpected attack that would freeze me and take me down mutely, and totally paralyzed from the emotional pain of the attack.

So then came the next step.  Okay if hypervigilance isn't going to work and in fact will destroy me with anxiety, then what will work?  And I found boundaries.  This was the absolute hardest part of the entire journey, and it took months and months, and many, many books, and much therapy to reprogram my brain to believe that I was entitled to have boundaries, and to believe I had the right to enforce them.  This was a totally new and radical concept to me. To have boundaries and to enforce them. But more deeply than that, I needed to absorb them and the concept into the many, many layers of the onion, and down finally into my core soul and being. I had to absorb the understanding that I could solve this whole problem. And not by trying to anticipate (and failing miserably) what others were going to do, and how they were going to act, and what they were going to say,  but instead, all I could really control is myself so?  I had to decide what sort of behavior, words, actions and treatment were going to be okay with me, and set the boundary and the consequence accordingly. 

Much, much easier to do than trying to watch everyone all of the time!  But hard, hard, hard to do when deep down in your core you do not believe you have the right to boundaries.  This called for some major, major brain reprogramming on my part. And after months and months of working on my brain, and then taking it still ever deeper on down into my body, then on down to a bone deep cellular level.  Until finally I realized that I now had deep knowing in each cell that I deserved to be treated well, and that boundaries would ensure that I was either treated well, or took care of myself in an appropriate manner with consequences.

And mixed throughout all of this was waking up and learning to feel anger.  Righteous clean anger for mistreatment. And learning to channel that anger not into revenge or fights?  But boundaries and relevant consequences.

I did have to clean house and usher an enormous number of people completely out of my life.  And then spend a very long period of time completely alone except for God, my therapist and my daughter.  And mourning and grieving the losses.  But for the last month or two, I have started reaching out to old friends that I did trust in the past.  Old friends who in the past were not boundary busters, people who were just nice, normal, boring, peaceful, peace loving people who really just want to get along and to be supportive to others. So I also had to accept that I had been addicted to trying to control the Disordered (stop them from mistreating me) and it had exacerbated my CPTSD symptoms. 

But now by actively avoiding and cutting off contact with these types of people, and instead only pursuing relationships with people who were NOT going to trigger me?  I could live a peaceful, joyful, happy, calm life and have friends where it wasn't a battle of wits or will or skill. Just peace and empathy and compassion. I have started to trust myself to make good choices, and so far it is working.  At first I was scared to death to trust myself to be able to tell who I could trust, but by taking baby steps and reaching out, just a little bit at a time?  Well, I am slowly teaching me I can do it and do it well.

Now with all of that being said, and now being happier than I have ever been before?  My therapist has told me that I may never be completely cured from CPTSD.  But I am okay with that.  CPTSD is my friend.  It is my own personal warning system that I must DO something for myself.  So I don't mind knowing I will probably always have it.

Si it took me two years of dedicated persistent dogged effort and lots and lots of time.  Time spent journaling, sorting, reading, learning, reprogramming and finally absorbing.  The absorbing part was the only effortless part of this process.  And that part came slowly after I actually confronted the sources of the triggers, setting the boundaries and the consequences and surviving to live happily ever after.  I did it in an email addressed to every Disordered person, and embarrassed the Disordered profoundly.  But, putting what I knew intellectually into actual practice slowly caused the bone deep cellular absorption of the knowledge that I am worth loving, and worth taking care of, and worth treating well and that I deserved good treatment.

I haven't been triggered in months. Maybe July is the last time I felt even a twinge of a trigger. So I may be incurable. But you could have fooled me!  I feel cured! I feel unfrozen and free, free to be me and if you don't like me?  Take a hike! Because I now KNOW there is very little to not like about me. Bone deep.

I haven't posted anything for a long time.  Not because I don't think of you all, but because I felt I had nothing to say. But I think I might be cured.  I haven't had a flashback in months. And any anxiety I have experienced has been quite manageable. But, I am afraid of the upcoming holiday season, so am continuing therapy with my beloved therapist until at least after the first of the year, just for extra moral support.

Here is a summary I wrote over the last couple of days of what this journey has been like for me.

When we with CPTSD are children we are taught we don't know our own minds, we are taught to not trust ourselves, we are taught that we are possessions, and worth only what the insane one decides for the day.  We have no safety, no sense of balance, no security, nothing to rely on and count on, and worst of all?  We are turned against our own selves.  We are taught we are to blame for almost everything wrong in the universe.  It is a terrible crushing burden for a child to bear and eventually the child's spirit is crushed. She does not have adult knowledge or maturity.  She only knows she is wrong at every turn, there is no pleasing, and worst of all she is brainwashed to believe that her very thoughts are wrong, bad, evil. And she is taught that all of the evil the insane ones perpetuate?  Is her fault.  There is nothing right with the world.  And so CPTSD is born. Hopelessness coupled with trauma creates CPTSD.

But in my case I think the most important things I took from childhood were two stories that I absorbed into my being.  One was the little engine that could.  I BECAME that engine.  I think I can, I think I can.  And Rudolph.  I just knew in my soul if I persevered and suffered and struggled, someday, someone would recognize that I had a lot to offer and ask me to lead the sleigh someday. I trusted this with all of my young heart. It kept me alive.

So I tried, I became superhuman. I tried to forgive everyone and everything.  I tried to be understanding and accepting of everything.  I tried to be perfect myself. I realized the other night that MANY people have come to me for help, shelter and solace.  My niece came to ME for help not any of her other uncles or her aunt.  And help I did, plane tickets, loaning her my car to get to work every day, straightening out the mess of her legal situation, helping her get a job, giving her a home and a safe place to live.  My aunt who was suffering from back problems stayed here 6 months while getting treated.  My sister's best friend stayed here to try to recover from the death of her husband, my own son and my grandson, despite many screw ups are still permitted shelter and refuge here.  And earlier in my life, I took in my sister when she had nowhere to go after a divorce.  I took in my son's friends when their own parent's said no more, I gave them shelter. And my daughter's friend K?  She also stayed with us for a time.  And my daughter and her daughter moved in with me for about 6 months. Even my own father - I tried to house him  for 4 months while he was being treated for back problems.   I offered my boyfriend a home too, if he would just divorce and walk away.  So I have helped many, many people over the years. And I all of the sudden I realize none of my siblings has ever done anything like this. So that right there makes me different.

But one day I got fed up with the treatment I was receiving from the Disordered and I said no more.  No more abuse as recompense for my generosity. I quit.

And life changed. Forever. I began the agonizing journey of healing. Because as hard as it is to stay still and suffer unjust and unfair treatment?  It is even harder to stop it and suffer the losses, and learn the truth and stop pretending everyone loves me.  Really deep down inside somewhere inside of me, I believed everyone did have a shred of love for me.  How could they not?  I was perfect! I opened my home to them, I gave them clean beautiful warm beds, soft towels, I made them beautiful meals, I treated them to beautiful sumptuous luxury that I earned from the sweat of my own brow, I shared it with them, and I turned the other cheek over and over and over as they slapped me for my trouble and it doesn't work.  Because in order to do all of this giving?  I had to treat myself badly.  I had to accept that I was just not good enough no matter how hard I tried.  I had to believe them and agree with them that bad treatment was really all I deserved. One day I said no more.  And I started asking for more. Each person got about a year, and plenty of guidance from me of what the problem was, and what I expected from them moving forward.  And I can even sum it up in one word:  Respect.  I wanted to be treated with respect.  And without it?  We weren't going to have a relationship anymore.  I got no takers from the Disordered.

My father declined, my boyfriend declined, my roommate declined, my sister declined, my son declined, my grandson declined, and one of my brothers declined.

This is where I entered therapy.  About a year before I started therapy I had decided no more.  Either respect me and treat me accordingly or get out.  And I tried mightily with each person.  I read 40 books and different ones geared towards each relationship, I wrote letters to them, I tried techniques, I studied all day long every single day.  I WORKED at it as hard as I possibly could.  While each one of them did exactly?  Nothing.  They were happy with the situation as is.  I give and give and give and they beat the crap out of me verbally or emotionally, and kick me around, and make sure I understand I really don't deserve anything better.  So when I woke up and decided that was not what I could be happy with, then true agony began.  A year of agony. I knew in my soul I deserved better, but they were all saying no, you don't. 

So I went into therapy almost a year ago with this plea:  I can't get along with anybody. And they say it is me, but I don't believe it.  I think it is them.  I think they are all Disordered and this is blowing my mind.  How can they all be crazy and I be the only sane one in this whole bunch?

Then another year of agony. Therapy. As my therapist told me last week:  Things often have to get worse before they get better.  And it did not get better the way that I would have wanted it to.  I lost them all, but?  I gained myself, the person I really am. I am finally me.  I am no longer a people pleasing perfect robot struggling to try to make insane crazy disordered people love me and respect me. I can accept now that they CAN'T love me, there is a hole in their soul and they are not capable.  And I can mourn for them, and be sorry for them.  But at the same time KNOW deep in my soul I MUST protect myself from them, as they offer me nothing except pain, pain, pain and more pain.

I am now:  Happy, joyful, pain free, whole, healthy, strong physically, drinking less than I ever have before in my adult life, excited, content, inspired, thrilled, at peace, accepting, and trusting of myself to KNOW things.

Again and again and again I come back to:  Each person has been given a task of what is needed to repair the relationship with me and each one declines.  Simple tasks. Really. Simple if you are HUMAN!

Nutshell to The Disordered:  You hurt me, I didn't deserve it.  Apologize, ask me to forgive you, commit to do better and let's move forward.  And Nobody can do it!

I think that has been the HARDEST part of getting well.  First believing I had a right to decent treatment, and a right to expect an apology and a request for forgiveness, and a right to expect better treatment moving forward. And quaking and shaking in my boots all the while as I first timidly asked for it.  Due to PTSD I was petrified to do it. 

But, I changed.  Instead of just apologizing to them for their upset at me, which is what I have always done to try to keep the peace, instead I asked correctly, finally, for the first time for them to apologize to me!  But Oh my dear God how difficult the struggle became when I realized and slowly learned to accept that not a single one of them felt I was worth that apology and that better treatment moving forward. 

It was tough! It made me doubt myself all over again, and search my conscience and soul over and over again to try to find the horrific flaws within me that prevented them from giving me what I felt I deserved.

But in the end I could not find them and that search only solidified and cemented my own beliefs about myself.  And that is that I am worth loving, and I am worth treating with respect, and there are some sick people in the world who are more interested in controlling me than loving me. And who want to use abuse and imagined slights to justify it.  Their world is made up.  It doesn't exist.  It is a fantasy and they have dragged me into it for my whole life and I ain't gonna do it anymore!

Thank GOD for my therapist, and the books and these forums. Where I tore myself apart and rebuilt myself all over again. Or maybe a better way to put it, is I found my TRUE self, I embraced myself, I accepted myself, I  learned to love myself, and to care for myself, and I learned to EXPECT others to do the same, and to ACCEPT that if they won't?  There is something wrong with them, and not with me.

And one of the hardest realizations of all?  Was that this entire time?  I was the one carrying the whole relationship on my back.  Whether that relationship continued or faltered and died was completely on me.  Because as soon as I stopped trying to make up for their shortcomings through whatever sacrificial mean possible, be that laying myself out on the altar for sacrifice as the scapegoat, or else handing them the nails to pin me to the cross?  As soon as I stopped doing that?  Each relationship died a very swift and fatal death. There literally never had been anything there at all.  I was the one carrying the whole load of the relationship the whole time. And without me there to act as the scapegoat?  There literally was NOTHING left.

Learning how NOT to do that has been one of the most difficult lessons I have had to learn in my entire life.  But what a happy pay off in the end! Despite the losses which were extremely painful to face, and to accept, and to mourn?  I now have me.  Better, stronger, smarter than ever, and with a deep KNOWING in my soul of my value and my worth and what I deserve and what I do not.

Another thing that has been hard to accept is that just because these people sometimes do nice things for me?  It is STILL not enough to make up for the cruelty and the abuse and the poor treatment.  My sister has given me many beautiful gifts.  My boyfriend has been a virtual slave for me as far as doing work for me on my home. Even my father the source of my PTSD has had his moments. I was educated given medical care and dental care and clothed and fed.

But despite these apparent outward trappings of caring?  My sister also felt free to attack me whenever I was down and kick me verbally, and criticize me and my decisions and way of life. She went out of her way to inform me of how superior she was to me and what a weakling I was for having PTSD.  My boyfriend felt free to deceive me for 17 years that he would divorce someday, and we would marry "someday." Elaborate lies. For years and years and years.   My father felt free to put me down every chance he got and to attack me privately about how I was living, what I was doing with my life, what sort of a Christian I was (a wrong one) and he tried to convince my daughter that I had ruined my life and that I was such a disappointment. Slyly he told her that she found favor in his eyes because he felt she was not following my example. He just dismissed my whole life of struggle to be good and to help people in one sentence.

But it changed my life when he did that. The scales fell from my eyes and I could "see."

So I had to accept that yes, these people could sometimes do nice things?  But it was STILL not enough to make up for their unfair undeserved disrespectful treatment and their complete and total lack of compassion or empathy.

I had to accept that each person had an agenda. I was being sucked dry by vampires. Whose sole motive in the end was about winning and control at any price, even giving up their own immortal souls. They were willing to sell their souls to keep being abusive, ugly, nasty, impulsive people without a shred of self control in their minds or bodies.

And I had to just walk away and learn to love me anyway even if they did not.  I had to learn that just because they did not love me did not automatically make me a bad and unlovable person. It was a long slow hard lesson to learn.

For a very long time there was only God, my therapist and my daughter left in my life that I felt truly loved me. A long, long time.

But conquering PTSD? Or what feels like I have conquered PTSD due to the long spell of pure peace that I have enjoyed?  I see now that PTSD actually kept me ensnared in these awful, awful relationships.  Because I could not stand to lose.  I was desperately trying to make these relationships work.  I thought if I just tried harder I could make the pain go away. I thought if I just tried hard enough I could end the pain, the anxiety, the fear, and the terror. But it could not be ended, because these people could not stop abusing me.  They quite literally can't do it.

And so there was only one way to end the pain, and that was to end the relationships.  Give up.  Stop trying.  Stop believing it is even your job to try. I was only one sane injured beaten person fighting a host of Disordered people who could not stop themselves from hurting me over and over again for NO REASON.

They could not see me, hear me or understand me. Because they were not human. And my solution to try to become superhuman and able to endure beyond all reasonable endurance did not work either.  Just as they could not stop abusing me, I could not make them stop either.  No amount of good behavior on my part was going to ever earn their love or fix them. And I had to accept that at some point in time I had become addicted to the pain.  That I felt like that was a normal way to live.  Being constantly anxious worried and scared and waiting for the axe to fall over and over again.  I had to cut myself off from the source of the anxiety and pain and learn to live in peace and serenity.

And the longer I stay away?  The happier I am. There is a direct relationship between my happiness quotient and the loss of each toxic relationship.

Daily I become stronger, trust myself more and am starting to reach out to others, those who are not Disordered and to do things for them. And slowly my network is building and I have more friends by the day.  As I slowly gain in confidence and learn to ask people to help me?  Most are happy to do so!  And I in turn am also happy to help them as well. And now?  My life feels fuller, richer filled with true friends. And I trust myself a little more every day.

And I think I might be cured. And it only took 2 years of agony to get here, but now that I am I would not trade this place for anything in the world!

So I am wishing this peace and joy upon each of you today.  The forums help.  Tremendously.  But ultimately it is still a journey one takes alone. And I hope my struggles will encourage someone who may be in despair. I hope you can be encouraged to know that eventually it ends, the struggle ends.  You must do hard things, probably harder than anything you have ever done?  But it will pay off in the end.

Again I would not give up my new found peace joy and trust in myself for anything. It is wonderful to just quietly live a peaceful and happy life.

Thanks for the supportive comment DU and Trees.  This is why I love the forum.  Nobody says, "OMG you must be crazy!  Go check yourself into the psych ward immediately."  No, you take me seriously and just accept.

No, I have no recall of dreams about being hit.  I have been trying hard to remember my dreams for a couple of months but honestly most of it is a bunch of garbage. Not literally, just jumbled up stuff that makes no sense. Example all I remember from last night is something about visiting a family, a man giving me a piggy back ride, a woman exercising on a beach, and a DVD we had rented that needed to be returned.  Garbage.

I have really been struggling to recover some memories.  My T says I just may not be able to handle it, the memories, and so my brain simply will not allow it, as my brain believes it would traumatize me.

So my laymen's take on what I think may be happening is: there is something very bad that happened to me which involved a blow to the head. But maybe the blow was so severe I was knocked unconscious.  So now, in a primitive way my brain is "making me" hit my head while I am sleeping, and then not allowing me to wake up, to "show" me how I could have had something happen to me that I simply cannot recall. A sort of a reenactment of NOT being able to recall something.

I know, that sounds silly, but I am going to run it by my T and see what she says.  I have not even dared to tell her about the bruises because FIRST I wanted to figure where they came from!  I believe I have found it - the nightstand.

And I have jammed a pillow upright between the bed and the nightstand to cover the corner so I could not do it anymore! So far 3 nights without new bruises!

I have a question.  Has anybody ever hurt themselves while asleep?  Over the last couple of months I have been doing some serious work on recovering some repressed memories. Some flashes of memory I have had involved being hit in the head as a child with some pretty severe blows. In any case I have come to believe strongly the blows to the head are an important part of a memory I am trying to recapture.

Three times over the course of the last month I have woken up and found that I have bruises with lumps on my head.  This was scary to me at first as I had NO MEMORY of hitting my head.  I would walk through the house over and over trying to figure out how it happened.  Finally in desperation I lay down on my bed and rolled towards my nightstand.  Bingo!  The corner of my nightstand is close enough to the bed that I could bang my head on it and the bruises and lumps matched the size and location of the nightstand corner.

What is troubling is I have NO MEMORY of banging my head hard enough to bruise and leave a lump.  So if that is how it is happening, why do I not wake up?  So I think I am doing it to myself in my sleep, but I don't wake up.  This bothers me.

Anybody else do things like this? Wake up with bruises and not know how it happened?

Such an interesting discussion and one I have agonized over too, the last few years. I tried forgiveness thinking my father would leave me alone.  Hindsight which is 20/20 showed me that my forgiveness was premature.  I had only been no contact for 8 months when I forgave.  I had not even started therapy.  I just wanted to live and let live so I wrote a letter to my father saying basically that I trusted God would guide him and that I needed him to leave me alone and let God guide me too. He took that as an invitation to continue trying to force his Narcissistic mindset onto me.

Here is how I reconcile forgiveness today.  It is impossible to forgive someone who has not asked you to forgive them.  God Himself does not forgive unless you ask first. You cannot give someone something they do not want and have not asked for. This is the whole basic premise of most religions. You recognize your faults and limitations and you ask for His (whoever you believe in) forgiveness for your shortcomings and you gain strength and comfort in knowing He has heard your plea and accepts your commitment to 1) No longer do what you are sorry for 2) He helps you stop doing what you are sorry for 3) Forgives you for all of your past wrongs.

You cannot give forgiveness to someone else unless they ask for it. I gain comfort and strength and sanity in knowing I cannot do more than God Himself. If He won't do it unless I ask for it, what makes me think I can do it? If I do, I am basically saying I am even better than God. Which I know I am not.

There is a website luke173ministries.org that pounded this into my thick head until I got it.  That mainly it was guilt, my guilt about abandoning my family that made me want to try to forgive.  But a year and a half later, having gained ever more perspective, I can clearly see nobody wants my forgiveness. They are still right, I am still wrong, and until I return and become the scapegoat for all to dump their sins upon, there will be no reconciliation and my forgiveness is trash.

So I accept as Woodsgnome said,  I accept. They don't want me as is, they want me back as a place to park and blame their sins. So I don't forgive.  I will never forgive until they ask for it and each one has been told exactly that. Until you ask for me to forgive you?  I don't. But I do accept you don't want me, and so I am removing myself from your life.

I know who I am. I know what I have done. And what I have NOT done. And I know I did not deserve what was done to me.

So I don't forgive as nobody has asked me to. I accept.  I accept life as it is and life as it is means I am an orphan with no brothers and no sister. Because I would rather be alone with God and my children and my doggies than keep trying with these people who just treat me like dirt. I accept.  They think I am dirt.  And I know I am far better than dirt. And I don't forgive, I accept.

Welcome Elizmorris2000, and nobody here can diagnose you?  We are all suffering from various forms of CPTSD ourselves, and all we can do is encourage you to TRUST your feelings, and if you do not feel safe with this man?  Then there is a reason for it.

Do you have a therapist?  If not can you get one?   They are trained for years.  We are not.  All we know is what we feel, just like you do.

If you are to the point that your physical caregivers at a hospital trained to offer physical relief from physical injuries believes you are at the point of having nervous breakdown?  I would take it seriously.

Trust yourself.  Trust your feelings.

I cannot say more not knowing your situation but it sounds like you are doing the right things.  Ensuring your daughter's safety, and then taking steps to protect yourself.  If you don't protect yourself, who will take care of your daughter?

You  know something is wrong, you are doing the right thing.  Wishing you much trust in yourself! 

Welcome Sohma Rae and so glad you found us,  You are in the right place for searching and healing!

I have been on my journey for a year and a half of being fully "awake" and knowing finally something was really wrong. And I am still struggling.  I thought I could fast track this, but I can't.  I have worked on virtually nothing else for all of that time and it just keeps getting deeper and deeper.

But I am finally starting to feel better about myself. Finally.

Welcome and I hope you find hope and healing.

Welcome chacha!  Look around and see what interests you or is relevant. For me this has been a great supplement to therapy and I hope it will feel that way for you too!