Messages

This is both a story and a question in a way but, I experienced extreme and long term gaslighting by both an ex-boyfriend, family and community combined, during this time I almost had what I'd describe as psychosis? I felt that I was under so much stress and was questioning my reality so much that I would feel always like someone was listening to me or watching me? I'd hallucinate seeing rats run across the floor of dark rooms when I'd turn the lights on etc. It took getting away and out of all those toxic situations, a lot of intensive therapy and moving to a whole new city to recover and feel well again.

I was doing so amazing and making new relationships and then it happened again, and a girlfriend of one of my friends who I considered a close friend gaslighted me and our entire friend group including her boyfriend. She made up awful things that my friends had said about her boyfriend and told him this, sending him into a panic, she made up things my friends had said in general and lied to my face and her boyfriends face about it. The wild thing is that all the stuff she made up I KNOW isn't true, I was there!! I heard everything that was said and I know its false but she insisted my  memory and my friends memory wasn't right and that I just misheard her or didn't understand what she meant and her boyfriend completely believes her (I think he's the victim of abuse and emotional isolation honestly) and I think in him trying to rationalize her story that he's kinda indirectly been gaslighting me too?

Since this I've fallen back to a lot of bad coping, I'm feeling paranoid and anxious and moody again, I've been drinking a lot, I'm always worried that she is gonna make something up about me to my friends and they're gonna leave me. All my friends and me have completely excommunicated her, but her boyfriend who I am very close with still talks to her and they're still together and whenever he mentioned her I feel anxious and shaky and like I wanna break down. Could I be that being gaslighted again flipped a trigger switch and made my symptoms come back? Does anyone else have any experience with long term effects of gaslighting?

Until recently I've lived in a very small community and because of this I've been forced to see my past abuser constantly and hear about him from other people. This greatly hindered my recovery so I made it clear to people around me that if you were friends with him I didn't wish to be friends with you. This has usually gone very well, its made me feel a lot better to not have to hear about him or see him on social media because we have no mutual friends.

However, its created this problem that when people are upset at me and want to hurt me they immediately run and go be friends with my abuser. I've had several experiences of a friend being upset at me then the next day posting selfies with him, because they know that it is very triggering to see him and very upsetting to have my trauma disregarded.

This happened again last night, two of my closest friends, and two of the people that originally helped me cope with the trauma and stood beside me throughout legal complications. Suddenly posted a photo of themselves having lunch with my abuser, this is extra upsetting as they are friends with not only me, but some of my abusers other victims as well.

Has anyone experiences this? Or does anyone have advice to cope? I'm feeling extremely distraught and upset, as this keeps happening and it sets back my progress.

I'm starting to have my first genuine romantic interest in someone since my split with my abusive partner and since developing C-PTSD. It isn't anything serious at all yet and we're kinda in the flirting stages but I seem to find myself pulling back a lot and getting extremely anxious about very small things such as complimenting him, I seem to revert back to the place I was while being abused and assume he'll get angry at me or respond negatively. I want to openly talk and explain that this is a symptom of abuse and nothing to do with him but I don't want to scare him off. And I'm not sure if this is too soon to talk about this kind of thing, he does know about my abuse since I met him through a very close friend who knew my abuser and she filled him in briefly in the context of warning him not to speak to my previous partner. Any advice? Or opinions about the best time to discuss trauma with a potential partner?

I left my most recent abuser almost exactly a year ago now, and since then I've been trying so hard to recover the person I used to be before we were dating and before the trauma. I was gentle and easygoing and honestly? I thought of myself as a generally very positive and good person. But since then I'm disgusted with myself and my actions, I'm emotional, obsessive and awkward. I find myself spending an unreasonable amount of time thinking about how to get revenge on my abuser, and I even have already gotten in trouble at one point because after the split I made a joke about him to a couple friends in private and it ended up getting leaked and he saw it. A year or two ago, something like that would have been unthinkable for me to do.

My abuser has gone out of his way to frame me as someone that is manipulative, vindictive and aggressive, even though during the relationship and before I was the EXACT opposite. And I'm scared that I've accidentally played right into his narrative, I feel ashamed and guilty. Any advice for trying to regain identity after a trauma and during recovery from C-PTSD?

Hi lambchxpp, and welcome to our forum!

Its been almost a year since we split and I am still confused about what exactly took place, was it his alter or was it an elaborate cover up.

I would say the latter. Multiple Personality Disorder (now known as DID, or Dissociative Identity Disorder) is extremely rare, and in those texts 'Jackie' actually says the shared boyfriend has no symptoms. From what you've said they sound like wannabe-psychopaths, and you don't mention proof of an official diagnosis. I'm betting there isn't one. It's very convenient to say: "It wasn't me who attacked you, it was my alter", isn't it?

Ahh!! Okay, I guess that is what I kind of figured, throughout the entire thing I did read up on DID and it was generally stated that it was rare and also noted that many people use it as a coverup. And yeah, I never saw any proof? I mean, he did get sent to a psychotherapist apparently but I know he refused to participate in it because the therapist wanted him to take full responsibility for his actions. Thank you for your input, I guess I wanted an unbiased opinion because it is easy for me to feel as if I'm crazy at times.

This might be a very long post and I'm extremely sorry but this is something I would love any and all, advice/opinions about! Especially from someone who has DID (dissociative identity disorder) or someone whom has similar experiences with someone like this.

So, I started dating this boy in March of 2015. We hit it off right away and started dating only a couple days after meeting, we dated for a year in total and up until the beginning of October things were 100% like a fairytale, he was charming and sweet.

However, on October 2nd I noticed him acting very strange and he out of the blue brought up the possibility of involving a third person in our sexual relationship. I was very thrown off, because I know he has the tendency to be extremely flirty and to stray so I did something I feel guilty and ashamed of to this day and I logged into his Facebook and looked at his messages.

What I found is him talking to a mutual friend of ours, we'll call her Jackie. They were discussing violence ... But they were also discussing alters, as in alternate personalities, they were referring to themselves in the third person and using different names for each other and I was completely taken aback and in so much shock and hurt I almost had to be taken to the hospital.

I of course confronted him about this, to which he immediately got upset at me for snooping, told me that it was his alter that had essentially just cheated (However he says it wasn't cheating) and not him so I could not be mad, even further he claimed no knowledge of the night before and when I requested that he look over the chat logs or show them to me he refused and said it was because he was too ashamed to read what his "alter" said. I encouraged him to get help and said it was maybe not the best idea to be speaking to Jackie if that is the side that she brought out. He said he would and then yet again not even 24 hours later I discovered him trying to start up an encounter again.

At this time I was homeschooled and him and Jackie attended the same school, which scared me because in their messages they had discussed real life encounters they could have at school. However, I was looking into transferring there so I guess it was either bad or good timing I can't decide.

A while later and the weekend before I started at the school, I discovered that the affair had been continuing and escalating. I confronted him about it on the phone and then he asked to come over and speak about it, he came over and I was in emotional disarray, I was crying hysterically and begging him to please stop. He seemed to be reassuring and comforting until suddenly he started shaking and not talking to me and was acting weird I tried to ask him what was wrong and he didn't respond, he wordlessly picked me up off the floor where we were sitting put me on the bed and proceeded to pin me down....

I freaked the * out, I tried to wrestle it away from him and get him off me, managing to throw him off the bed and we tumbled onto the floor. At which point my mom knocked on the door and he snapped out of it, returning to normal. When asked about this incident later, he'd say it was his alter and that he couldn' t remember it. And that I couldn't call it abuse, assault or attempted murder even because he wasn't himself.

A week or two later after I'd started at the school and the day before Halloween I was on the phone with him, when I messaged Jackie about what had been going on. She apologized and said she had to show me something upsetting, I said it was okay if she did that I wanted to know the truth and she sent me some texts between her and my then boyfriend. (

I was completely sickened I even think I threw up, my boyfriend was screaming and crying at me to not leave him saying it wasn't true and she was lying and the texts were his alter. I was also informed they slept together a couple of times and the times I was given that they did this, matched up with what I knew about where he'd been from my end.

I stayed with him because I was new at the school, I knew no one else and I was scared and still in love. He proceeded to finally cut Jackie off, turning everyone against her ...

I from her ascended into disarray, I developed severe bulimia, self harm habits and cried nearly every day for the next 6 months we were together. I constantly went back and forth between being utterly in love with him and thinking Jackie was lying, to hating his guts and believing everything.

In the months after Jackie was out of the picture, he'd send me graphic threats over message and then claim it was his alter ... He also assaulted me once again, to the point I had to seek medical treatment but once again said it was his alter.

In April of 2016, we split up finally. I didn't talk to him for a long while until about July when he was getting anonymous messages calling him abusive and he messaged me asking me if I knew anything about it and if I could help him. That was the last straw and I blew up, I confronted him about all the terrible things he'd done to me and he stated that it was a side effect of medication and his other personalities so I wasn't allowed to call it abuse or be angry. I was needless to say, completely appalled and so many people took his side, calling me abusive and toxic for being upset about what had happened, school administration told me it was my fault when I reported him etc.

Its been almost a year since we split and I am still confused about what exactly took place, was it his alter or was it an elaborate cover up. I have no idea and I'd like anyone's opinion, I know I'll never get closure but I'd like at least some of these pieces to fit together.