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Hi Far - self-referencing refers to thinking about what you need/feel/think/want ..... instead of others.  Many of us with CPTSD have had to focus on others, meeting their needs, watching for danger .... so much so that we aren't in tune with ourselves and need to start to begin to consider ourselves in order to recover.

Hope this helps.

Yes this helps. Interestingly, this is something I've already been doing for thirty years, ever since attending ACOA groups. My problem is that once I got married, I didn't know how to become more group-minded. I'm always thinking what I need first -- I feel as though I can never make up enough for being other-minded as a kid.

So now after 24 years of marriage, this old dog is still learning new tricks. Now I'm trying to figure out how to be self-referencing and also couple-minded. I guess the path never ends...lol

Thank you for the warm welcome, both of you. 

I've been thinking a lot about my mother, because she is still alive and she has been freaking out lately and her high level of crazy is seriously messing with my head. It's easy to think my father was the "good" one because I miss him now that he's gone, and I loved him when he was here, and he did sometimes shield me from my mother's insanity, especially when I was little. But I also think my dad had ego issues with how he was perceived. Like, he wanted everyone to think he was smart. He WAS smart, so there's no reason anyone wouldn't think that, but he sometimes made a fool of himself pushing the point. ALSO, he wanted everyone to think he was self-sufficient even though he was disabled. This was NOT true. My mother and I covered for him and made him look healthier than he really was, all the way through the last third of his life or so. So in that sense, I was there to fulfill BOTH parents' needs. And yes, I do believe it was traumatizing.  It's hard to have a support system because nearly everyone in my real life knows my parents and thinks they're amazing and wonderful; many people even think I had a nearly perfect childhood.

But yeah. I have this vivid memory of getting yelled at by an older student for coming in late to a school practice, and stepping out of myself with the realization that even if I tried to explain that it had taken me twenty minutes just to get my parents into the car, no one would believe me. It was like that--all the time. Are we going to run out of food, how am I going to get to school if it's storming outside, I just outgrew my entire wardrobe except for one outfit and the kids are making fun of me for wearing that one outfit every day, I am literally going to have to cut class and take an unexcused absence to take dad to the doctor because the vice principal is not going to believe that we don't have a phone, I had to miss school yesterday because one parent was in the hospital and the other was out of town and now I can't go back because neither of them is here to sign me in.... 

Of course, it was all in the past, and everything is fine now--except I barely have the energy to function each day.

And you're asking if you belong here? Um...yeah. (Hi I know you from the other board). You get hugs today!

Is self-referencing simply referring to yourself in the third person?   

I used Bradshaw's "Homecoming" as my guide.  I did all the exercises to the hilt and talked with my Inner-child everyday for years.  So worth it 

I just ordered this book. Thank you

This is an incredible thread. I can relate to all of it. I was wondering about a definition of self-referencing, though, and could not find it in the CPTSD glossary on this board. Can someone define it for me? I like definitions. lol.

P.S. I was referred to this specific thread by someone on the OOTF board (the sister board to this one.) I'm glad I was!

Hi all. I'm on the Out of the Fog board, and I'm wondering if I fit in here too. I just spent the last six years taking care of my aging mother who has serious emotional problems. I got so enmeshed that my personality changed. I became fearful, negative, anxious and depressed. She became increasingly demanding, dependent, and unwilling to take any responsibility.

I went NC a year ago and I'm finding it's taking a long time for me to recover. I still get worked up over little things, I obsess, I do OCD behaviors, and I'm always expecting things to go wrong. I get almost paranoid at times.

Do I fit in here? And how should I start? Just a little nudge in the right direction would be helpful.