Messages

I'm sorry, OrinIncandenza, that sounds even tougher than my position.  Thanks for responding. It helps to hear that, sadly, others have to deal with similar and then to hear how they're dealing with it.

I'd get a second opinion on the "finishing college means you can't get disability benefits". I've been told things by psychiatrists before that ended up being completely wrong, e.g. if I got disability benefits, I wouldn't be allowed to ever work again. Total bunkum. That was meant to persuade me to continue trying to get back in the workforce. Your psych might have had a similar agenda. BTW I'm sure I'm not in the same country as you so rules will be different.

Thanks for the response Blueberry. Your situation sounds very complex. At least mine offers me some more basic choices and given that no money I receive from family will be of an amount to really help me, it's easier to decide to keep it from controlling me.

You make a good point and it's something I've thought with regard to disability benefits. I need to broach it with my social worker/therapist but I've just started and I always get the sense that these therapists worry about getting hustled and are therefore vigilant about things like helping to support a disability application where they don't think it's appropriate. I have the same issue with medicinal marijuana particularly because it's a bit of a taboo with the older generations. I plan on wading into the disability discussion relatively soon. Thanks for the nudge!

Thank you Three Roses. I'm still stunned that she decided to go that route. I thought I could have that conversation and we could return to being supportive but I guess not. I'm going full NC with all family for the new year. I'm not sure for how long but I had questioned whether I would include her or not but now I don't have to decide. She'll probably defect and start telling my family all of the things I've shared with her so I'd guess they'll be angry at me anyway. Still, I'm feeling better in general for confronting these things whatever the outcome. Thank you all for your support! It means a great deal to me.

Well she and I have been talking quite a bit over the last few days and she started out very positive and encouraging, even though I couldn't agree with much of her perspective on this stuff since she was basically slowly reinforcing the primacy of my abusers and the need on my part to try to show them sympathy. She even introduced some things I had said to her as evidence that I participated in abuse of her, and I agreed and apologized and asked that she apologize for having attempted to out me and mock my masculinity as a way to win favor with my father. Instead of showing me the respect I showed her and apologizing, she denied any of it ever happened and said it was a "mind trick" I was experiencing. I told her to not contact me again. I'm crushed.

I tried and tried yesterday to respond to this. But i couldn't find the words.

Thus is one of the most maddening responses we can get, imo. It's just another way that others invalidate and minimize our pain! Ranks right up there with "It would go away if you stopped thinking about it."

I can't say whether you should adjust your contact level with her or not. I can only say, I limit the time I spend with others who drain me, and if possible I cut contact with them if I have issues with things they say to me, but they won't work with me to resolve it.

Thanks Three Roses, that's good advice. I think in the main she's somebody who can be a valuable presence in my life and is therefore worth maintaining contact with. I do think I need to address the belittling comments though if not her perception of her illness because her belittling comments are performative in the sense that she only says it in front of other family members, which I think she does because she knows from watching my brother do it for years that she'll receive social reward from my father as a result.

I can certainly see from reading other accounts and analyzing my own family why many choose to end contact with family altogether. It's almost impossible to disentangle any one member from the abuse and its effects, even those who have just as badly been damaged by it.

I've been struggling with this my whole life. Consistently being unable to maintain employment has been one of my biggest challenges. I was able to earn a JD and a masters with the "help" of Klonopin but kind of maintaining a 'normal' disposition consistently for many weeks in a social setting has always proven to be too much. In school, I could show up for classes and other events, work a bit, and still have the flexibility to protect myself and heal in isolation. Working full-time removes that flexibility and adds chronic sleep deprivation to the mix. As a result I've been chronically late to many jobs and abandoned more than a few. Having a mother who thinks work is the path to self-understanding has made this struggle acutely painful.

As a result of this struggle, I've routinely had to rely on my parents for money. My mother is in complete control of their finances and as a result all requests for help go through her. She uses this power to sow guilt and anxiety in me. Every time I've ever asked for assistance she's reacted by immediately stressing how difficult it will be for her and adopting a tone like I'm physically hurting her. I guess the good news is that she usually offers the money after the whole song and dance, but it makes coming to her for help again particularly scary. After my recent revelations with regard to familial emotional abuse and CPTSD, I expected her to adopt a new outlook on the way my family treats me and how she could help. Instead, when offering some fairly meager sums (my parents live in a 4,500 square foot house, drive two luxury vehicles and have more possessions stored in their attic than I'll ever own in my lifetime) she added, "there will of course be some conditions". I hit back saying that she could help if she wanted to but I wasn't interested in her conditions since I was asking for help, not for money, but she decided to offer money as her help. She adjusted and agreed so I guess I should be happy about that but the amount is only enough to solve one problem and ensure I'll need money again and very soon. This dynamic is the reason I now have over $300k in student loans that I'll never pay off. I basically decided it was preferable to have a permanent financial albatross tied around my neck, growing larger everyday, to going through this exercise. Unfortunately, post-school I've discovered I'm no better equipped to support myself so I've had to return to this damaging dependency.

I intend to apply for disability benefits but a psychiatrist in the past told me I would be denied because I was able to finish college (although it took 8 years and 7 colleges), so now that I've completed graduate and law school, I imagine it might be even less likely that I would qualify. I don't know what to do because I can't live like this at 34. I want to establish at least a temporary no contact with all of my family members but that's not viable as long as I'm financially reliant on them.

Thanks MelodieRose, it's not that she knows what I'm feeling but thinks she does. I think she uses that sense to diminish my feelings. Kind of like that, " Oh I've felt that AND worse. That's really no big deal." Kind of a way to downplay what I'm experiencing while shifting the focus to her and insisting on the greater severity of her issues. Growing up she was the golden child but has shifted to the jester role in recent years.

I've just been triggered a bit by a conversation with my sister who struggles with some of the same things but in a demonstrably less extreme way. She asked if she should be worried about me and I responded with some of the recent optimism I've developed as a result of uncovering my emotional abuse and finding CPTSD and this forum. She responded that she'd been through it all before and intimated that I shouldn't get my hopes up. This is her typical behavior: no one suffers worse than her and I certainly never could. Moreover, she's experienced IT ALL before and is an expert on MY emotions. She's only 18 months older.

She and I have grown closer over the last couple of years as a result of our similar struggles but every time I see her she finds a way to get a dig in, some of which are things my more chronic and violent abusers have said. These include questioning my sexuality despite repeatedly stating my interest in women. At Thanksgiving it was "my life is more interesting than yours".

I've been debating what I should do with her as she's the least problematic family member I have but is still clearly a periodic abuser and some of her behavior still triggers me. She just responded asking me not to get too sensitive, which I believe is a standard strategy to make me feel shame about expressing my feelings. 

Can anyone shed some light on this relationship and what is typically seen as best practice? Is this the type of situation I should try to work through or is this a case where a period of no contact would be best while I attempt to recover a bit more. I'd hate to lose this new intimacy but I guess if it's a damaging intimacy then maybe it's for the best.

When there's much of a confrontation (how much varies depending on the situation), I literally cannot speak! I keep telling people this (before or after), and no one seems to understand that I literally cannot make words, and they don't even seem to notice when it happens! It's made me feel so alone and insane (weird, abnormal? something like that).

I am nearly crying from the feeling that it's not just me, as it has always seemed.

Thank you again.

I feel the same way having read this! I spent years practically silent in social situations where one of my abusers was present. I faced the same reactions. Amusement that I wasn't talking or complete lack of awareness that I'd been silent. Chalk up 3 moments of not feeling alone in the world with a specific experience since I joined a few hours ago. This place is magic!

Thanks Libby. My priority beyond establishing some semblance of stability is to find a therapist more specifically trained in trauma and PTSD so that I can really delve into this and have an expert of sorts to work through it with me. My current therapist is a social worker who likely has more generalized experience and may not be equipped to properly aid in my recovery beyond being a sounding board.

I'm open to any tips or guides to locating a more specialized practitioner.

100% blanca, particularly wondering why certain people have treated me as subhuman while treating everyone else (including complete strangers) with more respect and care. The first emotion to come out of that is naturally a conclusion that something is uniquely off about you. Being away from the abuse has helped me reduce my own self-doubt and self-hatred and experience some recovery as a result. You were robbed of the opportunity to develop a sense of self that was not premised on the negative input of others, but in my experience it is possible to develop a more generous understanding of yourself. The most important thing I've recognized since coming to acknowledge my abuse is that there was and is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with me that has justified the abuse. Nothing at all. Why some saw fit to treat me as if there was I'll never know, but it had everything to do with them and nothing to do with me.

I'm brand new to the recognition that I'm struggling with CPTSD as a result of lifelong emotional abuse from family and friends. I've been dealing with the symptoms for years but have been muddling through (and covering these emotions) with Klonopin. I've been off of it for about 6 months and only last week began having cascading realizations about the abuse. As a result of reading up on emotional abuse, I found CPTSD and for the first time in my life I feel like I understand myself and what I experience in every moment of my life.

I've just resumed therapy and seen a psychiatrist for the first time since these recognitions and I have been unfortunately disappointed by the lack of willingness to tailor an approach to what I'm now beginning to understand. The therapy I can be patient for, but the medication prescribed is not in any significant way different to what I've been prescribed for years when they thought I was bipolar and then later when my diagnosis was OCD. I'm on fire to pursue recovery in full recognition of the nature of my struggle, but I don't see anything like a similar enthusiasm and understanding from the people who are designated as the frontline of treatment.

I'm in a place where I'm just starting to discuss this with people in my life and figure out who can remain and who needs to be removed. I'm full of questions and voluminous thoughts and anxieties that I need to discuss constantly, so even 2 hours per week of therapy is nowhere near enough. I hope I've found the right place for support and information. I've been sleeping horribly so my thoughts are not as organized as I'd like but I hope this can serve as an opening to recovery.

For reference, I'm a 34 year old man in Chicago, currently out of work and struggling to feed myself. I'm working with a mental health nonprofit and have been prescribed trazadone and Zoloft, although I'm hesitant to take either. I've had the most relief from physical and mental symptoms with marijuana and am long-term hoping to gain access to medicinal marijuana as a part solution to some of my most debilitating symptoms. I've had good responses so far from the few friends and family I've told but am still in a sense trapped because my 2 original abusers are part of my nuclear family and I don't know if I can ever broach the subject with them, particularly because they've both been better people for nearly a decade and it almost feels cruel (I see the irony for sure!) to tell them what they put me through.

Any input is new and vital to me. I feel alive for the first time in 20 years but I can already see that the work involved to overcome this is extraordinary and very difficult. I know this feeling will dissipate so right now I'm just looking to progress as much as is possible while I have the energy for it. Thank you in advance!

 I've had many over the years but one in particular stands out. When I was about 20, I overdosed on Klonopin and was hospitalized for a week as a result. When I was released, I went to see my psychiatrist. She asked me what I'd been taking in the hospital and chided me for not being able to remember all of the names. Then she cut me off as I was asking about her thoughts on what to do next and delivered a mini lecture on how irresponsible I was for overdosing and having trouble with memory. She concluded her speech by saying she could no longer treat me because my behavior was too erratic (I came to understand later that it was likely motivated by liability concerns) and as I was walking out of her office she told me to "stop being goofy." I was stunned but didn't know what to say in response so I walked out.

Sad thing is, the next psychiatrist defended her decision and only expressed mild surprise at what she said. Like if you heard a pilot crack a PG-13 joke about the mile high club right before takeoff. Sometimes I think mental health professionals are the last people on earth who should be tasked with the duties of their professions. I've found good ones, but many seem disinterested in people and distrusting and dismissive of their patients.