Messages

I feel as if I am in the midst of a large knot.  I can really see the threads or where they go or come from and each time I pull on it, it either becomes harder or more tangled.  And I am in the middle completely caught up in it.

I left my 32-year abusive marriage from my OCPDh.  I am regularly on the OOTF boards and just recently joined here as my therapist and I with EMDR are resolving my past trauma.

My problem, today, is my DDs are LC with me.  Granted I have trampled their boundaries in the past - I just truly didn't understand.  I was parenting how I had parented.  How I thought my OCPDxh would approve of.  How my grandparents had.  Yes, it sounds like an excuse but here, on this board, I hope that you all understand.  I was so completely in the fog and I never, ever, considered I was a victim of abuse.  I am 56 and it never crossed my mind.

Until I was diagnosed with PTSD.  It took a neuropsychiatrist to diagnose me before I realized that I was a picture of The Body Keeps Score.

And it is only recently that I realized that I have passed on this trauma.  That I have injured/damaged my own children who are my very heart and I am flattened by the guilt.

Granted my xh is relishing this and using it to his advantage but I am struggling.  My WHOLE life was those kids and keeping them safe from my ex's mercurial moods.  Now I am cut off from that very oxygen that kept me alive.  And yes, I deserve it, to a point.  I am working hard to recognize their boundaries now, but I am scared and anxious that I will never recover those relationships.  With my own children.

How do you handle the guilt?  How do you function?

Hello!  I am a frequent poster on OOTF and in working with my therapist, I have come to realize that much of my trauma began in childhood.  I came to OOTF out of a relationship with my OCPDxh - 32 years of marriage with prolonged emotional and financial abuse as well as physical intimidation.  Prior to that a sexual assault in college.  Then the repeated and constant beatings by my older brother as a child - and my parents looking the other way.  I began about ten years ago to have daily non-epileptic seizures and bouts of aphasia.  I was diagnosed with PTSD and began working with a trauma therapist using EMDR.  The effect was immediate and the seizures stopped.  I left my ex-husband and now am struggling with the aftermath.

The effect of my parents (struggling with this) neglect - with phrases like "don't be dramatic, it's not that bad, children should be silent, respect your elders" and then the look you get when they think you are lying.  My brother and my younger NPDsister specialized in gaslighting and tag teamed me through my childhood.  My other two siblings were off the hook as they were viewed as too weak to torment.  While I was open season.  No wonder I married a person who love bombed me and then almost immediately began to gaslight me when I pushed back on his insane rules.  But then my father raged when things didn't go his way and as they said, I was not really suited for anything but life as a wife.  I thought that was what marriage and men were. 

I am now considering that this is generational trauma?  In the era of being a little woman.  And I am fretting because it is how I raised my children.  Three lovely kids who are forging their way in the world now with a childhood of those same phrases and my tiptoeing on eggshells daily.

When I talked about cPTSD before to my therapist - who can't really change the diagnosis of my psychiatrist - she says she is hesitant because it's not in the DSM.  My psychiatrist is like well yes, he sees it but again, not DSM.  I had hesitated in the past to label myself this way because I didn't see the torment by my siblings as trauma.  Didn't all kids get socked in the stomach by their big brother when they refused to take his turn in washing dishes?

So now in the aftermath of the divorce where my DDs are refusing to accept that I was abused but they do accept the PTSD - they were there when the neuropsychiatrist delivered that one - they have sided with their father and don't want their childhood memories tampered with.  ANd I am reading more and more on this and beginning to see that I need help with my emotional regulation and reconciling with that kid who didn't really grow up - yet - at the age of 56.