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Messages - Unbroken1

#1
General Discussion / Re: Self-help books can trigger me
October 14, 2022, 06:59:14 PM
To everyone that has responded here: I appreciate knowing that I am not the only person here who identifies with this "tendency" (a helpful way to remind myself that it is not an embedded personality trait, but a learned adaptation to my environment) to feel like I am or have fallen short over the years of trying to find a way out of the hellish purgatory that CPTSD survivors live in.

Since my own path in life started with two very dysfunctional and immature parents, who both likely had undiagnosed personality disorders, I was also constantly being compared to others and shown in mostly passive-aggressive and subtle ways that I continued to fail to meet the unrealistic standards that were set for me. This led to my perfectionist style and academic over-achievement, but underneath that facade, I always felt I could never measure up and didn't deserve my accomplishments. My father, in particular, would mail me newspaper clippings or magazine articles that implied I wasn't measuring up. Never mind the fact that after they both passed away, I discovered my parents' school records, which showed me that they barely were able to keep up passing grades during high school and college. Their hypocrisy was and is still mind-blowing, and to this day, hypocritical behavior in others is enough to trigger me into shame and rage.

Enter Impostor Syndrome, which has made me feel not worthy and prevented me from stepping up to opportunities because I don't feel worthy and the despair shuts me down from even trying, or sabotaging myself. Shame ensues when I compare myself to others with my education and experience, who I feel have attained financial success or status which I do not have. I will turn 65 in a few months. Imagine what it feels like to restart your life at this age after discovering why you've been running a (metaphorical) marathon with a broken leg against emotionally and mentally healthy competitors for decades!

Since my divorce from my malignant covert/communal uNPD wife seven years ago, I fell into chronic cannabis use which I am now into cessation for the third time and at six weeks out, I think this time it will stick. I try to practice self-compassion and understand that the 24/7 indulgence was a desperate attempt to escape the emotional agony and confusion of being thrown out like a piece of trash after a 23-year relationship with someone who revealed herself as a true phony and fake empath, who had all the compassion and understanding in the world for everyone - except for me. Now that the fog is clearing, my obsessive reading and research about both narcissistic abuse and CPTSD are finally starting to provide some relief after decades of being treated through CBT for low-grade depression and anxiety.

Anyway, I have found another link that I got a lot of wisdom out of, and which seems to be related to what my original post here was about. Hope this is helpful to everyone else as well. Thanks for all the support. I hope you get as much out of this as I have and it sheds some light on your own experience if it resonates.

https://www.anniewright.com/the-playing-field-wasnt-level-to-begin-with-on-childhood-trauma-and-the-fruitless-comparison-game/

#2
General Discussion / Re: Self-help books can trigger me
October 09, 2022, 02:58:11 AM
I just found this article that brilliantly addresses the issue I (the OP) posted about: https://themighty.com/topic/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/trauma-cant-let-it-go
#3
As I was going through the end of my marriage 7 years ago, I developed atrial fibrillation, a dysfunction of the heart where my heartbeat is erratic (think about the sound a pair of sneakers in the dryer makes and that's what my heartbeat is like). I also developed arthritis in my spine, carpal tunnel in my wrists, and numbness/extreme sensitivity to cold in my hands and feet. Part of this is work related as I am a web developer and spend much time in front of a screen, but I am positive the timing was not a coincidence and is a partly a result of somaticizing the toxicity of my marriage. The symptoms, oddly enough, manifested as my marriage to my uNPD malignant ex was ending (she initiated the divorce).

I've meditated to try to get my heartbeat under control but the aFib is persistent, meaning 24/7, and is not episodic. I went through 4 cardioversions before being informed that medication is the best route to take but that is more about preventing a stroke than getting my pulse under control. the symptoms also include shortness of breath, which along with the erratic heartbeat, makes regulating my overstimulated nervous system a challenge.

Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this and how they manage. Thanks!
#4
Hi everyone. I am following the writings of Pete Walker, Bessel Van der Kolk, and Peter Levine, and for the first time in my 64 years I can feel the despair and hopelessness of my CPTSD start to abate, using the principles and methodologies that are advocated by these authors. I was raised by uBPD/uNPD parents and am still coming to an awareness of just how incredibly damaging my childhood FOO was.

There is one aspect that I stiil struggle with, and that is "witnessing" or observing my emotions mindfully, and seeing those emotions as passing clouds but they seem to still hang over my psyche, and I can't re-experience those emotions without fear and shame when I think about my past. No matter what part of my life I consider in this way, it's tainted by that same fear and shame - even if the experience at the time was not traumatic.

I am working on self-compassion and dialoguing with both my inner critic and inner child, but seem to be stuck. If anybody here has thoughts or ideas about working through this process, I would like to hear them. Thanks.
#5
Hi all -

In the context of why you are here, can you think of a fictional character whose story you identify with who speaks to you? For me it's always been an underdog character, someone who is lost, abandoned, betrayed, or forgotten; or someone who has been wrongfully accused, or someone who endures emotional isolation, or, lately, someone who is undergoing a personal transformation in trying to reckon with their past and deal with their personal demons.  I was the only son of a uBPD mother and UNPD father and was triangulated as both Golden Child and Scapegoat in our triad, so heroes, loners and rebels are my go-to archetypes.

For me: Neo from The Matrix, Jake Gyllenhaal's character from the film Donnie Darko, Jonah Hill's character from the series Maniac, and Daniel Holden from Rectify, a streaming series about a man unjustly sentenced to solitary confinement on death row. Tom Hanks in Cast Away because he has nobody else (naming my next pet Wilson  ;)). Ray Donovan, particularly in the final few seasons when he comes to terms with his own trauma. Of course, Blade Runner's Decker, who was gaslit by his creators and has to ask himself whether his memories really happened, and if he is really human. Lastly, the one positive role model my southern-raised mother insisted I know, Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird (with a heartfelt shoutout to Boo Radley, who was prolly just really really traumatized).

As a man, reading books or watching films like these bring up a lot of stored emotion for me which can be a great release (in a safe space) and really help with my own stored trauma. I don't want to excuse any evil or antisocial stuff these characters may have engaged in, in their fictional worlds, but their common humanity seems to be the thread I'm pulling on here.

I suppose this is sort of about what art can do to make us more human. But in light of why we're all here, I wonder if the emotional lens we, as survivors of a world few others know see the world through, are touched in a way that others aren't? 

Who do you identify with? Whose story reflects your own?

#6
Before I learned about the concept of the inner critic, it had already become known to me as the Not Good Enough Monster.

I moved cross-country after my divorce to a uNPD of the communal subtype with whom I had been in a 23-year relationship. My ex and I both worked in the same creative field, doing design for print publication, and each had a home office. We both have degrees in Fine Art and part of my post-divorce relocation plan was to establish a career as a fine artist in the area I've moved to.

I successfully took part in a couple of Art Studio Tours and the sales were impressive. But I am also continuing my career as a designer and also have a small vacation rental attached to the house I bought when I moved. So I already have two income-producing gigs and want to make painting more important in the balance of priorities, but am just not able to create the time and head space to do that. The pandemic destroyed my client base, and the vacation rental is barely covering my expenses, so the focus at the moment is on those two areas that are most reliable in providing financial support. I have a potential business opportunity on the horizon with a colleague, but that will take a while to get going.

I believe the "creative block" is due to all the important people in my life actively discouraging me to do this, particularly my father, whose praise for my artistic skills was nonexistent and who also treated my mother's creative skills as a vanity pursuit. I believe had she not had her own aspirations to be an artist destroyed in the same way by her father and then her husband, she possibly wouldn't have suffered from clinical depression and what I now believe was uBPD. But she was complicit when I was told that I could study commercial, rather than fine art, when I went to college.

My seeming inability to do what is one of the few pursuits that brings me joy is tearing me apart internally. I recognize that I have been creatively frozen for so long, I am afraid that I'll never be able to be free of the NGEM. On top of that, my ex has established a reputation as a successful artist in the area I moved from, so I compare myself to her and of course, always come up short.

Are there any other creatives out there who have faced any personal challenges like this? Wondering if anyone has managed to free themselves of the negative inner critic?
#7
Overcoming the impact that the empty phrases that my parents used as their yardsticks for life is even more of a challenge for me because I have assimilated them so completely, they've become a part of my  inner critic's "not good enough" monster that whispers in my ear 24/7.

Since dad (uNPD) was the control freak in our little triad, his principle carried a threat of violence. If I was upset (for example, I always got the Sears version of what I might ask for when Christmas came around)  and he perceived me as not being grateful, he'd say "would you rather get a poke in the eye with a sharp stick?" which shut me down and taught me to not expect or deserve anything good in my life.

Mom (uBPD/uNPD)., having been a beauty pageant contestant, was all about the appearance of how I should behave: "if you haven't got anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

Were these or similar sayings used in your family? I struggle showing up for myself and have realized that I was trained to self-erase.  To this day I am triggered by hypocrites and anyone whom I perceive as trying to manipulate or control me.
#8
General Discussion / Self-help books can trigger me
August 09, 2022, 03:36:40 PM
I was wondering if this happens with anyone else. Over the years I have read dozens of self-help books to try to deal with what I thought was codependency over the years. Including Deepak Chopra, John Bradshaw, The Secret. Anthony Robbins, etc. before I discovered the work of Pete Walker, Bessel van der Kolk and Peter Levine.

But after a while, whenever I considered "working on myself" via those particular types of self-help books, I felt shame and a sense of futility (even to this day) because nothing was helping over the long term, regardless of what I was reading and practicing. So the whole self-help genre - except for works on CPTSD or recovery from toxic/NPD relationships, which are giving me hope after 30 years of CBT - has the effect of making me feel "not good enough."  So the notion of trying to help myself this way can be triggering in and of itself.

Among the CPTSD survivors here, I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this?
#9
I just joined this board and OOTF (for those experiencing or recovering from abuse from individuals with NPD). For someone who has felt like an outsider for all my life, I'm still coming to terms about the truth of my childhood and my PD parents. Mom was uBPD, treated for chronic clinical depression and suicidal. Dad was uNPD on the covert side and the sole breadwinner of our small family of 3. I'm now 64, divorced, no children and living alone.

I started online therapy in the middle of the pandemic out of desperation as I became increasingly avoidant of people following the divorce and the isolation of going days without human connection became too much to bear, even as someone who is self-reliant to the extreme. My therapist's focus is helping individuals who are in or recovering from relationships with NPD individuals and is based on addressing and releasing past traumas held in the body.

I've been researching CPTSD for a couple of years now and have a pretty good intellectual understanding of this state of being and using the writings and practices of Pete Walker's approach to CPTSD, am starting to feel some release from this curse that I attribute to CEN (childhood emotional neglect).

Currently I am managing and self-medicating with cannabis and live in a state where it's legal. I'm extremely high-functioning and started self-medicating at 13 years old when I (unconsciously) realized that there was no way I could ever meet the unrealistic expectations my parents had of me, so defiance became my response, it was the 70s and the rest reads like the script of one of the cheesy anti-drug films we were forced to watch in Social Studies class. Cannabis has always been my drug of choice and allows me to feel normal. It gives me release from the uncertainty, self-doubt and intrusive memories that are the foundation of what I've come to personalize as my own "not good enough monster."

I've managed to cut way, way back on my alcohol consumption as it had also become a regular part of daily life following the end of my 14-year marriage and two-decade long relationship to my uNPD ex-wife. The exposure over years to the thousand+ cuts of incessant disdain, criticism and mind games contributed and exacerbated my pre-existing CPTSD, I'm pretty sure. I started listening to one of Gabor Mates books on addiction since I think he understands the connection between childhood trauma and addiction better than most, but I found little guidance among the endless anecdotes of addicts he treated while working on the streets of Vancouver. If anyone in this forum can suggest other resources that help with addiction and self-medication I would be interested to hear about them. I've successfully quit cannabis in the past for years at a time, so I know it's possible.

Right now I'm trying to wrap my head around the understanding that my childhood (pretty much my whole life, in fact) was one in which all the significant people in my life have held me responsible for their happiness and trained me to accept responsibility for their misery.

My therapist asked me the other day what it was that I was looking for in my relationships with others and I replied "an uncorrupted spirit." I think this may be naive at this point in my life but it's still a worthy notion. As someone who has always defined themselves through the eyes of others, I might ask myself if this is what I could find within, no?

I'm also interested in hearing about ways in which our unremembered core emotional wounds can be recalled since they mostly likely happened between the years of 1-4, which is mostly a blank for me.