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I don't know if this is helpful, but I sometimes tell people: "On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 = 'raised by angels' and 10 = 'raised by Satan' — the abuse events of my childhood are maybe about a 6. They were bad, but there's so many people out there who've been through worse. If you use the scale to measure how confusing my childhood was, though — that was a 10. Or maybe a 4000. Nothing about my childhood made any sense, and I had to figure it out alone, and it means my basic understanding of the world is not-quite-right in more ways than I even realize."

a_bunny, I don't know if I have any answers on the internal validation part, but your post hit a lot of feelz in me and I wanted to speak to that.

I've never done any formal work in CBT; all I really know is the descriptions I read, the "challenging inner negative thoughts," and some moments of (well-meaning!) people trying to help me with that.

For me, for my own experience with complex trauma, it has always just felt wrong. (I'm really speaking only for me; I know people, including some other trauma people, and people I love and respect hugely, who've found a lot of help in it. I respect that.)

Growing up in an abusive family, I learned early that if I didn't read my parents' moods right, it would have serious consequences. I had a very well-honed sense of how to read body language, read unspoken hints and clues, read between the lines. The instincts I developed aren't perfect . . . but they're good.

Through the years I've learned that when I have negative thoughts — usually they're right. They're always worth listening to. The CBT model of challenging these thoughts is actually where I get into trouble. When I start second-guessing what my instinct is telling me, that's when problems happen. If I pick up that someone is pulling away from me — they are. If I pick up that someone's uncomfortable around me — they are. If I pick up that a person is some kind of threat to me — they are. There may be more to the story, but my instincts are solid.

Too, I grew up with a mother whose idea of parenting was pretty much "No," and "You're wrong," and "You're doing it wrong." (She probably has some personality disorders in there.) When she decided I was a bad kid, she simply opposed whatever I did or said.

And the CBT model feels to me a lot of times like just opposing whatever I'm feeling. It doesn't feel like healing from Mom's voice; it feels like working to reinforce Mom's voice.

Growing up, it became hard for me to feel my feelings or even know what they were, and I think my task as a grown-up is to give myself permission to feel them. Not to challenge them, but more to experience them and understand them. There may be more to the story than my feelings are picking up on, but I've found I have to start with embracing them. (My boyfriend told me once: "Otillie, when you have a feeling, you attack it and wrestle it until it gives up its secrets." Which, um, yeah, that was the moment I fell in love with him.)

Maybe in the end that does get at what you're asking about internal validation: For me it starts with identifying and experiencing and trusting my thoughts. Everything in the world is ready to challenge them. I want to start by *having* them.

ellachimera, that is huge. Congratulations, and go you! Saying no can be the hardest, most brutal task in the world. When I've managed to do it, the weirdest part was figuring out how to feel: proud of myself? ashamed of myself? sad? happy? all of the above? But you did an amazing, important thing. I'll be watching how it goes for you, and hoping your family respects you, and hoping you find healing and freedom.

Oscen, can you let us believe you've done something well? Because you finished a marathon. That you did it limping and hurting only makes it more spectacular. You did the thing. It doesn't matter if it was pretty. You did the thing.

That's what courage is. Doesn't matter how many times you say "This is hard!" and "I'm scared!" and "I want to go home!"

It just matters that you did the thing.

And at the same time, I hear you. I've been there with a family ready to keep me small and make sure I never feel good about myself. (I read somewhere once -- I wish I could remember where -- something like this: The worst punishment you can give a person is to make sure they can never feel good about themselves again. That sounds about right.)

But your family was wrong and you are a hero. Not just finishing marathons, but living your life in the face of people who've tried to stop you. Hurting and limping and keeping on anyway. All these things you've done, they belong to you, they're yours. May you celebrate them all with us soon.

Not going sounds like totally the loving, adult thing to do. I read in a book once: "We all have limits. We just don't know where they are till we've reached them."

It sounds like you reached one, and acknowledging it and listening to it is so important.

I wish I had advice that would fix the pain, but all I can do is say, I hear you, I hurt for you, what your mother and that nun did was pointlessly cruel. I get it that you lost your hold on the earth for a moment; I would've.

I am in awe of your courage in building your life and living in it and loving your family despite the past. You are showing your family what it looks like to be a flawed and hurt but real person in the world, when you had no one to show that to you.

May it get better.

Kizzie, saylor, invisibledaughter: Omigosh. Thank you for your replies. Just knowing people "get it" is so powerful.

Kizzie, yes, I think the reason I'm so different from the people around me is because the world I grew up in was so different (and bizarre and upside-down and "Otillie, the sky is green what-is-wrong-with-you!"). As a kid, it felt like my brother and I were the only ones in the house with any connection to reality. How strange it is to grow up and realize people think I'm the one who doesn't make sense.

invisible daughter, all I have to do is read your user name and I already feel a kindred spirit. Yes, my mom is a narcissist, too, or "narc lite" or maybe "a polite narc," because she's articulate and successful and people love her...except her family. I talk to her once a week still and don't think I can go no-contact, really. I so wish I could. I'm terrified she might still eat up my adult life as she moves deeper into old age. She still could.

And oh, animals! They give me hope and respite. Four rescue dogs sounds like heaven and like four strong ropes tying you to the earth. I have two rescue cats, one my soulmate (anxious and humble and eager-to-please), one my opposite (he throws himself into the world with utter abandon; he's my avatar), both of them ridiculous glorious goofball beings. I can't imagine a life without animals surrounding me.

saylor, I am so sorry you know what it is to be unwanted. It's like an open wound that never heals, you know? My big brother has two daughters, now young women, and from the moment they were born I absolutely ached to look at them and know how wanted they were. They're now awesome people...and they don't get me at all, and my brain doesn't know what to do all the feelings it gives me.

Your family sounds a bit like mine (uff da). I think sometimes my mother had an intense need for me to be wrong; to be "just a bad kid." She didn't want a family but she felt guilty for feeling that way. If I was "a bad kid," tho, well, no one could blame her, right? She could still feel like a good person.

I am sorry we're all here and glad we're in it with each other. Hugs to all.

Thank you to TR, RR, WG, NA, everyone who's read! It is good to be here. I hope I can give back a little bit.

This isn't my first post here; I've posted a little bit before, here and there.

But I wanted to introduce myself because I'm aching to have more time with folks like you in my life.

I posted in a different support group for years, and it was wonderful, and I met people I cared about, still do. Other trauma survivors. But the group changed -- I mean, groups do that, members come and go, it happens -- and I don't feel at home there in the current iteration.

And I've felt the loss. I didn't even realize how much it meant to me to know people whose brains worked like mine does. To not be the weirdest one in the room. Until it was gone.

I've posted here and there on other boards, looking for community. Mistake. It's made me remember why I felt alone until I first met other trauma people.

So here I am, because when I read everyone's posts here, that restless achy flailing "but-there-must-be-someone-who-doesn't-stare-at-me-like-a-space-alien" feeling . . . calms down a little, and I breathe a little, and I don't feel so alone.

So hi! I survived the world's weirdest childhood. My dad abused me sexually, my mom abused me emotionally, both of them neglected me -- Dad was drinking all the time, and Mom had her own apartment where she stayed six days a week. (They couldn't get divorced because neither wanted custody.) Mom's probably an undiagnosed N. She remains in my life, at a distance. Dad died two years ago.

Of the two, I think Mom left more damage.

I'm 59. I've had 30 years of therapy (this July, it will be my 30th anniversary with T! She is "my other mother, the good one," I am unspeakably lucky in her). In the big picture -- well, I'm proud of my life. I love my career. I live alone and work at home. My house is the last one on a dead-end dirt road surrounded by woods. I have (this is sooooo weird, I cannot tell you) a wonderful long-distance relationship of 14 years. (I have never met anyone in a relationship that lasted this long, at least not one where the two people still liked each other.)

In the small picture, the day-to-day: My trauma remains my constant companion. I struggle with moods, with EFs, with misophonia, with anxiety -- with want to belong and being so scared to.

So, um, yeah. Hi.

I have both C-PTSD and misophonia. I don't know if or how the two are related, and I'm not sure anyone has a full picture of just what miso is yet. The two conditions do seem to be all jumbled together in my brain. I know that I was triggered fiercely by noises from my father (who sexually abused me), while the same noises from other people don't have the same effect. Dad was an alcoholic, and all his noises (snoring, loud breathing, chewing loudly, harrumphing, etc., etc.) all got louder and ickier when he was drinking. Hearing him breathing when he was sober didn't trigger me; hearing him breathing drunk did. So it does feel like there's a connection between the C-PTSD and the misophonia in Dad's specific case. As if the wiring in my brain between "Dad sounds" and "extreme danger, Release All The Adrenaline" is linked.

Most of my miso, though, centers on neighbor noises — hearing other people's thumping music, barking dogs, chain saws, recreational vehicles, and the like. All of those can send me into a spiral of hopelessness. In me, the misophonia rage turns immediately inward to weeping and despair (it certainly wasn't safe as a kid to direct any of my anger outward). It just feels like life is impossible as long as other people's noise is invading my brain; like I am at their mercy. It makes me feel, actually, like my (emotionally abusive) mom did as a kid. Making me feel small made Mom feel big, and that's how neighbor noises make me feel now: The people around me want to yank me out of my peace and solitude, and off-load their frustration and rage onto me, so they'll feel better. And there is nothing I can do about it.

From what I've read about miso, it seems to exist independently of trauma — you can have miso with no trauma at all. I know researchers have identified a gene where "greater likelihood of having miso" is passed on. My own idea is that this tendency to have miso can sometimes be "turned on" by trauma. In my case, once my tendency did get turned on, my C-PTSD triggers got all mixed in together with my misophonia triggers so that it can feel like just a ball of hopelessness. Hearing my neighbor's chain saw awakens the same emotions I used to feel when I was being abused as a kid.

I deal with my miso by living alone in the woods, and surrounding myself with white noise 24/7. It means I can go days sometimes without a noise trigger, which is glorious. But honestly, I still have triggers, and when a noise does make it through all my barriers — I still get just as hopeless. I've learned how to avoid noise better, but nothing else about my miso has improved, really.

I am so sorry, Foxbrown, that you know both trauma and miso, because they are brutal and cruel.

annakoen:

I am making very, very slow progress, but at least it's progress.. Just some days I feel it's only getting worse... Is that normal, is it part of the first real start of healing this?

Dealing with the trauma hasn't been a linear process for me. And I don't really see progress or change or getting-better-ness as it happens ... but when I look back over a few years, I realize, Hey, wait, I've been a little bit happy almost! How 'bout that...

I've been seeing the same therapist (aka "my good mother") for twenty-seven years. Can't even begin to say how much that has meant to me. I don't know why it makes such a difference—I mean, I talk, and she hears me, and not much else happens. But somehow it's Everything.

I found a support group a few years ago and that has also been Everything. I don't know why just knowing I'm not all alone changes things but it does.

And I'm starting to sound like I think I'm an expert, haha NO. I still get blindsided. I get flashbacks. Moods like whoa. My social anxiety and noise phobia have only grown deeper and more crippling. I have years where I cope better than others.

(On the other hand...somewhere along the line, I seem to have decided—it wasn't conscious—that my Plan For Life, which was "Wake up tomorrow and be a person who doesn't have social anxiety or noise phobia," wasn't working out so great, and why don't I set up a life that actually works for who I really am. So I did. INFINITE IMPROVEMENT. About 90 percent of my stress just flaked right away. It didn't do anything to make people or noise easier for me to deal with; just meant that I don't have to deal with them as much. On the whole: RECOMMEND.)

For me the up-and-down and one-step-forward-two-steps-back dance is STILL going on. Facing trauma—I've lived with my story now for a lot of decades, so it's not actively front-burner in my mind most of the time. Except when it is.

Even though on some level I've always known the impact and depth of my pain, it surprises, nay shocks me to now see the depth of this wound, the weight of this burden I've been carrying all this time. I can't seem to be able to put it down just yet, but I really, really want to.

Oh yeah. I don't think I'll ever fully put it down. Even after decades, sometimes I think my brain sends me back "inside" the trauma now and then, as if I'm right there in the moment again. I sort of disappear into my subconscious mind for a while, re-experiencing everything. For me, being back "inside" like that — the thing is, every time it happens I learn something. I remember some vital piece, I make some crucial connection. ("So that's why I'm scared of XYZ!") And then I have to get out because trauma (still working on that part). But yeah, even though I've been grappling with my demons since the 1980s, I'm not done yet.

Even now my brain—my past—my childhood self has things to tell me.

I'm hoping some day I can love myself enough to say "The kind of work place I need is such and such and if nobody can provide that for me I will provide it for myself". Now, finally, I have a feeling that this goal is reachable, even if it takes me the rest of my life to get there, I will be able to do that, some day

OH I HOPE THIS FOR YOU SO MUCH too. And ... and it's exactly what I did do for myself. I have my own tiny-but-thriving little business and IT IS WORTH IT. It's not perfect (What I would give for a day off...). But you can do this, annakoen, and it will be worth it.

annakoen, I wish I had the bandwidth right now to tell you how hard I hear you and understand what you are saying.

My story is different but it's the same, too. All those things your parents put you through—I know those things.

I am SO HAPPY you have a therapist and husband who hear you and care.

I'm here reading and cheering you on. My life has gotten better over these last ... er ... good grief ... thirty years since I started facing my chilldhood demons. So much better. It still hurts and I still struggle. But.

But. I'm sending you hope.

I am so triggered by noise, it's really limited my life. And there's a specific kind that sets me off that's a little hard to label—"recreational noise," maybe? The sounds of people having fun when "fun" means "being really loud." Motorcycles, stereos, snowmobiles, ATVs, loud cars. I don't know why it's so crippling for me; perhaps it's the sense that people are violating my boundaries for entertainment. Of being at their mercy, with no control.

Once I remember I heard the sound of a car engine revving, over and over again, for close to an hour. I was at wit's end; couldn't do anything, just sat there in my house and listened to the car and cried. Finally I went for a walk to at least find out what on earth was going on. Turned out to be a neighbor out in his driveway, working with his teenage son to fix up an old car. Immediately my helpless anger vanished. I was still pretty relieved when they were done for the day, mind you, but when I knew what was happening, understood this wasn't just random strangers making loud noises to annoy me ... I could cope with it.

But in general there is just so much noise in the world — so many people who I think really do enjoy annoying others. I hate how small it has made my life. How I'm continually 24/7 hypervigilant and how I've had to make so many choices just based on "how much noise will there be." I carry white-noise machines from room to room and never, ever turn them off. Usually I have several going. I have a white-noise headband I wear outside. There is nowhere in the world safe.

I'm also deeply, cripplingly ashamed of letting anyone see this part of me.

I wish so hard I could turn it off.

You are doing so well. I'm reading along and cheering you on and sending calm and hope your way.