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Oh, sunkitten.

This is so much you are dealing with.   An incredible amount.

I think your counselor is saying your emotional health is what is most important.   One can be in the right, and still be on the losing end.

I've had some times I have had to cut some serious losses and move on.   Likely, we all have.   Yours is an extreme example.   Dying people can will entire fortunes to a dog, and ignore caretakers and family, like that hotel woman some years ago...it's their right, fair or not.   It is just is the way it goes.

The timber company.  Personally, I have seen what the land looks like after a timber company stripped what they wanted, abandoned equipment on the land left for the land owner to deal with.   The land I saw looked like a bomb hit it, I never expected to be so shocked.    Potentially, water runoff issues afterwards.

I hope things clear up soon for you, sunkitten.   

Thanks, Rain.

I know dying people can do what they want with their money, but (besides the NPD/ASPD) my father was also on some pretty strong medications for pain while he was in the nursing home, medications which he was not used to receiving long-term. And he maintained right up until his death, even after he changed his financial POA, that I was "all he had" and that he would be leaving everything to me. There is legal precedent here, in my country, where unfair distribution of assets between *siblings* has been overturned by the court and this woman is not even a member of my family except by marriage of her mother.

My father knew I dealt/deal with chronic pain and spinal deformity and that this would inevitably lead to a point where I could no longer work full-time. There are tons of medical records which support this, and combined with my lack of assets compared to those of my uncle's younger stepdaughter, plus the fact that she had virtually nothing to do with him until the last seventeen months of his life, and other evidence on top of all of that, most courts I think would take it all into consideration.

I've been seeing this counselor since 2007, on and off, and was seeing her at the time my father made these changes (at least the ones I knew about at the time). She seems to think that if I just go to social services they'll get me all set up with an affordable place to live right away, but they won't -- due to that long waiting list. I'm sure she is concerned with my emotional health, but having to leave behind all of my possessions and my beloved cats and live on the street until a unit opens up in five years isn't exactly great for my emotional health either. I lose the annuity with no fixed address.

Thanks for your replies, everyone.

I do have a signed contract with the timber company president to harvest the timber on the land, and he gave me a deposit which has already been put into my bank account. We made a separate agreement for his hunting party to use the land for this year, next year and 2016 and he's paid me in advance for that too.

Ironically, he got my name and address from one or both of my uncle's stepdaughters close to a year ago, and originally sent me a letter then offering to harvest the timber.

Four months before that, the younger stepdaughter showed up at my door waving around a folder of opened mail she'd had redirected to her house concerning the estate (she'd also convinced my father to give her his financial power of attorney eight months before he died, at the same time he changed the beneficiary of his retirement fund to her name instead of mine). She had refused to turn over any of the estate mail to me for years following my father's death despite my being the executrix of the will. I finally, after several requests to her to give me the estate mail which went ignored, had an attorney start probate last year. Probate finished the same week this woman showed up at my apartment door. She must have been calling the courthouse for years trying to find out when probate was finished. She'd opened all of the mail, which is a prosecutable offense here, and held onto it because she didn't want me to have it. When she showed up I asked her again to give it to me and she said she'd only give it to my lawyer. He called me two days later and told me she'd come to his office with the estate mail, and also told me about the tax bill (from 2010!) then as it was in the mail. It was absolutely devastating news as I had never been told how much she'd gotten monetarily until that point. Whatever she said to my probate attorney, it was enough for him to recommend I get an estate litigator involved.

I did meet with the estate litigator he recommended, who sent out a letter to her asking her to provide all documentation regarding my father's estate as well as her accountant's name and the name of the financial institution where my father's retirement fund had been. I can't afford the estate litigator's services on an ongoing basis and my next step after sorting out my housing and job situation is to call my province's Law Society to help me find someone who will take this case on contingency.

A couple of weeks after the timber company president contacted me last year I finally heard from the estate litigator, who sent me a copy of the response from this woman's attorney stating that I should be able to find out all of this information myself and that if I wanted copies of the estate documentation I should pay her and her "client" $14,000. Guess how much the timber company president had offered me for the timber?

This is all aside from the fact that both stepdaughters have been using the land for years without paying me and without permission.

About my housing/job -- there is a five-year waiting list for subsidized housing here, and jobs are hard to find for healthy young people, let alone a person who is disabled and almost 55. I moved here originally to attend university (after seven years spent looking after my uNPD/ASPD father) and when my father became terminally ill, he needed so much care I couldn't go back to school once he'd moved in with me. He lived with me a year before going into the nursing home, and I did everything from taking him to doctor appointments, his bank, changing his colostomy bags, cooking for him, cleaning, etc., but during that year my student loans came due. I'm paying out half my monthly income on student loans and medication for chronic pain.  It's not sustainable, even with a roommate, unless I have a job. I had to leave my job last year and have been living on my small income annuity plus the proceeds from a small life insurance policy my father had. My only hope is to take my uncle's younger stepdaughter to court regarding the money she got, and win... unfortunately, my counselor/MSW seems to think I should just let it go. It's hard to do that, considering that the money is several hundred thousand dollars, and considering that there is a huge difference between what I did for my father and what my uncle's younger stepdaughter did for him in the last seventeen months of his life (she bought him his favourite cookies, and had her husband take him for car rides, and once they had financial POA they wrote out the occasional check for him).

Every time I have to hear from or see any of the people associated with my father's FOO... every time I wake up in such severe pain that it's hard to do anything... it's a reminder that my father must have really hated me to give his money to people who were at the most acquaintances. Their entitled attitudes just make it worse. I don't know how any of them can live with themselves or how they can sleep at night.

Right now I feel like that character in the Sopranos tv show, the one that uttered, "Just when you think you got out, they pull you back in..." (sorry, I can't remember the whole of the character's speech, so am paraphrasing it).

Today I got an email from my late uncle's older stepdaughter, going on about how she and her husband have spent many happy times hiking, snowshoeing and hunting on my late father's land. The two stepdaughters inherited my uncle's land when he died almost a year after my father. Both stepdaughters, along with their families, have been using my late father's land without asking me if it was okay.

(Backstory: My father was abusive emotionally, physically, financially, and sexually to me, and also to my mother. I disclosed my father's abuse to my mother at age 19 after one incident; there was another, worse incident six months later and I told my mother about that one too. She believed me without question. Unfortunately, after the second incident she then contacted the remaining members of my father's NFOO -- his brother and brother's wife and my father's half-sister. They accused me of making it up because my father refused to fill out and sign financial disclosure papers for my college. In the years since, my uncle, his wife, and my half-aunt have all died, along with my father, and the only ones left with any connection to my father's FOO are my uncle's two stepdaughters. Neither stepdaughter had any contact with my father since their marriages in the early 1970s except for Christmas cards and annual renting of his land during hunting season. The younger stepdaughter decided to start being "friendlier" to my father when he became terminally ill, and because my father was a malignant narcissist, was all too happy to lie to him regarding my hours of work, availability to run my father's errands on command, etc., in effect taking advantage of the strained relationship he and I had following many years of abuse. He signed over his retirement fund to her eight months before his death, keeping it a secret from me (I didn't know about the retirement fund's existence until after he'd passed away), but the laws in my country state the estate is liable for taxes paid on disbursement of a retirement fund after the owner's death. It effectively disinherited me as everything my father owned will go for the taxes on the money the younger stepdaughter received.)

I am really upset that my email address was given out by someone I'd recently contracted to harvest the timber on my late father's land, and upset that this older stepdaughter would have the effrontery to email me saying that they've been using the land and still want to use it. The timber man has been given exclusive access by me, not only to harvest the timber, but also to hunt on the land during the three hunting seasons between now and the end of 2016. I'm sure he's not aware of the backstory here and the older stepdaughter likely represented herself as part of my family in order to get my email address.

Every time I've had to have contact with any member of my father's NFOO, it's been like this: they might have had an arrangement with my father to use his land, but they have treated me like dirt since my mother disclosed the abuse many years ago, and have consistently discounted anything I had to say regarding my father. Nor have they ever asked me my own side of the story. They have never asked my permission to use the land, just gone ahead and used it whenever they wanted, making money off the landscape paintings they sell, having fun with their winter activities there. They also own an adjacent plot of land which they inherited from my late uncle, and IMO that should be enough for them considering everything else.

The problem with these continuing attempts at contact by the stepdaughters is that I get triggered into nightmares and emotional flashbacks. I expect that the older stepdaughter will be giving my email address to her sister, the one who has caused so much pain in my life when my father was in his final months, and that the younger stepdaughter's attorney will continue to demand money from me as happened last winter. They're not satisfied with what my father gave them but seem to want to take everything I have, which isn't much. Both stepdaughters have plenty of family support, good jobs, nice homes and businesses, yet they seem to think I, a disabled woman without any family, husband, kids, good job, etc., should just lie down and take it while they strip me of everything else.

I haven't answered the older stepdaughter's email yet, mostly because their continuing entitlement attitude upsets and baffles me and makes me want to tell her exactly what my father did to me, in detail. I know that's JADEing but I need to do something to get these people to leave me alone. My doctor has me on benzodiazepines, a small dosage, because of the stress... but that's not a good long-term solution to the nightmares. Help please?

Sorry it's taken so long to reply. I've been scrambling to find a solution, however temporary, to my situation.

The good news is that I found one, which gives me a little bit of breathing room and money to move out of my current place and in with a roommate (although I haven't found a roommate yet). My late father owned 200 acres of land which is mostly trees, and a few months ago I received a letter from a timber company president offering to harvest and pay for the timber on the land. I didn't answer the letter at the time because guess where he got my address?... the two remaining members of my father's NFOO, his brother's stepdaughters.

I negotiated with the timber man over the last couple of weeks to pay me a deposit on the timber, and he's also paying me for his hunting party to hunt there until the end of 2016. He sent me the money and it went into my bank account yesterday.

Then, today, I got an email from my (late) uncle's older stepdaughter because the timber man had evidently given her my email address. It's triggered me because of a number of reasons so I'll create a different thread for it.

Thank you so much for your replies. I'm doing a lot better now that I'm not faced with giving up all of my belongings and my beloved cats and sleeping in my car.

Thanks, everyone, for your replies.

I worked at a call centre here for six years, but it was a bad place to work because it's located out in the country and the buses don't run past a certain hour -- there's no consideration given by management for this, and at one point I was having to pay $30 one way to take a cab home at midnight. The other issue was that they did not accommodate very well for my disability, so I'd be in pain all day long and trying to be nice to customers on the phone. For those of you who know a bit of my story from OOTF... my father left me in bad financial straits when he died because he allowed his brother's stepdaughter to manipulate him into making her the beneficiary of his retirement fund. Her daughter also works at that particular call centre and was on my team, and she'd talk about her mom and dad all day to coworkers (she lives in their basement with her SO and two kids) which triggered my CPTSD big time.

So I have plenty of experience with phone customer service, and my computer setup at home is customized for my needs. The only issue preventing me from taking one of those jobs and working at home is the cost involved in getting an analog phone line and headsets.

The apartment building I live in employs superintendent couples, and the duties are a lot for two people to handle alone so they usually have assistant managers as well. The company is looking for another couple to manage the building as both the assistant managers and main managers have given notice, and I'm thinking of applying to run the office downstairs (which I could also do and have experience with, and which might save the company the money they would use to pay a second manager couple). This would be ideal too. Otherwise I'm applying for any job online that I'm qualified to do.

I've even applied to drive a cab overnight and/or do dispatch overnight for two cab companies here, and had an interview two weeks ago for one of them, but think that company hired someone else. It's really discouraging. I'll be 55 next month and know that ageism is still rampant in the work world despite anti-discrimination laws, and being visibly disabled just makes it more difficult.

Again, thanks. If you could keep me in your thoughts and prayers (if you pray), I'd really appreciate it.

I'm going through a pretty bad situation in my life right now, and can't seem to cope very well with everything that is happening (basically, I'm out of work, visibly disabled, and am frantically trying to find a job so that I won't be out on the street... I do get an annuity, but it's insufficient to live on, so regardless of the fact that I am in constant pain I don't have much choice about getting out there and trying to find another job).

The bills are piling up, and calls from creditors are enough to throw me into a panic attack where I can't even think. It's truly debilitating. My late uNPD/ASPD father was well aware that financial insecurity and the fear of living on the street is one of my biggest fears, and when he moved in with me after becoming ill deliberately caused issues with late payments. After he went into the nursing home, he'd ask me to come and visit to talk about my "future goals", and then suggest that I could be an escort or get a room in some elderly man's home in return for cooking, cleaning and providing sexual services (my father sexually abused me, among other things, so these suggestions were extremely triggering). It's not like there's a huge market out there for middle-aged "escorts" with visibly twisted spines, even if it were something I would ever consider!

So I'm wondering how best to cope with these panic attacks, in order to find a job which will get me earning again and start paying my creditors. I've been applying to places online, but am a real mess internally right now. And I'm afraid that once a potential employer sees me in person, the only thing he/she will see is my twisted spine and mentally discount me as someone to be hired. I'm even willing to drive a cab overnight, if that's what it takes but need to get my panic under control without resorting to taking medication.

I'd really appreciate any suggestions. Thanks in advance.

I don't take illegal drugs, but have been prescribed opiates for 10 or so years for my chronic back pain, and Lyrica (pregabalin) to help with my fibromyalgia. When I was in school the psychiatrist I was seeing had me on a combination of Zoloft and clonazepam (Klonopin I guess is the name used in the US for it?) -- the clonazepam then was to combat the restless legs syndrome which was exacerbated by Zoloft. Now my doctor prescribes clonazepam to help my anxiety, the lowest dose possible and I break the tablets in half.

I don't drink much, except for the occasional beer, because addiction problems run in my family. My late brother was an alcoholic. Even though alcohol is a depressant, it makes me less socially anxious and it would be far too tempting to have more than one drink... so I'm strict about using it.

The one addiction I do have is cigarettes. I've noticed that when my anxiety gets strong or I'm in more physical pain than usual, I smoke more, which considering I have asthma is not good. And of course it does nothing to help the CPTSD.

Hello to all. I recognize some names on here from OOTF, so some of you may have read my posts there.

I grew up as part of a military family, but when I was seven our family moved to the town where we would spend the remainder of my father's military career. We didn't have any extended family close by -- my father's FOO lived a hundred miles away, and my mother's were over a thousand miles away.

All of my family are dead now, including extended family, and my late father I strongly suspect had NPD/ASPD. I was diagnosed with clinical depression and PTSD around 2002, due to extreme physical, sexual, financial and emotional abuse suffered while growing up as the SG in my family. I'm also permanently disabled due to neglect of developing scoliosis during childhood, and have chronic pain from that and fibromyalgia, so am unable to work full-time.

My father died almost six years ago; however, it was only last year that I as executrix was able to start probate on his estate because he'd designated his brother's stepdaughter as his financial POA in the last year of his life, and she repeatedly refused to turn over his financial documents to me or any mail that arrived at her house for the estate. The week probate completed I received some devastating news that he'd essentially disinherited me, despite my disability and having taken care of him for many years following my mother's death. (The whole story is so long, and already posted over at OOTF, that I won't repost it here). I started to research narcissism shortly afterward, and realized that he was very likely a malignant narcissist -- it explains so much about his treatment of me over the years and about his final betrayal concerning his estate.

I've done a lot of grieving over this, the realization that he had never loved me and the many lies he told to me and others so that he would appear to be a good person to all except his immediate family. Due to my financial circumstances I can't afford therapy, but do see a counselor once a month to six weeks -- had to leave work last year because of chronic pain but also because the woman who manipulated my father into giving her everything has a daughter who works there, and it was triggering me so badly that the nightmares were almost constant.

Since the realization of my father's NPD/ASPD, and coming to OOTF months ago, another piece of the puzzle has fallen into place: my PTSD is really CPTSD. I've read all of the articles on Pete Walker's website, and bought his book on the subject last week, in my effort to become functional enough to stop isolating and get another job, and start rebuilding my life.

I have no husband or children, just two wonderful elderly cats who have been my lifeline. It's incredibly hard for me to trust people although (intellectually, at least) I realize there are safe people out there.

Thanks for opening this board for those of us who are dealing with CPTSD and are looking for ways to help us in our recoveries.