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Hi all,

I haven't explored this board much before and I'm going to have a look after I've written this but I just wanted to post about my experience to make sense of what I'm thinking and feeling at the moment.

I've just had a bit of a revelation about how I've approached friendships over the years. I have lots of friends, some of who I've been friends with for over 20 years. I've never been that secure in their friendship and I've pretty much always felt (and put myself) on the outside.

After reading 'raising a secure child' ( which I would highly recommend for any parents reading this) I realise that I am 'safety sensitive' in relationships- this means I desperately  want to be close to people but I'm constantly on the look out for danger (i.e. being intruded upon, being abused and rejected). This sensitivity sets the scene and plays the background music to my life. In the book they call it shark music and suggest that when we notice it we can turn it down. Well I'm noticing it everywhere! 

I've realised that this is probably why I've always felt so on the outside as I've wanted to be close to friends but not too close that they might need me or overwhelm me. I'm constantly analysing whether I belong and whether I'm valued and liked. And also whether I like others.  I've also never wanted to end friendships because I want everyone to like me. As a result I have lots of people in my life who I don't feel very close to. This was fine in my 20s when my relationships revolved around partying but as I grown older and healthier I realise I want more from my relationships.

Over the past few years I'm beginning to learn to communicate my boundaries and show up more authentically, which has meant that I've not ended up  maintaining contact in some friendships. I've also moved about 2 hrs away from everyone I know. Part of me wants to try to forge closer bonds with the friends I already have and part of me thinks I should make new friends and have a fresh start. I guess in reality it might end up being a bit of both but right now I feel so lonely, lost and stuck. Covid really isn't helping and I feel like I'm in limbo between 2 worlds and two lives!

Thank you for reading this and hearing my experience- I just  wondered if this resonates with anyone else?

Hi all,

I've not posted for a while but I'm really struggling again at the moment  with grieving life 'choices' I've made as an adult. 

I've done lots of work through self reflection and therapy and I've felt a lot of grief over my childhood, which has really helped. As I get healthier I'm now grieving my early adult years and the way I have approached relationships- I've realised how unhealthy my 8-year long marriage has been, and the toxic and sometimes emotionally abusive patterns that existed - these experiences haven't been anywhere near as abusive as my childhood, and as it was comparatively good, I think I've then tolerated it for longer than I should have.

Over the past year I've communicated really firm boundaries about how I want to be treated and my husband is taking responsibility and seeking help. Part of me is so proud of where we're both at and I feel really grateful that we're on this journey together. But part of me feels such a huge sense of regret that if I had been healthier I would have chosen to marry, and had children, with someone healthier- or I would have at least put a stop to the damaging patterns sooner.  I want to stay with him for a number of reasons but part of me can't help feel angry, disappointed and victimised that I'm continuing to pay for the trauma through my life choices.

I was just wondering if anyone else has felt and been through similar and what helped?

I've got my in laws coming to stay in a few weeks and I'm already feeling stressed about it. they have similar patterns of relating to my own FOO and i find being around them incredibly triggering.

DH's mother will often turn the conversation back to herself, make broad statements about how people should be and interupts me constantly. she woks in the same field and will often be little my role or act like she knows more about it than i do. if a conversation comes up about it she will often take over and tell all she knows about it. I will also stumble across her and my SIL whispering to each other in little areas of the house which i have no idea whether it is about me or not but it just makes me feel uncomfortable in my own home.

I'm slowly starting to stick up for myself a bit- on a couple of occasions more recently I said 'hold on' while i tried to get my point out but this feels very uncomfortable to me and then i find it difficult to speak under the pressure this creates. I feel sick ad i want the ground to swallow me up.  my husband is very aware of it now ad he will pick up on what I'm saying by asking questions but then his MIL will leave the table or do something else!

I think it upsets me much less than it used to and i don't need her to validate me as much but i still just don't like having her around.  I'm mainly worried about the example I'd like us to set for our children- We do not have children yet but when we do I do not want to teach them that it is OK to speak to, or be spoken to by, people in this way.

Have anyone else had and similar experiences of their in laws acting like their FOO and what has helped?

I've just had a bit of an Epiphany and i thought i would share- It would be great to hear if anyone else has had similar experiences?

I have a reputation among old friends and my family for being 'dizzy', i would always loose things, seem spaced out spend time daydreaming. People i meet now don't neccessarily see me in this way and at work I'm generally quite organised- although ive realised recently that when i have meetings with one colleague I always seem to leave something behind in her office. I usually feel very stressed during these meetings and the colleague talks and talks and there is no room for me at all. I find myself collapsing into myself and I think this must be dissociation. i dissociate and then i cant think about what i am doing or keep my head about me and i end up loosing things. i feel very ungrounded.

The more my family teased me about it iand called me names in the past, the more i think it affected me and it makes me feel stressed just writing it now . If anyone now picks up on it now i feel very sensitive and criticised and i just end up doing it more and hating myself and wishing i were different.

does any one else have a similar experience - what have you found helps?

Doe anyone else feel triggered when they watch horror films?

I can manage gore but if there's any suspense I just can't handle it. I watched the new Jurassic park movie the other day and I felt frozen in the cinema- I couldn't handle how scared I was. I could just accept it but on top of feeling scared i feel embarrassed and ashamed and invalidate myself that I can't even watch a kids film!

Hi all, I am looking for advice or other people's experiences about contact with family.

I am a married 33 year old woman with a loving and supportive husband. I like my life and I'm starting to develop better relationships with others. But, whenever I think about my parents/caregivers I feel a stone in my stomach and a sense of dread. It feels like a dark shadow in my life.

My mother experienced extreme domestic violence at the hands of my step father- to the point where there were broken bones and loss of life to an unborn child. I think my mother has a PD (a result of serious issues in her own childhood) - everything was about her. As well as witnessing the violence first hand, I also experienced it all over again every time she constantly talked about it and how it made her feel how awful my step dad is to her. They divorced when I was 11 –much to my relief. When I was 17 my mum re-married him. I cried and cried and my mum acted so surprised she kept asking me what he had done to me (she often projected her own sexual abuse on to me and I think the only thing she thought could evoke such a reaction in me was the same thing). They are still married now. No physical violence that I know about but horrible emotional abuse from both sides.

Since then I have maintained contact with my mum but put in boundaries (that I don't want to talk about my step-father and I don't want to talk about the abuse that happened as it upsets me). She generally has taken this on board but I have had to remind her quite a few times. she continues to make everything about her a lot of the time and  I have low expectations of our relationship but after 3 years of therapy and seeing my mum in a different light I have found some compassion for her.

Although I have avoided contact with my step father, I haven't made a stance of 'no contact' as I haven't wanted to rock the boat. I've rationalised it by saying 'he's my siblings' father' and 'my mum choose to forgive him so can I'. I now realise after 3 years of therapy that this is absolute rubbish. I feel sick when I see him and I hate being around him or even talking about him. I'm wondering whether or not to talk to my mum about it and stop any chance of contact all together.

That's my mum's side of the family. My Dad and step mother have been incredibly neglectful. I went to live with him when I was aged 7 (and saw my mum at the weekends). Things were ok for a few years but when they had 2 other children when I was 11 and 15, they seemed to forget about me as soon as I hit 16 I was free to do what I wanted and seemed to view me as having 'flown the nest' - they didn't try to include in their family in anyway. This happened to the point where I was upstairs in my bedroom for a week so sick that I couldn't get out of bed and no one checked on me once, that I remember. I had to crawl to the bathroom to get a glass of water. Anyway, they haven't bothered to make contact at all since I went to uni- I have stayed in contact with them because I have been the one to always call them and I'd time going over my nan's when they were there to see them- they went every Saturday at 12 o clock, regardless of whether that was the best time for me. My lovely Nan died a year ago and during this time I realise how one-sided my relationship with DF and step mother way. The handful of times I have been over to theirs this year I have felt triggered and let down and abandoned. I have tried talking to my dad and step mum- my dad's response was defensive and my mother's response was that it's all about me and mocked me 'poor me'.  I feel bad letting go because sometimes I tell myself that they haven't really done anything wrong and I cling on to the fact that at least my dad was better than my step-dad.

I am healthy enough to realise that contact (or trying to make contact) is not good for me but I feel so scared and bad about it all still- like I'm causing trouble which I'm sure is another EF.

Has anyone had a similar experience of either of these situations?

Hi all,

This is the first time I have joined an internet forum, after reading so many supportive and caring posts this morning I felt compelled to join and to belong to a like-minded community.
Like most people here I have had a complex family history, marred by emotional and physical abuse and neglect. Although I've thought for a while that I have CPTSD, it is only this week, after experiencing a particularly horrible emotional flashback, that it just makes perfect sense to me- on both an emotional and logical level. It gives me something way to explain how I feel, without having to explain how I feel every time. I even think I can use this as a way to explain how I am feeling to others, if and when I feel brave enough!
I'm at a stage in recovery where I am questioning whether it is helpful for me to stay in touch with family members, as contact with them often triggers and EF. I'm also at a stage where I am finding myself and who I really am, including parts of my-self I misidentified with myself from as they were influences of abusive caregivers who I wanted to completed dis-identify from.  I'm in a place now where I let myself expect things from life-  I'm studying for a doctorate which I find so much joy in finally feeling as though I have done my best and I am able to celebrate it (no matter how uncomfortable that makes others feel). I want to be more creative and learn to express myself more, both verbally and through art. I want to have deeper and more meaningful relationships and to feel accepted and that I belong somewhere. I feel that in many ways I am moving onto more exciting and fun phase of an incredibly tough journey, although I know that I will always remember the harsh truths of my childhood. I think for me now the important thing is that I don't want to forget.
writing this I realise how worried I am about celebrating my happiness and coming across as gloating! I guess it's a good example of the layers of emotion involved in triggering and EF's!

It's been a hard journey and there's always more to come but I always feel glad that I took the 'red pill'

'This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.'
Morpheous, The Matri

x (film)