Hello, I am new to this forum and I am already grateful for it 
I immediately identified with others' introductions. There has been so much pain absorbed by so many. And there is so much triumph in life's consolations.
I am a 45yr old male. I entered counselling when my short marriage disintegrated two and a half years ago. She was an abusive N. She began by identifying with me, then depersonalizing me. I left, and I sought help.
My FOO is a mess. My father was an angry, violent, alcoholic N. He manipulated the household, mostly my schizophrenic mother. I have two much older brothers. Both express CPTSD; one is diagnosed with PTSD, and I respect his limited contact. I stay in low contact with family. That works best.
My mother rejected the infant me. She had a psychotic event at my birth, and her own trauma expressed itself through dissociation. She became another her. One that hadn't been pregnant and didn't want this baby foisted on her. She was institutionalized for most of my first five years, starting immediately after my birth.
Her presence has been an impenetrable mix of disturbed logic. There were many, many episodes. Both parents were terror. Neither could trust or be trusted. There were no "I love you's" until I started handing them out in my twenties.
I cannot discern a timeline of my first five years, because everyone gets caught in their own trauma. I stayed mostly with one set of relatives, and it is there that I must have received whatever love it was that has preserved my life.
I don't have an articulate memory of home life, other than the oppression. It was daily violence, threats of violence, yelling, screaming and broken glasses, lamps, doors, windows, and walls. There was no mercy.
Everything was sufficiently covered up for family or friends, but my brothers and I each found our own ways to act out the violence. My own memories of dishing it out are not accessible to me. I've had to piece it together through therapy.
I was aware of dissociation as a child. I'd snap out of something, knowing time had passed. I asked people right then, and I've never been satisfied with what they tell me. Sometimes I was violent, and I have no working memory of that.
To look deeper is to associate that I likely could not bear the experience because I was BEING an overpowering violence that had already happened.
I've recently discovered this part of myself that has been locked away. I was 5 and 6 years old and now must forgive the child I was.
I've 'coped' for decades. Moving, moving, moving. A doormat. Helpless, entirely at others' mercy. Always in poverty. Financially and spiritually. I sought and found answers in literature and music. I lived out the invisibility and worthlessness that was programmed into me. I can see how my hunger for connection opened the door for abuse. Over and over.
I've been candy to any N's I'd meet. When I began to recognize their foulness, I had to leave my job (N boss) and limit a number of my professional contacts.
I have nowhere to go but forward. No task but to survive, and sometimes I even thrive. But the EF's are so numerous and pernicious. I can't always drown out the voice that hates me. My dedication to healing requires more.
Two long-time associates and 'friends' recently colluded to steal from me. I handled it professionally, and it's all over. But my triggers were pulled, and I can't get through to the emergency vehicles in my head to stop. Stop running the sirens, stop ramping up my heart rate, stop focusing on defending against a threat that will never arrive.
Again, I am grateful that this forum exists, and that I can safely say all those things I was warned never to tell anyone.
I immediately identified with others' introductions. There has been so much pain absorbed by so many. And there is so much triumph in life's consolations.
I am a 45yr old male. I entered counselling when my short marriage disintegrated two and a half years ago. She was an abusive N. She began by identifying with me, then depersonalizing me. I left, and I sought help.
My FOO is a mess. My father was an angry, violent, alcoholic N. He manipulated the household, mostly my schizophrenic mother. I have two much older brothers. Both express CPTSD; one is diagnosed with PTSD, and I respect his limited contact. I stay in low contact with family. That works best.
My mother rejected the infant me. She had a psychotic event at my birth, and her own trauma expressed itself through dissociation. She became another her. One that hadn't been pregnant and didn't want this baby foisted on her. She was institutionalized for most of my first five years, starting immediately after my birth.
Her presence has been an impenetrable mix of disturbed logic. There were many, many episodes. Both parents were terror. Neither could trust or be trusted. There were no "I love you's" until I started handing them out in my twenties.
I cannot discern a timeline of my first five years, because everyone gets caught in their own trauma. I stayed mostly with one set of relatives, and it is there that I must have received whatever love it was that has preserved my life.
I don't have an articulate memory of home life, other than the oppression. It was daily violence, threats of violence, yelling, screaming and broken glasses, lamps, doors, windows, and walls. There was no mercy.
Everything was sufficiently covered up for family or friends, but my brothers and I each found our own ways to act out the violence. My own memories of dishing it out are not accessible to me. I've had to piece it together through therapy.
I was aware of dissociation as a child. I'd snap out of something, knowing time had passed. I asked people right then, and I've never been satisfied with what they tell me. Sometimes I was violent, and I have no working memory of that.
To look deeper is to associate that I likely could not bear the experience because I was BEING an overpowering violence that had already happened.
I've recently discovered this part of myself that has been locked away. I was 5 and 6 years old and now must forgive the child I was.
I've 'coped' for decades. Moving, moving, moving. A doormat. Helpless, entirely at others' mercy. Always in poverty. Financially and spiritually. I sought and found answers in literature and music. I lived out the invisibility and worthlessness that was programmed into me. I can see how my hunger for connection opened the door for abuse. Over and over.
I've been candy to any N's I'd meet. When I began to recognize their foulness, I had to leave my job (N boss) and limit a number of my professional contacts.
I have nowhere to go but forward. No task but to survive, and sometimes I even thrive. But the EF's are so numerous and pernicious. I can't always drown out the voice that hates me. My dedication to healing requires more.
Two long-time associates and 'friends' recently colluded to steal from me. I handled it professionally, and it's all over. But my triggers were pulled, and I can't get through to the emergency vehicles in my head to stop. Stop running the sirens, stop ramping up my heart rate, stop focusing on defending against a threat that will never arrive.
Again, I am grateful that this forum exists, and that I can safely say all those things I was warned never to tell anyone.