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#1
Hi all,
I wonder if any of you had a similar experience...? (I hope not!)

When I was was around 14, my father, being ever more absent and 'furthering his career' (securing himself of necessary narcissistic supply, it was), being away from home in the evenings, returning late at night, ORDERED me to sleep in the parental bed... because my mother was 'so terribly afraid, terrified to lie there alone...'
And so I did. I don't remember to even finding that strange or inappropriate, then. I went to bed, before her, she 'joined me' later on, while my father, after coming home much later, would go to sleep in MY bed.
Is this bizarre, or whát?! A child being turned into his mother's tranquillizer...!
A child who, on a daily basis, got humiliated, got slapped and beaten, was subjected to heinous verbal abuse and annihilating criticism..., that child was made into this sort of 'human presence' to subdue his mother's fear.

The more I think of it, the more really sick it appears.
Anyone on this?

Kingfisher
#2
Successes, Progress? / Tentatively DARING to see change
October 03, 2020, 05:08:22 PM
Hi all,
Yes, I start to dare to see some fragile, hesitant changes in the way I cope with this longstanding pain and grief in me. Actually, being able to call them 'pain' and 'grief' and to really FEEL them, is a change!
Most of my life I have been berating mysélf, blaming myself, hating myself, even, for the difficulties, the emotional upheaval I went through, again and again.
I notice I start to be drawn to emotionally more healthy people, start to connect with them, carefully, start to be more open, without SHAME.
This goes hand in hand with seeing others' abusive, disrespectful, crossing-boundaries-behaviours towards me and my ability to refuse to be treated that way any longer; to even END, non-angrily, socalled 'friendships'.
All this is very new to me and -THÚS- scary but underneath all doubt, there is a sense of trust. Trust in my own perceptions, trust to stay very close to myself and moreover to what I feel.
Having found this forum, reading, exchanging, feeling welcomed, validated, respected has meant and means só much to me and is closely connected to the changes I described above.

Thank you, all of you, for being out there, for your courage, wisdom and honesty. Be well,

Kingfisher
#3
From: http://alovinghealingspace.blogspot.com

Love will never give up on you

Early relational experiences are encoded in neural circuitry in the first 18 months of life. Stored as implicit memory, they are inaccessible by ordinary awareness, forming templates through which we engage the world. In a moment of activation, the templates come surging online. Before we realize it, previously sequestered material has flooded our perception.

Our expectations in relationship – whether we can count on others, are worthy of love, will allow another to matter or whether we can take the risk to lead with our vulnerability – are organized in a fragile little nervous system that yearns for connection. The neural pathways are tender and responsive, as we seek attuned, right-brain to right-brain resonance with those around us. We want to feel felt, have our experience held and mirrored, and for pure space in which we can explore unstructured states of being.

While this encoding is deeply embedded, it can be rewired. While it may feel entrenched, it is not as solid as it appears. Even if your early environment was one of empathic failure, developmental trauma, and insecure attachment, it is never too late. The wild realities of neuroplasticity and the courage of the human heart is unstoppable and an erupting force of creativity.

Through new relational experiences – with a lover, a friend, a therapist, a baby; a star, a mountain, the moon, an animal-guide from the other world – love is hidden inside the caverns of neural circuitry. It is the substance which forms the neurons and their synapses, lighting up heart-cells in a moment of connection. Each time you attune to another – or to the unmet inner "other" within you – a new world is born.

As long as breath is present, you can update the narrative, recraft your perception and re-envision a new story. You can make new meaning of your life, re-imagine your purpose, and renew your commitment to being here. Slowly, you can revise your circuitry with pathways of holding awareness, flooding it with empathic attunement, presence, and warmth.

No matter what is happening in your life, you can start right now, in this moment. The opportunity for reorganization is always here and wired deep within you. Don't give up. Love will never give up on you.
#4
Hey, to all of you and thank you for reading this!

First of all I want to express my profound gratitude for the sheer existence of this forum (which I have only recently found and joined); it is immense and I have just read a fraction of its content, but it is already immensely important to me for áll the warmth, understanding, recognition, validation and comfort it provides! Thank you ALL for that, for your courage, honesty and GOODness.

Posting this in 'Recovery Journals', I think it would be best to start with signs of recovery, despite the tenacious, lifelong storyline of telling myself 'things will never get better; you're damaged goods; it's far too late (being 62) to really change and recover', etc.

Signs of recovery, for me, are:
- somehow, somewhere, sometime I just lost the intense social anxiety I have felt most of my life; that crushing feeling of shame, feeling ugly, feeling unacceptable, feeling watched, feeling judged, feeling disapproved of, feeling awkward etc.

- this goes hand in hand with a growing, if not full, acknowledgement of the horrendous 'upbringing' (DOWNbringing would be THE real word, wouldn't it?!) which I was subjected to for decades on end.
Acknowledgement. WITHOUT rationalizing, without minimizing, without intellectualisation,
without laughing it off, without 'explaining' or bringing up 'extenuating circumstances' or whatever (all of which I have been doing until quite recently); just stating fully: it was horrible, it was more or less criminal in extent, it was soul-destroying, it has affected my life and being in só many, deep-rooted ways. Period.

- being a late-in-life father (of my, by now, 7 year old son) I was, and ám, deeply grateful, grateful ánd astonished, for the most open, defenseless, tender, interested, fascinated, deeply caring LOVE I have ever experienced in my life, and that has been so from day one of his life.
My son, his existence, has been and goes on to be a 'catalyst in my recovery'; being with him, as a baby, a toddler, an open, fearless, eager and keen, sensitive and bright 7 year old boy-child has made me inescapably aware of the heinous ways I was crushed, gaslighted, beaten, laughed at, humiliated, neglected, tormented by a severely deluded, mean, malignant narc-father ánd an enabling, terrified, cold, childlike mother. (And, as said above, I don't f* care anymore for the 'reasons' which made them behave like they did; especially since they kept up their ways of 'behaving' all through their looooooong lives.)

- strange as it might sound, the fact that I have started to FEEL all this (during the past half year or so) instead of THINKING (endlessly) about it, I regard as a sign of recovery; hard as it is to feel só much raw, bare, nameless, core-pain, I am somehow able to stay with it, to contain it, to not want to escape it (which is futile anyway and often leads to damaging others or myself!) I am able to, somehow, welcome it, without having to put a name (sadness, anger, fear, despair etc.) to it.

- apt as I am, decreasingly though, to abreact my pain/fear/anger on others, I find myself to be aware of that real soon and have DISCOVERED to be able to make real, heartfelt apologies for it; understanding my reactions and behaviour, but WITHOUT condoning them!

Before this will turn into an endless post, I want to thank you for heaving read all of it.
Can anyone relate to the fact of having (had) a malignant narcissist for a 'father', who was an admired, adored, revered, famous, nation-wide celebrity and an absolute monster at 'home'?

More to come 😊
Any reactions would be most welcome.
Blessings to all of you.
#5
Hi to all of you brave, incredibly strong and indestructable people.
I posted in the introduction-board yesterday and feel free to dive 'into the deep' now. Well aware that I am writing this in the 'sub-board' of emotional abuse, still I might as well have posted this under the heading of physical abuse, or psychological abuse, or heinous verbal abuse, or emotional neglect etc.
At 62, father of the most wonderful boy-child one can imagine (7 years old), I am inescapably confronted with the depth of damage that was inflicted on me (ánd my lovely brother) by the two people whom I can only call 'parents'.
For a loooong time I have been able to sort of 'postpone' this confrontation by 'understanding' the dynamics, by 'explaining' the behaviour of 'those people' (the term my brother and I use by now, referring to our 'parents'), by 'excusing' them because of their own troubled childhoods and trauma, by minimizing, by laughing it off in cynicism, by swallowing the myth of 'inherited depression and anxiety' which can be taken care of by the right medicines.
And it is all not true. It just isn't.

The truth is, I was subjected to a severely deranged 'father' and a terrified, codependent, cold, childlike 'mother' from Day-One of my life.
Another, hard to take in, truth is that these two people have NOT changed one bit during their long lives, despite the fact of having three sons, all well into middle-age by now.

Imagine: a 'father' beating his baby son (my brother) in the crib. For 'crying too much'.
Imagine: a 'father' spitting his adolescent sons fully in the face (I can't think of a more repulsive act by anyone) for coming home 'too late'.
Imagine: a father calling his son(s) 'worthless piece of dirt', 'worthless piece of sh*t', 'horrible human being', 'the whole world laughs at you and sees what a dreadful failure you are'.
Ad infinitum. For decades.
Imagine: this 'father' to be (in the 60's, 70's, 80's) a national TV-celebrity and -icon, adored by millions, revered for his 'kindness', 'humouredness' etc.
Imagine: his son(s) being dismissed in complete disbelief whenever he tried to, hesitatingly, tell something of his horrific experiences with the same 'man', to anyone.

I won't go into all physical abuse now, nor into all deep emotional neglect.
It would be too much. For you reading this, for me writing this.
I just hope to have been read and understood, but after having read so many of your posts here, I am quite sure that'll be the case.
Thank you so much, be well, all of you.
#6
A thankful 'Hi!' to all of you!

I found this website and forum about two weeks ago and have been reading só much on it, finding confirmation, validation, comfort and recognition in what all you members of this community share - DARE to share - so courageously!
I am 62, male, from The Netherlands, trying to deal with the lasting damage that growing up under a truly malignant narc-father and a terrified, codependent, cold mother has done to me.
Physical abuse. Emotional abuse. Verbal abuse. Lasting for decades on end, unchanged.
Coming upon Pete Walker's book on CPTSD was a revelation to me, almost shocking in the way it clarified and made sense of what I have been suffering for so long; I could (and can) relate to virtually every word of it - as I can fully relate to so many of the posts I read on this forum.

I have KNOWN for a long time that I was severely traumatized (reading Alice Miller's work was a first, important step in acknowledging that) but somehow it remained mainly 'knowledge', on an intellectual, more or less rationalized level.
Since several months I have been experiencing a profound shift in this:
I have started to FEEL it all and, to my own astonishment, I am able to welcome it, to hold it, difficult as it is to feel só much raw, wordless pain in the core of my being, my soul. I call it 'pain', can't put another word to it, not 'grief' or 'fear' or 'despair', not even 'anxiety. It feels most like a huge bundle or ball of intense (but blocked) energy, deep down in my belly.
Does any of you recognize this? All feedback would be most welcome!

I am very glad to have joined this forum and look forward to sharing, reading and learning much, much more.