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I came across this on BBC news, no personal knowledge of it.

This kind of FOO stuff is soooo difficult. At least in my experience.

Is there a middle road possible? This kind of option was suggested to me: turn the invitation politely down but suggest you join them later for an important occasion?

If you have good contact with a sibling, I don't believe that declining her wedding invitation should make her go no contact with you. If it does, then imho very sadly the contact might feel good on your side but isn't so much on hers. "Not going" doesn't have to be understood as a huge statement.

Weddings are important but so is your emotional well-being!

I'm sorry that's the way things are for you atm.    if helpful Bach, otherwise ignore.

My H and I were just talking about his sister who was the executor for his NM's estate.  His NS told us their M left us money but after a couple of months and nothing my H started asking her about it.  She then started saying there was no money even though we had emails from her saying there was. She said she never told him there was money even though we had it in writing, and she just continued to run him around. After a while with him trying to get her to tell the truth she would no longer speak to him.

Sounds like my parents and all that run-around they gave me   In my case it turned out a little better. At least for now.

I'm sorry you and your H had to go through it all. It's so draining - all the gaslighting. Ugh.

So as you say, "Live and let die". 

   That's a new one for me.

Welcome to the forum, Sunspirit

Reading threads is a good idea - there is an awful lot of knowledge and experience here on the forum, even on really old threads nobody has responded to in a while.

The members are supportive of each other - it doesn't matter how bizarre I think one of my symptoms is, there's always somebody who understands it and has experienced similar.

Looking forward to hearing from you when you want to write more about yourself.

Thanks Blueberry. I visited the site. Their search gave zero results for my part of France.

I'm sorry about that. 

Maybe it can help somebody else though.

France is still there BB, just moved it so the countries are alphabetical. 

That's good to know. I see nothing between Canada and Germany, so that's starting up again but I don't need to be able to read it personally.

   

Is it possible to meet the definition of being stabilized and still experience emotional flashbacks? 

Oh yes, very much so. Unfortunately.

In our context of addressing CPTSD, what does stabilization look like?  Is it different from safety?  Do I have to wait to come out of this lingering weeks-long EF before declaring that I have met the definition of stabilization?  I've seen that one should be stabilized before attempting recovery work, so I fear I might be putting the cart before the horse.  Am I too unstable to begin healing?

You're definitely not too unstable to begin healing. Nor I imagine is anybody else. It's a question of what healing you address when. Especially your trauma-informed therapist needs to have this in mind! Or your non-trauma-informed therapist, if that's what you have. A therapist needs to get to know how much they can pile on your plate before you revert to terribly bad coping skills for days on end, like bad SH or feeling suicidal - which is a degree worse than the SI that's fairly common with cptsd, not pleasant at all but no plans.

My unhealthy coping skills involve eating and trichotillomania, among other stuff. Some of my stabilisation involved learning and practising better coping skills. But it's still very much a work in progress.

I've written some possible stabilisation stuff here
https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=15081.msg129314#msg129314

I guess it's partly to do with learning and doing self-care. But neither you nor a therapist should expect miracles, nor should your T put a bunch of pressure on. In my opinion.

Oops! Switzerland added, France removed!

I can see your post Cascade. BB I didn't see your reply, just the yellow bar but as soon as I clicked on "See This Post" there it was and here I am replying to both. 

I'm not sure this is terribly helpful for you Cascade. Maybe that's why no-one has used this feature in the past.  One of the downsides to a public forum I guess; there are always members you don't especially want to interact with. 

Well, I don't know about Cascade, but I could find this useful. Say if I get triggered every time I read a particular mbr's posts, then it would be helpful for me to ignore/block because then I wouldn't be tempted to read or my eye wouldn't catch the post by mistake. Also the person couldn't PM me, even if they wanted to. I guess I'm saying it could help me to dis-engage.

I don't know about PM, so if you experiment on that with Kizzie it would be cool if you let us know here on the thread

I'm on Cascade's Ignore List (for the experiment). When I attempted a PM, I got a pretty clear message in red: User 'Cascade' has blocked your personal message.

Same with Kizzie, so you being Admin makes no difference here. You can block / ignore me with impunity

Sending a PM does not work!

This is what happens. Now I'll send you a PM and let's see what happens...

[I can read your post and even copy it to reply]

I tried it too and see the yellow bar but the question is can that person see our posts and reply?  BB I am going to add you to my ignore list - can you let me know if you can still see my posts and reply to them? I'll make a post to you in this section.

You learn something new every day around here 

Yup, you do learn something new every day but more specifically YES I can read your post and even copy it to reply as you can see