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Thankyou for your replies, guys. In the end, everything was fine. I was hugely anxious on the car trip, but I told him why (he said it was fine to talk about the past if it would help me) and he reassured me that things would be ok. And they were - we had a fantastic weekend together, I learnt to ski, we went kayaking, and we had so much fun together.

Thanks for the reminder on Pete Walker and also staying in the present as much as possible. Both great tips and I'll definitely be keeping them at the forefront of my mind as things progress!

Hi all,

After being single for a couple of years I've recently got into a new relationship. The man I'm dating is lovely - kind, caring, sensitive. He knows about my c-ptsd stuff and isn't put off by it.
The problem is that I am finding being in a new relationship triggering. I've been having EF's to my relationship with my ex partner who was emotionally abusive. I was with him for 5 years, but the first year was the worst in terms of the amount of abuse he inflicted on me. Now that I'm in that new phase with someone else, I'm being reminded of that new phase with my ex and all the traumatic stuff that happened. I don't think I realised how much it had traumatised me until now. I did talk to my counsellor about it and she said that it's a matter of slowly learning to trust and replacing the bad memories with good ones. She also told me to ground myself by remembering how good I feel around my new partner. This advice was good and grounding myself has been helping, but lately I've been having anxiety about the past which I think is an EF.

My current man has admitted to me recently that he's struggling with some issues from his past (not FOO but some bad experiences) and he is looking into counselling for it. As a result he gets a little down sometimes. That's not a problem for me as I'm happy to be there for him, and about 90% of the time he is fine. We still have lots of fun together and really enjoy each others' company, so it's not having a huge effect, and he certainly doesn't take it out on me. This weekend we're going away on a well deserved break and I'm looking forward to it, but triggers galore....

My ex partner, in the first year of our relationship, became badly depressed and did take it all out on me - rages, silent treatments, basically just terrible behaviour that left me walking on eggshells. We went on a holiday together and he spent the entire time emotionally abusing me and being absolutely horrendous to me. I was his captive audience, basically, and there was 'no escape'.

I know logically that my new man wouldn't treat me like this, but I'm scared all the same. I know it's an EF in the sense that I'm being reminded of all the emotions I felt when I was with my ex. I just don't know how to conquer this. I don't want to screw this relationship up because of the past, and I'm a little fearful of telling my new guy about all this stuff too because I basically have this idea that if I share too much, he'll be like 'oh god, she's a headcase' and run. ugh.

Thoughts? Similar experiences?

Thanks Kizzie. I've been isolating myself a lot this week (headphones on, neutral music, focusing purely on work) to try and keep triggers at bay. Not the best system but I have a huge deadline soon and I can't let myself get derailed. I have to go away with friends this weekend so I feel like I'm storing up all my energy for then.

I think I'm definitely still feeling triggered around being 'alone' which I find frustrating. I'm a very independent person - I did christmas alone, and I had a fantastic day and actually enjoyed it far more than I would have with the FOO. I holiday alone. I do lots of things on my own for fun. Now the anxiety is telling me that alone is not ok, and I'm going to end up in the gutter/etc because I have no one to 'look after me'. I even freaked out about going to the supermarket last night and had the most absentminded shop ever. Thank god I always take a list.

I think the core issue is my IC still freaking out that she's going to be abandoned - because I was emotionally abandoned by my parents. I might need to try and work through that tonight.

I also had a freakout over the work I'm doing at the moment. I had another reassuring chat with my supervisor today so that helped. Ugh, my brain is a mess at the moment!

I'm doing ok. I spent yesterday doing some reading on c-ptsd, and did some inner child work around an episode when my best friend stopped speaking to me when I was 12. It was an intensely lonely period for me; I remember feeling that I had no-one at home, and no-one at school; I was all alone in the world. Ever since, when a friend has gone even *slightly* cold on me this feeling has been triggered. The inner child work also revealed that I was too embarrassed to tell my mother what had happened as my friend accused me of doing something wrong, and I figured that NM would punish me for what I did instead of comforting me. I hadn't realised that's why I hadn't told her before, but it makes sense. I was able to comfort my IC and assure her that the situation was very complicated, and that I didn't need to internalise all of that shame; that there were likely many factors in play.

I decided that was an important episode to focus on because this feeling of being 'all alone' is particularly troubling to me given I'm NC with my NM, don't hear much from the rest of the FOO, and currently single. I think it makes me codependently cling to certain friends. When things go wrong, it makes it harder for me to cope.

Other than that, I've taken it very easy on myself this weekend. I turned down an opportunity to spend time with my friend yesterday because it was going to be a long day together and I knew I couldn't handle it. I'm glad I did because it gave me the opportunity to do the IC work and think more about things generally.

We have a bank holiday today so I'll be taking it easy again today and making a 'plan' for myself tomorrow, a few strategies I can use if I get triggered again...but hopefully I'll be ok.

Thanks for your reply, butterfly

I've had some peace from EF's for a while...I went through a really good period, probably a couple of months, where I was doing very well and didn't seem to have any EF's at all.

Over the xmas period I had a hoover from NM in a xmas card delivered by enDad. I read the note, put it away and duly ignored it for most of my holiday break (about 3 weeks).
Then I had a counselling session about it and realised how much I felt about it - including guilt. I was pretty gutted but still felt alright afterwards.
In addition to this, I got a new social media account (not FB) and my PDex almost immediately started following me. This freaked me out and I blocked him. I have him blocked on every other medium possible (FB, Twitter, emails) and it didn't even occur to me that he would be on this other one.

Anyway...once I started back at work, I had more time to think, and an old symptom came back - vivid dreams, about my FOO and about my ex. I started to feel worse and worse. I had a partcularly bad one a couple of days ago, and it sent me into a tailspin. Basically, I got to work, felt like I was totally exhausted/zombie, then decided to borrow an absent coworker's office for the day because I couldn't cope being around people.
Then this woman at work who has it in for me started grilling me about a minor mistake I made and insinuated I had used a work entitlement for personal purposes. This upset me immensely, I dealt with it calmly (gave her the info needed, then forwarded the email thread onto my manager, who was taken aback at her behaviour), then spent the rest of the day in high anxiety, scared I'd run into her or she'd accuse me outright of fraudulent behaviour.

I had a weird run in with a stressed out friend/coworker, which shot me into the anxiety stratosphere. I drank in the evening to alleviate the anxiety, but....it was only a temporary fix and I was a mess this morning. Then realised duh...the extreme feeling of emotions flooding my body was probably an EF, triggered by the dream, then worsened by the work and friend triggers.

I'm now back in the absent coworkers office, after telling work friend what is going on and explaining why I'm isolating myself. She was supportive and offered to hang out with me over the weekend if I need distraction. I had a bit of a cry over the hoover and the associated feelings.

I feel calmer now, but the thought of being around any of my work colleagues still freaks me out, and I'm having waves of nausea. I think the realisation that there have been quite a few minor triggers which have 'set me off' but I failed to deal with them at the time...and now I'm in this place of out of control anxiety and emotions. I hate this so much; it's like my brain is a prison.

The only comfort I have is when I'm feeling better, I'll look back at this and think 'it's ok flyingfree, you always come out of it'.

Sorry for the brain dump. I just desperately needed to share in a group that understands.

This thread is interesting! I don't like to overthink the dreams too much if I can, but Indigo, what you said about the Nazi dream makes sense, and I'm sorry you're having them! That sounds awful.

I definitely have 'fear' around random things - fear that I never used to have. I thought I was getting more anxious as I got older but it makes sense that some of that fear is misplaced from what I experienced.

I had a dream last night that involved me trying to 'escape' from NM who was trying to talk to me and touch me. I had a huge fear/stress response to the dream, the typical 'trying to run away but my legs are lead' and 'trying to drive away but can't get the car to work' type stuff. Ugh. It's totally just a stress outlet dream that happens to have NM in it...

My mother was a boundary-buster and tended to invite herself into my life, so it was a pretty typical dream in terms of her behaviour.

Ugh. tired and brain fog today....sorry if my reply does not make much sense. I feel like my life is one big EF at the moment.

Thanks for your responses. It's a relief to know that I'm not alone.

Arpy, yes it is day wrecking! I've been in EF mode lately and it's been really hard. Some days I can centre in on the feelings and be ok because I can face them. Other days, I feel quite depressed and instead of handling that, I start disassociating really badly. It's pretty exhausting. In addition, my anxiety is really bad too. Fun....

ILV, I understand what you mean about trying to 'find' the abuse. I feel like my life is quite 'empty' without it, and I'm not sure what to fill the empty space with, if that makes sense. But again I am also convinced that the dreams are trauma processing.

I'm sorry that your NM contacted you again. My NM has gone in full on ignore mode so far which is good for me. But I suspect it won't always be that way. It's triggering having to deal with it though, and I'm finding even dealing with other family members difficult and anxiety inducing.

Since going NC with NM, I have been having dreams every single night, either about my dysfunctional family, or specifically about NM. Some of these are straight up nightmares; other times, they are just dreams about my situation (ie. not being able to attend family events because of NC with NM, past situations showing the dynamics of Nfamily).

Often the nightmares are an old trauma re-playing, but me having reactions true to who I am now (ie. becoming angry, standing up for myself, seeing the injustice in the situation). Either way they're traumatic and I usually wake up and have to have a big cry, either then or if I have to get up, later in the day.

Last night I had dreams throughout the night; I remember at one point waking up and I was shaking violently for some reason. Unfortunately I don't remember the content of the dream. I wasn't cold or anything, just quivering. I then fell asleep, dreamt some more about NM trying to violate my NC (common theme of my dreams lately, which is weird because she has dropped me like a hot potato since NC), then woke up again.

Anyway...this is doing my head in a bit. It's tiring and it's making me very emotional. I can see the good in it - that I am processing trauma and grieving it - but I really want just one night of really good sleep. Has anyone experienced this? Does it ever get better??

I got hit with a whopper of an EF yesterday due to a work situation. It fired up that old 'failure' schema, and threw me back in time to when I was around 16 years old and feeling totally hopeless and useless, emotionally neglected and abandoned by my parents, and completely overwhelmed by trying to cope with everything on my own.

Some of the thoughts that came up were

'You're a failure.'
'You're useless.'
'You're weak.'
'You will never find anyone to love you.'

I think the strongest feeling though, was what Pete Walker describes as 'Toxic Shame'. I felt like I was revolting, disgusting, worthless, a nothing, and I had this urge to isolate myself and just curl into a ball and cry. Before that, I didn't know what to 'name' that emotion. Now I know what it is.

It's quite frightening, to feel so out of control. I think the worst thing is, I knew it was a flashback, but the emotions were still all there, trying to rule me. It was quite hard to fight that, to ignore my vicious inner critic which was telling me all of those things above and more.

Just thought I'd share....

This picture makes my IC so happy. And everything else on the website, actually....



Hope it's ok to post it directly here!

This sounds great!

I talked to my T more today and she gave me more ideas on how to engage with my IC so that's good. I'm not exactly looking forward to it, but it should be interesting.

Having a thread on fun things sounds like a good idea. Honestly, I think my IC's been lurking for years. My friends have commented how funny they find it that I'm obsessed with cute cartoon cats (ie. Pusheen) and have all this pink stationery and cute screensavers on my phone, yet I'm also a leather jacket-wearing rock chick bogan. I always just saw it as the 'pink side' of me (rather than my 'dark side', as it were). Now I'm more convinced that my IC has been there for years showing herself in that side of my personality.

My c-ptsd symptoms had eased up a bit, but now I seem to be getting 'worse' again.

A couple of things. Firstly, my PDex and I broke up around a year ago. I am NC with him, but recently he tried to contact me, yet again (he did so through an avenue I hadn't even thought of to block). It's just so frustrating...he treated me so badly, cheated on me, and made what could have been a kind-of amicable breakup into a nightmare. I just can't believe he still seems to think we can be 'friends'.

I'm having some really bad flashbacks to the emotional abuse that he inflicted on me and a lot of anger about it too. Partly angry at him, partly angry at NM because her abuse groomed me to end up with a man like that. And partly me, for being 'weak' and going back to him after we broke up due to the abuse, because I couldn't bear to be alone.

I just got a warning for calling him a name on OOTF forum, and that upset me a lot too. I feel so embarrassed about it, not realising it was a breach of guidelines. I'm just so angry at him and unfortunately I am a 'sweary' person so it just came out.

In addition to that, today I got feedback on a piece of work at my job, and I just have so much to change and fix on it. It's SO frustrating. It's just triggering my rage, and worse, that feeling that I'm useless at everything. I think I'm in a bit of an EF, one where I feel like I'm useless and can't do anything right. And while this job thing is frustrating, the level of rage I feel is off the charts about it.

I just get these feelings like, what do I do with all of this? How do I ever heal from all of this? The abuse that my NM inflicted? the consequences in the form of the relationship with my ex?

And worse, I feel like I'm behaving pathetically, like a victim. I don't want to feel this way.

I just did this today, also with the prompting of my T. Wow. I really didn't think it would work, but boom, out it all came.

Nothing I didn't know already, but it was useful to see what that little girl was really feeling.
I feel pretty sorry for her now, but in a quite detached way. Maybe because it was all there anyway? It's hard to explain.

Today I brought a kids pen with a bright pink flamingo on it (not for this exercise). I realised that I liked it because my IC likes it, which is why I decided to buy it!

It's nice knowing she's there and I can access her a bit more easily.

Thanks for your replies. It's good to know that this is 'normal' or whatever as unpleasant as it is. I'm quite new to all of this.

I too often get really emotional just before I go to sleep. Which I think makes things worse, because I then dream about things as well. I'm going to try to keep my thoughts light and happy before I go to sleep, and do my heavy emotional work at other times of the day...hopefully that will help.

I'm also trying to validate and accept my feelings. For a couple of days I was feeling so much rage and anger over the abuse...it was unpleasant but I just accepted it. I think my IC needed to let it out. I used to squash all of my anger down, or unleash it on myself with depression and self-harm. No longer....it's a healthy anger because I was mistreated and I need to feel it.

Lately I've been having very vivid dreams, annoyingly so (I feel like I'm not getting rest). Sometimes they're about work, sometimes about my PDex (who I don't generally think about during the day??), and sometimes about my NM/Dysfunctional FOO.

In addition to this, lately I've been having the worst feeling of waking up in the early hours - between 3 and 5am - feeling absolutely terrified, scared and alone, with this sick, scared feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's awful. It's not always related to the dreams I'm having (to my knowledge) as I don't dream every night. It just seems to be happening. I have to calm myself and cuddle a soft toy, etc. to get back to sleep. The feeling isn't related to my current life, that's for sure. It's definitely something from the past rearing up.

I'm guessing it's some kind of EF, but I don't know why it's hitting me at that particular time, or why i'm waking up then....

Anyone else had a similar thing happen??