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Hi Flutterbye,

I'm still in awe.  Especially since I see you have done exposure therapy ,including, (God-forbid) proactive dating!

I had fallen passively into relationships all my life.  Seeking out who and what I wanted for myself, rather than just being claimed by who wanted me and being grateful that anyone did....well you can guess how that turned out!  Also, as Steadybowl says, what is familiar for me is unhealthy, not just from childhood, now I've now had five decades of reinforcing childhood dysfunction. 

I guess people can go for their whole lives being disrespected and abused, and I should be grateful that finally my whole being screamed out "NO MORE ABUSE OF ANY KIND". 

Depression is holding me back at the moment, and I'm looking into a radical treatment for it, which may mean leaving this country for a while.  Hard with my social anxiety disorder.  But like you say, rock bottom has it's advantages.  When I get back, I intend to go all-out.

I admire the example you are setting, and the tremendous courage and strength that I know it takes to do something like this.  I hope you keep us updated on your progress.

It sounds like your whole nervous system is raw and ragged.  A mass of triggers and pain.  I know what that feels like, and being in a refuge with a whole lot of troubled strangers must be so overloading.

I feel for you.  You need soothing.

Is there anywhere nearby that you feel more peaceful - a beach, a chapel, temple or church (you don't have to be religious? - hospital chapels can be havens of peace for those of all faiths or none), a park, forest, zoo, animal shelter, art gallery, library  etc.? Can you get some gentle exercise somewhere safe - walking swimming etc.?

Is there anyone safe you can talk to?  Does the refuge have volunteers or staff? and if so do any of these people feel comfortable enough to ask them for a private chat?  Would you be able to ask them not to give any opinions or advice because you are too stressed to process information (this is mainly to protect you from well-meaning idiots who think they know a whole lot more than they do).  Alternatively, could you phone and anonymous help line and just let out all your confused feelings to someone anonymous on the end of the line?

Do you have a faith, or could you seek out a minister or similar if you didn't.  Not all clerics feel the need to convert people, and are used to just being with people in distress.  Do you meditate? Can you knit or draw, do puzzles?  Is there music you can listen to that brings you comfort?  Do you have a journal to let it all out, and more importantly tell yourself kind reassuring things that you can read back to yourself?

I find nature and solitude soothing but it sounds like you are in a very urban location.  I'm about to go for a walk in the bush.  I wish I could take you along and you could talk or not, listen to the birds, soak in the peace.  But of course some people don't find nature comforting.  Soothing is a very individual thing.

I wish I could help because I know my own version of this kind of * - emotional flashbacks coming from all directions and no ability to process.

What you are going through is not pathological, it is a natural reaction to trauma.  You are injured.  It won't last forever, but I know that is of little comfort in the present.

Warm, kind thoughts to you.  You are so brave to let yourself feel this.

Narcissistic abuse, adult bullying etc. are at the level of understanding that domestic violence was in the 60s and 70s.  Victim blaming and denial reign supreme.

I've experienced all sexual abuse and violence, and know that psychological violence can be just as devastating, more if you count the invalidation that goes with it.

The latest research shows that childhood bullying has worse effects on survivors in adulthood than childhood sexual abuse.  People are slowly starting to wake up.  So sorry you had to deal with other people's ignorance in a support group.  You must have felt awful.

I'm so sorry.

I just wrote a whole lot of words and deleted them.

Maybe now is not the time for hope and faith, but just for enduring the here and now until they return.  That hollowed-out misery, the void - I know it well, but had forgotten that place until I read your message.  Yet I've been there many times.  When I'm there, where I am now is somewhere I can only dimly remember.

I wish I had words that could bring you comfort now, but all I can say is that you will be able to feel comfort again in the future.  Hold on until then.

Hi,
A quick reply,
I was diagnosed under the old criteria - sexual assault.  I can't answer your first question because the criteria for what consititutes trauma has changed.

Question 2.
Yes it is.  But it can be empowering and reassuring to just once, tell your story to someone who understands what you have gone through.  The right circumstances are important,  do your home work and research who you go to for a diagnosis.  There are still victim-blaming old-school psychiatrists around.  Avoid these people like the plague.  Being retraumatised is dangerous and damaging. Make sure you find a trauma specialist who knows how to help you with the feelings that come up.

Question 3.
I've been reevaluated a few times for insurance purposes (unfortuantely). The longest was about 3 and a half hours.  From my experience, average would probably be about  two hours for a first assessment.

Question 4.
Validation and respect can be surprising.  Detail is required, which makes the experience more real.  Don't expect that you can just give a brief, safe-feeling, overview that will allow you to stay somewhat detached from what you are speaking about.  It is a very personal and intimate experience, and the assessor needs to be very experienced, knowedgeable (specialist in trauma)  and trustworthy.

It can be reassuring to know that your experiences are the normal and predictable result of psychological injury.

You are not alone.  There are far too many of us, sadly.  Breaking the silence about abuse in a safe forum like this really helps.  Like you, when I started reading Out of the Fog, first, and then found Out of the Storm, I felt the most amazing sense of relief that my life hadn't been some sort of strange anomaly, but my experiences had been shared by many good people.

Welcome!

Hi Drew,
Welcome.
Not feeling heard can be triggering if it has been a pattern in your life.
I can tend to feel triggered by feeling unworthy of attention and insignificant, not important enough, I guess.

My mother, in her blithe, not really noticing me way, kind of acknowledged that I was invisible as a child when she said of someone else: (something like) "He still has problems because he was overlooked as a child, like Radical was".
Radical was in the room and astonished.  The problems in the family went way beyond me being overlooked, but it's the only acknowledgment I've ever had, or probably will ever get from her.
(I thought I was getting the silent treatment from her for months sometimes, but I suspect that after the initial hostility, it was partly that she clean forgot I existed.)

I hope you are able to feel supported here.  There are not many people around a lot of the time, and we all have our own particular 'things'.  Don't take it personally if people don't respond to something you say.  It happens to most, I think.  I just think of it as journalling if no-one  responds to what I have written.  I still get value from reading what others are talking about.

Many thanks, Dutch Uncle,
That makes things Sooo much easier!

Hi there.
I appreciate this forum, I've enjoyed following some of the links people have posted and valued experiences and wisdom shared.

That said, I'm wondering if there is a simplified "active topics" function because I have great difficulty navigating in this forum because it has so many different topics and headings.  I was grateful to discover that I can find posts that I have made via the profile function because I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where I had put them.  Sometimes I read something and want to follow it, or come back to it, but I need a notebook to write down where it was.

I don't want to be criticial, I am very glad this place exists, but what would make it much simpler would be if I could go to a screen that brings up the active discusssions, and makes a new reply to an old discussion "active".

Flutterbye, I'm in awe.
I hope to have this kind of courage one day.

A couple of things I've learned, particularly about groups.  Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.  I suspect, more often the latter.  Being Superperson may hold a group together, but only superficially.  I've known groups to disintegrate pretty quickly when the core member is away, or leaves.  Don't be that person, don't knock yourself out and make a huge effort when others aren't.  Do what you want to do, what feels comfortable and makes you happy and leave others to pick up their end of the string if they want to. There needs to be more than one person with energy and enthusiasm.  If it doesn't happen, it may be that it isn't the right mix or the right time, or whatever, and maybe you can keep a door open for a later date or make one or two friends at some level of friendship.

In the meantime, people are coming back, and as you say, relationsips take time.  I've been in a lot of abusive relationships and what they all had in common was that they didn't take time.  There was far too much quasi-intimacy and quasi-attachment far too fast.  I'm finding making friends to be a painfully slow process but I'm kind of grateful, though it feels lonely, because I see things going too fast to be a red flag nowadays.  I recognise that dysfunctional relationships have skewed my expecations and my ability to get to know people at a normal pace without feeling that I'm doing something wrong.  I have to be careful not to over-expose too early and pace things carefully, and in the process, not go over every detail after every encounter fearing I've messed up all the time.  Awkwardness is normal.  I'm shy and so are other people.  It's not all or nothing and there are different kinds of friends, casual, blue -moonish friends right up to BFF and everything in the middle.

Another biggie, for me, is not taking things too personally.  You don't know what is going on in other people's heads and lives and more often than not, it has nothing to do with you.  Also I need to remember that making friends involves reaching out to a lot of people over a long period of time.  Most attempts don't go anywhere, so don't overinvest in outcomes, try and enjoy and become more confident in the process.  That is a really hard one for me.

I've pulled out of long-term dysfunctional relationships at the same time as I called out bullying which overlapped two major groups in my life, and it's left a painful vaccuum.  but I'm determined that it is better to go the healthy way than to settle for instant, inadequate gratification. It was my insecurities and lack of self-love and that got me into messed-up relationships.  Now, I'm determined to work on myself because I can't go back to the life I was living.  It was destroying me, allowing myself to be used and abused.  I so wish I'd learned this sooner.

I really hope you are congratulating yourself for your courage and intitiative, and being a kind friend to yourself. 

Hi there,
I'm sensitive and have experienced many types of abuse.  Like you, I am in the process of learning how to protect, value, and take care of myself.

You know what? - the world needs us. Otherwise the authoratative voices of the self-obsessed and the those of the less sensitive, who too often believe their plausible dribble would be almost the only voices that are heard.

These are difficult times and the world is becoming more unstable.    The unshakeable confidence of narcissists becomes all the more alluring as a result.  Intelligent, decent people, who should know better can too easily become entranced and follow them along the low road.   Alternative perspectives are needed more than ever.

Hi there,
Your description made me laugh.  I like to think of myself as a self-sacrificing, dysfunctional, social fawner/freezer in recovery  and it's kind of nice to be able to say that without shame.

I'm a lot better with my social  anxiety now, and I can't really say why beyond something happened to me and I stood up to abuse and then stood up the the shitstorm of vicitm-blaming that ensued.  It was a kind of social death of ostracism (my worst fear) in one way, but a new life (I hope) in another.  Social anxiety sneaks back up on me often, but there are times when I genuinely don't fear rejection or disapproval or what people are thinking, and it's a real freedom.

I was looking up my brother's number for his birthday and realised that most of the numbers in my phonebook I need to delete after finally reaching the point of full-up, can't take any more  *.  I realised the consequences of radical action could not be worse than the consequences of living as I had been - endless disrespect and abuse. I walked away from from all toxic relationships, though  to be honest, in some cases the ostracism from confronting an abuser took care of some of them, but I still walked away from the rest when I was at my lowest ebb. Pretty gutsy huh?

And then I thought something else - the numbers were of the most disordered and abusive members of the groups I associated with.  I thought why were the most toxic people of all the people who were around me, reclusive as i have been, the ones I associated with most?

Answer, (in case you haven't guessed) - critically low self esteem, almost non-exisitent boundaries, desperation to belong and be liked, loneliness, social isolation...you get the picture.  Trying sooooooo hard and feeling a kind of pathetic gratitude to anyone willing to be my friend.   I'm not blaming myself here.  Most of the time I'm just glad to be part way out of the storm.

And guess what? I'm becoming closer to some good people who were distant friends.  By trying less hard, and being more open, trusting myself more.

Hang in there, social anxiety can get better.  (And not necessarily via a blitzkrieg either)