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Thank you, Three Roses, I will look into that book. It sounds similar thematically to "When the Body Says No", by Dr. Gabor Maté. I am unfamilliar with somatic memory so I'll poke about here to learn more, too.  Always learning, always (hopefully) growing. :-)

Hi all,

I've been making good progress in recovery but I've noticed a specific hurdle and wonder if anyone else has experienced it.

I have been going for long walks since I was young. Those are consistently soothing and grounding. The natural world is my safe place so I am lucky.

I have been doing more excercises to get healthier as I recover from binge eating. Specifically yoga and physiotherapy for my knees. Yoga is very challenging and puts me in a contemplative and generally peaceful mood, with the exception of a few poses.

The physio is a different story. Some of the excercises leave me completely exhausted and emotionally raw. I sometimes feel fear and anxiety after completing them. The physio focuses on my abs and my inner thighs/groin which is tight/atrophied from years of sitting. I generally do the physio right after yoga. I am going to try changing the timing to see if that helps.

I'm wondering if maybe the combined introspection with the intensity and discomfort of physio is "opening the flood gates" so to speak. I've turned into a crying wreck two days now and my T thinks I should go easier but truthfulky I'm not doing very much, was doing yoga before starting therapy and am recommitting to physio to avoid needing surgery later if I can.

I'd appreciate your perspectives and thanks for reading.

Wife #2, thank you for writing this. I am facing the same issues with my partner and have struggled to articulate what is wrong in the relationship despite knowing for years that it's not working for me. BF truly sees everything as fine even when I have brought up concerns in the past and we have not resolved them. I have withdrawn. His idea of trying to get me in the mood is to literally grab at my body. No interest in what would make me happy. In therapy I am focusing on bettering myself so I can leave and hopefully spend some time happily single.

I feel for you with the kids. That must be hard for you. Can you keave the house for alone time? I find going for a walk really helps me. Maybe physically removing yourself from your stressors could give you a little relief.

I think I feel similarly to you, km_watts. I struggle with lateness or sometimes not leaving home at all due to major anxiety over repeatedly placing myself in vunerable situations. I often fight panic attacks before parties. I didn't think too much about it but your post has made me do so. Thank you. I hadn't fully realised how impacted my life had become. I've developed some coping techniques but not all are good.

I try to sit in less vunerable positions with a barrier at my back or a good view of my surroundings. I can't take transit at rush hours unless I have noise-cancelling headphones or big ones that convey I'm anti-social. I frequently wear mirrored sunglasses even if it's not that bright out. If I don't do those things I have to fight not to seethe against the sea of humanity. Even with glasses I tend to close my eyes and try to meditate or  enter a kind of music-induced trance. I feel disoriented when I have to "wake up" and get off the bus or train so I wonder if I'm not also dissociating under a guise of mindfulness. I'm starting to drive which I find helpful because it requires active focus. I also have my own space in a car.

Even normal things like going for a walk can take a lot of time to work up to, and I always try to avoid overly-busy routes. I'd rather a long detour than too much immersion with others. This means I spend a lot of time and energy on the journey and often feel depleted by the time I reach the destination unless conditions were favorable.

Sometimes I throw myself into going outside quickly before my anxieties have a chance to build and I try to have faith that any vague fears will remain nothing more than that.

I behaved much the same in my younger years. I've thought about it quite a lot and have come to see how my own overly sexual behavior was created by my FOO's unhealthy support of my acting out (which all children do) and by subsequent sexual abuse.

My behavior created such shame in me that I was eventually able to change, marry and remain faithful; altho this marriage was highly dysfunctional, it fulfilled the need in me to focus on external circumstances as the perceived source of my unhappiness and kept me from looking within for my answers - altho I went to see counselors I always stopped going before having any kind of breakthrough. I still sought relief from my deep unhappiness through fantasizing about escaping my marriage into the arms of a new lover who would fulfill my every need, which kept me from looking to myself to fulfill my own needs first and then participate in a healthy relationship second.

I am now almost 60 and am just beginning to realize all this. It would have been better if I'd had the courage to see the truth earlier.

Three Roses, thank you for your reply. It brought me to tears. I relate strongly to what you said. When I told my BF I need therapy and that I specifically wanted to see a cptsd therapist his response was "Why?" even though he knows my FOO history. While I can't really say I've been abused by him, years of invalidation by both him AND myself have done so much damage. I had to insist I needed therapy. I feel like I was deadening myself to avoid making the changes I needed that would allow me to stand on my own because I am so ashamed and scared to discover who I really am. I'm trying to avoid reading into my BF's motives any more. I have been in distress my entire life and only I can make it better now. One of my many therapy goals is to learn to be content and healthy alone.

As for the affair, I think it's a quirk of timing and plays into the pattern I'm trying to break. This man I can communicate with so easily that it's almost cruel he would appear now. I feel like Molly Grue when The Last Unicorn finally appears to her... "How dare you come to me now, when I am this." (and now I know what my avatar will be) He says I'm different and rare and wants to be in my life no matter what form it is in. (Don't they all? In my case, not that I've felt this close to believing.) I find it so hard to trust him or myself that I can access such kindness and such a close bond with a man without it returning to sex.

I need to step away from all romantic relationships to heal, and that will take more courage and conviction than I have ever had before. And that's where I'm prone to self-sabotage, because my coping skills are missing.

Thanks again for your reply.

This is a sensitive, sordid topic I haven't seen adressed here. I am concerned if I am the only one to experience something like this that it may be indicative of me leaning into PD territory or perhaps bipolar. I haven't read about anyone else here being the one to cheat. It is also highly personal and I feel broken in some way that I can't parse. I will provide background to try to give context for my actions but not to justify them. Sorry in advance for the length. I have so much to unpack and I need help. I have brought this up with my T but we are only working on coping skills currently and this is still bugging me. I plan to adress aspects of it when I start EMDR soon.

At age 5 I found my F's stash of fetish porn in the basement. I didn't comprehend what I was looking at. I was made to feel shame and guilt for finding it. Around the same time is when I started sexually charged play with a boy my age. It was innocent exploration - how could it be anything else at that age? It was mutual. This kind of play continued throughout my childhood with other friends and I was caught once by my father. More shame. Around age 7 I was molested by a female babysitter (sister of a friend) who was 12-15 yrs old. She said we were playing and to keep it a secret, and I chalked it up as another exploration until I was an adult and realised I had actually been molested. I still have confusion surrounding this experience. I guess that was more of an awakening and I took a heightened interest in sex from around age 8-9 on.

I have almost always been in a relationship since my teenage years. I started being pressured by boys for sex from age 13 on but managed to not lose my virginity until 17 with my first serious boyfriend. I actually had a boyfriend before him that I would have done this with but he was not ready, I made him uncomfortable, and we broke up. This is when I think I started developing an unhealthy pattern of jumping from one relationship to the next.

From the boyfriend I lost my virginity to in '97 up until the present I have only been single for 3 years. Almost all my relationships have been one right after the other. Generally I would meet someone new and become infatuated, feel sick from disloyalty, and end the current relationship so I could cleanly persue things with the new interest.

My choices in men became progressively worse for me. I spent 4 years in a relationship with a man and I was caregiver for the last 2 after he was diagnosed with a degenerative disease. I think now that I was enabling him. He cheated on me twice in those first 2 yrs and I forgave him. I had my first go at therapy during this relationship. I finally left him and was single for 2 yrs but still dated during that time.

There was nothing serious from any of the guys' perspectives. One turned out to be incredibly charming but a liar and unfaithful, probably an N (told me things like all his friends had a purpose). But I fell completely in love with that one before I caught him holding hands with another woman in a mall. I was devastated. And after we messily broke up he kept contacting me and I couldn't move on, thinking somehow there was hope.

I dated a couple others to try and erase him. I got off to a tumultuous start with a guy who was leaving town, setting myself up for more heartbreak. I couldn't handle it, and decided to move across the country a few months later to be with him. We had only been together 6 months before & I was still partially trying to shake the ghost of my exN who still kept contacting me. I told him I was leaving town and that put a stop to his interest.

Things right off the bat weren't great in this new relationship, but I tried to make it work and overlook things that upset me. He was emotionally unavailable & non-communicative & stubborn. We fought as I tried to get my needs met. And slowly I started giving up on my needs and settled into quiet, lonely co-existence. 5 yrs later exN contacted me and was charming as ever. After months of online affair I met up with him and I cheated. It eventually ended with me telling him to never contact me again. I tried to break up with BF but had no courage of conviction and failed twice. Again I settled back into my unhappy relationship. I kept thinking that if I could just make him happy enough, help him enough, he would blossom and treat me the way I needed to be treated. I subsumed myself to him, helping make his dreams come true while I masochisticly suffered for my sin working jobs I hated and remained emotionally unfulfilled.

Fast forward to now. We've been together 9 years & he's tried to be supportive in his way but never the ways I need.  I started binge eating. I had a serious health scare. I am not working after being laid off. I have been too depressed to care for myself. I realised I need therapy an
& planned to start after I took time to go back home for the first time in 4 yrs and reconnect with friends plus see my uPDM and recovering flea'd B. I had clarity that I want to move home and get my life together. It will take me time to get out of my relationship and move back.

And while I was there this time a different ex contacted me.  He was a nice one, a few yrs younger, we'd dated briefly & at the time we decided we wanted different things so we split. We went for a drink and bared our truths to each other. I left knowing there was chemistry. And then he contacted me again, and came to see me again, and I cheated again. I am now in a distance affair.

I plan to leave my relationship and move home. I am in therapy. But I had planned to do it while single. Now I have this affair clouding my view of my future even though we both say we want to be single for a while as we both have baggage. We found comfort in each other and we communicate in the same way, with many things in common. After years without that, I was starving for it.

I wonder what kind of person I really am. I feel like I have no integrity or self respect. It was hard for me to write this but I feel a little better not bottling it up. I'd appreciate an outsider's perspective. Thank you.

Thanks for the warm welcome. I've been devouring forum posts over the past few weeks and I realize the experiences people share here feel very familiar to me. I hope to have my own insight to share in the future as I move through treatment.

Hi everyone. I'm new here.

I'm a 36 year-old woman and found this site through OOTF. I've had a lifetime of difficulties stemming from my FOO and have been in and out of therapy and on and off medication over the years. A couple years ago while searching deeper for some answer about what I was suffering besides depression I learned about NPD and it was the first of many lightbulb moments. I have a uPDM, a deceased alcoholic F, an EnSF, a recovering flea'd B & a severely flea'd or uPDSM. I have been in a relationship for almost a decade.

I've just started some preperatory CBT therapy to give me some coping skills so I can begin EMDR in a couple weeks. It is already painful and I have barely begun.

I woke anxious from a dream about my disordered eating. I had been doing better with self care but this is the first day I have had to continue my new practices while feeling shaky and weepy. I've cried more today than I have in months. And still I think I can get through the activities I know are good for me. I am lucky to be not be working currently; I can't yet manage job responsibilities and my increased care routine.

I have some friends but only a couple know the true extent of my distress. Only a couple people know I am in therapy. And my closest friends are both far away. Today especially I have wanted to talk to someone but I resist because I feel so weak, needy, and unworthy. I don't want to overwhelm others with my complex problems and I fear rejection even from my friends, or maybe especially from them. With no stable FOO I don't want to overuse good will or exhause it, especially since I haven't started the real hard part of therapy yet.

How do you reach out to your support group when you need it most without the off-putting neediness? I know everyone has their own challenges, and I want to be able to maintain the enjoyment of my friendships but still find support when I need it most. I suppose this is why I am here, and grateful this forum exists.