Messages

Welcome Miss Understand, So sorry to hear it has taken you a lifetime to find out what is wrong but glad that you finally have  I knew there was something wrong for a long time, but did not get diagnosed until I was 57. But I am glad to know and it gives me something to work towards.

Before my diagnosis?  I just knew there was something wrong with me. I knew I was feeling a lot more than other people did in the same situations. Say 4 mangers and the boss are sitting in a conference room, and the 4 managers are getting chewed out. And I am one of the managers.  And the boss is a wildly angry apoplectic man who yelled first and asked questions later. And say he was screaming at the 4 of us.  I was the one paralyzed with fear.  The rest were merely uncomfortable or embarrassed.  But me? I was terrified and cried in the bathroom after the meeting was over.

So I've known a long time, particularly around angry people like my old boss that something was wrong. I also know or am learning how to either stick up for myself, fight through the fear and stick up for myself or else walk away. Since being diagnosed I have practiced many times giving that old boss a piece of my mind!

Anyway welcome and glad to have you!

OOTS11 - I am sorry you are left with limited choices at your young age.  I know what that feels like, and it is not a good feeling. But, I am also encouraged to hear you feel stronger as you are getting older.

There are a lot of resources on OOTF that may be helpful to you in dealing with your mother for now, as it seems you must. Have you tried the Tool Box on their site?  Have you considered you mother might be Personality Disordered, and if so, what sort of Disorder it might be?  Sometimes collecting information on what we are dealing with, and how to deal with it if we must can be helpful. There are a lot of resources there on OOTF. Medium Chill comes to mind where you simply do not engage.  And conversations run along the lines on your part of "That's nice." or "That's too bad."
 
I once had a conversation with my NPD sister for an hour, and that is all I said.  And she was happy.  She was a bit disappointed to not get anything out of me?  But I listened to her, for an hour, and either said "That's nice." or "That's too bad." So she could not complain.  It's a way of disengaging, and not getting caught up in drama and arguments and fights.

Also, setting boundaries, which is very difficult at first can help. The best book I ever read on this subject  is called Respect Me Rules. It is written by a brother and sister team called Marshall. This book is a life saver, and has literally saved my relationship with my own son. It took a while, and CONSISTENCY, but it works. I have been using the tools on him for about 2 months, and our relationship has drastically improved.  I suspect he is NPD as well, but he is not as entrenched, as he is only 31. So I highly recommend that book. It has helped me tremendously to deal with tough people.

I wish you the best on your journey, and I pray your mother is not Disordered, but if she is, you will have to find a way to deal with it, and STILL move on with your own life.

This why I recommended Pete Walker's book, as that one is for you alone, and possibly a therapist if you can swing it, so you have somebody to talk to face to face about all of your problems. We are here, and we care, but we are not professionals. But, we can offer hugs and support and ears! 

Hello OOTS11 - I just want to say welcome, and please know most of what you have felt and thought, we have all felt and thought. That may be hard to believe right now but it is true.  We are a community of people who have suffered as you have suffered, and felt what you felt and thought what you thought.

I will just give one quick example.  When I was 16 I knew I had to get out, to get away or I was going to die. I knew the longer I stayed the worse it would get.  So like you I did not panic.  Something, some will to survive, welled up in me and I got methodical, made a plan, a really good plan and I got out.  I had a boyfriend who wanted to be with me.  I made the price of being with me my freedom.  If he would help me escape?  I would be his.  I figured it could not be worse, it might be better and he loved me.  So I pretended to sell Avon products for a month.  I smuggled my clothes in my little Avon case out of my parents home for a month in preparation for our departure. Until all I wanted to take with us was gone.  Then we left.  We were very smart.  Ran to Alaska to some friends of his. I knew we could not be found in million years (this was 1974 pre obsessive behavior about people who fly). So I know what you mean about feeling your heartbeat slow down and kind of going on autopilot to survive.

Anyway I am so sorry you have gone through all that you have, you did not deserve it, none of us did.

It is very hard and it takes a long time, sometimes a lifetime I think to really understand what happened and to put it behind us, and move on.

But we are glad you are here and I hope you find hope, healing, and help.

Have you read Pete Walker's book Complex PTSD From Surviving To Thriving?  It has helped a lot of us, so maybe you will give it a try?

Again welcome and thank you for being brave and sharing your story.

Yes, welcome Brick!  I am so glad you found the site, and thank you for sharing your story.  It is horrible and awful, and nobody deserves to be treated like that.  I am so sorry! 

It is a tough journey you have decided to take, but I believe it is a good decision.  I am sure you already know that other choices only led to more of the same.  So you have decided to do something different, and I applaud you and your courage!

I know for me, finding a place of safety and calm was the only thing that helped me be able to have enough space in my head to sort out what I needed to do.  So I hope for your sake you do soon find a space where you feel safe, as that will definitely help the "emergency vehicle's sirens" to stop screaming.

I second Trees recommendation of Pete Walker's book 'Complex PTSD From Surviving To Thriving'. It definitely helped me start coming to terms with CPTSD. So I hope you will consider reading it. Most of us here have found it tremendously helpful.

Again welcome and you are safe here! 

Welcome La!  And you are so brave for posting and sharing your feelings.  We are glad to have you. No one here will make fun of you or your feelings and everyone will share what they can.

I think after reading all that I have, that everyone's situation and feelings are unique to their own personal * that they have experienced.  Only symptoms are universal. For example, after I read the definition of the symptoms of PTSD in the DSM 5 (CPTSD is not yet recognized) I had every one of them.

So like Woodsgnome, my truth or some of it comes from dreams, while yours comes from images flying by. My recent truth came from a dream I had over and over for many nights, which was a voice saying to me, "Trust Your Feelings, Trust Your Feelings. Which I  have never done.  I was not allowed to have feelings as a child or an adult.  Only reason and logic. But once I allowed the feelings?  A lot more things I had never understood started making a lot more sense finally.  The pieces of the puzzle fell into place. This is ongoing, and I am slowly learning to trust my feelings as much as my reason and logic.  It is a whole new world.

So I wish you the best on your journey, and again welcome and look around, and please post wherever feels comfortable to you.  It is safe here.

Hello Oxygen! And what a great name!  Breathing helps. Just breathe.  When those flashbacks come, just breathe. I know that sound simplistic, but that is what helps me is breathing and doing things that make me breathe.  Like push ups, or vigorous walking or anything very physical.

It is a long and difficult journey - to put all the pieces together of WHY we did what we did.  But if we work hard enough and long enough it will eventually all make sense.

I second Trees recommendation of Pete Walker's book: Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder From Surviving To Thriving. It was very helpful to me.  The first step in a long journey.

It feels like forever but I have really only been fully committed for a year and a half. But I have learned so much! I wish you the same feeling of success and understanding.

We are glad you are here and we will all help in any way that we can!

Welcome MutualSoul!  Nice to have you here and I hope you will find it comforting, and welcome, and safe.

Yes!  Pete Walker's book is amazing, and a blessing to all of us who suffer from CPTSD!  So many things that never made sense are completely explained and now understandable!

I wish you success in finding a therapist.  I found I sort of had to diagnose myself in the end. I had seen many therapists off and on, but no one came close to actually addressing the problems I had.  So after studying for a year alone, I took all of my studies, knowledge and conclusions to my current therapist when I did not know her from Adam.  And I interviewed her. I asked her what she knew about NPD, the family roles, was she familiar with the Scapegoat, told her that I identified with that role, and asked her if she knew about CPTSD, and had she any experience treating it? From all of her most compassionate answers I could tell she knew what she was talking about and could definitely care for me in more ways than one. And if I was wrong in my own diagnosis?  She would still be able to help me. It was the best thing I ever did for myself!  So I wish you the same success!

Welcome again and we are glad to have you!

Cottonax - I just saw and read through this set of posts, and this quote from you kind of slapped me in the face:

"I could (should?) have asked for help from church and extended family, but I felt I would have to pay them back somehow, and I was already so overwhelmed that I couldn't do it. Besides, my job was making my parents look good, and asking for help would have made them look bad."

My whole body screamed when I read that part of your post.  My whole body screamed NO!  Your PARENTS  should have asked for help from the church.  Your PARENTS should have asked for help from extended family. It was your parents job as ADULTS to take care of their own needs!  Their bodies might have been broken?  But their minds were not, and they KNEW that as ADULTS they should have taken the steps necessary to care for themselves, and they should have taken the steps necessary to provide as NORMAL of a childhood  as possible to YOU under the circumstances.  Which would have included not growing up with the responsibilities of an adult weighing down the shoulders of a mere child! What they did is unthinkable, and unfair, and unjust, and you were robbed. You never even had a childhood.  I am so sorry.

So yes, a very belated welcome! And yes, you do belong and we are glad to have you!

Thank you for sharing Nyxbean. There is an awful lot of pain in your story. I am so sorry. 

For me one of the hardest and most difficult parts of my recovery has been that I could not help anyone else I loved. It made me feel sad, and like a failure to not be able to help them. Yes, my loved ones are sick, yes, they have terrible issues. But in the end I found there was only one person I could really and truly affect and change. And that was me. And I found out that if I changed?  Then they changed too.  I could advise them to go to therapy?  But I could not make them. But learning about boundaries and setting limits with them helped me get better.

And sadly I have ended up losing most of them, but the peace I have gained has been worth the loss. All of their drama simply exacerbated my CPTSD symptoms and exhausted me.  And finding myself, and who I am, and what I want. and where I want to go is peaceful and calm, and comforting.

You will find a lot of that here.  People who will support you and your recovery and where you want to go and what you want to do.  It is after all your life!

So I hope you take a look around and find that some of the forums have meaning for you, and will assist you on your journey.  And always remember we have all had to start from somewhere, and the first step is always the hardest. I am wishing you the very best on your journey to find yourself with us.

Fish, welcome and I am so sorry for what you have been going through.  I hope that getting away from the triggers will bring you some peace and calm that those of us who suffer CPTSD all suffer from. Most of us simply cannot hope for much improvement as long as we are in the triggered state.

It's good news that you are going to get some help through EMDR therapy.  I have heard a lot of good things about it, but never been treated with it personally.  Though I remain curious.

You asked for some links or recommendations. On this site I would probably recommend the forum CPTSD and Us  along with Our Relationships With Others as a good place to start reading others stories, and see if any of it is relevant to you.

Also if you haven't yet I definitely recommend reading Pete Walker's book 'Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving.'  This is sort of our bible and he just really cover s a tremendous amount of information about what we are experiencing and ways to address it.

Some other writer's books that I have found very helpful are pretty much anything written by Patricia Evans. The ones I found helpful: Controlling People, The Verbally Abusive Relationship and Victory Over Verbal Abuse. Also John Bradshaw, Healing The Shame That Binds You. Also very helpful in a practical way: Respect Me Rules written by The Marshalls a brother and sister team.

Anyway welcome!  And I am  so glad you found us and I wish you peace healing and safety. 

NyxBean - Welcome and so glad you found the site.  I started on Out of the Fog a year or so ago, but eventually became drawn to this one as it seemed more focused on specific things I was experiencing that were not resolved through cutting off contact with my NPD father.

I am so sorry you are going through so much anguish and turmoil.  It does take a lot of time and patience and effort to work through so many difficulties. I too broke up with  a SO a year ago (17 year relationship) and I thought the pain would kill me.  Quite literally.  Eventually I discovered by going back in my mind, and finding my wounded child and giving her the love she had never received from her parents, that the pain I felt at losing my SO was significantly reduced. I am not saying this as advice, it is simply something that helped me. Loving my wounded child myself with my adult self helped reduce my current day pain.

Some of your terminology I don't understand and have never been exposed to?  I apologize for my ignorance.  But what is a carer?  I have not been exposed to that term?

Again I am sorry you are going through so much, and all at once. I hope you get some of your most pressing physical diagnosis and financial needs met so that you can focus on healing. 

You will find many compassionate people on this site who truly care and who can empathize. 

SMW - It sounds like you feel very, very trapped, and very hemmed in, and like you have no choices left at all, and that is a terrible feeling.  On top of that to make it worse you must face one of your abusers on a daily basis, which then I would imagine ramps up your symptoms making it very, very difficult to think clearly and to make good decisions.

I am so, so sorry.

Bur I am glad you are here and glad you have some support in the form of a psychiatrist and a therapist, and I hope your husband is supportive too.

As you look around this forum, I hope you will feel that all of us are pulling for you, and that we do care. Talking about it here does help. So I hope you find some meaning on some of the forums. 

Yes, Pigeon welcome!  That feeling of isolation and having no one to talk to who understands can be crushing to the spirit.  But you are safe here.  Everyone here is kind and compassionate and understands what you are going through.  So please look around, find your niche and once you start posting you will find amazingly that we all get it. 

I am so glad you are here and that you found us!   

Hello SMW!  So glad to have you and I agree with everything Kizzie said.  I've done this, taken a break and it is amazing what a break from feeling that pressure and constantly feeling of being on guard has done for me.  So getting yourself a break from it might be something to think about.  Also counseling is something that has been sort a of a miracle for me. Again a great idea.

You did not deserve the treatment you received.  You did nothing to cause it.  It is horrific that people can be so cruel to helpless children, and my heart goes out to you.   

It is wonderful that you are reaching out and trying to do something for yourself to help yourself and we are very glad to have you.

cmkrohne, Hello!  And welcome.  I am so glad you found us.  Take a look around and see what looks interesting and applicable to your situation.  I am so sorry for your memory loss, and I hope that as you explore you will find answers that will make sense to you.

I am 58 too and was just diagnosed in March of this year.  It was a big shock to me but also a relief.  It explained all of these feelings that I was pretty certain no one else was feeling except me.  I have felt them since I was a small child so they were "normal" for me.  But eventually I figured out most other people weren't feeling them. And I had to keep quiet about them, or thought I did.

Anyway I am glad you are here and I wish you the best on your journey.  You will find many kindred souls here.