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I've had a hard week dealing with huge EF and really scared of the triggering effect of Christmas on top, then a difficult situation involving my teenage son tonight.
But I made a decision to ring someone and tell her how bad it truly has been, (really unheard of for me). When badly triggered I hide and stop and usually want it to end at any cost.
But this lovely person (who I met at a therapy group) listened and helped and guided and healed and for the first time the really really disgusting stuff inside of me was not just my burden alone. I was nearly out of my mind before I rang her with incomprehensible panic and somatic symptoms that were strangling me and now I feel almost normal. Then as if by magic another lovely friend rang me and suddenly I am ok. Not great, but ok
Huge for me, huge.
Taken me a long time to be able to feel the love and to find good people. Here's to the next chapter. xxx

This week has been really hard.  Basically I've been trying to get out more and face my fears of all the things related to it and had been doing ok. Last Saturday night I went out with a group of people and for one reason or another got really triggered. Now this isn't unusual when socialising, and usually it retreats back under the dissociative walls once I return home. But with all the work I've been doing I guess I've eroded those walls and there has been no hiding place for it to retreat to.
I'm not even sure I can put it into words really, the experience I've had. I know it's reliving something very very early.
It is a mixture of terror about being alive and conscious, and hopelessness at finding anything or anyone safe. I feel paper -thin and beyond hope. There seems nothing but pain and weird dissociative experiences around me, in the past, present and future, and absolutely no rescue. It is existentially frightening.

I feel so sorry for the little infant me who experienced this and quite literally had no rescue. There feels to be no point in trying to be with anyone because it is meaningless and I don't belong anywhere, not even to myself.

I have to hope that somehow this stuff will clear and the way out of this crazy stuff will materialise because right now I am empty and scared and going through motions that aren't worth going through.
I've read enough about Mastersons description of abandonment depression to recognise what it is . He says you have to work through it. Funny how nobody thinks to tell you how.

All I know is I'm sick to death of being so broken. I have to go this route even though right now to hope it will heal something fundamental that I am always missing, always scared of, always lost about. Except it doesn't feel like I'm on a route at all. More like a way to the end of the world.

I wanted to write about the difficulties I have with conflict because I've just had a silly little run in with someone that is typical of how I react.
it's like someone says something and instead of being able to hang onto my sense of proportion I just end up reacting defensively, triggered into a bit of a mess and then I have feelings of rage or hopelessness or shame that last for ages and make me play it over and over in my head.

Just by way of example, (a bit silly and really no big deal, except for how I feel - and because it's silly you can't really talk to anyone to make you feel better about it cos they think you're making a big deal out of nothing..)   this morning I'm walking my dogs in the country and one of them starts to do his business. A lady I know  was riding her horse down the lane and before the poor dog had even finished she started with "let's see if Helen is going to use a bag to pick this up" . No,  "hello, how are you? ". It was almost as if she couldn't wait to get in there with her snarky comment...

Now the silly thing on hindsight now I can think I realise I wouldn't have just left the mess there and was feeling a bit embarrassed at my dog doing it in front of her so was on the back foot a bit. I was also taken aback.  (Not that it was even any of her business.  Who goes around saying that to people anyway, it's just silly? )  But immediately I felt guilty. Even more than that something weird happens, which is hard to describe. I completely lost sight of the fact that i was going to clear it up and just totally reacted like I was guilty as charged, as if  i'd been caught red handed. I've noticed this before. In my family for example my sister would say something like "you're this and you're doing x for y reason" and would refute anything i'd say. It would be all her projection and blame and bear no resemblance to my motives or thinking but I'd believe her - i wouldn't be able to hear what my real motives and thoughts are. It's like i allow myself to become the bad person I'm being made out to be. It's like I've learnt to feel ashamed and disregard my own feelings and motives as irrelevant and bad so totally. That makes it damn hard in any conflict situation!!!

Anyway today I didn't feel able to just carry on as usual with her watching or just ignore her. It felt like I'd be "doing as I was told"  like a naughty child but actually it wasn't that logical. I just stood there doing nothing and started to argue with her about how dog poo was no different to fox poo out in the country which obviously a) invited her to criticise and b) me to feel stupid and shameful and wrong like now she thinks I don't care about leaving poo littering the countryside !!!!!

So why do you end up arguing something you don't even believe or pulled into an argument that doesn't need to happen? It's insane. Why can't I just let people and their snarky comments wash over me?

So to end it I sort of lost it  a bit and somewhat childishly said "how do you know I wasn't going to pick it up anyway" and stood there fuming while she rode off. So now I feel even more stupid and like I overreacted and was just totally weird.

Ok, like I say, no big deal.
Except why is it so complicated? It's occupied this great big space in my head since and made me crumble emotionally, I'm sitting here trying to understand "who" feels "what" internally, but basically I just feel angry and sorry for myself and have an intense urge to just give up. I felt awful afterwards like I had nowhere to go with the feelings inside. Sometimes if people yell at me or if I have a run in with someone it makes me panic like I can't bear it, the feelings are just literally unbearable. It's gotta be a traumatic memory being triggered right? Overwhelming shame mostly, rage, white rage, tightness in my chest, tight confusion in my head and self hatred all rolled into one. I literally curl into a tight ball of no escape. It's horrid.

Does this sound familiar to others?  I hate that silly things are such a big blooming deal to me.

I've kind of made a pact with myself this year not to avoid the underlying stuff, knowing "feeling your feelings" is the way to healing.

But that's not so easy really, A lot of it is incomprehensible and frightening and drives me with such weird beliefs that I am controlled by, even whilst I know they are illogical. It's very hard to explain, being preverbal.

So clear to me, the beliefs and what they mean, so familiar and strong yet there are no words to describe the contents or concepts. They relate to reality itself and are very very frightening.

At the moment I'm struggling to afford more therapy and in any case, feeling like I need to poke around in here and see if I can find out what's in here, otherwise I try to explain this stuff in ways that are hopelessly inadequate, and sit once more while people - even my therapist - just don't understand. It drives me crazy and makes those very little parts of me really panic. Easier to face them alone.

It is frightening, the sheer isolation of those existential thoughts. They've never been understood. I kind of know my only hope is to keep listening, keep feeling, stop this terrified running away from them and their confusing, contradictory surreal nature .
Then maybe I can do something with them.
I wish I could put it into words

There's something about a hopelessness because I'm not real somehow. Or that no one around me is real, maybe that's it. That connection is illusory.

There's some terrible fear of just existing and being real because that means death somehow.

I've built my life on chasing improvement, attainment, being the best, being good enough, trying to connect and yet it all feels like a wasteland- so many lonely painful memories. So much that could have been different - if only. Underneath, now I've stopped, is just a barren wasteland.

Underneath is a frightening brokenness and despair.

I am tired of feeling fizzy scared weird things instead of ordinary emotions and ordinary worries.

I can't conceive at the moment of what it must be like NOT to have this fizzy weird surreal stuff, the limits, the fears. That frightens me, how little I understand about how to live and how other people just do life. That they can't understand how frightening this stuff can be. That aloneness is terrifying

I believe I am worthless really underneath. I cannot believe anyone really cares and then  equally strongly I panic because on the other hand I don't see anyone to care for, not out there. They are all seem scary or disappointing or vapid or weird.

Or I'm scared of anyone coming close because it reminds me of something awful that I can't bear.

Sometimes I think it's because if they are ordinary they not rescue and swaddle me in love and safety and I have to keep functioning in this dreary life without hope. That the rescue fantasy (logically I know is rubbish) but emotionally it is shattering and beyond the ability of those frightened parts to understand.

They don't see anything for themselves as them. They don't see any point. They don't want anything. they just want to be held and sleep and not be conscious. I think they are very very young.

So I am caught between a rock and a hard place.

The fear is visceral and irrational but very powerful. It's as if the fabric of life is splitting and I'm left trapped in a nightmare.

I remember as a very little child thinking I didn't want to live but if life was this bad death must be worse.

I have spent a lifetime horrified by this stuff when it is triggered, totally dissociated and running like crazy. I have tried so long  to figure out all the impasses caused by these fears and beliefs and surprise surprise, never got anywhere with it.//. Now I know I cannot figure them out. I have to feel the stuff, think the unthinkable and try and remind myself it Is  old stuff. But the present feels so empty and so full of despair.

I know my mother hardly ever spoke or looked at me other than in sneering contempt or out of duty. Dress all her little girls alike and pretend to be a mother.
I know I was left alone as a tiny baby.
My family knew nothing of love or genuinely liking kids, let alone protecting and nurturing them.
Noone protected me from the paedophiles or the attacks from my own siblings.
no one even noticed. they just joined in and blamed me.

Sometimes I think my life is over because NOTHING seems like worth having anymore if you don't even feel real. It feels like I'm always on the outside looking in and run away the minute someone comes near. And that even includes myself.

Today just feeling sad and dispirited again.
It's like something heals and I feel better again, and then something more gets triggered and the next wave arrives.
Today I'm feeling bleak about the loneliness that permeates me from my childhood.
I'm starting to get out and about and that feels good because I'm doing it trying to really be present, (whereas before i'd go out and stay defended - almost as if I were just going through the motions and ticking off that I'd done it and feel no better after)
However it doesn't take much to make me feel like it's so pathetic ... spending time with people who take for granted family and belonging or who are discussing their mother cooking for 25 on Christmas day and it hits me how little I have or know of that kind of world, or of anything really.
Likewise people like that wouldn't be able to conceive of my absence or lack of comfort with people, lack of belonging.

I realised yesterday how little I think i'm entitled to really love someone or really be able to trust and relax. It's almost as if somewhere I told myself don't ever love, don't feel, don't need, don't be enough... and I don't. I don't feel it, I can't compute it, I don't get it.
Momentary connections here and there but soon lost in the mire
The concept that I could be among people who love and like me, where I could be enough without doing or saying or being something unacceptable, that life could be safe, is an alien one.

And always when I'm with people I feel like they like and want each other more than they want me. It's a wretched, shameful feeling.

I think I'm waffling. One of those days when you try to describe the bleak winds swirling within but you can't.
Sorry if you're reading this!

Does anyone else struggle with being productive?
I often sit at home overwhelmed by stuff to do. Wondering how "normal" people motivate and interest themselves. Feeling my space is not good enough.
And then I start to tidy and everything feels messy and dirty and I run out of steam. It feels so sad and angry and pointless and causes a deep bleak sadness I don't understand. Who cares anyway?
And I feel ashamed. It's so hard for me to have people in my space. My T says it's a great defence to keep people away.
Yet outside at work I am organised, effective and tidy. Seems like I have my stuff together. If only they knew......

I'm finding it hard to engage with life at the moment as It's as if I'm mortally tired of trying. Tired of trying to manage the shifting parts of myself, tired of trying to be enough and get it right.

I'm dissociative and have many fragments and parts. For instance, I have a good job and can be really sociable and bouncy and enthusiastic.
But when I go home there is another set of "me"s that are so automatic and heavy and stuck it has been hard to see where they kick in, all I feel is the heavy bloated confused misery that is those parts.
So I've been trying to find those parts. I think I am making progress because I think I am beginning to get a sense of who they are.
They are holding me really trapped and I can see that but until I heal them....

For instance, I get a powerful icy panicky loneliness at weekends where my son is away. Sometimes I can plan things and others I just am capable of nothing more than hiding. My house becomes a mess and I feel shocked at how alone I am - always have been . Somewhere inside I cannot believe it is true, that I was supposed to be and have so much more than this.
So I look at other people's ordinary functionality and family life and the fact they don't dread their home life and feel really inadequate.
If I think about it changing, - meeting someone, getting a family life, I panic. I cannot imagine someone here. I can't ever find anyone. I find men approaching me terrifying. I convince myself there is no one left out there. And with people I often feel so worthless and bad and empty I just want to run away.
And so I vacillate between not being able to bear the loneliness and panic at their being no hope.

Lately I've promised myself to go out and experience people differently and I'm slowly doing it. Sometimes I retreat into my fear and call it off, and often my stuff kicks in and spoils it so I want to stop, but sometimes I've had a good time. And so there is a tiny grain of hope that wasn't there before.

I know it will take a lot of hard work to change.
Meanwhile I am trying to heal the terrifying parts that kick in at home. Up to now they have been too scary and full of such immense pain I didn't dare, but bit by bit I am getting the courage to sit with the feelings. I have come across Dr Jonice Webb and her childhood emotional neglect posts and that, and all my therapy learnt tricks, are slowly getting there.

I woke up yesterday and in that half world between waking and sleeping saw very clearly how awfully nasty and cruel my family were compared to how families are supposed to be places of love and succour, and I truly understood why I am so afraid, so self hating, so lonely.
That is painful but frees up mourning rather than stuckness. It feels more hopeful - at times. I think I am starting to grieve the absence of that vital mother love and security and all the cruelty I endured.
There is a part of me that does not want to be conscious, cannot bear to exist. It has wiped out anything of  meaning for me at the moment but I am trying not to panic and dismiss it as depression. It is only by feeling it that it is processed and the understanding comes. I just have to trust that one day I will be able to feel loved and involved and just worry about normal everyday human pain as opposed to this primal stuff slung round my neck.

I've noticed I feel a bit guilty posting and taking up space.

And then when people reply I feel really touched that they have done so (it feels like I've been told it's ok for me to have posted) and then guilty - I don't deserve this kindness and interest.
I then feel like I have to then give something back - like I'm in debt somehow and ungrateful or not a nice person.

Interesting that the guidelines to the site encourage you to post about your healing first and helping others second. When I read that it felt quite powerful and great to know the site is being moderated in such a good way. Maybe I can experiment with that permission and what it's like to be worth someone's comments and cyberhugs.

Anyone else relate to this?

Having a bit of a rough day today.
A couple of weekends ago, I spent a weekend at a gestalt therapy group and there was this woman there who triggered me (and I her) and we clashed heads a bit. It really kicked me big time into panic and huge body reactions- heart pounding, terror and wanting to run away and a whole host of overwhelming emotions and confusion. I was terrified of being attacked by the group and appearing out of control and angry and crazy because that's how I feel in conflict. It was so hard to stay with it and it continued apace when I got home, for days....
And anger, at every little thing. It's been so hard to sit with, but gradually I've seen how it flares up as a defence against my shame, my fear, and whenever I feel unheard, unsupported, uncared for, ( which to be honest, is all the time!)
I've realised I've never had anyone to stand up for me. From a nasty sociopathic paedophilic grandma to a highly abusive, bullying scapegoating family to a similar situation in my ex's family ( all alone against them) and also a similar dynamic playing out at work, I've never had any one to turn to, no ally, no wisdom or perspective, no one on my side, no one coming to check i'm ok.
To be honest the last two weeks have been awful, and today is a very low day.
But at least I'm starting to see some patterns - at work one of my partners always has to be in control and either ignores what I say or just goes ahead anyway with what he wants, and the manager just dismisses and lectures me. I've found myself starting to see through their patterns, taking it less personally, and recognising that they will not listen to my pleading or arguments or pointing out what's going on because they are not caring, " people" people and unlike me who wants everyone to be happy, couldn't care less if I was happy so long as they get their own way. Dressed up as being reasonable of course. I realise how I've been replaying old patterns, feeling powerless and seething, unable to be heard and afraid of disapproval and shame.
But now I see how I collude with it, because it doesn't matter if they're angry with me really does it.. they aren't my goddamn family anymore. They don't respect me so why do I try so hard?
So I've decided I need to just hold my boundaries, and refuse to react to their behaviours that push me back into a frustrated voiceless box, Easy enough in theory butInevitably it has brought up more  fear shame and guilt as I break an old pattern and challenge a taboo.
On top of which I'm feeling heartbroken today as finding  this bullied, abandoned part of me has brought a jhuge sack of hopelessness, and loneliness like an icy shard, and I am struggling to put one foot in front of the other today in a way that feels bleak and scary.

I KNOW feeling the pain is the way through, I've done it a trillion times before, but each time it's bad you wonder if you can make it this time, or is this the time you crack into a million lost pieces. And you despair of it ever ever feeling any better.
Breaking taboos, enduring strong emotions, facing the terrible betrayals and abandonment and living in mortal fear of retribution... all a bit much for a Friday

There's a bit of a story here I want to share because it feels silly to try to talk to any of my friends about it. I guessed you guys might understand.

I've been working on my recovery a long time and recently started to work at the really deep stuff about self worth, intimacy, being seen - and facing my fear of people.
One day my therapist said that she'd been, with her husband to series of dancing classes over 3 months. She said it occurred to her that it would be a good thing for me to try something like that as what she'd found was that over the course of the class she'd got to practise dance moves with a succession of partners and to experience how she felt with each one. I t had made her think of me and how useful it would be. Some made her feel comfortable, held and supported, others uncomfortable, a few even repulsed. She said I needed a safe simple environment without complexity to just experience different people without them wanting something from me or triggering me to run.
At the time I kind of understood, and did look into it but everything I found was too distant or seemed too scarey. I don't think I was truly ready at the time.
However, what I did find was a "cuddle" workshop, a safe place "to explore platonic touch". I discussed it with her and she thought it'd be great - on some level my nervous system would be able to experience touch in a safe way and start to heal.
So fast forward a few months and I've been to several. At first I found myself just wanting the touch. And still feeling wary scared and judgemental of people and slightly repulsed by the whole thing. But I did think I felt different in myself.  And then slowly it has become a place to explore my boundaries, daring to be myself and resist what others want from me. As an abuse victim I have never had that concept before. So it has become less about the touch but more about listening to me and listening to how I feel with people. Exactly what my therapist wanted!!!
At times it has felt weird and I have resolved not to go again, and then something happens that hits you deeply and you realise what a great place it is to learn. I had one experience of giving a chap a shoulder massage, someone obviously in a lot of need, who suddenly grabbed my arms and held me to him as if his world would break. I had no idea how to handle or process that but it was a profound moment that stayed with me for days.....For someone who has shied away from any relationship (after a very traumatic marriage and long childhood history) for over 10 years it was odd to experience being held... memories stirred of pleasant times, of being enough:, confused, momentary and odd, but nonetheless real.

Meanwhile over the last few months I've done some real grieving and facing shame and found myself freed in ways I find it hard to explain. I found "me" again, somewhere in there. Uncertain but there. And so started to embrace much more of what my therapist intended about exploring being with people. I made a deal with myself to just go out and experiment, to promise to go to 100 social events and just experience being with people in a new way - now that I was in a better place, much freer of fear and projections and judgements.
So I have. I'm only on 6 ( and  still having to talk myself out of wimping out each time!! ) and already I have learnt so much, observing things in people and our interactions that before were lost in my panic and projection and shame.
I've started to feel warmth, connection, see other's defences operate, been able to explore holding onto me and not being pulled into other's worlds or dramas. I am experiencing being enough and occasionally seeing value in myself. WOW!!
It has been exciting even if at times the old panic has arisen.
So what I really wanted to talk about was the cuddle workshop I attend this weekend as something happened I don't really understand but was so lovely. For someone who has been so confused and controlled and uncertain about men it is hard to figure out!
There were 12 of us and you do various exercises that set boundaries and build up connection. Then you have a break and a cuppa and then start again with more exercises. During the cuppa we were idly chatting and I asked one of the men, who only vaguely been on my radar and who had introduced himself at the start as feeling sad that day, where he was from. Sure he was quite cute but that wasn't it. As he responded there was just this amazing connection between us. Soft, lovely, mutual, intense, joyous and really open. It wasn't like any attraction I'd felt before. It wasn't even attraction. It was just this exploding sense of joy and belonging and mutual connection and it was beautiful. It quite literally took my breath away.
I just felt like we LIKED each other and there was just this bond. It was weird. Anyway I had no idea what to do. I have a pattern of chasing unavailable men and the generosity of this guy's attention to me was just - well, there aren't words. Usually I get embarrassed and feel cornered by someone's interest in me and eye contact is excrutiating for me but this was so different, it was liberating and emboldening.
During the next half an hour we exchanged a few really connected smiles, all feeling equally lovely. And then we separated in different groups and we seemed to lose the connection, and my inner doubts started and I noticed he had a wedding ring. In the last exercise when he was being held by someone he cried and then he was withdrawn and left fairly quickly at the end  -without any of the connection of earlier. (I know THAT feeling too well. Bereft , mistaken, not able to understand or capitalise on something. Disappointed.)
I just wanted to reflect on it because it seems important. I probably sound like a teenager to the rest of you, but for someone so damaged and exposed only to nasty narcissistic people, this is all new. If that is what real connection is then I'm hungry for it.
I feel like I've always missed out on love and connection and always people are married or otherwise engaged.  For a brief moment it felt like there was only him and I  and I and it wasn't a sexual connection but almost a soul thing. As if everyone else in the room should disappear and leave us in that bubble just to smile inanely at each other. I just wanted to hold him.
I guess he felt it too? Something like that has to be a mutual thing, doesn't it? Maybe not maybe it's just new for me.
I know next to nothing about him I have no idea what's going on back at home for him. Maybe he isn't looking for what I am.

Sorry for babbling.  I guess I'm after some feedback and I've only just started to come alive and realise connection love and how wonderful other human beings can be after a lifetime of isolation abuse and indifference. 
My very wise therapist was right. I need to experience a different way of being with people and the only way to do it is to do it.
Thank you for reading this!!

I've spent a few years fighting this trauma lark and of course I understand that " feeling your pain" is the way through. How many times do you repeat that with your therapist beside you?
It's funny though, how you can relearn something over and over or in a deeper way.
For years I've been doing EMDR tapping and child work for complex PTSD and polyfragmented dissociation, and yes a lot has healed and improved.
But this year I felt such a weariness. Just didn't believe in it anymore. All this work and nothing really seemed to change deep down. I was still on the cycle of finding something exciting to work on ( dressage, keep fit, photography) getting really into it and being successful, then everything crashing at the emptiness behind it.
This year something inside me has kind of known that that is not enough any more I can't keep doing that.
Initially it manifested itself as a sort of depression - hopelessness, with funny stabs of regret tagged onto random things and an urge just to eat sleep and get drunk. I stayed in bed a lot and put weight on. It got rough.
My get up and go had moved out and it just felt, well, mwerrrr.

I carried on seeing my therapist and carried on working on stuff, but kind of getting cross with her too.
So meanwhile, planning a holiday with my son he wanted to spend some time in Wales so he could see some mates from a previous holiday, and I found myself drawn to going back to where I'd lived as a teenager,  near Bristol and "showing" him.

Just before we went I got a verbal lashing from my ex (NPD bully) and instead of turning the other cheek I let myself sink into the rage I felt. Actually allowed myself to decide enough was enough even though it was hard for me to give myself that permission - I have normally kept a distance but tried to be civil "for my son" but also because I was afraid - he was still controlling me in a way I hadn't really understood til that moment.
So this time I sat with it. Hard on the heels of the anger came immense shame, the shame he'd put into me but also the shame from my childhood. From a lifetime of narcissitic and borderline people and bullying
So I sat with it. Squirmed with it. For days.
In the middle of this we went down on holiday and I was hit by how much I'd loved where I'd lived and how happy I'd been as a teenager and how everything since felt trashed and wasted - it was intense. For a few days I imbibed the lovely memories and feelings and then wham, full on grieving, For who I'd been that I'd lost, for all the hardship and rubbish since, and for the way people, notably my ex, had treated me.
I suddenly saw clearly through the release of my shame that he'd been awful to me just after I'd lost my parents and my family home  and how none of it was because I was worthless and weird at all. That it was about his need to destroy me and make himself bigger. He'd yelled at me that I had no one and no one loved me within months of losing my mum

It was odd, my body releasing that grief. I realised I had never grieved properly for anything. I was humbled by that inner wisdom that had drawn me down there and led me to face what I needed to.

A few days later I got a text to say my aunt had died - someone I'd lost contact with when she developed Alzheimers and her daughter had whisked her off to Belgium and refused any interest. And wham, there I was crying and grieving all day all over again.
And afterwards... I felt softer, clearer.

It lasted for a couple of weeks then the magic of what i'd felt on holiday left me, and the "usual *" in my life and my frustrations built up again. Then I walked into a situation with my narcissitic colleague at work.
Instead of shame and self blame and angry emails, I sat with my rage. Boy did I rage to myself for 2 days, not knowing what to do with it and how to let it go - and then through sitting with it I once again I started to see how out of line he was, the pattern that had been going on/ He'd behave badly, no one would back me up and Id retreat in a cycle of shame and embarrassment and confusion. How I always, feeling so inadequate and wrong inside, always blamed myself and got drawn into his arguments as if I was trying to prove him wrong. all the time believing it was me.

And since then I've looked at some of the really horrible stuff I feel at home or with intimacy, places where I often get badly triggered and dissociative. Places where the complex trauma of my early family life and abuse flourish. And instead of being terrified of those feelings I've turned and said "come on then". Sitting with them has been hard... and you dread the descent into madness that you believe will inevitably follow. But instead all I've seen has been a morass of confusion, hurt, rage, terror and fear of being crazy. And a fear that this stuff could just burst out and shame me at any moment as it was not under my control.

I'd tried to think my way through it so many times but got nowhere as it was contradictory and crazy. SO just sitting with it and talking to those parts and letting them rant... it's starting to clear. I've started to feel more connected and softer with people. I've even had the strange experience of noticing that someone seems to like me, seemingly I am enough - usually I think everything I say or do is wrong somehow.

Yes so now there's more grief welling up. At all the horrors I've put up with and the way my world has been so warped. I can't feel it clearly yet. It's in there. I can trust it will find it's way out.

It's early days and  I have to keep reminding myself to listen inside, to try and find what I think, what I want, how I want to act which is hard as I've been so busy performing and hiding the real me.  Trusting that whoever is still in there holding this yukky stuff will trust me and together we can let it go.
It hasn't been as hard as I imagined in some ways ( my therapist says things that terrify a child are not as terrifying to an adult) and in some ways it's been the hardest thing.
Until I'd  said ok, what do those deep down parts, those parts I try and ignore, what do they feel, until I'd done that I couldn't see an of this, Until I'd faced the shame and the grief none of this was accessible
Now I notice I feel bad when I start acting or caring about how I come across instead of being centered and with myself. Noticing when I abandon myself, I suppose.
Living for me feels sad, lonely, empty, pointless and a really odd concept but I believe now that it is the start and it will get better.
There's more to do, I know it, but i'm slowly starting to trust myself and daring to start being with people in a different way - learning who I like and what I like rather than trying to dodge the perennial disapproval and shame I carried internally.

There was a big shift when I allowed myself to say, this isn't working anymore.. Something deep inside is so unhappy.  Going "home" and remembering when I'd felt alive and belonged reminded me of how it can be, that it's MY LIFE Daring to feel what's inside means I can let mood swings happen rather than chasing happiness and defending against the pain. I can be authentic rather than trying to be the best at things, or chasing affection that never fills the holes.

Listening to yourself and daring to live really from yourself is hard but so liberating.

Hi guys,
I'm in throes of this stuff at the moment, it's very painful and it feels like a hopeless mountain = too much hurt in the past and too little in the present.
I've worked so hard for so long at this stuff and still feel so handicapped.
My therapist says I have to let myself go down to see that I am enough. When you're in the middle of it though, that's hard to believe.
What do you do when there seems to be nothing for you?
And when you feel so boring. lovable and shameful to your core.
You can' tell anyone as they either don't want to know or it makes you feel like you're weird and afraid of driving them away.
I get snatches of seeing the real me, and a bit of genuine hope and connection to something exciting but only briefly and only occasionally.
Life seems so disappointing and a pale imitation of what I wanted it to be,
The emptiness and coldness is immense takes my breath away when it hits.
I tell myself it's old pain but it's hard to believe I can deal with this alone. Just always feel so far behind what other's seem to do so effortlessly.
It sucks!

Hi I'm new here. Hello to everyone. Hope it's ok to share something. I joined tonight so I had a place to put this.

I've been working with a dissociation/child abuse therapist for years, I'm also in a gestalt group and I've done individual and group therapy before that.
I just mention that because I've worked so hard for years and yet right now things are very difficult.
My cptsd story "in brief" is hostile unloving mother, bullying father, sexually abusive grandmother I was left with as a baby,  horrible dysfunctional family and then some. I don't think I ever felt genuinely loved - or even knew what it was - until I had my son and even now I only feel it vaguely. I was severely dissociative with many many many fragments of me that we are still finding.

Lately I've been working on the real baseline stuff of abandonment, self esteem, the paralysing loneliness and the way "people" trigger me.
Just to say I work in a public facing job and get on with people great there... I can do it, On the face of it you would think I was really together.

But  I just never seem to find anyone for me in private or ever belong anywhere and I have a painful set of irrational but powerful beliefs that make finding myself a community or "family" very confusing and painful. Lately it has started to feel unbearable.

Just tonight I picked up my son from 2 weeks at his dad's - who has just broken up with his second wife and now has got a new girlfriend. Not that I care - other than I was suddenly overwhelmed with my inadequacy that he is so much better than I - even though he is a nasty narcissist and bully - and I felt an icy hopeless aloneness that is like shock.  How does a nasty * like him just walk into another relationship?  How do people just do that? I feel ashamed that I haven't had any relationship in 10 years, that I hide at home rather than go out and that I can't find anywhere to belong.  Going out to meet new people is really really hard for me , I try but it's easy to run away or give up....I feel inadequate that I have never had the family and friend support to do "normal things" and although I try - and have tried very hard for years - it all feels hollow and empty because this stuff deep inside never changes.

My son tonight seems really happy and I can't shake the belief that it's being at his dad's rather than being home has created this and that now  I have to hide from him how dreadfully useless and inadequate and empty and boring and UNABLE I am. I can't see that I have value.

I have friends - but no one  that understands this level of pain or really wants to know about it, in truth.  I never trust that there is anything in me that people really want, and I struggle to feel any connection. I try over and over to remind these parts of myself that this is the traumatised me and not the whole picture but the ferocity of these feelings literally take my breath away  - especially tonight - and show my little efforts, to "meet people" and live normally, almost laughable.  I feel ashamed that people will see how much I , a grown woman, struggle to do the thimgs that to them are so easy.....
I am brave and I have faced unspeakable things in my recovery but this feels too big.... no one able to help me as I can't even tell them. I feel trapped having to pretend to my son when I feel so empty and with the terror that it will turn out to be true that I am not enough and will drive him away. I know that is stupid as I write it but it feels so real.

I'm not sure any of this makes much sense. My therapist says putting things down "in writing" pulls it through the hippocampus and out of traumatic memory but just now I've been losing hope that I can do this. It just feels too big.  I feel very demoralised .