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I really thought I'd had some borderline traits when I was younger and I told my therapist. She told me I did not have borderline because I had too good a heart and guilt and remorse when I do something wrong, but there is no doubt that CPTSD and borderline have some traits in common.

Do any of you think you have been misdiagnosed with a personality disorder when it was really CPTSD? Let's face it. We grew up with PDs. They raised us. Or maybe they had CPTSD too from THEIR upbringing. My mom was awfully horrible to me. But her mother wasn't that great to her, although she was nicer to her than my mother was to me.I was the scapegoat by entire FOO (it's a very small one, luckily), but she was openly second best to her brother, my uncle (another piece of work).

What do you think about the CPTSD/borderline traits being similar? Any thoughts?

The only positive trait my mother ever agreed I had was being creative and writing saved my life. I still like to write, but most of my stories are dark about tortured souls. I still feel that helps me and I like to post on forums too with people who understand.

I wonder if being creative makes us vulnerable. Many creative types are very sensitive, and that is a trait that predators use to pick somebody to bully. My entire family of origin bullied me. So did the kids at school. Heck, my sister and brother still think I wasn't abused, but that I was the abuser. Right. An infant and young child and minor teen are great at abusing. But it did continuing long afterward.

Of course I was least favored and most vulnerable.

Do you people also feel creative people are more apt to be scapegoats?

I always thought I had such a good LONG TERM memory of things because I could remember being in a bedroom with an uncle of mine, scared, before I was five years old and I remember what he was talking to me about, but nothing else. And I remember random mostly negative stuff from my childhood. And my tapes in my head tell me what my mother said about me constantly.

But I'm starting EMDR and, after reading about it, I found you have to focus on a particular trauma. I can't think of any that are not fuzzy or vague. I know I was treated like garbage in my family of origin, and it persists today. I can feel the shame and fear. But I don't really remember why...what set off the incidents of rage in others and my answering back with anger. So I have a lot of holes myself. It doesn't help that I was so traumatized by my family that I tossed out my only picture book of my young years when I was in my 30's. I don't miss it and feel it would be a huge trigger, but maybe it would have filled in some memories too.

So, no, you are hardly alone. I hear it is part of CPTSD.

Thank so much, all of you.

It is hard for me to believe that my sister and brother saw ME as the abusive one. uBPD mother mistreated my father too. Now he was not perfect and could be baited into anger, and she knew this so she DID it, over and over again. I was the sensitive, dreamy, learning disabled child who threw tantrums and was difficult. She actually told me that, "When I was pregnant, I felt nothing and all my friends told me I'd feel something once I held you, but when I did hold you, I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing." She did not hold me, per herself, because I stiffened in her arms so she propped a bottle, usually of chocolate milk because I didn't like formula.I had over 30 cavities at my first dental appointment. In spite of all the chocolate milk, I still have my haphazard baby book and it says I weighed only 17 lbs. at one year. Failure to thrive anybody? My graddaughter is not heavy and she is almost one and weighs about 23. But she is loved.

My mother told me I was stupid, selfish, lazy, never thought of anyone but myself (meaning I didn't always do things that pleased her), and most of all was "baaaaaaaaaaad." Those are the voices I still hear unless I use my coping skills to talk back to them. I have had symptoms of trauma all my life, but did not own them because "My mom was a good mom. I was just a bad kid."

And my sister is just like her. She reminds me of her so much.

The funny thing is, my sister accuses ME of doing Scorched Earth for posting on anonymous webistes to heal.  I never give out info about her or talk to people who really know her, but s he still thinks I'm going scorched earth on her and has asked her borderline group if this is what borderlines do.

Whatever. Again, her life is miserable.She can't get close to anyone if it entails intimacy or emotional honesty. I am grateful I had the insight to know something was "off" early in my life or I would not have my wonderful self-made family today.Any of you younger people who say you don't have a family...you can and will. You can make your own family. Just be sure you are healed enough to not freak out if your SO is able to give you real intimacy. I had a big problem with that for a long time so my first marriage was pretty icky.

Thanks again for all the support.

I don't miss my small FOO at all. As my therapist said, they only offer invalidation and drama. Who needs that?

This is so typical in these families. People say your reality isn't real. The siblings who may not have been the scapegoat insist Mom is swell and it is YOU. Family members blame the scapegoats for almost anything, even though the abuse usually began in the crib. So it's an infant's fault that the mother never loved her and gave her what he or she needed to attach and love right? Baiting, gaslighting, namecalling, divide and conquer...it is the rule in unloving families, yet many times the abuser is worshipped by some of the family membes and sometimes they even deny she was abusive.

This is not our faults nor is it your responsibility to make Mom feel better if you know she is bad for you. I wish I had dumped my FOO right after I left the house, but I was under the illusion that they were good and I was bad. And I had no core self. I took on the needs of everybody else and was a total mess in my 20's and early 30's. It took a Codapendency Group, a boyfriend with ideas that were alien to me (such as not sticking around people, even family, who mistreat you) and a brand new second marriage to a loving man to learn what true love and acceptance is. And, trust me, it was so hard to accept that I almost broke if off with my now husband many times before finally getting the gumption to tie the knot.

My mother hated him because she called to pick info from my then minor son, whom she almost never saw, and my hub called her back to tell her to stop it. Well!!!! That was abuse!You never tell Mother to stop and, darn it, how dare he call for me, even though I asked him to because she upset me so much, and how dare he stick up for me??? She didn't want ANYONE sticking up for me. And in my very small (fortunately) FOO, nobody did. My life is very peaceful and drama free without them. But sometimes old tapes still play in my head and I have to talk back to them.

My sister is on another site calling me borderline. The sad part of it is, she has way more problems than I do and has a miserable life too.

I don't feel responsible for her happiness. I tried to help her and she turned on me. I'm so done with all of them.

Don't feel bad if you are also done. You have support here.

I'm so sorry you went through it as well. As much as it hurt you, and I know it must have, I hope you feel it was for the best that they left. I now feel it is best that my FOO left me, although it does produce shame when your own FOO leaves you. I hope you are on a good healing journey. Without them. With people who REALLY appreciate and love you, as you deserve.

Looking back, when I was still very young and first starting therapy, I would tell the therapists, "Oh, my mother was a GREAT mother. It was me. I was just a terrible child."

I look back and shake my head. An infant has terrible, malicious intent? A little girl? Really? Because I had early depression and tantrums and didn't listen because I had no boundaries or rules and desperately needed a firm but gentle hand? You didn't hold me because I stiffened?

That's the stuff of attachment disorder, which is trauma related.

I am sorry for anyone who has gone through that and is told "it wasn't so bad."

If you read "A Boy Called It" you know his very sad story. He was taken by social services at age twelve and his skin was so thin his bones shown. He had been starved. Yet two of his four brothers insist "it wasn't that bad." I kid you not.

The scapegoat can be badly abused while other kids are not.

I will never again let my siblings anywhere near me. The last time and only time I will see them is when my father passes away and I will be surrounded by my real family---husband and kids. Nobody will go near me. And that's it.

I feel like my siblings are doing t  he abuse all over again. My sister in particular tells everyone I'm crazy and abusive when she has as many problems as I do. Same parents, that's why. Denial is not just a river.

Thank you for responding. I really appreciate if your kindness and understanding.

I can't think of anything that feels worse, makes me doubt the most or causes more shame in me, than that my siblings deny the abuse. Yes, I was the scapegoat and a lot of it happened not within their hearing or sight and my youngest sister is seven years younger than I am and things changed. Yes, I was a difficult child who had tantrums and was very unhappy. But there are some things they DO know for sure.
My mother told me she had not felt anything for me while she was pregnant or after I was born. She would not hold me because I "siffened" so she  propped a bottle of milk in my crib. She almost bragged about it. She did anything to shut me up. I guess I cried a lot and fed my chocolate milk in a bottle for five years. Yes, five years. She had no real caring for me my entire life and called me horrible names that I still hear in my head unless I talk myself out of her tapes. I was lazy, selfish, I never thought of anyone but myself, I was a brat, I was a troublemaker, I was stupid, etc. etc. etc. I never got hit, which makes me doubt the abuse.

I tried to love my mother until the end, but she disowned/disinherited me. I really hurt with that, even though I saw it coming. The money wasn't a lot and I didn't care about it. It was how she dismissed me as a daughter. I kept calling her, kept trying, although she never called me back. She has a GC, my brother, who can do NOTHING wrong, never could. And my sister sacrificed a lot to get along with her, although sister has mental health issues too...anorexia and refused to invite GC to her wedding because he was too ugly and she was ashamed of him. Now they are bosum buddies. Who knows what she said to him to make him excuse that? She wasn't exactly quiet about her disdain. There is just so much. My sister hangs up on me whenever she is angry at me and if I call back to try to find out why she is upset, she calls the cops. Her latest is to post on a forum that I am diagnosed borderline. That's a lie.  I was never diagnosed. I thought my CPTSD might be borderline and the only person who mentioned the disorder was me. I think she acts a lot more borderline than I do.

Recently, my sister and brother both told me it was ME who abused my mother and everybody else, not the other way around.They insist I was never abused, that Mother was a good person. She may have been to them. I can not invalidate their experience with her. I'm sure she was good to GC. But they invalidated me.

I am going beyond no contact with them. I'm refusing to even look at their social media as it is a trigger for EF, but I'm still pretty stunned that t hey really seem to believe I was not abused. That I caused it. An infant? A little child? I WAS the one who tended to speak up for myself and to bring up our problems. GC was blissfully unaware of any and sister just suffered quietly.

Does anyone else find that relatives invalidate your memories? My sister said I make things up. I guess my brother agrees. Fortunately, that is all I have of a FOO, besides a very elderly father who has always treated me fairly. He was not a great father, but did not play favorites and is being very kind to me lately.

Am I the only one? Invalidation? Gaslighting maybe?

Thanks for t he responses!!!

I am a fawn/fight, I think, although I can also freeze under pressure. At work, I was alone in the break room and put a cup of tea in the microwave and it started sparking. Instead of getting out of there, I totally froze and stood there and do that a lot under pressure.

I hope you keep healing. I have come far from where I started, but I had to really cut out my family completely, including checking FB and anything else on the social media. Long ago, before I heard of CPTSD, I had thrown out my baby books with all the pictures of family. I thought I'd regret it but I don't. It would probably have been a trigger to see a young mother.

My dad has intimacy problems too, but he was not as abusive as my mother and most of all he has a good heart and I always knew he loved me, even if he stayed away from home as much as possible. He is old...he fought in WWII. He hates to talk about it. I wonder if he has some PTSD symptoms too. At any rate, thanks a lot for your responses and for this site. I don't feel so alone. It is hurtful when your fFOO decides you are flawed and have a personality disorder that even your therapists say you don't have.

I'm just going to share what happened to me and hope it helps somebody else.

I have been in therapy since I was 23 and I'm over 21 a few times now

My dx. have included depression, anxiety, panic disorder, mild OCD and at one time I had depersonalization/derealization. Since I was bullied both at home and in school I had used maladaptive daydreaming to deal with the present, especially in school.

Once my grandma died, the only person in my FOO who loved me unconditionally, it was no holds barred for BPD mom and she dragged my siblings along wit her. I hadn't been abused. *I* had abused. Ok. Yep.An infant and child can be very abusive. I thought I had BPD mostly because I am so hard on myself that, of course, I had to have a diagnosis that was "baaaaaaaaaaaad." Nobody diagnosed me but me. Instead I have been diagnosed with trauma and most recently CPSTD.

My scapegoating FOO basically have all disowned me and I wish they or I had done it at an early age. Without them playing a large role in my life, I have been able to find a great husband and raise wonderful chidlren (this is after one rather verbally abusive and financially abusive marriage that nonetheless lasted seventeen years). In my first  marriage I had no idea that calling me names and belittling me was abnormal. I thought all marriages were like that. Plus first hub had a chronic  illness so I thought I had to be nice to him and not stick up for myself because he was sick. The first time somebody told me he had no right to be mean to me was in a group setting. I got so upset that the group didn[t understand that I HAD to accept everything because he was sick, I left crying. But I learned after joining CODA.

The less my FOO was in my life, the clearer my life became and I now have a loving relationship with a man who can feel and show intimacy. My kids benefited big time from our loving marriage. I still have my FOO's tapes in my head (L"you're bad" "you're stupid" "you're lazy" "you're selfish" etc.), but I can talk back to them more and tell myself, "That's all a lie."

My sister likes to tell everyone I have borderline, diagnosed.

I don't talk to her, read her FB page or know what her life is like now. It was not good the last I checked.

I turned out to be the only one with a loving, peaceful, sane family. I think the less contact one has with people who make you feel two feet tall and like you are worthless, the better off you are the more you can heal.

I'm no doctor so take my two cents with a grain of salt. Even hearing my brother or sister or mother's first names can cause an EF. Their voices cause EFs. I don't like EF and would prefer to have as few as possible so I try to avoid triggers. I think your family is who loves and respects you, not whose DNA you share by accident.

Anyhow, just my two cents. I am still in therapy, still working on me. I probably will always be in therapy. But I'm happy most of the time now. I'm here because I'd never heard about CPSTD before, although many of my therapists asked me if I had experienced trauma, which I used to disavow. I'd say, "Look, I was a horrible kid. My mom was a GREAT mother. It was MY fault." And I believed that too.

Don't give up

Wow. This is incredible to me.

I also just want peace and serenity.

I have been in a good place for almost twenty years, when I married my husband. My childhood and first husband were a trainwreck and the peace not only feels strange, even to this day, but I still have EFs. I did not k now what they were. Most of the time they are when I talk to somebody from FOO and that is what kept me in chaos for so long. Although I was not in constant contact with these people, who are related to me by DNA only, sometimes I was and when they were cruel to me, after teasing me by being nice, for some reason it always devestated me and set me back to Square One. I was not surprised that my mother disowned me and disinherited me, but it still really hurt. I'm not sure why. She never liked me. I called her to try to mend the rift, whatever had caused it, but s he never called me back and her nice voice was fake. When I said "I love you" she never said it back. She said, "I know." My sister was on again off again trigger that I let in my life far too long.

I always let their anger make me feel like a lost little girl. Embarassingly, I am 61 and my sister can still make me feel that way so I finally decided that this time she can't come back.

I do have a wonderful husband and great kids so I count my blessings. I live in a small, peaceful, quiet town and have NO DRAMA in my life. My only drama since moving here was my FOO. Good riddance.

So odd to wish for peace over anything else, but I'll bet a lot of us feel this way. 

I was brought up with no boundaries, discipline, manners, rules, life skills, you name it. My primary caregiver cared about two things---that my hair stay long so that boys would like me and that I only date boys of my own religion. You can imagine the mess I was when I first got married (very young to get out of the house--I had no self-esteem and felt I couldn't get out on my own). I had no idea how to take care of a house and had terrible social skills and boundaries and still sometimes offer too much, although I try to keep drama filled people OUT of my life and have done this now for fifteen years. My exception was my sister and now she is gone too. It was her idea--she had cut me off some ten times before and come back--but it is for the best.

Usually FOO is where the trauma is from and I wish I had cut my FOO off as soon as I married. They were never there for me, except fo tell me I am a bad person anyway.

It is a huge but often important boundary to deal with your FOO any way that is best for you.

Most of us probably did not learn boundaries and I know th is has haunted me in my life for a very long time. But I sadly think it is common when you grow up with chaos.

Kudos to anyone, of any age, who are finally setting boundaries and learning not to allow people to cross t hem no matter how angry they get.

You may also want to go to your search engine and put in "Mindfulness." I found this EXTREMLY helpful. It is a coping skill that helps you focus on the here and now rather than the past or future.

Lots of luck to you.

Hey, without being worried, I'd go to a very good psychiatrist and tell him your symptoms. If you've been traumatized, we all get many weird symptoms and they can be treated. I have not experienced this, but I easily disassociate moreso than the average person. My mind can be in one place and I can be doing something else and then I don't even remember, say, getting a key from my daughter or where I put it because I'm so in my head. This is common with CPTSD as are others ways to disassociate, I believe.

There is treatment for everything, especially the trauma. I've gotten much, much happier than I started out and can manage my symptoms pretty well unless extremely triggered, which usually happens when I have to even just hear the voice of anyone in FOO.

I hope you go for help and can figure out your stuff. We may not all go through the same exact things, but  I'm sure everyone here understands and will support you on your journey.

I'm sorry you are having this stuff going on.

I have never experienced what you are going through, but I have had depersonalization and derealization, the feeling of being in a dream and it is scary and horrible. It is also a trauma symptom. I am just taking a layperson's guess and could be wrong, but it sounds like you have things you are dealing with and the things on your mind are not what is happening now, but from the past. If this were me, and I were not in therapy, I'd go to try to figure out what it is and maybe get some relief. In fact, I think I'd see a psychiatrist who is the one MD and probably can come closest to diagnosing what you are feeling. Sometimes a diagnosis is the explanation you need to feel a lot less anxious about the symptoms.

I hope you feel better soon and offer my empathy and caring.

What a mean trick.

From now on assume they are lying. Go to friends and other people you trust, such as a therapist you like, when you need a shoulder to cry on. Obviously they are playing mind games with you.

That really stinks and I'm very sorry for your pain.