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Lol, I get it. I am awful at being organized or keeping up with anything. I haven't even started my notebook, lol. I think maybe I was hoping that if I got some people interested it would be easier for me to do it/keep up with it.

It's funny how like...normally successful people talk about having a "full plate" or "juggling a lot" and maybe they're like, juggling career stuff, and kid stuff, and volunteer stuff, and project stuff....

Meanwhile, I'm over here feeling like I'm juggling balls called "get a good nights sleep" "eat a healthy meal" "do your laundry" "take a shower" and like, I'd LIKE to insert "work on body project" but this last week all my balls got messed up because of Things. Sooo...let's just say it's on the list. I'm taking a break from emotional homework this week though, so maybe I'll find some time.

In the meantime, I'm just kind of mentally doing things here and there. I'm trying to reframe my thoughts when I look at myself in the mirror. I'm "writing letters to my body" in my head before I go to sleep. I made, and kept, that yoga apt this week...

For the Sunday afternoon thing.... Absolutely. That's exactly what I would do in that situation. Reclaim your Sunday afternoons. Do whatever you need to do to make them as awesome as possible. Are you artistic? Do you have a hobby? Anything that you can trigger Flow in? (Are you familiar with the Flow concept?)

As for the second thing...Like I wrote in badmemories thread...this would be a good place to employ awareness.
1. You've already identified that you're having an odd emotional reaction to a mundane thing/activity. (You became aware of a 'red flag')
2. This is obviously an activity that happens over and over again so you can observe it over and over again. You can employ the mindfulness technique of observation. From the moment you start getting ready to drop your son off, start observing yourself. See if you can tell the moment those odd feelings begin.
3. Once you've determined when they started, go back and look at what was going on. Like Keepfighting mentioned, did you pass by someone wearing a particular perfume, or haircut, or did someone say something to or around you?
4. Once you've determined what it is, you can come up with a further plan to deactivate it.

I'm not so sure that it's entirely necessary to "confront the past traumas" to deactivate every single trigger that we have. I've been deactivating triggers for years, and yet unable to really access many emotions/specific memories about stuff. A lot of times, just understanding WHY I'm having an emotional reaction to something is enough to deactivate it. I use this specific analysis a lot.


Example
1.)I used to have weirdly strong negative emotional reactions to interactions with certain people.
2.) I noticed I was having those reactions (I use any kind of "strong" emotional reaction as a red flag as I don't normally react "strongly" to anything.)
3.) I started observing myself having those reactions to those people in those situations. ("Oh look, I'm getting angry."
4.) I analyzed what was similar about those people in those interactions. (Weirdly, I had several of them in my life.)
5.) I realized that each person seemed really full of themselves. Name dropping. One upper's. Story tellers. Everything about a lot of our interaction screamed "I'm better than you! I know more than you!" (Obviously, no one likes people like that, or likes to be around them but I was having serious feelings of like...disgust, ragey I want to punch you in the face, shut up and get away from me kind of feelings - I can usually put up with just about anyone)
6.) I identified what it was about those particular character traits that was triggering me. It all boils down to emotional manipulation and condescension. Both of those things were seriously present in my childhood/teen years and they are things that I react really strongly to.
7) I'm still working to deactivate these triggers completely, but once I realized what it was with those particular people...I could see past my initial emotional reaction to what was going on with them. One was a new guy in our group...a new boyfriend of someone and he just kind of desperately wanted to be liked by us and was going about it all the wrong way. When I realized this, I could kind of work towards making him feel more comfortable instead of just shutting him down like I had been (because I won't engage with people who are actively working me to try to get me to stroke their ego's - it's still a trigger) The more comfortable and accepted he felt in our group, the less he did it. The other guy was obviously similarly insecure, and I didn't have to change my interaction with him at all. He'd talk, I'd shut him down by refusing to engage, and he'd eventually shut up. But, I wouldn't react emotionally anymore.

So, deactivated triggers, no "reliving trauma".


I haven't observed whether or not this might be the case, because it's just now occuring to me, but I'm curious about whether or not immediately delving into this analysis might not short circuit those immediate unsettled feelings? A sort of "self-soothing"? Maybe creating feelings of taking control of the situation, problem solving, a positive reinforcement thing when you have the "aha!" moment?

Very long! So sorry!

Poor Badmemories! Believe me, I have had these kinds of situations too. I call them the "perfect storms" where just, everything that can go wrong does go wrong - lol.

So, I guess subconsciously, I've started doing this thing though - this sort of analysis, with situations like this...because I don't have a really good T to help me with this kind of stuff. For me, Awareness, and Identification seem to be the two biggest tools that I have been able to cultivate on my own.

So, the first thing is this - you wrote it out! That's awesome! I write a LOT in an online (private) journal. (I type really fast so I can get things down a lot faster on the computer.) Especially with a situation like this, I would sit down ASAP to write out exactly what happened, and how I felt, just like you did.

Then I would identify the first point of "unsettled-ness" like you did! You became aware that your reading was getting you "agitated". So, next time...do you need to stop reading sooner? Switch to some other subject sooner? Did you push yourself too far? (I do this often and am currently learning my own limits with this) Would it have helped if, after you did your reading, you did some kind of...thing, to ground yourself back in the here and now? (Lots of self-soothing options have been talked about on the board. For me, I have to look around, bring myself back to "reality" and repeat "I am safe. I am safe." when my reading upsets me)

(This is how we learn how to set boundaries for ourselves, in any situation. Identifying "When did I first start feeling uncomfortable? What could I have done about it then, when I was still "ok-ish"? What was the "point of no return?" What could I have done in that emergency situation?" And looking at that stuff, it's not about being able to fix it RIGHT NOW. It's more about becoming aware of stuff. First, we become aware in hindsight, over and over again. Then, we kind of become aware as it's happening. Over and over again. Then, we become aware BEFORE it happens. Slow, slow baby steps)

I would identify the other aspects  of the "perfect storm". For you, it seemed to be the reading, the smoking, the not eating.

For me, I have identified a "terrible trifecta" that keeps happening. Little, or bad sleep/not eating/too much caffeine. It's a terrible combination every single time. I can't handle even half of what I can normally handle when that happens. I couldn't handle a confrontation like the one you described, or sounds, or emotions, or children, or barking dogs or...well, I just want to hide in my house when that happens and most often, I can't. So...first, I'm working on not letting that happen. Second, because I know that it will, I'm working on a "disaster plan" for when it does. The first step was identifying when it happens. "Ahhh! I'm freaking out! I'm so anxious! What's going on???.....Oh...yeah, I slept like crap last night, it's 3pm and I didn't eat breakfast or lunch, and I've had three cups of coffee...oooh!"

Maybe keeping some snacks in my purse or at work. I know that already, when this happens, I immediately assess whatever is on my "To Do" list and if it isn't absolutely critically important - I wave the white flag and crawl into bed. If I'm at work, I do what I can, and re-prioritize things. Only the Critical stuff gets done. I'd avoid any social contact.

So for you, maybe grocery shopping could have been put off until the next day.

The Confrontation itself - this is a much more difficult thing to deal with. Can you imagine how you might have handled this if the Perfect Storm had not also occurred? Would you have reacted the same? (I know hindsight is 20/20 but realistically, was it JUST that all of those other things had happened, or would you have had that same reaction if someone on a good day had come up to you and said those things?)

Lets assume that you would have had the EF regardless of all the other stuff.

Again, Awareness and Analysis

At what point did the woman start making you uncomfortable? What could you have said/done to get out of the situation before you started feeling dissociative/small? Write it out. Write out "what if" scenario's. What if I'd done this? What if I'd done that? What were my options in that moment?

(I would say, at this point in your recovery, that the important things to focus on might be simply identifying what kinds of situations spark an EF, what it was about THIS situation sparked it, and how to get OUT of the situation rather than "standing up for yourself" or "confronting the lady back". Even as far along as I am, I am not at a point where I could say something like...of course, what we'd all like to say to someone like that..."Mind your own business. Leave me alone. Go away." You might smile and say something like, "Thank you, I'll make sure to do that in the future. I'm in a hurry. I have to go." and move away from her. And, whatever you choose to say that is non-confrontational...maybe just keep repeating it, or a variation of it, even talking over her if you have to, and continue to move away from her, even kind of pushing her out of the way if you have to. Just making it clear that you are ending the conversation. Eventually as you recover, you will feel strong enough to stand up for yourself, that's the goal anyway.)

And when you do all of this...it's important that you're not judging yourself. The analysis isn't a platform for you to beat yourself up and say, "Well, I should have done/said this, I should have done/said that." and feel bad about it. It's so that you can say, "In this moment, I was not able to react in any other way than I did. I am looking at what I COULD have done differently if I'd been more aware, able to react differently."

And here's the thing, the next time something like this happens, you STILL might not be able to do anything about it. But the more times this happens, and the more times you do this kind of analysis, the more you'll find that you can make tiny little changes..until at some point down the line, you'll realize that you made a WHOLE BUNCH of little changes, because you became more aware of them as time goes on. (You can read how that process works for me in the "process of change" thread).

And again...a Disaster plan is good to create for yourself. Because we know that this is likely to happen again, you may want to create a plan of action for when it does.

"I'm emotionally unsettled, I haven't eaten, I've smoked a lot - and I have to go to the grocery store. I'm about at my limit for challenges...I might want to write my grocery list down." - this way, if anything else DOES happen, you might have been able to just...focus on the list. Get the 1st thing, ok get the 2nd thing, down the list, get out of the store as fast as possible.

"I've identified that I'm having an EF, what can I do?" (You WILL get better at identifying them as they happen...then, later down the line, you'll get better at identifying situations that MIGHT cause them and then you can put response plans into place for those)
Can you just leave the cart and walk out of the store? (This is probably what I would have done)
Can you phone a friend? (If there's someone close to you who knows what you're struggling with, go out to the parking lot "Hey, I'm at a store kinda freaking out and I need to get groceries, you busy? Can you give me a hand?" (maybe not as possible with your GD with you)

Whatever. My disaster plans in situations like these right now which do involve confrontations of a particular kind which I've identified trigger EF's for me, is to remove myself from the situation. To put my "Everything is ok" mask on (which I've kind of perfected over the years) smile and nod, get up, and leave. Walk away. Say whatever needs to be said in that situation in order to shut the other person up, and walk away.

I know that that is a classic Fawn Response. It's a disaster plan for a reason though. That is worse case scenario, things are not going well, I am feeling myself go into an EF and need to get out of here NOW - without breaking down into hysterics and embarrassing myself, making myself look crazy. Once I am out of the situation, I can calm myself down, reassess, and decide what action needs to be taken. (Do I need to confront someone? Do I need to make a complaint? Does the situation need to be Handled in some way?)

I'm still in the awareness and analysis stage. And each time it happens, I go over it just like this. What could I have done differently? Where did I get triggered? What is that trigger connected to? How can I "deactivate" that trigger? What was the reality of the situation as compared to how I felt? How can I protect myself in the future? Awareness. Awareness. Awareness.

I have trouble with authority figures and doctors who hold some aspect of my life in their hands. IE: the psychiatrist that I recently saw who 1)accused me of drug seeking 2)refused to give me the assessment that I was there for 3)was extraordinarily condescending to me 4)kept asking me the same questions over and over again 6)then threatened to diagnose me with BPD/and or Bipolar

That situation threw me into a MASSIVE EF that ended with me crying hysterically on the floor of the bathroom at the clinic. Lots of analysis of that situation. And it wasn't the first time, so I've had time to look at those triggers. I've gotten to the point where I understand what it was about that situation that made me feel Helpless and Trapped. I had actually become aware AS it was happening, but didn't catch it quite in time...pushed myself past my "point of no return" BUT, I also saw that happening, so I ended the interaction and got up and left and got myself to the bathroom before I totally lost control. So, I had a lot more awareness in that situation than I have had prior, because I'd been analyzing the situations.

Also I was actually able to identify a situation that I was going into where it was likely that, dependent on someone's reaction, I might feel that way (the office situation that I talked about in that thing that I wrote, you might not have gotten to that part). I was able to think about that like, "Ok, if they say or do X, I am likely to have (EF) reaction. What will I do if that happens? And I came up with a plan. It didn't happen, so I didn't need it, but I felt a lot better about it knowing that I was much more aware of everything.

Ok...good job if you got this far!!!

The last thing I want to say is this: This is a fantastic example of why I really think that mindfulness practices can be a fantastic tool for recovery. For ME, it's becoming THE THING that is helping me progress faster than I was. It seems to me that the basis of c-ptsd is the unconscious. Unconscious reactions. Unconscious feelings/thoughts. Unconscious defense mechanisms. Mindfulness, as a practice, teaches us how to put space between us and all of those unconscious things, how to pay attention to what's going on, if not in the moment...then after the fact. It's been really helpful to me in learning how to become more aware of my own stuff, even if it takes me a while to identify what it is. Sometimes just knowing that there's SOMETHING going on is enough for me to be able to slow myself down enough to figure out what it is.

SC - I want to be clear - my offer for anyone to join me is not predicated on following MY project. Our healing is individual, as is our specific issues - like how much yours differs from mine. MY project just seems big because I've had so much going on in my life in regards to my physical health - there were so many things that I was trying to put into place - Eating better, drinking the appropriate amount of water, dealing with my food issues, trying to love my body...that I just wanted to put it under one banner - Body. I've been doing a LOT of what feels like mind/heart stuff lately. This project also helps to slow me down in that area...to get me out of my head.

But I think anyone who wants to start focusing on their body more, reconnecting with it, should/can have their OWN body project. The "project" part, I just thought might be a fun way to keep track of what we're trying to address. And it would be an opportunity to be creative/imaginative with it. Maybe you just download an app that keeps track of your water? Or - I just found a really cool Android app called Two Grand which is like Instagram, but specifically for logging food. It's for people who don't want to log calories or macro-counts. You just take a picture of everything you eat. (Not trying to talk you into it, just making suggestions in case you or anyone else thought that I was suggesting everyone had to follow my project idea).

You don't have to keep a notebook, or take pictures or do anything else that feels "too big".
In order to participate, I'd say that the only thing you'd have to do  is pick something that you'd like to do that has to do with reconnecting to your body, and do it! That's your Body Project! And if you have awesome ideas about how to make it fun, and creative, share them here! (Or, if I get enough interest, the new thread when I start it.)

Thank you everyone for your very kind feedback! I really appreciate it! I did find this very cathartic to write. I feel like it's kind of a summary of both my progress, and the things that I'm still struggling with so it helped me to put a lot of things into perspective as well as sort of get in touch with some feelings that I'd been having difficulty with.

Badmemories - I definitely get taking things in little bites. I am the same way too. I've been getting overwhelmed by this stuff really easily lately and my body has been telling me in a very particular way that I've been pushing myself a little too hard - so I'm listening, and slowing down.

SC - indeed I would love a club! I really wish that there was some kind of c-ptsd group therapy kind of thing in my area, but no such luck. It is incredibly healing to hear so many stories that are so similar to mine. Seeing people who resonated with this so strongly really made me emotional. It's so nice to know that we're not alone!

bheart - I'm always sorry that others do resonate so well with my story, because obviously we never want to see others struggle the way that we have...but, at the same time, it's incredibly validating to me to know that sharing what I've learned, and my experiences is helpful to others. In a way, I guess it brings me some level of comfort because it makes me feel like...at least it wasn't all for nothing, you know? I can use my experiences to help others. If I didn't have that, I'm not sure what I'd do. It's THE reason that I'm going to school for psychology.

BeHealthy - those are very good questions.

Personality disorders can be developed without a history of abuse. That got my attention. Is this from your own perspective or is it a theoretical model of someone else?

I don't know where I got that exactly. I know that in my reading on personality disorders, I did come across information somewhere that said that while they were often correlated with prior abuse, that that wasn't always the case. Of course, it is entirely possible that in whatever studies they've done, "emotional abuse" and "neglect" were not quantified correctly, because we still don't have very good unifying criterion for either.

I had always assumed that my mother had had a rough childhood. Then I found out from my father that my mother was, from the time that he knew her, just always incredibly narcissistic and selfish, and that her explosive rage was always present. He told me that my grandparents spoiled her, and that she always got whatever she wanted. I don't know much about her childhood, and my grandmother I think is a very different person to me than she was to my mother. I've seen glimpses of my grandmother's "crazy" as well, so who knows. I know that my mother's sister is very cut off from the family, very LC, with her own anxiety and personality issues. There is definitely something that runs deep in my family.

I also read recently in regards to certain personality issues like obsessive traits, that those can be innate in children rather than having been developed by any childhood trauma. Obsessiveness and perfectionism and a bunch of other things that fall into that category are some of the criteria for Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder.

It's way easier to raise emotionally healthy children than to repair emotionally broken adults. Yes, objectively this may be true. However the people that raised us (emotionally broken adults) did not have the capacity for doing anything other than what they did.

This is a hard one for me. Objectively, I know that that's true. Hurt people hurt people (although, back to the other question, as I said there's some question about how that happens). I know that there were far fewer resources and information available to my mother when I was a kid. I guess my problem, and the very un-objective filter that I am looking at this through is how I have been able to break this cycle when she wasn't. How so many of the people that I know who are raising wonderful kids, were also victims of child abuse and are also breaking the cycle. For as much as I do understand about human motivations, and psychology, it still baffles me how some people just have more self-awareness than others and how the protection of their children from the things that they experienced is enough to motivate them to do the hard work of healing.

My decisions and mistakes were written in highlighter. By yourself? or from your parent's perspective. Do you still feel that way?

This is another hard one for me that I've been debating myself. My "family" is actually split into two parts. My mom's side and my dad's side, which became separate when they divorced. Both sides judge things very differently from the other, their priorities are very different. I got a lot of criticism for many of the choices that I made from both sides. Some of it was very warranted. I got myself into some very messed up situations. I think I internalized though a lot of what I just "knew" they considered "right" and "wrong" without it being said specifically. In addition to that, I never got any specific positive feedback for any of my strengths from either side. In the absence of any kind of positive reinforcement, the criticisms just seemed so much louder.

And with both my mother and father, it seems that to them...half the time what they're trying to do is give me "advice" and "be helpful" just in really critical ways. That, I think, layered on top of my already messed up "I am wrong" programming just served to make me feel even more judged.

I don't know if I feel that way anymore. I do think that they thought that I was a very messed up kid, when in reality, I was actually pretty normal. It's THE biggest reason that I had to take a break from both sides of the family because every time I was around them I'd revert back to that kid, that's how they'd treat me, and I'd dissociate. Now, I feel more secure in who I am, and am able to hold my boundaries better, at least with my dad's side of the family - and since being able to do that, I am seeing that a lot of the ongoing judgments that I felt may have been in my head. I've felt much more comfortable being myself around them, and they seem to be accepting me a lot better than they did.

Thanks for all the great discussion guys!

BeHealthy - reintegrating myself with my body is definitely my end goal. What seems to work best for me though is to first externalize something, such as my inner critic, or my inner kid, in order to "get to know it." That's my goal with my body. I've spent so long ignoring it, outright abusing it, and abandoning it that I feel like I need to spend some time "befriending" it. I want to get to know my body, separate from my sense of self, if that makes sense, because my "me" is always so stuck in my head. I want to learn my bodies language, what it's trying to tell me, what it needs, how I can heal it - and I want to spend time sending it specific messages of love and acceptance.

I feel like I've been at war with my body for a long time, which in and of itself has been a very fragmented thing, so now I want to call a truce and repair the relationship. I think that will make it easier for me in the long run to reintegrate. It may not work for everyone.

I will be taking separate pics purely to keep track of progress. One of the other things that I thought might be helped with the headless pictures is the fact that I actually have a really hard time looking at pictures of "me", as a whole. So, if I can separate the me, then I think I might be able to look at my body in a much more objective way.

Butterfly - yeah, I really liked the idea of the self massage too. It seems like a really great way to really connect with my body.

Andy T - It's really hard for men who have body image issues. I wish you well on your own journey to heal. I know it's not easy.

Keepfighting - it's good to hear from someone who has successfully worked to turn around a lot of the issues that I'm dealing with too. I wasn't a chronic dieter, but I might as well have. A few years ago when I started having lots of food sensitivity issues and digestive issues, I started on this yoyo of elimination diets, and dove head first into the Whole food movement, which really just served to create a food anxiety disorder for me. So, I'm working to overcome that too. Very much with the "intuitive eating" and trying to stop seeing certain foods as "evil" or "dangerous". I'm working with a naturopathic doctor to try to overcome some of the deficiencies that I've developed over the years from all the digestive issues and stress.

The massage that I linked was actually for self-massage. I have done regular massage in the past, and I found it to be extremely healing in many ways, but it's an expense that I can't afford to keep up for long.

I have talked to my T and my boyfriend and a few friends that I knew would understand about it. I told my dad too. Provided him with the link from OOTF. I actually got a very favorable response from him. One that I wasn't expecting at all. He's being very supportive. Although, I am still working through my feelings about him and having him in my life again. I was NC with him for five years, and sometimes, I'm still suspicious about how much he really is supportive about certain things or if it's just that he wants me to continue talking to him. *shrug*

Badmemories - I don't know where that might be happening, but it hasn't been my actual experience at all. I have several male friends who have had insane ex's - where there was demonstrable evidence of emotional abuse and neglect, where the courts wouldn't do anything at all.

One friend of mine just got his son this summer because the ex committed suicide. 16 years of emotional abuse and neglect for his kid. They kept going to court, she kept putting on the "I'm the prim and proper sane one, and he's the tattooed Charlie Manson one." The judges nearly laughed him out of court - meanwhile, the children are living in squalor, the 16 year old has been kept out of school for nearly two years to babysit the younger one, never any food in the house, drug parties going on, and five..yes five, open children and family services cases against her. That entire family (my friend and his new gf, and even HER children) all have mild c-ptsd from dealing with the woman's insanity. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen.

The vitamix is like the super rockstar of the juicing world. I'd love to be able to afford one.

I think next after that, is probably the Ninja...it's a blender, but like the knockoff version of the Vita Mix, about half the price. Still spendy.

With both of those, you'll get the fiber WITH the juice, which is good for you.

I don't know what brand my juicer is, I can look when I get home. I like it, other than...and this will be true with any juicer really, it's really loud and a pain to clean so not great for motivation if you're struggling with exhaustion or depression.

I got my juicer for free off of freecycle. I know it was just a right time, right place kind of thing but I've gotten a lot of things off of freecycle, so it might not be a bad place to start. I also got a dehydrator off there a few years ago, that I never even ended up using and ended up passing along.

I believe that craigslist also has a free/in search of section.

Thanks!

con't from previous post...

"I know that I immediately became the "black sheep" of my family. I felt differently than they did, I acted differently than they did, I thought about things differently than they did, my priorities were completely different than theirs. My decisions and mistakes were written in highlighter because I was trying to function with the broken tools that had been given to me. Meanwhile, I am actually a really good person. I am kind, and giving, and helpful. I am intelligent and resilient, and strong emotionally. It's funny how I and people with similar backgrounds to mine have spent so much of our lives feeling weak, and useless, never realizing just how strong we had to be to go through what we did and even remain on the planet. Lots of people don't. I managed to make it through my childhood without any sexual diseases, drug/alcohol addictions, unwanted pregnancies, criminal records, or any other long term abusive relationships other than the one. Very, very few of us are that lucky. I recognize that and am grateful for it.

But, my point is, that it's like some weird, surreal acid trip where you're stumbling around in life, drunk almost, trying to function through this haze of bad mental/emotional wiring...while underneath, wondering what's wrong with you? Why do you seem to be so different than everyone else? Why can't you seem to function like everyone else? Be productive like everyone else? Have healthy relationships like everyone else?

And since I was already pre-programmed with this operating system that was flashing "Wrong! You are wrong! Something wrong with you! You don't belong! You don't deserve! Not as pretty! Not as smart! Not good! Not worthy! Not worth protecting! Not worth loving!" Well...then every single mistake I made as an adult, every bad decision, every rejection, every instance of things not working out right no matter how hard I tried to make them ok - was just icing on the cake. Just reinforcement for the original operating system. And the criticisms and judgments that I got from my family because of them, an extra layer of reinforcement.

And I know it was confusing for them too, watching me act that way. Of all the types of abuses, emotional abuse is talked about the least. It's effects on children are so easily written off and the least understood. And because of that, dysfunctional families churn out dysfunctional adults and because no one understands what's happened, we are judged. "What's wrong with you?"

It's like people assumed that I walked into adult hood with everything I needed to be a functional adult. And it was even worse that I was smart (even if I couldn't see it at the time). I was very capable in some areas, but not others. I could hold management jobs at work, hold a steady full time job, but couldn't stop giving my money away to my boyfriends or choose a healthy relationship to save my life. Then I developed invisible mental illnesses like anxiety, and depression. And because of the chronic stress that I'd been operating under since I was a child, I developed other invisible health ailments like unbalanced hormones, nutritional/mineral deficiencies, digestive issues and Adrenal Fatigue - which contributed to my anxiety, depression, and low energy, brain fog, and weight gain.

So, collectively, we survivors are judged as simply being dysfunctional...sure, we can't function as adults in normal society...but no one goes beyond that. No one asks, "well, how did you get that way?" Very few parents ever want to ask themselves, "What part in this did I play?" That's a hard mirror to look into. Families as a whole never ask, "What part did we play?" In fact, in dysfunctional families, things like silence, and shame, are essential to their very nature. It's in no one's best interest to admit that there was ever abuse of any kind. And in society, no one asks, "How did you get this way?" There was a time when psychology sort of focused on that question, but in more recent years it's been a lot more, "Which drugs can we give you to get you to stop being this way?"

So, we hear things like "What's wrong with you?" And we get labeled the black sheeps, and the family * ups - we get diagnosed with things like personality disorders and mood disorders, and anxiety disorders and drugged. And if we say, well...you know, I had it kind of rough as a kid, people roll their eyes at us and say things like, "Oh, right, blame your parents for all your problems, instead of taking personal responsibility for your decisions and mistakes!"

We get blamed for not being whole, when it was very likely others who broke us and scattered our pieces to the winds to begin with.

And we blame ourselves. And, god forbid we actually come to the conclusion that our childhoods were a whole lot worse than "rough", and we go looking for answers. Looking for accountability. Looking for apologies so that we can simply move forward with our lives. Looking for SOMEONE to say..."I'm so very sorry for what I did to you." Because that's not going to happen. Very, very few adult victims of child abuse hear any kind of "I'm sorry." Instead, they hear things like..."let it go" "That never happened." "I did the best I could." We are told to "Forgive and forget" and to "brush it under the carpet." Even when the abuse is ongoing!

We are told that we cannot be whole human beings, strong human beings, until we forgive those who have hurt us the most grievously. We are told to forgive, even before we fully understand the depths of our own wounds, or fully felt the justifiable anger about what was done to us, or grieved for the things that we have lost.

And grandparents turn away from us, because admitting to the abuse would be to admit that they stood by and watched it happened and didn't/couldn't do anything about it and that there might be something seriously wrong with their child. And siblings that we were close to pull away from us because listening to us talk about OUR abusive childhood would mean that they'd have to admit that THEY had had it a little more than "rough" themselves, and that THEY have some serious healing to do themselves that they're not ready to confront.

And so we are left alone. We are left alone to wander here and there to pick up the pieces. We are left alone to get bloody digging into our own psyche's, to yank out the tangled and corroded wiring that our families of origin installed. To learn how to set boundaries despite racing hearts and throats that are closing, voices that are trembling and tears that are threatening because of PTSD triggers. Despite feeling the kind of terror that is usually reserved for finding serial killers hiding behind shower curtains, and fear that makes us nauseous, we have to learn how to handle the every day challenges of life and we have to learn how to live and function in a world that in every way seems unsafe to us. People are not safe, some places are not safe, certain aspects of certain situations, combined in certain ways are not safe -because they trigger emotions long buried, long forgotten that were never processed properly.

A minor confrontation with my neighbor over a noise issue left me trembling and nauseous in my apartment on more than one occasion. I put up with the noise for months, aggravating my anxiety and developing an increasing sensitivity to sounds of all kinds because of it, but I was afraid even to ask for help for fear that if the office told me that they couldn't, or wouldn't help me, that it would trigger a PTSD emotional breakdown leaving me humiliated, and in danger of being seen as "emotionally unstable". It is incredibly difficult for me to be in situations where I feel helpless, trapped in a situation I can't do anything about, with another person holding all the power to either fix or control the situation while I am at their whim.

In order to even begin healing, we have to dig so deep to find amazing amounts of courage in order to force ourselves to speak up in our relationships despite tears in our eyes, constricting throats and trembling voices and the surety on a cellular level that we will be rejected and abandoned because we dared to put forth an opinion, or a dissenting view, or god forbid - actually come out and say that we are angry. God forbid we find that we have to go through this entire process in a professional setting.

We have to RELEARN how to even HAVE emotions, because we were taught that emotions are bad, they are wrong, they are not ok for us to have. We don't have the right to be angry and when we make other people angry at us? It ends BADLY. We walk away with, at the most, a black eye or belt marks across our legs, and at the least (only because it's completely invisible) a completely crushed and shredded ego. We weren't allowed to be sad, and we stopped daring to be happy because it would be snatched away at a moments notice. I have had to learn how to stop panicking when anything goes well in my life, certain at any moment that it would be taken away from me - both because I felt that I wasn't deserving of having good things in my life, and because in my house it wasn't safe to be happy. Being happy meant that you might inadvertently share a moment of happiness, and inevitably that would be used against you, or twisted around into something bad and shameful.

We have to teach ourselves from scratch what is acceptable behavior, on our parts and on other people's parts. Boundaries are an unknown concept in dysfunctional families. Something that we should have been learning in KINDERGARTEN, we are now learning as adults in what is almost surely already volatile family, relationship, or work settings because we nearly always have our "moment's of awakening" in the midst of these ongoing abusive situations when we reach a point of breakdown, of "I can't take it anymore."

And, while all of that learning and relearning is going on, we have to grieve.

I have to grieve in ways that most people don't ever even contemplate. To most people, grief is reserved, thankfully, for those instances where grief is normal and natural, in losing a loved one. Or losing a relationship even. As an adult victim of child abuse, I have to grieve things that I never had, that I should have. Things that I never WILL have, that I should have at least had the option to have. I have to grieve all of the ways that I was wronged as a child, and all of the ways that I wronged myself as an adult by putting myself in harmful situations because I didn't know any better, or didn't know how to make a better choice.

I have to grieve all the time that I lost, floundering around trying to deal with all of this. I am behind in many meaningful ways, and I have had to learn how not to judge myself by my family's and the rest of societies standards because only I understand how I have been held behind.

I have to grieve a mother who is still alive, who continually approaches me saying that she doesn't understand why I want nothing to do with her because in her mind, she's completely re-written my history, effectively making the person that I am right now, non-existent - because every single thing about me is informed by my childhood...my interest in psychology, my health problems, the things that I struggle to overcome on a daily basis - and talking about any of those things would mean talking about my childhood, which doesn't exist, which means that *I* don't exist. On the flip side, to have a relationship with her, I would have to defend myself against awful things that she has, over the years, determined are true about me by piecing little facets of things together here and there. My mother, the woman who birthed me, thinks that I have done things more horrible than any single person that I have ever actually wronged in my life has ever thought about me.

And I can't say to the world, "I miss my mother." because she isn't dead. And I can't even say that I "miss her" because I never really had her to begin with...and I can't say to anyone, "I wish I had a mother." because no one gets it. They look at her, and listen to her, and her delusions and her, I am certain, very real pain - because what mother wouldn't be pained by her child denouncing her, especially when in her mind, there is no reason for it? And I become the bad guy. I am the cold hearted one. I am, as always, at fault and in the wrong. I am abandoned over and over again when it comes to her.

And it's funny, because I have friends whose mother's have died. And they say to me things like, "You should learn how to forgive because when they're gone, you're going to be so sorry and you're going to miss them, and wish that you'd had this time with them." And I know, that in their minds, they are missing their mothers. They are missing the nurturing that their mothers provided them with, maybe the advice, or the mother-daughter bonding. Even if it was just for a short time. They are wishing that their mothers were there for them during milestones like weddings, or child births.

And what they don't understand is that I never had any of that to begin with. I never had it to miss. And yet, paradoxically, I do miss it. I don't miss what I never had, I miss what I should have had. I ache to have a mother to go to to talk to about my problems, without having to fear what I divulged to her knowing that it would be used against me later. I WISH that I could call my mother up and talk to her about my amazing boyfriend, or my new job, or any of this crazy healing journey that I've been on, or cry to her when I am sad, or have been hurt. I wish that I'd had a mother who could have talked to me in a meaningful way about becoming a woman, instead of being left to discover everything on my own. I wish that I'd had a mother who hadn't shamed sex, and my body so badly that I am still struggling with body and sexual issues.

I watch my friends who have children, my friends who are working SO HARD to be good parents and I my heart swells with gratitude that they are raising healthy, happy children - that those kids lives are just so completely opposite of what I experienced as a kid. And at the EXACT same time, my heart aches with jealousy. Jealous of the kids, because they are so loved, and so cared for, and so nurtured, and so strengthened, and so protected - all things I never had - and jealous of the parents, because I will never experience having children of my own because my wiring is still so fried, so crossed, so damaged that for many many reasons, me having children would just be a bad idea and so I've chosen not to. It's my choice, and I know I could very easily choose otherwise and this isn't a decision that I blame my mother for, but the events that led me to making that decision, I most certainly do.

Everything is just...harder than it should be. I've made great strides towards healing. I've corrected a lot of my unhealthy behavior patterns, learned how to make better decisions, adjusted some of the warped filters that I was taught to see myself, and the world through...but I still have a long way to go. And I can't stop myself from wishing that it was different.

No matter how much I learn to accept myself, I can't seem to stop feeling sad when I look into the mirror at all the extra weight that I carry because of the health issues that have come from all the chronic stress that I've been under for so long, and the depression that has kept me from being able to do more than just barely function in my life for so long. Because of all the ways that I disconnected from my body, abandoning it, and abusing it because of the ways that I was taught to hate it.

I can't help but wish that *I* was different, that I was more sociable, that it was easier for me to connect with people emotionally, that I was more trusting, that so much of my emotional and physical energy wasn't tied up in just getting through each day. I wish that I didn't miss out on so many social engagements because I feel too awkward and uncomfortable to go to them, or that I miss out on them while I'm there because in a room full of people, family or not, I often still feel out of place. Painfully awkward. Alien. Other. And even during those times when I put in the massive amount of emotional work that it takes to not feel that way, to mentally adjust all my internal filters, and talk myself off of the anxiety ledge, and remind myself ten-hundred times that I'm ok, I'm safe, I can be myself...I still go home exhausted and sometimes need a day or two to recover, and am not so eager to jump into another social engagement.

And I know that that takes a toll on my relationships, even the ones that are incredibly important to me. Days, and weeks flash by me because I'm just trying to make it from one to the next and the next thing I know, I realize that I haven't talked to someone in ages. People text me, and I forget to respond because all of my focus is here, now, friends go through terrible life experiences and everything in me wants to be there for them, to help them if I can, to be supportive...and sometimes I can be, most times I can't.

I refuse to give up though."

I'm not sure that it's finished, I think I just got tired of writing, lol.

So, I wrote a thing. I don't know yet what it's purpose is really. I'm thinking I might use it as some kind of introduction (maybe edited and cut down, it's long) for a blog that I'm thinking about starting.

I'd love some feedback. Especially because I know that I'm writing from my own perspective, and would love to include other perspectives as well - at least as possibilities for reactions.

"I feel like the prevailing response, when you start to talk about your childhood and the ways that it affected you, is some kind of eye rolling - "Oh, right, blame your parents for all your problems, instead of taking personal responsibility for your decisions and mistakes!" I've heard it from others, and I had even adopted that mentality myself - towards myself. I saw myself making terrible decisions. I never wanted to be that person who blamed her parents for her troubles. I took personal responsibility for every mistake, every poor decision, for a long, long time. I even blamed myself for the emotionally abusive relationship that I ended up in, refusing to put any blame on him whatsoever. "I stayed. It was my decision to put up with that. I could have walked away at any time."

When I finally started realizing the depths of the effects that my childhood had had on me, it was actually really, really, difficult for me to let go of that responsibility. I was very hard to admit that I was a victim of child abuse, and that my mother was abusive. To this day, five years after that first realization, I am still catching myself trying to let her off the hook and invalidate my own experiences and feelings by making excuses for her actions.

And maybe there are a lot of people out there who, for various reasons have falsely accused their parents of abuse. Maybe they have a mental illness, like a personality disorder which causes them to see things in a distorted, and victim like way - despite their parents doing everything they could to give them the best childhood they could. Personality disorders can be developed without a history of abuse. But for the rest of us? People don't realize how difficult it actually is to get to a point where we can even clearly see that we WERE abused, let alone speak up about it.

The thing is, mental illness's aside, very few of us come into this world dysfunctional. Children are pretty much the closest that we can get to perfection as human beings. Children do not know how to hate themselves, and they do not know how to hate others, until they are taught. Again, aside from mental illness's, most children don't come programmed with depression, or anxiety. Most children are wired eager to learn. Trusting. And when taught how to be loving and accept love, how to accept their own strengths and weaknesses and those of others, how to set firm boundaries with themselves and with others, how to be responsible to themselves and others, how to think critically about information and problem solving, and when they are inoculated against the evils of the world with a loving support system...MOST of them come out the other side from childhood to adult hood having naturally and healthily moved through all the developmental stages they need to at least make decent decisions, even if they aren't wildly successful.

The great debate about nature/nurture is no real debate at all because we are built by these things in equal measure. A child's temperament is just as important as it's environment. It might determine how resilient a kid is in a dysfunctional environment. It might determine how many times a kid needs to be put down, humiliated, hit, told that they are hated - before the kid starts to break and start to develop seriously twisted defense mechanisms in order to survive. Kids are like tootsie roll pops, you know? "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop?" Well, the question that's always tripped me up is, "How many times does a kid need to be told that their parent is sorry that they had them before that seriously starts to emotionally affect the kid? Once? Twice? Five times?" "How many times does a kid have to be hit with a leather belt before they start to fear adults, authority figures, and determine that the world is an unsafe place? Five times? Dozens of times?"

Each case is different. I can only remember maybe a dozen times when my mother hit me. Despite the number, I remember them clearly and have been diagnosed with PTSD because I have triggers that go off when I am around people hitting their kids, among many other symptoms related to emotional abuse. I've read about people who were hit on a daily basis who seemed to go on living lives where they were at least functional, if not entirely happy. We respond differently, we heal differently.

But, in addition to our nature, we are layered with our environment. In an ideal family, our self-esteem is laid down as a secure foundation which the rest of our life is built upon. As we get older, our school peers begin to have a larger and larger influence on that initial foundation as well. So, between our families, and our peers, we should enter the world as adults with a healthy, secure sense of who we are and what we might be capable of. We should see the world as full of opportunities. We should be curious, optimistic and hopeful. We should possess a resiliency which helps us bounce back from many of the challenges that the world throws at us and we should have the capacity to build healthy support networks of family and friends from which to operate from.

In a dysfunctional/abusive family, this entire process is derailed from the very beginning. And this is where things begin to become turned topsy turvey for abused kids.

In MY family, I lived in a kind of Bizzaro world. Up was down, hate was love, and everything was my fault. If my mother was upset, it was my fault. If something wasn't done correctly, it was my fault. If I made a mistake, there was no distinction between me making a mistake and me being a horrible person for having made said mistake. *I* made my mothers life difficult, and since I was really no different (more difficult) than any other child, it was hard to come to any other conclusion that it was merely my existence which made her life difficult. And, considering that I was surrounded by adults who were all doing their best to look the other way, implicitly approving of her behavior, that conclusion was further reinforced.

So, it was really no surprise when I got older that I naturally took responsibility for everything. That's what I was taught to do from an early age. Someone is angry? It must be my fault. Something went wrong? It's definitely my fault. Someone is blaming me for something? Yes. Yes. Of course it's my fault! (I would take the blame without even thinking for a moment whether or not it was justified.) Get into an argument with someone? Even if I initially felt justifiably angry, I would soon be overcome with crushing guilt that the other person was angry with me, and turn things around on myself! Take the blame, apologize! Who needed to be abused by someone else when I could just as easily do it myself, the way I was taught to? This was just one of the dysfunctional traits that the predator that I later ended up in an abusive relationship with grasped onto.

I wrote this yesterday on FB:
"When children are taught that their opinions don't matter, that they are not allowed to stand up for themselves, that it is dangerous to get angry...or to have someone get angry with them (that they will be hit, humiliated, put down, or criticized), that they do not have the same rights as other people to have emotions like anger, or to not be hit...they grow up and walk into the world believing that they are inferior to everyone else. THAT FEELING informs EVERY SINGLE DECISION that they make from their friendships, to their intimate relationships, to their career decisions, to how they take care of and protect themselves from emotional and physical predators - it informs those decisions until they realize just how effed up their foundation was and they start doing the VERY difficult work to re-wire their entire belief system. Some people never reach that point. It's way easier to raise emotionally healthy children than to repair emotionally broken adults."

And, the extension of this is just how confusing it is was for me as an adult victim of child abuse to walk into the world with this worthless, backwards, delusional belief system where I was inferior to everyone else, everything was my fault, I had no right to demand decent treatment even if I had had the first idea HOW to do that. And I was operating under this entire framework of now out-dated defense mechanisms that continued to keep me reacting to the world in wrong, out of sync ways because where they were once necessary for my survival, in the "real" world, they were dysfunctional ways of being. A few weeks ago, I coined the term "fishbowl of terror" for the dysfunctional environments that a lot of us grew up in. We had no idea that there was an entire ocean outside of our fishbowl where things were just...normal. OUR normal was just...twisted...and then we get spit out into this "new" normal...and don't have the first clue how to function.

Defense mechanisms are the psyche's adaptation system. They are created under duress. Once created, there is no "switch" to just, turn them off once you're in a healthier situation. Others look at this and think "self-sabotage."

cont in next post

Invisible Hero's

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/childhood-neglect/2014/10/are-you-an-invisible-hero/

Adrenal fatigue - for me, was a crazy rabbit hole to go down. As bee said, it's not recognized by mainstream medicine, and because it's not there is SO MUCH misinformation out there about it.

The adrenals do get tired with all the chronic stress that we're under. But, the other thing that starts happening, which most of those websites don't talk about, is that our minerals get seriously out of whack - either through diet issues (we're not eating correctly) digestive issues (which are common with chronic stress) or the simple fact that there are certain minerals (like salt and magnesium) that our bodies actually dump when we are chronically stressed. Back last year, I was having serious, serious problems with physically "crashing" after stressful events. I've tried several different supplement programs that didn't work because the people suggesting them didn't know exactly what they were talking about. I've spent literally thousands of dollars the last couple of years trying to "fix" my "adrenal fatigue" - when I think a LOT of it was due to my anxiety (caused by my inner critic) and a depression that I didn't know that I had and several mineral deficiencies that would just get worse during a stressful event and my body would "dump" more of them. Magnesium has been really helpful for me.

I had a hair test mineral analysis done and have just started working with yet a third naturopathic doctor. He's more educated than the others that I went to, and more moderate in his approach (no massive doses of anything), so I'm kind of hopeful that it will help me improve some things. We'll see. I haven't started his supplement program yet.