Messages

Thank you to all of you for your responses. This poem, written so long ago, in anguish, has taken on a protective feel for me now. When my mood starts to wobble and my thoughts turn despairing, I remember that it's comfort I'm seeking - not actual extinction. This has sucked much of the fear out of my despairing.

Mary Anne, because your previous poem had such an impact on me I had to wait a day or so before I felt I had the strength to read this poem.

Once again, your words capture your feelings so well, with such intensity. The weight of what you endured comes through so clearly.

Anger is clarifying, isn't it. But also disturbing. You have me thinking I should try to harness my anger into words in a similar way; stop shying away from expressing my bottled up rage at how I was treated. But first I need to let myself feel the full strength of it all.

Thank you for what you have written.

Oh Mary Anne, what a devastating story - but brilliantly told. A compelling read. Your experience, compressed into the discipline of a poem, resonates with me in many ways and and so, sadly, is comforting to me. A devastating, brilliant poem. Thank you for sharing it.

Have you read Gregory Orr's wonderful book 'Poetry as Survival'? The impact of your poem sent me to the bookshelf, determined to re-read his book. Mary Oliver, another poet who writes masterfully of emotions, provides this acknowledgement of Gregory Orr's book:

"Gregory Orr's thesis is the transcendent power of personal lyric poetry, its balm, and, far more than that, its ability to enable persons who have undergone trauma to fortify and in a sense to re-create  themselves by speaking out through the exactitude and dignity of poetry."

For me, your poem 'Dad' has that quality of re-creation 'by speaking out through the exactitude and dignity of poetry'.

Thank you for your support Bodhi and Kizzie.   

A warm welcome to you, Mary Anne, and thank you for your introduction. I was scared when I first posted on this forum and I am all too familiar with that sense that I've done something wrong and something bad is about to happen to me. So I hope that now you are a contributor you will find the support and understanding that I found once I started to contribute; support that has helped me gain confidence in posting my thoughts. I should also say that medication - an anti-depressant and Prazosin for nightmares - has enabled me to experience a calm and less fraught existence and I'm hugely grateful for the difference it's made to everyday living. I hope you experience similar support from your medication.

You sound eminently sane to me Boatsetsailrose. I relate absolutely to what you say: [/i]I've reached a level where my self care self love and who allow into my space is so important to me .[/i]

Over the past year or so I have reached a similar healthy state, As a result I have ended friendships where I felt the other person was using me (I'm a good listener and a 'people pleaser') and showing little to no respect for me and who I am and what I now feel I need from a friendship: mutuality, kindness, respect, openness and generosity.

Over the years I've let some friendships drift on because I didn't want to hurt the other person and I felt I should put in the effort to understand her and absorb the hurts she inflicted on me.  No more.  Cutting ties that were 30 to 40 years old has taken courage from me but the relief I feel from no longer having to manage these fraught friendships is huge and I have no regrets about the action I've taken.

In fact it was telling to me that three of these long term friends immediately accepted my wishes and cut off all ties with me. To me that's a tell tale sign of someone who was using me for their own purposes.  If they had felt respect and warmth for me, I feel they would have tried to save the relationship, or at least discuss my concerns, but they didn't.

Healthy, sane me says 'good riddance'. That's energy I've saved to give to those few more recent friends who engage with me as I am now in a fulfilling and respectful manner.

As for reading on toxic people, maybe the Out of the Fog site would be useful, if you haven't already looked there.

A warm welcome to you Chrissy - I'm confident you'll find understanding and compassion from this forum community.

A warm welcome to this healing community StartingHealing. In my experience, the journey of 'looking at myself' has been the most worthwhile journey I have taken. I hope you have a similar experience.

Hi Red, I'm 73 years old and have done a lot of therapy too. It has all helped me in various ways, but what has also helped so much is my own reading of books in the quiet of my home. Reading and reflecting and actively trying to take learning from writers who have experienced or studied relational trauma. Recently I've focused on Pete Walker's books, and I can highly recommend them if you haven't already discovered them.

In particular, I'm now reading slowly through Pete Walker's The Tao of Fully Feeling: Harvesting forgiveness out of blame. I have already done the same with his later book, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving.

Now I should say I was sceptical before I started reading this 'Tao of Fully Feeling' book, because I feel forgiveness is not something that abusers necessarily deserve and that 'forgiving' can actually be a form of denial and leave us feeling only more lonely and abandoned. However, he writes about opening up to feelings, about angering and about grieving and how doing this releases the positive feelings you feel you cannot access right now. He makes a lot of sense to me.

In therapy I have spoken about how I never confronted my parents or my husband for the abuse and abandonment I experienced from them. Part of me has felt pride in being so tolerant and 'turning the other cheek'. I'm realising that this pride is misplaced if I'm going to heal.

Pete's book has enabled me to break through that passive 'tolerance'. In these past few days I have relished and delighted in not just confronting my parents/husband in my mind but, for the first time, feeling my rage inside my body and expressing it by imagining killing my parents and husband over and over again with every weapon imaginable. And once they're cut into pieces, I reassemble them and start again! No guilt, just relishing the expression of long bottled up rage at cruel and merciless people. Doing this in my mind each time I think of my parents/husband has brought me a new sense of calm and even joy. Although I hasten to add that 'in real life' I have never taken up arms against anyone! 

I'm grateful to Pete Walker for all I've learned from him and for helping me feel free to express a range of feelings previously suppressed. I hope my story may give you some confidence that opening up to positive feelings is possible, even at our advanced ages.

[but that's OK.]

Welcome Paul and thank you for your introduction. You mention wanting to see the 'finish line' and say "Nobody wants to stay broken, but that's where I am at".  These words resonated with me.

After having similar wishes for a long time, and having experienced this struggle for a couple of decades longer than you, I have come to the conclusion that there is, for me, no 'finish line' with CPTSD and that I will remain 'broken' for the duration of my life - but that's OK. I'm healing all the time. I'm working on my 'brokenness' all the time and that in itself is a worthy endeavour. Coming to this conclusion has enabled me to relax more into the work and see it is part of my being alive, a part that I share with those many people who are similarly injured. Being part of this Forum community has been central to my healing journey and I hope it is for you too. I look forward to hearing more of your story.

Hi lonelytourist, I agree with Armee - What you shared is enough. It's enough to explain the pain, the trauma, whatever you are going through now?

I can understand your distress at not recognising a classic model into which to fit your family to explain what happened to you. I have spent a lifetime trying to understand why my family acted as they did. For most of that time I wandered in the darkness, with no internet or even books to help me. I've now come to the conclusion that ultimately it doesn't matter why what happened happened. It's enough that my mind, body and soul know how it felt then and how I suffer now as a result. It's enough to know that my rage at family members is real and needs expression and resolution. It's enough to know that my grief needs an outlet here and now - for whatever reason my family was so destructive to me. This knowledge has not stopped me from wondering about my family dynamics, but it's become more of a puzzle that I can dwell on at some distance from myself emotionally. I hope my experience gives you a little hope that your current distress may lessen in time.

Yes, purplelily, please come back and give this kind community another chance. As others have said, it's not only a quiet time of year and there are many reasons why viewers may not comment, but also this is a community of injured souls connecting openly and carefully with each other. So please don't read rejection into a little delay in response to you - although I know how easily that can happen when your words seem to fall into a void!   

Thank you to you all for welcoming me back so warmly! 

My healing process has twisted and turned recently. I left this Forum feeling I needed a break. I went through a period of not wanting to think about my trauma or its consequences. However, I recently turned to my GP for help when I started flailing emotionally again and then had another disappointment in trying a new therapist.

However, from all this I have a renewed sense of strength. And I now wish to return to this kind community to share my thoughts with others.

I'm reading Pete Walker's books with renewed attention and huge gratitude. Of all the extensive reading I have done on trauma, his writing resounds with me most strongly. It feels most true to my life experience.

And, taking up a suggestion I found in Beverley Engel's 'It Wasn't Your Fault', I'm starting to write something new. Not a journal this time, but a story of my journey through life for my grandchildren, told as if in a children's story book (Once upon a time a baby was born...) . I'm finding this exercise is helping me to break through the 'ordinariness' of my experience. It's all I know so it feels so familiar to me. But told as if by a storyteller, it's bringing up emotions of grief, rage and shock at what I experienced. I am sure this will be a healing endeavour.

And I'm feeling so glad that I want to be actively back on this Forum. Thank you to Kizzie and everyone for still being here!
bluepalm. 

[The Comfort of Extinction]

I have today written elsewhere in this forum of an important recent insight: that I use thoughts of extinction as my only effective way to  'self-soothe'. Critical to this insight was my remembering a poem I wrote forty years ago. It amazes me that I knew this forty years ago but only really grasped what I was saying then in recent days.

The Comfort of Extinction

The sharpness of the sun
and the square heaviness
of daily doings -
of breakfast toast
and truck exhaust,
of children's sticky faces
in my lap.

These mock my midnight struggle
when the unassailable logic
of the comfort of extinction
filled my mind -
and overflowed in visions
of drifting softly in the sandy depths
weeds woven round my eyes
fleshy dribbles being nibbled
from my breasts.