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I thought I should add by way of explanation that this poem came to me after watching a video of a baby koala clinging to her mother's  back as the mother clambered unsteadily over rocky ground in the bush. I watched the baby and her little limbs clinging to her mother's fur (see how I imagine the baby is a girl, I identified with that baby so much) and realised I'd never been able to cling like that to anyone. I envied that baby koala.

I'm also aware that a term of abuse used mainly by some adult men against some adult women is that they are 'clingy'. A variation of this was the accusation thrown at me angrily by my husband many years ago - 'all you want to do is hug and cuddle!'. This from a man who eventually admitted he was, in his own words, 'incapable of intimacy'. And yes, I'd never been allowed to hug and cuddle and that impulse to cling to another human for safety and protection and warmth has never been satisfied.

I know there are many psychological issues around this accusation for both sides, but I do wonder if disproportionally, baby girls are not given the chance to cling to their parents when they need it so that the impulse can be satisfied and 'discharged' at the appropriate time in their lives and instead lingers on, miserably unsatisfied.

Reading through this thread, I realised something and wondered if it would be helpful to share it. I hope so.

Yesterday I looked at my reflection in a window - my body side-on - and felt cringing shame go through me, although I know, at 164cm and 67kg, I am objectively an 'acceptable' size to this world.

This disjunction between my knowledge and what I felt, and reading through this thread this morning, have made me realise that the only thing that would make my shame go away is if I disappeared altogether.

No matter what size I am, it is too big, too much, too solid, it is unacceptably taking up too much space. I remember as a young girl (when I was really skinny) looking down at my thighs as I sat waiting for a train and feeling disgust at my flesh. It was all too much. I've had the occasional impulse to cut my breasts off because they stick out from my body and at some primitive level I feel this is 'too much', it's offensive for other people to have to tolerate looking at me. My flesh is taking up too much space.

My response to the shame has been to treat food as forbidden - to deny myself the pleasure of food. And here I'll recite a poem I wrote many years ago in a moment of awareness of this struggle and which I've already posted on this site:

Hansel and Gretel ate the house
nibbled at it like a mouse.
I shut my mouth and hunger denied.
To save my mother, my soul, it died.

These feelings are so irrational, so primitive, so unhinged from reality, I'm sure that they are driven by the trauma of abandonment and my learning as an infant that my very existence was an outrage, a mistake, a reason for others to treat me with cruelty and hostility.

If these intensely strong feelings about our right to be alive on this earth underlie our body image, how hard is it for us to come to acceptance of our bodies, whatever shape they take? How much strength and tolerance for deprivation does it take for us to forswear the comfort of carbs and sugar and warm, filling food? Or, in my case, how much strength and tolerance does it take for me to go through life not indulging the need for comforting food? Either way, it is a terrible burden to carry these feelings through life and be subject to the judgment of others who have no knowledge of the trauma inflicted upon us.

The consequences of human cruelty for the lives of other humans are appalling.

Thank you to all. It is healing to know my words speak to others.

Thank you for your kind words Whobuddy.

[The impulse to cling]

The impulse to cling

I was never allowed to cling
to anyone.
Not to mother or father
or husband,
and now not to children either.

The impulse to cling is deep,
fundamental, primitive,
and, if constantly denied,
seems to persist forever, 
leaving me achingly bereft.

Oh Kizzie, my heart goes out to you. You say:" They're everywhere though I know so up to me to work on being less upset/angry and triggered. To be honest, I was/am upset with myself that I did react so strongly which tells me I have some more work to do on self-compassion."

Please don't berate yourself for what is such an understandable reaction. I reacted with a strong upsurge of anger inside just reading what you have to say - in fact I did the same when I saw a shorter note from you on this awful experience on Twitter yesterday.

Face to face groups are so rare and I dearly wish I could find one. My initial research located only two in the whole of Australia - each far away from me. In fact I've thought of approaching the local hospital and asking if they could start one. But there are so many potential problems, I hesitate. Then I read of your experience and I feel true despair.

I feel like screaming  into the universe:  It's not fair! It is so horribly not fair!

In my experience, people ask to be trusted and blame me for my lack of trust even while they hurt me. My therapist asks me to develop trust that there are good people in the world, and I beat myself up because I continue to see everywhere people who take pleasure in using and hurting other people. In your case, you took a chance in good faith to trust someone who asked to be trusted and they betrayed you and sought to exploit your pain and use you for their own needs. This is cruel and miserable behaviour.

All I can do is commiserate with you, send you a warm hug, and tell you again what incredibly valuable and precious work you are doing here on OOTS and in your wider advocacy efforts on behalf of those of us affected by relational trauma. Your efforts have certainly provided me with invaluable support over the past year since I found this OOTS refuge. Thank you so much Kizzie. 
Bluepalm

Thank you Rainagain for posting. Your taking the time to set down your understanding has helped give me my own insight.

You say: "Thinking back to those days I had a sort of mental freedom, I could deal with things, could interact with anyone without worry, I was mentally free." and you explain you "didn't really notice it, that was just how things were". And then, cruelly, trauma took this state of mind from you and you became aware of what you had lost.

In my work with my therapist at the moment I sense that I am starting to feel this the other way around.

For most of my life I have struggled with being and staying alive but, in a strange way, I didn't really notice it; that was just how things were. I sought therapy for depression and various crises and believed that I was 'neurotic', but I had no appreciation that my inner world was so very different from that of others around me. I had never felt any other way.

Now, through working with my therapist, I'm coming to understand that my experience of abandonment and abuse was, to use her word, 'extreme', and with the framework of complex PTSD to help me analyse my experiences, I'm realising that the painful confusion through which I've lived most of my life was imposed on me; was not who I could have been.

And with this realisation and through the experience of 'being held' by my therapist, I'm starting to feel a new 'mental freedom'. I'm starting to feel how life can be lived with the expectation that I can actively look after myself and protect my inner freedom. Mind you, I'm doing this while staying alone and sheltering myself from people, including family and erstwhile friends, because I'm afraid my inner freedom could disappear again under attack. Nevertheless, this is the healthy and actually quite wonderful process through which I'm working.

Thank you again Rainagain. Your articulation of your experience has helped me understand mine. I dearly hope that you can regain some of the mental freedom you lost. You say: "As I have gotten older I have less physical strength and stamina, that is normal and to be expected/accepted." and "It is hard to accept losing my previous mental freedom, it isn't a natural part of growing older."

No, it is not a natural part of growing older. Please may I encourage you: I'm 71 and yet I feel my mind is clearing even as I know my bodily strength and stamina are diminishing. In fact, the need to protect and conserve my physical well-being more as I age has, I believe, helped me to put energy into healing and understanding the trauma that has affected my body, mind and soul. My therapist, this lovely community on OOTS and reading all the literature on the effects of complex, relational trauma that's become available now, are all helping me on this journey. These last years are precious and I'm really focused on living in this world with some inner peace before it all ends. 

A very warm welcome to you RJBush. I wish you all the very best on your healing journey and I'm glad you've found OOTS. It is a safe, kind and caring community and it's proven to be an important support for me in my journey to understand and heal as best I can from the injuries I've experienced.
bluepalm

Welcome to this valuable community, In the Lighthouse! Your post resonated with me, so thank you for posting. I also found it nerve-wracking to post anything at first, but I'm so glad I stuck with it because this safe and kind community has helped enormously over these past months to alleviate the isolation I felt, struggling alone with the consequences of complex PTSD. Reading the experiences of others and sharing my thoughts has been healing for me and I hope it becomes that way for you too.
bluepalm

Working with my therapist this past week reminded me of a little poem I wrote years ago that encapsulates a central cause of the suffering that continues to trouble me on a daily basis more than 70 years later....

Hansel and Gretel ate the house.
Nibbled at it like a mouse.
I shut my mouth and hunger denied.
To save my mother, my soul, it died.

bluepalm

Welcome whoam-i. My heart goes out to you. From my experience on OOTS these past months, you've found a valuable, validating and kind community of people who have been affected by similar traumas.   

Woodsgnome thank you for your comment about not apologising for responding to old threads. Our shared experiences, whenever we write about them, remain those experiences and remain highly relevant to our journey of understanding.

cg177, I, for one, have been helped and prompted to respond by reading what you wrote.

I'm in my early 70s and share your experience of a father and mother by whom I was abandoned from the start - a father who did not touch me except to beat me or talk to me except to demean me; a mother who lashed out at me at random, routinely left me 'to cry it out' on my own and once confessed that she used to go shopping all day and forget she had a baby and then come home at night and find I was still there in the cot.

Recently I had a full day and night of being caught in a terrifying state of pleading panic and disintegration where all I could do was cry and say 'please', pleading uselessly into a void. I think I was caught in that timeless panic of so many years ago. I too, after all these years "have never had a deep sense of safety anywhere or with anyone".

What extreme cruelty to cause such profound damage to a helpless human being!

So thank you for sharing. My heart goes out to you because I sense we share similar experiences.

Thank you Kizzie and Chris 336. A great question and a good clear result.

Welcome katididit! I'm in my early 70s, discovered cptsd only in the past few years and I agree wholeheartedly with your comment: "It's  been enlightening to realize that traits I considered 'odd' and 'my fault' are actually results of my upbringing." It's been enlightening and freeing for me too. I hope you find OOTS as peaceful and warm a community as I have.

Welcome SerenHybrid - I'm glad you've found this place. I found it earlier this year but I'm still excited about the find.

I think this explanation by Jazzy of how emotional flashbacks sneak up on you and how they feel is absolutely spot on from my experience:
Some of the extreme ones are pretty easy to notice, but most of the time it is an invisible force taking over your moods and your mind. It took me a lot of work to be able to recognize them, even though I probably still miss some. To be more specific, during an EF, I usually feel unsafe and hyper-vigilant, but at the same time disconnected, and kind of going through everything on autopilot.

Yes! This is it. And I feel I still miss being able to identify most EFs. It's my 'normal' and I just get lost in them. But the contributions of members of this OOTS community, with comments like this one from jazzy, are allowing me to feel less alone in my daily struggles.