Messages

I grapple with this question a lot.  It makes me ask why I've take so long to address some of the issues I'm trying to address now, decades after the last face-to-face encounter with abusive members of my FOO.

It is again about blame and accountability, yes?  At what age or under what conditions, are we accountable?  Do we then assume blame?  Can we still attribute blame to those who wounded us long ago?

I've been intrigued with research showing that abuse leaves an impact on brain and body.  Somehow, that scientific finding suggests that moving past early abuse requires more than "just" identifying it.  So, Arpy1, perhaps someone with a history of trauma might be especially vulnerable to the pull of a cult, not as a "type" of person but as someone whose brain had developed in a particular direction?

But we also have choices, maybe not all the best choices but choices nonetheless.

I'm at least glad to know that other people are considering these questions.

All I can say just now, in response to D/U's post, is yes, me too.  I'm amazed, over and over, at all the commonalities.

Thank you all for the work you do.

Perhaps, but lack of desire for vengeance may stem from the futility of it all.  What good would it do?  What would be the point?  Or maybe we/I have spent so much effort trying to survive, bobbing and weaving and accommodating, that all the fight is gone.

I'm not a "fight type" now (to use Walker's typology).  I might have been once, when still trying to engage with my uNPD mother, but I'm pretty sure I became more passive as I sought strategies for survival and tried "medium chill" and "low contact" before I finally gave up and went NC.  Regaining some fight seems like a useful exercise now.  But it doesn't mean revenge – hence remembering the line about living well.

I'm still struck by the lack of vengeance talk on this site.  So many people have so much reason to seek some sort of revenge.  And yet I don't recall a single post that I would interpret that way. 

[Dutch Uncle,]

Dutch Uncle, your sister's response sounds familiar, like a kind of projection on her part.  She's attributing to you her own responses, real or imagined.

I've been accused, over and over, of being vengeful and angry.  I continue to receive letters (snail-mail, handwritten) describing my behavior and emotional state as seen by my uNPD mother.  Never, ever has she asked about my state of mind.  She only tells, or rather dictates.

The paradox here is that I'm trying to access anger, on the theory that the exercise might help me purge some piece of this puzzle.  And I can't imagine what revenge would even look like. 

[Southbound,]

Southbound, I'm struck by the parallels between your story and mine.  I, too, had a visit from my father, without my NM, and it was the last time I saw him, in 1989.  He was conflicted, clearly, trying simultaneously to recruit me back into the FOO with all the characters in place and to engage somehow supportively.  Of course, he couldn't be supportive without my NM's consent, so the message was incredibly muddled.

One task for me has been recognizing that he shares some of the blame here.  He may have been damaged, no doubt had CPTSD too.  But he was also an enabler.

Becoming invisible is certainly a good complementary strategy for NC.  And becoming visible elsewhere, outside one's FOO, reminds me of someone I know who used to tell me, "Living well is the best revenge."  He meant to encourage me to do much the same thing and so develop a career and a life.  I've tried.  Some members of my FOO, it seems, are truly vengeful.

Now that I think of it:  interesting, perhaps, that no one I've read on this forum speaks of revenge.  We all speak of exit, survival, recovery but not revenge, even though many people clearly have reason to vengeful.  Is that CPTSD turns the brutality on ourselves? 

With more than 25 years of NC behind me, I can attest that NC certainly possible.  Most important, I think, is lack of internal conflict.  I didn't ever actively make the decision.  I merely acted out of self-defense, and the response I received made clear that I had to exit.  If somehow, magically, my FOO were to become something very different, I'd reconsider.

I'm also fortunate in that I have one brother who gets it.  He took over as scapegoat when I left home.  So it's not entirely NC.

[Indigo]

Hi, Indigo,

Yes, I don't really want to be grounded either.  The thing is dissociation is an effective defense against what is, at least for the moment, unthinkable.  When I do it, I really can't be present in any significant way.

The experience varies.  I can  lose time in ways I don't really understand, but every now and then I realize that hours have past and I don't know what I've done.  I work alone some of the time, so I don't have social connections to keep me grounded.  And, yes, I put things down and can't remember where they are.  Worse, I find myself disorganized after having made much effort to keep a project on track.  It's disconcerting. 

This sort of thing happens sporadically, often when I'm especially stressed or threatened, as I have been lately.

Lots of websites have suggestions for "grounding."  But they don't always work  if you don't realize you need something.

Southbound, I have the feeling that fate dealt you a blow I managed to avoid, just barely.  I really didn't have the clarity of mind to tell this "therapist" off, as I hope would now.  But I was far away, and this was around 1989/1990, I think, before electronic communication.  That I'm writing about it onto a screen 25 years later, still remembering this woman's voice, speaks to the threat the whole episode could have posed.

I wish you a path to peace.  I know it's been a very long road already.  You deserve so much better.

I feel like voting for everything said in this thread:  yes, yes, yes. 

As children, we have no choice but to accommodate, somehow, the "reality" of an NPD parent.  And then once we come out of the FOG, we face too many people trying to pull us back in. 

Southbound, like you, I have an NPD mother who is in charge of most connections.  My family is dispersed, and years ago, before I went NC, I tried to establish some independent ties -- that is, communicate with cousins without going through my mother.  She was furious, and all family members except one brother acquiesced.  I understand the power she exerted in the household; after all, it was enforced violently at times.  But why everyone else, including people who aren't directly related to her? 

Kizzie, I think in some ways, a covert narcissist is harder to address.  My mother became more overt than covert, and eventually, going NC was an act of mere survival.  I applaud the effort you've made to understand a set of dynamics that are probably subtler.

During phases of dissociation, which have been happening again in the past few months, I "discover" lost time, or at least time I can't account for.  And like you, Indigo, I find things in unusual places. 

Thankfully, the condition usually abates, but it's scary.  I've been trying to "ground" myself by writing lists and setting alarms, but these tactics are only partly effective.

I've been told to consider other techniques for grounding like holding a familiar object or having a friend call at a designated time. 

Indigo, I hope you can find a strategy here.

Yes, Dutch Uncle!  Your assertion disavows an act of self-harm.

I've encountered a little of the "we choose our parents" logic among the new age types I've known.  The claim always seemed like a form of blaming the victim.  It certainly absolves the perpetrator.  Instead, anything done to you is your fault, yes?

And the perpetrator also gets to the victim of self-harm.  Small wonder this kind of PTSD is "complex."

KayFly,

Of course you're angry!  In addition to everything else, you now have to deal with respiratory problems and the possibility of judgment from those who might be less than understanding about CPTSD as the cause.

But you don't have to tell anyone anything specific.  You can always fudge the facts just a little to say "asthmatic symptoms" or "respiratory distress," both of which are accurate (yes?).  And if you need documentation, you can ask that the symptoms be precisely documented but without mention of anxiety and/or CPTSD.  Arguably, anxiety is "only" a symptom anyway.

That little tactic probably won't make you breathe any better, I know.  Can you perhaps find another medication for anxiety, one less addictive?  With all the psychotropic drugs out there, your psychiatrist should be able to consider alternatives – and if not, should be able to explain why. 

You will get past this phase.  But you have every reason to be frustrated.

HarpBee,

I've read that one symptoms of CPTSD is a fragmented memory and sometimes very little memory at all for periods of one's life.

The diagnosis might help to explain the sense of unreality that you describe.  It certainly sounds familiar.  One problem that made it worse for me was the lack of validation I experienced everywhere.  Only lately has that problem abated a bit.  Reading stories on this forum has helped.

For most of us, there's no going back.  And mostly, there's little to go back to.

Anything close to a full recognition of "the life that got away" would probably be too much to bear.  I try to tell myself that I've done pretty well with the hand I've been dealt.  And news from the world outside tells me many times a day that I'm relatively fortunate (so far anyway, not a victim of a natural disaster, not refugee, etc.).

Lately, though, I've been thinking about how much better my recovery might have been, years ago, if CPTSD had been better recognized.  For example, when I went NC with my uNPD mother, now more than twenty-five years ago, the label didn't yet exist.  Prevailing clinical wisdom to "avoid cutoff," so by going NC, I was going against the advice of my T at the time.

Now, as I deal again with new assaults from my FOO, there's a language to name the problem.  And very recently, many new resources – including this forum – have emerged.  Pete Walker's book hasn't yet been out two years.  The messages are very different.

But of course, I'm that much older.  That much more life has passed.

Equating the experience of cult life with a CPTSD-inducing family makes all kinds of sense.  After all, criteria for CPTSD include totalitarian control of the sort that cults exert.  So do families controlled by people with personality disorders.  I've come to see my FOO as a kind of cult, with internal rules and high boundaries that obscured the view from outside.

I've not been a member of anything I'd consider cult like, but I can imagine the attraction for someone seeking a family substitute.  And I know (no need to imagine) that lack of experience in a functional family makes discernment difficult.