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Firstly, apologies if this is posted in the wrong place. I confuse easily!

My mum died when I was a teenager and I think my C-PTSD was caused by a combination of seeing the horrors of her succumbing to a painful illness and living with my NF, along with general high school bullying which was just the icing on the cake. For the first time I'm seeing just how much pain and stress I was in. I suppose maybe I'm connecting to my inner child, which for a long time has been a concept that I've struggled to understand or approach.

When I went no contact with NF recently I was first of all quite jubilant, then very angry and now I'm sad. I think I've been sad for years though and I'm only just feeling like I'm in a safe enough place to acknowledge it.  Today I found an old bottle of my mum's perfume and the smell brought her memory back to me. I cried and released so much emotion I didn't even realise I had been suppressing until now. I think after she died I was so focused on just surviving that I never had any real opportunity to grieve for her. As a teenager there was no time, privacy or leniency from NF. I was intent on leaving 'home' as soon as I could and studying/work was the only escape. Now I've opened the door to expressing my emotions I want to continue in order to be healthy. My aim is to one day be at peace with my past to the point that I might be able to talk about it matter of factly to other people when the topic of parents comes up without feeling ashamed or panicky.

I'm not sure how to continue grieving or how to connect to my inner child further. I know that Pete Walker suggests that the inner child needs reassurance but I feel like I still am my inner child. Maybe the inner child stuff does just confuse things and really the point is that we can make peace with our past by coming to terms with our present? Possibly I'm just over-thinking it as I often do and the best remedy is to cry when I need to and be nice to myself. What do you guys think, do you manage to grieve effectively for the child that you once were?

A weird one. I went out with a friend tonight to do some bingo ) and to have a couple of drinks. My friend came back from the bar about an hour in and said that some woman had asked if her friend was OK (i.e. me!) I always feel overwhelmed in new places but I'm amazed my discomfort was really that obvious to a stranger I hadn't even spoken to. I'm always the quietest and get flushed in social situations but I did well to get out tonight. I guess it's just hard that my idea of doing well still looks like sadness or a struggle in the eyes of someone else. Kind of sad but I'm trying to look at it from a different perspective too. Maybe they were genuinely a nice, caring person and didn't mean to sound judgemental. Maybe they were just nosey about a new face who didn't always wear a smile. I guess I'm just trying to get out of the habit of instantly shaming myself for appearing a certain way. It would be nice to get to a point where it comes naturally but I see it's going to be a long road. 

My uNPD father keeps pushing me to speak to him on the phone. I don't want to speak to him on the phone because he is passive aggressive and my anxiety does not need it. I feel better off not speaking to him. The digestive problems I have every single time I deal with him are testament to that.

He sent me a text message asking to speak on the phone after already being told that I prefer to communicate by email and text message. I've reiterated again that text message and email is the best way to communicate with me. He responded asking what's going on with me and calling me rude. I responded just now saying that I'm sorry he feels that way but I don't think I'm being rude, I'm just not comfortable talking on the phone at this present time and I'm asking for that to be respected. I finished the message off telling him that it needn't be a drama.

Now the ingrained shame response is kicking in. Am I being rude? Treating a normal, rational person the way I am him would be rude but my father invented rude. I could have retaliated listing a whole bunch of things he's done which are rude (usual narc things: belittling others behind their backs, shaming, not phoning me for 3 months!) but I didn't because that would be attacking him and the whole point of this isn't that I want to be mean to him, this really is just me wanting to protect myself and grow as a person.

I think that I'm starting to realise that the hold he's always had over me is the fear over how I'm perceived. I'm laying down a preference for my own wellbeing for the first time ever and he can't deal with that, so in his eyes for not conforming to what he has shaped me to be I'm being 'rude'. The next challenge will be trying not to care about being called that, because my whole life has been dictated by what people think of me and the fear of saying and doing the wrong thing in case I upset people. I hate the thought that anyone could think I'm being a mean person, but I think he knows that and has played on it. I've always wondered why I'm so fearful socially and I think that he has nurtured that attitude in me. I think this must be the root of my social anxiety: the belief that if I stand up to anyone or step out of line that I'm a bad person, so to avoid that I must be hypervigilant about doing and saying what other people want me to. It seems so simple.

I still feel on edge and horrible though even after this revelation. I feel so alone too. I was the scapegoat child who lived alone with him for years so I got the full-on emotional attacks from him. Into adulthood I feel like I'm expected to just ignore that it all ever happened and function like a normal adult. I'm well aware that I look to other people as though I'm being rude, difficult and nasty to him but I don't feel like I can heal if I have a direct line with him verbally as I don't have the assertiveness and conversational skills to protect myself. 

Really hoping I'm on the right track with the course I've chosen. The other option is to submit and miserably live in fear of phone calls from him. It just doesn't feel right to myself to do that anymore. 

I've been triggered for the last couple of weeks and it all started because someone wanted to return an item to me which I had sold on Ebay. It sounds so daft that something that minor was my trigger (which in itself has led to me feeling a lot of shame), but it did get a bit complicated and I guess it was stress that I didn't need which has become exacerbated by other things stressing me out. I decided yesterday that since I haven't been sleeping as well lately then I could benefit from being a bit nicer to myself and taking things a bit more slowly.

Today I got my hair cut which was OK, I kept fluffing my words as I spoke to the hairdresser (anyone else get this?!) but it wasn't terrible. I felt like that was enough so started walking home looking forward to a quiet afternoon, then got stopped by a really charismatic, chatty saleswoman asking for a regular monthly donation to a charity. I accidentally said 'yes' to a question rather than 'no', then realised too late that she had said, "So I trust we can rely on you for a monthly donation?" and didn't have the energy to backtrack and explain that I wanted to refuse. I feel mean saying that but money is another of my issues at the moment, I'm not working full time anymore and don't have a lot of spare cash, plus I had already donated this month to a charity. I couldn't even afford the haircut but had already booked in advance!

The one positive I suppose is that I'm not hating myself for this because I know that in a better state of mind I would have handled things better. When the fog descends I just lose any assertiveness, I get very tired, I withdraw into myself, I have trouble articulating my speech and I forget words and basic facts. I usually come through this soon enough, it's just frustrating when it does happen. I could really have done without needing my (already limited) bank of assertiveness today, it goes on hiatus when I'm triggered.

<--- Me at the moment, hehe. I will get through it, it's just hard when my brain doesn't play ball. 

I work in an office and this week I really have noticed that a co-worker seems to patronize and mock me behind my back. I've heard him making offhand remarks to other people as I leave the room and it's one of those things where yes, I'm naturally paranoid to these things, but it is really obviously about me. I'm very quiet and anxious which becomes magnified by 1000% at work and I struggle to communicate with people without having emotional flashbacks. I think he's mocking me for acting weird. I know it's weird but I can't help it, I'm not an emotionally well person. I want to recover and this kind of thing really sets me back as it's not supportive in the least.  I don't think I'm actually very highly functioning to be honest, I find it very difficult. I am starting to wonder whether working in an office is really a good environment for me. By nature they seem to be bitchy places where there is little way of escaping. It's a male dominated environment as well so emotions are seen as weak.

What do you guys think? Anyone relate? I'm feeling low and my self-esteem has taken a real bashing. It was about a 2 on the scale after months of building it up and now it's dropped down to about 0.5! 

Recently my brother and his family came to stay with me, which was really lovely. There was a lot of talk about the past though and my sister in law told me some stuff about my mum which now makes perfect sense. My mum died she was 51 and I was 15 from cancer, which left me living alone with my narcissistic, emotionally abusive father. I think my mother protected me from him far more than I ever appreciated because once she was gone everything took a nosedive. This I've been trying to come to terms with for a long time into adulthood.

What is fairly new to me is the fact that my mum knew my father's behaviour was wrong and was looking for ways to leave him. I always thought she was a saint for putting up with him but clearly and very much understandably she had reached her limits. He found a box of newspaper cuttings she had kept about women being abused and how to get out of the situation. I've only learnt of this years later, he never told me any of this. Apparently he then gave the box of cuttings to my brother who was about to sit his university finals at the time, talk about passing on the shame.  I wonder whether my mother left this box for him to find intentionally or whether she forgot about it. I also wonder if him finding this box actually made my life worse because I was the only one living with him at the time he found it and he would have taken it out on me. In a way I'm angry because I think this is probably the case, however a big part of me screams, "Whoop, go mum, good for you!"

Little things come back to me about the way he treated her. I only remember her having one friend, a lovely old lady who lived opposite, and I think he probably resented her even having that. I remember being very little and sitting down at the table eating, with him laying into her about something so relentlessly that she got up and went into the other room. This was a shock to me at that young age. I remember how she never bought herself new clothes either and would do her clothes shopping at charity shops. It turns out that he used to criticise her for supposedly spending too much, even though most of her expenditure was probably just groceries and school stuff for us, so she felt she should never have anything new for herself. This was coming from a man who cheated the benefits system at the age of 40 and didn't work a day after that. My mum didn't work for years, even when I was older which I thought was strange. Turns out my sister in law touched this subject when she was chatting to my mum one day and upon suggesting that my mum could look for a part time job she was told that she couldn't bare to leave me alone with him. I knew she wanted to protect me and although I ultimately ended up alone with him for years it is at least something. I grieve for the independence and confidence she never had though.

So now, with an adult perspective on her situation, I find it tragic and I feel so sad for her. She died young after having a hopeless, unhappy marriage where she felt trapped. There is no justice in any of it.  I can only distance myself from his toxicity as far as I can and be grateful for the wonderful husband and stable home life that I now have.

I really panic at work whenever someone I subconsciously deem as being higher up/better than me addresses me. Specifically the panic occurs when someone approaches my desk, which I think is because I feel trapped. My main symptoms are a racing heart and facial flushing, the latter of which has a negative effect because I get embarrassed about how it might be misconstrued (all the men in the office probably think I fancy them!)  I really don't!!

Has anyone had any success in overcoming this kind of panic? I've read self help books and I take anti-depressants which help the free floating anxiety, but these social triggers are just immense and I'm not sure how to move forward.

Does anyone else feel like they're judged really harshly sometimes for having had a horrible childhood? When I had my breakdown last winter my own mother in law who I thought might show some compassion after having anxiety herself and her own difficult mother seemed to instead completely distance herself from me. I've since learnt that rather than asking me personally about the difficulties I've had with my father she chose to ask my sister in law behind my back at a barbecue we hosted, as though it was a juicy piece of gossip. It really angers me that as soon as you're not happy or bubbly when in another person's company they just run away as though they're going to catch something, yet they still want the insider info on what's going wrong in your life.

I really feel like I've been judged harshly for not having a good relationship with my father too, even though I endured so much pain and terror when I lived alone with him. Why is it always the abused that end up being the ones who people think should fix everything?! It really drives me crazy. 

Sorry no real point to this message other than to rant! Does anyone else relate?

I wonder whether the childhood I had was really so awful sometimes and I still surprise myself when I come to the conclusion that I was very poorly treated by my father. I relate to pretty much all the symptoms of CPTSD and though undiagnosed I believe it highly likely that my dad has a sociopathic narcissistic personality disorder. Yet still my instant reaction is to attack myself and look at ways that I must somehow be doing something wrong! I've really woken up to how cruel and relentless my inner critic (and perhaps more upsettingly, my outer critic) is and the notion of everything not being my fault seems so strange, even though I know logically that I can't be held responsible for everything that ever goes wrong.

There is no smoke without fire and people don't just grow into adults suffering from toxic shame and the ensuing anxiety and tendency for depression for no reason. Something must have been wrong growing up for me to turn out like this because most other people I know have the healthy confidence, self-esteem and assertiveness of an adult which I feel I am very much lacking. I remember all these nightmares I used to get as a very young child and how self-conscious and terrified I felt being around other children at such a young age. Teachers used to say in school reports how serious I always was. That can't have been normal! It's only looking back that I see that I must have been treated badly when I was little too and I don't even remember it. I just really wish I could open my inner core, rub out all the unhealthy thoughts with an eraser and pencil in the healthier alternatives.

Blah, just getting a bit fed up with it all. It feels like an uphill struggle most of the time just trying to be a functioning member of society! 

I had a dream yesterday morning where my dad was holding some kind of tool (think it was a socket wrench or something). He had a strange expression on his face and I thought, "I haven't done anything to provoke him...he wouldn't really throw that at me, would he?" but he threw it at my head and I ran as far away from him as I could. I had a complete breakdown in the dream and ended up crying my heart out hysterically to anyone who would listen, though the only one I could really remember was an old work colleague. When I woke up I felt sick to my stomach and my chest hurt, as though I really had been heaving sobs.

I think it was my former self in the dream (my inner child?) rather than me as an adult. I felt overwhelmingly sad because the child was terrified and the one person who should have been there to protect her instead physically attacked her. I think this might be my sub-conscious coming to terms with what did happen and seeing it for what it really is. The good thing is that I feel so much compassion to myself now for what I did go through. It's just hard to fathom how a parent could treat their child the way he did. 

http://www.boredpanda.com/burning-man-festival-adults-babies-love-aleksandr-milov-ukraine/

To me this shows how the inner child emerges when you grieve for your lost childhood. I really like it and find it very poignant. What do you think?

I was on Citalopram for years (think in America you might call it Celexa) but I started to gain a lot of weight and got fed up with the lack of sex drive. I felt strong enough two or three months ago to try going it alone so came off it. I was primarily taking it for anxiety and it did help take the edge off, though I think I felt so ok on it that I didn't feel inclined to do any deeper soul searching into why I had problems in the first place. Now I'm not on it it feels like all the suppressed emotions are rising to the surface and it feels completely overwhelming. I seem to be in a constant emotional flashback triggered by so many things and now I'm just miserable. I wonder whether I have to feel these things in order to progress though. Surely when I was on anti-depressants I was just suppressing emotions that needed addressing? How do you address these feelings when on anti-depressants when they're not so prevalent?

I currently have a sociopathic narcissistic father who's been giving me a no contact guilt trip for the past couple of months which I think has loaded more stress on me than ever before, but on anti-depressants I probably would have just given into him because I wouldn't have cared so much. Maybe I'm expecting too much too soon. Complex PTSD only came on to my radar about 4 or 5 weeks ago so it's still something really new that I'm trying to come to terms with. I do feel dreadful most of the time though. In your experience can you still effectively work on overcoming CPTSD whilst on anti-depressants?

This is kind of odd. I was doing some shopping and wanted to go to the fish counter but saw the husband of a colleague there who I strongly suspect is a narcissist, so I wasn't going to go over there for fear of being triggered into panic. However, he was looking around and I thought his wife might be around somewhere too, so I thought it would be rude to just walk past. So I kind of panicked myself into going to the fish counter anyway and said "hi". He then didn't recognise me (cue inner critic berating me for being boring and forgettable) but then when I said who I was we had a conversation which I didn't really want to have (escape! must escape!) about my new job, while I got more and more panicked and flustered to the point that I felt like I was hyperventilating and could only give short answers! After what felt like hours (2 minutes realistically!) he left and I wandered around the store feeling stupid, because clearly he had seen me having a panic and I hadn't been charismatic enough and he was then going to go home and laugh about me to his wife and blah blah blah...inner critic nonsense...

On the drive home though I thought, actually, I WON'T direct the blame of my shame to myself. Instead I've placed the blame straight to where it belongs: my sociopathic, narcissistic father. I panic in social situations because of the inner beliefs he ingrained into me by abusing me throughout my childhood and adolescence. The more I thought about it the angrier I got; how dare he still continue to have such a detrimental effect on my adult life? When I got home I punched a bag of toilet roll repeatedly and let all of my anger go. It felt really good to get angry...I was never allowed to show anger as a child. I think the shame and anxiety I feel in these situations often overrides the anger, so it was good to get the anger out because I feel it's been very much locked inside for a long time. I don't think approaching a narcissist of my own free will and prompting a panic response was the most sensible thing to do given my situation (thanks panic) , however  although I do feel foolish about how I might have looked I'm not going to kick myself about it. Chances are I won't ever see this man again so it really doesn't matter anyway, plus internally all experiences I have get blown out of proportion in my head and it probably wasn't as bad as I thought it was. My instant reaction in the past has been to run straight home and hide from the shame with a bottle of wine, so I'm feeling quite proud of being kind and reassuring to myself instead. It's crazy how it takes so much work just to be nice to myself! 

Today I tried the verbal ventilation that Pete Walker suggests in his book. I wandered around the house at lunch time just talking about everything that was on my mind and reasoning through it out loud. I felt like a bit of a nutter but I think it actually did me a lot of good. Writing is good too but actually hearing my own voice reassure myself seemed to give me a lot of satisfaction.

I've been doing so much thinking about the past just lately and it's getting to the point where I feel sick of it. I don't want to hide my feelings the way I used to but it's all so intense...how are you supposed to go to work and appreciate the normal aspects of life when you're triggered constantly?! I hope it gets better. Today I did have a situation where something which would normally have triggered me into a panic response went really smoothly. It sounds so minor but I had a conversation with one of the managers at work and maintained eye contact. I managed to reassure my inner child throughout the whole thing too and we did great. Then he came back through about something else and I was back to being flushed. You win some you lose some I suppose! It just goes to show that improvements can happen though and that maybe I am on the right tracks.

I still haven't heard from my PD dad. I haven't actually phoned him for years but every 4 weeks or I usually get a phone call from him when he thinks of something he needs from me. I'm not counting properly but it must be about 5/6 weeks since we spoke. I was feeling guilty about not ringing him but I read an article last night about how sociopathic narcissists use the silent treatment as a form of punishment and that they don't feel remorse in the same way that people are usually wired to. It's put things into perspective. I desperately want to reach out because it is human nature to have connections and nurture them, whereas the PD father gains his energy and power from punishing through silence. He's punishing me just for saying no to looking after his dog while he was on holiday, even though I genuinely wasn't able to! It's all incredibly sick and twisted really.

I've been recalling memories of how bad it actually was to live alone with him when I was in my mid teens. I'm not surprised I've developed the anxiety and shame that I have as an adult. Memories are coming back to me like not having a door which would shut properly to the bathroom and him not bothering to repair the kitchen taps, so to wash up (which was always left up to me) I would have to go upstairs with the bowl and fill it up there, then bring it down again. I would say this would be acceptable short term if works were actively on-going, but something would break and he would just go stay with his girlfriend where everything worked rather than repairing anything. This went on for years. He used his health as an excuse. He was ill so people bought it and he got away with it. If you really cared for your child though then wouldn't you pay for repair work rather than taking yourself off to Australia on holiday and buying yourself brand new cars? Funny (or not) how I had to make do without a shower, flushing toilet or door which would close on the main bathroom while he had full use of a functioning en-suite bathroom. What a selfish *. He made me feel ashamed for not doing more round the house but I did as much as I could while studying hard, I really had nothing more to give. At the time I knew the way he belittled me was not fair but unfortunately it has stuck and I worry a lot about what people think of me and my actions. I think it's because I had to keep pre-empting what would trigger him into shaming me. When you're in defensive mode for so long it's hard to snap out of. 

It didn't so much bother me at the time because I was just elated to escape, but as soon as I moved out he moved his girlfriend in and did the entire house up to pretty much showroom standards so that everything was functional for her. I'm talking power showers and over the top mirrors where the lights come on when you clap your hands. Their relationship is weird though. She doesn't love him, she stays with him because she has nowhere else to go following her divorce and she gets masses of free holidays out of him. He has her around because she cooks and cleans for him. It is a messed up relationship, so the house improvements just hide the shallowness really.

It's actually been ok with him for the past couple of years while I have stayed on side. I suppose you could say that I was the golden child for quite a while. I've always known that as soon as I say no to him then that will be it though. How awful that a father/adult child relationship is based on one doing constant favours to appease the behaviour of the other, rather than mutual love and respect. I could have bent myself backwards trying to continue to please him for an easier life but why should I? I am so sick of my own needs going unanswered for his sake. What makes him so special that everyone should drop everything they're doing and rush around for his every whim? Why should I adapt my behaviour to what I think will please him? What do I actually get from it other than feelings of shame and self-hate? No-one wants to be a doormat, it's humiliating.

Right, I think I've well and truly vented for now. I'm so glad to be an adult!