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A question to everyone. Emotional abuse and neglect isn't necessarily about the ONE painful incident, it's about what day-to-day life was like. So I noticed that I'm always feeling a lot better if I consciously avoid everything that reminds me of home. I moved to another part of our county, which in Europe is enough to make sure that people's accents are VERY different. My mother's kitchen has white walls, so we painted our kitchen red. My mother loves potted plants, so I'm avoiding EVERY SINGLE kind of plant that she prefers. If, on a Sunday, the radio happens to play the Schubert or Mendelssohn Bartholdy (the way our radio station did when I was little), I at once switch to a station that plays heavy metal.

I used to be super confused about this. Why am I feeling like Busy Lizzies give off bad vibes? Why is it always like petunias have cooties? Why do I see certain things and just get this feeling like - brrrr, I have to run the other way? I used to think I was simply being childish. Nowadays, I'm kind of using it as a chance to make myself feel better. If I'm getting this helpless, bored, lonely, EF feeling again, I'm sometimes consciously trying to find out if there's something too FOO-like around, or if there's something I could do that my FOO would NEVER EVER do.

Does anyone else get that? What are these even? Cooties? They're not triggers. Busy Lizzies or petunias don't trigger me. They just give off bad vibes.

It's African Violets for me - I still can't buy them because they were my uNPDm favorite flowers. They don't trigger me, I actually like their bright and cheerful colors, but I can't and won't buy them.

Frankly, I think this is a remnant of adolescent behavior - trying to assert ourselves as individuals. I don't know about you, but I've never really hit puberty - I had to be a grownup by the time I was 8 and missed practically all 'normal' stages of development. Asserting myself as an adolescent was not an option - it was too dangerous for me - so I'm guessing that avoiding things that were typical for my uNPD parents is really more or less catching up on my adolescence...

Emotional abuse often takes on the form of being kept so busy catering to the toxic person's needs that you just don't get the time to take care of your own needs or even learn to recognize that you are neglecting your own needs. It can also take on the form of emotional enmeshment so it's hard to tell where the toxic person ends and you begin... Maybe purposefully avoiding things that remind us of a toxic person is just a way of giving ourselves leave to take care of our own lives now?

I closed the tab and sat there, utterly spooked, heart pounding. Finally, that one hellish time in my life made sense. Hooray. That's good. But it also means that it really happened, it really was just as bad as I felt it was, and that is scary.

But can this really be true? It's not like I grew up in a cult! What do I have to complain about? It was just emotional abuse, it wasn't the GULAG.

That sounds pretty frightening. I am glad you've got your DH on your side to help you cope with the horrible memories.

The way I see it, we did grow up in a cult called the 'family system' that centered around one or more toxic person(s).

Are you familiar with Steven Hassan's BITE model? It's a good resource for the different levels on which mind control works (another term for 'brainwashing').

https://www.freedomofmind.com/Info/BITE/bitemodel.php

Somewhere at the beginning of Pete Walker's book on CPTSD, he mentions that his method can also help cult victims.

On the other hand, to this day I've got trouble believing in my own opinions. I'm so used to thinking: "oh, but that can't be true - after all, it's me thinking it." Now THAT certainly isn't an attitude I was born with.

How about you? Anyone else feel that? Or is it just me? What are your experiences with this? If this truly is a part of CPTSD - being unused to validating one's own opinions and experiences - then that would be a major stumbling block on our way to recovery, right? How can I win if I haven't got myself on my side?

You're definitely NOT alone in this - we were programmed to believe in the superiority of their judgment and our own inferiority. The ability to trust in my own judgment is a skill that I haven't mastered yet - and I'm in my forties and have been NC with both my parents for more than 13 years.

Like you said: Time to get ourselves on our side!

Hi, bheart,

nice to meet you!

I'm glad you found this community. Since you've been reading/lurking already, you probably already feel that there is a lot of warmth and support to be found here. Hopefully you'll feel less isolated with your CPTSD.

Looking forward to your contributions!

kf

Rant away - it sounds like you need it  .

How is your depression now?

Your mother sounds like a two faced, cold hearted manipulator. I am so sorry for the way you've been treated as a child/adolescent/adult. It sounds horrible. (((hug)))

Before you let yourself get too confused over a small incident and begin to doubt yourself too much: Look at the evidence of her actions, pay no attention to her words or those of her flying monkeys. Does this letter of thanks addressed to your children really show remorse about how she treated you? Does it demonstrate that she wants things between you and her to improve or might it be an attempt to influence your own children in her favor? ...

Here's a link to an enlightening article about emotional manipulation, how to spot it and protect yourself against it. Maybe you know it already.

http://themindunleashed.org/2014/09/8-ways-spot-emotional-manipulation-free.html

Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Who's Pulling Your Strings?: How to Break the Cycle of Manipulation and Regain Control of Your Life

Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

Seems like you've got your work cut out for you! 

The part that was a real eyeopener for me in the "Mistakes were made..." book was the part about how people justify hurting others towards themselves so that they can still feel they are good and decent people. That question had been haunting me for very long (my uNPDf is a self proclaimed spiritual leader which - in my book - is incompatible with the cruelty he has shown towards us as his children)

(((BadMemories)))

What a horrible horrible loss to bear.

Shame that your bro and sis are in very different places than you are in dealing with it.

You haven't chosen the easiest way to deal with all the hurt, but probably the healthiest. Keep on going! Kudos!

Hi, sebas,

nice to meet you!

I do hope you will find help and solace here.

You have had a bad time of it and no mistake. I am sorry to read about the traumas of your childhood and the betrayal of your mother and stepfather.

I am glad you managed to get your father's last name back. I understand a bit how important it must have been to you. I got married to a man from another European country than my own. When we got married, we could choose which last name laws we wanted applied to our union. We chose the laws of my country (in which we could choose between each keeping their own last name or choosing the name of either partner for both - in my husband's country the last name laws say that each keeps his/her own last name and are only allowed to use the partner's inofficially). I sooooooooooo badly wanted to get rid of that *'s (my uNPDf) last name! For years I had run-ins with different institutions here (like banks etc) who wanted to force me to use my father's last name instead of my husband's (customs of this country are more familiar to them, I guess). It took about 2 years until I had every last contract and document in my chosen last name.

Good luck on your way to healing!

kf

Triggered by another topic about nightmares, I remembered that in the early stages of T my nightmares were gradually replaced by dreams which actually empowered me:

I had a number of dreams in which I was reliving particular scenes from my childhood. The child me would feel frightened, confused and powerless but then the grownup me would enter the dream stage, protect the child and tell my abusing parents all that the child could not and did not tell them. (No prizes for guessing what inspired those dreams - they were pretty much along the line of what we were working on in T at the time)

Waking up after such a dream felt great.

I think that it's amazing that the same mechanism that gives us the frightening nightmares can also come to our rescue and help us deal with the issues for which daytime just isn't long enough...

This summer vacation, quite out of the blue, I had another one of those empowering dreams: This time, it was only the teenage me and my overt uNPDf starring in it. We were on our way to my highschool graduation and he was going on and on about his church activities (he is a self proclaimed spiritual leader of some standing - lol). Then the teenage me turned towards him, told him to shut up for once about himself and let this graduation be about me and my achievements and nothing else. (See, in my dream he actually respected my wishes, IRL he never would have done so). Don't know where any of this was coming from but I woke up laughing.

Did any of you have these kind of dreams? Dreams that helped you in your recovery?

You made me think of all the things I got spanked with...paddle boards(the kind you buy with the ball and rubber band), willow branches, construction markers(1.5 x1/4), wooden spoons or spatulas,belts,and jump ropes.  i remember we realized if we screamed more she would stop... but once she found out we did that and then DIDN"T stop even IF we were really crying.

Funny, Now Mom tells MY children that it is not good to spank kids... but that is what they did then. I think the emotional abuse was worse for me. Playing us siblings against each other, having scapegoats, Golden child, (it switched depending on her mood)Making me be responsible for all the children at a young age. (I had NO childhood.) When I was molested by Policemans son, just acting like nothing happened. Never letting me out of the house and grounding me months for small infractions so she would not have to deal with it, Making Us clean house for her all the time, making us cook,.

Really when You read it none of it sounds bad... why am I so broke? Or am I just remembering the easy stuff?

(((hug)))

OMG, if this was the 'easy stuff', I shudder to think what else was there.

You're a survivor and a fighter. You've done what you had to to survive back then - and you're doing what you have to to thrive now. It's hard work to get yourself better and you're an inspiration to us all with all your research and your warm and insightful comments. Be nice to yourself - healing can be quite as painful as the original injury was but if you look closely, the wound gets smaller and more manageable with each passing day.

(((grouphug)))

Nightmares are such a horrible part of CPTSD. Rob us of the little sleep we get.

I used to have lots of nightmares - some of them repeatedly (my bed stepped over a railing and I fell towards a black and white checkered floor was one of the earliest ones; woke me up every time) and others partial reenactments of events and/or conversations I've had or witnessed. Until I read this thread I didn't know they were called 'themed nightmares' but I had those, too. Mine were about me giving birth alone in tunnels while everyone of my travelling group was moving on without me (??!???). I used to have those a lot in adolescence.

My worst recurring nightmare took place in what I called my nightmare house: It was a house which I knew well and I was terrified of it, yet I knew for a fact that it didn't exist IRL. My DH read C.G. Jung's theory on dreams. It was something along the lines that the elements of dreams represent a period in your life. When I analyzed my nightmare house, I realized that I knew it so well because it was composed of elements of my grandma's house, my best friend's house and our local church building - the three of them together were part of my life between 8 and 10 years old. That information was very helpful to me. I haven't done a lot of IC work, but what I've done was focused on the child me at that age - the tortured little soul that tried so hard and was unwanted and unloved.

At that time, I was also in T for PTSD, so I don't know whether it was the Jung way of analyzing dreams or T or the combination thereof - but my nightmares have all but stopped and for more than a decade now. I still have one occasionally but they are few and far between - nothing like the ones I used to get that almost made me afraid to fall asleep.

Here is a good book on Cognitive Dissonance: http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/product-description/0156033909

It's easy to read, really funny when you 'recognize' someone else in your life - and very enlightening when you 'recognize' yourself in it. Should be a must-read for any human being .

I don't know anything about Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome.

Like I've already posted somewhere else, my youngest DD had an accident about a year ago. She will have to be in specialist dental care until she's 20 years old which means another 10 years to go for her.

A few months later, DH and older DD got into a car accident together. Luckily, just a few bruises for DH but the car was a write off.

Another six weeks later, older DD left on her bike to school. A few minutes later, she called me on my cell and from her voice I could immediately tell that something was seriously wrong (she's not one to make a fuss). She had gotten into a biking accident. She was disoriented but some nice lady was with her and told me where she was. Turned out she had a concussion and a broken nose.

That all happened in the last 'school year' (here: from September to July). Now the new school year has started and I'm frozen stiff. I am terrified that even more nasty things like that will happen to my little family and I really really feel that I can't take any more.

I've been trying to rationalize this, telling myself that the odds of anything on that scale happening again to our little family are extremely small and I should not worry about it but it doesn't seem to help. I am trying to escape the angst by reading, fitness classes, playing endless mindnumbing games on the internet and comfort eating. I feel like if I fade quietly away, where no one notices me or gets annoyed by me, I can keep my family from harm (I know it sounds completely mad but that's how I feel). If I stay quiet and invisible, than maybe fate or whoever is in charge will spare us from more accidents and hurt.

Does anyone have any useful tips/would like to share his/her experience of how to get out of this frozen state of mind? - I seem to be at my wit's end here....

Update:

We'll go on a family trip to commemorate the anniversary of the accident - something fun for the kids and relaxing for us. Also, I am going to buy some flowers and write a thank you note to the emergency dentist. His concern for DD's wellbeing and his role in getting her to have the best specialist care in the area was like a ray of sunshine in a very dark period in our lives. DD had written and drawn a thank you card for him a few weeks after the accident and invited him to come to her restaurant once she's grown up and a chef  (...only now she's changed her plans and wants to become an astronaut instead  ), but this one would be from me and DH.

I did/do feel wistful but now I'm thinking along the lines of "How can I turn this positive, caring, supportive approach toward my younger self and help her work through her trauma?"  As Katz points out, a lot of the elements I think our IC need are there in your example of how you dealt with your DD's accident KF - respect, choice, voice, support, caring ......  The trick is in giving it to ourselves now. 

....the trick before that is feeling worthy of warmth and kindness and understanding. I know my IC is, but I'm having trouble allowing myself to feel it. Shame is a very hard thing to overcome - but luckily we can all support each other in our efforts to get there...

With regard to the upcoming anniversary, is there something you could do to help make it more positive?  Coming up to a year after I had surgery and chemo for cancer my H and I started to feel that awful sense of dread you talk about (and we learned later that's common). So we chose a really nice restaurant in the Rockies with an incredible view and food, and on the anniversary of my diagnosis we looked back on the year that followed as we sat together and had this amazing dinner with an amazing view.   It was a way of remembering/ acknowledging a very tough time in a pleasant and life-affirming environment.  It took some of the pain and fear of those memories away by layering some positives memories on top if that makes sense.   I don't know if there's something like that that you could all plan together but it might be helpful in processing things.

That is a very nice idea. I'll discuss it with my family this weekend. Thank you for sharing the story of your anniversary - I cannot imagine what you must have been through but this is a wonderful way of giving credit to both the feelings of dread and pain as well as those of hope and strength.

Also thank you for the compliment.  (I feel a bit embarassed now)