First post here

[Marzipan]

Hello. Well, here's my first post on this forum. I randomly found the link to this website in the middle of a book, and felt grateful to stumble upon this. It's hard to know what to say, especially on an introductory post. I guess I'll just say that I had a kind of complicated, confusing, difficult relationship with my parents, and have been in therapy for about a year. I started going for other reasons and only just recently started getting into some of my deeper, more longer lasting issues. I'm currently having a hard time making sense of what was maybe not appropriate behavior from my parents and what was normal. I'm an only child and as my therapist has pointed out, kids don't have a reference for their experiences, it's just what life is like. So I'm hoping to maybe get some feedback here at some point. And it's just nice to know there's a place to kind of anonymously talk about these things that are hard to talk about. I appreciate this forum existing. 😊

[Moondance]

Welcome to you Marzipan. I am new as well and want to congratulate you on your first step and sharing your introduction.

Although I joined this past week I find this forum supportive and encouraging. 

[SteveM]

Welcome Marzipan!
I am new as well and have found the people here open and welcoming and yes , refreshing to find a place that you can speak your whole truth!
Steve M

[Armee]

Hi and welcome! 

It takes awhile to understand what happened to us. I've found getting support from a group of survivors here has been extremely healing. More than anything else. To have others who have been through difficult traumas tell you what happened to you wasn't ok...it's really validating.

[Papa Coco]

Welcome Marzipan!

I am glad you found this forum. I found it the same way you did, by chance and by luck. I've been a member for about a year and a half. It's the most supportive community I've ever been a part of on any topic.

Don't worry about not knowing what to say on your introductory post. As you read and share, whatever you need to say will eventually flow for you.

I spend most of my time in the Recovery Journal section. That's a place where we can basically talk about anything that's important to us on any given day. We can respond to each other. It's like a never ending conversation spot.

When you say you had a complicated, confusing, difficult relationship with your parents, you've pretty much described how Complex-PTSD became a part of your life. I have been in therapy for anxiety/depression since I was 20 years of age. I'm almost 63 now. I was 40 when I finally found a good therapist. The first 20 years were with therapists who just wanted me to scream into a pillow and snap rubber bands on my wrist. But at 40, my current therapist introduced me to the term PTSD. It confused me because PTSD comes from a single traumatic event that nearly takes one's life. Like a war, or a car crash or house fire or something. I had no recollection of ever being in a single traumatic event, so how could I possibly have PTSD, right?  But now that we know the term Complex-PTSD, we now know that having complicated, confusing, long-term, gaslighting and betrayal by narcissistic parents, teachers, ministers, siblings, etc, now we know that we can be traumatized in confusing ways also.

Sharing our stories here on this forum has shown me how, while each of us has a unique past, there are some very strong similarities to all we've been through. We each respond differently to various treatments, but as we share these emerging treatments with one another, we're all learning from each other what helps and what doesn't.

The best part of this forum is that I don't feel alone with my "crazy" anymore. Knowing that so many people have felt as alone as I have always felt somehow makes my loneliness not so lonely.

I hope that we can give you the same kinds of comfort that I receive here.  This is group of people who are difficult to shock. We've each been through so much that no matter what comes to your mind that you want to discuss, there will be compassion and understanding here for you.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

[Blueberry]

Welcome to the forum, Marzipan

[Marzipan]

Thank you all so much for the welcoming responses. I do really appreciate it. I'll have to do some figuring out where to post what, but hopefully I won't bungle that up too much. Thank you again for the support and kindness.

[woodsgnome]

Hey, Marzipan; glad you're here, but sad for the circumstances that lie behind your need for seeking this forum out.

Personally, I've never been able to make sense of what was, and remains, to my mind, the total senselessness of our various forms of abuse. They didn't make sense then (other than they hurt deeply). They still don't make any sense, and probably never will.

While I may have given up on definitive answers, I have found this forum invaluable for providing a place where the world seems less daunting, for a change. Having found others with similar scenarios that are horrible to contemplate, the good news is that we still want to rebuild ourselves to function as best we can. Another word for this is captured in a song I heard just yesterday, called Resilience. It includes a line referring to standing shoulder to shoulder, and about how we can still/and will -- move forward in spite of what happened to us.

Anyway, enough of my babbling -- Welcome 

[Papa Coco]

Hi Marizpan,

To your comment that you are looking for where to post, I usually spend most of my time in the Recovery Journals. A lot of people go there daily and update their own journals, and also respond very collaboratively with each other's journals. 

The Recovery Journals are about in the very center of all the various thread choices, under the block heading of Treatment & Self Help. Once you're in that block, Recovery Journals is about the 4th thread topic in.

I hope this helps. The Recovery Journals are a pretty active thread most every day.

[NarcKiddo]

Welcome.

I totally agree with your therapist's comment about the experience of a child being all they know. You just think it is normal. Even now, knowing what I know and having had express confirmation from my therapist that my upbringing was objectively abusive, I still have moments where I struggle to accept that. It took me decades to even figure out something was badly awry.