How I came to be here

[DD]

I find my story still a hard one to tell, even though there are countless of others with worse stories out there. But for me it has been traumatic enough. My childhood environment was abusive and toxic. My father has covert narcissist tendencies and my mother had a lot of undealt childhood trauma, was manipulative and enmeshed with me. I was always told I had a good childhood and good parents and my reality of feeling horrible inside was not acknowledged and not allowed to show. I ended up dissasociating with my entire childhood around the age of 20.

I was in an oppressive religion before then and shunned in it but unable to leave, thanks to dad.
My brother used to vent his unwellness and emotional pressure on me with quite hard emotional violence.
My mother was at times a bit violent. Often manipulative and I was her main support system from the age of 13 I think.
I had a few unhealthy relationships with sexual violence issues, although they weren't considered rape then.
I left the religion at 20, and pushed all memories and emotions of it somewhere in my psyche until I reconnected with it last November.

When I finally got away from the religion and moved away from home around 20, my brothers decided they wanted nothing to do with me because in their eyes I was treated better than them although to my father, I only existed as a mainly this princess doll that needed no connection and to my mother I was the therapist. So they wanted nothing to do with me but thanks to my father's constant pressuring to do so, I tried to regain contact for 15 years with no success. My father tried for 20 years to get me back to the church despite repeated requests and pleas to stop.

Around the age of 20 I met my husband, who became my religion after I left the previous one. To him I had the role of being the one who was unwell and broken and he was the one who was all together and my mentor and it ended up being quite full on control of my reality. When we had kids 12 years later, it became abusive emotionally, financially, and a bit sexually as well, for the next 9 years. until I divorced last year.

I broke it off with my family last month. They still don't believe it and try to contact me.

I am now regaining lost memories, being triggered a lot and accessing long lost emotions. So this is how I came to be here.

[Kizzie]

Hi and a warm welcome to OOTS Dragon Dancer     Glad you found your way here and I hope being able to talk about all that you have been through will help bring about some healing. We're a pretty welcoming, friendly and helpful group. I'm so sorry you went through all that you did, it's a lot to deal with.

[Armee]

Hi,

Im.sorry you've been through so much. Including having people close to you hurt you and deny reality.

My understanding is that the memories start to arise when our brain thinks we can handle them, and in my experience at a pace we can handle. It seems being free from family and your ex has allowed you to be in a safe enough space to start to process. It can be really very painful and difficult but we'll be here with you understanding what you are going through. My experience has been even while going through the awful reconnection with memory and past experiences that I still in spite of this continue to feel better and better even though there are some slumps too.

So welcome. Glad you are here. 

[Papa Coco]

Hi Dragon Dancer,

Welcome to the forum. Your story is welcome here. Narcissistic parents, angry siblings, sexual abuse and toxic religious abuse are all a part of my story as well. I'm very glad to see you found this forum. The people here are helpful and kind and validating. We're all sort of in the same rescue boat. Our stories are believed by each other. Even though our stories are all unique, they seem to have led us to the same place for healing.

What I've learned is that narcissists are all exactly the same. They follow the same playbook, word for word. Controlling, dishonest, belittling, invalidating, angry, fakes who make friends by lying about who they are, and who create chaos every day so they can control the confusion, and eventually betraying anyone who ever disagrees with them.


I usually don't give suggestions on introductory posts, but religious abuse is one of my biggest pet peeves, so I just want to share where I found help with my own religious traumas:

To handle the traumas for my religious abuse, I started following Andrew Jasco on his forums and his YouTube interviews. At one point, a year ago, I even contacted him and signed up for 10 therapy sessions over Zoom. You might at least Google him and read some of his posts or watch some of the YouTube interviews with him. He really, truly understands how religions abuse embeds itself deeply in our souls. He helps to lessen the pain of religious trauma.




Again, welcome and I hope the good people here are able to bring some comfort to you as they do to me.