The Yo-Yo of Self

[Papa Coco]

Hi Dante.

YES!  I am exactly the same. The PTSD has divided me into two people: Outwardly I'm a highfunctioning, competent, rescuer. I build my own furniture, I designed my own home. I've published three novels. I was a singer for a while. I was a standup comedian in the 1990s. Meanwhile, unbeknown to many who know me, I'm on the verge of complete collapse almost every day. In 2011 when I started writing my first novel I told my coworkers what I was doing. They asked what the book was about. I told them that it was about a boy who had to survive an abusive life just like mine. Then I told them of the abuse I've lived through. At first, everyone was shocked. I'd hear, "Man! I never would have expected to hear that your life was like that!" Why? Because I was real good at being who I believed people needed me to be. Mr. Happy-got-the-world-by-the-tail funnyman. I was like Robing Williams: A beloved-but-troubled comedian. Maybe it's a case of Imposter Syndrome. I am highly competent, outgoing, and risky on the outside, but pretty sure I'm a worthless, humiliating bum on the inside.

I can't ask for help. I own tools and winches and small cranes and handtrucks and my own pickup and my own garden trailer just so I NEVER have to ask anyone to help me with anything heavy or difficult. I kayak alone. I ride my bike alone. I walk alone. That way I never feel like I'll be punished later for "making someone go with me doing something I want to do." I do all the cooking at home and never ask for help. I do most of the housework and all the yard work. Asking for help in my childhood was asking for serious trouble. In my family I was never allowed to ask for anything. When I asked, my family answered with "You don't want that!" If I ever admitted something made me happy, they'd take it away from me. From childhood on I had to pretend I wasn't excited about anything if I wanted to keep it. On the rare occassions that I did manage to get someone to ever give me something I wanted, or give me a ride to a friend's house, or anything at all, it would only be a matter of time before I'd find out that I'd ruined their day that time I had once "made" them give me a ride. The shame of having been the cause of their unhappiness would cut right through me. And I'm talking about as far back as I have cognitive memory. My siblings were teens when I was born. They had absolute power over me. If any of them had given me anything, ever, I'd eventually find out that somehow I'd caused them pain or cost them money for making them give me something that I didn't deserve. So Today I live knowing that I can't ask anyone for anything. They'll either say no, which will hurt a little, or they'll say yes, and eventually I'll find out they helped me under durress and I'll need to hang my head in pure shame for having been such a selfish jerk. I'll NEVER pick the restaurant with friends just in case someone doesn't like their food, because my trigger response tells me I'll be blamed for making them unhappy. I'm in a trap I can't escape from: Whether I get what I want or not I end up totally ashamed of myself for having ever asked for any help.  As I grew, my family of older siblings proved beyond a doubt that if they ever gave me a dime I'd end up somehow owing them a hundred dollars later. My family was under the sick control of sister #2.  She was 11 years older than me and a raging sociopath. If she ever gave me anything or any help of any kind, it was a setup to come back on me and take something big from me in return. Sociopaths only give a little when they want something bigger in return. Like the wicked witch in the woods who gave Hansel and Grettle some candy just so she could fatten them up and destroy them later.

Dante, your words are freakishly familiar. In one of my all time favorite movies, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Logan Lehrman is writing to his journal, "Only you can understand how I can be happy and sad at the same time."  That's ME!  That's CPTSD!  We're divided. We're all-or-nothing thinkers. On any given day we're either in Heaven or *, but never on the earth in between. I over achieve, NOT because I am trying to compete with my peers but because if I don't do five times more work than them, I'll be rejected, ostracized, walked away from...humiliated as being totally worthless as a human being. I overcompensate everything just so I can feel like I'll be allowed to stay in the game at all. Sadly, this feeling resets every morning. Whatever amazing things I did yesterday mean nothing. It's a new day and I'm totally worthless again. In other words, I've saved people's lives, but when you ask me what I have to offer, I can't think of a single thing. I ONLY remember the humiliating things I've done. I honestly see myself as completely worthless, dispite a long list of accomplishments I can't even remember having made.

During my lifetime, I've many times imagined washing up on the beach of an uncharted island and finding a race of people who were just like me. This was a fantasy because I honest to goodness believed I was the only freak on the entire planet. In the second grade I was sexually abused muiltiple times by more than one person (Two clergy and one older boy). In the 5th grade my best friend tried to give me a ring. But I didn't have any idea what was going on. I was 10. He became furious that I didn't accept his ring. Out of nowhere he nicknamed me "homo" and was able to convince my entire Catholic School (in 1970) that I was gay. I wasn't gay, and I really didn't know what the label even meant. I didn't understand what was happening but I spent years begin beaten up and taunted for something I didn't even understand. Even some of the christian teachers joined into the abuse. Being labeled as gay today is difficult and can be dangerous, but being labeled gay in a church in 1970 was just one notch beneath a fullfledged de*th sentence. My family told me not to bring my little problems home for them to deal with. I was instead instructed to just ignore the entire school and to never, ever, ever fight back. (it would embarrass them if they ever had to see the principle for me getting into a fight). So I spent the next several years completely isolated and treated like the freak of all freaks. Being mob-bullied at school and UNsupported at home is a terrible combination. Few kids survive that. I almost didn't. So at night, to fall sleep, until I was in my 40s, I would imagine I'd been welcomed in by a whole village of island people who felt life as deeply as I do, and who were just as naive and loving and caring and just as afraid of other people as I was, and that I'd never have to hide my true nature from them, and that they'd never turn on me the way the people of the known world turned on me. I used to imagine that little fantasy to help me fall asleep at night.

This is bad. I'm rambling. I'm writing wayyy too much. I need to stop. I just wanted to let you know that YES!  I resonate with every single word you've written here. In many ways I feel the same!

[Gromit]

Papa Coco has just explained my behaviour to me. I find it so much easier to do things alone than to risk feeling someone else's disappointment at what I chose to do.  Or at least, I did, now I am married with kids, it is rare I do anything alone like that now aside from watching TV shows. I used to tell myself that if I did not do these things alone, I would not do them, so I did, never risking asking anyone to join me out of fear of their rejection. But, I felt that shame when my OH took me to London for a break, I got tickets for exhibitions, then felt such shame when he did not enjoy them, although the trip was for my birthday. I am not sure I have risked doing anything like that since.

Yes, I am outwardly, calm, confident, unflustered, but a mess inside.

Super thread.

G

[bluepalm]

This thread has me in tears. So much suffering endured for so long by so many. All at the hands of other humans. What other form of life turns on its own members, trying to destroy them with such cruelty and ferocity?

Papa Coco you were not rambling - every word had meaning for me. You refer to Hansel and Gretel being fattened up for destruction. I once used a similar image to convey that I learnt early in life not to ask for anything.

Hansel and Gretel ate the house,
nibbled at it like a mouse.
I shut my mouth and hunger denied.
To save my mother, my soul, it died.

One time I did ask for something from my father, to collect me from the railway station in his car because I felt too sick to walk the mile distance home, he was visibly angry with me when he collected me and told me he'd calculated that trip to collect me would cost him two shillings and sixpence and that amount included wear on the carburettor. That taught me I had less value to him than the carburettor in his car engine.

Gromit - you said 'I am outwardly, calm, confident, unflustered, but a mess inside'. Trying to convey this 'internal mess' to a therapist once, I explained that although I sat there well put together with lipstick and perfume and earrings, if I were to open my skin down the middle of my body she would see a tangled, bludgeoned mess of blood and gristle instead of a neat placement of internal organs.

I learnt very early in life to show no preference for anything because I knew that whatever I preferred would be taken from me or destroyed. My shorthand visualisation of this caution I learnt to display was that if I held out in my hand a pretty flower and said to my father 'isn't it beautiful' he would grab it and crush it in front of me.

I'll stop because I feel sick remembering all this. Thank you to all who have contributed to this valuable, albeit distressing, thread.

[Papa Coco]

I see a very common thread here in all of us.

The details of our stories may differ, but the theme is pretty stable. We are Fawn Types because we were shown that to fawn over others was all we were good for.

Gromit, your story touches me. It fits me perfectly. I can't enjoy so many things I want to enjoy, even on my birthdays, because I'm worried I'm making my wife or kids do something they really don't want to do. I seldom get to eat what I want to eat because I cook for my wife's taste buds rather than my own, and we go to her favorite restaurants instead of mine. If I make food that I like, then I can't enjoy it because I worry I should have made what she likes instead.

And Bluepalm, your story of the ride from the train station is the story of my entire childhood. As a boy I was told my parents never had the money to buy me a bike or a football of my own (they lied. They had PLENTY of money), so I tried to get my own jobs to earn my own money. But I was repeatedly denied the opportunity, because "I'd fail, and they'd have to put themselves out to deliver my papers for me or mow my lawns for me." There was no truth to that. I had proven myself a thousand ways to them as a responsible kid, but they still wouldn't see it. I am a workaholic even to this day who never lets anyone down. But they were constantly reminding me how expensive I was and how difficult their lives would be if I got something I wanted.  They made me responsible for their happiness and I took that responsibility on. How you describe yourself, a hidden tangled mess of gristle feels pretty familiar to me too. No doubt.  When I was a little boy, my mother would sing this song about how little girls were made of sugar and spice and everything nice, but little boys were made of dismembered dog tails and rocks and filth you find in the garbage. It was probably meant to make me feel like I was tough??? but it made me feel like I was garbage. It was just a song, but it fit with what my mother thought of me. I hated that song!!!  Also, as a tiny boy I would sometimes ask her why she loved me. Her answer was always the same, "you're my son. I have to love you."  Apparently she was required by law or something to put up with me.

So we all kind of know how we became the Fawn Types here. And we are all searching for answers to help us live with that. I suppose the overarching question here really is: If I'm stuck being a Fawn Type, but I'm without someone to Fawn over, then who am I at all? I'm like a fisherman without a boat. Or a teacher without students. I'm a Fawn type--a servant without a master.

I feel like I have a me-shaped hole in my heart that I don't care about. My job is to find that love for myself that was denied me during the formative years. I was born pure, then rewired to not respect myself, and now I need to unrewire myself. (You won't find the word unrewired in the dictionary, ha ha).

I believe there is hope for all of us. I believe that if we seek, we find, and we here are all seekers. I believe the help and the answers are out there for me--for us. For me the challenge is to make sure I'm asking the right questions. And today's question is, "How can I accept and respect the Fawning in my personality and still find the self-love I need to enjoy my life more and feel like I belong?"

I know the truth. We all belong. We all have rights. For lack of respectful parents, we just don't feel like we do.

It's trauma. Pure and simple. This is not a character flaw, nor a disease, nor a birth defect. This is Trauma. The better we get at learning about trauma, the better we'll become at finding that love for ourselves that we have all earned. For the most part, we Fawn types are the world's most beautiful people who have devoted our lives to others. The salt of the earth. So we have definitely earned a place in our own hearts.

If we seek it, we'll find it. I'm sure of it.

[Pippi]

I know this thread is a little old, but it was so powerfully relatable to me that I need to chime in too.  Wow.  You people are all stunningly brave and wonderful.  And my heart aches for all the hidden pain you are carrying, because I carry this, too.  Dante, I absolutely relate to being home to a hidden cauldron of pain and rage, while my outside is presentable, put-together, and successful in almost every area of my life.  In my case, I have even made a career out of helping vulnerable people who are often ostracized in our society, and am seen by colleagues as a strong, caring, highly functional person, even a role model whom people seek out for advice!  But inside, I feel like Bluepalm: A tangled, bludgeoned mess.  I think I've always felt this way, and it has made me always feel different from others, always on the edge of the group (even if I'm leading the group!  I'm great at performing at a party!), a fraud, imposter waiting to be found out for the hideous evil wreck that I truly am. 

And until recently, I have never, despite decades of therapy(!!), put it together that a person who had a happy childhood (the one my family assures me that I had) would not feel like I do.  I would feel lovable and safe if I had been raised with love and safety. 

It is so lonely, isn't it?  Always feeling like you are set apart, somehow flawed and damaged, and longing to be seen and loved for more than just the perfect image you put out there to the world?  Of course, we are not flawed.  We ARE worthy, as all humans are. 

My therapist is encouraging me not to tear down and blame my high-functioning, perfectionist part.  She reminds me, as Kizzie said so well in this thread, that our "outside" part is not just a mask, but is a part of us that is working really hard to keep us safe, to keep the world together amidst all our inner chaos.  So I am trying to embrace this part of me, too.

I'm curious if anyone relates to this:  I'm a bit ashamed of this, but here goes. I've realized that one of my coping mechanisms for dealing with always feeling secretly bad and different was to become somewhat narcissistic.  As the daughter of a raging narcissist, I had a master teacher.  I was his "golden child" and groomed by him to see myself as "special." I now realize that this was not a kindness, but really manipulative, to tell me I was different and even better than other people.  It just exacerbated the feeling that I was a fraud, and put even more pressure on me to perform at a high level in every area of my life.  I do now see that being "special" and narcissistic just separates us from having any true and meaningful connection with others.  Being "special" feels pretty awful.  Yes, I'm special. But so is every child and every adult.   For me, the turning point came a few years ago, when I was actually at an awards ceremony for an award that I had been nominated for.  It was the pinnacle of my life's work and all my dreams.  I was in a fancy dress in a glittering ballroom. And standing there, I FINALLY heard the voice in my head, and it said: "You are loathsome. You don't belong."  That night changed my life forever.  I had achieved all my goals and it didn't matter (and my narcissistic father, whose love I'd been chasing all along), didn't even notice.  He was too wrapped up in himself to see me, yet again. 

This forum is such a gift.  I feel safe and seen here.  I feel like I belong here, like the dark mess inside me isn't so dark and shameful after all.  Thank you.

[bluepalm]

This thread keeps giving to me.

Papa Coco - what you write here resonates deeply with me. I, too, know it is true. What you wrote deserves repeating.

"I know the truth. We all belong. We all have rights. For lack of respectful parents, we just don't feel like we do.

"It's trauma. Pure and simple. This is not a character flaw, nor a disease, nor a birth defect. This is Trauma. The better we get at learning about trauma, the better we'll become at finding that love for ourselves that we have all earned. For the most part, we Fawn types are the world's most beautiful people who have devoted our lives to others. The salt of the earth. So we have definitely earned a place in our own hearts."

Having recently started seeing a trauma informed therapist who is taking a refreshing approach to my concerns and whose first counsel was that I need to be my own best friend, I'm getting more optimistic that 'if I seek it, I will find it' - although I'm not yet 'sure' I'll find it. But boy am I willing to work hard with him to try to find it!

Pippi - you say: "It is so lonely, isn't it?  Always feeling like you are set apart, somehow flawed and damaged, and longing to be seen and loved for more than just the perfect image you put out there to the world?" 

Yes, I understand this so well. I long to be seen and loved for all that I am. Just for being. I have yet to experience this. And maybe I never will. However, I'm willing to work at learning to love and care for myself. That's all I can realistically expect. And maybe that is enough.

As an aside, may I say that I love your chosen name 'Pippi'. As I child my very favourite book was Pippi Longstocking. It was my favourite because Pippi lived her life without parents. I so enjoyed that Pippi had no parents in her day to day life. It was wonderful to contemplate that state of freedom. I later learned that I was not alone - my (younger) brother longed for our parents to die so we two children could live quietly alone, free of them.  When I learnt that, I felt so sad for my brother, who I did not regard as flawed and damaged, but as a full human being, deserving of love. I'm still learning to also feel sad for myself.  The flaws and damage inside me include a churning mess of 'you don't deserve to be loved' that I need to cast aside. This I am still working on.

Thank you to everyone for this helpful and meaningful thread.

[Pippi]

bluepalm, it's so nice to encounter another fan of Pippi Longstocking!  And I loved her (and still love her) for the same reason you did:  She was free and empowered, without any parents or older siblings to hurt her.  I've actually always felt myself drawn to orphan stories, and only recently did I realize that this was related to my childhood.  I've recently enjoyed rereading these orphan stories.  Some of my favorites:

My Side of the Mountain (not exactly an orphan, but a boy who runs away to live alone in the mountains)
Anne of Green Gables
Jane Eyre
Nancy and Plum
The Boxcar Children
James and the Giant Peach

I know there are many more orphans in literature, but these are some of my favorites. They have always made me feel calm and hopeful.  I wonder how many of these books were written by people like us?   

[Dante]

Pippi, I firmly believe that if you can (genuinely and non-manipulatively) ask "Am I a narcissist?" , the answer is probably no.  I can relate to what you're saying, because I had that same sensation of being special, of doing something that "mattered".  I lived my life in a fog that was never quite real.  I now know the term for that is dissociative fantasy.  It's a protective mechanism, it keeps you from feeling how truly awful everything is.  I think I believed I was special cause surely there was a reason to suffer like this.  Becoming aware of it - finally! - has helped me to see it for what it is and push back against it when the fog settles in.  There are days when the howling monsters are barely still in the closet, but fewer days than there used to be.  It's also helped me to finally make some headway against my addictions and compulsions.   And that little voice telling you you're not good enough is your inner critic.  It developed to make sure you didn't make mistakes that could get you punished. 

Coming here and finding this group, I finally see that as Papa Coco says, these are normal reactions to abnormal circumstances.  Realizing that has helped me take it all less personally, and to feel like - just maybe - I'm not the obsessive compulsive addicted loser freak I always firmly knew I was - cause that's what I was told. 

I'm glad you're here and I am grateful for the opportunity to learn from everyone!

[Pippi]

Dante, thank you so much for sharing that with me, and for the term "dissociative fantasy."  That feels absolutely like what I've been living in, for many, many years.  My therapist says that my (very intense) fantasy life was adaptive, and was one of the ways I survived, and I guess she's right.  But now I don't want to live in a dissociated fantasy world any more.  I'm glad to hear that you have been able to do so much healing - it gives me hope that the same will be true for me, too.

Thank you all for being here and for listening and responding with such openness and kindness.