Major Emotional Abuse by Personality Disordered Mother

[ajvander86]

I just recently, within the last couple of months, learned about cptsd.  And it's only been about 4 years since I've learned about the concept of emotional abuse itself.  Believe it or not I really didn't even know what emotional abuse was.  I always had this idea in the back of my mind that my emotions were meaningless and it didn't really matter if they were being trampled on by my mother or different family members.  After all, sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.  Well, it turns out emotional abuse can be even more hurtful, painful, and damaging then even physical abuse. 

When it came to my mother, who definitely fits the definition and characteristics of someone with a personality disorder, although I can't tell if it's BPD or NPD exactly, she didn't hit me very often and we had food on the table and a roof over our heads so I thought everything was fine.  But looking back, and especially after I learned about emotional abuse, I realized just how extremely abusive my mother actually was. 

Out of the fog helped me to understand these behavior patterns in people, as well as to be able to verbalize exactly what was going on with my experience with my mother with all the terms on the site.  As a child I would be brought to therapists and I knew something was wrong with my mother but had no idea how to verbalize it.  Now I do, and I'm so thankful to learn that I'm not crazy.

But essentially my mother was a type A, high strung person, officially diagnosed bipolar with adhd.  My experiences with her, however, fit far more in line with personality disorders.  She was constantly catastrophizing everything and treating me like I was some kind of criminal (I was a quiet and withdrawn kid who got good grades in school and pretty much holed myself up in my room to get away from the chaos in the house), and that I was constantly under some kind of interrogation.

It honestly felt like my mother just hated me.  I always had people around me telling me how much my mother loved me, but it always confused me because I constantly felt hated, despised, and like some kind of burden.  She would flip out randomly and attack me verbally and emotionally, starting fights (baiting) to try to get me to react and then if I did to try to get her away from me, she'd take me yelling back or becoming angry and withdrawn and go around telling other family members and friends how I was.  This served to really alienate me from anyone else who might have otherwise been sympathetic to me and my situation. 

My mother was extremely angry, extremely belittling, condescending, blaming, and a perfect chaos manufacturer.  Living with her was like walking on eggshells, or landmines, and you never knew where to step that wouldn't set her off.  I was hit on multiple occasions of course, but I always had this idea that since I was a male and my mom was a female, that it wasn't that bad and I could just kind of take it.  And when she'd hit me it wasn't like a spanking for discipline purposes.  It was like she was taking out all her stress and anger out on me and hitting me wherever she wanted however hard she wanted.  One time when I was a teenager she started trying to hit me for no reason and I started blocking her and she actually told me to stop blocking her so she could hit me.  I told her if there was a problem we could talk about it, and that there was no need for her to hit me for any reason at all.

I was never allowed to express myself, my thoughts or feelings and was always shut down and torn down if I did.  My mother loved to talk and talk in circles without ever finishing and not letting anyone else speak.  When I learned about emotional abuse I honestly just cried and cried and cried because my inner self was indeed extremely neglected, extremely unloved and extremely abused.  It's kind of like I don't have a family as they are all toxic and either alcoholics, narcissists, or some other personality disordered variation. 

It was honestly like *.  And my mother was very good at becoming a completely different person in public and at work to make any issues I was having with her make it seem like I was just some crazy ungrateful kid.  Looking back I remember teachers in school asking me if everything was ok at different times and I of course said oh yeah of course, not really knowing what they were talking about.  Looking back I can see that I was extremely withdrawn and isolated, and probably looked like I was in a great deal of pain.  I was. 

When I learned about emotional abuse, and then later about extreme low self esteem, and then most recently about cptsd, it felt like angels were pouring love onto my extremely damaged and burned emotional self after being unattended to my whole life.  I felt such great relief at knowing what this was and that I was not crazy.  That all the difficulty I've had in life, and in functioning in life was very much due to me having cptsd, to me having intense emotional flashbacks when being around any people at all (if I can't trust the people who are supposed to love me the most, how can I possibly trust a world of strangers?). 

According to the book CPTSD from Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker, I fit the freeze type to a T.  In fact, frozen is a perfect word to describe my emotional state most of my life.  Someone would ask me how I felt and I honestly didn't even know.  I really think I was frozen in a state of shock terror and confusion constantly. 

I have been someone who has been extremely withdrawn and isolated to the point where I didn't develop properly emotionally or socially.  My ability to connect with people intimately and genuinely is severely compromised because I don't trust people as it is, but I realized that when I am in situations where intimacy and openness is called for I seize up and have intense emotional flashbacks.  I didn't even know what emotional flashbacks were until I read Pete Walkers book.  It makes so much sense now. 

I lived in so much unbelievable terror and pain and being so avoidant made it extremely difficult for me to function in life that many times I just wanted to die.  I mean I had been in therapy since I was 6 as my parents got divorced and someone thought it would be a good idea for me to go so my Mom took me, thinking everything was my Father's fault.  But in all my years of therapy and looking for solutions, no one, and I mean NO ONE ever brought up cptsd or even emotional trauma as a possibility and how to heal from it.  So you know, I felt hopeless and permanently broken if I was reaching out to the professionals and they couldn't help me at all.  So suicide seemed like the only way out for real. 

Luckily I didn't give up on myself and now that I know about cptsd everything is so much clearer and I feel so much better.  I am able to practice self compassion with myself more knowing that I really was severely affected and damaged in my life, and that it wasn't my fault.  I do have severe emotional flashbacks and panic attacks that make it very difficult to function and connect with people, but I am learning and growing day by day. 

Growing up the way I did was like pure *.  They say * is a place of torment for the soul.  That's exactly how it felt.  And I was so confused because on the outside everything looked ok.  I had food and a roof over my head, so what did I have to complain about?  In fact, if someone offered me 1 million dollars on my 18th birthday to go back and relive what I experienced, I would decline it without thinking twice. 

I want to live now, I want to heal, and I want to share this information with others who are suffering from something similar.  Happy to know I'm not crazy, and happy that a place like this exists for support and healing. 

Blessings.

[lostinthedark]

I relate to a lot of this. My mom was extremely emotionally abusive but I never saw it until I started going to therapy a year ago. My therapist brought up the word abuse and I immediately started to deny it, almost like I was trying to defend my mother. My therapist has also brought up that she thinks I have CPTSD (She can't formally diagnose me because she isn't a doctor but she is quite certain.) Looking back at my childhood and how I am now as a young adult I know that it was (and still continues to be) abuse. Lately I have really been struggling with that diagnosis. I go back and forth telling myself I have CPTSD and I need to start healing to telling myself I'm being over dramatic. I most of the time can't even begin to put into words how I feel but this is my first time to this site so this will have to be my start.

Thank you for sharing your experience and I am truly sorry you had to deal with this. I know it is complete *.

[dsgirl]

Hi Ajvander,

Thank you for the post. Your story resonated deeply with me, especially the part about your mother alienating your support network, you feeling isolated, you living in constant chaos, and being made to feel like you were crazy or at fault for feeling confused.

My mother was always the victim in every scenario, always the hero, the martyr, the survivor, to the point that ultimately I now feel like I was just a prop in her life story called 'Victim'.

She completely dominated my life, including relationships with other people and even when I was an adult. She did not recognize or respect  boundaries. I too only recently came to understand that I have CPTSD, and it truly was an eye opener for me. This realization was initiated by a few sessions with a trauma counselor.

I also completely understand how difficult it is, when you've been trained all your life not to talk about family problems ( even if your mother tells everyone about her version of events) to share that information with other people so I commend you and thank you.

Sometimes I feel very disconnected from other people, but coming on here and reading these stories (even if I don't comment) I feel less disconnected and feel a deep affiliation with the people who are writing their stories.

I wish you every success with your recovery, you deserve to feel happiness and peace independent of guilt, and control.

Blessings to you also.