Layered flashback?

[alovelycreature]

I had the weirdest emotional flashback today and honestly I just needed to vent about it.

First, I was mad at my partner because he went out and said he was coming back. Well, he took an hour and a half. When something like that happens I begin to panic. Like what if he got in a car crash? If he was going to late wouldn't he have told me? It just came out of no where. I knew that I didn't feel right so I did that tapping video that someone on here shared with me.

While doing the tapping video, I just remembered every time my Mom would do that. My Mom would leave my bi-polar addict uncle one of my psychopathic aunts to watch me. I've thought about that before and how angry it made me, but then I remembered something else.

When I got older, I use to have to babysit. Sometimes this same uncle or another psychotic family member would be watching us also. However, I just remembered all these times was spent watching my sister. I didn't matter if my Mom was just going for a night out or for a week long vacation to Florida. From the second my Mom left till the second she got back my sister would just cry and be a complete melt down. My sister would hold her breath till she would pass out. It was awful. I would have to cook when she was gone so one time I remembered I made sauce to go on some steaks. I remember adding wine to the sauce and not cooking it because I thought it would make my sister pass out. It did. It was the only peace I had when she left me to watch her for a week straight. I was 14 and my sister must have been 9.

Just my whole body felt on fire. Just awful. Taking the rest of the night with my partner to relax thankfully.

[schrödinger's cat]

And, you finished your wine sauce steak with your sister passed out....

Absolutely - a clear sign of how utterly exhausted you must have been, Alovelycreature. After a while, you can't be in "emergency mode" anymore. Things normalize, whether you want them to or not. There's just this bone-deep exhaustion. You're so emotionally drained that you just can't do anything but take step after step after step, doing mundane tasks. There's this absolute tunnel vision, this dissociation sometimes... If you live in the middle of shrill alarms and blinking red lights all the time, every day, without a break, it all eventually recedes into a background hum of noise and pain. We lived like that for almost twenty years. It's not pretty. It hollows you out.

That whole situation was cruel. I've got two kids, and one of them used to have veeery dramatic temper tantrums, screaming and crying and so on. Even just half an hour of that wore me out. And I'm a grown-up! To leave a fourteen-year-old alone with a week's worth of having to deal with a crying, traumatized, hysterical child - Lovely, you weren't babysitting, you were parentalized. You were forced to be mother-cum-therapist. What's worse, you weren't forced by circumstances ("we're refugees who got separated from our parents" or something), you were forced by your own mother - presented with a fait accompli. No wonder you were angry. Bloody h*ll. That's so messed up. A vacation in Florida. --- I just deleted a few swearwords here, sorry. --- That's true abandonment right there.

I can imagine that this still lingers deep in your bones - this thought that if your mother doesn't come back, you'll end up doing this for the rest of your life, with no support but a couple of highly dysfunctional relatives (which doesn't sound like they were much of a help).

Did you ever have any safe way to express how distressed you were?

You don't have to answer this - it just occurred to me while I read your post: how polarized your sister's and your roles were. She took on all the upset and distress and grief and fear, while you were pushed into the role of grown-up caregiver. That role often means there's no safe place for you to have needs, to be momentarily weak, to be upset, to be fearful and worried. There's no way you can simply phone someone grown-up and loving and say: "I'm really worried and upset - could you (come over / reassure me / help me out)". Whatever happens, you're on your own. My mother was parentalized at a young age, and she's always had this profound belief that she's on her own, she must deal with things on her own, she's with her back to the wall only there isn't even a wall so she has to be wary and competent at all times. So either it was similar for you, or I'm reading too much into your text.

But either way: vent away. This sounds like it was long in coming.

[alovelycreature]

Yeah, I was feeling horrible about it yesterday. I was definitely one of those kids growing up who had no emotions other than anger, and even that was self directed. I never talked about it with anyone when I was in high school. When I would attempt to bring it up with my Mom, I was "schizophrenic" for thinking she would do such a thing to me. I think since so many adults were around and I didn't fully understand at the time their mental illness, that I assumed that this is what I was supposed to be doing, or I deserved it. My Mom would always create situations where it was my family against me, or my siblings against me, so I figured it was my fault. I don't think I knew I was being abused honestly. I didn't have the language. I did end up seeing a therapist when I turned 16 who helped me see that my Mom was an alcoholic. Even then it took years for me to realize that what she did was abuse. I took me years to cry. It's like I wasn't a person.

I did completely dissociate yesterday. I didn't even remember anything I wrote on here except the general part about my sister. Today has just felt like a blur too. Just makes you want to curl up in bed all day.

Thanks for reaching out to me, Cat.

[schrödinger's cat]

I still have those swearwords I deleted, in case you need them. I'm more and more thinking they'd be absolutely warranted. Your mother really left nothing out, didn't she?

How are you doing today? Remembering all that sounds rather overwhelming. Are you okay? Or, okay-ish? As okay as one can be in those circumstances (which is probably not very)...

[Elly]

It ain't called simple post-traumatic stress disorder. 

I think it's a good thing that you can recognize the constellations of events, and articulate it so lucidly even if you do feel on fire. Hopefully that recognition can become a more helpful mechanism for the process or coping and recovery.

[marycontrary]

Yes, you will find these memories are linked. This might be why CPTSD is so stubborn and painful during treatment....

Take care...you are not alone. I have had 4-5 memories linked together like this. Painful as * cause it is stacked so deep. Deep knotted mess, but it can be untwisted with a lot of work.