This is overwhelming

[Unbroken1]

I just joined this board and OOTF (for those experiencing or recovering from abuse from individuals with NPD). For someone who has felt like an outsider for all my life, I'm still coming to terms about the truth of my childhood and my PD parents. Mom was uBPD, treated for chronic clinical depression and suicidal. Dad was uNPD on the covert side and the sole breadwinner of our small family of 3. I'm now 64, divorced, no children and living alone.

I started online therapy in the middle of the pandemic out of desperation as I became increasingly avoidant of people following the divorce and the isolation of going days without human connection became too much to bear, even as someone who is self-reliant to the extreme. My therapist's focus is helping individuals who are in or recovering from relationships with NPD individuals and is based on addressing and releasing past traumas held in the body.

I've been researching CPTSD for a couple of years now and have a pretty good intellectual understanding of this state of being and using the writings and practices of Pete Walker's approach to CPTSD, am starting to feel some release from this curse that I attribute to CEN (childhood emotional neglect).

Currently I am managing and self-medicating with cannabis and live in a state where it's legal. I'm extremely high-functioning and started self-medicating at 13 years old when I (unconsciously) realized that there was no way I could ever meet the unrealistic expectations my parents had of me, so defiance became my response, it was the 70s and the rest reads like the script of one of the cheesy anti-drug films we were forced to watch in Social Studies class. Cannabis has always been my drug of choice and allows me to feel normal. It gives me release from the uncertainty, self-doubt and intrusive memories that are the foundation of what I've come to personalize as my own "not good enough monster."

I've managed to cut way, way back on my alcohol consumption as it had also become a regular part of daily life following the end of my 14-year marriage and two-decade long relationship to my uNPD ex-wife. The exposure over years to the thousand+ cuts of incessant disdain, criticism and mind games contributed and exacerbated my pre-existing CPTSD, I'm pretty sure. I started listening to one of Gabor Mates books on addiction since I think he understands the connection between childhood trauma and addiction better than most, but I found little guidance among the endless anecdotes of addicts he treated while working on the streets of Vancouver. If anyone in this forum can suggest other resources that help with addiction and self-medication I would be interested to hear about them. I've successfully quit cannabis in the past for years at a time, so I know it's possible.

Right now I'm trying to wrap my head around the understanding that my childhood (pretty much my whole life, in fact) was one in which all the significant people in my life have held me responsible for their happiness and trained me to accept responsibility for their misery.

My therapist asked me the other day what it was that I was looking for in my relationships with others and I replied "an uncorrupted spirit." I think this may be naive at this point in my life but it's still a worthy notion. As someone who has always defined themselves through the eyes of others, I might ask myself if this is what I could find within, no?

I'm also interested in hearing about ways in which our unremembered core emotional wounds can be recalled since they mostly likely happened between the years of 1-4, which is mostly a blank for me.

[woodsgnome]

Hi, Unbroken1.

All this madness is indeed overwhelming.

I did note that at least you've created some glimmers of hope for finding better ways to face the future.

I relate to your frustration at dealing with people who just don't understand; yet took advantage of your willingness to trust, until you learned to set boundaries. That was a hard one for me as well.

Anyway, welcome to this unique site/forum where many are daring to try to find a way forward. It can feel like trying to maintain balance, and composure, while crossing a canyon on a flimsy old swinging bridge. And yet we know we have to take that next step, and the next ones.
   

[Kizzie]

Hello and a warm welcome to OOTS Unbroken    I too am recovering from an N abuse, a mother with uNPD and a domineering alcoholic father. Trying to explain how badly N abuse messes people up is difficult although I do think people and professionals are beginning to understand how dangerous N's are to everyone around them.  Thanks Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.

My M was a covert or stealth N so it was death by a thousand (unseen) cuts just as you describe.  And the mind games were absolutely crazy making, I still can't be around anyone who is an N (I have a really strong N radar) or even watch anything on TV involving an N. I had to stop watching the news when Trump was on 24/7 because the media were so caught up in the chaos and drama.  As I've grown older (65) I too have become more avoidant of people. 

Anyway, as you can see you're in good company here.  I hope you find some relief, support and info. 

PS - It might be best to ask your therapist about how best (safely) to recover memories from age 1-4.   

[Papa Coco]

Hi Unbroken1

I'm 62. Raised in the Seattle area by a family and church that made me responsible for all their problems. I didn't realize, however, that I was their scapegoat until I was 50, so I never rebelled as I should have. I just continuously carried the weight of their nastiness on my shoulders until I couldn't take it anymore. At 50, shortly after my baby sister took her own life, is when I realized what they'd done to she and me and I said, "My family has become so evil that even I can't love them anymore," and I walked away. My very survival required total estrangement from all those nasty uNPDs and selfish pawns (flying monkeys) of the uNPDs.

I don't know how to recover infant memories, but I have discovered Ketamine Infusion therapy. Every time the Ketamine starts to flow through my veins, I connect to my own birth. It's difficult to describe the sensation, but it's as if I remember every second of my life. Not the details, but the emotions. And not the bad emotions, but the love I felt, or wanted to feel, when that time in life was happening. And even though my mom, dad, aunts, uncles, cousins and Narcissistic elder siblings treated me like the family pet from birth to 50, (which is when I finally estranged from the family once and for all), I seem to connect only to the love that did exist in the small cracks between the abuse. Forgiveness became easy for me after that. I still stay away from them, as I still recognize how dangerous and disrespectful they all are, but forgiveness isn't about them, it's about bringing peace to my inner soul. Like they say, Not forgiving is like drinking poison in hopes it will kill them. My sense of forgiveness is a sense of losing my frustrated anger at what they've done to me. They're still bad, but I don't burn in my own poison any longer. 

Now that I don't feel so much hatred for them, I do still have to deal with a lifelong depression which has formatted my brain in ways I can't quickly fix, but at least my emotional healing is purely between me and my depression now. No longer do I entangle my personal sorrow with anger at them. Untangling the mess allows me to work on one problem at a time.

I've lived, as you have, fawning first. I freeze (dissociate and keep going on autopilot) next. I flee and avoid bad people third, and I turn and fight, only if I'm cornered when the first 3 "f"s don't work. I've lived my whole life for other people, and still do to a point, but not as much since I began Ketamine Infusions. My K Infusions have connected me to love and forgiveness, which has miraculously helped me stop believing I have to be a doormat. My therapist and I can now work on helping me lose my self-appointed doormat status with more promising results.

You might talk with your T about K infusions. I can't say that everyone would have the same positive results I have, but a good therapist should be able to help advise you safely. The infusions haven't helped me remember the details of my infancy, but they've connected me with the sensations of it. Perhaps if your T works with you, something like that could move toward what you are looking for. ()