Natureluvr's Recovery Journal

[natureluvr]

First of all, I kindly ask that anyone who posts in my recovery journal only do so with kindness, gentleness, and compassion.  Please refrain from giving advice, or minimizing, or explaining away, debating, disagreeing, or negativity and criticism in any form.  Thank you.  What I need most is words of encouragement, support, and understanding.  I will do the same for you.

[natureluvr]

I started recovering from my CPTSD about 36 years ago. Back then, I had never heard of CPTSD, or narcissism.  I was on antidepressants for most of the last 28 years, and have recently come off them.  This is a very good thing, because now I can access deeper layers of healing.  I've really been going through a grieving process.  I believe that deep inner healing is, and will happen, as a result of this.  My little girl was abused and neglected, but never allowed to express how she felt about it.  Now, I'm giving her that permission.  I feel deep compassion for her, for all that she went through, but yet was not allowed to protest, or even have any opinions about it. 

[Papa Coco]

Natureluver

I absolutely respect your request for us to be kind and supportive. I'm thankful you posted that out there. You're right. This is YOUR recovery journal. Your little girl deserves to have a place to express the feelings of all she went through.

I hope we are able to provide the care and validation that you hope to get from us.

For now, I'm just sending you a safe, non-intrusive hug, from one invalidated inner child to another. 

[natureluvr]

Thank you Papa Coco!  I deeply appreciate your gentle and compassionate response!  I look forward to reading and supporting you all in your recovery too.   

[Armee]

I'm here and reading and caring. That little girl does deserve to be seen and to receive compassion after what happened to her.

I agree with Papa Coco, thanks for stating your needs up front. I think I occasionally slip into advice giving so I will know to be extra cautious and hopefully it will help me remember more broadly to be careful with all journals.

[natureluvr]

Armee I appreciate you reading my journal and offering support. 

[natureluvr]

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I just need to share this.  One of the most evil things my malignant narc mom did, was verbally and psychologically torment me and provoke me, and cause me to get extremely angry and upset, to where I was beside myself, and then she would mock me, and severely punish me for being so angry and upset.  She did this when I was only 3 or 4 years old.  This did not happen to my siblings.  She managed to convince them that I was the crazy one, because I was losing my temper, or being extremely upset.  All this caused me to have a lot of issues even as a small child, so that then the teachers and other kids in school marginalized and rejected me too.  All though my childhood, she would throw in my face how I had a horrible temper, and there was something very defective about me because I was upset and unhappy.  Since I was the only one this was happening to, I thought there was something terribly wrong with me.  I now know that is toxic shame.  I became her emotional toilet even as a baby and toddler - which is so evil. 

I now have learned, by learning about narcissism, that she was projecting her dark shadow side onto me, so that she did not have to face it.  I've done a lot of angering and grief work about this. I've also gone no contact with her.  Doing the grief work has helped a lot - I no longer carry around the inner anguish that I use to.  I'm getting over the toxic shame, and realizing she is the sick and crazy one, not me. 

[Papa Coco]

Natureluvr

Oooh your m's behavior is definitely a trigger for me too. I'm sorry it happened to you, and that she started it right from the beginning of your life.

I'm impressed by your later statements of how you're recognizing it as the trauma from a N, and not because you, in any way, deserved it. It looks to me as if you're doing everything right: Anger and grief work, going No Contact. Everything. Good for you!!!!

My n sister would get me so frustrated that I looked crazy, then she'd laugh at me and call me crazy, and everyone in the world believed her. It crushed my self-image for most of my childhood AND adult life. So, I really resonate with your experience. To me it's insidious behavior and some of the worst kind of bullying ever invented...using a good person's emotions against them. Disgusting. Or to use your word, Evil!

I'm very glad you're getting past it. 

[natureluvr]

"My n sister would get me so frustrated that I looked crazy, then she'd laugh at me and call me crazy, and everyone in the world believed her. It crushed my self-image for most of my childhood AND adult life. So, I really resonate with your experience. To me it's insidious behavior and some of the worst kind of bullying ever invented...using a good person's emotions against them. Disgusting. Or to use your word, Evil!"

This seems to be a common behavior of abusive toxic people.  Very manipulative.  It's nuts how people believe the abuser, and not the victim, which also happened in my case.

[Papa Coco]

Natureluvr,

I feel the frustration with you. I guess there are terms, like "defamation of character" that these toxic bullies have learned well how to use.

My sister had my entire huge catholic family in the palm of her hands. Every time she decided to knock me out of my happiness, she'd turn my entire family against me with lies that I couldn't recover from. This is why I feel so empathetic to what you've gone through also. I feel the pain in your words and I'm 100% on your side. YOU were a victim because YOU are good. Toxic sociopathic narcissists hate it when good people are happy. Their jealousy is one of their top five trademarks. One book I read about them says that they know nobody loves them, and when they see that people like us are loved or lovable, their jealousy enrages them. They live by the rule that If they can't have love, no one can.

I'm sending you a nice, safe, virtual hug, just because I feel like we both know the pain and suffering of having our characters trashed by people who just can't stand to let us be happy.

[natureluvr]

Thank you Papa Coco.  This explains why they were furious at my dating relationship with my husband, and tried to destroy and sabotage our wedding. They may have put a damper on our wedding, but we still got married, and my husband and I have a loving and close relationship to this day. 

I'm thankful I'm no contact with them all now.  My only regret is not doing it sooner.  I'm still working through the grief of not having relationships with my own sibling and mother.  It's heartbreaking. I do still pray for them, but not that much, and only brief, general prayers. 

[Papa Coco]

Natureluvr,

I like your story of how you and your husband are having a loving and close relationship to this day. I'm glad you shared this last post. I can relate to it. It validates for me that what I went through isn't unusual for people with CPTSD.

My dad, mom and elder sister would never let me date. They would use every trick they could find to make me break up with any girl I dated. They absolutely hated it when I was happy. When I met my wife, Coco, I tried to keep our relationship as low key as I could so my family wouldn't mess it up, but 3 weeks in, I could tell they were starting the rumor mill and working to get me to dump her, so, on the 4th week after our first date, we snuck off to Reno and got married in secret. At first, the family was angry, emotional, blaming me for not letting them come to my wedding. Somehow by taking care of myself I had "betrayed them." (Betrayal is a big word that they use all the time. If you don't give in to their bullying, they say you're "betraying them." They betray us constantly and when we stand up to them, they call us the betrayers. Typical narcissistic behavior--every accusation is actually a confession). When we had our public reception, they gave worthless gifts meant to insult me. They eventually told me the gifts were things she wouldn't want to take in the divorce.

That was 40 years ago this year. And we're still not headed toward divorce. Still very much in love.

Like you, often I wish I could have gone NC sooner. I didn't go NC with them until 2010 when I was 50. My T said "You couldn't have gone NC with them until then. You're too good a person. Walking away from family was not something you were capable of until now."  And he was right. I looked back at my life and realized I was too deeply caught under their spell to leave them when I should have. I finally went NC when I had finally matured emotionally enough to handle it. Which was 50.  Today I say it like this: "My family finally got so ugly that even I couldn't love them anymore."

I know what you mean about feeling grief of losing communication with your sibling and mother. Estrangement is healthy when it's needed, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. I pray for my siblings also, and like you, I give them the general prayers that they find the peace they couldn't find when I was in their lives. Narcissists pretend to be happy and self-reliant, but they aren't. There's only aggravation and anger and jealousy in their hearts. So I pray they find peace. My feeling is: If they find peace, maybe they'll stop attacking everyone that wanders too close to them in life.

[natureluvr]

Wow Papa Coco, there are so many similarities between your story and mine about our dating our spouses.  I'm so happy you have a good relationship with Coco to this day! 

I started dating my husband at age 19.  At first, my mom seemed sort of OK about it, but eventually, she said I couldn't date him because he wasn't Catholic (she loved to play the religion card), so we ended up sneaking around to date.  I had to lie to her. Then, in our marriage, when I was mad at my husband, occasionally I would confide in sibling #3, she would say "you guys will end up divorced".  She was the one who ended up divorced.  when I was in the hospital for depression 16 years ago, she asked my husband, while I was in there, if he was going to stay with me or divorce me.  He told her, of course he would stay with me.  The day before our wedding, sibling #4 came to my apartment, and tried to talk me out of the marriage, saying I was only marrying him to run away or escape or something.  They always have to patholigize everything we do. 

[natureluvr]

Just want to share an update of where I am with recovery from CPTSD.  I've been in a deep grieving process.  Pete Walker talks about this quite a bit in his books "CPTSD From Surviving to Thriving" and "Tao of Fully Feeling". In it, he says that the end of the grieving process is the hardest, that is where we grieve the deepest.  I believe this is true because for years, I've been in therapy dealing with tremendous anger and rage at the abuse.  I had one therapist tell me how I needed to get beneath the anger, and deal with the hurt and sadness and tears.  And, since I've gotten off antidepressants I've been able to do this.  In the past several months, I noticed the grief and crying has become more about the neglect and lovelessness I experienced as a very young child and baby.  I've been having some deep and intense grief and pain over the desolation and abandonment I experienced as an infant and toddler.  This is really painful emotionally.  However, I believe that deep inner healing is also occurring, so it's all worth it.  As they used to say in the Adult Children meetings, to overcome it, you must walk through it.  You can't go around it. 

[Not Alone]

Natureluvr, I read your journal. I feel sad. I wish you warm comfort in your grief.