Member of The Club

[Lolly728]

Hello everyone... introducing myself... wanting to find some connection with others who understand what I've been through. I read some of the posts here and they resonate with me quite a bit. I have been working on myself for years but some days it still amazes me how much the hurt still hurts. I'm in a lot of pain right now because I had to have contact due to my mother's death and I've been NC for years. It brought up a lot of hurt, as did her death (she was one of the abusers.)

Anyway... I just wanted to reach out to others who understand. It's such an odd feeling at times, living in a world where you feel disconnected from everything because of what you've been through and unable to talk about it at the same time.

So I'm here to talk about it or just say hello to someone now and then.

Thank you for listening and I look forward to listening to you as well

[Dalloway]

Welcome to the forum, Lolly728. I´m sorry you had to go through all the painful stuff recently and in the past, too. I feel very much like you, I joined the forum because I wanted to connect to like-minded people who understand me and my struggles. What I´ve found here so far is empathy, kindness, support and love -- all the good things. I´m glad you´re here, too. 

[Kizzie]

Hi and a warm welcome to OOTS Lolly, glad you're here.  My NM passed away in Nov so I understand how much that can bring up. We think it's gone and then there it all is again, all the pain and hurt.

So, we do understand and that's the beauty of being here. There's always someone who has had a similar experience and can share with you about that. It just helps us to feel we are not really as alone as we though, or as different as we thought.

 

[Lolly728]

Thank you both for responding. A little light in the wilderness...

Have either of you tried any in person support groups? I have a therapist I'm working with but I am considering adding a support group with my healing. I saw that this site has some Zoom groups but I wouldn't want to do anything group oriented over Zoom. I kind of hate it and only use it when I have to for work.

[AphoticAtramentous]

Welcome to the forum, Lolly. I've found a plethora of understanding from folks here, and can reassure it to be a rather valuable part of my social life - because as you say, we feel so disconnected from everything else. So I hope it'll feel the same for you too!

I've attended only one support group session before and I found it wasn't really for me. I have noted that many individuals with CPTSD tend to struggle with or avoid group support, but if you're curious then you can of course give it a go. There's never an obligation to stick with it either, so if it's not for you, then that's fine and understandable. But I'm always one to recommend folks trying something at least once, cause you never know, it might actually be a very comforting experience. And if not, at least you can say you gave it a go. No pressure though.

Regards,
Aphotic.

[Lolly728]

Hey thanks. It does seem like a supportive place although to be honest, I haven't read that many threads. But what I've seen looks positive.

I used to cringe at the idea of going to in person support. I'm finding myself feeling like maybe I could meet other people that I might want to socialize with. I'm pretty lonely in my personal life, going through a divorce and I'm tired of hiding. That being said, to really know me means you have to understand what happened to me (even if I never share the details, which I usually don't.) It seems to come up in any relationship that is more than casual. Eventually they ask you about your family and then... I either lie, dance around the subject or tell them the truth (rarely). I don't want to lie any more and I find myself wanting to connect with people who really understand and have lived through it.

The one thing that makes me nervous about it is you never know where people are on their path of healing. But I guess that's true of 'normal' people as well. I mean... most people have some sort of trauma in their lives.

[Dalloway]

I´ve also been thinking of joining an in-person support group or a group therapy, but I´m afraid that it would be kind of retraumatizing for me. It needs a professional, who really knows how to work with people with CPTSD and can handle the group dynamics. Unfortunately, in my country, therapy is still something that people don´t really talk about. It´s still a big taboo and people who are going to therapy sessions, are considered mentally unstable or weird or sick, so it definitely means something pejorative for most of the people.   
But I ditto what Aphotic said, if you feel that you want to try something like that, it´s a good idea to give it a try.

[Kizzie]

Lolly, if you feel ready to join an in person support group I say go for it.  One word of caution. The main reason we're anonymous here is that it allows us to feel (mostly) safe, not something many of us feel or felt in our lives.
So it may be that you do not feel safe in an in person support group just yet. That would be entirely normal but if it does work out that's great and good on you for trying if it doesn't.   

A facilitated therapy group might work though because there's a therapist leading it as Dalloway suggests.   

[Blueberry]

Welcome to the forum, Lolly! I'm sorry about all the pain you're in. Gentle    unless that feels threatening (then ignore).

I can resonate with your pain. My parents, with whom I'm VVVLC, are still alive but as they become more decrepit, their impending death and how that will affect me is certainly something that I've been chewing on for a while, off and on.

Another possible support group: the 12 step ACOA, Adult Children of Alcoholics (and other dysfunctionals). It's been mentioned on the forum before as a supportive group, iirc it's said the members more or less all have cptsd due to growing up in these types of families. And it's definitely not just for adult children of families with alcohol problems - all types of family dysfunction and addiction 'count'. Not everybody on this forum is a fan of 12 Step groups, I'm not any more either - among other things I just get triggered - but some members have mentioned ACOA favourably.

[Papa Coco]

Welcome to the forum, Lolly

I like how you said that you are looking for connection. I'm sorry to hear of the pain and loneliness in your life. Truth-be-told, that's the story of my life too. Always feeling alone in a crowded world is really a feeling of not being able to connect with others.

This forum has been such a godsend for me, as I have felt heard and validated by people who I respect. I feel emotionally connected with people who understand me and who care. I hope you find this forum to help you feel connected also.  The folks here have been through all sorts of different sorrows in life, and somehow we all ended up with similar symptoms, feelings and emotional reactions to life. We came from different places but all ended up here.

The kindness I've found on this forum seems genuine, even though we are all anonymous to each other. We're not connected through our identities and or careers, but through our emotions and fears. Interactions on this forum feel so real to me. I hope you find it to be good for you too.

Welcome and I look forward to future interactions with you.
Papa Coco

[Lolly728]

Thank you all for responding. I feel a little less alone tonight <3

Dalloway, I think I understand what you're saying. I don't relish the idea of listening to the gore of other people's tragedies, either. I don't understand how therapists do it, honestly. It was painful enough to live through it and have to remember it. To listen to another human being tell their own tale of pain and suffering is very difficult. I think this is what you are saying. Apologies if I misunderstood. I am sorry that therapy is viewed that way in your country. At least you have this forum. I'm in the US where therapy is quite the norm for a lot of people but I still feel quite alone in my story and history, fwiw. It's just not party conversation, if you know what I mean, lol.

I have a friend IRL and she is lovely but she did not experience what I have and I can't bring myself to tell her what happened to me other than referring to it as 'trauma'... which then creates this veil of 'mystery' that I'm not really looking to create in my relationships either. It's an endless cycle, this stuff, at times. Sigh.

Blueberry, thank you for the idea of ACOA. I looked into it in my area and mentioned it to my therapist. She said she's heard mixed reviews of most of the groups except for one which is for parent's of alcoholic children which is not really my situation. I have tried 12 step and I'm not really a fan. I consider myself a Christian but I don't go to church. Maybe at some point here I'll explain how that works for me but suffice to say for now that the rigidity of the 12 step process does not resonate or work for me. So... I probably won't explore that.

Papa Coco, hey thanks and nice to 'meet' you. Hug appreciated and accepted I would wonder from time to time what it was going to be like when my mother died. Well-meaning friends/acquaintances had warned me of the regret I would feel at not having resolved our relationship before she died. I feel no regret. I had no tender memories of her mothering after I got the news, only flashbacks of the 3-4 worst things she did and the ramifications it had on my life. And the pain of having the news delivered to me in a brutally unkind fashion that was designed to hurt me. It was a rough couple of days... not saying that it will happen like that for you, just relating my experience. Anyway, thanks for your post and thoughts on this forum. I hope I can find some connection. I will look forward to future interactions as well

[Papa Coco]

Lolly,

I totally agree with your experience of your mother's passing.

<<<TRIGGER WARNING: I have some unresolved anger about family that will be obvious in the following>>>:

Anyone who says "You'll regret not resolving a relationship" is someone who absolutely does not understand that there is NO relationship to resolve with narcissists and sociopaths. That whole story of Ebenezer Scrooge is seriously flawed at the end, when the old miser suddenly grows a conscience and makes peace with the people he'd tormented during his life. LOL! Yeah! Right! Like that ever happens! In the real world, NO narcissist EVER grows a conscience. If anything, they use their own deathbed to make sure and dig at us one last time before they go to their final demise. People who say you'll miss them, or regret not having resolved differences are living a very different life than we're living and have much different parents than we had.

I don't miss my mom or dad. They died in 2009 and 2011. I still don't regret not resolving differences with them. The last words my dad ever said to me were "I'm having you thrown in jail for not being nice to your sister." I then responded with, "Good bye Dad. I love you." I hung up. I changed my phone number. That was the end of it. I then went FULL No Contact with the entire huge, Catholic family, and I don't miss ANY of them. Not even sometimes. Their smear campaigns drove my beautiful little sister to her own suicide. Then they turned all their lies and rage against me, as the new youngest, and drove me to suicide. I was rescued seconds before jumping. I learned that they were not someone I needed to resolve any differences with. I hold to my deep desire to NEVER see any of them ever again during this lifetime.

Yup. Only people who have felt the sting of parents who would rather hurt us than love us can grasp the fact that there is nothing to resolve in the end.

I fully resonate with your lack of regret in this case. I feel no regret with how my parents left this world in their own shame.

In fact, since my family took my beautiful little sister's life and then came within inches of taking mine, I started a new quote of my own. I now say "To be willing to die for your family is noble. But to be willing to die because of your family is just dumb. Run. Don't walk. RUN from them while you can."

[Lolly728]

Oh gosh. I am so sorry. I can feel how painful the loss of your little sister is. I am sorry you lost her and at the hands of so-called family. It's very difficult for anyone who has not experienced this level of cruelty from blood relations to understand the depth of the hurt that has been caused. It's a hurt like no other.

With what I just experienced, I am now resolved - and very much at peace with this resolution - to never have any contact with any of them ever again. There is only one that would ever reach out to me again and I am thinking of changing my phone number so that he cannot.

I had a rather incredible thing happen when she died. Bit of a long story but I'll try to give the short version. I was at a recital my daughter was participating in. As she played, I was recording with my phone when I suddenly had an intense desire to send the video of my daughter to my mother. My mother was also a musician and it always saddened me that she never got to see what her granddaughter had become, even though I knew that protecting my daughter from my mother's cruelty was one of the most important things I could ever do. As soon as I got that feeling to send the video, I also had a sudden thought that my mother had died, or I at least wondered if maybe she had because the feeling to send the video was notably intense. As I left the recital, I was confronted with an elderly, frail woman who I later learned was the same age as my mother, making her way down the stairs of the recital hall. I thought of my mother again when I saw her. There are other details but it makes the story too long for a forum. Later that night when I got home, I saw that there was a phone call from the area code where I grew up. I knew instantly that my mother had died and that it was one of my brothers calling to tell me.

The other details of the story are somewhat remarkable as well. And you could easily say they were all coincidences. But I do not believe they were, especially the intense feeling I had to send her the video.

I am telling you this story because I agree with you -- these people go to their graves with no regret, no remorse and it is terrible, even criminal in some cases. But I believe -- and what happened to me that night confirms it for me -- that when we leave this earth, we have to face God and answer for how we have lived our lives. And I believed she deeply regretted what she did with and to my life in her neglect and abuse and was trying to communicate with me that night to tell me. So... it's comforting. I got a strange closure with her death that I did not expect.

This was all very recent (it happened last Friday night) and I feel like I am still putting the pieces of it all together. The next day I had an odd coincidence of seeing a mother and child on a merry-go-round that also felt like a message for me. Perhaps it was just my brain assigning meaning to random events in order to process my pain... but I don't think so.

Sorry this got rather long, I tried not to go into too much detail. It's nice to be able to talk about it here because how could I possibly relate this story to anyone who hasn't lived some variation of it and have them understand all the ramifications and meaning?

I wish you peace from the terrible truth of what you lived through. Even though we have just 'met', I am here in solidarity with you. Sending a hug back to you

[Papa Coco]

Lolly,

For starters I am 100% sure that your stories of how you felt your mother's passing are completely accurate. My life has always been full of these same things. There were a lot of very odd messages coming to me around family. In fact, the person who saved my life seconds before I would end it did so because she felt a panicked need to call me as I was walking away from my phone. She'd known me all my life. She lived on the East Coast, I live on the West Coast. It was the 2nd anniversary of my little sister's death. The Grim Reaper had appeared behind me earlier that morning. I worked from home then and was at my computer all morning. The Grim Reaper kept getting bigger and more real as the day progressed. I could feel myself being pulled into the darkness. I was being told I was about to die. I finally knew it was time. I turned off my computer. As I was starting to stand up to leave my cell phone and take only my car keys so I could head for the bridge to jump from, my cell phone rang. If it had rang only seconds later, I'd have already been on my way to the car. I answered it. She didn't say "hello" She screamed into the phone "JIMMY! WHAT'S WRONG?" I started bawling. I told her I was about to kill myself. She said, "I have been sick to my stomach all day. I can't get your face out of my mind. A minute ago, a man I haven't talked to in two years called my house and told me to call the west coast immediately because something horrible is about to happen."  Just talking with her and agreeing with her to call the suicide hotline broke the spell. The reaper vanished. I've come to realize that it wasn't my time to go, and all the angels or spirits or god or whomever watches over me used the reaper to contact someone to save me. So your stories of how you felt your mother's departure don't surprise or baffle me in any way. I have dozens of stories from my own life that are just as real as your story about your mom's passing.

Secondly, knowing that this all happened only a few days ago puts a new perspective on how compassionate I feel for your situation. No matter how close or distant you were to her, there is a period of solemnness when a parent or loved one passes on. Please be careful for a few days, don't drive in heavy traffic, or operate any chainsaws while this passing is still processing in your head and heart. I find that when people pass on and my connection to them severs or is challenged, that my executive function isn't as in control as it could be. I space out a bit. Prone to run red lights, dent cars, cut my fingers in the kitchen...stuff like that.

And thirdly, you never have to apologize to me for writing long posts. I think I probably am guilty of writing the longest posts on the forum. I keep trying to shorten them, but I can't seem to succeed at it.

I share your belief that as we depart our bodies, we suddenly feel the full connection of all souls in love and safety. I would believe that you are correct, that as your mother passed, she felt it for the first time, that she had thrown away a full lifetime of feeling a loving connection with you. There is some research out there that says people who have the most regrets have the most difficult time passing on. Her spirit reached out to you with a power so strong you could feel it.

I always like sharing stories with people about our experiences in spirit and love. Please feel free to share any stories you want to with me. You can use my Recovery Journal on the forum if your topic doesn't fit anywhere else. To me, the spiritual awareness of our soul's connections as people are the single, most important treatments for my CPTSD.

I've spent my life feeling alone and unwanted. Stories and experiences with feeling unconditional love are probably the ONE thing that has helped me find a desire to live, even if I have to do it with CPTSD and a long, long list of anxieties, terrors, EFs, fears, etc. What I didn't feel in the first half of my life was love. Now I feel it. I can weather the torments of trauma disorders as long as I know love is bigger than this world can even understand. And it's there for all of us.

Thank you for having the courage to disclose your spiritual experience with your mother's passing. It meant a lot to me that you trusted me enough to tell the story.

[Lolly728]

Hey Papa... or should I call you Jimmy?

I'm so sorry I disappeared. I made my first posts from an out-of-town location and I had a two-day drive to get back home. The day after I got back, I came down with Covid. Bleh. That was this past Tuesday and it's been a pretty rough week. For reasons I don't understand, the variant seems to trigger neurological symptoms, anxiety in particular. I have been dealing with almost daily anxiety and it's been really hard, on top of the other symptoms. The fatigue and brain fog is awful and I had a headache/migraine for 5 of those days. So... yuck, it's been tough. I am slowly starting to get better though.

That was quite a story you posted and I'm so glad you were saved so you could go on to feel love and live your life.

Thank you so much for the reminder to be gentle with myself. I have a new thing now where I try to remember to mother myself whenever I am struggling. Been doin' a lot of that this week.

I hope you are doing well and that you've had more good days than bad. Thank you so much for being there