I haven't posted anything for a long time. Not because I don't think of you all, but because I felt I had nothing to say. But I think I might be cured. I haven't had a flashback in months. And any anxiety I have experienced has been quite manageable. But, I am afraid of the upcoming holiday season, so am continuing therapy with my beloved therapist until at least after the first of the year, just for extra moral support.
Here is a summary I wrote over the last couple of days of what this journey has been like for me.
When we with CPTSD are children we are taught we don’t know our own minds, we are taught to not trust ourselves, we are taught that we are possessions, and worth only what the insane one decides for the day. We have no safety, no sense of balance, no security, nothing to rely on and count on, and worst of all? We are turned against our own selves. We are taught we are to blame for almost everything wrong in the universe. It is a terrible crushing burden for a child to bear and eventually the child’s spirit is crushed. She does not have adult knowledge or maturity. She only knows she is wrong at every turn, there is no pleasing, and worst of all she is brainwashed to believe that her very thoughts are wrong, bad, evil. And she is taught that all of the evil the insane ones perpetuate? Is her fault. There is nothing right with the world. And so CPTSD is born. Hopelessness coupled with trauma creates CPTSD.
But in my case I think the most important things I took from childhood were two stories that I absorbed into my being. One was the little engine that could. I BECAME that engine. I think I can, I think I can. And Rudolph. I just knew in my soul if I persevered and suffered and struggled, someday, someone would recognize that I had a lot to offer and ask me to lead the sleigh someday. I trusted this with all of my young heart. It kept me alive.
So I tried, I became superhuman. I tried to forgive everyone and everything. I tried to be understanding and accepting of everything. I tried to be perfect myself. I realized the other night that MANY people have come to me for help, shelter and solace. My niece came to ME for help not any of her other uncles or her aunt. And help I did, plane tickets, loaning her my car to get to work every day, straightening out the mess of her legal situation, helping her get a job, giving her a home and a safe place to live. My aunt who was suffering from back problems stayed here 6 months while getting treated. My sister’s best friend stayed here to try to recover from the death of her husband, my own son and my grandson, despite many screw ups are still permitted shelter and refuge here. And earlier in my life, I took in my sister when she had nowhere to go after a divorce. I took in my son’s friends when their own parent’s said no more, I gave them shelter. And my daughter’s friend K? She also stayed with us for a time. And my daughter and her daughter moved in with me for about 6 months. Even my own father - I tried to house him for 4 months while he was being treated for back problems. I offered my boyfriend a home too, if he would just divorce and walk away. So I have helped many, many people over the years. And I all of the sudden I realize none of my siblings has ever done anything like this. So that right there makes me different.
But one day I got fed up with the treatment I was receiving from the Disordered and I said no more. No more abuse as recompense for my generosity. I quit.
And life changed. Forever. I began the agonizing journey of healing. Because as hard as it is to stay still and suffer unjust and unfair treatment? It is even harder to stop it and suffer the losses, and learn the truth and stop pretending everyone loves me. Really deep down inside somewhere inside of me, I believed everyone did have a shred of love for me. How could they not? I was perfect! I opened my home to them, I gave them clean beautiful warm beds, soft towels, I made them beautiful meals, I treated them to beautiful sumptuous luxury that I earned from the sweat of my own brow, I shared it with them, and I turned the other cheek over and over and over as they slapped me for my trouble and it doesn’t work. Because in order to do all of this giving? I had to treat myself badly. I had to accept that I was just not good enough no matter how hard I tried. I had to believe them and agree with them that bad treatment was really all I deserved. One day I said no more. And I started asking for more. Each person got about a year, and plenty of guidance from me of what the problem was, and what I expected from them moving forward. And I can even sum it up in one word: Respect. I wanted to be treated with respect. And without it? We weren’t going to have a relationship anymore. I got no takers from the Disordered.
My father declined, my boyfriend declined, my roommate declined, my sister declined, my son declined, my grandson declined, and one of my brothers declined.
This is where I entered therapy. About a year before I started therapy I had decided no more. Either respect me and treat me accordingly or get out. And I tried mightily with each person. I read 40 books and different ones geared towards each relationship, I wrote letters to them, I tried techniques, I studied all day long every single day. I WORKED at it as hard as I possibly could. While each one of them did exactly? Nothing. They were happy with the situation as is. I give and give and give and they beat the crap out of me verbally or emotionally, and kick me around, and make sure I understand I really don’t deserve anything better. So when I woke up and decided that was not what I could be happy with, then true agony began. A year of agony. I knew in my soul I deserved better, but they were all saying no, you don’t.
So I went into therapy almost a year ago with this plea: I can’t get along with anybody. And they say it is me, but I don’t believe it. I think it is them. I think they are all Disordered and this is blowing my mind. How can they all be crazy and I be the only sane one in this whole bunch?
Then another year of agony. Therapy. As my therapist told me last week: Things often have to get worse before they get better. And it did not get better the way that I would have wanted it to. I lost them all, but? I gained myself, the person I really am. I am finally me. I am no longer a people pleasing perfect robot struggling to try to make insane crazy disordered people love me and respect me. I can accept now that they CAN’T love me, there is a hole in their soul and they are not capable. And I can mourn for them, and be sorry for them. But at the same time KNOW deep in my soul I MUST protect myself from them, as they offer me nothing except pain, pain, pain and more pain.
I am now: Happy, joyful, pain free, whole, healthy, strong physically, drinking less than I ever have before in my adult life, excited, content, inspired, thrilled, at peace, accepting, and trusting of myself to KNOW things.
Again and again and again I come back to: Each person has been given a task of what is needed to repair the relationship with me and each one declines. Simple tasks. Really. Simple if you are HUMAN!
Nutshell to The Disordered: You hurt me, I didn’t deserve it. Apologize, ask me to forgive you, commit to do better and let’s move forward. And Nobody can do it!
I think that has been the HARDEST part of getting well. First believing I had a right to decent treatment, and a right to expect an apology and a request for forgiveness, and a right to expect better treatment moving forward. And quaking and shaking in my boots all the while as I first timidly asked for it. Due to PTSD I was petrified to do it.
But, I changed. Instead of just apologizing to them for their upset at me, which is what I have always done to try to keep the peace, instead I asked correctly, finally, for the first time for them to apologize to me! But Oh my dear God how difficult the struggle became when I realized and slowly learned to accept that not a single one of them felt I was worth that apology and that better treatment moving forward.
It was tough! It made me doubt myself all over again, and search my conscience and soul over and over again to try to find the horrific flaws within me that prevented them from giving me what I felt I deserved.
But in the end I could not find them and that search only solidified and cemented my own beliefs about myself. And that is that I am worth loving, and I am worth treating with respect, and there are some sick people in the world who are more interested in controlling me than loving me. And who want to use abuse and imagined slights to justify it. Their world is made up. It doesn’t exist. It is a fantasy and they have dragged me into it for my whole life and I ain’t gonna do it anymore!
Thank GOD for my therapist, and the books and these forums. Where I tore myself apart and rebuilt myself all over again. Or maybe a better way to put it, is I found my TRUE self, I embraced myself, I accepted myself, I learned to love myself, and to care for myself, and I learned to EXPECT others to do the same, and to ACCEPT that if they won’t? There is something wrong with them, and not with me.
And one of the hardest realizations of all? Was that this entire time? I was the one carrying the whole relationship on my back. Whether that relationship continued or faltered and died was completely on me. Because as soon as I stopped trying to make up for their shortcomings through whatever sacrificial mean possible, be that laying myself out on the altar for sacrifice as the scapegoat, or else handing them the nails to pin me to the cross? As soon as I stopped doing that? Each relationship died a very swift and fatal death. There literally never had been anything there at all. I was the one carrying the whole load of the relationship the whole time. And without me there to act as the scapegoat? There literally was NOTHING left.
Learning how NOT to do that has been one of the most difficult lessons I have had to learn in my entire life. But what a happy pay off in the end! Despite the losses which were extremely painful to face, and to accept, and to mourn? I now have me. Better, stronger, smarter than ever, and with a deep KNOWING in my soul of my value and my worth and what I deserve and what I do not.
Another thing that has been hard to accept is that just because these people sometimes do nice things for me? It is STILL not enough to make up for the cruelty and the abuse and the poor treatment. My sister has given me many beautiful gifts. My boyfriend has been a virtual slave for me as far as doing work for me on my home. Even my father the source of my PTSD has had his moments. I was educated given medical care and dental care and clothed and fed.
But despite these apparent outward trappings of caring? My sister also felt free to attack me whenever I was down and kick me verbally, and criticize me and my decisions and way of life. She went out of her way to inform me of how superior she was to me and what a weakling I was for having PTSD. My boyfriend felt free to deceive me for 17 years that he would divorce someday, and we would marry “someday.” Elaborate lies. For years and years and years. My father felt free to put me down every chance he got and to attack me privately about how I was living, what I was doing with my life, what sort of a Christian I was (a wrong one) and he tried to convince my daughter that I had ruined my life and that I was such a disappointment. Slyly he told her that she found favor in his eyes because he felt she was not following my example. He just dismissed my whole life of struggle to be good and to help people in one sentence.
But it changed my life when he did that. The scales fell from my eyes and I could “see.”
So I had to accept that yes, these people could sometimes do nice things? But it was STILL not enough to make up for their unfair undeserved disrespectful treatment and their complete and total lack of compassion or empathy.
I had to accept that each person had an agenda. I was being sucked dry by vampires. Whose sole motive in the end was about winning and control at any price, even giving up their own immortal souls. They were willing to sell their souls to keep being abusive, ugly, nasty, impulsive people without a shred of self control in their minds or bodies.
And I had to just walk away and learn to love me anyway even if they did not. I had to learn that just because they did not love me did not automatically make me a bad and unlovable person. It was a long slow hard lesson to learn.
For a very long time there was only God, my therapist and my daughter left in my life that I felt truly loved me. A long, long time.
But conquering PTSD? Or what feels like I have conquered PTSD due to the long spell of pure peace that I have enjoyed? I see now that PTSD actually kept me ensnared in these awful, awful relationships. Because I could not stand to lose. I was desperately trying to make these relationships work. I thought if I just tried harder I could make the pain go away. I thought if I just tried hard enough I could end the pain, the anxiety, the fear, and the terror. But it could not be ended, because these people could not stop abusing me. They quite literally can’t do it.
And so there was only one way to end the pain, and that was to end the relationships. Give up. Stop trying. Stop believing it is even your job to try. I was only one sane injured beaten person fighting a host of Disordered people who could not stop themselves from hurting me over and over again for NO REASON.
They could not see me, hear me or understand me. Because they were not human. And my solution to try to become superhuman and able to endure beyond all reasonable endurance did not work either. Just as they could not stop abusing me, I could not make them stop either. No amount of good behavior on my part was going to ever earn their love or fix them. And I had to accept that at some point in time I had become addicted to the pain. That I felt like that was a normal way to live. Being constantly anxious worried and scared and waiting for the axe to fall over and over again. I had to cut myself off from the source of the anxiety and pain and learn to live in peace and serenity.
And the longer I stay away? The happier I am. There is a direct relationship between my happiness quotient and the loss of each toxic relationship.
Daily I become stronger, trust myself more and am starting to reach out to others, those who are not Disordered and to do things for them. And slowly my network is building and I have more friends by the day. As I slowly gain in confidence and learn to ask people to help me? Most are happy to do so! And I in turn am also happy to help them as well. And now? My life feels fuller, richer filled with true friends. And I trust myself a little more every day.
And I think I might be cured. And it only took 2 years of agony to get here, but now that I am I would not trade this place for anything in the world!
So I am wishing this peace and joy upon each of you today. The forums help. Tremendously. But ultimately it is still a journey one takes alone. And I hope my struggles will encourage someone who may be in despair. I hope you can be encouraged to know that eventually it ends, the struggle ends. You must do hard things, probably harder than anything you have ever done? But it will pay off in the end.
Again I would not give up my new found peace joy and trust in myself for anything. It is wonderful to just quietly live a peaceful and happy life.