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My parents won't leave my head

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I recently reawakened to the extent of my childhood abuse and neglect by my parents. I realized that I have significant dissociation, but I'm not sure how many different "parts" of me there are (been doing IFS therapy, but I think I have DID or OSDD). Tonight I realized that I have at least one part that is my mother - where I act and view the world through her eyes. I've been making huge progress in identifying her behavior as abusive and distancing myself from other core beliefs, but the devastating blow tonight was that I've sought out and implemented almost all of my new coping mechanisms through the lens of my mother. I've been trying to heal myself as my mother would have. And it repulsed and frightened me into a huge upset. I have no framework anymore, not even the tentative one I have been building for months. There is nothing in my head not tainted by her or my father - who represents another huge part that also tries to "heal" me using his methods. I know this is common and to be expected, but I wasn't aware of just how much of my recent behavior I saw as healing and healthy was just my parents yet again trying to control my life from within myself.

I don't know where to go from here. I'm afraid that any new belief system I try to adopt will be tainted by them. I cannot escape them. Worst yet - I've been trying to "heal" my parts using IFS, which involves identifying with them and trying to see the world through their eyes. Which just brings me back to my parents. I have no identity. There is no part that is me. I hate everything about myself because it all reminds me of them. I am still the fawning victim under their control.
 
hello aardvark. welcome to the forum.

whether from biological parental units, impersonal group homes or third world beggar gangs, trying to lose our childhood conditioning is a bit like trying to lose our DNA. it's the raw material we're made of, like it or knot. there is no cure for the common me, but i view the common me as nothing more, nor less than raw materials. what i do with those raw materials is up to me. whatever the source of my internal conflicts, they are mine to manage now. i manage them more effectively when i take ownership of their existence during the process of becoming who i want to be.

but that is me and every case is unique.

gentle support while you sort your own case. welcome aboard.
 
I have no framework anymore, not even the tentative one I have been building for months.
It will come back. It’s still there but you’re developing your self awareness and self-reflection. It feels like it’s gone, but it’s not. You are learning to reclaim your thoughts and actions as your own which means developing self-forgiveness. Keep going and you’ll see it come together.
 
I have no identity. There is no part that is me.
I’ve done that twice. Two and a half times to be strictly honest. And had to rebuild myself, as I chose/directed. Which sounds a helluva lot more fun than it is (like the whole ‘live in the moment’ or ‘live like there’s no tomorrow’ BS that gets so much press).

I’m not prepared to say more on the subject, right now, but wanted to pass along this…

1. It can be done.

2. It’s “just” an extension of a natural process. Which not only means it can be done, but that we are -in truth- wired to be able to do so.

The natural process takes people years/decades, and is achieved by a kind of leapfrogging ascendency of independence seeking & regrouping, rebelling & realigning, reshaping & consolidating… as children/teens/young adults grow into “who” they are // who they will become.

The directed process? Is much much faster. Arguably more -or less- painful. And it’s also not new. You can read accounts of people who have been broken, by various methods, and rebuilt themselves, stretching back as far as we have means to record our words. <grin> Very much the same as CBT is hardly new. You can read Marcus Aurelius expounding on “think instead” throughout his collected personal writings/meditations, working on cognitive distortions and core beliefs 2,000 years ago; Asian leaders/poets/warriors, whose words have survived, back twice as far.

PEOPLE, as a species, are amazingly adaptive/fluid creatures. Most people have no need -nor use- of that ability applied to identity/self. Sure, they might alter/tweak/define certain aspects of themselves they find wanting. But? The ability is there.
 
Hej,

This post hits home. Throughout decades I have been catering the abuse and narcism of both mother and father each in their own way. And now with my father dead and burried for over a year and since ger last suicide attempt of my mother, which led to coma and severe brain damage, whichfor she now is in a permanent neurologice rehabilitation facility...


The void that is omni present in me is what I know have to film with my identity.


And I also do not know who I am any more. Often when looking in the mirror I see a stranger...


Any help on this would mean the world to me.


Thanks for bringing this in to focus for me.


🙏
 
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