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“I have to live with this for the rest of my f*cking life,” I cried to my cousin on the phone, full of burning pain and rage fueled by the whipping sting of helplessness. I had my head in my hands. I felt so alone. Cast out as always. They chose him, and I lived with that choice vividly and...

Oh goddamn it. This shit just keeps getting worse. So yeah. Revelations continue. Turns out my little cousins—my father’s late brother’s two girls—think the reason my sister and I are never around my parents but my brother is is because my father sexually abused us. So like. Because my...

I’m finally, after 15-16 years knowing I had the option and my wonderful recent therapist urging me to consider it further so she could help me do it, seriously looking into my legal options. I’ve always known I had a truly stupidly excellent case. But I believed in keeping it “in the family.”...

My father no longer lives bound by the restrictions of Orthodoxy, but he is still a devout man. God-fearing. The Judaic God is not known for His mercy. Absolution doesn’t exist in Judaism. There is no magic moment that can make you clean. Jews believe in atonement through action. Christians...

@grief Thank you very much for responding and sharing. All my threads are always open for discussion. I just have a very strong lean towards a narrative style that gets stronger and stronger the more emotional and painful something is for me to write. In most ways, going no contact with my...

I have spent so many years absolving my father so that he was charged only with the crime of absence and ignorance. “No, no, no more, son of a bitch... No more happy face.” He f*cking saw it happening. He saw it. All those years of abuse? All those abusers. The years when my mother...

My father decided, somehow, maybe three years ago or more that he “wanted a relationship” with me, which was, to me, abrupt and which he pursued with sudden... aggression is my word. Zeal, maybe. It was something I knew I could not give him. Something I had already long wrestled with and fairly...

@grief gave an excellent and concise explanation of the connotations for outraged v enraged. As a linguist, yeah, there’s a connotative difference, but it’s negligible in usage. You would have to consult a corpus to find out whether there really is a strong connotative lean one way or the other...

I’ve had insomnia, night terrors, more-vivid-than-life Nightmares, and just regular horrific nightmares (capital N here like a capital T Trauma for me—Nightmares are clearly and distinctively trauma-related) since my abuse ended around age seven-ish (I’m 30). I’ve tried to stay away from this...

I’ll take a hangover from substance abuse over a therapy or stress/PTSD “episode”/meltdown any time, please. My last and dearly beloved T would work with me for 2+ hours with a 50-minute slot and charge every other week. I have no complaints about the free/50%+ off therapy, but she kicked my...

I was really anxious to hear from you today. Well done! I will not feel surprised if you get on board and find that, actually, you’re not particularly impressed by your colleague and realize you’re perfectly capable of the same job or more capable. I only say that because my friends and I in...

I was going to write a response about my experience with this when I re-examined the title and stopped. Is it helpful or even “correct” to describe alter switching and dissociation as separate, really? I see them as the same symptom with different degrees and permutations. I have lost time...

Mist filters sunbeams.

I actually do not know where to start addressing your experience of being left alone when you were a child unable to leave your home and with no one to support you for weeks at a time on any level. I know several people who have taken time to realize being left alone at various ages for days or...

Glass

I feel worried by some of the above, largely by your categorization of your trauma on a spectrum that sounds like “not that bad” and “validly horrific.” Is this categorization serving you? Has your T/support team talked with you about the possibility of disordered attachment? Anxious attachment?

I could write an essay about topic of recovered/buried memories, the history of mental health professionals regarding such memories giving context for current prevailing attitudes and their gunshy nature, and my own experience of surfacing memories that were, blessedly, not only proven accurate...

I wish I had more to offer in this string of beautiful responses, but instead I’ll say I’m sitting in this space with you, my dear friend.

So as a professional editor who has also felt alarmed by going rates... if you are a professional, you are a professional, and you deserve to be compensated competitively for your services. Try to remember what you’ve written here regarding your online interview. I personally hate phone...

This thread has blown up since I started a response, and I don’t have the energy to catch up, so I will merely respond to grief: I wasn’t saying sufferers are not disordered. Let me clarify: I was positing that our disorder is an appropriate response to our experiences that should not be...

Welcome to the forum! This is so fantastic to read, having read your harrowing ordeal with trauma and family therapy, and it is so crucial. I’m so happy for you to have these resources in your journey. Please do not fret about your writing style. I felt you were clear, comprehensive, and...

My mantra is “There is no tiger.” It’s my easy way of reminding myself that stress is a mostly obsolete reaction to the perception of danger. I almost died in a very very very near miss car accident, but I had no spike in adrenaline or cortisol, because at the time I was hypomanic and was...

PTSD is a normal reaction to abnormal circumstances. “The way humans live their lives today” is a manner of living characterized by a set of nonsensical methods and rules producing a population sick with the disease of artificial scarcity borne out of manufactured hierarchies that are...

Well jeez. I’m wondering why you keep disclosing the comforts of your life, how your family was loving and you’re not scrounging for survival? It reminds me of the way I used to speak about my own struggle, how I felt like I was somehow cheating by looking for support when I am graced, the way I...

It really does seem like yesterday that I was a young, lost, angry 20-year-old easily wounded and ready to bite. Now I’m practically a senior citizen here. I didn’t think I would live this long. I wouldn’t have. I made it because the good people of this community were there for me even if I was...