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While I wasn't adopted or fostered, I had 2 serious attachment disruptions in my childhood that made me feel like an interloper in my own family. My parents left our country of origin when I was a year and a half, leaving my older brother and me with an aunt and uncle. I was 3 years old when I...

Hi Jasray, and welcome to the forum. I can relate to many of the traits you list, and would say that you're definitely coping with symptoms of complex ptsd and are coming to an awareness of intergenerational trauma. I was struck by the gap between your public persona and what you experience in...

Welcome to the forum and I'm sorry you're going through this. Your description of childhood/abusive marriage says it all: you need to devote all your energy and time to YOURSELF. Cut this man out of your life as completely as possible or he will suck you dry until you're nothing but an empty...

Yes, not an obvious task to hone in on the most pressing issue when there's a constellation of symptoms and issues are all intertwined anyway. I'll suggest an excellent book about PTSD by Pete Walker called "Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving" (his web site also has very helpful articles)...

Adoption, no matter at what age, is a domain rife with attachment issues. I was left with an aunt and uncle between the ages of 1.5 and 3, then reunited with my parents (they'd emigrated) whom I no longer recognised. It was an initial abandonment by my parents, then a 2nd abandonment by my...

I find that very relevant - ritual is all about reliability, predictability, nothing to shock or surprise (i.e. safety). Feeling safe is a big deal for traumatised people, whose limbic systems are usually highly dysregulated, and they feel like they're in free fall a lot of the time.

Yep - as much as we might want to believe that we can go it alone, humans (and most mammals) are wired for connection and will never do well in isolation. Sometimes I watch vids of kittens in a litter just to enjoy how much they seek out/crave physical contact - they're all over each other, they...

I agree that reality is infinitely more complex than any theoretical model. That said, my greatest advances came about as a result of finally understanding the mechanics of how my family functioned via 'theory'. When I realised my mum behaved like a narcissist and my dad like an abnormally...

I can relate to your feelings of feeling sorry for your abuser who was also your mum. I think it's quite normal for a child to feel 'responsible' for the parent, particularly when she's been brought up to make all others a priority before herself. I'm glad to hear you're in therapy and have...

What an interesting question! I've always felt that my given name didn't reflect who I felt/thought I was. When my parents immigrated, they changed my and my older brother's names bc they must have thought our original names would be too hard to pronounce/remember. I always felt that the...

I'm sorry you're going through such an emotionally intense time with your partner - it must be so very upsetting since it's getting at the heart of relationships: sexual and emotional intimacy, feeling like your needs are being seen and acknowledged, communication, connecting!!To be honest, none...

Morbid fear of disclosure - that's some wicked, wicked stuff!! Please be uber-compassionate with yourself; based on how terrified you seemed to feel after disclosing this incident to your therapist, I can't imagine how excruciatingly bad the incident must have been. I don't have the same...

So sorry you can't continue therapy, and it sounds like your flashbacks are visceral and terrifying. The perception of 'regression' isn't uncommon, especially when you really start processing the emotional effects of trauma. At the beginning, it's hard to do because it's so overwhelming and your...

Oy, this is a biggie!! the loss of your childhood with the attendant need for play, security, safety, love, guidance, physical affection, and time to be completely taken care of and nurtured is a massive trauma. I was a preternaturally 'mature' child by the age of 6 or 7 - doing housework...

While my parents were not addicts, both my brother and I recognised ourselves in the ACOA profile only a couple of years ago. I'd turned into an emotionally shut down, isolated, overachieving codependent and he'd been a homeless crack addict for years as a result of our severely emotionally and...

Interpersonal dynamics are typically highly problematic for traumatised people. It's because of arrested development after having been brought up in a dysfunctional/exploitative/abusive environment. If you've never been taught how to manage social dynamics, you can't NOT be quite emotionally...

I think attachment issues are so complicated because in young children, there are neural/hormonal changes that happen under conditions of distress. In that sense, a child is being conditioned in a very particular way and if she's subjected to high levels of stress/anxiety for prolonged periods...

This is a long post! :) So I joined this forum last spring, checked it out very briefly and then clocked out as I was going through a period of intense therapy and coming to terms with certain realities about my upbringing that I'd been in denial about for most of my life. It's a curious...

If you google youtube (can't embed the vid here) for 'attachment styles', check out the one by 'Scarlet Moon', which is a three-parter on attachment styles and how it plays out later in life. Very informative!

Pete Walker's book is excellent! Glad you found it; his earlier one (The Tao of fully Feeling) is also an excellent explanation of emotional abuse and what you can do to cope with it. The minimization business is a big deal: it's SO hard for a child to admit that their parent(s) is not treating...

For years, I was very triggered by young children - toddlers, mostly - and was completely unaware of it. It took me a very long time to realise that I was reacting to my own childhood of invasive emotional deprivation/neglect and extremely harsh and punitive reactions to my energy. I was a...