• We are a multilingual website again. Read the notice about this.
  • Understand AI use at MyPTSD: all AI use is explained in our AI help page. AI use is by choice here. It exists if you want it, but does nothing unless you choose to use it.

Around The Bend

Am aware that my mother knew about our dad abusing my sister and I and this was why we had to be killed. Get rid of the evidence.

It was after this time that her mantra to us at night was "I have to love you but I don't have to like you" and that she had to make a choice between us and our father, and that she chose her husband, felt she had to.

Am also aware that the garage was a place of abuse at home with dad and his friend G. Recall being put naked in front of a camera and told to run in place for a long time while both men took my little sister into the garage.

I feel incredible guilt for the two specific memories of when he did something not right to me and then took her into another room. I was not fully aware at the time what was happening nor could I overpower two grown men. And I knew that my mother didn't listen and threatened us when we spoke at all about the abuse. I don't know what I think I could have done, but I did nothing.

Just tonight talking to my husband did I put it together that my total black out dissociation into a coma in a friend's garage was due to the abuse in the garage at home.

My only memory of this was in a flashback two weeks ago.

My dad was trying to molest me and I was fighting back with my hands. He dragged me to the garage in the dark and used clamps to clamp my hands to a sheet of plywood and closed the door. I was four. I was left in the garage for a long time in the pitch black.

I feel more memories coming about the garage, but that's all I want to process for now. I'm smelling motor oil.
 
Only since moving to FL have I had smell flashbacks. I've read that they are common, esp. in early child trauma.

Smell FB's have both been from when my dad punished me for not cooperating with the sexual abuse. For some reason, the smells got recorded. Smell and shaming?

I don't know why but they have been connected. Perhaps because he also broke my nose. And he often covered my mouth with his hand and I could hardly breath with his fingers flush with my nostrils. It was a strain to breathe. It was all I could hear. Suffocation feeling.

Sometimes when I had FB's during sex the feeling was suffocation/can't breathe.
 
After doing some more thinking/feeling, empathy work and processing, I can see how my mother could have felt trapped and saw death as an escape. I can see how she felt she couldn't tell her parents about the abuse, because she blames herself for things. By the time she figured it out, I think he had made her feel complicit. I think as a narcissist with a major void inside of her, she had no sense of self as inherently good to strengthen herself for the work of separation from an abuser. She is weak.

Seeing the weaknesses in my parents has helped me to move past the total resentment and feel like I'm learning from my life, however small these steps are. And I may detach from and dissociate these feelings, but some of the work will remain and integrate.

Mostly what has helped me feel this is understanding how powerless I felt to battle my father as a bully. I doubt that she felt powerful enough to battle him, and I know she tried. I believe he was expert in crushing one' s sense of power over oneself.

I'm proud that I did it and left the mind traps he set.
 
This weekend, another kind of flashback. Feel shaking and scared little girl.

Woke Saturday having dreamed the vague dreams of memories of childhood as this little girl part. Then, found my husband to be too triggering, all weekend.

I sucked it up and pulled it together so we could do our Sat. plans to Epcot, but I was having a hard day, feeling really down and unable to enjoy. Felt fear of people, very much, and felt like a frightened child in an adult body around crowds and people. Even my family.

Focusing in the movie stuff: during movie couldn't tell I was dissociating, but I watched as if I were someone else, noticing different details than I have before. Feels like I was switched into an alter all weekend, feeling intruded upon. Someone else out.

J. says that happens every year before my birthday. I do remember I feel scared and depressed the weeks before my birthday. Always. Worse each year.
 
Thank you and hugs back, @gizmo

The trouble is that the anniversary reactions seem to punctuate the year at frequent intervals. In this one, I have no specific even that I have remembered or re-experienced clearly yet to attach it to.

This year, the flashback was clear that I had just began to believe everything was okay at home, going to be okay, and then I felt betrayed and unsafe again. I felt the familiar feeling of hating myself for trusting again.

Before this happened, I was having this feeling all week: how can I trust myself to know who to trust? And maybe I am wrong to trust in my husband (of 20 years relationship). I feel the rug pulled out from under me feeling of growing up in the dangerous family.

This seems to happen when I have any current life fears or worries hanging over my head that I cannot solve quickly. In this case, we are waiting to hear of his potential job since January. It is taking forever. I am holding my breath too long. I cannot live through much more of the pain of living in fear.

I think it is my catastrophizing and also just current life stress cups too full.

God regularly asks way too much of me. I do not know how I have survived my life up to this point.

I'm tired of living in a constant state of fear or "what is going to happen to us?!"

The lesson is to take the stable, easy road in life and not to expect too much or risk too much. To be grateful for the daily food and shelter.
 
A long two days. Stress cup maxed out Friday. Started switching into a different me at work.

Woke Saturday, expected to have a fun day out for birthday. Made plans.

After drinking coffee on the sofa, I suddenly felt overwhelming despair. I tried to distract from the feelings of dread and fear. Found I was USING MY LEFT hand instead of my right to type into the Roku romote, and was not having difficulty with that. Okay. Weird. Still feeling weird and bad. So I went to take a shower.

While showering, my hands washing my hair were suddenly my dad's hands washing me. I was suddenly a small child, crying at the floor of the shower. I felt like I was in Alice in Wonderland and became several times smaller. The shower felt enormous. This child who came forward began to sob. I was no longer in control.

My husband heard a child crying and came in and realized I was having a DID event. He turned off the water and put a towel over me, but I went total submission and turned into jelly, face down on the tile. I couldn't move or think.

Later, I came to and crawled out. But it gets fuzzy from there. The last thing I remember is crying for my mommy for a long time.

My h carried me to my bed. I was not able to walk. From there, I think I switched rapidly into other children, but today, I cannot remember yesterday, until I felt better and took a shower (again?) and came out and told my husband a vision I had. Spiritual vision. I can barely remember that.

Then, I thought I would be okay. Same thing today, drinking coffee, exactly the same, boom, sudden overwhelming despair and depression, and then I was a child again, having flashbacks about her (my) traumas. I was talking to my h about a feeling and then suddenly I was a child who was overwhelmed by that feeling remembering hiding in the dryer in the basement laundry room/bathroom while freaking out because I heard my little sister being abused by my dad in the next room. I was crying so hard and just sobbing her name. I said "I don't know if she will be dead when I come out of here." So I felt afraid to come out. I felt like a bad sister because I couldn't stop what they did to her. I heard her screaming and crying. I was apologizing to her and I felt broken. I still do.

Then, I switched into other alters. One I remember because she said "M" is having a flashback. When I switch, the alter is talking, then they have a body memory that I feel in my body. The feelings don't make sense every time. Sometimes I have to wait while my husband asks the alter what is happening, then the alter speaks and tells (us) what is happening.

In this case, the alter said "M" is having a flashback. And then I was reliving a rape in the basement. My dad decided to use a piece of wood to hit me in the right eye. The wood hit my eye, at the brow, splitting it and then slid down and broke my nose. The red-orange carpet that I guess we had down them got a bunch of blood on it. My mom somehow came down later and saw me on the floor covered in blood. I don't know if she knew I was raped also. But she put me in the hideabed down there and brought me a pbj sandwich. She knew my father had done it to me. They began to fight. I heard her crying and I heard him talking like an angry animal and hitting her. Later I heard her making dinner. I don't know if he left or went to his room.

My mom said I had to stay in the basement because nobody could see me like this or I'd be taken away. Not even my sister because she would talk?

So I was kept there for a week? 2 weeks? I was in and out of consciousness. I got very sick and had a sore throat. I missed over a week of school.

I longed to be at my grandparents' house. Then a mom from the school brought a school craft I apparently had made in Kindergarten before the rape/assault. I had then, and have now, no memory of making the craft. Although at the time, my mom after the lady left made a big deal about it. The lady said "I had made it for her for mother's day." However, like I said, it looked vaguely familiar. Although it didn't feel like "I" made it.

I assume I dissociated a lot at that time and just couldn't connect to the happy child who made it, as that was not me. I remembered when my dad got off me and left me with the broken nose. I was in pain but a tingly feeling came all over me when I thought "I am going to live!"

So I guess I thought he would kill me. I felt so relieved that I had survived. But this turned into despair at being imprisoned in the basement for a couple of weeks and getting really sick. I lost a lot of weight. Probably from 40 lbs to the 30's. I was pale. I was not allowed to come upstairs until my nose appeared "normal."

Nobody noticed that it had been broken and not reset.

I forgot about the abuse and only remembered being sick, as that is what my mom kept telling me happened. That I was just very sick.

I don't know if she sent my dad away for a week, if he went hunting, or if I just had to pretend that he wasn't there to survive that couple of weeks. For some reason, I can't tell if he was there or not. She said that I was getting better, and the lady dropped off my craft because it was going to be spring break the next week and they wanted me to get my craft before the break.

Because of this memory/flashback, I think this may be why I have anniversary reactions in March.

I seem to get bad around my birthday too and all this is coming up, lots of rapes this weekend, of both me and my sister with me having a panic attack about it, but unclear why me, why now.

I got super shaking and having twitches or mini seizures. This is a new low for me. I don't know about that. I also switched into a 9/12 year old, she said she was both 9 and 12. Go figure. And she was talking to another alter, a 3 year old girl begging to come out, and she was saying "NO." I don't remember everything she said, but she was trying to keep other alters who contained trauma memories from coming out. Another alter choked her and said "Just do your job." Which was to "babysit" the alters and keep them from coming to the front. By this time I was exhausted from hours of switching. No food or water. Much crying and freaking out and hyperventilating. Water made me feel like I'd vomit.

This was from about 8:30 am to 3 pm. About 3 pm, I was having trouble breathing, where you have to make yourself breathe because you can't do it automatically. So again, I made myself take a shower and pretend I was getting ready for work, which helps me activate my normal worker self. It took a while and I was shaky, but it got me going again.

Rough two days. I am not coping with the stress of my h's waiting on a job. We're down to the wire and I don't know how much more I can take. I feel like if this doesn't work out, I cannot live anymore.
 
Thank you, Gizmo. I think very highly of you, too. :hug:

I'm just not wining any "Cope-er of the Year Award". My birthday has been a "challenge" previously, but this is a whole new level to the point we're thinking about just skipping it next year. :confused:
 

Donation drives

2026 Donation Goal

Goal
$1,800.00
Earned
$910.00
This donation drive ends in
0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds
  50.6%

Trending content

Featured content

Back
Top Bottom