Feeling Like A Fraud/liar/crazy

[ptsdsolution]

You will wreck your head trying to determine what did or didn't happen. The fact you are thinking the thoughts you are thinking is your selfs way of communicating that something needs to be done. So you are not crazy but you will drive yourself crazy if you don't get help

 

[EvenStrongerNow]

Ryn, I relate to this so much. This voice has been really loud in my head. For me, I think it comes from a defense mechanism as Solara mentioned. The doubt means I can avoid it and not have to go through the pain of getting better.

I just wanted you to know that yet another person experiences this and is experiencing it right now. I just googled the way I was feeling and found your thread. Thank you for sharing it. :hug:

 

[Echo]

@Ryn, I'm in the same place as you. It is torture. My therapist tells me that I may never know full details and that I shouldn't force them out of me. To do so could be shattering and very traumatising. She says if is enough to see how my body is reacting to know that something must have happened, otherwise I just wouldn't be in this state. When I remember what I do actually consciously remember of my childhood, and when I think about the way my parents and family treat me now, I have also had to come to the conclusion that what I thought was normal, was really, really toxic, and remains so.

I am reading 'Toxic Parents. Overcoming their hurtful legacy and reclaiming your life' by Susan Forward, and I have had to put it down. Every single page seems to be about what I have experienced and so much of it I thought was normal. Another book I've just got is having a similar effect on me: 'The Emotionally Absent Mother. A guide to self-healing and getting the love you missed' by Jasmin Lee Cori. There is a lot in there about narcissistic mothers and attachment disorder. I think the whole culture within abusive families around the abuse and its subsequent emergence is super toxic. And it has all had an effect on us and the way we accept or rather deny to ourselves what has happened to us. All of that, too, is part of the abuse.

It was really helpful to read your account, @shell. If that is not a salutory lesson, I don't know what is. I don't think I've got anyone I can ask since both my parents were involved in my abuse. One of my sisters (younger) corroborated several things for me and it shocked us both to the core when we compared notes. However, unbeknowns to me, she has had a whole series of fishing conversations, supposedly innocently trying to confirm peripheral facts, with my parents. She won't tell me what she found out (she claims she doesn't want to get caught between everyone), but I realise now that I've come out about my diagnosis and later rape, my parents are not stupid enough not to be able to put two and two together, and so I'll never be able to have such fishing conversations myself, even if I wanted to do so.

I hope @Ryn, you do get to find out some corroborating facts, just to put your mind at peace (at least in the sense that you can stop feeling like you're going mad). I've decided I am just going to have to trust what my body tells me. I've got enough to know that abuse happened and by whom, though I suspect there is much more. For me it was a deciding factor in breaking away from the family (at least temporarily), but as I progress I am wondering if there will ever be a way back. What I have got, however, is freedom to make my own life be as I want it, even if it is terribly slow going because of the PTSD. I no longer have the clouds of confusion coming from the family's wish to deny, hide, minimise, and scapegoat. It has only been a few weeks, and though it is very lonely in one respect, even that early on in the process, it is a relief. I realise how much they were contributing almost daily to my head spinning with where the truth lay (about just about everything, not even to mention the early abuse).

 

[Ryn]

@Echo, my therapist says almost exactly the same thing. It really is torture.

I think the main thing that keeps me from talking to anyone who might be able to confirm anything is - as always - guilt. My parents are already seemingly having a hard enough time dealing with it, me, everything.

If I approached my father I would feel guilty because I know he is truly hurt by what happened to me and I don't want him to blame himself. If I approached my mother I am more just scared of her prying more out of me than I want to tell, or being made to feel like it was my fault and therefore more guilty... That's how she works. (definitely checking out those books, @Echo, by the way - thank you for mentioning them) But yes, even with her, I am afraid of hurting her, if she happens to still give a damn about me.

My brother is barely 16; not only is there not a whole lot he would remember, but to be honest, I am terrified that my abuser might have hurt him too. I really have no reason to suspect that except that I'm so shattered and shaken by my own memories that I don't know what to believe about our childhood anymore. And if by chance he was abused, I would rather die than cause him to remember and deal with what I am going through.

Protect, protect, protect. Reading the above it's blindingly clear how seriously I still take the threat my abuser made against my family, and how determined I am to protect them even if it costs me. That's just how I learned I'd have to live.

I might try looking through some of our old family records when I go home for the summer. I hate to have to do things secretly and sneakily but if there is some secret my family is keeping from me, this is the only way I'll be able to find out.

As far as the subject of the original post, I'm still feeling the same. I've been dealing with some derealization episodes lately that really make me feel like I'm coming undone. What I have been able to do is recognize some of my fragmented personalities - three so far, apart from me. I might write about them in my trauma diary later. The one good thing about them is that I feel slightly more validated in my memories when I can sort of view them as happening to another "person". I don't know if that's healthy or not; just what I've been noticing.

 

[Echo]

Yes, @Ryn, protecting my siblings is what I've done my whole life. I planned not to tell any of them about my abuse by my parents, in case it had happened to them. I wanted to let them come to it in their own time without my stuff clouding the issue. One of my sisters guessed, so she now knows some of it. I'll never willingly tell the rest of them. What has been so hurtful is that, whilst I've been excruiatingly worried all my life about them (I now realise), they don't seem to have any kind of emotional reaction to me having been raped. Just a shrug of the shoulders - that's your issue - you're on your own... I would be devastated if I heard any of them had been hurt.

And as for my parents, well, despite what they did and have continued to do, I still can't bear to think that they might be hurt. I felt so guilty telling the psychiatrist I saw briefly about what had happened. I felt like I was trashing my father's reputation. And the feeling that I am a disappointment, failure, etc., etc. in their eyes runs very deep. When really they should be feeling those things. But we seem to take everything for everyone onto our shoulders. It does help not to know how they are all responding now. I don't even want to imagine. I have put a great big white wall up in my head and they are all on the other side of it.

I agree with what you say about these separated parts. I do find it easier, too, to have compassion for an externalised self than to actually feel it for myself now as an adult. I actually had a fun day chatting to my baby self who had opinions all day long about what I should do and eat, etc. I think she was so relieved to be heard. Other parts are terrifying, though, and I can't go there. Baby steps, I guess. I think we gradually shift our perspective from observer to being the one it is happening to or the one who is feeling it all full force, and then shift back again, when it is all too much. That or totally numbing out....!

 

[Ryn]

they don't seem to have any kind of emotional reaction to me having been raped. Just a shrug of the shoulders - that's your issue - you're on your own...

This is just horrifyingly hurtful. I'm so sorry.

I think my brother would be an absolute emotional wreck, which, considering he's already likely mildly depressed and in a tough time right now trying to deal with my parents, I would not want to put on him. I guess I will have to tell him someday. Somehow I think doing that will be harder than anyone else. I really do love him and for all our fights and sibling spats, we are really close. He is the only reason I have survived growing up with my mother because he gets it.

I too feel like I am hurting my parents' reputation, especially in my own eyes, when I tell my therapist about them. And the failure/disappointment thing, too. I wonder if we will ever be fully free from that.

I actually had a fun day chatting to my baby self who had opinions all day long about what I should do and eat, etc.

:) I love this.

 

[Hashi]

I understand not wanting to talk to parents and siblings, for a number of reasons. (In my case, their likely invalidation and denial, or them falling apart and looking to me to help them with their reactions.)

I think the thing of what it means for your own perception of your parents to talk to your therapist about this/them, is worth staying with and working on. I know it's very painful and difficult, but for me it was necessary because I had to get through my denial about my parents in order to get through my denial about my own experiences.

 

[Ryn]

for me it was necessary because I had to get through my denial about my parents in order to get through my denial about my own experiences.

That's a really good point, @Hashi. It is no wonder I am minimising my abuse memories when I am even minimising (lesser) bad memories about my parents. This whole ordeal has been massively eye-opening about nearly every aspect of my life, and that has been staggering but also necessary. So that's definitely something worth thinking about. Thanks.