Life Changer

[Blackjack]

I am hoping that some of you can throw some thoughts or opinions into the mix for me.

I started seeing a counsellor in April in conjunction with my PTSD diagnosis. I have had 6 sessions with him and he then had a holiday which meant that I had a 6 week break from seeing him. While I was seeing him, I was also getting some help from a lovely lady who, whilst not a trained counsellor, is a spiritualist, a PTSD sufferer herself (although she has hers pretty much under control most of the time now and understands PTSD very well) and has been a great source of help and support to me. She has now become a good friend to me too.

However, whilst talking first to my counsellor and then more recently to my friend, it has come to the surface that although the accident was a huge part of my problems, my issues actually go back to my childhood. I have come to realise that my mother is a terrible narcissist and I can now see how much she is controlling and affecting my life. She never showed me any love or affection as a child, I can never remember her hugging me or giving me any affection at all either as a child or as an adult. She will never praise anything I do or compliment me in any way. She used to hit me a lot as a child, sometimes with her hand and sometimes with a hairbrush or whatever she had to hand. She has openly told me that I was a mistake and ruined her life and how awful it was giving birth to me, how much pain I caused her. It has also resulted in me digging up a lot of things from my first marriage, which was to an abusive and violent husband who more than once put me in hospital with quite serious injuries.

This has all been incredibly unsettling to me and I now feel like my whole life has been turned on its head. I feel like I have lost the security of my upbringing and home life that I assumed I had always had because I now realise and have thought about how things really were. My memories of my childhood are realistically largely of being told off, beaten or punished but up until now I have always kind of put these to the back of my mind but now I have been forced to confront them and it is really very very hard indeed. It is a bit like waking up and finding I am a different person somehow.

Does this make any sense to anyone, and if so how the heck do I pick up the pieces and move forwards with life and get used to the fact that in reality I am a different person to whom I have always thought of myself as. I am now struggling in my relationship with my mother because of the things I have come to face. My relationship with her has been irretrievably altered and I am finding it hard to adapt to the realities after 50 years of life. It is like someone removing blinkers from me and I can now see the full picture and its very frightening.

I hope someone can at least understand this if nothing else.

 

[Silver.]

I would write down everything you can, and when you have your next therapist appointment, bring it up.
I recently started seeing a new therapist, and it was slow going at first. My brain is scrambled these days, so I wasn't really telling her things I thought she should know, to help guide me. (especially because I told her I needed her to guide me and not just sit there). So one morning I had a moment of clarity, I typed up a long email of things that happened that added to the PTSD, the anxiety, panic. Things in life that were crappy, and I saved it. Then I would think of some more to add to it, things that were stressing me out and so on. Then after 3 days, I wrote in introduction, explaining that while I can't say it in therapy, here is x,y, and z, I want to get better, and here is some stuff that you need to know to help me, and I sent it to her.
I am so glad I did that. She now knows as much of the story as I can think of, and we know what we need to work on.

I am so sorry you have had to go through this. Perhaps you would be better off cutting your mother out of your life or perhaps you need to find a way to forgive her, for you. But that isn't my judgement to make. The best thing is to talk about that relationship so you can work through it and figure out a path that is best for you. I am glad you have found a spiritual friend who can help guide you, we all need someone like that in our lives.
I wish you the best x

 

[Bubblegirl]

Hello, thank you for sharing your story. Some of us do understand. I was molested by my mother's brother for 10 years, from age 3 until about13, but I did not remember the trauma and in my 40s began to deal with the real facts of my life... recently I had memories return that brought me the devastating knowledge that my mother knew.
I completely understand the mind-bending feeling that everything you thought about your life is not what you thought. The only advice I can give you is, keep yourself safe, emotionally, mentally, physically. I spend most of my therapy sessions trying to figure out if or how to have a relationship with my mom.
I feel for you. Hang in there.

 

[Pakadlangitok]

Hello!
There is sometimes value in addressing the past if it helps with the future but if it complicates that, it may not be good. Sometimes we have to let things go. I am not good at it. I was abused too and in a bad way too. But on the days I CAN let it go? I totally do.

 

[Chem Lady]

Your story resonates with me a lot. I had my revelation when I was younger than you, but only because horrible life circumstances precipitated it. But, I do know what it's like to suddenly realize that your world is not the one you told yourself it was for so many years. It is a situation that makes you confused as to which way is up. This same thing recently happened to my sister-in-law as well, and she frequently had to ask us if she was crazy, if she had just made it all up in her head.
Both my sister-in-law and I had to go through a time of mourning, all the stages, to grieve the family we thought we had. I found it important to share my thoughts with someone who didn't downplay any of my experiences and support me through working through it all. I also have spent many years trying to make a new support system after I realized that my family was not there for me like I thought they were, and I've had to figure out who I am when an angry BPD mom was not telling me who I was and yelling at me for things she imagined. This was all 12 years ago now. I'm still working on building self-confidence and discovering who I am, and I still have moments where I mourn the family I wanted, but never had. But, the sad moments get farther apart. I think I probably would be farther along had I not married a narcissistic man! Sigh.
My spiritual mentor told me something when I was where you are and it helped me so much. She said that I was like the Israelites wandering in the desert with Moses. They had no idea where they were going. They had this promise of coming out the other side, but they had no idea when that would happen. So, they wandered around the desert for 40 years. Right now you are wandering in the desert and not sure where to go or when you will come out. But you will. It's ok to be in the desert. Keep being honest about your life with people who care and support you and one day you'll have the nice surprise of feeling like you've moved out of that desert. It'll happen!

 

[lostforgottensoul]

Does this make any sense to anyone, and if so how the heck do I pick up the pieces and move forwards with life and get used to the fact that in reality I am a different person to whom I have always thought of myself as.

Yes, I think us all that came out of denial has these issues. And you are no where near a different person. You just supressed your past and was in denial lying to yourself and now see your real past for what it was.

If i were to tell you "well for 10 yrs I lied to myself and now im not and that means Im a different person now" im sure you tell me "no, you just arent lying to yourself anymore."

Im still picking up the pieces but im in a completely different position now then I was 6 months ago. I did it slowly. Slowly telling myself the truth, slowly countering distorted thinking, did CBT thought records http://www.cognitivetherapyguide.org/thought-records.htm and worked through a DBT workbook Dead Link Removed and worked with my therapist on things in particular, talked on here and tossed things around. Also wrote affermations on sticky notes and put them in places if read it all day and over time pieces get picked up and put back where it belongs.

It is like someone removing blinkers from me and I can now see the full picture and its very frightening.

Yes it is!

When it comes to my mom (and different as we are estranged) my therapist is spending a good deal of time having me dig into her past with my dad and her youngest brother whom is the only one that speaks to me. Its something im not wanting to do as I think that gives her an "out" but I think its helping me see that she was injured too. Not to justify what she did as no matter how injured you are, you are responsible for your behavior but it's starting to help a bit. Helping to shed the rage and forgive her, forgiveness is for you, not them. Maybe run that by your therapist. Learning how she was raised can help as most times abuse runs in cycles and she was likely raised the same way. That can help to forgive her. Just a thought.

Hope some of this helps.

 

[VioletButterfly]

@Blackjack

My mom was one of my main abusers and like you, I think my mind tried to work with what I had at the time it was all going on, and buried all of the hurt as I didn't understand it when I was little and was too caught up in unhealthy, engrained thinking by the time I reached adulthood. I think I was in robot mode for a very long part of my life (20-your age), living as I was programmed. It lead to a lot of unhealthy behaviors and living. Part of me realized this in my 40's, and tried to pull away from her. I wasn't aware of the entire picture though. That came after I
decided that I had to jump in and rescue this woman from herself and her Alzheimer's diagnosis in order to get her to a safe place. There was a great deal of drama and stress in trying to get her situated in a facility with legal and financial ducks in a row and secured. I don't think it helps that this continual oversight will continue for the rest of her life and I find it very triggering.

At any rate, after I had done most of the heavy lifting, I could feel and sense a change within myself. I have and still do feel very disconnected. It's as if this person who is here now can't relate to the person I was before. I know, in my mind, the course of events in my adult life, but I can't connect to them and really "know" them like I used to. Childhood is really a challenge to consider and for now, because there are so many ghosts back that directions, I'm trying to ground myself in the present. This state of being has perplexed me and driven me to my knees in despair time and again. I have tired to figure it out, tried to connect, but all I have come to conclude is that somewhere in the process of saving that woman, I lost my bearing and my grip on a good deal of who I thought I was and who I truly was before the cascade began with her. It feels like a good deal of my filters that used to insulate me are now gone - ugh, uncomfortable. I realize though that I have to make choices that are good for me.

Easier said than done, and I am fully aware that I am spending a good deal of my time taking care of this woman as her proxy, handling her personal affairs and overseeing her medical and residential care while I watch my bank account dwindle and find that I can barely get out of bed most days. It's very trying. At the same time, I am grieving what can never be and what I have lost in this process from childhood until now. There will be no working through the relationship, no warm fuzzy as her mind is not able to have a relationship with me right now - it's too late. I feel sad and angry at her at the same time, but feel that I have no outlet. Exercise in futility.

So I'm working on acknowledging what I know to be true for myself, accepting this, and taking actions when I can to help myself. One truth being that I haven't managed to wall off the emotions that go along with caring for her (very triggering to care for your abuser) or to clip the enmeshment that exists between the two of us. It's a slippery slope, but I'm working on it one episode at a time, trying to be aware of my thinking and motivations. Knowing that I have to get a job, so must find a way to move forward with that process with her tethered to my ankle, but a least I'm aware now of the mechanism that keeps her there, for now.

So, if you would accept a suggestion, maybe that's where you begin - acknowledge your feelings, accept them, and take action to protect and care for yourself. Give yourself room to feel, turn over, examine, and process your sense of having the rug pulled out from under you, and the emotional and intellectual disequilibrium that brings to the table. Get yourself to a place of self-acceptance no matter where you are in the process and like or even just accept who that is and where you are. Perhaps your T can help you with this process?

Although I brought this up in therapy many times, my T gave me no direction, and I usually think in circles due to all that I have up in the air right now so it took a good deal of time, but I kept coming back to it so I knew it was important and kept chipping away at it until I reached some plausible conclusions for myself. It took a lot of reflection, sorting and determination on my part, and I'm still not sure I fully understand what I have on deck. All I know is that I feel shaky and unstable - like up is down and down is up. I hang tight to trying to stay present as I am easily distracted/dissociate when life gets really heavy. And, I keep looking to acknowledge my feelings and accept them, taking action when I can. In other words, give yourself space, time, and love. You didn't get here overnight and it will take time to find your way back to a more comfortable place.

Hoping this all made sense and might help you out a little. Best to you. VB

 

[Nevermore]

I havent read all the replies but just reD and wanted to say it makes perfect sense. I have been told that not everyone who experienced trauma develops PTSD. People who have healthy attachment in their childhood are not as susceptible as people who don't. So it makes perfect sense that you now realise your childhood was not as secure as you thought it was!
I had thd same realisation.

 

[Blackjack]

Thank you so much for your kind and supportive comments, I really do appreciate it. It's good to know I am not alone with this. I will get through it, I have no choice, but it's hard right now. Thank you so much though, you are a source of great strength and encouragement.