Title

“Just because I have to love you doesn’t mean I have to like you.” 

My mom would tell me this enough times in my childhood that I remembered it my heart.

I’m lost. I don’t know how to heal. I don’t know what to heal. My emotions are everywhere. When I started feeling my feelings, I wish someone would have told me how to control them. My therapist was so insistent that I feel everything in order to heal but never bothered to prepare me for what was to come. How do you close the dam once it’s been opened?

I was watching Richard Grannon’s Instagram Live and I learn more from that guy than years in therapy.

I just can’t keep going on like this.

The pain is like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

I cannot stand to be in the same room as my mother.

I am barely talking to my father.

I discovered I was the Lost child in this dysfunction. So I am trying to read as much about that as I can.

I’m still agoraphobic. Still monophobic. Still having to rely upon these monsters for food, money and shelter.

This. Is. Not. Living. This is dying slowly.

I wish I had happier things to report.

I finished Toxic Parents. It was okay. Nothing groundbreaking. Got to the part where you’re supposed to “heal.” Write a letter to your parents. Been there. Done that. Still in the same spot.

I worry Im getting to a point where I know this won’t get better.

There is the Red Pill. The Blue Pill and the Black Pill.

I think when I started this “journey” I was red pilled. I felt I could see everything now and I could possibly get out.

At this point, the best I can do is die here or die in a state-funded group home.

The lost child was never allowed to even imagine a life free of pain and suffering.

The lost child in me is telling me to not bother having any expectations. Don’t plan anything. The last time I had a goal, I set out to volunteer at an animal shelter. It was great until my NM tried to get the place shut down. I was kicked out because, once again, my NM could not control herself. She has to ruin ANYTHING I have. Anything that is good in my life, she must find a way to ruin it ASAP.

Everything has been an illusion.

Thought I had parents – I didn’t.

Thought I had a childhood – I didn’t.

Thought I had family – I didn’t.

Thought I had faith in a God – I didn’t.

It was all lies. I was brainwashed since birth. Now I’m too old to start. I can’t find a partner to have kids with I’m too old. I have so much work to do on myself. I can’t get a career. I have a 8 year gap in my work experience from PTSD.

I have no future. I wake up every morning and I don’t get why I’m still breathing. This isn’t living. This is not living. From birth it has been surviving one crisis to the next crisis to the next crisis.

I get now why people kill themselves. I get now why people eat their pain. I get now why people take drugs to numb it all.

I feel so goddamn broken. This – ME – is just not fixable. There is no time. I had no childhood, I had no teen years, I had no 20’s. I’m halfway to 40 with no friends, no job, no family.

These thoughts are impossible to avoid. I know I shouldn’t be thinking like this. Everyone will shit on me for being so negative but this is how I feel. These are my thoughts.

I don’t want sympathy. I don’t want empathy.

I don’t want people to sell me false hope (‘Oh, put your faith in God. It will get better. Just hold on. Good things are coming.’)

When? When are the good things coming?

I’ve had almost 40 years of straight suffering. I don’t know what non-pain looks like or feels like. If there is a blue print to get better, please tell me because I’ve done the medications, the exposure therapies, the yoga, meditation, NLP, EMDR, CBT, DBT, hypnosis, exercise, praying.

I think it’s me. I think I just don’t want to keep trying these things anymore. I think I’m tired. I’m tired. I fought for me for a really long time. I made it through the 80’s in this house. I made it through high school in this house. And nothing has changed except I’m unable to leave this house now. Now I’m in prison in my house and in my head. I know I can survive hell. They murdered my soul and they bled me dry. They got exactly what they wanted. I’m old and tired now. The same old and tired I used to complain about when I was in elementary school and the kids would look at me weird.

I’m scared.

I want to be honest with how I feel but my own words terrify me.

I don’t even know if I believe in God anymore. I was forced Catholic. Strict rules, religious abuses and ritual abuses since birth. *Drink this or the devil is within you.* *Do this or you will bring Satan into my house*

I just want to ask him, why send me here? Why send me down here? I have no purpose. I’ve been disconnected from everyone and never truly connected at all. It was all a joke. Am I just a joke to you? What was the point of all this? Others could have used my life for good. I’m wasting it carrying around this trauma like a badge. Makes me physically sick. These people you put me with, they hurt me, you know.  I have no self. I have no idea how to fix any of this.

Skip, Next. TL;DR

I have been isolated for four days now in this room.

However, when I look at the last five year or even the last 30 years, I see isolation is a very common theme.

It’s the thing that hurts the most.

I became housebound agoraphobic in 2014 but I see I had dealt with agoraphobia since I was a child. I was abandoned in this house. This very same house, numerous times. Times when I was such a small kid, no one should have left a kid that young alone. You wake up, go downstairs, see a note that says parents are gone. We didn’t even have cellphones back then.  I remember walking around this house at night with a knife in my hand, feeling terrified at what I might find. No parents home. Even if my parents were home, I was told to go to my room and I was never bothered with.

Years and years of playing alone in this very same room. Years of hearing my mother on the phone for hours downstairs or just up and leaving the house for hours. Years of my father being so busy he would get home at midnight and be gone by 8am.

I was an afterthought. They just gave birth to me and assumed I could take care of myself. I was the “perfect child” because I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I didn’t fuss. Why?

Because I was in a constant state of never knowing what was going to happen and who was going to physically abandon me next.

And that is just physical abandonment. Doesn’t begin to touch the emotional abandonment. The hugs I never got. The kisses I was forced to give that I said no. My mother only hugged us when she wanted to feel like someone loved her. If you tried to touch her, she would shoo you away whilst saying, “go away.”

My father was never hugged or shown affection so I remember telling him that I would care for him like a mother. I was probably 7 or 8. I would go to carnivals with him and try and give him fun childhood stuff. Win him stuffed animals and toys. I stopped calling him Dad and started calling him by his name and calling him Little. My little ______

I thought, if I could give my Dad the love he didn’t get from his parents, then maybe he could learn to love me like the other kids parents loved their kids. I saw kids on tv and kids at school with parents who loved them. Normal kids. Hugged them. Showed affection for them. Asked them how their day was. Checked on their homework. Did school projects with them. Played sports with them. Spent time with them doing hobbies and stuff. Made them meals. Help them get dressed for school and brush their teeth. Basic Dad stuff.

My father couldn’t do any of that. But even more sad is that I think he just didn’t want to do those things. He didn’t care.

I remember being angry many times and telling my mom that I wanted a “normal dad.” Why can’t he just be normal? I was angry that he couldn’t do basic stuff. And the excuse I would get my from my mom was “That is your father.  He brings home the bacon. His parents abused him. He got his OCD from them and he’s never going to change. Deal with it.” Then she’d go get on the phone again or turn on the tv and eat food.

My mother disassociated with food, tv and becoming a SJW. I don’t know if she was unable to be a mother, didn’t know how to parent or just didn’t want to. I think she just didn’t want to.

I don’t think it matters how she became the way she is. She denies doing anything wrong.

She denies my entire existence.

“Will you stop playing the victim.”

“Stop acting like we tortured you.”

“I’m telling you, you’re remembering it wrong. Your perception is skewed.

“Your anger is genetic and it’s not from my side of the family.”

I have lost track of how many times I have heard all of these over the last 3 decades.

I never knew it had a name. Gaslighting a child for 30 years turns them into an adult that feels internally, 8 or 10 years old. It turns that child into an adult who is unable to know who they are (no sense of self.) A child who doubts the thoughts in her mind. A child who fears herself. A child who cannot leave the house without holding onto their abusive parent. A child who cannot be left alone in a house for longer than 30 minutes. A child who cannot work to support themselves. A child who was taught to never, ever, under any circumstances trust the world or society – for they will stab you in the back every time. Trust no one. A child who abandons themselves at every let down and blames and shames themselves. A child who has a voice in their head telling them how disgusting they are because they couldn’t fix mom and dad so you surely can’t fix yourself. A child who used to be able to drive a car and can no longer trust herself behind the wheel of an automobile. A child who was taught to fear herself because like mother said, I brought the devil into the house. A child who was taught that she will always fail, so what is the point of trying.  A child who was taught that they can have acquaintances but never make friends.

I have no money.  They took my car, sold it and bought another one but it doesn’t matter because I can’t drive anyways. I have no friends.  I have no connection to the world. I have no connection with these people called my parents. I have no means to work or support myself.

What is am I supposed to do?

I go to therapy every week. That is what I’m supposed to do.

I don’t see how I will ever recover. I just look at this problem logically and see it for what it is and it is an impossible situation.

Either, I die.  Which is likely considering my health issues and the fact that I spent 22 hours a day inside a 12×12 room for over 1,800+ days. Or one of my parents dies. Which will probably force me into some sort of group home or institution. I have no family. I have no friends.

I’m not even holding on my a thread anymore. It’s way beyond that point. I ask myself hundreds of times a day “How did I get here?”

Inner voice says “You have to help yourself. You have to help yourself. You’re not helping yourself correctly. You’re not doing it right. Always wrong. See.”

There is nothing else for me to do expect go to therapy and stay in this room. I’ve tried leaving. It’s met with panic. I ask my therapist how to stop it and he says there is no way to stop it.

Richard Grannon has a course out that he claims will cure CPTSD and save you years of therapy. It’s $500.00.

I have 122.39 in my checking account. I still have to pay for my meds this month klonopin $10, doctors visit $80, food, car insurance. You think I’m ever going to see $500? I can’t remember the last time I saw that amount of money.

This guy is claiming I can be rid of this horribleness that I’ve been in for 5 years and be whole again. Possibly live a normal life and have friends again and work again and actually be apart of society again.

But for a price.

It’s sad. If people want to help you, they will help you. No money. If I wanted to help someone I spent thousands on friends. Paid their rent, bills, groceries. I was that guy. I was the one person people called when they were where I am right now and say “Hey____, can you help me?” And I would get in car, drive down, pay for everything, bail them out. Stay with them. Offer emotional, financial support. That was me. That was ME. Knowing I would never see a dime of that back.

Where are all those friends now?

It reinforces my belief that people disgust me. Because hearing Richard Grannon has this program but it’s $500 just proves my inner critic right. << “See, I told you all along. You can’t trust anyone. People are con artists. They say they will help you but there is always a catch. They just want your money. They don’t want to help you.” >>

It’s true. My therapist once saw a patient who could only pay him $10 dollars a week for 2 years because that is what he could afford.

That to me is someone who is here to honestly help other people. They aren’t doing this to drive a nice car or remodel their home. They want people to get well so that they can get out of their office and help someone else.

 

 

PTSD vs Home Depot

Night 3 no sleep.

I don’t know if it’s due to the change in clonazepam manufacturer or not.

I asked to go to Home Depot late morning. Figured no one would be there.

The place was jam packed.

Mom went to park and she almost side swapped a car. My dad and I both told her she was close, she denied it and claimed she saw everything. She didn’t. No one can object.

I get out of the car and this old man is pushing a wheel barrel. Very loud. I hold my hands over my ears.

He apologizes for the noise and I’m embarrassed. Why is the noise bothering me?

Feel the need to get back in the car. It’s too bright out here. Too exposed. I ask for the car keys and head to the vegetable section. I’m holding my dads arm the entire time.

He’s angry. I can sense it. He is embarrassed. I can sense it.

I hide behind a row of shelves of plants. He is quiet. Won’t look me in the eye. Won’t acknowledge me.

I told him I’m scared and I feel that the shelves will protect me. Cars are driving passed us but to me they are going 100mph. I decide to try and make a run inside the garden section thinking it may bring down the anxiety.

It’s packed inside with people. I head for the bird feeder section. Open spaces. Dad is annoyed. I see a pile of soil about 4 feet high. I run to it and take cover behind it. Feel like I can breath. Someone is coming down the aisle and I pretend I’m just looking on the ground. He’s embarrassed. I try to make it over from the pile of soil to the bird feeders but can’t move my feet. I grab my dad’s arm and try and keep moving. If I stay still too still for too long the anxiety builds up so I try and move around to another aisle. Mom is gone but she finally shows back up. I get to the plant hanger section and quickly pick one out. I can’t breath. People are around and I need to just get the stuff and get out. My dad is asking questions and I can’t hear them because my brain is going a thousand miles a minute. Sun is bright and shining. People around. Just get the stuff and leave.

I get the hanger and make it to the check out. There is a lady behind me and my dad goes “you’re gonna hit her with the hanger.” i wasn’t. It doesn’t matter he already got inside my head. I try and push my breath out. I can’t people are coming in and out and the cars,  I can still hear them. Big cars, trucks. I think what if they hit me. What if they just plow through this Home Depot. We cash out but my dad wants to use one dollar bills. We don’t have time. I’m trying to hold on. I can’t focus on much. Im looking for the keys to the car. I need to make it back to the car. I’m still holding onto my dad’s arm. He is annoyed and can feel his resentment towards me. I hate myself. I see a woman and a daughter and think my dad is looking at her thinking “What the f*ck is wrong with my daughter?”

We get to the car and throw the stuff in the back. Feel somewhat safe and able to breath once inside the car and the doors are closed. I’m exhausted. I’m drained. I feel hopeless that this will ever improve. I’m angry at myself for becoming this.  I’m continuously re-experiencing trauma over and over again thinking maybe one day my brain will “click” and realize there is no fear.

God hear me, please. I beg. I beg.

Kingdom

From the TV show “Kingdom” [Season 3 Episode 5]

Ryan Wheeler talking about his friend Keith. 

 

 

 

 

I used to tell myself that the only reason I was alive was to remind others how not to live their lives. I was an example from God on how not to be. I hated me because my parents taught me to hate me. I would ask God to “take me home.” I would write in my diary that God sent down the wrong kid. I was 8 years old. What was the purpose of this pain? What is the purpose of your pain? What has it gotten me in 34 years? I’m still in pain. I still have very little purpose. The grief is overwhelming. I was that kid. I was Keith. I suffered and I continue to suffer. Never really living. Never catching a break. Never understanding why my parents didn’t want me or want me to get better. Was I never supposed to catch a break? Is this what I will leave behind? Journals of pain. Countless pages upon pages of the abuse. It doesn’t mean anything. It can’t help anyone. What is the purpose? What is the point here?

 

How to Create a Human Trash Can

Pre Birth

My parents were married a year after meeting on a blind date back in 1971.

My mother claims she had to raise my father for 10 years. She also claims he did not want to have children. This she told my sister and I when we were very young.

She said our father was infertile and she couldn’t get pregnant but then she “figured it out” and that he was just running too much and his sperm was unable to impregnant her.

Yes, things my mother told my sister and I as children.

She claims she desperately wanted a child and my dad just loved running so much that it took 10 years for him to give her a child.

My sister was born in 1980.

All accounts were that she was dreadful and difficult. She fought with nurses, teachers, anyone. She was fussy. She was loud. She made messes and demanded attention.

You know, sounds like a normal baby but in our dysfunction she was a thorn in their side.

See, my father later explained my mother never wanted to have kids. She wanted to join a convent and be a nun. She married my dad because her mother said she had to. It makes no sense.

Two people coming together. Each tells two polarizing stories of the other. But what you realize is that neither one of them should have been married in the first place, let alone should either of them had children.

So my sister comes along and my mother claims this is the child she fought so hard for to have and makes her into this needy, dependent, problem child.

She, of course, wasn’t at all.

My sister was a product of their complete and utter sickness and chaos.

She was a kid just being a kid. She was more difficult than any other child. She wasn’t a burden. She was a kid. A KID.

My parents couldn’t handle raising a kid because they themselves were abandoned and neglected so they did exactly what they knew: abandoned and neglected her.

She then had to work overtime to get any of her needs mets. She had to scream twice as loud and throw twice as many tantrums and still no reaction. Nothing.

They made sure they did all the traditional stuff to make themselves look like a family, they made sure to take all the pictures to make it seem like things were normal. But this kid carried around this label her entire life.

M**** is difficult.

M**** is annoying.

M**** never shuts up.

M**** always needs attention.

The reality was my sister was a great kid. She didn’t deserve the crap she has had to go through.

I came along almost 4 years later and she was so excited because she was alone for this whole time, in this confusing world where these people yelled and screamed and she never got her needs met.

My birth was “hell” as my mother claims. Before I was born, she claimed I was not moving and she thought I was dead and had to visit the doctors weekly. My therapist likes to point out that before I even breathed my first breath, I was blamed and I was indeed. I was the cause of pain. I was blamed as the cause of her almost dying. She claims she lost so much blood and that they had to take me away. She claims the reason why “we have no connection at all” (her words) is that the nurses took me in order  to save her life. Since me just being born caused her to almost die.

Do you see how sick the manipulation can get?

Apparently, my mother miraculously bounced by from the brink of death, because my sister soon came into the room, looked at me and said “We’re gonna go home now” and began leaving the hospital with me before they said no. This would be laughed at for many years but it shows that this kid wasn’t what her parents labeled her as. She wasn’t crazy, bonkers, off-the-walls. She was a kid who wanted to be seen and heard and wasn’t getting those basic needs met which means there were cracks in her foundation that she has no clue are even there.

Today my sister turned 38 and she has had to fight her way through a lot in life. Especially since we were raised without the proper tools in life. We have a lot of anger. A lot of difficulty regulating our emotions and calming ourselves down. These are things that healthy kids were raised to do (self sooth) but because of our upbringing and unhealthy home life, we lack those basic skills.

So she has faced health issues and in-law/family issues, job issues, money issues and she has had to do all of this without understanding that none of this pain is her fault. It’s her programming.

She blames herself a lot.

She uses work to distract herself and also to feel like she is worthy since she and I do not have a sense of self. We lack a sense of self due to our foundation being so toxic. We seek worthiness from external things instead of looking within to feel worthy.

She raised me. She was the one who showed up when I would call “Mom.”

Every. Single. Damn. Time.

My mother laughs when she tells this to family and friends of hers. She laughs that her daughter is the mother of her youngest daughter. She finds it funny. Yes, she actually does. She thinks it’s comical that she parentified her oldest daughter because she just couldn’t hack being a mom. My sister at one point was fed up with my mother packing her bags and leaving that I remember clearly, my sister being 8 or 9 and saying “Ma, just go. We don’t care. You always leave so just go.”

I remember being so angry because in my role, I had to beg and plead for my mother to stay. That was my role: make my mother feel loved so she would stay. She never would. She would fuck off to some religious place and leave us kids home. (Again, note, she wanted to be a nun and be in a convent so this is why she would go to a religious house when being at home with us was too much.) Her needs came first though she would claim,  “I left so that I didn’t blow up and take it out on you.” Yeah, riiiiiight.  My mother loves to lie and get others to believe she is a great human being when all facts point to the opposite being true. Again, actions speak louder than words. She abandoned up not only emotionally but physically.

My sister was the one who had to carry things on as normal. She would call my dad up and tell him mom bolted again. She was the one who would cook me breakfast, teach me how to do almost everything, including tying my shoes. She was the one who stood up to the bullies. She was the one who would share her candy and toys with. No wonder that by the time she was in middle school she was exhausted and felt tired. She was. She was put into a role she never asked to be put in and all she wanted was to be a kid.

And as I write this, I’m angry. I’m so angry that this kid could have done anything she wanted and become anything she dreamed. But she made a lot of her decisions based on fear instead of what she wanted to do.

She always complains she is so tired. Something her and I began saying when we were teenagers. We felt old. We felt exhausted. We felt worn out and we didn’t know it at the time but it was because we were victims of this abuse. The exhaustion and fatigue are the symptoms of Complex PTSD. We were experiencing those symptoms as early as Middle School.

She currently has some pretty heavy life decisions to make. My mother is pressuring her to have a child and as she has told me, she is 38 but she feels 15.

That is the thing with Complex PTSD. You are literally stuck emotionally. We are stunted. Our growth has ceased because of the abuse. She sees her friends having kids and she doesn’t feel ready. But our NMother wants that baby. And my NMother wants that grandchild so she can own it like another piece of jewelry. My NMother has no idea how to love. But she believed back in the 70’s that if she just popped out a kid she could feel love and the kid would love her back. Not my sister. My sister would tell my mom “I hate you.” And my sister was validated. My mom was looking for a supply. She needed someone to adore her, to love her, to worship her, to obey everything she said and she believed would not only provide that but also fill the void she felt inside of her that her own mother caused.

I was that supply.

I turned out to be the child that fawned over her, that shut up and sit still, who never caused trouble, never asked for anything, never fussed, never cried, always smiled, always danced on cue, always accepted the abuse.

I accepted, before I could talk (non-verbally) that I was going to take all the shit that they needed to throw at someone to make themselves feel better, because they were screwed up people, and they were going to throw it all on me. I accepted this. I had to in order to survive being in this sick unit of people.

I was the child they turned into a human trash can.

Concerns

The more my therapist pushes EMDR the more research I am doing on it.

Things aren’t adding up.

All of the protocols state that the therapist should create containers, do body scans, set up timelines, properly close a session and establish general steps for each session.

My therapist has not done any of this.

Every time there is an issue and I ask help with a problem, he points to the machine and says we have to do more EMDR.

After researching, I joined some support groups and began asking questions.

All of these peoples experiences are different from mine. They are seeing results. They are establishing “safe places” and I haven’t done any of that.

My sessions generally go like this.. He will ask me to think of a traumatic experience:

“How do you feel on a scale of 1 – 10”

“What is the thought?”

“What is the feeling?”

“What do you want to feel instead?”

“What do you want to believe instead?”

“Let’s go with that.”

“What is your number on a scale now?”

If I say the number hasn’t changed we have to do the same thing all over again.

And this takes up the entire session.

I also spoke with an author who wrote a lot about developmental trauma. He said EMDR is not the way to treat childhood trauma and would not recommend it.

I’m so confused. I feel like my gut is telling me one thing but I’ve been told that my gut is wrong by so many people.

I never have closure leaving an EMDR session. Last week he said “Doesn’t it feel great getting this all off your chest?” And I said “No. I don’t feel good at all. I feel like someone who is being plunged every week for 45 mins and then time is up and I leave holding my head above the water waiting for the next week to work on it all again.”

I don’t know what to do anymore.

I don’t know who to trust anymore.

My hyper vigilance is off the chain. I feel exposed and about to be attacked at any moment. I don’t know how to explain this to someone who has never felt this but you feel like in any situation you’re in, even just walking out your back door, that something horrible is going to happen.

I explain this to my therapist this week and again, he points to the EMDR machine.

I feel horrible for even writing this and questioning his methods. Maybe he thinks I don’t need to do these things? He is the first person who said he believed me when I told him about my childhood.

God as a Weapon

 

My mother would regularly tell me how I have demons and I am being oppressed by evil spirits on this plain. She would preform rituals with oils, salts and holy waters claiming she needed to rid me of these demons. I was forced to pray over her and others and was told I was the Padre Pio of our family. I was told I was only here to be a “suffering soul.”

What I didn’t understand was why I was anxious and depressed, isolated, hyper-vigilant and living in a constant state of fear was because of my mother and father. I wasn’t possessed by demons; I am living with them. They needed to “pass the buck” to someone or something else (evilness) because they couldn’t possibly take accountability for what they did to my sister and I. They made up whatever they needed to and force fed it to us in order to continue the abuse.

My sister got out but I didn’t. I am expected to stay, care for them and obey them until they die. I wasn’t being oppressed by evil spirits, I was being harassed, taunted and gaslighted. But they used God/Catholicism/Spirituality as a weapon. All of the stories I was told turned out to be lies. I stopped wearing my cross, not because I don’t believe, but because I don’t need something holy “to protect me.” I’m still told daily how sinful my soul is and how they believe I will regret disobeying them and will end up in purgatory. What they don’t understand is I’ve been in purgatory for 34 years.

The only time I’m allowed to access the kitchen is when my parents are not in it. So this is usually late at night. I am yelled at if I make too much noise and “bang” things. My mother lives downstairs because my father never allowed her to sleep in his bedroom or share his bathroom.

Tonight I was rushing to clean up because I don’t want to spend more time in there than I need to. She came into the kitchen a few times already and I walked into another room in order to avoid her. She made this loop twice. It’s a way of intimidating me and sending me the message of “this is my kitchen and my house.” She knows it’s irritating to me so she wants to inflict the lost pain upon her child. Isn’t that kind?

So I was rushing and I picked a pan that was in the oven. Burned my three middle fingers. She rushes in and says “what is going on?”

I said, “I was rushing. I burnt myself. I’m fine. I’m just tired of always having to rush.”

Her reply, “If you want to make meals at night, and you’re so unhappy here, maybe you should leave.”

I exploded.

“Shut the fuck up with your same old tired excuses. You didn’t leave! You didn’t have any courage to leave. You taught your daughters not to leave.”

She trailed out of the kitchen back into her room, mumbling to herself.

She has no fucking power anymore. Not over me. I’m not going to stand there with burn cream over my hands, taking this woman’s shit. I will not allow someone to try and reject me.

She believes telling me to leave will cause me such rejection. She also is looking for a reaction because the only power she has is to provoke anger out to another human being.

Sadly, I gave her one, however, she is also looking to dominate the person she is abusing and she didn’t get that from me.

She wanted to make me feel as small as possible but she ended up making me feel powerful because I recognized what she was doing and I didn’t turn it inward. I didn’t get angry at myself and make myself feel like I was a horrible person. I didn’t absorb her shit.

She heard me go upstairs and speak with my father and she had to move to her computer so she could eavesdrop on what I was saying.

I wish there were videos on YouTube for people who live in actively abusive homes. With help on what to do and how to handle these situations. There are so many videos on how to survive AFTER you leave the abuse but I have no where to go. And my mother knows this so she continues to goad me in order to control me and continue abusing me. But there are so many of us who cannot leave the abuse at this moment. I’m trying the best I can to save money, working on my agoraphobia but I still have a ways to go.

Going Up

I don’t want to jinx anything so talking about this is scary for me. However, I have noticed that since I have been aggressive with the Complex PTSD recovery (therapy sessions, watching videos, workbook exercises, exposure therapy, journaling, Pete Walker’s book, Lisa A. Romano’s book, etc,) I have found that I am able to gain more control and do more things.

For instance, I have had agoraphobia since 2014. Now, I have begun to be able to go into places, make phone calls, handle finances, order food deliveries; general life stuff that I would normally not be able to do is becoming increasingly easier. I still experience anxiety but it’s shifted. It feels different. It pops up and I think, ‘What is setting this off? What is the fear telling me?’ Usually it’s something like, ‘Oh, don’t go in there alone. You will panic and freak out and lose touch with reality.’ I then have to think about it and breath so that I’m working from logic, not fear. It’s tricky and exhausting but it’s getting easier when it pops up.

This may also be due to reduction of medications but I don’t see a pattern between withdrawal and recovery. Though the less toxic drugs in my system may actually be helping. SSRI’s always made me more depressed and anxious. Mood stabilizers just numbed me and tranquilizers worsened panic attacks and phobias.

I was able to get to the doctors today and with the help of my sister. I stood alone at the reception desk and although I was anxious, I did not budge. I felt like I was in a nightclub and I thought, ‘Okay what is setting this off?’ And I noticed lightbulb flickering and I eased myself, ‘See, it’s just a stupid lightbulb.’ And I could feel the hyper-vigilence backing off. Normally, I would need someone physically by my side. I wouldn’t be able to make eye contact. Outwardly, I would look like someone who is tweaked out on drugs but people have no idea it’s the anxiety.

Today, I made sure I made eye contact with everyone and smiled. I kept repeating in my mind, ‘Not everyone is evil and bad. That is the old tape from my parents.’ It helped me since normally my beliefs are that all people are evil and doctors do not care; they only wish to cause harm. Hospitals are dangerous. (Any fearful thought you can imagine.) This stems from my distrust of parents and my parents distrust of society. (Society is bad, evil. People will screw you over. The second coming will only save those who believe in Jesus.) I know crazy. This was my reality.

After my appointment my sister asked to go across town to pick up lunch and I agreed. Normally, I would ask her to take me back home and back to my safe place. I’m trying to build the safe place within me because at some point (hopefully sooner rather than later) I’m going to have to escape this place. That was always the plan. And I have to be able to find the safe place within me; not externally in a place or in a person or in a God. But me. Make myself the one I can always count on. (Learned helplessness and victimhood.)

I missed therapy this morning because I had to go to the doctor but I feel like I’m still holding myself accountable to do the work and continue recovering. I have to. I have to give a sh*t about myself and start investing in me, first and foremost. These people (my parents) didn’t invest in me and I learned to abandon myself. If there is an award for self-abandonment, I would have them all. But I have to start taking back control of my brain, my reality and start doing the things they didn’t do in order to rewrite the program *In a functional way-not a dysfunctional way*

After Therapy 2/5

I just left therapy. 1:05pm

I walk in every session with my journal and what I’ve been doing and all my interactions with my parents. I read everything; including dates and times. Today my therapist affirmed, “You know if you were under 18, I would be reporting your parents to DCF for severe abuse. You would not be getting in a car with him (my dad) and going back to that place.”

I said even if I was a kid, DCF wouldn’t believe me and my parents would have an answer for every single thing and a way to bring it all back to me. Then I would be made to me the one who ratted them out.

He said he believed me and everything I’ve told him. He said he doesn’t believe I understand how severely abused I am. And that it’s not something that is a past trauma but a present trauma. It’s still happening.

I don’t know how to take that.

How am I supposed to react when someone says that?

I look off to the book shelves and I just start crying.

He asked me again if there is any family I could live with and we went through everyone I know. All my mom’s estranged family. My father is an only child. My sister is 4 hours away and living in her own toxic environment.

I have no friends. I have one childhood friend who lives on the west coast. She speaks to me on FB and that’s it.

It feels like I’m carrying 500lbs of crap.

I told him this isn’t living and he agreed.

Told him how my parents think I am being brainwashed by him.

My mother has a history of filing false complaints and trying to bring down church’s, schools, animal shelters, hospitals, etc.

She is dangerous and anyone who does not agree with her, she will focus all her energy on them in order to destroy them.

He said he is waiting for the day he will receive a complaint against his practice.

I told him that I blocked his website on her computer. He said I don’t have to protect him and that I need to stop trying to protect everyone. “You sacrifice yourself to protect them.”

I don’t know any other way.

He said the key out is the car. If I can relearn how to drive I can pack it and get out. He said we can do EMDR around that.

I said why do I feel so out of control when I’m in the drivers seat? I’m an excellent driver. I have gotten out of so many dangerous situations by being a really good driver. I know this. It’s ingrained but it’s very different when I sit in a car. He said it’s because the fear takes over and they have systematically instilled every possible way of teaching me that I’m incompetent when I’m not.

He asked: If you leave, who will they fight with? If you leave, who will they abuse?

If you leave, will take care of them?

They need you to continue the abuse and dysfunction.

That’s why me going to therapy upsets them so much. I’m learning healthier ways and I’m learning them independently from them.

They lose control when I walk into his office.

The hour went by really fast.

I booked for the next few months.

I have a little hope: he is always encouraging and hopeful but not in a way that some therapists are. I don’t feel like he is bullshitting me. When he says “you will drive again and you will get out of that house.” It just feels like he knows what he is saying. If I said it, I would still have a inner critic going ‘ya but you don’t really believe you can get out.’ With him, I believe it, if only for 1% more.

He said I need to keep crying. I said I’m exhausted and it’s getting to point where it’s sobbing and it’s loud and I have to go to the bathroom and turn on the water. He said I have to get it out. A lot of it is anger. Anger from being a kid so pissed off at how they were treated. It’s a release and it’s the main one for me. I just hate it and he said he knows. But that the more I do it, the more shit is getting out of me.

I said there is healthy crying and unhealthy crying and he said “who said that?”

I can’t remember.

He said crying is better than hurting myself. It’s just very uncomfortable for me. Whenever I would feel sad or cried I would call up my doctor and get something to numb it. He said “imagine all those years of not releasing it. It doesn’t just go away. It’s still there and it’s coming out now.”

I’m exhausted and really hungry.