I ask myself this question every single day... I subscribed to PsychCentral years ago as a grad student in Experimental Psychology. Ever since I have utilized it to heal my children and me from the 15 years of exposure to NPD my ex-husband will probably never allow himself to be diagnosed with.

He used all listed and some additional ways of abusing, controlling, belittling, mocking, patronizing, invalidating, blaming and blame-shifting, gaslighting and using to keep me and my kids form wellness. In the three years since wee divorced it has been a roller-coaster. I suffer from severe PTSD, Depression, and Anxiety.

My kids have all the above and my son uses food to self-soothe and medicate. He also has been showing replicating signs of the abuse he and I suffered first-hand by his father. He is 14 and gifted. He is also entering a phase I cannot reach him most days.

His empathy comes and goes- more gone than here. Since the divorce, he has taken up the need to act as his older sister and mother's male support. My daughter is 16. She has JUST gotten through the hell that takes so many teens. She is bright, empathically gifted, and can see things that few are able to see. She is like me in many ways, only she has not gone into dangerous waters that cannot be returned from.

One time she drank Fireball that my ex had to have and never showed up for on Thanksgiving. Other than that, no drugs, no drinking, no rock and roll. Still, I cannot get her to keep her room clean for more than a day, maintain any responsibility in the home, and she continues to make toxic choices in friends and romances.

Luckily, she has avoided the romance for a while and just recently said "If you cannot be kind to me and when I tell you that you are being disrespectful, not to call me stupid, I cannot be around you because I am not emotionally stable enough. I love you, but I cannot do this." I was SO PROUD! This was the first time she did this for herself. Kids do what they see parents do- NOT what we tell them.

My son is becoming my ex and my daughter has conformed herself to toxic relationships that she saw played out through myself and her father for 16 years. I have not yet been able to cut that last string he keeps on me so he can retain that control and feed off my emotions as if his own. I know, logically that I must to survive. I know, logically, that his approval and validation of ALL I have done in the face of total annihilation means nothing and should not be important to me. I know that he will always mess with my head and worse- my heart.

I have done much work here but my emotion over logic personality has made it tremendously hard. I am seeking and getting help with this- as well as the survivor guilt I have over my baby sister and best friend who died the day (24 hours exactly) after our mom.

I reached out to a medium at Christmas and it was abstractly therapeutic for me beyond words. However, even though I am revered in my Ph.D. program and have an M.A. in Experiemental Psych and have don etremendous things after being an at-home mom and abused wife for 15 years... even though I have raised my kids all alone and only have opposition and more problems given y their father... even though when my mom and sister died I went back to school and never stopped while maintaining the best mothering possible when my daughter got sick and we almost lost her... even all this and a million more things that are great about me and special- I feel like a failure most days.

Most days I wonder if this crises-ridden life will ever transform into the life I and my children deserve. Each time I think it is moving into that direction (I am asked for an interview and it is a possible career for me to start, I get a scholarship...) something catastrophic happens and I am right back in hell. I wonder if I am doing this subconsciously to myself because it is all I have ever known.

I want so much to be loved in a healthy way and know what that feels like (romantic love), yet I sit at home, go grocery shopping, run my kids all over, and little else. I am afraid but want it so much. I am afraid I will fall for another who is a closet Narc that will finish me off for good. I am afraid my ex was right and I will never work- even though I know for a FACT that I will be an amazing professional in the advocate and helping profession. I know all this logically, but in the back of my head it nags and nags.

I have serious pain issues and am over ten years without abusing after the doctors all started me on opiates for my chronic pain. I have to have surgery on my SPINE! Just the "test"- a discography- to detect which vertebrates to operate on has kept me in severe pain for 10 days post-op now. I used to be so confident and sure I would be amazing- knew I was amazing!

Now I struggle with a duel-identity almost and am this accomplished woman that always finds a way and never gives up on one hand- and a scared, broken victim on the other with hopeless thoughts of the future- terrified for my chidren. I never thought to use PsychCentral for me.

Tonight in the absence of being able to sleep, I did every quiz applying to me and started a mood journal. I am closing with this post. I know I have so much to give and it comes from a place more genuine than many of competing professionals because I lived it and made it through to a better place. I just want to be loved and cared for. I first want to be loved and cared for by myself...