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Trig Feb 21, 2020 at 06:55 PM
  #1
Hi everyone,


I recently joined the Forum, and I think I just need to vent, so I hope you are ok with that, and that you might bear with me.


I was diagnosed three years ago (in this order) with Depersonalization and Derealization Disorder, depression, Generalized anxiety disorder, somatization disorder; I caught my breath and calmed my thoughts, and after six months of CBT and Zoloft, I felt so much better.



Then, a bit more than year ago, came Panic attacks, DP/DR again, but not as acute as before, and Dissociative Amnesia. GAD actually never went away, now reinforced with agoraphobia. Oh yeah, and a possible Stockholm syndrome.



Immediately after the onset of this last crises, I was overwhelmed with flashbacks of childhood abuse, that I suffered from around age 3 to roughly 10, and that was covered by dissociative amnesia. I could suddenly remember pretty vividly the event that started it, at age 3, and also could remember not only the subsequent abuse, that happened in different places, but also a number of stages in my life when I nearly remembered the abuse, but then repressed the memories of memories. As someone put it aptly, amnesia can be for amnesia, and it happened to me a lot, more than I can know at this point.



One particular crisis of memories flooding happened around the age of 14, when I had a massive trigger of the abuse, fell ill in fever and excruciating pains that had no physical cause, lied in bed, tossed, turned and cried out loudly, as if something was ripping me apart from within. Then I remembered the details of abuse, wrote down my memories, and disgusted by what came out of me, torn all the pages and threw them in the loo, not to remember it again until I was 40.
At age 14, this crisis caused me to hurt myself, in particular to
Possible trigger:
What a reminder, huh?

And then I forgot…


Dissociative Amnesia is still hiding so much from me. It goes as far as to not know as whom am I going to wake up in the morning. I have four different "programmes" of behaving and living in the world, and they often change. I do not know whether something like that happened to any of you guys, if you did experience D. amnesia? I have always had these "programmes" and I am very familiar with their preferences and abilities. I used to reflect on this when I was younger, but then I just learned to live with them. Becoming a professional allowed me to keep myself anchored to a stable framework, regardless of which "programme" is in charge. I guess others would perhaps call them parts, but for me they are operative programmes, in an analogy of me as an electronic device with just factory settings, that becomes animated once the "programme" is upoloaded. I would like to hear if you have any comment to this?



Sorry for this long post. Every time I share something like this I crash afterwards, but then I get better, and closer to understanding how my mind works. Thanks for being there!
A.

Last edited by bluekoi; Feb 23, 2020 at 07:45 PM.. Reason: Add trigger code.
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Smile Feb 22, 2020 at 03:04 PM
  #2
Thanks for sharing your experiences. There isn't anything I can offer in reply. But I just wanted to let you know I read your post... & I wish you well.

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Default Feb 23, 2020 at 04:25 AM
  #3
@Skeezyks,
Thank you, it is much appreciated!
Wish you well,

A.
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Default Feb 24, 2020 at 05:07 PM
  #4
Hey guys, I wanted to post this on another thread on "not much of a childhood", but then I felt as if I would be hijacking the thread, as I could not condense what I wanted to say. So, this is perhaps just another angle to my previous post, this time about my abusive parents.
I was the only child in what seemed a pretty decent home, some would say. From the outside. From the inside, there was a constant presence of my mother’s and my father’s individual pathologies, as well as the pathology they produced when together. This is something I only remembered fully, tangibly, several days ago – and it actually felt for the first time in my life as part of my memory, and not someone else’s.
I always knew my childhood was awful, and that I felt as if I were living in a concentration camp or a prison. I knew I wished not to exist at age five. I was just too small to grasp the concept of death, as I believed that people just disappear into thin air when no longer alive, so I hoped I would just evaporate. I always knew something awful happened to me, but could not tell what. I even talked with my mother, and my father about it. Did I ever have a near-death experience? I would ask them. Was I just too emotional as a child, and could not cope with otherwise normal dynamics of a family life, that included fights and screaming from time to time? Was it their alcoholism, that ran out of hands at one moment?
The only thing they constantly re-affirmed in me was that there was something wrong with me, as they were good parents. I was usually exposed to sentences such as: “We are perhaps not the best parents in the world, but we were not that bad either”, “You can be certain of one thing, that mom and dad love you the most in this world”, “We would do anything for you”. Except they weren’t and they didn’t. They separated when I was ten, but whenever I would start this kind of talk in my teens, my mother would call my father to come over and kind of deal with it. If I were going through some emotions I could not handle, she would feel as if I were doing something to her. As if by my mere existence I somehow was taking the breath from her lungs, jeopardizing her own sense of self. I was feeling overwhelmed with – I did not know it at the time – repressed memories of childhood abuse, and she would behave simply unbelievably insensitive towards me.
I was hurting myself as teenager, because I was hurting inside thousand times more, but she felt as if my hurt was aimed at her. In response to my agony, she sang ironically back to me a popular song about a girl who is spoiled and feels entitled. I still shiver inside thinking of the mocking tone in her voice while she was singing, in a distorted, loud manner. I never felt entitled, I barely felt I existed, and it was her punching the air of my lungs, and not the other way round. I do not want to throw triggers into this post, so I will not talk about the abuse. I mentioned that I remember it started at age three, but it could have been even earlier, as what I remember at age three is pretty gruesome, and I guess it did not come out of the blue, so I guess something must have been building towards that.
Fast forward to the age of forty, I sit in a living room of my father’s apartment. It is pretty small, so I acutely feel his presence, as he is passing by my chair, in order to sit in his place. I do not remember at this point anything. I mean, anything at all. He starts talking, trying to find out what do I know. We are in some kind of argument, that goes on for some time at that point, all the while I do not realize what brought it about. In retrospect, I think that he misinterpreted – or maybe interpreted better than myself – some of my behavior as my memories coming back. He became reclusive, would not answer the phone. Said he would not see my husband ever again, and spoke of many other things that did not make sense to me, insulting me and my life choices.
So, here we are, and he is actually still standing up, turned with his back to me, trying to avoid my stare. And he says: “I have ruined you”, with some pathos, that I find disgusting. I answer: “I do not believe anyone can just ruin another person, and I do not feel ruined, thank you very much”. When I am writing down this conversation now, I can hardly believe it, but I remembered it to the letter, as if it is ingrained in my mind. At that point, I have no recollection of anything that he is talking about. He continues: “Don’t you remember anything from when you were a child?”, and I say: “You know very well that I do not remember much of my life before the age of ten.”, and I kind of brush it off, a little bit annoyed, as I do not understand the meaning of it. And he says: “You really do not remember anything?”, and I kind of stare at his back, while I guess some dissociated part of me is crying their brains out inside my head, but I still say: “No”, and I continue: “I do not understand what do you expect me to remember…”. And he says: “You do not know how happy I am that you turned out this way”.
Now, the old me would say: Look, he tried to say he was sorry. But he never actually said he was sorry, not once. He just stated that I am ruined, as a matter of fact. He never admitted what he had done to me, and he dropped the subject as soon as he realized that I really do not remember anything at that point. He was not looking for redemption at all, he was just looking after himself.
I did remember some of it, however, but only three full years after that conversation. After a lot of mental agony caused by trauma-related disorders of DPDR and D. amnesia, depression and GAD; and not to forget somatization disorder, that translates every damn memory of abuse, that is not consciously accessible, into the re-run of the original pain, over and over and over again.
When I managed to verbally express, first to my therapist, and then to my husband, what I remembered from my childhood, I soon felt the urge to tell that to my mother as well. We still had a pretty close contact, even though she behaved in an emotionally abusive manner towards me my whole life. I managed to sit down, now in her living room, and to ask her not to interrupt my story. I told her everything I remembered, including some details that would make any sane person cry their mind out. She just sat there. She said: “I would have hugged you now, if I weren’t ill” (she had a mild cold). I just stared at her, across the room from me, still in shock of the sound of my own voice resonating with those horror stories that seemed detached from me, emotionally. Then she said: “So, this is why you were behaving so differently, I knew something was going on”, alluding to my standoffish behavior towards her constant attempts to colonize my life some time before that. I swear I could see something of a glare in her eyes when she was telling this, as the only thought she could take from what I was saying was that she has obviously been a better parent. She also said: “I need some time to process what you just told me.” I got up, dissociated, and emotionally blank, and went out of her apartment without a single touch of consolation between her and me.
In the aftermath, she would call to say that I can confide in her. That we can talk it all out. That the bygones were bygones, and so on, until one day something snapped in me. In a voice that did not sound like mine at all, as it was hissing and harsh, whispering and screaming at the same time, it literally made things around me vibrate, I started spilling my guts out. I remember that the first thing I told her was: “I will not have my pain become a pastime for you”, and then it went on and on and on. And the weirdest thing I realized was that whatever I was saying made little difference to her. I have never in my life been disrespectful to her. Now I heard myself telling her in that unfamiliar voice that she was an idiot raising the child, that she could not even tell when her own daughter of three was frozen in horror of what has been happening to her. And she had no reaction to this, she would just continue as if nothing has changed.
I painfully realized that if she weren’t the in-empathic person that she was, probably with some serious issues herself, my life would not have been such a horror story. I blamed it on the perpetrator, of course, but I could not escape the feeling that she was very much responsible. Most people close to me think that she knew, but decided not to see. I don’t know. I can rely only on what I know from my adult life, and that are decades of different forms of emotional abuse from her part.
I cannot go into why my parents hurt me so bad. Of course, I can find reasons for their behavior in their pathologies, but I do not want to be full of understanding any more. It is either-or situation. Either I will heal, and the burden of responsibility for hurting a little child through abuse and neglect will be upon them, or I will immerse myself into pondering on whether they can be understood and forgiven, and in that case I would cease to exist, as this kind of thinking held me hostage of my own mind for four decades. And this kind of thinking has been a cornerstone of my healing.

The thing is, we all grow up in a particular context that normalizes even the abnormal. It took me a long time to realize how toxic and abusive both my father and my mother were. I still cannot find the adequate words to express all the rage in me, but hopefully I will.
I just want to say that I am sorry for every one of you who had been abused or neglected. You were just a little child, and the role of grown ups was to protect you. I guess everyone has to find their way out of agony. Don’t get me wrong, I do not want to influence your decisions, but I feel that forgiveness towards neglectful or abusive people, even if there are your parents, is overrated. The people we have to forgive are ourselves, for doing what we had to do at such a young age to survive.
Wish you all the best, take care of yourselves,
A.
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Default Feb 26, 2020 at 10:34 AM
  #5
Survivorship can be a wonderful place to get involved in your own healing. I think with a lot to speak on in this area you would probably do great things with continuing the journey
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Default Feb 26, 2020 at 12:23 PM
  #6
@vultureculture,

Thank you, it means a lot when you formulate it this way.

Inspiring, truly...
I wish you all the best,
A.
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Default Feb 29, 2020 at 11:23 AM
  #7
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alatea View Post
The people we have to forgive are ourselves, for doing what we had to do at such a young age to survive.
I have never heard it said this way before. Very good. It applies to me.

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Default Feb 29, 2020 at 12:43 PM
  #8
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Originally Posted by pachyderm View Post
I have never heard it said this way before. Very good. It applies to me.
@pachyderm,

I am sorry for your hurt.

I am glad if this resonates with you, it was a big breakthrough for me as well, when I realized this.
Take care,
A.
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Default Feb 29, 2020 at 12:51 PM
  #9
Has you answered your speed talkers. I'm sure your very creative alters has given you a word/phrase. They will hide no more once you master it. It is the simple premise as screw in a knee. Discovery slows down isn't all what it cracks up to be when I enjoy it Like it. There is things to watch out for orientation being slight off or a skill set so I challenged myself to a job hopefully to twitter you got what u expected.

Can you ask your higher self, because now I need help what makes it work?

Musically speaking scat dolableloollala starts you to notice speed so that optimal amount of ur brain is functioning at its potential. I guess this is the challenge can you answer ur battle back the next day. As if you, I need this too please replicate like the song when I go my hiding place you enjoy so well. I'm not scripted mind genius either I read read and reinterate so if this is the play show us the way. Because now in the grandma switch teacher patience switch she the next day is going to make me/us the plurals concerned about who can't learn it right away right back to ground zero then.. Is this her son now? I'm not a gift teach of parts I'm just an alter so I'm merely seeking help just as you.

Right now I mostly got a concept of moving things around like your head on a swivel, so if this is the short yellow bus ...Is this rodawn then? There was a voice then attached to her wheel chair that told her information her social worker?? Anyway as I'm directed to one of education departments maybe this is how they like it. If we can not always possible surely isn't that easy.

Happy Leap Year
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Default Feb 29, 2020 at 02:37 PM
  #10
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Originally Posted by vultureculture View Post
Has you answered your speed talkers. I'm sure your very creative alters has given you a word/phrase. They will hide no more once you master it.
@vultureculture,
I appreciate the input. I don't know if I have understood it all exactly as you meant, or perhaps I took from your writing only what I thought applies to me... but thank you anyway. I tried to write down some thoughts in response, but I am completely bugged right now... Perhaps later.
Take care,
A.
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Default Mar 01, 2020 at 11:49 AM
  #11
@vultureculture,
The mechanism of the disorder(s) that I have is basically to hide certain type of data from me, particularly everything that had to do with abuse, but also all secondary memories. So, I can remember the instances when I remembered something that was immensely important to me, but I can’t always remember what I have remembered. I don’t know if that makes sense? I feel the weight and importance of that memory for me, but I cannot see it, I just see everything around it.
You have seen that I have a long list of diagnosed stuff, but there is no doctor here where I live who can tell me whether or not do I have alters, so I do not refer to what I have as alters, because I don’t want to seem as if I am self-diagnosing. I just know that what I have now, I always had, just that it was hidden for the longest time. And I can remember the instances in my life when I lived that way, aware of the parts, and then I knew times when I lived without noticing them.
One thing is certain, and that is that for the last ten or more years, my most ambitious, diligent part, or whatever that is, employed all of our strength to achieve some professional goals. The more I worked, the less I knew of the things I did not want to know about, and that was just like a drug for me. It is not called workaholism for no reason.
But when the dam holding it all exploded and came tumbling down, more than a year ago, I did not have the same motivation for work anymore. Once everything I believed in had fallen down, I had no more reason to distract myself, as most of it was exposed. It took me the whole year to learn to live again this way. I know that whoever I am, I am consisted of parts that I am not afraid of. That is just how my mind works. And my head has always been the safest place for me, so whatever happened there to hide so many things from me, happened for a reason. Even though some parts of me do not seem to be me, I know that’s who they are. I understand the mechanism that brought it about. I know it was there to protect me, and I know that if I managed to live with it before, I will be able to continue to live with it now that I am more aware of it.
Take care and wish you all the best,
A.
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Default Mar 03, 2020 at 02:58 PM
  #12
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Originally Posted by pachyderm View Post
I have never heard it said this way before. Very good. It applies to me.

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Default Mar 06, 2020 at 06:17 AM
  #13
It feels as if I cannot live with the knowledge of abuse, I tend to push it back behind the amnesiac barrier. There is this tendency in me to erase everything again, to forget what has been done to me. Why can I not live with that? I mean, I know why, but not knowing is not an option any more… I am struggling and suffering terribly, as if separate currents within me stretch me in opposite directions...



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Default Apr 26, 2020 at 01:39 PM
  #14

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Default May 01, 2020 at 10:52 PM
  #15
I know everything and yet I often make remarks as if I don't. I know my system knows.
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Trig May 02, 2020 at 11:23 AM
  #16
Ok, I was not entirely ready to speak of this when I joined in. But now I am trying to make a better sense of it, and I need to share.
Last summer, on June 29th, I woke up completely depersonalized, not remembering the night before. It was our marriage anniversary the day before, and we made love, and somewhere in the middle of it I heard a child screaming inside my right ear, and I left my body. I do not remember anything afterwards, taking a shower or whatever else that I did that evening.
The next morning, I was not even aware that I did not remember that evening, because I woke up in a state that does not resemble anything else that I had prior to that. I had dissociation before, as well as depersonalization and derealization, but this feeling looked exactly like this image: there was the body, consisted of the skin on the outside, and resembling a dark cave from the inside. I – whoever I was – was in the body, more precisely in the left heel of the cavernous insides that were mostly in dark, as only here and there the orange-red hued light would come through the body’s skin. I was 15 cm high, holding onto a straw, or whatever it was, hanging above the abyss that stretched forever beneath my foot.
Body moved that day, but I could not produce one coherent thought. I spoke automatically, unable to convey anything to my husband who was with me. I was in a state of panic inside, but could not do anything about it. As if all the lights were off, and I was waiting for the moment I will lose my hold of that straw and disappear forever.
I could not talk, or write, but I had the urge to draw. I bought a notebook, and a pen. We spent the day at the beach, and I was drawing, as if my life or my presence or my sanity depended on it. It was the most desperate day of my life. I didn’t draw anything significant. I had no comment to make, and I was unable to produce a thought or a symbol or a metaphor. I could just draw what I saw in front of me, as it convinced me that I exist.
Later that day or perhaps tomorrow, I think that I remembered that I have forgotten the evening when I blacked out. The next couple of days I held my breath, hoping for the best. I tried to walk, to talk, to behave like a person. But it exhausted me, and I fell ill on the evening of the July 1st.
I thought I was dying, in all seriousness. I could not cool myself; it was very hot. I had an image in my head, like the most realistic image if there was any: there was a sickly baby, or perhaps a toddler, laying on the sandy ground, atop of a cotton diaper, in the backyard of the house we used to spend summers in, when I was little. It was under a carob tree.
Next to the unconscious baby there were two girls, me as a 5-6 year old to the left, squatting, and me as a 8-9 old to the right, leaning over. They were taking care of the baby, and I was the baby.
Behind them, to the left, was a boy, 3 year old, looking translucent, like a ghost, or a projection. I knew that was me as well, but I could not identify with that child in the same way as with others.
In front of them, as if I were looking over their shoulders, were four grown-ups, that I recognize as my own “programmes” of behavior in the world. From the left to the right they were very familiar to me, with dominant behaviors of an intellectual, a sexualized programme, a protective programme and a curator – one who archives things, sorts them out and put them in relation with one another.
I keep regaining the sense of this image, and then losing it again. I struggle with dissociative amnesia. I don’t know exactly what is going on with me. When I tried to talk about this with my T, he just stopped me, telling me that I am a “structurally normally developed” person. I think I don’t need anyone anymore to tell me what is going on. I think I know. I am just not able to know it all the time, but perhaps I will be, if I give myself more time to embrace it all…I do not feel like a number of people, but I know that I have parts, and that is all I need to know rn.
Thank you for reading
A.
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Trig May 05, 2020 at 04:39 AM
  #17
Of all the people, I only had my abusive father to talk to, when I was a teen. I have had already forgotten the abuse by then, or kept forgetting. I still am not sure when it actually stopped, to be honest. He kept supplying me with books based on incestuous content into my late teens, but I kept pushing the awareness about it somewhere where I could neither see it, or think about it...he would even ask me what I think about a particular book, and if the book was not too triggering, I would read it without being aware of the content as explicitly, but sometimes the incest was the main topic, and then I could not really read it...other topics were insanity and dark pathology in particular.

One day, when I was around 15-16 years old, I told him that I have "different persons" in me, and he just said that is how everyone feels. Both him and my mother systematically normalized everything that was not normal in our lives, and sometimes some quite "normal" and actually healthy behavior of mine (such as my wish to have more autonomy in some regard) would be deemed abnormal, and "you should go see a shrink" to "check your head" was usually used as a threat by my father, if he disliked something about my behavior.

Another time I told him that when I look at my hands, I know they are not mine, and he said: whose hands would they be, haha. I never again brought the subject forward, as I was afraid that he would be able to start a smear campaign and use it against me if I were to say more about it, or even to have me hospitalized, as I believe that was one of his threats when I was little.
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Trig May 20, 2020 at 09:06 AM
  #18
TRIGGER TRIGGER TRIGGER!!!!

ABUSE. SEXUAL CONTENT.


And here I come slowly to a realization about what Stockholm syndrome really means. In an adult, who has been abused as a child. This is another stage in my long struggle that encompasses re-living the past. Not a willing one, necessarily, but one that comes with violent flashbacks, that I have no control over. What I dealt with first were flashbacks of pain, of abuse, of confusion, or terror, of me as a child, hiding or screaming under the bed, until I ran away out of my mind.
What is haunting me in the past several days, or weeks – I haven’t really seen it in time, I missed its clues, as I often do with things that I do not want to face, do not want to go through – is the pleasure part or the love or affection part.
I knew it may happen that I encounter it on my way through facing the trauma. I have conveniently forgotten how it goes, even if I have been there before.

The memory of it was triggered in me. It started with confusion and arousal. With wanting the touch, but feeling embarrassed about it. Soon the urge becomes stronger, and some kind of relief is what I look for. There is a vague sex talk, with someone I barely know, all wrapped up in jokes, so no line is crossed there. But in my mind, these few lines already force me to masturbate. More and more. I start looking porn. I start thinking about masturbation more and more often. And still I do not recognize where it comes from, and how familiar it is.
When I start feeling so turned on that I have to act out – which should not be anything perverse or bad in itself, and my husband could not be happier about my suddenly awoken sexual drive – I override the sense of a blockage that I feel in my own home, and do pleasurable things that we rarely do. But I do not really feel as myself. Or do I feel as myself more?
We have sex, but following my very strict rules and desires, me commanding every move, without penetration. With clothes on. And still I cannot recognize what it is all about.
And then, the next day, I can remember my childhood. His hands, his shirt, his scent. I can remember only split seconds of it, but I clearly remember my addiction to sexual contact, my addiction to being held. If it was abuse, how could I have become addicted to it?
Please understand that these thoughts are melting my brain. I can feel dissociation coming back, hovering like a terrifying storm cloud over me. I can feel how easily I can just slip back into deep depersonalization, and completely dissociate from myself and any form of identity/ies that I have.
And yet the only thing that I currently can see is this urge, as it is taking everything in, as if nothing else exists. This must be how a sexual addiction feels. And I should know, as I had a sexual compulsion when I was a child. An abused and hypersexualized child, who secretly looked at pornography, conveniently placed in the corner of the kitchen, with the stack of old paper. Women’s breasts, intimate parts, I was fascinated with it all. It was more than trying to understand what that sensation is. It was a porn addiction in a little child.
It is perhaps the first obsession that I had.
I know what comes after this, as well. I may or may not act further upon my urges. In any case, I will end up feeling terrible shame about it.
I just hope that there is something else I can do this time.
If only I could go through it recognizing what has been done to me.
If I could re-connect with my natural urges, and not a compulsion.
If I could take my healthy sexuality that I was supposed to have as a human being out of that box of abuse, that made everything so difficult to me.
If I could deal with the pain that is constantly reminding me of the abuse, punishing me for feeling pleasurable feelings while not in control, for being subdued to what was not my fault and my doing.
I wonder sometimes how can I sustain it. How I am still alive. It is an anomaly. How can I be alive? With this pain?
There are moments these days when I am at the edge of the blade, metaphorically. I am not a threat to my life, it is my mind that is in danger.
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Member Since: Feb 2020
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Trig Jun 03, 2020 at 12:04 PM
  #19
There is a perfect clarity with which I can look at my life now. After days and days of crying, losing myself in dissociation, coming back to my senses, crying again…
My father may have had committed the incest and it almost ruined my psyche, but my mother committed an emotional incest. That was the missing part, that I just could not work through before.
But now, I just look at my life – and I can say my life, as I finally see it as my life-narrative – and I clearly see their motivations and their deranged narcissistic behaviour towards me.
I wonder how did I survive.
I seriously wonder how did I not just kill myself, numerous times, from all the sorrow that they caused me – I guess it is beyond sorrow, it is beyond grief, if you read this, I am sure you know what I am talking about…Where did I find the courage to accept myself and my life? It is a wonder.
I know I will have hard times again…but I will never go back to where I was before.
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