I Have Something To Say

Healing from narcissistic and emotional abuse is a lifelong unraveling. One has to scrape through many layers of gunk made up from the minimization of abuse and misplaced, mis-formed thoughts about one's self and the world they live in. In many ways, I consider myself extremely fortunate and privileged to have escaped my abusers and be in a place where my soul can finally ask two all-important questions: Who am I, and what do I want? These are difficult questions for anyone seeking to live an authentic life, but for abuse survivors, they are especially elusive. When I was a child, at a time when I was supposed to be developing a sense of self, I wasn't allowed to have an identity separate from my abusers. I existed tin order to serve whatever their ego wanted. That was it. As I naturally fought against this role, I was labeled "rebellious," "ungrateful," and "bad" for trying to seek a separate identity. Even though I distanced myself as much a...

I've always been a daydreamer. As a kid, I spent hours in my own created worlds, whether it was swirling around in an inner tube on the lake, or staring out the car window, lost in some internal medieval landscape with fairies and unicorns. In fact, all of my "good" memories of my childhood are the dreamy ones. As an adult, I formed a career around the those worlds I created. Most of my friends are creative types who live in their own worlds, too. When I need to unwind from a long day, I can get lost for hours thinking about what it's like to live in other places and times. When I'm driving, I'm never actually on the freeway. I'm composing stories to be written until somehow I arrive at home. You could say I have an active imagination. You could say I live a creative life. You could also say that I dissociate. Dissociation is a coping mechanism, common among abuse survivors. When someone experiences an intense threat, the brain splits off from trauma...

It's New Year's Eve, and I'm spending it deep cleaning my house. I've been working on "good enough" instead of "perfect" all year, my kitchen and bathroom certainly reflect the achievement. I usually have a Sisyphean outlook about cleaning, given that I have three kids and lack the assistance of Alice from The Brady Bunch.  But I love a good metaphor, and what better metaphor is a thorough house cleaning on the last day of the year? So, this year has been... interesting. I'm not one of those people who declares the whole year to be great nor terrible. I mean, how is that defined, anyway? By fate or free will? I am neither looking forward to 2018 in fear and dread, nor giddy anticipation. There were ups and downs in 2017 and there will be ups and downs in 2018. But on the whole, I felt this was a year of progress. There is something that feels complete about it, other than the date. Perhaps because I feel like this was a year where I met my g...

Recently, I wrote about the ways "It's not that bad" has kept me from owning and validating the true cost of my traumatic past. There have been times I have envied those with physical trauma because they received all the validation and support that was denied me as a survivor of psychological trauma. There are plenty of abuse survivors with far more dramatic stories than mine. Surely, we've all been in situations where someone else's story of calamity and misfortune has humbled us. Ironically, for many, holding on to the misplaced shame that their own story of abuse isn't "good enough" to be validated because more terrible things have happened to others is exactly the trap that keeps us silent and perpetuates the cycle. Acknowledging trauma is about acknowledging one's own perception. It's not something someone else can determine or validate for you. The greatest goal for an abuse survivor is to be able to own what actually happened to t...

I was the scapegoat in my family, and my older brother was the golden child. According to my abusive parents, he could do no wrong, and I could do no right. We were often pitted against each other, as narcissists tend to do with their children. My brother beat me up daily after school, and when I told my mom about it, she shrugged and made it my fault. If he complained about me, she immediately took his side and I was punished. My father alternately ignored or raged at both of us, but my mother made it abundantly clear that my brother was the favored one. She fawned over him like she fawned over my narcissistic father. In her world, males were to be enabled and blindly followed, and females, well, were in the way. To them, I was the "annoying" one when I spoke up about things that weren't normal. I was the "over-emotional" one when I reacted to things that were not normal. I was the "rebellious" one when I challenged things that were not normal. ...

Today I celebrate my 100th post on I Have Something to Say. I started this blog only six months ago as a way to reclaim my own voice, and to sort out my thoughts as I heal from the long term effects of childhood trauma. Like many others, I was coerced into silence by my abusers. The terror that raised me remained more present in my life than my parents ever were. I started this project because, for me, it was the best way to face my fear. In order to break old ties, I needed to make a public declaration. I was abused. Today I celebrate not only my own journey, but all of those who have read my posts and resonated with them. Abuse thrives in silence. It loses its power the more people call it out. 100 Reasons it's Important to Speak Up: You will reclaim your voice. You will reclaim your power. You will reclaim your indentity.  You will feel better. You will face your fears. You will inspire others.  You will inspire yourself.  You will make it easier to spe...

One of the most common non-helpful responses to someone suffering from the fallout of abuse is to push the victim toward forgiveness too soon. Usually it's coupled with some form of shame that the victim "should" feel something other than whatever she is feeling. Sometimes, it's coupled with well-meaning platitudes- "It's the Christian thing to do." It's offered as the fix-all solution to help her "set it aside," "snap out of it," and "move on." Here's the thing. Pressuring people to forgive prematurely only prolongs the healing process. The only way to fully process what happened is for the victim to feel her feelings, whatever they may be. People who have been psychologically abused by narcissists and other dark triad personalities have been brainwashed into all kinds of shame-based falsities that their thoughts, feelings, ideas, and opinions don't matter. Essentially, they were taught to believe that they...

I just spent the last few days on retreat, where my family later joined me. It was some much needed self-care away from the trappings of life. Over the last several months, I've grown more aware of how necessary self-care is for someone like me facing the realities of complex trauma head on.  Speaking of head on, on the way home I had a very close call. On a twisty mountain road, I drove my daughter and two cats, while behind me, my husband followed with my other children. In the other lane, a Jeep and a truck careened toward us, side by side, vying for the same spot in their single lane. One second sooner, and the Jeep would have hit me head on. One second later, and the Jeep would have hit my husband. Instead, it slammed through the guard rail between our two cars, flipped over a boulder, and rolled down the hillside. My husband, a trained trauma nurse, was the first to reach the driver. He helped her crawl out of her overturned car, and miraculously, with my husband'...

I have survived quite a bit, and on most days, my resilience and adaptability are strengths, not weaknesses. But there was something about my resilience that made me feel like a fraud. Even though I did survive terrible things, and even though I did turn as much of my life as possible into something positive and productive, something in the background was nagging at me. My accomplishments felt empty. Even though there was obvious fruit from decisions I made to shut abusers out of my life, I still felt on some level like I didn't deserve to enjoy a good life. This nagging feeling was what eventually lead me down a deeper path of self-reflection and healing. Even though I knew all the facts of what emotional and narcissistic abuse was, I never felt comfortable fully embracing that I was, in fact, abused. I lived in a wasteland between the lie that I was somehow responsible for what happened to me and the horrible truth of what really happened. Resilience felt like a mask. Even...

Psst. I have a superpower. And maybe you do, too. There are many long term, far-reaching, negative effects that children of toxic parents endure, from physical health problems to emotional and social issues. Children of emotionally abusive parents often have the hardest recovery because it is so difficult to de-program all the negative feedback they received from their toxic parents. As adults, they must retrain their brains how to think, and it's extremely challenging for a victim of abuse to even recognize how the negative feedback they received from their abusive parent has turned into their own negative self-talk. Recovery feels counter-intuitive, because their identity is formed in lies: "I'm worthless." "I'm bad." "Nobody could love someone like me." "No one cares." "I'm a screw up." "I'm permanently damaged." "I'm hopeless." Children who live in toxic environments in which they a...