I Have Something To Say

Trauma survivors seem to worry more than most that they are being 'lazy' when they aren't 100% productive. Let's expose that lie, shall we? The traumatized brain is anything but lazy. In fact, it is over-worked, over-stimulated, over-active, and over-stressed. Trauma survivors have an enlarged amygdala, which triggers the fight-or-flight response. In a survivor, this response goes haywire. It cannot perceive between something that happened in the past with what's in the present. The brain remembers trauma in the form of flashbacks that constantly re-create the experience. A traumatized brain is always on alert. Hypervigilance is constantly running in the background, assessing the situation and trying to report back to the rational brain what it finds. In order to keep up with everyday situations, it often must work hotter and harder than a brain without trauma. Say a non-traumatized person wants to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. No sweat, right? I...

A couple years ago, I hit a serious wall.  I was emotionally and physically exhausted, but didn't understand why. Sure, I was a mom, wife, graduate student, and ran a business, but this exhaustion went much deeper than my chronic state of busyness and hypervigilance. Sure, I knew I had a rough childhood and had gone no contact with my parents ten years prior. I got on with my life. I made many positive and deliberate changes so I didn't repeat their patterns, but I hadn't fully unpacked just how vast that black hole of childhood trauma was. For me, awakening to the impact of my childhood trauma has happened over many years, with thousands of tiny steps toward recovery. But one day, the truth of it hit me so hard, I had to drop everything to process it. I had no choice because my body and brain simply gave out. I had to grow or succumb. I chose to grow. I threw myself headlong into the task of really looking at my issues. You could say I was hypervigilant about trauma ...

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...

Healing can be a long process, especially from complex trauma. There is an entire lifetime of coping mechanisms that survivors must unravel before they can decide what to keep and what to toss out. The process of becoming who you really are is tough for anyone, but for those who survived childhood abuse, it means learning fundamental aspects of development that were previously denied. When a baby learns that their caretaker is unreliable, it is extremely difficult to expect others to be reliable throughout their whole life. This deficit creates a whole host of coping mechanisms in survivors. Some become combative and antisocial. Others go to the opposite end of the spectrum. I am the kind of survivor who learned to cope by being extremely self-sufficient. I hid behind the masks of "I'm fine" and "That's okay." I never required much from my relationships because it was reinforced enough times for me to know on a visceral level that I would be let down. I...

When I was a child, I had no tools or language to understand the abuse that was happening to me. What I did know was that I was constantly misunderstood. My parents often accused me of doing things I never did and punished me for not doing things that were not mine to be done. I didn't know what projection was, but I was constantly accused of having malicious intent when there was none. In order to survive, I stuffed my anger and made sure to never even think a cross thought about my abusers. I attempted to be perfect, which is, of course, impossible. I became hypervigilent in anticipating the needs of others. I became the cheerful servant, like Cinderella, daydreaming about a kinder and gentler world. Also like Cinderella, I didn't understand why, in spite of all my best efforts, my family hated me so much. I thought it was some flaw of mine that I was so misunderstood. When I grew older, I tried in vain to communicate with my abusers. I honed all the skills to write and ...

I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional home with a raging, alcoholic, narcissistic father. I still carry a lot of pain over the traumatic memories of his irrational outbursts and propensity to punish me for imagined slights. I struggle with an overbearing sense of responsibility and need to be blameless as a result of his abuse. But recognizing the ways he abused me and my subsequent hangups are pretty easy to identify. Though painful, my father's overt behavior is not as difficult to process as the other forms of abuse I experienced. The hardest is emotional neglect. The constant baseline in my home was not angry outbursts, it was neglect. It was the chronic, constant expectation that I would not cause any trouble or upset by having needs of any kind. If I did attempt to be seen or heard, I would be punished. My parents were experts in emotional neglect and covert abuse. As a young child, I was expected to require minimal upkeep. My physical need for food, clothing, and shel...

A couple weeks ago, my daughter had a medical emergency. I was four hours away. My husband and I had just hiked in to a remote location, eager to spend a few days in silence and contemplation. It was also much-needed chance to re-connect with each other. The last few weeks had been especially busy, and my C-PTSD brain was barely hanging on as it was. I was exhausted in every way, and this trip was the carrot I had been dangling to make it to the holiday. I knew after a few days of recharging, I would get the rest I needed. It was a healthy gift to myself and to us as a couple. I had one bar on my phone, which was enough to push the message through that our daughter was in the hospital and they planned to operate in the morning. So, we packed up, threw on some snow shoes, and hiked out in the dark. I was straining to not think about the mountain lion I encountered on my last trek in. After a driving on narrow highways full of oncoming high beams piercing my migraine, we arrived at ...

One year ago today, I created my very first post, I Have Something To Say.  This was a huge milestone in my recovery for a few reasons. Because of the type of abuse I experienced, I had a huge mental and physical block about speaking up publicly. The knots in my stomach, lumps in my throat and overall panic came from a very real history and experience of being punished for telling the truth. When someone has been silenced and de-humanized from a time before they could even speak, it creates seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Ironically, I have spent much of my adult life learning how to write and express myself in creative ways. And yet, giving a voice to the parts of me that were abused were so blocked, I couldn't admit out loud what happened, let alone write about it directly. Too much misplaced guilt and shame prevented me from integrating my identity as an abuse survivor into my professional life. Sure, bits and pieces leaked out. I would casually mention to friends I tru...

I study a lot of stories, and I am well-versed in the power of inspirational stories to uplift and entertain through shared catharsis. We can learn a lot about our own lives through storytelling. However, there is a big reason why some stories that feature characters who rise above their circumstances go down as all-time classics, and why some fall flat. It's all in how the character handles (or doesn't handle) their trauma. Take Harry Potter, for instance. After his parents died at the hands of evil, he was raised by his aunt and uncle, the epitome of ignorance, hate, abuse, and neglect. When he escapes them by going off to Hogwarts, his experience there is not exactly all happy charms and spells. He narrowly escapes one plight after another until he finally has to battle the one who killed his parents. Harry Potter works because Harry appropriately faces the trauma of his past. He doesn't succeed in spite of it, he succeeds because of it.  He is the ultimate exampl...

One of the biggest mistakes I see victims of narcissistic abuse make is to feel sorry for their abusers because their abuser is "mentally ill." This is wrong. Narcissism is not the same as mental illness. While someone with a mental illness might inadvertently cause chaos around them due to their mental state, most of them sincerely don't mean to hurt others. Many mentally ill people struggle with shame caused by their desire to be there for loved ones when their mental illness prevents them from doing so. It's important to understand that a narcissist does not feel this way. A narcissist willfully chooses to harm others. They are in control of their behavior, as evidenced when they put on the charm to manipulate people into thinking well of them. When they act in an abusive way, they choose to do so on purpose. Narcissists, psychopaths, sociopaths, and those who make up the cluster B personality disorders are notoriously responsible for the bulk of physical, ps...

Before EMDR therapy, I previously did not consider myself a fearful person. If I felt threatened, I would quickly push those thoughts out of my mind and focus on more practical, productive things. I learned to do this as a very young child who had no other option for coping with a cruel, punishing father, and an emotionally neglectful mother. While pushing impulses away can be a decent coping strategy short term, the long term effect of shutting down feelings of fear for me has meant lifelong chronic migraines and toxic stress. For much of my childhood and young adulthood, I didn't feel much fear, but it turns out, the bulk of my terror was repressed. I detached so much from what had initially been bothering me that I no longer saw the rather obvious connection between repressed trauma and chronic pain.  Today, in order to heal, I am committed to the oh-so-fun task of feeling my feelings, especially the ones that were previously off limits. Today, my entire body is on high ale...

I have a life-long habit of going unnoticed, even to myself. I am so busy getting things done, I rarely ever make time to acknowledge my own accomplishments. It struck me the other day, just how much I am managing while also making space in my life to grieve my past and heal from trauma. I felt a rare sense of pride, and then another wave of sadness, as feeling proud of who I am in spite (and because) of abuse is so fleeting. You see, when I feel proud of myself, I also feel how lonely it is to be standing in this empty space, unseen, unheard, and unacknowledged by others. Sometimes, I hide on purpose. As someone who has survived narcissists, a spotlight on me means I am an easy target for abusers. It makes me feel uncomfortable, not because I don't want to be noticed, but because I fear retaliation for taking up space. As a form of self-protection, I tend to blend into the background, making sure everything runs smoothly. I am so good at this it is common for others to just a...

It's been nearly twelve years since I went no contact with my covert narcissist mother, thirteen for my malignant narcissist father. After a lifetime of trying to reason and cope with the abuse, I made a choice to leave in order to survive them. I am now a voluntary orphan. It's been the hardest and best decision of and for my life. Being human, there is nothing that makes no contact with both biological parents easy. It goes against all of my biological, physiological, and social programming. I am perpetually broken-hearted. I long for connection and understanding from my narcissistic parents, past, present and future. Alas, there was never, is not, and never shall be. I ache for the child in me who missed out on not having loving, safe, supportive parents. I ache for the adolescent and young adult who had no positive parental example, no guidance, no support of any kind. I ache for the grown woman with kids of her own who struggles forward, hoping to carve a better pat...

My husband came home late last night to find me curled up in my favorite furry blanket, staring at the wall. He has found me like this many times before, often on days like this one, where I process a new traumatic memory in therapy. "Can I get you anything?" he asks. "A better childhood," I reply. He nods and sits next to me. He knows I want him near, but I don't necessarily want to talk about it. It's exhausting to explain trauma to someone else when it's raw, and besides, it's not so much the event itself but the fallout from it that needs care. At the moment, that means I'm tapped into a deep well of sadness for the child in me who was neglected, terrorized, and so unloved. This is a productive sadness. It's progress. I have earned enough breakthroughs in recovery to know how important it is for me to fully feel this sadness. The old me probably would feel shame for being upset about something that happened so long ago. The old...

It seems the deeper I journey into the healing and recovery process, the more I find that much of our cultural and conventional wisdom does not help trauma survivors. All the trite platitudes and sayings that might help someone having a garden-variety bad day can actually become giant triggers for someone living with trauma. Let's assume everyone wants to live a healthy, pain-free, abundant, and productive life. There are hundreds of motivational books and centered on "fake it til you make it" principles, which encourage people to think positive, let it go, don't sweat the small stuff, etc. They may have helped some people. Judging by book sales, they have probably helped many. Yet, for many trauma survivors searching for relief, these books and motivational coaches don't help. In fact, many, like me, feel more depressed, broken, and impossibly disconnected after reading them. Here's why. Trauma survivors are often highly motivated people. Many are cond...

I've been living with the effects of complex trauma for a long time, but for many years I didn't know what it was. Off and on throughout my life, I've struggled with what I thought was anxiety and depression. Or rather, In addition to being traumatized, I was anxious and depressed.  All mental health is a serious matter, and should never be minimized. If you are feeling anxious or depressed, it's important and urgent to find the right support for you. No one gets a prize for "worst" depression, anxiety, trauma or any other combination of terrible things to deal with, and no one should suffer alone. With that in mind, there is a difference between what someone who has CPTSD feels and what someone with generalized anxiety or mild to moderate depression feels. For someone dealing with complex trauma, the anxiety they feel does not come from some mysterious unknown source or obsessing about what could happen. For many, the anxiety they feel is not rational...

As a trauma survivor, some days are more manageable than others. I am learning the long, slow process of better recognizing ways to prevent overwhelm and ways to better care for myself when I am overwhelmed. Even so, sometimes it comes on so fast, I can't deescalate. For me, feelings of stress and anxiety can quickly morph into panic, sometimes without an obvious trigger. It could be triggered from the gradual build up of a stressful week, or it could be triggered simply walking into a noisy room. Sometimes, just the general sense of overwhelm itself can be the trigger to an even more intense emotional flashback. Part of the reason for this is that therapy causes the goal posts to keep moving. I have made a lot of progress. I am re-wiring my brain. I don't relate in the same way to things that previously bothered me. This is all great news, but the reality is that this process of taking all the fuses out of my mental fuse box and rewiring them means there is still much to ...

I have always been a perceptive person, able to see any situation from the point of view of others. Growing up, I never understood how I could see my parent's point of view, but they could never see mine. And the (not so) funny thing is, their point of view was always skewed in their favor. If they were upset, it was my fault. If I was upset, it was my fault. If they were offended, it was my fault. If I was offended, it was my fault. See the pattern? When I was blamed, which was inevitable, I would take responsibility for my part, and then some. Even when things were not my fault, I could trace the line of reasoning back to how they could potentially find fault with me, and I would even take responsibility for their false perceptions. For example, one time, in a rare act of generosity, my parents took my friend and I to see our favorite band. My bestie and I were understandably excited, and screamed and cheered throughout the show. It was two hours of sheer joy, for which I la...

Recently, Arc of Hope , an (excellent) child abuse recovery and support network on Twitter added me to a list titled "Abused Kids/ Child Abuse Victim Army." Seeing myself associated with being a victim of child abuse sent a shock through my body. It might sound weird, but it felt like a new revelation. Now, one might think that someone with the Twitter handle @AbuseSurvior, having over 10 years of no contact with her abusers, who has been been blogging about the nature of abuse for several months now, with scores of posts and a steadily growing audience might be used to the idea by now that she was abused. But seeing this struck me in a new and different way. Here's why. It was external validation, by people who "get it," that it really happened. Growing up, not only was there no one else to validate that the emotional, psychological, spiritual, and sexual abuse happened, but the very nature of the abuse meant that I was brainwashed into doubting my own f...

I went no contact with my abusive parents many years ago, but my mother, a covert narcissist, still continues to hoover me in. Hoovering is a strategy characteristic of Cluster B disordered people wherein, like a vacuum cleaner, they try to suck people back in to their manufactured drama. It is yet another form of manipulation and control, often thinly veiled as "caring" or "concern." When I went no contact, I moved away and left no forwarding address, on purpose. My mother has managed to get hold of my address with every subsequent move. Sometimes she manipulates other family members to get it. At first, she played innocent, as if I must have "forgotten" to give it to her. Other times, she has used the "poor me" approach to gain sympathy from the other flying monkeys in my family, who were all too willing to sell me out. (They are no contact now, too.) The thing is, if there was a real emergency or if she wanted to have a real conversation ...