amy55

Hey Aeryn, I hear you. I don't post on the ACOA section, but I do belong there. I turned out to be a perfectionist. I'm getting over that. My 2 sisters were always top of the class, I was a little down from that, so I was a failure. But are we really failures, or are we just us. Sometimes I just want to be "me". Celebrate me for the day. I am okay, and so are you. My dad was my main abuser, I kinda got over it thinking that he did the best that he could and loved me the best that he could, and I considered how he grew up. He actually did make improvements over his own dad and how he grew up. It was with that thinking that I learned how to forgive. Later on I realized I had my own life. I have to make my own decisions, right or wrong, they were mine. OK, I made a lot of wrong decisions, but they were mine. I learned from each experience. They say God never give you more then you can handle. I say, I think you and I are both very strong, and that is why God gave us that learning tool. PS--- I am an atheist, but I still believe that.

I believe in you, and I love you.

((((((((((hugs)))))))))))

amy

wanttobehealthy

My father was precisely the same. Left us kids to be abused and he just disappeared. So sorry you grew up w the same awful experience

wanttobehealthy

So sweet of you... The offer to stay in PA. Ironically I lived in PA twice at different points in my adult life and left the second time to move back east to be w xAH. But I LOVED PA and have reached out to my old employer as a "what if..." And I would love to be able to move back. So maybe my kiddos and I will be in PA one day after all

Aeryn

I can't remember are you no contact/limited contact? I am (contact by paper letter only) and my T said it's the best boundary I could ever set since severe NPD/BPD's do not have empathy and unless they want to get better will not and will take any gesture we make and use it to continue the abuse cycle.

I'm so sorry about all you're going through right now but you will come out on the other side I'm sure of it...you are so strong and have come so far.

amy55

Aeryn,

Sometimes I thing we need to release our anger. You have every right to. You were abuse. So was I, not as bad as you though. Sometimes I think we want to feed poison to other people to stop our own pain. It doesn't work. Sometimes I think we need to forgive, (I am not saying anything about forgetting) just forgive, to just release the own poison from your body.

From what you are writing I think that you are an adult, (over the age of 18). I know sometimes, you might just want to explode and get it all out of you, I am here for that and so is SR I want you to get it all out. I want you to scream, and to hit your pillow repeatedly.

Then after you do all of that, I want you to talk to us.

I love you, is that a deal?

wanttobehealthy

Hearing all these backgrounds makes me understand everyone so much better.

Amy55 I didn't grow up in a Alcohlic home but I can relate so well to the perfectionist ACOA stuff. My sister was the queen bee perfectionist and I was a bit less perfect but still pretty perfect by normal standards but my mother told me repeatedly I was a loser bc I wasn't as good as my sister.

What a shame for parents to act as ours did

And I feel like my kids have suffered bc of how I grew up. I tolerated abusive behavior by xAH bc I felt like and still feel like the loser I was told I was by my mother. If I had had a decent family as a kid maybe I wouldn't have thought I deserved to be treated like crap by a loser wife beater child abuser a$$hat drunk.

Sigh...

wanttobehealthy

My NPD mother lives in my town. She pops by my house as she chooses. She shows up at my kids schools and used to pick them up arbitrarily until I told th she wasn't allowed to.

It's beyond anxiety producing to live near her. I told xAH I would never ever move back here and through a series of manipulations he moved us back here and told me my resistance to it showed I wasn't a team player and that a good daughter forgives and accepts her mother as she is.

I have limited my contact w her as much as possible while still being in the same small town w her.

I try to avoid face to face contact w her as much as possible.

Aeryn

Oh gosh no. I'm not angry about it anymore. I've been in therapy for a while and am working it through there...I definitely don't feed poison to anyone else. I know that for a fact. And no I don't feel like I'm going to explode - not even close. I'm very easy going and calm - that's just how I roll now. And I'm way over 18....

I don't think I know you well here but I've been here a long time and most that know me and my story would agree with what I've said.

I definitely don't need to talk about it here for sure! I have support both IRL and a great counselor and I'm actually doing and feeling quite well and strong. In fact I'm currently feeling healthier and better than I have in years - I'm doing great. I have a new person I'm dating and new friends and a new lease on life. I've accepted my mother for who she is and her limitations on what she can offer me and I've drawn the boundary needed and am quite happy with my boundary.

amy55

wtbh, I was my fathers favorite. My father was the abusive alcoholic. I was his favorite. I was always slower then my sisters, I only got A's, they got A+'s. I was fat, I weighed 115. My sisters were under 100. I went to a christening this weekend. My cousin had asked me if my dad sexual abused me, because she came over one time, and he was all over her.

No my dad didn't, thank God. I remember my sis telling me when I had cancer, that she was in fact happy it was me, because I could deal with it, because she couldn't, then she told me that she was happy that my dad abused me instead of her.

Aeryn

Oh I know how hard that must be...I'm so sorry. And if you read any NPD book they will tell you the worst and most common thing someone who doesn't get it will say is that whole not a team player, forgiveness thing....NPDs/BPDs don't work like that....ugh. It can be quite frustrating when people don't get it. I accept my mother for who she is and all her limitations but I also realize that acceptance means she can't be any more in my life than she is without damaging me (and that's why I hold the boundary but the one I have would be so much harder to hold if she lived in the same town for sure!).

amy55

Aeryn, I am glad to hear that you are doing so well. I'm sorry, some of the posts that I do post, go back in time also. So, I do understand. Thank you for for story. I do really appreciate it.

Also, I do suspect my ex was BPD, I understand.

amy55

Just let me know when, my basement should be finished by then, and i will have lots of room.

amy55

I also live in a gated community, and the security guards will shoot him. (lol)

Stung

I'm still a total rookie but I have to say my triggers are definitely people in denial. Especially extra thick denial like my own was. I too have an NPD and codependent mother and in learning more about myself it saddens me how little empathy that I show others and that I also end up being mean when I perceive my own meanness as humor. It's not funny, it's just mean. Thankfully I'm learning how to set boundaries with my mom but holy crap, I think I'd rather take on an additional alcoholic husband if it meant I could have a regular mom. Dealing with her is 10 times more challenging than my alcoholic husband.

Live

I, too have PTSD.

Through therapy over the last 2 years, triggers have greatly diminished, altho my triggers now are very much different than the ones I have had in the past.

SR saved my life years ago and I come and go around here but still find it a relevant and authentic place. It did take some people being very blunt with me. I thank them now, Morning Glory in particular and another lady who is no longer here.

Some of the time the people that trigger me remind me of how much I must have frustrated those who loved me and were there during my time of woe and being lost and hurt.

As often as there are those that frustrate me, there are others who inspire.

(((hugs)))

NWGRITS

Triggers. Yes yes. I want to save all the children. All the time. It's like, if I save the kids now, it'll somehow undo what happened to me. Backwards and unhealthy, but it is what it is. In all seriousness though, I told my husband that I want to take in foster children from addicted homes when our children are older. Nobody wants the troubled kids. They want the angelic fosters who never give anyone a problem. I say bring it on. I've got all the love in the world for those kids.

amy55

Hey Grits,

The children. I could never have my friends come over to my house when I was growing up. I made sure that my children were able to. No matter how bad my ex was, I made sure he wouldn't stop that, and I made sure that his mouth was closed when my children did bring their friends over.

My 2 youngest children ( the ones that I had with my ex) are very special. They are both very high academic achievers, but for some reason the children that had problems gravitated to them. (And as I just wrote that out, I worry that I instilled codie ness in them. Most Saturdays, and Sundays I was making breakfast for 6 - 10 kids. When their friends stayed over for the weekend, a lot of times they would come to me, to talk to me.

One was diagnosed with ODD, (oppositional defiant disorder), he told me that he was dropping out of school, I can't believe this, he is so bright, so intelligent, his grades were sh1t, but I knew him for so long. I yelled at him !!!!! Well maybe not so much yell, as I thought I did. I did tell him what I thought of him, which is all of the above, told him that I thought of him as my own son, begged him to reconsider what he was doing with his life, then told him that I was out of line, because I am not his mother. He looked at me, thanked me, hugged me, then said ---- I wish you were my mother, that's what I wanted to hear from her. He did go back and get his GED, and I think he is now earning about $80,000 a year.

I had another one --- my daughters friend. She would talk to me all the time, because she felt like she had no mother. Her mother had kind of "checked out". Her mother had finally left her ex who was a police officer. After she left, her ex had his police officer friends gang rape her. So her mother really did "check out". I remember she bought me a birthday present once, and put a card in there and it said, "Thanks for being my mom".

I do have other stories, maybe not as dramatic as these 2, but NWGrits, I think that what you are thinking about doing is the greatest gift that you can offer to a child.

Stung, I was also in deep denial. Sometimes its hard not to be. I look at things like I just wrote above, and I saw how damaged those children were, and it kept me in denial. They actually looked to me, and they thought I was "normal?"

Live, (((((((((hugs))))))))))))) I do know what you are talking about. I know how much I frustrated the people that I talked to.

amy55

I have to say, I didn't know what I was thinking yesterday, I lost my power for over an hour, closer to 2. I was just sitting here thinking about "me?". I was thinking about my triggers. I think that I wanted people here to understand me a little better and sometimes what triggers me. What I got out of this thread, was just, so much love. I can now understand more how or why someone replies. I can see the "triggers", and respect the reasoning behind it. It is all done in love.

Perhaps someday I will start a thread, maybe entitle it ---- "I got triggers, and this is what I am doing about it, and recovering from them". It would be about how we use the knowledge that we gained from our own relationships, and how we pay it forward to another. Oh, but that is what this forum is about. (lol)

Just want to say that you all helped me so much last night, and I am so glad to have gotten to know you better.

Florence

The thing about denial -- you just don't see it. Others tried to tell me that my STBXAH had a problem, but I just didn't see it. I just didn't see it. It was that simple.

One day, I saw it. I had quit smoking months before and he continued to smoke, he was taking hourly smoke breaks outside on a Saturday morning. I just happened to look out the window and saw him sitting in his car, take a throaty swig of vodka right off the top of a giant jug I'd never seen before, and then hide it inside something in his car. Out of curiosity, I went out there to see what he was doing and if I was seeing things, and he blocked me from his car and redirected me back inside.

But I couldn't unsee it.

For some reason (this day happened like I was led by some invisible hand), later that day I went outside and took out the trash. I lifted the bag that was already in there to look underneath and there were 5-6 GIANT empty jugs of bottom shelf vodka. That's how I figured it out, all in one day, that he was a full blown alcoholic living and raising a child with me full time for YEARS.

It was like a row of dominoes, all the **** that a select few had been trying to tell me, all falling over at once. The missing money, the layers of lies and deception, the weird and confusing behavior, the stories that never added up. He was drinking! He was secretly drinking! My son's strange pleasing behavior, which I always attributed to his relationship with his dad (which is and was fraught) suddenly took on the context of a child growing up in an alcoholic home. My anger, and the anger I had at inexplicably carrying ALL of household responsibilities. The joy was sucked out of many of my memories of our marriage, realizing in hindsight that my STBXAH's funny stories probably weren't true at all, that he was loaded, or lying. It tainted everything.

This was, in a way, its own trauma. That all of this happened right under my nose and I didn't see it. I just didn't see it. Who was I that all this dysfunction could be swirling around me and I didn't see it? I was so disappointed in myself and so sad, just devastated. Over the next year, it was blow after blow. Relapses, more truth-telling, more lies and deceptions unveiled. All the money gone, the job opportunities wasted, the sexless nights, the weird and abusive sex we did have, the nights alone, the time I was sure he took my car while I was sleeping in the middle of the night. I was in total shock, furious, dismayed, paralyzed with the disbelief that this is and was my life.

This is my trigger now. I'm hyper vigilant, I'm half convinced everyone I know is in the bag. I have history with PTSD, and it's mostly under control now without therapy and meds. I am easily triggered when I am tired (H.A.L.T!) but otherwise the past intensive therapy, commitment to exercise/diet/sleep, and daily SR readings keep giving me the perspective I need to continue. I have a hard time dealing with people who are lying to themselves or defending their abusers. Oftentimes people have more compassion for their abuser than for themselves, and this is terrible and unthinkable for me. But it's exactly what I did. I was sad for him, and sometimes I still am. But I'm mostly sad for me and determined not to let this pull me under. I don't hold any torches for that guy anymore, but I still wonder about myself and why I am still so attracted to deeply dysfunctional, depressed people who struggle with life. I want to thrive, and I want to be around people that thrive. I think I'm getting there, but my worst obstacle is me.

readerbaby71

Florence, thank you so much for sharing this. I just wanted to let you know that you constantly inspire me with your insights and wisdom. I also appreciate your bluntness, even when I don't want to hear it.