Hello my friends. This blog has become about my recovery CPTSD caused by parental abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, manipulation, toxic shaming, scapegoating, parentification and gaslighting about it all by four very narcissistic parents. Today I'm looking at healing from CPTSD by sourcing the disconnect. And I'm doing that by paying close attention to uncomfortable feelings, clues that I'm spiraling or may be about to.
And this might be one of the trickiest things I've ever done. Why? Because I don't know how because I was taught to ignore bad feelings and red flags. My boundaries were so smashed by steamroller adults that they no longer existed. In fact, I don't think I really ever developed boundaries. I never knew where others stopped and I began. Because "I" didn't really exist. I was a human doing and giving, source of constant narcissistic supply for the adults in my life.
Marilisa was not a human being with needs, wants, goals, opinions and feelings of her own. She existed to be a supply, servant, surrogate spouse and/or parent, scapegoat and support (prop) for others. Needs were ignored and dismissed. Feelings were mocked and sometimes exploited. To have needs and wants was selfish. To have opinions or ideas outside parental ones were unspeakable acts of insurrection, instead of just normal kid stuff.
I was literally indoctrinated that self-care was disobedient to God, especially if it went contrary to whatever they wanted me to do at the time. For example: most of my life I did not have a bedroom or bed. I was put in their kids' and babies' rooms of whichever parent I was living with. What was my room was given to random people such as my uncle and his girlfriend, once. The parents were way across the house or several floors away. As far from the baby/children as possible. I still don't sleep more than a few hours at a time because I've been getting up at night with kids since I was 10.
The one time I objected to that (well, not really objected but just not as delighted as my dad thought I should be), I was beaten in front of everyone. Another time, my mom's boyfriend exploded on me because the baby I was caring for, woke him up. He says I shook the baby Now I see he was lying to protect himself. I didn't then. And it so traumatized me that I thought I never should have children.
I also see now that that is not only abuse and neglect but endangerment, exploitation, parentification and gaslighting. But then those were just more ways I'd let people down. Those are just a few examples. And they've all congealed into a septic sewage dump of toxic shame in my brain. But for all the ick, they are silent until something stirs them up.
Then I start feeling fearful and anxious. I start looking over my shoulder, expecting some form of punishment. I start over-reacting. But since it's not down to anything that actually happened, but rather old memories, I can't see where it began. In fact, I don't even identify that I'm feeling this way because I always feel and have felt this way, just to lesser or greater degrees. I only realize it when I'm in full-blown dysregulation or panic attack. And I'm too fucking old to keep experiencing this. I'm sick of it.
So I'm starting to pay much closer attention when the nagging anxiety. I'm starting to notice the ripples in the pond before a major hurricane occurs. I still can't sort out where they come from. Likely that swamp of toxic shame is deeper and dirtier than I thought. But I go with whatever I've got to work with.
Today, I sourced it to fear over not giving my kids a coupon I'd earned before it expired. Which I know is crazy. So it must be something deeper. I also had one of my famous bizarre nightmares last night. I found an abandoned baby in a church bathroom. My oldest daughter and I were looking formula to feed the baby. Then a woman put my daughter and the baby in a "beautiful baby" contest. I said no. We haven't even fed her or found her parents. But the woman snapped at me to stay out of it, mind my business and let my daughter be. She said the baby would be fine. I backed down but said that if my daughter needed me, I was crashing the contest and coming to help her. The dream ended when I said "you obviously know nothing about at-risk babies. She hasn't even been fed!"
I'll blog on that more. I think this panic attack came from a constant sense of failure. That I'd somehow let my family down by failing to share the coupon. It hasn't even expired yet! But these are the things I dream about, missing deadlines, losing children, letting them get hurt, failing to do things, not picking kids up on time, dropping the ball. Things I now recall happened to me on a regular basis.
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