Hi friends. Lots of discovery going on around here about the narcissistic abuse and neglect I was raised with. And there's one really helpful source that might surprise you as it has me: My chronic CPTSD nightmares. Seeking help for these was what got me looking at things more clearly. Here's what trauma dreams teach me about my abusive family.
So what we know about CPTSD is that it's like combat-related PTSD only more complex because it stems from early childhood trauma. One symptom I don't hear much about is nightmares. We know they're part of shell shock. But there's not a lot of mention of them related to CPTSD. Maybe because few people have them, or have them like I do.
I've never heard of anyone having dreams like mine. When I ask them about dreams, I get responses like "everyone has bad dreams." Or they say they understand because they had one bad dream months ago. Which is patronizing and not very helpful. Because I know everyone dreams and clearly I wouldn't have brought it up if mine were normal and occasional. And it feels dismissively gaslighting because it denies my reality of constant, nightly disturbing nightmares or likens one bad one to a lifetime of bad dream memory.
The point isn't to fault people for not understanding. Though being sensitive and supportive goes a lot farther than condescending or dismissive. And maybe they're not pooh-poohing. I only think they are because I was shamed for everything. And mocked for walking in my sleep. I never told anyone about the nightmares because I'd have been further shamed. And gaslit into believing that they weren't that bad. And that I was showing off. Which is probably where a lot of the nightmares stem. And so because I was not taken seriously, I learned to downplay it. I began gaslighting myself. And my dreams join in.
Also, in a way, hearing what others consider bad dreams is helpful because it shows that very few people have dreams like mine and so regularly. When I tell them mine, they instantly recant and say they've never experienced anything like this nor know of anyone who has. They say they couldn't invent dreams like this let alone imagine how awful it must be to have them. Which is both scary and affirming that I'm not making it up and they're that bad.
Because my dreams aren't just about bad things happening to me. They are about bad things I believe I have done. And good things I'm failing to do. I always have a mountain of expectations I'm not meeting. I don't even know what they are because no one has actually told me. I'm trying to care for everyone's kids, do laundry, cook, clean and care for everyone, plan lessons, teach classes, meet deadlines. The environment is dirty and unsafe. I'm wading through literal garbage. There are feces and urine everywhere. Children get hurt in terrible ways because I didn't even know I was supposed to be watching them. I don't have the resources and don't know where things are. I'm always late.
I feel terrible guilt and fear. People are angry with me and won't tell me why. I've done unspeakably bad things but I don't know what they are. My kids hate me and my husband cheats on me, scorns and makes fun of me. I'm left behind. I'm lost, alone, hungry, exhausted and cold, a lot. And it goes on and on. This is a very small sample of what I go through each night. It doesn't matter what I eat or drink. Where or when I sleep. What I do or don't do. The dreams are relentless.
So another thing I'm learning from my nightmares is that you don't dream like this without there being a reason. And what they're telling me is that my childhood really was as disturbingly dysfunctional as I'm now accepting it was. So mind-blowingly disturbing that my trauma damaged brain must rehash it every single night all night long. And why is that? Why does my brain put me through this?
My parents would say that it was guilt for the terrible things I've done. God is inflicting this on me to show me my sins. Which fits in neatly with their theory that I was the cause of their problems. And that all they put me through wasn't abuse, neglect, exploitation, scapegoating, bullying, endangerment and abandonment but logical punishment for my transgressions. See, even your dreams are telling you how wicked you are.
And, since that's exactly what happens in my dreams, I assumed they were right. They had me so brainwashed that I "remembered" things that they said I did or that happened in my dreams as if they were memories. I actually have more dream memories than real ones. And if it's happening night after night, God must be trying to tell me something, right?
Right. But not what it seems. It's time to play detective and start looking at just the facts. Because what I dream I've done wrong, never really happened even though I thought it did. People were always angry with me. They did place crazy expectations on me. They did change rules and not tell me. They did expect me to jump on command and read minds. They said they were angry because I'd failed. But how could I have? I hopped through their every hoop. I waited on them. I kept quiet and was terrified of my own shadow.
Looking back, I see it was either someone else failing or no one. For example, in one repetitive dream, my dad comes downstairs in his underwear, furious because I've been loud and woken him up. Now my dad did do that kind of thing or would have. He was always angry, mostly at me. But he worked at night. And I had to go to bed early with his kids because I slept with them. I worked till bedtime. I crept around the house on eggshells. I hardly would have dared make noise both because he got so angry but also because I genuinely worried about him getting enough rest. So it could not have been me waking him up.
But now that I remember, there was someone who did. And I just recalled a few days ago that my stepmother would watch TV all night. She also let their sons be loud. She expected him to do all the work and childcare which he put on me. They were not quiet or considerate of his need to rest. But that, like most everything else just got blamed on me, despite me being the only one who actually did respect him (too much). Even I blamed myself, so my dreams show.
And my dreams are right, there were always random inappropriate and unstated demands on me. Even my father-in-law saw that the first time he met me. As my husband says, these aren't dreams, they're memories. I did live periodically in squalor, in unsafe places. I was left behind and left alone too young, a lot. I was cold, alone, hungry, a lot. I felt lost and homeless because I was. I was expected to be at everyone's beck and call. I did have to care for lots of random kids. I did have mountains of heavy work to do. I was told I was bad.
So why does my mind keep going over these experiences? Two reasons, I think. One, to try to make sense of the senseless cruelty. My inner child is trying understand why she wasn't parented but had to parent her parents. She's trying to juxtapose the notion of loving family with the nightmare she lived. She's trying and failing to find a reason for her ugly alternate reality, a way to survive her parents delusional fantasy. She's trying to bring order to her intensely painful cognitive dissonance.
And second, their gaslighting was very successful. One thing we know about the gaslit is that we start doing it to ourselves. We believe and internalize their lies.
And third, I think God is trying to find a safe way of showing me that it did happen and shouldn't have. He protected little me by dulling the memories. Which explains why I have so few good memories. There weren't any. And now He's helping big me see and come to grips with it. To get clean from the gaslighting.
This isn't ideal. What would have been best is for it not to have happened. But since it has, needs must He find a workaround. He has to work with what he has. And a shell shocked, gaslit mind like mine doesn't give him much. It automatically makes everything my fault because that's the default presets my parents put in place. My dreams can't and won't accept that it might not be how they said because it's hardwired not to. The guilt and shame gaslighting runs too deep. So God let's me dream them over and over again in hopes that one day I might be able to rightly interpret them.
Where does this leave me? Hoping that the dreams will abate, the more I process this in real life.
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