Wednesday, January 15, 2025

My recovery from CPTSD just turned a corner

Hello my friends. I just had an epiphany in my journey to heal CPTSD from narcissistic parental abuse. For more on all that you can read my back posts. I've turned a corner and am taking a new and, for me, unprecedented direction. I'm deciding to do a few things differently. And it's having a marked improvement in just a few days. What is this new direction, you ask?

Simply put, I've decided to cut contact with my two parents that are left. After a lifetime of them abusing, neglecting, shaming, invalidating, insulting, mocking, depriving, stealing from, parentifying, excluding me when it suits them, exploiting, enslaving, manipulating, raging at me, bullying, lying, dismissing, scapegoating, enmeshing, pirating my self, minimizing and gaslighting, I finally decided that it ends here. No more enabling, pity, help that hurts me, giving without reciprocity and getting kicked in the stomach for it. Done. 

And not a moment too soon. I've been struggling all my life with physical, mental, emotional, financial and spiritual suffering with CPTSD they created in me. And it's killing me at an escalated pace. I'm tense, anxious, frightened of shadows,  shell-shocked. I just a tiny noises. Everything worries me, especially things I've been made to think are my responsibilities, that aren't. 

So yes, it took me into my 7th decade to finally realize that I needed to sever ties with these dark triad people. Yes I wish I'd done it decades ago. If I'd cut contact when I was 16 and they kicked me out of the house, I'd have saved myself years of misery. As I said to my daughter today, ending narcissistic abuse is better done earlier rather than later. To which she said, "better late than never." So very true. 

And I didn't because I didn't know should not allow it or even that I could. I was raised in a cult of one, by four dark triad narcissists who saw to it that my brain was damaged by their exploitation. For children raised this way, coming out of the torture is exactly like coming out of prison. You have to break your way out because they will  never let you go. And the strongest bond and barriers are in your own mind, put there by people in whose best interests it is to keep you locked up, chained and walking the grindstone. And like Jean Valjean after Toulon, abuse survivors are scarred, scared and confused. 

But we are free. And I for one am never going back. I realized now I owe them nothing. And yes it sounds cold and heartless. Gaslit me definitely still feels more like a perp than a victim. But if you know my backstory, you know it's the only choice I have. Once you know it's being burnt you have to yank your hand out of the fire. 

I didn't ask for it to be this way. I did everything in my power to make them happy. And they liked that power they had over me. I kept my hands glued to my eyes to avoid seeing what as right in front of my face. They did not, do not and never loved me. They've used me. And I let them. I made excuses, defended and bent over for it. 

But no more. No more bullying. No more answering to shaming manipulative demands. I call the shots in my life. If I screw up, so be it. I'll deal with it if the time comes. I will let me common sense dictate what's best for me, not a conscience rubbed raw by inappropriate expectations and demands. 

And so it sounds like I don't care. Well, I don't. No more that the basic concern I have for everyone. They wanted to play it both ways, family when it suits them or there's something to be gotten out of it. And they bosses and business transactions when they give or do something. I always heard about how she had to "get back to her (real) family."  But then oh wait, I expect this or that because you're my child. Did she know how excluding that was? Of course she did. She went out of her way to remind me   of all the double standards I was expected to put up with. 

So yes, I was your child, to care for an nurture, not to boss and exploit. And you weren't my mother when it came to expectations you were supposed to be meeting. You reaped where you didn't sow. So now I don't care anymore.  I care about me. I care about those who are genuinely in my care. So she needs someone to care for her. (No not really. She just likes being waited on.) But say for argument she does need something. It's not my job to provide. And I don't want to anymore. 

It may be difficult for me at first to enforce these boundaries. But I'll get the hang of it. What has been going around for 60 years, is finally coming around. And who am it to stand it the way? 

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