Hi friends. I've been working on healing from parental abuse, neglect, abandonment, exploitation, shaming, scapegoating, endangerment and gaslighting from four narcissistic parents. Today, I'm looking at one huge thing I need to start doing and that is trusting myself.
I've been bossed around, falsely accused, used as a punching bag, told off, pooh-poohed, blamed and shamed, criticized, lied to, gaslit and just made miserable by these people all my life. It extended into and got worse in adulthood. Their kids were now joining in.
You might ask, why did I let them? You may as well ask the sun why she shines. It's all I knew. They'd been shaming and gaslighting me so long the poisonous arrows were embedded in my brain. Once you learn something, even if it's wrong (maybe especially if it's wrong), it's virtually impossible to unlearn. No it is impossible.
They don't even have to say or do anything anymore. I'm trained. I do the gaslighting, shaming, blaming to myself. Even when they die, their voices live on in my mind. So I have a nasty case of CPTSD as a result. I barrage myself continuously with self-doubt, self-recriminations, second-guessing. My self-esteem is shot to hell. Actually, I never had any. I just believed as I was told that I'm the problem.
So actually, this title is misleading. I say I'm healing from abuse and CPTSD but I'm not. You never heal. You just hopefully find ways to cope. I say I'm learning to trust myself. Nah. The best I can hope for is to just start noticing the constant attacks and deflect them. Because I'm not just stuck in this, I'm buried under it.
I'm sorry to offer hope and then pull it back. But I have to be real about how badly I really do feel about myself. No one likes to hear it, I get that. They want to be positive, to "cheer me up" But if it denies or minimizes what I'm really feeling, it's false and toxic positivity. Well meant, but still not helpful. And maybe, not even well meant. In a way, it's a perpetuation of the gaslighting.
I have come to despise phrases like "let go and let God", ""you got this, girl" and especially "rise above" and "just get over it." They are so glib. They minimize what for me is a personal hell. And they just make me feel more ashamed because I effing can't let go, get over, rise above. I don't got this. You might as well tell me to leap a tall building in a single bound.
And for crying out loud, don't you think that if I could just get over it, I'd have done so ages ago? I hate this shit with all my being. No one wants me to get better more than me. I want to box it all up and incinerate it. I want do-overs. I want a childhood that wasn't filled with suffering. I want teen years without all the added shame. Those times are hard enough without people torturing you. I'd like to have been celebrated or loved, for a change.
And it's abundantly clear that anyone who would say these things don't got an effing clue. They aren't experiencing it. If they were, they would not be so blase. It's like telling someone whose loved one has just died, that "he's in a better place." She doesn't want him in a better place. And who are you to pontificate like that? Just shut your mouth and love her, foo.
So, what can I do? Well, for starters, I can be honest. I can keep saying what I need to if others don't like it, tough shit. I'll probably do that through this blog, though. Being scolded for feeling bad just makes it worse. So I'll consider the source. I can also recognize that nobody really gets it because they didn't live it. When they say unhelpful or hurtful things it just proves that.
I think the most important thing to do is to poke holes in every crazy, negative thing that comes into my head. Every time I hear their voices mocking or shaming, I can talk it down. I can interrupt. I can contradict, argue with and reject the lies they tell about me. I can call it out and name it. I can listen to the good things people tell me. I can begin telling myself good things.
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