Hello friends. I've been writing a lot lately about my CPTSD from decades of narcissistic parental abuse, neglect, shaming, invalidating, exploitation, scapegoating, endangerment, enmeshment, abandonment, parentification, manipulation and gaslighting by four narcissistic parents. I've shared how my childhood trauma nightmares are teaching me things. Today I'm exploring how they are calming, reassuring and validating.
I've written before about the crazy and terrible CPTSD nightmares that plague me every single night. The moment I fall asleep, I'm in one. They're chaotic and confusing. I'm in strange and terrible situations, having to care for numerous children in dangerous, filthy and disgusting places. I'm expected to do impossible tasks but what and by whom, I don't know. There's no pattern, just misery. People are nasty to and angry with me. I have more memory of dreams than reality. I wake up more tired than I was when I went to bed.
I've shared how these dreams are showing me that, odd as they are, they're true. These kinds of things did happen to me. I was subjected to very unsafe, inappropriate expectations by angry, malicious parents. I was left alone to cope with things adults could not cope with. I was baffled by the shifting, self-serving, destructive and unfair demands. As my husband says, the nightmares are more memory than dream.
I have lived in a confusing shadow world of deceit, where lies were truth and reality was flipped on its ass. I was pool-balled and played off people. I was thrown in the path of sadists, psychopaths and predators. Machinations, cons games, scams, double standards and threats were my normal. These dysfunctional adults who were responsible for me, manipulated, coerced and browbeat me into a complaint state of enslavement. They bullied, harassed, attacked and exploited, all for selfish gain.
I wrote recently about how this ceaseless trauma has damaged my ability to protect myself and rendered me boundaryless. My coping mechanism is to fawn and try to fix. I find myself in awful situations with no idea of how I got there. Because I'm raw with no self-protective skills, I get gulled or dragged into very wrong situations, by narcissists, that I did nothing to create. But because I'm so prone to guilt and fixing and so brainwashed by selfish people, I immediately assume that I somehow created the problem. I described some of those experiences in an earlier post.
I don't remember ever not being stressed out and hating myself. My home life (which was really nothing more than constant couch surfing) was fraught with tension. The air was sliceable with it. I look back and remember faces grim, sullen, resentful and livid with rage. Most of it passive-aggressive (mom, step mom and dad) and some just aggressive (step dad and occasionally dad).
The few "peaceful" times I experienced always backfired on me. Just when I began to relax, I got a sucker punch in the stomach. I can still feel the gut twisting shock. I've blanked out, squashed down and sat on a bulging suitcase full memories. I thought I was managing to keep them in check. But they explode out in those nightly dreams.
The nightmares don't resemble my actual life or people in it but the feelings and actions are exactly the same. I believe this changing of people and places is to protect me. If I dreamed about the real people and situations, my mind would implode with the realization that it wasn't just a dream. As the cop shows say, the names have been changed to protect the innocent (me) but the events and my brain damage from them are real.
So here's an example (warning it's pretty disgusting). Last night's dreams involved me having to care for a large number of babies who were defecating in my hands because they were sick and there were no diapers. We were in a dirt floor basement and I was trying to get them clean, cared for an off the floor. Later I was trying to clean my home in which there was old food and vermin.
There was a woman staying with us who was ordering me around and taking the place over. She and my husband were both yelling at me to clean up and get rid of the bugs. They weren't lifting a finger to help. They expected me to wait on them and mocked me. This is completely out of character for my husband. So it had to come from earlier memories.
And this is so strangely helpful, calming and validating to me. It's calming because it's validating which is helpful to sort out the truth from toxic lies and gaslighting I was told about myself, what I was supposed to do and what God expected of me. I've also noticed that I'm fighting back more than I have in past dreams. Normally I'm kowtowing and feeling ashamed. In this one I yelled at them to get busy and lend a hand. So maybe I'm turning a corner?
My husband has also been requesting that I tell him the entire content of my dreams. Something I've been loathe to do because the shame that was implanted in my brain makes me think I'm somehow responsible for having them and that people will think I'm the oddball because my dreams area disgusting and weird.
I have recognized my own parents and their partners in these dreams. My bio parents brought dangerous people into my life. They all expected me to serve and parent them. They all kept me in unsafe situations. I've lived in actual squalor and metaphorical filth from their dirty immoral behavior.
But after telling my husband, he identified an additional connection, that the woman in last night's dream may represent his mother. The dream woman was young and attractive and there was obviously something between them if he moved her into my home, let her take over and they joined in bullying me.
He made the point that his mother had always considered him a possession and kind of a surrogate spouse. She looked on me as a rival for his affections and did not respect me as his wife. She had always been scornful and unpleasant to me. She would feign affection and then turn on me even when I was doing for her. She messed up our wedding as much as she could by crying ugly, angry, pouty tears throughout the entire thing.
She called the shots on everything. Husband says she's done that all their lives. And his dad, while not complying with her, expected his son to. Husband was the fall kid in their family triangle. When dad passed, she expected husband to take her to the doctor (she had other options but didn't want to use them).
He had to use my car because hers was uncomfortable to drive. And because she was so over-picky and nasty about using hers. This left me without a vehicle. And it never occurred to us to expect her to leave hers for me. The one time I had to drive it, to move her across the state, she made my life a living hell. Instead of just putting down our boundaries, we gave let her have her own way in everything.
He admitted that there were many times when he'd be frustrated with her and take it out on me. He has given her her way because it was easier. I took care of her most of the time (because his work schedule didn't permit it). This made her angry because "her son" wasn't taking care of "his mother." I waited on her and let her abuse me.
Neither of us had acknowledged how much damage she was allowed to do. Because, well, she's his mom. We both turned a blind eye to her very hurtful, controlling and selfish behavior to "keep the peace." But evidently, my dreams didn't. They saw inside my subconscious and have tried to warn me of the damage these people and situations have caused. It never would have occurred to me if he hadn't pointed it out.
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