Hi, I think when a person reaches out for help, the healing begins. There will be rough times sometimes but it is like purging the poison.



I have faith from what you are doing to really understand why and how he did all this will help if it is meant to be have trust, you never really ever had trust. It must have been a very traumatic time and as a child impossible to process.

Thank you for answering about your mom, it is good you both survived and kept a relationship. Sometimes it is just impossible or they come around in time like your brother. There was nothing you could have done to make the outcome any different; he is using his own free will to decide poorly or not. I would suggest just keeping the door open and if you have tried to get him to see things how they were his denial is his shield for now. When/if you do have contact with him perhaps avoiding your step father or the past to see if you can start minus the baggage. Besides as long as he is under your step fathers grasp anything said will go directly back to him.

It is a shame that therapist told you that. We have an understanding that because someone has a credential they know what they are doing. While there are many good/great therapists, I always thought their role was to support you and it doesn't sound like that happened.

When you mentioned your attorney friend I had this image in my mind of him flying in to help you riding on the wings of a thousand angels. I don't get the idea he will let you come out without your due right. Lawsuits just take forever and his appearance is a miracle indeed. Many miracles will come your way.

Exploring what went on will help in the end, you will be able to bloom into the person you never were allowed to be. By taking this first huge step and speaking about the past I hope will help you find the answers you are seeking.

We are here for you. We care that you will become a healthy survivor. Have you had a chance to explore what PTSD does and how it has probably been a part of your life for most or all of it.

Di

Isn't it interesting how much we see ourselves through their eyes? Almost like, in order to survive we had to somehow lose contact with who we are, and how we feel, in the attempt to try and work out a way of defending ourselves against the onslaught?

Let me give you an example, because I'm not sure what I wrote it very clear. I've just finished some sessions with an OT. The sessions were to help my PTSD symptoms, which have dominated my whole life. A lot of my energy has gone towards trying to deal with them over the years, so a lot of the time I feel utterly exhausted (to the point where I can barely get up out of bed and face the day). I also have panic attacks, IBS, nightmares, hypervigilance...the usual.

Anyway, time and time again during my sessions the OT told me I was telling my story through what I thought was his perspective: his intention was this, his aim was to do that...I hadn't noticed I was doing that. I mean, I know why I was doing it - I had to try and stay one step ahead of him all the time in order to try and deflect the worst. That's where most of my energy went. I had to try and understand what the merest twitch of a nostril would mean for me, what the slightest smirk meant, the tiniest change in his breathing. I had to, because my life depended on it. I mean that literally, as he told me time and time again that if I made him angry he would kill me. I'm now an absolute expert at dealing with people's anger, in the sense that nobody can stay angry with me, even if they get to the point where they're angry with me, because I had to learn to cope with his murderous rage.

The OT kept telling me that to try and be inside his head is not a nice place to be, and that I couldn't know how he thought because I was not him. I agreed with the first part, definitely. But I felt a bit hacked off at the second part. Trust me, I know him better than he knows himself, I can slip into his train of thought very easily. It's almost like there are two parallel versions of the story going on at the same time: mine and his. Orwell calls this capacity to hold two seemingly mutually exclusive trains of thought in one's head at the same time 'doublethink'. I did get what she was trying to say though. She was trying to get me to tap into me, in order to feel more secure in myself.

So there came a point in the sessions where I would notice that I was speaking from his perspective. Then I would go to say something and catch myself just as I was opening my mouth. Then I started to say 'I think that his aim was...', or 'I feel he was trying to...'. Then I started to tap into how I felt about it all.

And wow, the wave of rage was incredible. I remember coming out with 'how dare he do that to me. How dare he do that to another human being'. I was practically choking on the words (choking with rage...ha ha!). And she repeated what I said back to me. I was struck by how powerful it sounded.

Then we talked about my worries that if I tapped into my own anger, I would turn into him. She helped me understand that I've used my (for many years suppressed) anger in lots of very constructive ways. Some have been to help others (women in similar situations to myself), and some have been to try and heal myself (the creative stuff I do). So in that way, in reaching out and building bridges with other people and in creating things, I'm very different from him. Utterly different from him. He's all about destruction, I'm very clearly not.

Yes, I've struggled with an eating disorder for many years too (most of my life). A lot of the 'medical profession' has judged me for it...rap on the knuckles, bad girl. But it's really an expression of something, an expression of feelings, a way to try and control the situation and try and change my state of mind. So I see it differently from the way the 'medical establishment' sees it. And I'm damn well entitled to my opinion on it.

But when it came down to it, when the chips were down, I chose life. I chose life because, like yourself, I chose to remove myself from it all and escape. I tricked him, and I escaped. I promised him I would be back, at the same time knowing full well that I had no intention in hell of returning (this promise came after 10 days of being starved of all food and practically everything to drink except alcohol, and repeatedly assaulted by him in various ways. It wasn't a conscious thought process or conscious decision, because I was not in a place to be stringing any train of thought together at that point. It was totally instinctive). I knew the last time I looked at him that it was going to be the last time I ever saw him.

I didn't mean to write so much about myself, I'm sorry. I hope my story helps you in some way, perhaps by bringing you comfort or lessening the feeling of isolation. Something positive in any way, I hope.

I wanted to recommend a book to you. It's by Judith Herman, and it's called 'Trauma and Recovery'. It's been one of the best books I've read about all of this, very well researched by really powerfully written too...visceral.

Writing about yourself is a good thing, it helps others to hear your voice;)

On this link you can see "inside" the book you reference.

Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman

Di

Thank you Di. Your comments are always very validating. I really appreciate that

Dear Dianne,
Thank you for your mail and comments. I think one of the worst things has been an eternal sense of isolation, despite being able to talk clearly with my mother and offer each other a lot of support. This is why it is a painful but good thing for me to be able to write about it all here and to discuss it with other people.

I agree with your comment about my brother, and I have always left the door open for him, and try not to bring up the subject when we are together, which is rarely. You can't and shouldn't try to control how anyone thinks or feels, though it is very frustrating at times not to be able to communicate with him.

Interesting what you said about everything I tell him going straight back to my step father, because exactly this happened a while ago. My brother complains of complicity and secretiveness between my mother and I, he perhaps has a point, and he argues for openness and lack of secrets. Everyone should speak up. Yet when we do: he asked me to explain to him why I am angry with his father and how I feel about the situation - my step father has always used him as a messenger boy and a pawn, to pit us all against each other. This was during the legal negotiations over the house. So I mailed him a long, sincere mail detailing my opinion and feelings. Two interesting things happened: that first I was shouted down and bullied by both of them, as no conflicting opinion is ever valid, no-one else's feelings hold any weight. Then my father started with abusive emails, sending me a mail where my original mail to my brother (in which I had specifically asked him not to show my step father) was copied into him. The betrayal of trust didn't surprise me, yet it was hurtful that my brother could not even see he had done an unethical thing. Then he complains of lack of openness. Also my step father shortly sent me a laughable email, a scanned document in it in which there was a communication between him and his French notaire, underneath which, poorly obscured, was a clause instructing the notaire to remove me from the will so it all goes to my brother, who is, presumably 'a good boy'. These childish, spiteful games wear me out, after so many years.

Yes, although I had some help from the therapist I think I could have had a better one. Maybe that has also kept me from trying again to unravel some of this psychological mess. Plus there were repercussions and consequences: had I know what I do now I would not have encouraged contact with him again. At least I have always had control: it has been, since I was a young woman, me and not him who has dictated whether we have contact. In the end it has been me who has rejected him, not the other way round.

It's funny you should say that about my uncle, the 'cavalry!' I also feel that I can absolutely put my trust in this person, who has my best interests at heart, and who fully understands the years of abuse I have had to live with. he is behind me all the way. He has shown compassion, gentleness and protection toward me, which have been at the same time wonderful and painful, as I never had them from a paternal figure. I find it quite intense emotionally to spend time with him, and it is amazing how much we have in common. He has a keen interest in classical horsemanship, and rides and has a farm, and I see him as a kind of knight coming to the rescue! He is the total opposite of my step father, and what he aspired a little to be: an upstanding gentleman, well-connected, powerful, loved.

Thank you again for the discussions and the support. This is a painful issue and it is a great help to find a group of people who can help. It seems to be something people didn't talk about, but now there is more awareness, thankfully. I never thought anyone else could have had the same crazy mind games and endless emotional trauma, I don't know why it didn't occur to me.

I must say I know very little about PTSD, apart from it usually being associated with combat trauma. Some vague knowledge. It wouldn't have occurred to me that I may be suffering from it. I suppose anything's possible!
Thanks again for your help.

Hi Starry,
Thank you for your message, and for sharing some of your experiences as well. I was interested in what you had to say about the emotional second-guessing that was part of the territory. Yes, we become experts at guessing others' emotions, and total strangers to our own. If you ask me 'how do you feel?' I can't answer. I have to stop and think because I don't know how I feel about anything. I know how I think, but feel...? I had less of a threat than you did, by the sounds of it. How awful for you to have to go through his abuse. Were you young when you finally left? That is the only option here, to walk away.

In my family the only person's emotions who mattered were those of my stepfather. He was like a predator. I agree, you have to hide yourself so far away inside, in a place so impossible to access, in order to protect yourself from invasion. Then later in life you are unable to open that part of you. It's gone. So who are you, in fact? You don't even know yourself. You find yourself wasting a lot of time and energy 'interviewing' people, sussing them out in case they are not trustworthy. Then you share little, and then wonder why you always seem isolated, emotionally cut off.

Let me give you an example of my step father's subtle, systematic eroding of my confidence. He could only really laugh with mirth at other people's expense, and had a vicious wit. he was funny, but as long as you didn't mind being the butt of his jokes. There was a family party when I was very small, lots of people in the garden, drinking, us kids in the pool. I was changing from my wet swimsuit into a dress: my mum had gone to get me some dry knickers. My step dad knew I had no pants on, so he asked me to go and pick something up the other side of the lawn. I didn't want to do it, but his form of control was stronger: I did it because I wanted to play along, be a good girl, and gain his approval. He took a photo of my bare bottom when I bent down, and yes, it was funny, it must have been cute, the blond girl with her bum in the air. But I also felt humiliated because of all his friends laughing. This was always his idea of a joke, and if you protested, you were 'over-sensitive'.

I agree that you cannot try and second-guess these monstrous people, even though you are pretty good at it, quite simply because you cannot reason with the mad. His ex partner said that to me one day, when we were in the middle of -do you think he meant that, is he going to do this or that? I know he probably means... He said - Look, don't even bother. There is no point trying to guess his mind or make the first move, who cares? You can't allow yourself to care. He's mad, and you can't reason with the mad.' I agree with him. You try to figure it out and you'll go mad yourself.

You say you struggle to be as different from him as possible. I do the same. I can't even bear to live in the same country as him. I like living in Spain, but cannot separate my loathing of him with what England sums up. I'd say that's pretty traumatised! I shy away from English men just in case they are like him. I can't listen to opera, even though it's beautiful because it reminds me of him, and being mocked for my cultural lack of knowledge or taste. I know what you mean about suppressed anger, mine scares the crap out of me. I wouldn't know where to start letting it out, and more worryingly, where to stop. A close friend of mine said the effect my stepfather has on him (a gentle, kind, intuitive soul) is that he wants to stab him. He brings out the same visceral hatred sometimes in me. I would like him to die, to just go away and leave us all alone. I don't wish him any ill, I just want him as far away as possible from me.

But shaking off a family member like this isn't that easy, because they are so deeply ingrained in your sense of self that you end up being very confused. I think we can project a brittle outer shell to everyone, the appearance of a calm and stable personality, but then, on closer inspection we become needy children. The thought of dismantling the armour makes us feel queasy- what if we left ourselves unprotected for a second, what might have a chance to creep in and meddle with us? Hm, now you come to mention it I can see perhaps a level of paranoia and defence that might have something to do with PTSD. I think unwittingly we live with symptoms of terrible stress for many years, without attributing them to the tremendous trauma we have been through. I become easily laid low by migraines, osteo-arthritis, tiredness, but talking about these issues seems to give me more energy. I feel physically sick when remembering him and talking about him, but much better afterwards, like having poison slowly lanced.

I'll try and get hold of that book, thanks.

It's really helped me a lot reading what you've posted, especially what you say in regards to yourself.



I think you've absolutely hit the nail on the head here. What these people do is a kind of severing at every level. these people are masters of this, from the largest severing to the very smallest.

They start with severing one's thinking/feeling axis. My theory is that we feel good and in harmony with ourselves when what we think tallies with how we feel about someone/something. And there is disharmony when how we think is in contrast with how we feel. So these people exploit that, to the max. One example from my own life:my head said 'don't be silly, he's my dad' while my gut feeling told me not to trust him and to get away, as far and as fast, as I could.

On a much smaller scale, the capacity to think, to string a train of thought together (and possibly take action as a result) requires your brain to make connections. So they set out to sever all of those as well. There are times when I felt absolutely frozen to the spot in sheer terror. There was nothing going through my head at all, no thoughts, no action, just frozen, rooted to the spot and the feeling of utter terror. It's one of the things I have flashbacks too.

If a person is the connections they make, their memories, their thought process, their voice, their ability to express themselves, then these people commit a kind of murder as the sum of what they do destroys all of this. It's not necessarily a physical murder (although that sometimes happens), but a murder of the soul.

I remember the moment when I realized all of this, I remember it very clearly. I realized what I needed to do to come back from this place. If his mission was all to do with severing, then my work was going to be about reconnecting. That reconnection could be any kind of reconnection. I'm particularly proud of being able to have a train of thought, and to carry that train of thought through from the first flash to a kind of 'completion', where I can resolve the issues in my mind and present a coherent and well thought through argument to the world. I know it sounds really daft and pathetic, but I see it as the opposite of that moment of frozen terror, where I was completely unable to think anything at all.

The reconnecting with the feelings has been much, much more difficult, and much more frightening. If you ask me how I feel about him it would vary, from an 'I could spit on him' kind of anger to a murderous rage. I remember doing a kind of 'body feeling meditation' with a therapist, and once I relaxed and tuned in, the first feeling I had was a kind of electric shock going up my spine and my arm did a huge big circling, stabbing motion.

But anger is a feeling, it is energy...it is a reconnection even! So that's a plus, a step forwards. And there have been times when it's felt really, really exhilarating too. The question for me now is what do I do with that huge amount of energy?




Thank you for that. I understand what's been happening and how I feel a lot more now.


I'll post some more later. Feeling knackered now.

Hi starry,
Thanks again for the posting. It looks like this is something you have studied and thought about a lot, in an attempt to tackle it. It also helps me to read about how you feel with regards to self-image, as I am beginning to realise just how damaged mine is, as I delve into this more and more and come to undertsand my 'enemy' and what has happened to me. I forgot to comment on something you said in a previos post about going through therapy and having it pointed out that you refer to yourself with his opinions and viewpoint. I do exactly the same, and am trying very hard to work out who I rally am, not who he told me I am. If I were to believe him it would go something like this - ugly, intellectually inferior, naive, awkward, neurotic, over-emotional, sexually promiscuous, available, a doormat, helpless fag-hag, irresponsable, selfish, out of the loop, badly-dressed, sexually repulsive (just for being a woman), and never, ever good enough on any scale/criteria he chose! However, if I look at how normal people react to me, it is to someone who is wise, good fun, clued up, confident, kind, attractive, interesting, academically gifted, artistic, expressive.... etc etc. And even as I write this, how intersting that I talk about what he said about me, then what other people probably think about me, not about me and my opinion.

I thought your remarks about severing and connections were very interesting as well. Yes, in a sense it was like being brought up as a human Bonsai - no room to grow, branch out, blossom into yourself- in fact quite the reverse, any little sign of individuality, defiance, originality, in fact the slightest twitch of a ´feeling´about anything and ´snip´! off that comes straight away. So we are left stultified, frozen, as you say, our development arrested. I think every time you make a connection you are triumphing, following an argument through and so on- good for you. The little triumphs are important as well as the big ones.

I was not subjected to physical abuse or death-threats, that must be unimaginably frightening, but I do understand the ´frozen´feeling you talk about. He was intellectually faster than me, at say, 10 years old (wow, Brain of Britain!) and from a very early age put me down intellectually. I can safely say as an adult I am far smarter than he is, though he has an animal-like cunning. But that´s insulting to animals. Anyway, he would cut me up, be contrary, lampoon me in public, arguu out any sign of dissent, so often when asked my opinion, or given the chance to disagree, I would end up ´frozen´, not knowing what to say back, in case he caught me out/criticised me/pre-empted me/laughed at me/became angry and all the other pathetic, tiresome eventualities.

The result is a kind of emotional numbness which can be crippling. A tendency to self-efface in a way that suggests you are not even there, you matter so little, your feelings and opinions matter so little that everybody in the entire world must come first, before you dare to ask for something or dare to reject something you don´t like. After all, a lot of effort went into persuading you that you must rub out yourself bit by bit if you were to survive. That you must put up with a daily dose of things you don´t like and didn´t ask for, and have no voice or power to reject. Defiance is a wonderful thing, and as you say, anger is an energy in itself. I know excatly where you are coming from with the repressed rage, in fact it has made me smile thinking about your therapy and the arm circling and stabbing as if by itself!... My mother and I have laughed ourselves sick by discussing the many ways we can actually go and dance on his grave, while singing ´ding dong, the witsh is dead....´´ like the witches he always said we are, on the night of his funeral. Just because the idea is so shocking, we find it ridiculously funny. Like I said in another post, one of my closest friends who is very intuitive and good at reading people, also a gay man, said on the few occasions he´s met my step father, he´s experienced a sudden surge of anger and desire to stab him in the stomach. Very specific. And that´s only knowing about what he did to me, not experiencing it. I waver between compassion - what must it be like to be such a freak, such a sad, isolated, mean, unloved and unlovable monster? And white-hot hatred. I have seen myslef in my mind's eye repeatedly punching him in the face, pushing him off cliffs, whacking him round the head with a frying pan.... the list is endless. I do not agree with the sentimental idea that ´family is sacred´when you have a monster in your family, and I think it´s healthy to say Í hope he dies soon´' because that´s honest, and would really be best for everyone, all round. Even him, probably.

I am so, so glad that you have found a few things in what I have said that have helped you. I have very little to offer but my own confusion and conclusions I have come to about how to deal with psychopaths, but if that helps anyone, even a little, then that´s really something. It is also extremely helpful to communicate with equally complex people who are also striving to heal themselves.

Got to go back to work now....
x

Thank you.

I was very lucky to meet someone who had worked for many years as a psychotherapist in a secure unit (our equivalent of Broadmoor) a few years ago. I talked to her about it a couple of times. She believed me, totally got what he was about and set me on the path, thinking and reading up about it.

It was only a couple of years ago that I realized I had some chronic medical conditions that were almost definitely related what I experienced with my dad. It's easy for me to ignore my body, and detach from it, so a lot of the time it doesn't even register what's going on with it. But yes, I would say that the chronic stuff is there because of it all.

I wrote a long answer about complex PTSD, but my computer crashed...dang! I'll write it all again at some point. Probably in a couple of weeks, as we have rellies coming to stay.

I also do the 'interviewing people' thing. Although I hadn't realized I was doing it. So thank you for bringing that to my attention. You have a great deal to offer, so I would disgree there