narcissisticabusesurvivor

I did it. I went on my trip. It didn't all work out as I had envisioned, but it went quite smoothly and I think it was a good risk. I struggled a lot with the food choices, so mealtimes always brought some anxiety, but it was nice to be in a bubble for a few days, often without phone or internet signals. I was able to have conversations with other travelers, and since they were fairly brief I didn't feel too uncomfortable or pushed to share anything too personal.

This was my first time traveling in 3 years, since I had to leave my masters program in Finland due to rapidly declining mental health. I am definitely in a better place than I was then, and since Covid made everyone's worlds become much smaller I wasn't the only one with little to show for the past few years.

The vacation did bring up a few things:
1) I have to get out of this city/region. Living here just makes my anxiety worse because of fear that I might unexpectedly run into my ex one day.

2) I don't like my job. I haven't let myself even think in such a definitive way about my job before this trip, but now I am sure. I need to find a new job.

3) I have a habit of "mirroring" people. If someone struck up a conversation with me on the trip, I caught myself watching them for cues about what to talk about, what emotions to express, and when to leave the conversation. It was very hard for me to end the conversation on my own, even if I had to go to the bathroom or needed to move on to the next event. I've been talking about boundaries with my therapist lately and I think this is connected.

4) Although this trip was a big change in my routine and represented a big step forward, I am still not ready to fully re-engage in life. I need a safe bubble of people, routines, and work. I'm not sure how to create that with simultaneously needing to move and change my job, but I know I need to.

I got back home yesterday and fell into bed. It's been nearly 24 hours and I have mostly been just lying in bed or sleeping. I have the impulse to do things like deep clean my apartment, but I just keep lying there. I was able to get some long overdue things done before the trip because of the deadline, but now it feels like I am just going to slide back into the muck and mire of life here.

In the end, I'm glad I took the trip and had some time off work. I'm glad it didn't result in any panic attacks. I'm glad I was able to interact with strangers in a way that felt safe. I'm glad that I didn't just stay home in my apartment for a week.

#MentalHealth #Depression #Anxiety #narcissisticabusesurvivor #Winter #Vacation #goals

The image says: "My past is an armor I cannot take off, no matter how many times you tell me the war is over." -- Jessica Katoff

My therapist offhandedly said something about avoidant attachment style a few weeks ago and it totally changed how I think of myself and made me realize how I am really experiencing the world.
I was always the good kid who did the right thing and helped others. I wasn't wildly popular, but just a solid *nice* person. Up until very recently, I would have told you I was a "people pleaser", and really needed the approval and love of others.
It turns out I have some serious anger raging inside of me that I never knew was there - and it is anger toward all those people I was nice to, all those people I helped, all those people I smiled at and befriended. All the people I listened to. All the people I never said "no" to. All the people who never *saw* me.
My last boyfriend told me all the time how he had never felt so well understood by anyone in his entire life until he met me. How could I tell him that I didn't feel at all the same about him?
I don't know how to stop this angry part of me from putting up a barrier to protect myself after decades of no one even bothering to notice that I might have reason to be angry and that I was in fact angry. I don't know how to switch my thinking from "boundaries" to "giant flaming wall" because I'm angry that I spent all my time and energy understanding other people so well and they never did the same for me.
I don't even know if this post makes sense, but it is such a wild mind shift for me that I am struggling to know how to think or process things these days. Thanks for reading and for being there.

#Isolation #avoidantattachment #boundaries #Relationships #Therapy #MentalHealth #Depression #Anxiety #spiritualabuse #EmotionalAbuse #narcissisticabusesurvivor #Family #angry

I started to write another post then realized I was hiding. If I start to hide on The Mighty, I’m in trouble. This has been the one place I can take off my mask. I have C-PTSD. Mom was a narcissist. She had other issues too (alcoholism, bipolar, etc.), and there was some sexual abuse from brothers, but the biggest damages were brought on by the narcissism. It took me a long time to accept or even agree that there was trauma left by the narcissism. But I find I feel like apologizing. Or backing up and not saying anything about the trauma. Or the damage. Because what really happened? Some words were said? My feelings were hurt? I was ignored? That’s what I think other people are thinking. Boohoo. But. I really do struggle. I have horrific flashbacks. They can debilitate me for days. It isn’t the purpose of this post to define narcissistic abuse. And yet I feel I need to. It feels like not explaining it, the reader is left to their own definition. And what if the reader doesn’t know anything about narcissism? They can’t know the depth of the injury brought about by this kind of abuse. I want to apologize for claiming to have a mental illness because of how I was talked to, how I was ignored, how I was shamed. It keeps coming back to the same thing. The thing I told my therapist three years ago when I first started working with him. “It wasn’t that bad.” And there’s the harm. There’s the injury. I was taught, it was drilled into my head, nothing that happened in my abusive childhood home was that bad. It just wasn’t a big deal. And that lie has done more damage maybe than anything. “It wasn’t a big deal.” Yes, it was a big deal. It was a very big deal.

#theselfcaremaven #Youtube #cptsdrecovery #thrivingsurvivor #MajorDepressiveDisorder #BreastCancer #narcissisticabusesurvivor #CBT #DBT #emdr #ChronicIlless