When did our world become all about them?

[KIP.]

When did we lose ourself?

[confusedallofthetime]

I ask myself this daily. I thought I was strong, independent, intelligent, brave – all good things. Now? I’m lost.

[HopeLifeJoy]

We lost ourselves when we lost our sense of safety.
It’s funny you talk about this today because I was wondering this morning what is safety, how come I felt safe with him when he was a danger to me? How come I still don’t b****y feel safe now?
And you know what? Because we never suspected monsters like these existed amongst us! So now we are hyper vigilant, guarding ourselves and can’t bring ourselves to live fully anymore. F that. I want to live fully again and I’ve send out a prayer this morning to be surrounded with only healthy people for the rest of my life. Living, working around me, only healthy ppl pls. I don’t have time for the un respectful dramatic abusive types. I wish to be surrounded by healthy genuine kind people so I know I can be myself and feel safe and enjoy life to the fullest. I want to live again.
How about you? What do you think happened?

[KIP.]

I think your right. I read about recovery from trauma and recovery can only really start when we feel safe. Makes sense that when we felt unsafe we lost ourselves.

[KIP.]

Trauma bonding. That’s what makes us feel safe around an abuser. Like a kidnapped person we try to beyond with our abuser as it’s the safest thing to do. They push us off a cliff then rush down and make a big fuss about rescuing us. And we are so grateful! Mind blowing brain washing.

[Headspinning]

A word I came up with is “chaos”.
When I reflect – my home life was chaotic. I didn’t know from one day to the next when a minor issue would escalate or if we would be happily watching a box set.
I didn’t know if we would go out for a family dinner and have a nice time or if something I said or did (that xtra glass of wine/that wee joke I made) would cause him to be angry when we got home.
Finances were chaos too. Didn’t know what was getting paid in or coming out (he didn’t spend extravagantly but just didn’t make the effort I would want to earn a bit more (self employed)
When you are living in chaos you can only live for the moment in a constant state of confusion of what just happened and why.
We are currently separated with him living out the house and the peace and quiet is bliss. You only realise the extent of the drama and chaos when you get out of the environment.
And they all have their nice sides between all the chaos which keeps you hooked in. The different sides create confusion, doubt. They tell us it’s us causing the problems. So your head is in constant chaos trying to figure it out!
Eventually there is just no more time for us to think about ourselves!!

[KIP.]

That chaos you describe could be described as trauma. The constant assaults on the thought process is Devastating.

“When you are living in chaos you can only live for the moment in a constant state of confusion” – that’s trauma x

[HunkyDory]

Headspinning, I identify with so much that you said, I felt exactly the same, even in a “nice” period, I was so busy running round after and for him, working full time, taking most of the housework on, buying rubbish for him to keep the nice period going, etc. never a finger lifted to do anything decent for me.

Thinking back though I think it can be seen as trauma KIP. I was doing everything to keep the peace and nothing to make me happy. I started EMDR after being pretty much diagnosed with PTSD, and just about got to the actual therapy part. But I decided today I’m going to stop it. One, because I feel a lot better and think someone will need it / get more benefit than I feel I’m getting and 2 the girl doing it is generally always late for genuine reasons and has to shorten the session, or off sick and has to rearrange. I’m just getting irritated with the process.

Back to your question, maybe we lose ourselves when we stop thinking about ourselves and our needs and wants and for me that was pretty much the day I met him. Xx

[Overcome]

Even now, he is still dominating my thoughts. I know what he is and what he has done, but I am still trying to untangle all of the mess inside of me. I really should be thinking of myself, my children, my future.

Does it ever stop?

[KIP.]

For me it stops with zero contact. Time and zero contact is how to recover quicker. Using a third party regarding children. Any contact is toxic and damaging. It does get easier. Takes time to change your own thought and behaviour patterns but it’s very doable x

[iliketea]

I’m bumping this in the hope it helps someone. It is a key question, and something we all need to ask ourselves. Getting out, moving on, needs to be about turning the spotlight back onto us, because they are so good at turning it onto the them. So, lets make today the day we make our world all about us. Thank you @KIP for your wise words and observations from your experiences. x

[KIP.]

💕

[Anonymous]

It all makes sense really when you think of it as your life together wasn’t about it being two people but only being one – him. We mistake the whole union thing or marriage as being two halves that make a whole and it should never be about that. Two wholes make a union, not two halves. So the minute we sign into this whole thing of giving over our wants and needs and replace them with their wants and needs, we lose our personhood. We just become an appendage to them. Getting that back is hard but it can be done. Unplugging from all that yuch is like having a poisonous foreign object pulled out of us. We will be sick from it for awhile, we have to heal. Learn how to live differently now.

And we got our personhood from serving someone else. If we didn’t do it right enough then we just aren’t up to par here. Smack with the ruler across our knuckles. The conditioning and brainwashing is just profuse and it’s so very devastating to us as a person. I remember just getting really sassy when I finally got fed up with it and would say NO about whatever and of course I’d get the nasty response for that one. Then the – well why not? I got to where I’d say because I don’t want to, don’t feel like it, I don’t owe you a written report about it. I don’t care what you think about it. Sod off! Who we bow to is a great indicator of what we think our own self worth is. If they treat us badly then we are agreeing with them that we need to be treated badly.

I don’t owe anyone an explanation or big report in detail about why I feel this way or that way. It’s my business, none of theirs. My existence isn’t about them. They don’t like such demands themselves. We have a right to be here, to be whoever we are, warts and all no one has the right to destroy our personhood. It is absolutely up to us to be about our healing and patient with ourselves. The traumatic poison took time to infect us and it takes time to heal from it.

[Author]

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