Dear Katrine,

glad you’ve started talking on the phone with your boyfriend, and that you’re making plans for Portugal. Also good to hear his father is doing better – all great news!

It’s kinda always been like that (kinda like that other guy)

I didn’t know X behaved strangely in the past too. She did seem supportive when you had a crush on the previous guy, but I didn’t know her mood fluctuates and she can sometimes be avoidant too. I guess it has nothing to do with you, but with her own issues.

Have I understood it well that she was raped and got pregnant and had to do an abortion? That’s a horrible trauma! No wonder she is reluctant to talk about her love life. Maybe, just maybe, she is a little jealous of you now that you have a boyfriend and seem to be in a healthy relationship? Because so far you were struggling with relationships, but now this has changed, and she compares herself to you, and in hurts? I don’t know, this is just a thought… In any case, please know that it’s none of your fault if she behaves strangely around you.

Said he wanted to catch up before our girls trip to Venice on Friday.

Are you going with X and Y to Venice?

They made me café supervisor when our manager got fired, so I’m in charge of the café where I love working.

Congratulations! That’s fantastic!

I’m the only thay have positivly highlighted at every staff meeting saying I’m setting the standards, and now I’m café supervisor. People say I deserve it, they all say that the café is my domaine and noone does the same amount of work that I do.

Wow, that’s amazing that people recognize your hard work and that everyone supports you. You being the cafe supervisor is well deserved then! And you love working there too, so it’s a perfect match.

So many changes at the moment have had me overwhelmed and I only have two shifts this week not three so trying to calm myself down and not read anything into it.

I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I don’t think your position is in danger, if that’s what you’re afraid of?

She will probably get a lot of complaints because she isn’t ready for this position and it pays more so she has to step up big time.

As the f&b manager, will she be your supervisor as well? The best would be if she steps up and start taking her job seriously… But if not, I hope she won’t last long in that position…

Dear faber castell,

you are very welcome!

true things have happened and keep happening. It’s NOT in the past. These people keep being my one and only karma and now I’m without my mom, they one person who I truly loved from that family… so wow.

Yes, real abuse – emotional abuse – has happened to you, and it is still happening at the hands of these cruel, narcissistic people, who are unfortunately your family. You are now in the middle of a legal battle (have you sued them?), and are depending on their good-will to give you what belongs to you, but was taken away from you and your mother. And their good-will is zero, it is non-existent, as they have proven many years ago, since the moment you moved in with them.

I hope you won’t mind me saying this, but your story reminds me of the story of Cinderella, only you didn’t suffer at the hands of the evil step-mother and step sisters, but rather, at the hands of evil uncles (and possible their wives and children)? I mean, the way they treated you is abhorrent:

When my father died, since they didn’t like him, they decided never to mention him, or the situation. The day my dad passed, no one spoke to me. No one gave me a hug. Nothing. I was already living in that house and they wouldn’t speak to me, I was 14 years old… They even later told my mom they couldn’t avoid being mean to me because I looked too much like my dad. They wouldn’t allow me to use the computer, or answer the phone, they’d come in angry bursts to “punish” me for things I never did…

It was abuse through and through. They didn’t even try to stop themselves from being mean, because in their mind, you deserved it since you resembled your father so much. I am sorry this happened you to, it was so unfair to be exposed to their wickedness. I am glad you did have some strength to resist though, e.g. that you stopped coming for lunch, even if they called you rebellious and disrespectful:

all a horrible systematic dynamic that lasted for the first years until I totally isolated and stopped having lunch with them, etc (which was also a reason to call me a rebel, a disrespectful teen, etc.)

But I am sorry your mother didn’t protect you better. I am sorry that she chose to tolerate their abuse, even after they told her openly that they are mean to you because you remind them of your father! I understand she was in a financially vulnerable situation, but still, that was a big price to pay to stay in that house, and let them abuse you… so she can finance your school and later college. BTW I don’t quite understand: you say she had to pay for your school. Does it mean you went to a private school?

I totally understand why you resented her for staying there, or for at least not standing up for you and protecting you:

But I did resent her a lot for not being more firm with them. For not seeing them for who they actually were, even after proving it once, twice and a million times.

It seems she had low self-esteem and actually believed those accusations by her family:

it was absurd the amount of abuse that she also received from them, making her feel like a failure, like she married someone who was beneath them and his death sort of proved it, she could only feel shame and at least feel grateful that they would take us in.

Instead of standing up to them, she believed them and felt bad about herself. And she let them abuse you, and even take her inheritance…

It’s good you are a different type than her – that you didn’t believe those lies and accusations that her family was saying about you, and that you chose to protect yourself the best you could from their abuse:

BUT, there is something in me thats quite different and I value it a lot, and it’s the fact that I might have mistakes, I might be vulnerable in some ways, but I DON’T fall for certain things and it pisses me off that they did that to her. They would have never been able to do that to me,

Good! It’s good you’re stronger and you don’t believe their lies. It’s good that you don’t believe you deserve to be humiliated and abused like that. Unfortunately, you were a child back then and couldn’t really impact her decisions, so the only thing you can do regarding the inheritance is try to reverse your mother’s decision, if possible. If not, you’ll need to let it go.

However, I think it’s much more important for you to heal the emotional wounds inflicted upon you, and in that way receive your “satisfaction”. Even if you don’t receive it in the material form.

In the end, i don’t know who I am anymore, I clearly am a very traumatized person, honestly people sometimes don’t even see it and see me quite functioning, but THE moment I start talking and sharing about this even my closest friends gaslight me. like, yeah but you shouldn’t live in the past, you cannot hold so many grudges, you have to forgive, etc.

You don’t need to forgive. What you need is to stop allowing that their wickedness – past and present – affect you. You need to stop letting them have emotional control over your life.

If you want them to apologize, forget it – they’ll never do it. If you want them to admit they did any wrong – forget it, they are incapable of that. If you want anything from them (emotionally), you’ll be stuck, because you’ll let them emotionally control you.

So you need to let go expecting anything from them (other than possibly your part of the inheritance, but that’s a different topic). Only then can you be free. But first, before you can stop expecting anything, you need to express you anger, not to their faces but to a good therapist, or even just to yourself.

Recently I saw a video where the coach said: don’t look for others (like friends and family) to validate your anger. Don’t wait for them to tell you you have the right to feel angry. Validate your own anger. Know that you have the right to feel angry. And then write it down, write it on a piece of paper – write down everything you are angry about. Don’t show it to the perpetrators. Don’t show it to anybody. It’s for your eyes only. But validate your own anger. It will cause a shift in you, I believe. Because you won’t need your friends to validate it for you, and it will remove the burden from them too.

I also want to say that what your father did when he apologized to you is amazing! It’s really rare and so precious. I can imagine it gave you a lot of healing, because you understood that he actually means well, that he understands you and loves you. He saw your need and responded to it. And then he tried not to hurt you like that any more. That’s really precious and I am happy you had such a healing experience with your father!

* sorry, the title of the video is: Complex PTSD explained.

Dear faber castell,

I’ve just read some parts of your story, and it seems you’ve been gaslighted a lot as a child (and later), and told that you shouldn’t be angry when in fact your anger was justified because your needs haven’t been met. You also said you’ve realized that some members of your family are narcissistic:

I now realize that the pattern of emotional abuse in my family is very complicated and sneaky. Now, after many years, I’ve realized they’re pathological narcissists, which is the reason why I don’t count on them for any of this. The way they treated me when my mother passed just did it for me and I could finally connect the dots and free myself.

You earlier said that your mother left your emotionally distant father at a certain point, but she took you to an even worse place:

I was never too conscious of the amount of anger I felt towards my mom mostly complaining about this but never quite leaving, and when leaving, taking me to the most violent of places, although, she always gave me the love that others didn’t. IT WAS confusing. I was angry, a lot, and my family, much to their own fitting just reproduced the idea in others that I was a difficult teenager.

Did she take you to her own family, which was “the most violent of places”? Are those the people who are pathological narcissists, who treated you poorly after you mother died, and with whom you are now in a legal dispute (I now have some legal issues with my family cause she did try to leave it all clear for me but my family has legal rights over her stuff)? Are those the same people?

It seems that later, you were involved with some narcissistic people, e.g. that yogini boyfriend of yours, who used you for sex although he knew he wanted to break up with you.

You also had a negative experience with therapists, whom you said denied your reality and retraumatized you:

I totally need therapy but I’m tired of others judging me for whatever blame they always find in my story.

many therapists have also told me, or told me back then, things like “don’t victimize yourself”, etc., which only made things worse,  whenever I felt the true need to value myself and speak up, which at the same time requiered for me to recognize unfair treatment, I got really discouraged.

It seems you did experience a lot of gaslighting, not only from your family and romantic partners, but even from your therapists. Unfortunately, there are therapists like that, e.g. in a couple’s therapy they often end up being charmed away by the narcissist and start blaming the victim. A famous expert on narcissism, Dr. Ramani, talks about it in her youtube video: Gaslighted by your therapist. I highly recommend it.

As Dr. Ramani suggests, you’d need a therapist who understands narcissism deeply and can see through narcissistic tricks. There are such people out there, so don’t get discouraged.

I think it would be very important that you can finally tell your story to someone – the story of how you were abused and how it was denied and you were blamed for it instead. Your truth needs to be seen and heard – it needs to be validated – so you can start healing and trusting yourself again.

If you’d like to share some more about the abuse that happened in your family, you are very welcome.

Dear Wren,

I am really sorry about your declining health and your poor living conditions!

I am still locked away in a basement, nothing of my own. I shower in a sink. My kids are very taken care of and happy

Does it mean you live alone in the basement, in poor conditions, while your children live separately (maybe in the same house, but upstairs?) and have good living conditions? Where is your husband in the whole story?

I would like to understand more, if you’d like to share…

I do hope your health gets better and you can return to art and also free yourself from the current living arrangements…

Dear Katrine,

That’s some very good advice! The younger wounded parts of batteling with my adult self kinda.

Glad you like the idea! Yes, it is your younger self reacting out of reflex to protect herself from harm…. that strategy was necessary in the past, but now it’s not any more. Now you can protect yourself and stand up for yourself more and more. And you can also protect and soothe that little girl inside of you.

I’m trying not to take it too personally that he’s not a person who texts all the time, even my best friend is like that. It can easily take several weeks or even a month for her to reply, she’s trying to work on that.

I hope he texts more frequently than your best friend! Can you agree to have a daily check-in?

Yes, I did and still do in terms of X. I sometimes get the feeling she’s mad at me. Like when we are alone she seems fine but when other people are there she’s kinda giving me the cold shoulder. Like yesterday one of the boys wrote me asking me to go to a park, X, Y and another boy from work was going as well and I thought they knew but when I showed up X didn’t seem positive at all that I was there and whenever I talk she’s not responding to me and even looking at me. This has happened several times before, and I don’t know why

That’s weird if she is ignoring you and not responding to you. Maybe she is distracted by the group, I mean maybe someone else in the group is talking and she is paying attention to them, because they are louder or something? Or maybe she is even interested in one of those boys, and that’s why her whole attention is on him? Otherwise, I can’t think of a reason why she would suddenly be cold with you…

Am so I managed to have fun after all.

Good! Glad you’re not that affected by her strange behavior… And that people enjoy your company and like to hang out with you, such as the Canadian girl.

Sorry to hear about Y. She definitely doesn’t sound like a good candidate for the job. Because she’s not responsible, she doesn’t do the job well, people need to cover for her… Even if she is good at telling people what to do, it still doesn’t make her a good manager, because who guarantees that she’ll do her job properly? I hope she doesn’t get selected…

For me it is a bit hard to be told what to do at work by someone, who’s never actually done the work themselves. So I am worried about all the changes happening.

Have you thought about applying for that job yourself? Or you couldn’t see yourself in a managerial position?

Hi John,

She is getting on with life and living life to the full and seems to be in a happy place.

But does she have a partner or she is single?

I must not cause more distress with promises I can’t deliver.

I agree, it wouldn’t be fair to meet her and try to restart the romance, when you know how it will end…

When I am calm and rational and we are in a good place, the promises seem to be the easiest thing to deliver but the calm rational thinking gets completely destroyed by my irrational, subconscious, side which I can’t control.

Yes, and because you know of this mechanism, I think you should have as much integrity as to not want to initiate it again. Even if you believe your subconscious is stronger than you and prevents you from leaving your wife, that’s one thing. That’s your life. But if you drag her into it, that’s already two lives affected.

I know that it’s her who is ultimately responsible for herself and her actions, however, it would be easier if you wouldn’t tempt her. And you could probably stop yourself from doing it, in spite of the “siren call” of your subconscious mind.

Hi SereneWolf,

Well yeah you’re right and that’s why these days I do try to socialize more. (As an experiment) That’s why I noticed that and I told you… I’m just too much comfortable with my own company but I do need to get out of my comfort zone without draining my energy. And I’m an ambivert.

Definitely it’s a good experiment to try to socialize more and see how you feel about people… if you still feel they’re very different and you feel like an alien? I had to look up what an ambivert means…it seems like a balanced type, best of both worlds.

Like for me I’m not much emotionally expressive. Or like I just don’t get surprised with lot of human behaviour or things. I find it really normal. But her she like really emotionally expressive like a high school girl who feels too much you know

Are you saying that she gets upset by something (some human behavior), and this same behavior doesn’t affect you that much? Or she gets super excited about something, and you’re like “meh, nothing special”?

Yes! And before there was time where I used to just blindly believe everything my inner critical voice told me because I didn’t know the difference between my own self and inner critical voice.

Great that you now know the difference and don’t believe everything your inner critic is telling you!

And Yes I’ve watched the video and I told you that I’m mostly between good connection to no connection back and forth

And there was also a bad connection, I’d say, during your LDR. Because that relationship was mostly frustrating for you, right?

Hmm I see so you mean there should be a good balance right?

Yes, for example we should love ourselves and feel lovable, without needing to get love from someone else. Or we shouldn’t feel helpless like a child and wait for someone else to fix our problems. I think those are examples of emotional self-sufficiency.

I mean I know what to do but I just overreact in those particular situations and try to make them in better state ASAP otherwise I feel anxious as well.

Yeah, you’d probably like to fix the problem ASAP and make them stop (crying, or being upset or whatever). Whereas the best thing you can do is to simply listen and show empathy. You don’t need to fix anything, and your partner doesn’t even want it, in most cases. They only want empathy and understanding (remember that short video about the nail in the head? 🙂 )

Haha I don’t remember I’ve been with any strict and judgmental type girl even as female or male friend. Creating the good supportive circle you know?

Oh I see… you’re filtering all critical and unsupportive people from your life… cool! good strategy!

But I think that possibility of turn this into something else is just scaring me like what If I like her more with time?

Okay, so you can ask yourself: what if I like her more with time? What’s the worst thing that can happen?

Or what if I feel bored with her after some time? And like what if she is not on the same page as me?

Okay, you can ask yourself: what if I feel bored over time? What would I do? What are the options I have?

So questions like this as well her different but confident persona is something I feel…

She is different than the usual type you’re attracted to (insecure, low self-esteem). I think that’s what’s scary because you can’t apply the usual tactics of your outer critic, which would be to see her as inferior and imperfect (which would then serve as an excuse to distance yourself from her). The inner critic is trying to sabotage you, by telling you you are worse than her in some respects. But nowadays you’re watching for the inner critic and you’re not believing everything it says. So the inner critic isn’t managing to sabotage the relationship so easily either…

But something in you (hint: the inner child) is still afraid, and so you’re coming up with these what-if questions, which serve the same purpose: to sabotage the relationship. My suggestion is to notice that too: that these what-if hypothetical questions serve the same purpose, and so not to give too much weight to them. If you want to try to push through the fear some more…

Inner and outer you’re dealing with both of these things which isn’t easy at all. I’m proud of you and I hope you progress better and healthier way with that

Thank you! Yes, it’s hard when it gets physical, when it’s your body that aches and there is no escape from pain. I feel that I could much more easily deal with emotional pain than with physical pain. Because I can’t just think about it differently, so that it doesn’t cause pain any more. Although I think I can still be telling myself a positive, optimistic story, or I can be telling myself a negative, hopeless story (like that I’ll never get better). And that too makes a difference… But it’s hard, there’s no doubt about it…

Yes exactly and I don’t know how to protect myself from that for sure!

What’s the worst kind of behavior that you feel you can’t protect yourself from?

Haha Nothing that shows too much. Like not on the face or neck. But l prefer around the shoulder, back, hands, biceps and maybe chest. But yeah mostly desecrate. Yeah I know it’s normal nowadays but there are two things. One judgment from my family and another thing is that gaining enough weight so tattoos look much better. Have you got any tattoos though?

No, I don’t have any tattoos. Not my style, and besides, I’ve got many birthmarks, so I’d worry about damaging those. So no, no tattoos for me 🙂

If you worry about how the tattoo will look, I’d choose a spot which doesn’t depend on your muscular mass. So somewhere where it always looks the same, regardless of how fit you are 🙂