Dear Anita,

Yes, one singular person.  Her always..

Oh how confusing it was for me growing up.  Yes, it was all about her, but it made sense to us – for she was a victim herself.  victim of her own family emotionally abusing her, isolating her.  Victim of my father’s physical abuse.  This “poor woman” was so beaten and battered, she didn’t know how to cope.  Of course she is sad and angry.

I have been doing a tremendous amount of reading this weekend.  I am now going back to the roots. Ever since I had this awakening, i.e. first wrote on Tiny Buddha about what was going on – it was focused on now, the present day.  Of course it was.  I was writing to you about present day events, and a lot centered on my wedding.

Of course those patterns are deep rooted, and started from birth.  I now see that my level of suffering is from a lifetime of being treated this way, but only the most recent events register the most.

In fact, I was reading a lot about mother’s with narcissistic personality disorder.  It was reading about this over 2 years ago that made me clue in to the fact that “something” might be wrong with my mother.  She fit all of the criteria to a T – it was jaw dropping that such criteria could exist – how could general criteria fit my mother so well! And that means there are others?! This is a true disorder.

Diagnosis or not is not my point, it does not matter what her label is – the fact that is a true abuser and has characteristics known to be objectively abusive is key.

So I am going back to that, and the more I read the more I see that children born and raised into these households not only suffer severe anxiety and/or depression, they suffer PTSD.

Now once again, I am not going to attach myself to a diagnosis or a term.  especially  given that I am a physician I see many people cling SO tightly to diagnostic terms, in order to validate what they feel.  “see look i have PTSD.” That is not my goal here. But it was quite eye-opening to read about the complex PTSD that adult children of these narcisstic mothers suffer from.  Why? because it describes me.

See I always knew something was off balance.  Maybe just some anxiety.  Maybe I am hyper-aware.  Maybe I am depressed (I mean very likely because my maternal grandmother had severe depression and committed suicide).  Maybe I have ADHD (I always do have trouble focusing on one task at a time). Yes I have insomnia. Yes I have chronic pain complaints over the last 10 years (neck tension and headaches).

Yes, all the above.  But what i see now is something hard to put into words –  I will try my best.

I am not an anxious or depressed person.  No.  What I am suffering from is a lifetime of repressed emotions from the abuse I endured.

I am not a person with attention issues. My body and brain are constantly reacting to the years of abuse.

Everything that I am, every negative thing I feel, every moment of myself not feeling good – is all mirrored from the abuse I suffered.

It is from the trauma.  I may not have active trauma now, it doesn’t matter.  My parents could be dead, it doesn’t matter.

Call it post-traumatic stress disorder, call it a lifetime of abuse starting in childhood hiding in the adult child manifesting itself every second.

So how is this treated? First recognizing the trauma.  Then slowly releasing it.

I started yesterday remember a lot from my childhood, things that weren’t particularly outrageous, but “normal life.”

Things like the disney world example.

Things like how it was so normal for every time my dad was stressed or angry, for him to blame the family for his heart attack.  But then a second later, for my mom to join his side, and curse the daughters that caused his heart attack.

Things like being in medical school and just finishing an exam, walking to my car.  Answering my mother’s phone call. It was my father on the phone, asking for advice.  My mother had an “emotional affair” with one of the workers at our house.  (cliche much – so much more on that later, not sure if I ever talked about this).  And somehow in this disgusting web of what is my parents, my father was involved.  My mother was distraught over the fact that this guy, N we will call him, was no longer answering her phone calls and wanting to see her.  So she would stop eating and lay around, failure to thrive.  Like I said I would like to elaborate on this later. So it went something like, she now wanted my father to protect her from this sadness she was experiencing.  They were on their way to drive to where N was going to meet them.  And my mother was going to tell him, no more, I don’t want to be hurt – or something like that.  So they are calling me on their drive there, and pretty much asking me what they should do…

Yup just another day leaving the medical school campus after an exam.