I want to add to “things inside get messed up”- things can get straightened out and healing takes place.

You sound like an intelligent young (?) person, intellectually and emotionally.

I shared just a bit about my experience with my unsafe mother. Of course, your experience may be very different from mine

I would like to hear about it.

Hi Starlight: I’ll read & reply in a few hours when I’m back to the computer/ phone

Good morning (here), Starlight1 🌟

You are 🙏 and thank you for having this conversation with me!

Pete Walker’s book on PTSD is the last book I read (around 2014). It was very meaningful to me. It so happens that I didn’t read a single book since.

Of course it’s okay to ask 🙂.

How those mental back and forths between the criticizer/attacker 😠 and the criticized/ attacked 😞 stopped for me?

Well, it mostly stopped, last time was maybe a week or two ago that I remember, but it was contained, short, and not intense.

Let me see.. thinking out loud, whatever comes to mind:

(By the way, when I use the 📱 like I do now, emojis show up and I just love them. Are you 👍 with them?)

Back to the question: I was a victim of engulfment trauma, meaning I never separated- individuated from my mother, didn’t have an independent separate self.

In other words, mentally, she dominated me.

This mental terrorism (an extension of the real-life domestic terrorism of living-dying with her) stopped ✋️ when I finally had enough separation from her: in real- life (no contact since 2013/14) and mentally.

For as long as I was too small, too weak, too dominated, I wasn’t able to have a say about what was happening in my mind or in real- life (zero assertiveness).

So, my answer: it was a gradual process, not a technique.

I hope I answered your question? Please let me know if I answered a question you didn’t ask 🤔

In regard to health care workers and professionals you came across, you’re saying that they are not trauma informed or that they’re reluctant to share what they know?

Can you give me an example or two?

Next, I’ll visit your other thread.

🤔 🧠 🤔 Anita

Good morning again, Starlight 🌟

Thank you for sharing all of this so clearly. I can hear how much you’ve been carrying, and how long you’ve been trying to make sense of it on your own.

What you wrote about your mother — the apologies without real change, the hurt about her choice to remain with the person who harmed you, her impact on your life — all of that makes complete sense. You don’t have to go into anything you don’t want to. I’m hearing the experience without needing the details.

About what you said regarding “breaking contact”- it ended up being necessary in my situation. You get to decide what is right for you, in your timing, with your own clarity.

You wrote in regard to your mother, “it cost me so much staying in contact”- I very much relate. It cost me my mental health, a huge price. I had to stay small, engulfed, unimportant, sacrificed, a non-entity.

What you said about health professionals resonates with so many trauma survivors. Internal conversations, replaying events, talking out loud when processing — these are all very common trauma responses. It’s painful that instead of explaining the mechanism to you, they pathologized it and medicated you.

Being told you were “delusional” for naming abuse is a deep injury in itself. I’m glad you’re thinking clearly now and that your mind feels quiet as you write. That clarity belongs to you; it’s not something anyone gave you.

Nothing in your message sounds like you were asking for advice — it sounds like you were thinking out loud, and I’m simply walking alongside you as you do.

🤍 Anita

How exciting it is, for me, to know that somewhere across the world 🌎, Starlight1 has submitted a post exactly 10 minutes ago!

Please do rest, do take the break you need to take. I’ll be here when you return.

🌿 Anita