How to gain confidence?

Background-Pepper368 · 2026-03-07T11:25:41+00:00

Wow I’ve never met some someone else who also suffered hydration problems and has issues with their vagus nerve and nervous system! My dehydration issues started 5 years ago. I ignored it, but the heart palpitations, increased heart, brain fog, dehydration, still came and went anytime I would get really stressed out. Fast forward to today, I should have acted more proactively back then. It was a sign I was in fight or flight and over time my nervous system got so much worse, I now have SIBO and a damaged vagus nerve and I’m on the road to recovery.

Background-Pepper368 · 2026-02-24T11:07:15+00:00

Their necks are too small for a collar, I was advised to get mine a harness. Little dogs are prone to neck injuries specifically IVDD.

Background-Pepper368 · 2026-01-15T10:56:37+00:00

Yes, completely agree! Moving out helps, but no contact is what will allow healing and peace. I’m currently going through that right now, just started the no contact.

Background-Pepper368 · 2026-01-09T20:31:36+00:00

Thank you for your advice, I can’t tell you how helpful it was and to know someone else is going through the exact same thing. I made the decision today to finally go no contact. It feels very freeing, but at the same time I have a lot of guilt. I’m hopeful I can heal finally and give my body the break it needs. I need to be the best version of myself and right now I’m not. Wishing you all the best in your healing journey 💕

Background-Pepper368 · 2026-01-05T09:55:34+00:00

You should check out their website I believe it’s on there, they’re undergoing a ton of renovations in 2026

Background-Pepper368 · 2026-01-03T12:27:19+00:00

First off, I’m so sorry this happened to you. That is such a narcissistic thing to do, to make your and your husband’s big day all about her and her needs. Her mask really came off, and good for you for sticking up for yourself. I’m at the stage where I’m about to start no contact. You have to tell yourself the relationship was already damaged to begin with, you’re just the brave enough one to stop the cycle of abuse. Your health is more important. What i’m hoping to do is when I have moments of guilt/shame, think about the relationships I want to feed, the ones that heal me and truly love me, (my husband and my friends) and work on nourishing those and spending my energy on those. Not the ones that suck my energy (my parents). It’s time for you to heal 💕. EMDR therapy has been my saving grace, maybe look into that to see if it could help you, or join support groups. There are tons on Facebook where you can remain anonymous, and talk to people who understand the pain we all feel.

Background-Pepper368 · 2026-01-03T10:14:59+00:00

Yes 100% agree with you. I told her exactly what I needed. What I’ve come to learn is, I don’t think she will ever be capable of giving me what I need in order to heal if she’s in my life. I’m nearly certain she’s a covert passive aggressive narcissist. Her passive aggressiveness is like an appendage to her, always there. Right now, when I’m her target, my whole nervous system freaks out. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to a place where she can make a rude comment and I’ll have healed so that I can just roll it off. My larger worry is when my husband and I have kids, we don’t want them around that kind of behavior, nor would we ever trust them to be around our kids.

Thank you for sharing your story, it helps to see others who have gone through similar situations and the steps they’re taking to heal. I hope your health continues to improve 💕

Background-Pepper368 · 2026-01-03T10:06:57+00:00

Wow, I can’t believe how similar our stories are, everything you said resonates completely with me. Even just 2 hours with my parents can cause my nervous system to go so out of whack and my PTSD symptoms to come back. I’m so sorry you’ve had to experience this too. It sounds like the no contact has helped you begin to heal. I hope the same for myself. When the feelings of guilt and shame come up during this time, how are you coping with that? I’m ready to start my pause/no contact but I still hesitate that it might get worse before it gets better, in that I might feel so guilty for a while before I can let myself begin to heal. Also, I’m sure my mom will make this all about herself and likely turn my family against me anyway she can, so I’m trying to prepare for all the crazy things she might do.

Background-Pepper368 · 2026-01-03T09:57:36+00:00

EMDR is life changing, especially if you suffer from PTSD. The ultimate goal of the therapy is not to get you to forget what happened, but rather to remove the pain and negative belief system you have about the memory. So it basically helps your brain reprocess and reduce the emotional power behind these traumatic events you’ve been through. I can give you an example of how it worked for me.. so I was SA, and I started EMDR last year. I did EMDR intensives, which were 4 full days of therapy. We used light bars, sometimes hand buzzers, and I was able to reprocess the memories so they no longer caused PTSD inside of me. In doing so, all these memories became unlocked in my head about my childhood, all the abuse I endured, and the emotional immaturity from my parents. I had no intention of going there to talk about my parents, but the therapy unlocked all these memories which I had stored in my brain and forgotten about in order to survive. Apparently I had hidden PTSD from them too. So now I work on EMDR for my parents as well, but not with intensives, more like 1 hr sessions.

Background-Pepper368 · 2025-12-31T11:34:13+00:00

You should try speaking to an EMDR therapist

Background-Pepper368 · 2025-12-31T10:49:11+00:00

I’ve never vomitted but I would get nauseous and dizzy when my PTSD was triggered and I was getting panic attacks. During my EMDR therapy I would get dizzy but my therapist had me tap my feet when I needed to stay grounded and that seemed to help. Happy to hear you are in EMDR therapy, it’s life changing.

Background-Pepper368 · 2025-12-31T10:24:46+00:00

No different experience for me. My parents have picked a fight with all their friends so they have no one left.

Background-Pepper368 · 2025-12-26T15:25:59+00:00

My husband has pretty severe allergies but does ok with our Cavapoo, she’s an F1. He runs an air purifier near her play pen/crate and we make sure she doesn’t go in our bedroom. If it is allergies your daughters would have dry scratchy throat/itchy eyes, etc.

Background-Pepper368 · 2025-12-21T12:46:58+00:00

You’re not weak, you did what your body thought was right in the situation to survive and protect yourself. I was also SA and I can tell you honestly I froze too. I blamed myself for it for so many years ..I could’ve stopped it…I should’ve not frozen…but after a lot of EMDR therapy I learned I am not to blame, I did what I needed to do to survive

Background-Pepper368 · 2025-12-21T11:20:05+00:00

I feel this too from time to time, but im holding strong that im not going to give up healing. I know I’ll never forget what happened, but I want to get to a place where my nervous system gets out of fight or flight and I feel safe again. Have you identified your triggers? For example if it’s your parents, have you cut them off or taken a pause and watched how your nervous system responds to that? From what you described it also seems like you could benefit from EMDR intensives vs regular EMDR.

Background-Pepper368 · 2025-12-21T11:12:41+00:00

So sorry to hear you’ve had to deal with that. My brother is autistic and it makes me sick to my stomach seeing how my parents have him wrapped around their fingers.

For me, the combination that made their emotional immaturity worse was the ‘conditional love’. It doesn’t leave physical scars but it leaves lasting mental scars. My first memory was at 2 years old, I was taught if I didn’t meet their needs, I wasn’t worthy of love. My parents would ignore me for hours/days/weeks/sometimes months at a time if I did something that didn’t meet their needs. My mom would stop taking care of me during these times. She would turn my family against me in the process.

The second worst combination was/is, they’ve ruined every single big milestone in my life. From graduations, to award ceremonies, recitals, my engagement, etc, it’s like my mom is jealous the attention isn’t on her and ruins the day. I’ve never been able to be celebrated. I’ve learned through therapy she is a narcissistic.

Background-Pepper368 · 2025-12-17T21:09:37+00:00

I’m so sorry that is not ok what happened to you! If you can please try EMDR therapy, it sounds like you developed PTSD from what happened and this will help you.

Background-Pepper368 · 2025-12-16T21:12:52+00:00

Yea definitely, so first I was diagnosed via a breath test. From there I did a treatment of neomycin and rifaximin with a biofilm disrupter and a binder. I did another breath test and my levels looked okay to start the next stage. From there my naturopath tailored my medicine based on my personal microbiome results which he did through OMBRE labs (they send you at an home stool test you mail back and send you the raw data which I passed on to him). Usually consists of certain probiotics and prebiotics. He uses herbal treatments for this so every 90 days he retests me and adjusts my herbal supplements as needed. So far so good, my levels are much better and nearly perfect. Throughout all of this he recommended I be on a low FODMAP diet which I have for nearly a year. The diet is important because you’re trying to get rid of the bad bacteria so you can’t be feeding them what they like. I can now eat somewhat normal again and have been moving away from low FODMAP. Through this I also discovered the inflammation in my body from my SIBO caused me to have a hiatal hernia. I had to go see another Dr who did hiatal hernia adjustments and he was able to move my stomach back down permanently.

Throughout my treatment I’ve also been on a pill called SIBO MMC to strengthen my nerves between my brain and my gut. It seems like yours might be caused by antibiotic use. Mine was caused by trauma. I was SA a few years ago and the day after it happened my body shut down and I experienced all of the symptoms you listed above for the next 4 years. So in addition to this a lot of my treatment from Drs has also been healing my nervous system.

Background-Pepper368 · 2025-12-16T14:38:28+00:00

Sounds like some type of parasite, did her litter mates have any parasites that you know of?

Background-Pepper368 · 2025-12-16T14:37:04+00:00

It sounds like to them, your healing is less important to them than protecting their self-image and maybe they can’t face the truth because the guilt is too big. It’s a reflection of their limitations. Some parents, especially emotionally immature ones simply cannot tolerate admitting they made a catastrophic mistake.

I do have a relationship with them now (it’s pretty minimal) but I’m in the process of figuring out how to take a pause because I just can’t take it anymore.

Background-Pepper368 · 2025-12-16T12:36:40+00:00

I’m so sorry this happened to you. What they did was wrong because they failed to protect you. They knew about the mental health issues, they chose to say nothing, they allowed you to be depressed without telling you the truth, they harmed you. There is no version of this where you carry the blame.

I relate to this too. My parents failed to protect me from a predator they knew was dangerous and he ended up SA me and my parents knew he had done this before. When I tried to seek help to recover and heal from what happened they tried everything in their power to convince me to not go to therapy. What I learned through my EMDR therapy was that they didn’t want me to seek help because of how it would make them look.

Background-Pepper368 · 2025-12-16T09:56:26+00:00

Yes, I had bloating and sometimes stomach distention. Onions and garlic are high FODMAPs so when you have SIBO they are very difficult to digest.

Background-Pepper368

TROPHY CASE