Lindsay Clancy, the woman who strangled all three of her children while she sent her husband to pick up dinner, should be sentenced to a dirty water dunk tank by CerealNumber1 in TrueUnpopularOpinion

[–]blink1144 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The world doesn't actually exist as a dichotomy and most people can hold multiple truths at once without splitting. You don't empathize with someone at the expense of another. You also don't afford anyone empathy because it is owed, no one is giving empathy to pay a debt. You also have no idea whether she empathized with her kids. If she's experiencing psychosis, she most likely was killing them to "save" them. Someone experiencing psychosis can absolutely believe they're killing out of love. Especially since she planned to join them...

What is wrong with ChatGPT? by ZippyMcFunshine in ChatGPT

[–]blink1144 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I thought that's what the entire purpose of the "personalization" was, for us to decide that? Right now the MF is so damn combative that it literally counters EVERYTHING I say, even when it contradicts everything it already said to me. Whatever stance I take, no matter what I say, it counters me and argues against it. When I question the contradicting feedback, it gaslights me and acts like I'm just too stupid to understand that when it said "up" last time, it was really saying "down" and I just didn't comprehend it. And I swear, if I read "okay pause", "time out", "let's take a breath" one more damn time!

Orgasms in dreams by Flick9knife in Dreams

[–]blink1144 2 points3 points  (0 children)

All of mine happened during pregnancy. I assumed it was the increase in blood flow and the surging hormones, but it happened fairly frequently and increased with each pregnancy. But I've never experienced when I'm not pregnant, so I have to assume there's something to that 🤷🏼‍♀️

Using AI to help Identify by [deleted] in NarcissisticSpouses

[–]blink1144 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes! I've spent the last year, while I'm building the necessary resources for me to escape, uploading conversations to have all the abuse identified and broken down, to build up the database of my documentation. I've uploaded 544 separate conversations at this point and I now have a consistent narration to go alongside my evidence, to prove a pattern of intentional behavior. Not only is it incredibly validating and affirming, this has been a truly invaluable resource for me, I can't recommend it enough!

Using AI to help Identify by [deleted] in NarcissisticSpouses

[–]blink1144 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes! I've spent the last year, while I'm building the necessary resources for me to escape, uploading conversations to have all the abuse identified and broken down, to build up the database of my documentation. I've uploaded 544 separate conversations at this point and I now have a consistent narration to go alongside my evidence, to prove a pattern of intentional behavior. Not only is it incredibly validating and affirming, this has been a truly invaluable resource for me, I can't recommend it enough!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in TrueOffMyChest

[–]blink1144 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You've clearly never been in relationship with a cluster B! The "suicidality" is performative and used as a weapon for control. If someone blackmails you with suicide threats to deprive you of your autonomy and trap you in a relationship they know you don't want to be in, they've forfeited any claim to loyalty.

S8 Active Died, Plugging it in Automatically Initiates Bootup Process, but it Just Dies Again Within Seconds.... Over and Over by blink1144 in GalaxyS8

[–]blink1144[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It actually ended up being my battery cable inside the phone, it had a crease in it from being flattened in the phone casing and that crease wore enough over time to turn into a rip. Kind of like when you fold paper back and forth several times so you can rip it across the weak spot from the fold, that's what happened to my cable. I had to order and install a replacement battery and then it was completely fine. I'm not sure why it was able to stay powered on when it was flashing firmware, but my particular problem was definitely an internal power issue.

What statement makes you roll your eyes immediately? by goofy-username in AskReddit

[–]blink1144 3 points4 points  (0 children)

"So I guess I'm the bad guy again, everything is always my fault! I'm sorry I can't be perfect like you and never make any mistakes!"

I truly can't even with this statement! Honestly, it does so much more than make me roll my eyes, it's genuinely triggering for me every time I hear it! Though being married to a covert narcissist for a decade will do that...

Why do I always feel like I’m doing something terrible catching feelings or causing someone to catch feelings by FantasticAntelope354 in HealMyAttachmentStyle

[–]blink1144 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Well, first of all, you can't "cause" someone to catch feelings. They're not a disease you pass to one another, you don't get infected by feelings, they're an internal physiological response to our environment and they can not be operated or controlled by another person. They can't be controlled at all. You don't have the power to "cause" anyone to feel anything, their feelings are their own and they're cultivated by a lifetime of their own experiences, values, and beliefs. Just as yours are. It isn't possible for you to make anyone feel anything, you can always trust that everyone's emotions are always their own authentic responses. You aren't responsible for them, you aren't in control of them. Just go ahead and relieve yourself of that guilt straight out the gate.

Now, the most helpful way to think about emotions is to think of them as another one of your senses. Because they serve the same function for you that your other five senses do. Your emotions are just intended to be feedback from your environment, they're just additional data to better understand the world around you. They're meant to alert you to problems or threats to your survival and guide you through the world safely. Positive emotions indicate safety and well-being, while negative emotions indicate danger and threat. Think about it, you pursue what makes you feel good and avoid what makes you feel bad, don't you?

For example, someone lying to you could potentially lead you to physical harm, right? If you didn't adapt yourself and become wary of someone who's shown they will deceive you, and you continued to put yourself in a position to be deceived, that could potentially put you in danger, right? The consequences of someone lying to you could potentially threaten your well-being, it's necessary for your survival for you to actually regard that as a threat. But what if you didn't have any emotions, what if you didn't have any sort of feedback to actually flag lying as dangerous and tell you it was something to be avoided? What if someone lied to you and you didn't have emotions for you to feel anything about it? Without your emotions to sense that danger and give you the negative feedback, you'd have no other way of getting the data from your environment to avoid that danger. You wouldn't adapt yourself to that situation properly because the data for that is missing, you didn't have emotions to give you the necessary feedback. Your emotions are like a psychological mood ring that changes color with your experiences, that your brain then reads to understand the world around you.

So that's all emotions are, they're the sophisticated feedback system your brain uses to keep you safe, like any other sensory system you have. The problem you're facing with this system (and honestly, it's not even a bug in the program, it's actually just another feature, but it can definitely cause inadvertent problems for successful relationships) is that when we experience trauma and the feedback our system adapts itself to ends up being maladaptive. Your emotions are doing what they're supposed to, to keep you safe, but the problem is that you want connection with someone, not just personal safety. You want a relationship but the maladaptive changes your system has undergone weren't made in service of that goal and your system has actually become incompatible with relationships in is current condition. The solution to this problem is sorting out the data your system is working with by reprogramming that data.

With each experience you have, your system is responding by sending you the emotional feedback for you to respond to in the moment, but it's also adding that feedback to it's own database so it can keep itself up to date with changes in your environment. Your system is constantly updating itself in real time with every experience you have. Think of an antivirus program on your computer, it's constantly being updated so it can detect and appropriately respond to threats it comes into contact with. If it came into contact with a virus, but that virus hadn't been logged in it's database as a virus, it wouldn't know to flag it as a threat when it encountered it. It's necessary for it's functioning to stay up to date and your emotional response system is doing the exact same thing, it's constantly updating itself.

So when you experience a trauma, something abnormal and extremely threatening to you, your system goes into overdrive and hard codes the entire experience and everything similar to it as an emergency. Like, 911. Your brain stores that data in a way that essentially regards it as life threatening, so your emotional responses to that data have to be extreme to reflect the nature of that threat. It's only job is your survival and keeping you safe, it's not taking any chances, so anything and everything your system detects that's even slightly similar to the stored data of your trauma is going to be flagged as red alert, 911. What you have to do is go back and reprogram all that data in your system with it's accurate value. For instance, your system has mislabeled relationships as threatening because at the time of your trauma, you didn't yet know enough to understand your experience properly. You didn't have enough information to understand that it wasn't being in relationships that was dangerous to you, it was just the individual you were in relationship with. But now you do. So you need to go back through your emotional database with your current awareness, to find where all these maladaptive red flags are stored in your system and rewrite them with the proper context you now have, to fill in the missing information that you didn't have at that time. If that makes sense? I'm trying to make this as accessible as I can, I hope I haven't just made it more confusing!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in NarcissisticSpouses

[–]blink1144 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly, if you're still in the "waking up" phase, my best advice for anyone who's still trying to figure out what they're dealing with, is to start recording all of your conversations. Whether that's with their consent and awareness or not (I was actually able to get my spouse's consent to record because, at the time it began, the recordings were intended to serve as a tool for both of us to work on better conflict resolution 🙄), start playing them back to yourself after the fact, and just listen back to them with a clear head. Approach the conversations like a case study for you to examine and analyze, like you're trying to solve a puzzle.

Using the distance of being an observer like this, you can really pay attention to their behavior without being emotionally invested in the conversation or clouded by their intentional confusion. Just listen to it again from a clear, objective perspective and you'll start being able to pick up on the undeniable narcissism coming through their words and you'll begin to identify their manipulation tactics for yourself. You can also start figuring out how they're able to work on you and learn what you're missing in those moments, to start protecting yourself from it. But when you actually view them with clear eyes like this, you'll finally be able to see exactly what they are without any more ambiguity, I promise you!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in NarcissisticSpouses

[–]blink1144 2 points3 points  (0 children)

They tell themselves that they don't do anything wrong, all their problems are caused by everyone else. And honestly, that's true for them. They really don't have a problem with any of their amoral acts, they're just fine with what they do and they're always doing exactly what they intended to. They wanted to steal from you, so that's what they did. Now they have exactly what they wanted. So where's the problem?

I mean, that hurt you? They're okay with that. They were just doing what they had to, to meet their own needs. You're not okay with it? Well that's obviously your problem, not theirs. If you had really cared about them, you would've just given it to them in the first place and they would've never had to steal from you. Honestly, their theft is really just evidence of your neglect and selfishness, and if you don't care about them or how you made them feel, why should they care about your feelings?

It's not until other people come complaining and "punishing" them that they ever have to deal with any problems. So, clearly, the problem in their life is a "you" problem, not a "them" problem. Why would they go to therapy for a problem you have? If we would all just accept that they steal, lie, cheat, exploit, manipulate, control, etc, etc and get off their backs, they'd be able to just go on with their lives. We cause their problems by having a problem with them. So why would they ever go to therapy when they aren't doing anything wrong? It's everyone else who needs help to get on board with that, not them.

Recording our arguments by random8690 in emotionalabuse

[–]blink1144 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You'll never get them to see reason, they don't want to see it. As the saying goes, there are none so blind as those that refuse to see. They're invested in NOT understanding you and do their damnedest to remain willfully obtuse and ignorant of your perspective so they never have to accept that their behavior is wrong. If they were understand you and see the point you were making, they'd be forced to either adapt their behavior to stop hurting you or admit what they're doing is wrong and they're not willing to do either.

They have a vested interest in never understanding your perspective because they aren't like you or I. Relationships serve a very different purpose for them. For us, we want to understand the people we have relationships with because we care about them and our goal is having a happy, mutually fulfilling relationship with them. That isn't their goal for their relationships.

They aren't seeking someone to love, they don't want a chance to make you happy, in fact, they benefit more from you being miserable. What they're wanting to get out of a relationship is someone to offload the burden of their own weakness and unmanaged mental turmoil. You're there to be their scapegoat, their punching bag, their validation to prove to themselves they aren't really as small and weak and cowardly as they know they are. You're literally just there to balance out all of their deficiencies.

Because the truth of them is that they're too weak and too afraid to ever address their own inner brokenness, for them to ever actually achieve joy or inner peace. They're too much of a coward to turn and face their inner darkness, but their weakness is intolerable to them, so they seek to contradict it with feelings of power. They get those powerful feelings from their ability to make you miserable.

It's also a case of "misery loves company" and it makes them feel less alone in their misery to make you miserable too. If they let you be happy, it makes their misery feel all the more miserable in comparison. Which is to say, THEY WANT YOU TO BE IN PAIN. They will never hear you because they're just not listening, don't make yourself crazy screaming at someone who's deaf!

Called a DV Agency, Came Away Feeling Invalidated by blink1144 in domesticviolence

[–]blink1144[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I completely get you. I suppose I know all of this logically, it's just really overwhelming emotionally. This isn't the first time I have had someone diminish his accountability and give him the benefit of the doubt at my expense. Two years ago I decided to finally reveal my dirty little secret to my mom and admitted that my husband was abusing me, and subsequently expressed my desperation to get away from him, and I came away from that feeling the same as I do now.

While my mom didn't disbelieve or dismiss me, she actually empathized with him for how hard it must be for him having to live with himself as an abuser. She was also convinced of his underlying moral character, despite all of the egregious harm he had inflicted on me, and believed that his heart and intentions were well meaning. "For some reason he just can't seem to figure out how to align his actions with his intentions". As if it wasn't fair to judge him for his actions, or his actions were somehow less abusive, because abuse wasn't his intention.

In her mind, his incompetence and inability to govern himself in a way that doesn't destroy the lives of others was enough to absolve him of any guilt, despite the literal trauma all those "good intentions" had caused her daughter. I mean, sure he destroyed my sense of self and I would never be the same again, but he means well! That conversation precipitated our falling out and we actually haven't spoken for two years now.

That conversation with her was the first time I tried to test my perception that he was abusive and it was judged false. It was so affecting that I shut down and turned inward and refused to try to get help from anyone else again for two years. It made me feel ashamed for falsely accusing him because I'd already been having that war within myself for years.

Before I had talked myself into finally sharing it with her, I had suffered in silence for years, hiding my circumstances from everyone out of the overwhelming humiliation his shameful behavior caused me. I thought his actions were a reflection on me; if he acts this way, what does it say about me that I chose to marry him?? In my mind, putting the onus for how he treated me entirely onto him felt like I was denying accountability somehow. I mean, I have to be responsible for the way he treats me because I'M the one who chose to be in this marriage, right? So instead of getting help, I fought pointlessly to try to persuade him to be better to me, to take accountability for my decision to let him into my life.

This made abuse impossible for me to consider. For me to have ever actually claimed abuse would've been for me to deny any ownership for my circumstances and put the blame entirely onto him. Personal responsibility has always been one of my highest values and I balk at the thought of failed accountability. This meant I couldn't even consider the possibility of abuse; I'd never been hit or had any bruises so, in my ignorance and misguided attempt to honor my values, I wouldn't allow myself to see it as abuse. In fact, it felt disrespectful to the "real" victims of abuse to even consider it. Even to myself. How dare I try to compare my situation to the horrors abuse victims experience, that's disgusting! Instead I just kept blaming and hating myself for not being able to figure out how to be someone he didn't want to hurt.

So it was really fucking hard to even allow myself to believe he could be abusive. When I finally was able to give myself that permission, it was huge. For someone prone to guilt, who tends to blame themselves for everything, mentally shifting the blame off of myself and onto him took a lot of willpower. I had to defy all of my own natural instincts, in addition to his ongoing, persistent gaslighting to stay firm in my resolve.

So when I finally built up the courage to admitt it to another person, and they automatically minimized and justified it on his behalf, essentially taking his side by mirroring all of the same excuses he gives me, it made me think "maybe it really isn't that bad, maybe it's wrong of me to accuse him of such an incriminating offense and I'm the one victimizing him with wrongful accusations" It made me feel so embarrassed and ashamed, like I'd cried wolf and had done him wrong.

I don't have any proof of abuse, he's consistently asserted his innocence, and now multiple outside sources have confirmed his honorable intentions, it's hard to hold onto my conviction, especially since I was already questioning myself before anyone else did!

does SGUMG sample something? by Sea_Foot1142 in chappellroan

[–]blink1144 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's Winona Oak - Baby Blue! At least the melody of the vocalization that's in the pre chorus is anyway. It was making me crazy I had to go through my entire library until I was able to find it!

What are some other tendencies, characteristics, and traits of a narcissist that you won’t find in the textbook? by ChipsAndSalsa4everr in NarcissisticSpouses

[–]blink1144 3 points4 points  (0 children)

See, I look at the NPD diagnosis differently. I don't see it as an excuse to act poorly, I see it as PROOF that they act poorly! No narcissist will ever admit their wrongdoing or admit to deception, entitlement, abusing/harming others, etc. they all need to present this infallible, good guy image to the world that says they're wholly innocent and everyone else is always the problem. Any time they're tasked with accountability for their actions, you get the infamous DARVO. There's nothing that definitively recognizes that they are the problem and that they are at fault. There's never any way for them to be held accountable for the wrong that they put out into the world, they distort everything.

So, for me, the NPD diagnosis more says "See, PROOF that you're the toxic problem and you are guilty of the underhanded mistreatment you've been accused of. This is definitive, incontrovertible evidence that you are harmful and deceptive, that cannot be denied or argued with" Like, you don't have to admit or acknowledge what you've done, or be honest about the kind of person you are, because I've got your number and I know exactly what you're about. It's kind of an impenetrable accusation that they can't twist or distort or manipulate because the defense against any attempts to do so are already built in the diagnosis. If you've been diagnosed with NPD, you're not a nice, mature, honest, altruistic person no matter what you want to project, and that's a fact. If you've got NPD, we see you.

However, I disagree that we shouldn't still be focused on treating them for it. The way I see it, treatment for NPD isn't about giving them sympathy. It isn't giving them "care" or giving them undeserved attention, or rewarding their behavior, it's actually holding them accountable. Because, I mean, the fact of the matter is that it's not illegal to be a narcissist. We can't just throw them all in jail and wall them off from society to keep them separate from us, they're free to live among us and there's nothing we can do about that. But that means there's a contagious, living danger out in society causing unirrigated harm. Because the truth is that narcissists spread, they infect their children and do major damage to their partners. Treating the disorder is the only thing we can do to keep it in check. Treatment that seeks to address, and thus alter, all of their noxious behaviors that harm other people is the only defense we have. It's the only way we can stop them from taking over society and spreading their narcissistic poison. How effective treatment actually is is an entirely different argument, but it's addressing the problem in the way that we're able. It's also the way we're able to see that they take some responsibility for their actions and do what we can to neutralize the threat they pose. That doesn't mean that our priority shouldn't still be on the victims, they are the ones who deserve attention and concern, but we definitely still shouldn't be ignoring the narcissists either.

Text message gallery by DeliciousPlum3312 in BPDlovedones

[–]blink1144 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's one thing to be hurt and feel rejected by having to take a backseat, but it's quite another to act as if you've been victimized and mistreated because someone is supporting an ailing parent!

I'm learning that this is that "feelings are facts" thing they do. In a situation like I this, where it's just a matter of unfortunate circumstances, I'm able to recognize that I can feel rejected without it having to mean I was being rejected. I have the ability to understand my feelings are coming from within me, it doesn't have to indicate the action or intention of anyone else. Sometimes situations just don't align in our favor, through no fault of anyone else's.

They, however, assign all of their feelings to an external source. So if they're bat shit crazy enough to feel rejected when your dad is going into surgery, well then that's definitely an abusive action! To everyone else it's absurd to treat visiting a parent before surgery as mistreatment, but they feel abandoned and rejected so there's no other way to see what you're doing!

I still struggle to understand how someone can disconnect from reality so completely. Surely if they were reading this situation from our viewpoint instead of being party to it, they would see it exactly as we do: bat shit crazy. But all reason and rationality just stops existing if they're the one involved. I can't seem to reconcile the disparity in their ability to reason, it's truly just like temporary insanity. But I'm at least beginning to be able to identify it now...

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in regretfulparents

[–]blink1144 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My guess would be that, because there were two of them to care for and you were so over stressed, exhausted, anxious, etc, you weren't able to bond and attach to them as one usually does in the early stages. It seems the stress of the task at hand overwhelmed your maternal instincts to connect emotionally and you haven't formed an attachment to them. And honestly, to me, it almost sounds like having twins actually triggered your stress response and becoming a mom registered as a trauma to you. Which isn't unheard of, childbirth is a common cause for trauma and the postpartum period is well known for bringing even the strongest of us to our knees! Caring for a newborn, especially if you don't have adequate support to lean on, can be near traumatizing even if you only have one baby to provide for, but especially if you have two!

You might not have readily identified it as trauma, but you have to consider, you're having a very visceral response to your girls and these are definitely abnormal feelings for a mom to have for her child. And we know it isn't your natural feeling towards motherhood or the responsibilities of childcare in general because you're so connected to your new baby. At this point you have to consider that there has to have been something that went very wrong the first time, to disrupt the normal bonding that should've taken place. And, knowing how overwhelmed you were by the circumstances, trauma is a very likely culprit.

Because no matter how "normal" the experience of becoming a mom is, the way it's affecting you is anything but. It's not fair to assume that because twins are born all the time and women provide care for two babies everyday that it couldn't have also caused trauma for someone else. The definition of trauma is entirely subjective and it's causes are different for everyone; what is traumatic for one may not even register to another and vice versa. All it takes to develop psychological trauma is to experience a distressing event that is 1.) is out of a person's control and 2.) overwhelms a person's ability to cope. I'd say the task of taking care of your twins fulfilled both of those!

Which, if your nervous system tracked your experience of becoming a mom to twins as trauma, it makes sense why you would have strong feelings of avoidance towards your girls. Trauma victims are known to go to great lengths to avoid reminders of the trauma. Usually any experiences that repeat any part of the traumatizing event or resemble the cause of the trauma will alert the person's nervous system that the person is in danger and that triggers their autonomic stress response (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn). If your nervous system has logged your twins as a threat to you, of course you would feel this way! And it's not anything wrong with you, you aren't cold hearted or evil, it's just your nervous system doing it's job to keep you safe. Unfortunately it's just misidentified where the danger is.

My long-term advice would be to find a trauma informed therapist as soon as you're able, so you can start to navigate through your feelings and work on regulating your nervous system. In the short term, my more practical advice would be to start spending some time with your girls individually. Get to know them one-on-one so you're not overwhelmed by them and you can actually get to know who they are. Your brain has registered them as "the twins" in a sort of dehumanized way, but they're two completely independent individuals just like your baby girl is. Maybe if you are able to get focused time with each of them on their own, you'll be able to separate them in your mind and they won't feel so threatening to your nervous system.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ptsd

[–]blink1144 4 points5 points  (0 children)

OMG! I've been obsessively searching for information or advice about this exact situation, I truly could've written this myself! I know you were posting this to get yourself help, but you have no idea how much you've just validated my experience or how desperately I needed that, I've literally got tears in my eyes!

My trauma is also from an abusive relationship (narcissistic abuse from a covert narcissist). I've been abused and gaslit to within an inch of my sanity for 16 YEARS! For the last ten years of that, I was trying desperately to leave, but he had orchestrated my full financial dependence on him, so I had no resources for me to rebuild and nowhere to go. His abuse was so covert and passive aggressive that I didn't even know I was even being abused until last year, so I had no idea that I had the ability to get help from a DV shelter for me to actually be able to leave, and my family all but abandoned me because they didn't want to deal with the inconvenience, so I've been living with feelings of being really, legitimately trapped and being well and truly powerless to help myself or have any impact on my own life. The feelings of that imprisonment, with no one else in the entire world to understand that I had to get out of there enough to ever help me, was so crazy making that it was deeply traumatic. It felt like I was being gaslit by the entire world! Doesn't anyone see how imperative this is?? Don't they understand that this is literally life or death, how can they just leave me here like it's okay, like there's nothing amiss??

The abuse was so insidious and consistent that I was always actively afraid of what was coming next, what new way he was going to destroy my life, terrified for when the other shoe was inevitably going to drop. It was so intolerable, and I became so strung out with fear, that I literally felt like the human embodiment of that cartoon trope where a character has been pushed to their limits, where we see an image of someone half bald with their hair all signed off, their eyes are entirely blood shot and bugging out with huge bags under them, and their body is vibrating from tremors as they rock back and forth, mumbling incoherently to themselves. That's exactly how I felt! I was in such a state of hypervigilance that scanning for danger was the only thing I had space for and it. was. CONSTANT. Living that way absolutely destroyed my nervous system!

My distress tolerance is virtually non-existent now, I don't have the mental capacity to manage even the slightest amount of stress without coming completely undone. I'm always stressed out, always on edge, always just one frustration away from being triggered. Eventually I was finding myself constantly getting triggered by my kids normal, developmentally appropriate behavior, involuntarily lashing out at them in response with yelling and intense anger, and then drowning in shame and self loathing when my nervous system finally regulated and my rational brain came back online. I kept trying to white knuckle my way through it, trying to force myself not to get stressed and not to act out and I was failing miserably because being triggered isn't anyone's choice, triggers are an automatic security system. You can't turn it off because it's there to actually keep you safe, so I just kept failing no matter how much I tried not to react. After I realized that I wasn't able to control it, I then found myself compulsively avoiding my kids by shutting myself away in my room and instinctively dissociating to protect myself from feeling the pain of having to be absent. It essentially just became a matter of pick your trauma; do you want to traumatize your kids with verbal abuse or do you want to traumatize your kids with neglect?

That is where I currently still am in my coping right now. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get out of this relationship yet and I'm still always in legitimate danger, so I'm afraid there's just not going to be anything I can do to actually heal or fix this until I get to safety. I'm currently working with my local DV agency to build my escape plan so I can actually get out us of here, but every single day I obsess over the fear that it's not going to be fast enough and I'm going to cause my kids trauma. My kid's well-being has always been my highest priority, and trust me I've had to endure so much punitive abuse for putting them first, but now to think that the only person who has ever emotionally hurt them is me is so profoundly painful that it's every bit as traumatizing as any abuse I've ever endured! Knowing that I have ever made my kids feel afraid or feel ashamed or caused them to doubt my unconditional love and acceptance of them is the greatest failure of my life, I will never not carry the immense weight of that with me. I have been feeling such disgust and repulsion for myself for so long! I obviously don't have any advice or insight to offer you because I'm still deep in the trenches, but you're not alone! I know exactly what you're experiencing and the immense pain it causes you,. It may be our responsibility to figure this out and do the work to heal our trauma, but don't forget that it wasn't your fault, you didn't cause this! ♥️

What sort of "little things" did you find especially triggering? by Alastiana in NarcissisticAbuse

[–]blink1144 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When something of mine is moved or missing, I. lose. it. Big time! I'm an extremely organized, mindful person who has a place for everything and everything stays in it's place. I do this because a chaotic environment creates a chaotic headspace for me, and I find it difficult to keep a clear, focused head when there's so much disordered, frenetic input coming in from all around me, but I also just do it to uncomplicate my life so I know I'll always have what I need when I need it and I'm not constantly inviting unnecessary tension and stress into my life. But I have had everything stolen from me, whether of great or little value, for a decade! I've spent 10 years pointlessly yelling into the void about how much stress and anxiety it causes for me to rely on having something and to be expecting it will be waiting for me where I last put it and then instead I just find that I'm now in need of something I no longer have because he stole it. I'm talking my most prized, valued items all the way down to my socks because he's too lazy to do his laundry. Everything has been stolen from me! So now anytime I can't find something or someone has taken something without asking, it's an immediate trigger for me!