u/PlumTourmaline

Trigger warnings: Narcissistic abuse, emotional abuse, suicidal ideation, self-harm

I have been doing IFS work for around a year at this point, and I have been identifying my exiles. After getting in touch with my unseen exile, I have started crying uncontrollably in my therapist's office (which I have never done), to the point where she asked me to return that same week. Today, I was yelling, borderline screaming, about what's going on in my life; I was crying, throwing tissues into the bin, standing up to pace before immediately sitting down, while meanwhile pausing twice to tell my therapist: "I'm not angry with you. I don't know what's come over me." Whenever they take hold, it's like I am terrified and see myself drowning and sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Has anyone else experienced this?

How I Was Feeling a Year Ago (Baseline):

I created something to describe what I learned in my first three years of therapy before I started IFS work (attached).

Parts Mapping:

Exile	Protector	Firefighter
Anger: Comes from the protest of being wronged, inability for my child self to say no, primary cause: emotional abuse	Empathy: Dissolving rage by focusing on the person that hurt me (parent, partner, etc.), fawn response	Binge Eating: Whenever triggered, I would unconsciously eat and eat to numb the pain
Grief: mourning what was never received or encouraged, primary cause: emotional neglect	Feelings of Helplessness/Hopelessness: If I don't know what I want (indecisive), I can't grieve not getting it. If nothing will change, there's no loss to feel. Feelings of confusion numb the pain.	Flooding: This is where it gets tricky, but I think my crying spells have been an attempt to halt access to grief and my unseen parts
The Unseen/Unheld: the core wound, no one is coming, I don't matter, I'll never see real love or be prioritized	The Analytical Researcher/Perfectionist: If I am competent enough, prepared enough, knowledgeable enough, I can outrun being hurt and will be chosen because I'm indispensable.	Engaging in Hookup Culture: Increasingly erratic/wild behavior

What I've Studied in Therapy:

Just for information, here is what I've focused on in the four years I've been in therapy. Wanna see how thorough my researcher/perfectionist part is? I've read like 35 books at this point and journaled hundreds of pages. Lol, he's a fun time (no, seriously, I told him I love him and thank you for getting me this far).

• Modalities:
  • CBT
  • IFS (current)
  • EMDR (starting)
• Areas of Study:
  • Attachment Theory: Shifted From Anxious Preoccupied > Earned Secure
  • Psychological Maltreatment: Emotional Abuse/Emotional Neglect
  • Family Systems Theory: Family Roles, Enmeshment, Undifferentiated Family Ego Mass, Parentification
  • Narcissistic Abuse: Gaslighting, DARVO, etc.
  • Boundary Setting: Self-Differentiation, Internal Locus of Control
  • Self-Compassion: Self-Kindness, Common Humanity, Mindfulness
  • Internal Family Systems: Firefighters, Protectors, Exiles
  • Nervous System States: Social Engagement, Fight or Flight, Fawn, Freeze
  • Other: Crucial Conversation Framework, EQ Framework, Self-Esteem, Psychosomatic Health, Shadow Work, Erikson's Stages of Development, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Historical Works of Philosophy/Poetry

What I Went Through/How We Got Here:

In my early adulthood, my Mom straight up out of the blue told me that she wanted to abort me but that family pressure stopped her from going through with it. She said it to me when we were alone, and I was dumbfounded. I told my Step-Dad what she said, and he didn't believe me. Fast forward a year, and she's crying in family therapy, and she's crying in front of the family therapist, saying: "You were always my gifted kid. So special, and I always loved you." And I'm watching, speechless, as the family therapist laps up everything she said. My personal therapist straight up said: "That's gaslighting." That's what made me realize that I experienced straight-up narcissistic abuse.

My memories of childhood are not that good. I remember my Mom and my Step-Dad were yelling and fighting every other day up until I left the house. They were always cursing. My Mom would yell obscenities about my biological Father and tell me to never listen to a word he said. She also refused to speak to him and his partner because my Dad's partner confronted her behavior. I remember talking on the phone with my Dad when I was little and playing telephone and telling my Mom when he wanted to see me, since she couldn't schedule with them on her own. I remember having a nightmare when I was a small kid that I was on a dark playground with one streetlamp working. My Mom was pushing me on the swing set. I turn around, and she doesn't have a face. She starts chasing me, and the second I go outside the area streetlamp illuminates, there isn't any ground, and I fall into an abyss.

I have been talking to my Dad and his now ex-partner about this time. I literally just learned like a week ago that she'd throw away all the presents my Dad got me since I was a baby. Apparently, she'd tell him: "Oh, he wasn't using it, so we got rid of it." Jackets, toys, etc. All down the trash. Apparently, that's why my Dad held onto my stuff, so when he would pick me up, I'd have it. When I was a teenager, she'd tell me: "He's just getting you that camping gear so he and his girlfriend can use it when you're not there. It's not even really for you."

I also just found out like a couple weeks ago that my Dad ACTUALLY paid child support. Mom always told me that he hadn't. My Dad's ex-partner told me on a recent call: "Oh, I would've never dated someone who didn't pay his child support. He made payments the entire time we dated. Just ask your Dad." Anyways, I call my Dad, and he says: "Yeah, when your Mom wanted to move out of state, she wanted to settle out of court. She told me: you can keep track of your travel experiences taking time off work/traveling out of state, and then if they exceed your required payment amount, then we can forego them." For context, my Dad was taking unpaid time off and only has a high school education. Anyways, he agrees to my Mom moving out of state, and he helps drive the moving truck to our new house out of state. He's with my Mom and my Step-Dad during the move, and she demands the child support payment, denies the existence of her previous verbal agreement, and starts crying to my Step-Dad about the situation in front of my Dad.

Here's how things went from there. I remember crying to my Mom when I was a little kid, but she was so angry about something I had said or done that she ignored me for a week. I would cry and have my arms outstretched to her, but she'd look down at me and frown and step back from me. She only talked to me again after I apologized over and over. I don't even remember what I did. I remember having to beg to do music in elementary school. I remember looking up how much the instrument cost and saying I wanted to join the school band/orchestra and giving a whole presentation about why it was a good idea (hello researcher/perfectionist part, nice to see you). After bothering her for a long time, I finally got my instrument, and I was so happy. Only to be followed by: "Wow, you sound terrible." and "I always hated Classical music." and "You never practice, what a shame." I ended up giving up.

My Mom and Step-Dad were always working. To the point where I was always the last kid to be picked up from school. I would wait in the library for two hours after school. When I was little, I could tell the front office workers and librarian did not like me. It was like this from elementary school to high school. Kids would make fun of me and say my parents must not love me (ironic now that my Mom has told me she never wanted me). Anyways, we'd come home, they'd fight about what was happening for dinner, and I would shut myself in my room to study. They said I was so gifted, to the point where they couldn't figure out my homework anymore, so they just signed me up for honors classes, and I had to fend for myself basically. The house was always dirty (borderline hoarder), and my Mom was always saving animals off the street, so we had like 10 cats/dogs at any given time, along with lizards and snakes and stuff. It was so stressful.

I was expected to get up, help my siblings get up, make myself breakfast, make them breakfast, pack my lunch, all before school. Sometimes if I didn't hear my parents shout from across the house, they'd say: "Oh, you must not have heard us when we shouted, so we didn't get you any takeout for dinner. You can go find something in the fridge." When I woke up late on Saturdays (because I stayed up late gaming on Friday nights avoiding them), they'd say: "Oh, you woke up late, so we didn't make you breakfast."

I stopped asking for help. I would cry myself to sleep all the time. I got so depressed, I stopped eating. And then at that point, they took me to weekly weigh-ins with my PCP, who'd look at the scale and told me: "Just eat more." At this point, my parents suspected I was gay, and they signed me up for sports, which I did for years and HATED. And ironically the men I was surrounded with were homophobic and the instructor was also homophobic and held me back from progressing with my peers.

My Step-Dad would humiliate me in public when I was bad. My Mom would humiliate me in front of my family on my birthday, getting me a children's book about the importance of positivity on my birthday when I was a teenager, ordering me to read it to my family in story-tale fashion in front of everyone. I was told I was "depressing", "sensitive", I was called a "dick" and a "slut" even though I hadn't even slept with anyone by seventeen.

When I was a teenager, my Dad disappeared for years as he helped his partner take care of her physically abusive and emotionally abusive mother, who was in end-of-life care, and he took on a bunch of credit card debt. At that point, I started to believe everything my Mom had ever said about him 'cause he wasn't in my life for years. It wasn't until confronting him in adulthood that I realized the truth: he didn't want me to think less of him as his son.

When I graduated college, I wanted to move out of state, but my Mom said: "If you get a job in-state and stay with us, we'll keep you on our health insurance and car insurance." At that point, I almost escaped to graduate school in Europe, sadly, I listened and stayed. As soon as I landed my job, they kicked me off their insurance. "We never made that promise," they said. Meanwhile, my siblings (who are older than I was at that time) are still being taken care of as their dependents.

There was a time when my parents were in a potentially life-threatening situation, and I picked them up in my car, saving their lives (I wanna spare the details). They refused to listen to my advice, refused to call 911, the whole shabang. When I called the local police department asking them to interview my parents and get a police report on file about the day prior, my parents yelled at me so bad I had to leave the house and stay with a friend. We were robbed when I was a kid too, lol.

My Mom forbade me from talking about my college degree at home. She said it was depressing and she didn't want to hear about it. I remember sharing with them my professional internship work in college, and her and my Step-Dad didn't even bother to look at it.

I dated emotionally abusive men. And men that weren't involved. And when I would bring them home to meet my parents for the first time, my parents would make fun of me in front of my boyfriends, telling them how needy I was as a kid and recounting as many embarrassing stories as possible. And my last ex didn't believe me when I said I was abused as a kid (I discovered last year in therapy what emotional neglect and abuse are and now I feel stupid). Before the breakup, he told me I'd been so depressing to be around for months (this was after starting IFS therapy) and that my Mom was right; he wished I'd just shut up so he could eat dinner in peace. I broke up with him. I saw a psychiatrist and got diagnosed with ADHD.

I started to understand the narcissistic abuse, the emotional neglect, emotional abuse, the malignant normalcy, everything. I realized that all my friends from before and exes had been incredibly toxic and narcissists and so many things. I dated a guy briefly in the last year and he held me when I cried, and I realized he was the first person to ever do that. I started looking at wedding rings without telling him, I texted him good morning everyday, I wrote down his favorite flower, coffee order, everything in my Notes app. But he decided to pursue a career change and told me to see other people. I realized later in therapy that I was in an over-giving dynamic, and I need someone who sees me weekly and prioritizes me.

Anyways, this is the part of the story that leads to where I am now. I told my Mom off and said: "I refuse to talk to you again unless we're in a family therapy office." And so we're in the family therapy office, and I find out my sister was cutting herself for years and was going to kill herself. When I was a teenager, I literally told my parents: "There is something wrong with her. I think she's depressed. She needs a therapist." And they told me: "You're a dumb kid. You don't know what you're talking about. Stop backseat parenting." And then my Mom would turn up the radio so loud I couldn't talk to them in the car. Well, now I am learning all these years later I was right. There was something wrong. I almost lost my sister.

I started having weekly panic attacks. My psychiatrist diagnosed me with PTSD and apologized for not diagnosing it sooner (I think I subconsciously hid my symptoms from her). Seeing my sister like this, I couldn't deny how bad my childhood was anymore. I failed a class for graduate school two semesters in a row. I've never failed or had to withdraw from a class EVER IN MY LIFE. I have been crying like daily. I started seeing a trauma specialist. My family doesn't know about the panic attacks, PTSD, nothing. And they never will. They have lost access to my inner life, they're not safe, they'll never change I accept that. Blah blah blah. But then recently, I was hospitalized (for a non-mental health reason), and then I had to call my parents since they're my medical power of attorney. And I lost my shit. Like completely. I was like: I wish anyone else was here. I wish I wasn't alone. I wish I had a loving husband so I didn't have to go through this alone.

I've been talking to my unseen exile, and all he wants is a loving husband and to be a loving husband. But all my exes weren't there enough or were emotionally abusive, or they didn't believe me. It's hard to believe in love, and I'm scared. I'm on dating apps, and I'm like self-sabotaging, liking people that seem nice that I'm not even attracted to because they have thoughtful bios. Lord forbid I raise my standards to be someone that I'm attracted to AND is emotionally available AND is reciprocal. I worked so hard to get to earned secure attachment, and get a good job, and get and furnish my apt all nice, and adopt my pet, and I take music lessons, and have a bunch of friends. But I am struggling right now; I want to build something with someone. When I left my past relationship and have been living on my own, I cried when I realized I was feeling peace for the first time. I am not in a rush to give up my peace for the wrong person, but like also I don't want to fucking be in the hospital again and worried about dying and be all fucking alone.

Where I Am Right Now:

I am in so much pain. I am so tired of my friends telling me not to let my past stop me from having a beautiful present and future. Having me do gratitude exercises with them. It's like my pain is too uncomfortable for people, and because I'm a man, no-one wants to hug me or hold me or physically console me. It's awful. Horrible. My therapist asks me how I'm feeling, and I just say: "Horrible." I randomly cry silently in public now. I feel like a madman.