Dear Sue, it’s so good that you have worked your way through this. That kind of guilt can eat us up if we don’t face it. Thank you for sharing!

Dear Felice, thank you for sharing your story. It warms my heart to know that I have been helpful to you in your healing. Take care!

For years I had been struggling with a self-esteem that couldn’t get any lower, depression and anxiety but I couldn’t bring myself to honestly see how it was related to my childhood. Several of my family members have autism and my mother had a victim mentality and clung on to me because I was so empathic. The concept of personal boundaries didn’t exist in our home and as the confidant in the family I felt like I was carrying everyone emotionally. In my early twenties, everytime I tried to be honest with myself I got so overwhelmed by guilt that I forced myself back in my altered version of the truth (You have too much to be grateful for, your parents gave what they could and that should be enough, etc.).

When I was 22 my mother had a serious accident and landed in a coma in IC. I felt my father and brothers as a burden. They couldn’t carry me in this extremely stressful time (couldn’t make me feel safe, supported or comforted) but they (especially my father) were still counting on me to carry them. I just wanted them to go away. The waves of guilt that followed were horrible and I ofcourse went out of my way to support everyone, regardless of my own emotional state.

5 years later (after 2 burn-outs and a relationship with a narcissist) I came across your website and I started seeing a therapist. It’s been 1,5 year and I have made enormous leaps forward. I can finally embrace the truth, take myself seriously and let go of the conviction that I am responsible for my family’s well-being (the hardest thing I have ever done). Keeping a healthy emotional distance from my parents is still a challenge and sometimes very painful with my mom. But I will keep doing it because I know that even though I feel responsible for them I AM NOT. Thank you thank you for showing me the truth in the way you did, it convinced me in a way that I could never have convinced myself <3

Dear Jacqueline, thank you for sharing your story. Now is your time to treat yourself as you’ve always deserved.

I wasn’t physically growing from about 0-4 years and was in and out of the hospital and doctor’s offices being poked and prodded repeatedly without it really being explained to me. My emotional needs were never met.

I didn’t know how to name was I was feeling until a year and a half in trauma therapy.

Had a major fall from a tree when I was 8 that erased most of my memories from there and back. I don’t know which memories are real or reconstructed ones.

Was sexually abused by my older brother who repeatedly broke into my room at night, and I knew my parents wouldn’t meet my needs, so I never fully told them.

Still struggling with whether or not to tell them.

Watched my older brothers fight violently and them and my parents screaming at each other most of my life.

Got married young, was infertile for 5 years. Had a tough physical time with my first pregnancy (blackouts, nauseated all the time, and just extremely hormonal and exhausted). Threw up a ton in labor and had birth trauma because I tore and felt all of it.

Unexpectedly miscarried when my daughter was 10 months old. Didn’t know I was pregnant again…

Had past sexual traumas triggered at the hospital while being in complete shock over the miscarriage. Never felt my emotions after the initial shock. I was numb.

7 months later, I conceived again and thought my son would die, too. Just super anxious, but I couldn’t name what I was feeling at the time, so kept trudging through life trying to raise my kids.

Birthed my son and sexual abuse and miscarriage traumas were all triggered. Labor stalled off and on for three days because I was scared to birth my son and didn’t realize it at the time. (Didn’t want him to die, didn’t want to be violated by a boy down there, miscarried through the birth canal, too). So I had an overload of emotions and now way to unravel them all.

Went about life because I was used to internal chaos. Tried to raise my kids, but I began snapping at them and becoming distant and disconnected from them and my husband.

My relationship with my daughter had changed after the miscarriage… And I was struggling to connect with my son, too.

I began having more and more emotional flashbacks (I discovered I have CPTSD) to the point that I was a danger to myself and others, and I could feel it coming, but couldn’t express the gravity to my family.

After an internal implosion and then external explosion with my husband and his family, I was removed from the house and later discovered I not only have CPTSD, but also CEN.

I had dissociated so much of my childhood that I only realized my sexual abuse traumas were the issue and they were the only issues that had been affecting me… but it ran so much deeper than I could ever see or know until I married into a family the polar opposite of mine (which was scary, btw, when I started to see and recognize the differences).

So, from someone learning to heal from many deep trauma wounds, thank you. Because despite all I went through as a child, the guilt I feel for my siblings and I having gone through what we did, and the guilt I feel for now setting boundaries with them and coming across as cold and heartless (to them) is weighty.

Self love and self care has slowly helped me to heal and start standing up for myself and what I need/want.

Dear Susan, your post resonated with me. It took me thirty years to say enough, and I lost everyone in my birth family. I also had to lose many friends because my friendships were rooted in my dysfunctional coping mechanisms. Although I have a few friends and lovely newfound relatives, I still feel totally isolated and alone because it’s difficult to explain to most people how the emotional neglect and dysfunction has caused me so much heartache, and I don’t think it will ever quite go away. Unless people have walked in our shoes, it is very hard for them to comprehend, adding further to the feelings of isolation. I found group therapy very helpful, not to make friends, but to hear other’s stories and to learn there are others like me and that I am not alone. I have had to learn not to confide in those who simply cannot understand for the sake of my own emotional safety. Not because they are nasty, but because they haven’t had my experience and therefore cannot give me the empathy I need. My first great therapist always reminded me “not to go to the hardware store for milk”. I wish you all the good things you hold dear.

Thank you for sharing that, Richard. Lots of helpful advice in there for others.