Need help moving from grief to healing (first time poster)

[Merv_Griffin]

Nearly two years ago, I ended contact with my mother, who has BPD. I come from a long line of survivors of this diagnosis: my maternal grandmother had it and my mom ceased contact with her when I was a child. I also strongly suspect my sister has some form of the condition (she has no contact with my father, and she and I have little contact with one another). We are a prime example of how BPD can split families apart with lasting effects.

I'm in my mid-forties, mom to two fabulous, warm, kind kids (ages 8 and 10), and married to a wonderful partner who is himself a survivor of a similar parenting dynamic. We work hard to provide our children with the steady, nurturing care we both lacked as kids ourselves.

After ending my relationship with my mom, my psychiatrist and psycho-therapist both diagnosed me with PTSD from the decades of significant abuse and neglect I experienced with my mom. I am still working through that diagnosis, and allowing myself to feel and grieve my childhood after many years dismissing or intellectualizing it and acting as though it was all in the past. The official end of my relationship with my mom sparked a series of major health issues for me (new diagnosis with a chronic illness), which I think was my body's was of finally acknowledging how much pain was still active in me, deep down.

Day to day, I am "fine." I run a highly successful business as a writer and consultant, adore my partner and kids, do volunteer work and have a wonderful group of loving, supportive friends. At night, I'm plagued with awful, violent nightmares and yell or cry in my sleep. I'm hoping to learn from this community and find a way to access and heal that deeply wounded person who only seems to come out when I'm unconscious or through physical ailments like my chronic daily migraines and ulcerative colitis.

Thanks in advance for allowing me to be a part of this community. I've never formally connected with anyone else who has had similar experiences, and I'm both a little scared and very grateful.

[Sylfine]

Hi Merv_Griffin.  No advice as I am new to this too.  Just wanted to say welcome and offer big virtual hugs!  This is a great community to be a part of. Reading other people's stories can be very helpful - you're not alone.  You made a huge step and it will continue to get better

[Merv_Griffin]

Thank you so much for the welcome! I'm really grateful to be here and looking forward to learning more.

[zachira]

Yours is a familiar tragic story very similar to what many of us who post here have experienced with our disordered family members. I would say that the healing begins with being present with your feelings and body sensations as much as you can, so you can process what has happened to you, and reduce the flashbacks and nighmares to a point that you are only occasionally overwhelmed in intensity and length of time by past trauma incidents. EMDR has been the most helpful to me in reducing flashbacks and nightmares. Normal memories are memories we control, and we can decide that we just don't want to think about the memory in the moment, whether it is a pleasant memory or a painful one. Traumatic memories are stuck in hanging files that can overwhelm us at any moment, and EMDR puts those memories in normal files. EMDR also teaches how to be present in the moment, something I was unable to do due to having a mother who was unable to nurture children in any way and who left me in the crib all day as baby to fend for myself except for getting fed and diapered. I have found body work to be invaluable in healing trauma, and am continually working on ways to loosen my stiff body parts that keep me from grieving my most painful feelings. I recommend reading "The Body Knows the Score" which explores the most current modalities for healing trauma, and focuses on the body-mind connection for healing.
We are here to listen and support you. Do let us know what you need and how we can be the most helpful.

[Merv_Griffin]

Wow. Thank you so much, Zachira, for that.

I just learned about EMDR this year, when my therapist recommended it. I'm eager to find a practitioner here in Washington, DC, which is much trickier in the time of COVID. The one my therapist recommended is not taking new clients, though I've left a message asking for other names.

Naming and accepting a diagnosis of childhood trauma has been both incredibly important and equally as difficult for me. I've spent my life intellectualizing my mom's behavior and abuse and trying to distance myself from it; when I share stories it's always under the guise of "get a load of this crazy thing" she did, but behaving as though I'm fully past it all and fine. In high school, when the worst of her abuse occurred, I was a mess: suicidal, isolated and in terrible shape. But I've become a successful adult with strong relationships, a great job and a community, etc., and so I've essentially compartmentalized everything that happened as a kid, not in the least because so few friends can relate to that level of dysfunction.

It was not until I ended my relationship with my mom that I started really grasping the full effects of her abuse, rather than seeing it all as "in the past." The pain from it has had to go somewhere, and it's ended up all over my body. I have chronic migraines, ulcerative colitis (which began almost immediately after moving to no-contact status), and a long history of insomnia, anxiety, depression, shame, and self-loathing. I've spent so many years dismissing my experiences with my mom because they weren't obvious, physical abuses and in the grand scheme of terrible things that happen to children I felt like a poseur using the same term. (Yes, my mom would threaten to kill herself in front of us. She would force my crying sister to get on a scale and tell her she'd have to buy clothes in the chubby section. She faked a miscarriage to make me feel bad for not paying enough attention to her. But it's not like she _starved_ me, or that I grew up with rats in my crib or being beaten with a rubber hose.)

[Merv_Griffin]

Also, I was interested to see your comment about being left alone in your crib, Zachira. Obviously, I have no idea how often or how much my mom did this, but since I was a child she would cheerfully tell stories of how I was such a colicky, difficult baby that she would put me in my crib and go to a different floor in the house and turn on a fan while I cried. No wonder I have nightmares, right?

[Goldcrest]

It was not until I ended my relationship with my mom that I started really grasping the full effects of her abuse, rather than seeing it all as "in the past." The pain from it has had to go somewhere, and it's ended up all over my body. I have chronic migraines, ulcerative colitis (which began almost immediately after moving to no-contact status), and a long history of insomnia, anxiety, depression, shame, and self-loathing. I've spent so many years dismissing my experiences with my mom because they weren't obvious, physical abuses and in the grand scheme of terrible things that happen to children I felt like a poseur using the same term. (Yes, my mom would threaten to kill herself in front of us. She would force my crying sister to get on a scale and tell her she'd have to buy clothes in the chubby section. She faked a miscarriage to make me feel bad for not paying enough attention to her. But it's not like she _starved_ me, or that I grew up with rats in my crib or being beaten with a rubber hose.)

All the above  It is brutal, terrifying and potentially annihilating to a child. Your mother is your protector while you navigate a strange world. She provides everything as you are helpless and depend upon her. When your mother is not safe, that is utterly terrifying. For those of us with BPD mothers the very fact that they can't even see how their behaviour has caused deep damage means we are left doubting ourselves. We think...surely it wasn't that bad. Surely I am have mis-remembered it. You ask yourself...am I making it up? But why would you make any of this up? If we had had a safe and secure childhood we wouldn't need to. We'd be skipping through a field right now with our children thinking about our next family holiday somewhere pretty...It is real and as damaging as it feels.

[zachira]

You are wondering if the nightmares you have might be connected to early childhood abuse. I think that is very likely. Our earliest memories are bodily memories and there is no verbal narrative. We only remember things starting at about 3-4 years of age. The nightmares I used to have were just terrifying. A common nightmare was that I was falling into a deep dark hole, and I would wake up terrified just before hitting the ground. 
I am sad to hear all the abuse that you have suffered from your mother. Now that you are no longer in contact, you are in a safe place to remember the abuse, though probably not ready to process those memories without the help of a therapist. Once  you learn some techniques to not be so ovewhelmed by the memories, you will be able to do a lot of healing and processing on your own. What do you do now for relief when you are overwhelmed by the memories and nighmares?

[Merv_Griffin]

Zachira, you are right again. I was talking with my therapist about this today (She's great, and the one who recommended EMDR, which I'm trying to get into now.) On top of the trauma of my mom leaving me in my crib to cry for who knows how long, she would re-traumatize me by telling me that she did it because I was a difficult, colicky baby. I'd never thought about it that way: that on top of how awful it is to leave a crying baby alone and unattended, cheerfully relaying that she did that without any regret or remorse just compounds it. But she has done stuff like that my whole life, really. It was part of what caused me to move to no contact: when she denied for the fourth time that I'd told her about being sexually assaulted in college and she brushed it off as "probably being consensual."

I'm pretty terrible at self care, I'll be honest. I have a busy professional life, plus full time parenting in the time of COVID. The only "respite" I take is the occasional nap during the day, though increasingly I've been too anxious to really do that. I'm really hoping I can find someone who will be able to see me for EMDR to start that process.  I'm lucky to live in a big urban area with plenty of practitioners, but less lucky that COVID 19 means a lot of them aren't seeing people or taking new clients.

[zachira]

The EMDR will teach you to be present and then you can do a lot of healing on your own. I had terrible problems with disassociation and being unfocused until I did EMDR. As a baby left in the crib crying with no caregiver to comfort you, can you imagine what that has done to your brain and how you process emotions? I am sad to hear that you are a victim of such terrible neglect, and you are on the right path trying to find an EMDR therapist.