I'd like to share something that happened to me repeatedly as a young (13-14 years of age) teen. Maybe someone else here has experienced something like it. My mother was a narcissist and my father her enabler. My relationship with my mother was sad in that I received next to no emotional nuturing or warmth from her. Had it not been for my father's love and approval, I'd have grown up scarcely knowing what love was.

My mother used me as a buffer between herself and my father, whom she despised because he loved and displayed affection to me that she believed should be hers alone. Sometimes for days or weeks at a time she would sleep in the extra bed in my bedroom rather than sleep with my father, presumably to punish him for some unknown offense. I call it "psychosexual" abuse. I don't know if that's a legitimate term; I made it up. By the time I was 15 or so, the abuse stopped. Why? I don't know.

I grew up not knowing how to establish personal boundaries, with chronic depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. I eventually married an abuser. For many years I was disconnected from my feelings, experiencing from time to time what I can only describe as bizarre "out-of-body" episodes where I felt like I didn't recognize people I'd known for all my life, like I was meeting them for the first time; the same with certain physical locations. Twenty years ago, through the suggestion of my therapist, I confronted my parents (together at the same time) with what had happened. Both of them denied what had happened. My father said he couldn't remember . My mother went so far as to say that I'd "imagined" it all. Gaslighting, I think they call it.

What happened here? Has anyone else experienced anything like this? Thanks for listening.