[Woman_Healing]

I have parents who are seen as enormously good members of society...helpful and giving. In reality, my mother has inwardly turned agner which manifests itself in anxiety, control, and withholding. My father is too weak to leave her or stand up to her and never protected us kids. I felt I wasn't worth enough because of the withholding.

As soon as I was old enough, I was handed the role of scapegoat. I was the golden child, strong, loving, smart, talented, beautiful - so I was chosen for this role. Thinking I deserved it and was "bad", I have always done things to perpetuate my staying in that role. Failed in school, became and alcoholic and drug addict, even got major disease. Thus, I became the scapegoat for my mother's whole side of the family who are all sick like her. For years I put up with brilliantly subtle, passive-aggressive, abusive comments which were meant to cut deep. They'd watch me struggle to trust myself or speak up which I never did and they could feel superior in comparison. This plays out in all my other relationships as an adult - people see I won't speak up and they treat me badly/abusively.

When I got sober my feelings cropped up and I became so emotionally ill that I stopped sleeping at night and have had to depend on my parents for financial support. I have drag myself around exhausted for years. This continues to give my mother a way to control and the whole cycle has remained. I can't get out. I get sicker and sicker.

I identify strongly with BPD and tried DBT but chose a spiritual program of recovery over it because it's the same tools but with a God, and the God aspect helps. I did that very hard work on myself for 3 years straight and started really healing. I wasn't sleeping yet but had tools to change these dynamics and I was feeling much better. Unfortunately, just as I was feeling better, I didn't put up boundaries with a man who has a history of violence and I had a brief relationship with him. He misrepresented himself to me and I happily settled for less because I wasn't healed enough still. I ended it quickly but my fear, trauma, and abandonment issues cropped up and I kept pulling him back in. His rage surfaced, he knew I didn't really want him, and he began to punish me. Threats, intimidation, destroyed my reputation by making public the things I had trusted him with, exaggerated facts to make me look worthless, and this pumped up his ego. The last time a woman rejected him he murdered a weak, innocent bystander and what I got was a psychological form of that murder - a thousand times more painful than physical. The intention has been to completely destroy any self-esteem I had worked for. I found myself in a very new and different scapegoat role. He and his family and friends are locals of the community I lived in and I'm not, so everyone jumped in, blame-shifting, feeling superiorly united.

I wish my father was willing to stand up for me, it would have made a difference, he's a powerful man in society. He lent no support and asked no questions about whether I was OK, etc...I know...I'm an adult. I have struggled for a whole year now. I moved away (funny - the scapegoat is always cast out, right?) and now I'm sicker than ever because I'm dealing with rage from 2 separate situations. I know my part. I know where I went wrong. But I can't heal, it's just too much. I'm hardly sleeping at all even with meds. My dreams are awful. I can't even settle down enough to nap. I have a terrific therapist but it's not enough. I'm in a spiritual program of recovery and that is I believe where most of my answers are. Prayer and helping others helps but I sure wish I could sleep. I need relief. Mostly, I stay in all day and punish myself down with cigarettes and try to keep my moods even with coffee. I am absolutely wiped out and exhausted. I believe I will die from cancer within a year or two if I don't get some relief. What can I do?

[sisu]

I'm sorry you went through this. You've expressed that you know what works for you- it sounds like you're waiting for the sense of safety to start going back into treatment. Maybe don't wait- you know you want to feel better?

Above all don't give up. You have a therapist, you have a program, work it till it works and ask your therapist for some better coping tools than the cigarettes (and explain what they do for you, when you do.)

[Woman_Healing]

Thanks. Good advice. Some days I feel better than others. I was feeling very hopeless when I wrote this the other day. I'm not going to give up.