I just don't understand how to move on from the past&get my energy back from vampires

He also had this view of how women are so self-sacrificially altruistic and men aren't, LOL
He probably programmed others into doing that for him. (I do know of one case where he did but I don't know of a lot of details)

Sometimes it just takes time to process everything - and if it takes years, then it takes years. I am still reeling from a former abusive relationship before my marriage whereby I was hurt very very badly. It's taken me three years so far to heal from it and I am still not fully healed. He took a part of me and I haven't gotten it back yet.

I think if you step back from the details and look at the whole picture it will help. To see the person(s) as abusive and manipulative. To know that their actions were harmful to you and that it was not about love, true caring or respect. It was about power and control over you. That's what abusers are about - it's all about having power and control over others. Know that it was not your fault. You did not cause this. You did not deserve it. Be empowered by the fact that you did sever all contact because you knew it was harmful to you. Be glad that you've removed that from your life so that they cannot continue to harm you. You're going to be a stronger person for this experience.

I see....do you know what part of yourself he took away? How do you get it back?



I like your summary, thank you. Of course, I do already have this big picture but you kind of put it more emotionally with empathy for me. I am going to try and focus on all this big picture and not get swayed again and pulled back in my mind. I really feel I DO have a RESOLVE for this finally. I did process more last evening too and that I think helps too.

You won't believe this actually!! I went back to old facebook talks where I was trying to get him to take some responsibility or at least clear up things for me and give me closure. Err, at least???? It wouldn't have happened without him taking responsibility lol. So anyway, I finally understood the worst part of what he was saying. It always tripped me up before!!

Basically, he seemed so spiritual and that tripped me up before. Like, he did ACTUALLY get admitted to a buddhist university the same year as his ****up with me. I'm not joking. Things like that always bugged me still even if I tried to just tell myself that eh, it's just something he did on the side and doesn't mean anything. But he did do yoga too for a very long time and became a yoga teacher etc etc. A helpful person on the surface and so on.

So you can see how I was tripped up in all that. But I read the very last chat we had before I cut him off. And before we had that last chat he was already ********ting me with how he just expressed himself (when he shouldn't have!! Not keeping boundaries. Yes this was about cheating too, very serious cheating, serial cheater & the manipulation on top of it). So then I asked bc I knew he was so into this buddhist crap, I asked what system of principles he has that it can be compatible with that, THAT emotionally abusive behaviour.

And he linked this buddhist website to me and it talked about buddhist principles... and he emphasised the one called brahmacharya and it just said on that site that it's like having sex with a pure intention in the heart. And I didn't really pay attention to that back then, ... But I looked it all up now and it's SO IRONIC it's about sexual moderation and a proper loving relationship, for a SERIAL CHEATER ?!??! LOL

Anyway back then I didn't look it up, I just plain got stuck on how he noted it means that you should avoid sexual objectification..... I got at him immediately that he did objectify me and others like f*** and we got into an argument about it lol so we never went back to the buddhist principles.

And then ..... Discovering this, I'm like.... I finally see such a truly obvious lie, thank god. I mean I knew he lied anyway, but this was just really so obvious like he tried to lie to me about his attitude to sex when his attitude was already VERY clear to me about it loool.

I mean. Very simple lie. "I'm a serial cheater and I am justifying it to you with brahmacharya (sexual moderation, sex from pure intent from the heart, a pure relationship)."

(No joke. His idea was free expression from the pure heart or whatever LOL. No, he denied being into polyamory. Plus polyamory is straightforward, it's not cheating behind the back of your partner)

It just gives me such an objective grounding finally that I didn't have before. I had some but this gave me way MORE. I felt shock but I also felt relief and I got over the shock and I just feel relief but I also do feel some nausea and feeling like throwing up but that's also strangely relieving eventually

Also it's really sickening spiritual abuse - on top of the emotional abuse also involved here - because it's like he expected me to also believe that he was following this essence of this principle about seeing the soul rather than just the person in a relationship, and specifically in an emotionally balanced relationship. I know for a FACT that he saw anything about me but not my soul.


The end. Thanks for reading...

Where I say I know for a FACT that he did not see my soul, is because of how he TREATED me (and other women). And I mean, I was tryin to make sense of the emotional part beyond the sex part, I wanted to see if he still had some feelings after all, but since all the processing I've done in these 3 years since I cut him off, I did slowly discover how bad he really treated me emotionally. Which explained why I got such bad emotional and mental reactions from it and why it nearly fully destroyed me. So the processing for 3 years it wasn't a wasted time because I couldn't have seen the above either without it. If that makes sense. I just am glad that I can point to this lie, besides other lies, this one just really hits deep and really untangles s*** for me.

I really do also dislike how much he denied any wrongdoing too. Like it was all staring in the face, sex is a pretty objective act, even if I tried to explain away the emotional expressing of his, but he thought he can just CALMLY, FIRMLY and OPENLY deny it, it was so shocking I couldn't even believe it and I didn't take it in. But it's all of course making full sense by now.

Hi, I too have been through a very similar experience with a person who was sucking the energy out of me and I had to cut ties for my emotional energy. However, I do understand how replaying the past in the mind, can draw you back into the same experience and some guilt from removing yourself Ifrom the people who drained your energy. I, found that when this happens to me the way I cope is to send energy to those people explaining exactly why I left their lives. Somehow, this gives me peace in my heart and mind. Hope this helps and good luck.

Thanks for your post. I kinda had the impulse to do that before but if I did it for too long then it started to feel intrusive thinking of these people & deff not giving me peace

Yeah the guilt from who knows if you were judging wrong even when your energy is completely drained is lol and ridiculous and unnecessary and pointless

How did you cut emotional ties?

This is important to see. It sounds like you gave them more value then they actually deserved. You are still doing that without realizing it. You are still holding onto your own hurt feelings that were caused by two people who never had the capacity to respect your feelings in the first place.

Do you understand what an emotional vampire is? An emotional vampire is someone who constantly needs others to vent their emotional challenges to, they are not emotionally mature where they can resolve their emotional challenges on their own. This type of person is NOT going to appreciate you the way you think, in fact if you don't service THEIR need the way THEY want, you can most definitely expect that person to trash you and tell the world how awful you are.

It's often a person that chases this need to be "special" to make up for not feeling that way when they were a child. OR its a person who was treated like they were special who expects that same treatment from others as they tend to feel entitled. Both need their ego to take priority and neither will give you "genuine love". You know that saying "sheet floats"? Well, that's typically what gets to the top sadly.

If you have not moved on then there is something you need to learn from the experience you had with these two people. Part of your healing is recognizing your own part in this bad experience. From what you shared it sounds like you gave more of yourself than you should have to individuals that did not have the ability to appreciate you. If you are only wonderful when you are constantly servicing another's emotional needs then that's a red flag.

People often tell you who they are by what they say or share about themselves. My suggestion is BELIEVE them and don't think you can change them either. I think if you revisit what you experienced with these two individuals, you will see that they never really saw you but used you. Some people simply are not worth handing our heart to.

Thanks for your input. With some of it, I'm not sure if you read the whole thread though. I was not speaking of hurt feelings per se. I wish I was. And this whole thread is about trying to see what I'm missing about how it's taking so long to get past all of this issue, but some of it really is just it being a slow process.


Yeah that was a great summary. I didn't call them specifically emotional vampires, but one of these people was definitely a classic emotional vampire. And the other one was too in the sense that they used drama even if more subtle drama than the first person, to get their needs serviced lol. I really liked your phrasing there. Servicing needs is what they actually EXPECTED, yeah.

YES totally.

Well the thing is if I had seen it was about their emotional and other needs being serviced, I'd have not got into it. When I did see it finally was when I ran from it. And I've been trying to get past it all since then (3 years).

I don't really like to think of it as, "recognising my own part in the experience". I've tried to take enough responsibility already, clearly overdoing that, in too many ways. I prefer to view it instead as, simply recognising what I can learn and how to avoid such extremely bad experiences/people in future. Leaving my own "responsibility" out of it when viewing it this way. Because I've already had these toxic people try and put ALL the blame on me both in overt and subtle ways.

Well, actually responding to your first post made me think & realise that a BIG part with it taking so much time to heal and move on is that I still have had to undo all the subtle blame put on me. Actually that is something I am actively working on lately. Because, all the blame and gaslight, it ended up in me not even seeing that it all wasn't even my fault. And that's very dangerous to psychological and emotional health and makes moving on impossible. So yes it has to be fully recognised and through recognising this I can then fully take in that they really just tried to exploit me and it was not ME. None of it was me. So yeah, your last sentence. Definitely.

It has nothing to do with me wanting to change them, either. I don't really believe in people changing all that often. It truly is just them orchestrating things with gaslight and manipulation so that I would have a very hard time getting rid of the feeling that maybe it was something I did.... NO. It wasn't.

So again I appreciate your wanting to help but please when you see people talking about trauma then understand that it is not about "holding on to" "hurt feelings" and it is most decidedly not about what the abused and traumatised person's "responsibility" was in "letting it all happen".

That's emotionally bad input and not fitting the situation. Be please careful to not add further damage for such people. I am aware of what it is so you didn't cause damage to me, but if you see a similar situation for someone else, please remember this. Thanks.

Actually, as a person who also struggles with ptsd and is sensitive as you are, I understand what you are saying when you talk about not blaming the victim. What I said was not "consciously" realizing what you are holding onto.

When I say what part of this experience did you play, it's not about blaming you at all. Instead it's about how you got pulled into something that was unhealthy for you. We tend to hang onto things that ended up hurting us because there is something about the experience we still need to see for self preservation. Our emotions contribute to our self preservation more than we consciously realize.

I believe that you made an effort to be a "good" friend to both these individuals. Because of that you invested more into these two people than they deserved or had the ability to respect and appreciate. You ended up getting hurt and as soon as you set up your own emotional boundaries you got abandoned in some way.

I am sure both of these individuals had something about them that you liked. They also most likely responded positively to your effort to care about their needs too. They rewarded you and you thought they cared when they did that. THAT is the part you miss, that feeling that someone was appreciating your effort to care. We ALL like to be appreciated, it helps us feel positive about ourselves right? We can be so willing to engage that way that we don't see how our effort is not as valued as we think it is.

Now, you have said here that you can't change another person and the only one you can change is yourself right? Well, it's ok to continue to be a "nice/caring" person and to even feel good about helping others too. However, what you need to learn is how to recognize the signs that your efforts are not being respected and appreciated the way you really want, a way that is actually healthy for you.

By understanding how others may not really appreciate what you give them of yourself. What you miss is that period where you thought they did. It's important to understand how some individuals can be very charming and how they can pull you into their drama where you don't realize it's really ALL ABOUT THEM. You most likely miss the love bombing you got, the idea that you had value, yet, as soon as you had emotional boundaries of your own, what happened? That is not a relationship that you should ever re-engage. Instead it's more important to see it for what it really was so you don't fall into engaging in that kind of relationship again. Yes, sometimes we hand our heart to the wrong person and that's what you need to see in this experience that keeps nagging at you emotionally.

These individuals, like all individuals that are self centered never had the ability to appreciate you and your feelings and boundaries. Instead of respecting YOUR identity, you were supposed to cater to THEIR identity. This can go way back for a person who was raised to only have value when the parents got THEIR needs met.

These terms like emotional neglect and emotional abuse and emotional blackmail are all ways of describing what can happen to a child growing up where the parent or parents fail to realize their job as a parent is to help the child develop their OWN identity instead of constantly trying to control who or what that child can be. And that a parent is constantly deciding the value of the child, even in telling the child not to feel this or that. And then often parents are so busy with their own challenges and wants and needs that they fail to think about the child's needs. Sometimes without realizing it the parent actually teaches their child what to see as normal and that can lead that child down a very unhealthy road where they gravitate to the wrong people because something is familiar or someone is being nice to them only to use them.

There are times where a grievence can go back very far, a familar hurt that causes us to feel worse about a failed relationship than we consciously realize. Often a person is raised to believe they are supposed to love a parent or a sibling even when that parent or sibling isn't nice or may even be selfish. Even in religion often we are told to love thy neighbor even when thy neighbor is selfish and disrespects our boundaries. We are supposed to be good and love them anyway? Honor thy parents? Even if thy parents behave badly and are mean to each other and neglect our needs?

Growing up I watched my father be mean to my mother. And my mother would say "we have to accept people for the way they are". My father only saw something as important IF IT WAS IMPORTANT TO HIM. I remember my mother spending time to look beautiful when they went out and every single time when my mother came down the stairs my father ALWAYS found something to say to deflate her ego.

When I sit and read about narcissistic behaviors, there are so many things that I read that bring back memories of how my father treated my mother. A child has no idea what that means but THEY FEEL IT. That can cause that child to navigate their life thinking some of these behaviors are "normal" when they are instead unhealthy. Also, this can actually lead this child to gravitate to someone who is nice to them, but someone who is only being nice to them TO USE THEM.

The truth is that some people simply cannot SEE you no matter how nice you are as a person. The individual just want's an audience, a kind of fan club to service their fragile ego. You are permitted to be in their orbit as long as you are "useful" to them. What are the tells? Often a tell is "you don't make me feel good so I am discarding you". Then they will say "you did this and that when you should have done this instead", so they WANT to make sure you are left feeling you are not "good enough" and that is because this other person needed to have "all the power and attention". So, you were charmed and then discarded. You were only wonderful if you served and serviced, only given to so that you would serve. They say "I am special" otherwise I am angry. This you must believe.

This is why you feel your energy is sucked out of you. These type of individuals get good at sucking people into their drama. There was something you enjoyed, something that made you feel worthy somehow right? Well, you have to get "something" to keep you present right? They DO know this and they feed you just enough so you keep FEEDING THEM.

Hi @Alive99, my apologies for not replying to your last reply to me. This week has been lost on me (due to my own emotional pain and healing process from abuse, etc).

My abusive husband kept trying to blame HIS infidelity on ME because I called the police on him one night. Well, WHY did I call the police? Because HE was screaming at ME, I got scared of him so I called 911. So, he twists around the entire situation to be MY doing... when I was reacting to HIS ABUSE towards me.

Abusers will always try to put blame on you for their bad behavior. They just cannot handle taking ownership of what they do that is harmful to others. Why is that? Because they have such feeble egos, that their weak and meagre ego cannot take it. So they deflect, deflect deflect onto their victims.

And what's so hard is to NOT allow the blame... to NOT absorb it, and to send it right back in their direction. A responsible, caring and introspective person will think, huh, maybe I DID do something wrong, and that's why they're behaving so poorly towards me.

However, the KEY thing here is this: We are never responsible for someone else's behavior. We are responsible for our own behavior only - and same goes for every other person. Even if someone is angry, hurt, disappointed, enraged, upset, etc with us, they can handle their upset in a MATURE and ADULT like manner. And that means explaining to someone in a calm manner - I am hurt or disappointed by you, etc. And then discussing it openly, calmly and maturely. That's what healthy communication looks like.

Abusers and toxic people do not handle their emotions in a healthy, mature and adult-like manner. Instead, they act out their emotions in hurtful and harmful ways. This is a very dysfunctional way of being and of existing in this world - it's a dysfunctional way of dealing in interpersonal relations. So they wreak havoc wherever they go.

I am probably not saying anything you don't already know. But for me, it helps me to think of things from this perspective and to reframe a situation in this way.

I hope you can find some amount of peace during this holiday season time.... you did nothing wrong. You are not to blame for others' poor behaviors, and you are not responsible for their poor treatment of you - just remember this.

Here's to our healing journey. Hugs to you.

Hey, no worries and thanks actually. I've been in that process to a LOT. I'll go check your thread soon.

Yup that's just crazy stuff.

I just think everyone has their blind spots where they don't notice this is happening. And other things where they instantly "send it back" without even having to think about it.

So working on the blind spots helps.

Yes, that is put really well, sure I know all this but I feel that is a good summary to put it that way, that we are not responsible for other people's behaviour. Thanks.

Thanks for this. I know it in theory but it helps actually hearing it too. Hugs to you too! And yeah keep going with your recovery.

hey @Open Eyes, I only read your 3 posts now. I'll respond to the last one first because it was emotionally very ...affecting me.

I really really want to say that it's not true with trauma. Trauma is about about failure to integrate the experience and the emotions. It's NOT about holding onto normal hurts. If therapists told you that then they did not really experience trauma. And where you say that the abuse was embarrassing, I would say NO!, it's only an embarrassment to the abuser at best lol, it's NOT an embarrassment to the abused.

You wrote a lot about your sister. And I could relate a lot there. Alot and then when you got to the point where you said people tell you all the time that you are just holding onto hurt feelings I got upset and angry like how can people tell anyone that. To me it's just like, if you loved someone that much, it's just going to be like that, how can you even expect yourself to just go decide and kill that love ???? : ((

I mean I have tried to do that and it's just CRUEL having to try to do it.

I don't care if anyone calls that holding onto hurts!! On top of dealing with the whole trauma experience!!

Sorry. I have to calm down and think more about all of this. Alot of your thoughts there I have had myself. I also felt angry yes, I just don't know at who or what. Angry at the person I used to know and who damaged me so much? Angry at the world for being just like that?


EDIT: And yes there is such a thing as trauma bond. But I'm not even talking about trauma bond (that's bad though), I'm talking about what I (or you) felt for the person before the horribleness started. I knew them before it went all so bad. It actually is true in both cases, both people I mentioned.

And I don't want to like, invalidate or humiliate those feelings, how I felt, myself for feeling/having felt them. IT'S FINE. Fine that I felt them.

It's extra sad if others then all try to just help and be well-meaning and then just actually try and invalidate and humiliate the feelings.



EDIT2: I saw you deleted the third post now. I hope you don't mind me having responded to it ? let me know.

OK, I'm responding to this too. I think while the experience is not even fully integrated emotionally, it's really pointless to talk about hurt feelings. It really just makes me feel like...I don't know but it definitely just hinders the processing of the trauma. This is my experience, this is not the first time I hear advice like this.


And everyone I've talked to who experienced trauma has said the same to me, that it's maybe well-meaning advice but it's not really good for trauma. (A few people)

And then even for the old feelings of care and love, it's not good for that either, for me personally at least. But I wrote about that in my previous post.


And yeah I said it's cruel having to try and kill that previous love. I try to think of it as, the person I used to know just no longer exists. The feelings are still there somewhere for me, even if in real life I do not go to feeling them anymore, this is really complicated though. So they still are there somewhere deep or something and maybe they will always stay.

This is for the nonromantic one BTW.... the other one was the bigger trauma (the romantic relationship), and for that one I deal with it differently because I did not know them in the same way like I did the person above. (Sorry if that was vague)

Sure, I've tried to understand all that too during these 3 years.

The last sentence about the boundaries ---> abandonment was great. Exactly how it was. In both cases. Even though I was the one who cut them off....they still wanted things out of me.

To be clear one of the relationships was not a friendship. The other one was...but was like as if she was my sister. So kind of similar to you maybe. ....Anyway well I didn't make an effort to be a "good friend", it was just truly coming from inside, not just some appearance of a "good friend".

I think she just made me feel happy. I'd rather not talk too much about the other relationship. I finally let go of that one. (That's not the best wording, "let go". It's way more complicated than that. But yes I feel free. And trauma mostly processed, I just need to recuperate and heal some more bad effects, but the trauma itself I've done a lot of work. Removing the spiritual abuse helped a lot, too.) With her, it's different. It's not the same as a romantic relationship. With her I "just" have had to accept that she was pretty **** to me. That was kind of simpler.....she did not do mental gaslight like the other person.

So...what you describe here, that dynamics, I don't know if I understood the part about being appreciated. But I don't think I understood it back then about her either, I thought she was in a bad situation and was depressed and thought I should be able to "take some ****". Except it was so much **** I didn't realise it wasn't normal. When I saw her taking me for granted I still thought it was just her being depressed. We knew each other for a long time before things went for the worse. She was already very important to me before that. But. I had no idea that as soon as money issues would enter the picture she'd change so much. And she was so good at timing her things, words, behaviours, that I thought we were still friends, but we were not. She only needed the financial and practical services from me from the point that the issue of money started playing a role. I did not know she changed her picture of me due to that. It took me years to realise that. And when she already had her picture changed of me, I still got more attached to her due to being there for her during hard times (or that's what I believed, her view was so different obviously). It's sad.

I think I'm past that.......yeah she tried to train me to take crumbs, but I thought it was OK and normal - temporarily - that she didn't care that much because of the "depression". But then it just got too glaring, and she became careless about the pretending and the timings too.

I just miss feeling happy but I don't need to be happy for a while now.

Oh...happy with regard to both of these people but neither was an actual happiness grounded in a real relationship, of course.

I never had the conscious idea that I had value but I did like feeling the "attentiveness".

Yeah, my issue was more that with me fleshing out this over the 3 years, some things were still pulling me back into the compulsive doubt and that was due to some gaslights and subconscious blaming and intrusive guilt and so on. The latter also from the traumas.

To be able to fully absorb it viscerally that they were the wrong people, I also just have needed to become less dissociated, less avoidant of the experiences, but it's impossible to deal with the whole horribleness of the experiences in one go. It takes / has taken time.

In addition, with the nonromantic one, she really seemed to change right in front of my eyes. But I was not seeing it until it was impossible to miss. Was hard to process that too.

And you know what. How did I get my boundaries set up. I didn't even mention much about that in this thread - or I don't remember if I did - but you figured that that's what happened. When I started to pay attention to more than these people in my life was when I set up my own boundaries yeah. With both I notice there was this thing, that they tried to pull me into their own bubble. Making themselves my whole world or something. With the romantic one I didn't let that go on for long but alot of damage was caused anyway. With him it started happening when he started to manipulate me more after he found a way "in" to do that to me (he didn't manage to for a long time). With her...it went on for long years. She had me pulled in for long years. But only because I knew her before that too. I just didn't know her COMPLETELY, clearly not.

But it's ok, with her, I can accept this was this, even if it is painful, I could integrate more of it by now, I just have to undo damage and make sure I don't get pulled back into the past about her.

With the romantic relationship, I think I really am over him. I no longer see anything in him. I almost don't even understand why I was interested before, ha ha. I mean I can now have that pov where I don't understand ha ha. It feels freeing.

Maybe I'll get there with her too, I don't know. It's not really a goal for me with her. My only goal is not to be pulled into the past about her, and I think to achieve that, I don't have to hate her or anything like that. Plus of course undoing all the damage she did to me (quite some damage on top of the first trauma).

But it's true it's hard to answer if she was ever an OK person.... She wasn't always a complete emotional vampire. I was always around friends though who would sometimes be like that, I had a too high tolerance for that even in middle school.

The difference is I didn't care about those other friends, I didn't see the things in them I did in her, they were less special, no attachment.

EDIT: In my previous post I write about not invalidating my own feelings. .... But I think I can view it as, it's my feelings, and less about the other person if they really were not deserving of these feelings. Or maybe I can just miss the times when we still did not have such an unbalanced relationship. But I just cannot see my emotions about that as invalid. Or even the emotions I had when she already was treating me in bad ways. I don't know if this makes sense.

Hm well. I did not have parents like that, luckily. I'm fine with my parents, I think my story involves other people and other things outside family.

With these two people traumatising me... I didn't just gravitate to them just because they were nice to me. That was far more complex, thanks.... I had my own emotions, my own preferences. I did like their attentiveness or what I thought was attentiveness, but that just sealed the deal. If I hadn't had strong interest in them, I'd not have given a second thought to their attentiveness.

So that's where this was very different for me.

We can add to this some lack of emotional awareness that got worse over time as I just focused on work/business/hobbies and not people until I got more emotional and focused on these people then. But my emotional awareness lagged behind that new interest. Or it's not even about emotional awareness... it is, as far as me not paying attention to my own emotions, sure. But I was also NOT experienced about subtle manipulative behaviours. Mind you, most people are not.


That's why I took too long to realise that they had their own unsaid agendas. And since the romantic one did mental gaslight (quite a lot of LIES) and spiritual abuse (that was VERY bad), it was extra complex. What saved me from further damage (and trust me it was BAD enough) was that I kept my head screwed on and focused on objective behaviours. But my mind and emotions were very subtly but definitely being manipulated and that caused a LOT of damage. 3 years. This long to get over it as far as not getting pulled into the past and all the doubt and compulsively checking thoughts about their possibly good sides and intrusive feelings and memories (in his case only, for the latter, memories and feelings about her were never intrusive).



Yeah, charmed, and then abandoned. But keeping me around in case they need me again (her). But further manipulating me to pull me into their bubble fully so that they can do anything to me as they please (him).

I don't think they were NPD as in their main concern being "I'm special", but they had narcissistic traits for sure. They both were attention seeking sure.



I said this above. I just thought I felt happy. Until I didn't.

@Alive99 yes I deleted my last post because I shared a lot and did not want to take up your thread with my own challenges. I have most definitely suffered a lot of not only trauma but a lot of emotional abuse from my older sister. I felt you may not understand with what little I shared. So I deleted to keep more focus on you.

Often the root of many challenges tends to come from ones own expectations. A person can decide if I do this I will get treated well and get what I want. Life teaches us that is not how things actually go.

So in affect when a person decides if I buy this for someone or happen to make a big sale or have this or that I DESERVE this and that. That is setting self up for what can become a huge disappointment.

It would be nice if my trauma was just about disappointment or expectations. (I'm not even cynical LOL I truly wish it was just that.) I've heard this type of idea before. My challenges are in a different area. Oh I also had emotional abuse so I get you there.

Understand ((Alive99)).

@Alive99, how are you doing now with all of this? Where are you at in your thought process and emotional state?

I am not sure if I posted this here yet, but I formally reached out to two abusive ex's to tell them I forgive them. It has been several years of no contact. Now, this may not have been the best idea given how they may react to this, especially out of the blue years later, but I did it for myself. And I do feel better after having done so.

I am not suggesting you do the same thing. I am only sharing this because I finally got to a place of being sick and tired of holding onto the pain that one of these individuals in particular caused. I wanted to finally let it go.

But forgiveness is tricky business. I think one has to process the experience for oneself first, and process through all the resulting emotions before being able to forgive, in one's heart or formally in an email like I did. If we forgive too quickly, we may still have to process what happened, regardless.

But forgiving for me has finally allowed me to release all the pain, anguish and regret that they caused me, and I do feel a lot lighter, better and more at peace about these situations that happened in my life.

Anyways, just wondering how you're doing with all of this and where you're at personally with it all. Hugs to you.

Hey thanks for asking. Sorry I was low and not posting on here at all but I will check your thread soon (tomorrow as I don't have much time now).




That is cool, I don't know if I would be able to let go of any bad feelings that way. Maybe if I've first spent enough time out of the gaslighty bubble they put me into. So that all of it is enough in the distant past. It is still too fresh for now because so far I only fully got out of one of the bubbles (the romantic one).



I totally agree that timing matters for all this emotionally.


Thanks again. I think I said it above. For me getting out of the bubble I mentioned above, that has helped me release a lot of the pain and anguish. Being back in the normal sense of reality. But I have only completed this for one of the cases so far. I am not sure yet where forgiveness would fit into all this. Actually, can you say more on what kind of thinking goes with it for you? Like...do you feel like you can put the whole experience in your normal sense of reality and integrate it emotionally for you so then it feels like a normal thing to forgive too? I hope that made some sense.

@Alive99,

No worries - take your time!

And I am not sure what you mean by putting the whole experience in my normal sense of reality and integrate it emotionally so that it feels like a normal thing to forgive?

Nothing was normal about the experiences I had. The two past abusers I had forgiven wreaked absolute havoc in my life.

One of them is an ex fiance. I got engaged to him. But after several months of living together and of severe abuse from him, I had to kick him out of the home. He became homeless. He was homeless when I took him in and decided to support him to help him get back on his feet. In the end, I learned that he was a pathological liar, he stole from me, he hid drugs from me, he did drugs secretly in our home without my knowing, he's an abusive alcoholic, and then he cheated on me in the end. He was a total nightmare so nothing is normal about it.

The other guy I literally had to flee from for my own safety and well being. I was living with him. He used to chase me around the home, yelling at me and screaming at me in a very frightening manner. There is so much more. He is another narcissist and abused me severely. Having to flee from a man's home for your safety is not normal.

It took me YEARS to get to the point of wanting to forgive them.

Forgiving took a conscious decision and effort on my part. I cannot integrate these severely abusive situations normally into my reality. They are experiences I had, however, that have taught me what abuse is, what the red flags are to be aware of, to have stronger boundaries and to have even greater self love and self respect. I have learned to love myself MORE than any need to have a relationship.

So, I've been able to process my way through these abusive situations and come to a place of greater peace and acceptance about them. They happened, and I accept that part. I accept MY responsibility and role as well in allowing these men to even enter my life. I ignored red flags - I wasn't even aware of what red flags meant at the time. But I also ignored my initial GUT reactions to these men.

So, the lesson in life for me from these experiences, including with my current soon to be ex husband, is not to ignore any red flags, to pay attn, to these flags, and to walk away from someone EARLY ON when I notice a red flag. Another lesson for me is to love myself so much that I will not allow anyone to cross my boundaries.

So, I suppose I arrived at a place mentally and emotionally whereby I was able to:

1) accept that the abuse happened
2) take responsibility for my role in it
3) forgive myself
4) learn the lessons meant to be learned from these experiences
5) forgive them for being the broken and hurtful people that they are
6) release all the pain of the experiences

I hope this helps.

Hey @Have Hope

still taking time here, sorry. I'll respond to your post first.

OK to clarify I didn't mean anything about abuse is normal. What I meant is trauma involves the inability of integrating the experience in your psyche / emotionally / mentally etc. Because of how MUCH it's NOT normal, the experience, exactly. If abuse caused the trauma, same applies. So it takes a long time to process and integrate things in your normal sense of reality, like being able to accept it yeah. Accept that things happened like you said in your post. And then when you can do that then forgiving is like a "normal thing" too, sorry I still didn't find a better way to word that. But it's like, I meant that if you are able to deal with the experience then forgiveness could also be naturally following from it. I don't know, I haven't got to that point if I even can or should.

You speak of your responsibility and role and ignoring the red flags, your initial gut reactions etc. Tbh I think in hindsight it's too easy to say that we should've done all this and that all this was our responsibility and role in the abuse happening. I don't agree with that/I don't think that way though. I think that abuse involves manipulation and disorienting of the person being abused, so of course they can't pay attention to what they'd normally pay attention to. It's a very different place to be in, it's not the same mindset as when looking back to it later. I hope that made sense.

Of course, you do still have a responsibility, which is, learn from the experience and avoid it in future, yes. But I don't think there is any responsibility or role in the previous events. You may have made mistakes, but that happens to every human being. With mistakes all you can do is learn from them and try your best to not do them again. But you can't blame yourself for having made mistakes. Now if you did do something knowing full well that it's a bad idea then you do have responsibility for that in retrospect... but that's not the case with being abused. And recognising that abuse happened, it actually is already taking a stance that you are not to blame for what happened. Or what happened would not be called abuse.

So... I am glad that you got past these bad experiences. These guys definitely sound crazy bad. The first one sounds like he had a lot of psychopathic traits yes. Maybe the second one too, but you did list a lot of psychopathic traits for the first one (besides narcissism: being a pathological liar, stealing, impulsive, irresponsible life style).

You say the lessons for you are 1) love yourself enough 2) to not ignore the red flags. I agree, good lessons. I think in my case it would be, things like (not a complete list), consider my own emotions first over other people's emotions, and face all the bad traits of people ie. be willing to integrate them into my image of their person. (I do see bad behaviour in the moment but integrating them into the character of the person is another issue. Previously I would only do it for very obvious ones, and I was not aware of which other ones are also red flags.) This might be the same things you talked of, in another flavour.

I don't think I fully understand the part about forgiving oneself or forgiving the abusers. When (about 2 years ago...after about 1 year of No contact) I thought of how the romantic one had unsatisfied needs they tried to fulfill, would that count towards that?

Also, releasing the pain of the experiences... yeah it's like you don't want the pain, it's the last thing you want, and the one thing you most want to know is HOW to get rid of it. That's at least how it's been in my case. But of course it takes a long time of processing through it all, all the experiences, putting the puzzle together, getting free of the manipulation bubble, finding and dealing with the emotions, etc...