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

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...

@Alive99, well, for me, and I am speaking only from my experiences, I had had seven abusive relationships prior to meeting my now abusive husband. I truly knew better. I should have paid attention to the red flags, which I ignored yet recognized, and I ignored my gut reactions that something was very off. So I've had to forgive myself for not listening to my gut and for ignoring the red flags, and I've had to take responsibility for the fact that I also married someone whom I knew was abusive just before I married him. Now that's just my particular process and situation.

I am glad that my post made you think a bit on your own traumatic experience and on what you have learned about yourself coming out of it. That's all we can do is learn from our experiences.

Trauma is complex and different for every person. I do not know if you have or were abused in your childhood, for example. I was abused in my childhood, and therefore, I have childhood trauma, which is triggered by these abusive relationships I've had. I am working on healing all of it in therapy to date.

So, I suppose for you, and now please forgive me if I haven't read through your entire thread, but if you experienced childhood trauma, it could also be triggered by the experiences you've had more recently. If not, then these recent experiences stand more so as an anomaly within the entirety of your lifelong experiences.

Therapy really helps to process trauma and abuse. Are you in therapy? And again my sincere apologies if you are having to repeat yourself.

I am very pragmatic and practical when it comes to solving problems. So therefore, I face these issues with very practical questions: what can I learn from the experiences I've had and how can I apply that education and learning to my future relationships? How can I heal myself from past abuse? And finally, how can I find inner peace after so much turmoil and pain, after all is said and done?

That is why I chose to forgive those two past abusers, finally. Forgiveness is not for everyone. But there comes a point in your healing journey where you will want to finally release all the pain from the past, whether you choose to forgive or not. But forgiveness does allow for that release. It's a pathway. I understand you are not there at this present moment. You are still processing your experiences. That's just the path that I personally chose, and it's helped me.

At the very least, it helps to think it through in full - and again I point to what can be learned? How can I heal from this? And how can I move forward in life from this, putting it all into perspective and behind me?

Hey Have Hope. Sorry I got so low for months that I couldn't get on this forum. I was focusing on pure survival. I don't know how you are doing but I hope you are OK. I will check your thread as soon as I can get there but I hope it is no longer even relevant. (Which would mean good news)




This is an interesting issue, of ignoring gut feelings. I find that manipulation and gaslight made me disoriented, and through that, made me ignore my own gut feelings too. The last thing I would do is blame myself for being made disoriented. I don't know your situation of course. Sometimes people do sorta understand but need to learn the lesson for real via the truly hard way. Maybe that's what you meant, I don't know. Just wanted to add this.



I have childhood trauma but not childhood cPTSD (thank god, it would have been really bad to have to experience that too as a kid). I was not abused in some major way as a child though. It's just the trauma from a childhood that was made harder for me than usual/average (even if there is no truly literally average childhood). It is a long story as to what it was but it was not child abuse and the like. It was a hostile environment but not abuse beyond that



I think I can recognise the reactions that relate to my childhood and they are definitely different from these experiences. I would say, anomaly in that sense, yes. Even if of course anything that happens to you later in life is indirectly the consequence of your childhood.

It is one of the questions I've tried to answer for myself though: how could I get these bad experiences later in life?

It's been a hard question.



No worries there! I was in therapy before yes, but certain circumstances made it hard for me to get access to therapy while the measurements and regulations for dealing with the pandemic are in place. And they are still in place here. I was denied access to the trauma centre nearby because of them. So no, I am not in therapy now.



Those are quite general questions for me and so they take a lot of time to process. But definitely relevant issues.



I do want to get rid of all the pain of the past. It doesn't want to respond to commands from me like that though lol

So yeah, it takes a lot of processing.

Glad you got through it for yourself. I imagine you started the process earlier than I did. I took a while to recognise what was going on etc.



Yeah, I am trying to do these things. It feels like a lot of small puzzle pieces requiring a lot of time and energy for me. One day...

@Alive99, nice to see you return to the forums.

"It is one of the questions I've tried to answer for myself though: how could I get these bad experiences later in life?"

Sometimes, there are no answers. And when there are no answers, what can we do but process what has happened to us, integrate it into our lives, work on healing from it, and try to move forward from it all, taking what happened as a lesson in life. I've said this before and above, but really, what more can we do? It's all a process, and sometimes that process can take years.

I do hope you've been able to get on with your life in other ways and are not perpetually thinking about the past with these individuals? We need a mental vacation from traumatic experiences, although often they can engulf us so much that we cannot see or enjoy anything in life. For you, during the last few months, have you been able to take a mental vacation? I am working on this myself. I am not healed from my abusive marriage, which I know will take many more months and a lot more therapy.

Hugs to you in your healing journey and process.

Hey, nice to see you too. Thank you for your input again. Yeah there aren't always answers, but I still feel like I want to get a full picture of it all, and that will be the answer for me. And yeah, processing it all takes years in my case, and it's also made harder by how I need to make sure to not make my life even worse in the meantime. You asked if I'm thinking about the past with these people, and I'm not trying to, but it comes out anyway, there are many triggers even if I just try to enjoy reading some entertaining book or watching a nice movie. So no, I'm not really able to take a mental vacation from it and it does make it all harder. I don't know if you have any suggestions for that.

Hugs to you too in your healing process - however long it may take or hard it may be, I'm sure it'll eventually get the results.

What I do when I have triggers occur is to shift my focus. I acknowledge the trigger, allow the feelings that result from the trigger to arise and exist, then I shift my focus either back to what I was doing or shift my focus entirely and take a break - like I may get up and stop what I was doing to clean the kitchen, take the trash out or do something active until the emotional impact of the trigger passes. Then I go about my business and my day. I think often times there's no fully escaping triggers, but we can manage our reactions to them and control how we respond to them. Not sure if that helps you any.

Thanks for your tips. An issue for me is that if I try and block out the memories by getting active then I will get very angry/raging instead of being negative just inside my own mind. This assumes I was able to get active in the first place, which I feel is still the better option, but is just exhausting too. It takes a long time (years) for all this to become less intense, it seems. It is funny because it just feels like, I ignored the negatives until they traumatised me, and now my mind forces me to see and feel them and there's a LOAD to process, though maybe I've processed most of it by now...just I made my life worse (in some ways) in the meantime over these years so I have to undo that too.