Really sorry to hear of the crap you're going thro with your old families, Hesdoneitagain and pinkyminxy.
Hesdoneitagain, not sure where your therapist is coming from, saying you need to sort things out either with them or for yourself - surely that's why you're in therapy in the first place?? Sounds like you're trying your hardest to me, and god knows, it is hard. Yes, it's true, they do stay with you internally even if you never see them - but fwiw, I think it is much much harder to sort it out internally when the same old crap just keeps on happening externally. I think you've been trying to buy yourself some breathing space, so you can try and deal with it. Maybe I'm tubthumping here because that's the choice I've made, but a couple of times you've mentioned how when they pull this stuff it leaves you feeling all upset again, and doubting yourself and at a complete loss as to what to do, and I know how much it hurts to feel that way and to feel stuck there. And IME sometimes you do need to pull back and stop their crap happening to you for a while - in the present at least - just so you can get strong enough to deal with it, to get to that point as your DP says where you can feel confident in your decisions and perspective even if they disagree/undermine you. (Oh, and btw, re calling your email abusive - no, of course it's not, not in the slightest, but I've had the same thing - my F calling ME a bully!!!!! because I wouldn't give him a free pass to keep on bullying me like he and my M and my older B had all done for years and years....It's like oneplusone says, abusers always say the victim is the abuser; Hitler blamed the Jews, FGS.)
As I write this I'm still stuck myself in my old fear that it's never really going to work out. I realised recently that I've spent most of my adult life seeing counsellors or therapists or healers of one sort or another. Which was quite a sobering thought. Unfortunately, most of them failed me pretty badly. They made promises they couldn't deliver; they offered understanding they didn't really have; they held me back because of their own denial (it's scary how many therapists are prone to denial about some of the really dark stuff...) and I never felt any of them really "got" me even though I'd go and spill my guts out week after week and work so damn hard on trying to recover.
Fortunately I then found the therapist I have worked with for 8 years now and the only person (professional) I would ever trust with these issues. She "got" me instantly and the relief of feeling so utterly understood and supported and validated was and is precious beyond words. And in those 8 years my life has gone from being a waking nightmare to something pretty wonderful, certainly on the outside, and to an extent on the inside too.
But the poison my parents left in me hasn't yet been healed, and my life can still be a living hell because I still talk to myself and think of myself in the abusive way they taught me, and that is something I am still working on and may still be working on for the rest of my life, for all I know. Often I feel so damaged that it seems impossible I'll ever get over the past, and it's a very dark place to be. Sometimes the darkness has been so overwhelming that I've felt mired in guilt for marrying DH and bringing our DS into the world, thinking I should have just died and let the damage they did to me die with me rather than risk passing it on, and infliciting it on those I love.
Nabster, when I'm not in the middle of it, I think that depression isn't so much an illness as a logical, actually quite healthy reaction to being hurt really badly. I just don't buy into it being purely a chemical imbalance for example. I know that behind my depression (and I've struggled with it since my teens probably, though never been diagnosed as such) there is a lot of pain, grief and sadness - and I've often heard it said that it's linked to repressed anger too, which makes sense to me. Anyway, maybe I'm tubthumping again, but it helps me to see it as a healthy response to an originally very unhealthy situation that you weren't responsible for and couldn't take on at the time, rather than a weakness.
So many people on here have been talking about anxiety - ActingNormal, I also have that feeling of having done something wrong when I open up to someone I'm not sure I can trust not to reject me. It's a really sick, scary feeling. And ditto the fear of people coming round to my home... We must all have been terrorised in some way as children. I've actually been having anxiety issues about posting on here - it's such an awesome thread to find, incredible to read people expressing the things I'm always trying to express myself, and I so want to join in; but I get overwhelmed by trying to "get it right", worried I'll offend people by not knowing enough of their story or missing them out, or inadvertently saying something hurtful, worried about being rejected or ignored - again, things other people on here have been voicing so I know I'm not alone, so I hope I'll be forgiven for not always being the 100% sensitive, caring, thoughtful virtual buddy I'd like to imagine myself as!!! (so, no perfectionism or people pleasing there, then.... )
Sakura, thank you for your response to my previous post, it really meant a lot - and congrats on your writing competition results!Thanks too oneplusone for kind words and a welcome to us new posters. It is hard to keep up with this thread, isn't it? I do read the all the posts, and often want to say something back to different people, but just can't find the words. Found a few tonight tho... Night all.