You know it only takes a simple text from my Narcissist Father to make me upset. It would make my stomach churn, cramp and upset to the point of diarrhea, it only takes a couple of hours after the text. I’m 50 now but my Narc dad can still do a number on my emotions. It’s like when someone has been terrorized by someone and they leave messages on their phone nothing threatening just a message that you can’t put your finger on plausible deniability. After they contact you, you feel violated somehow and agitated, tense, uneasy jumpy drained of energy and emotion. This happened to me today and every time my narc dad would text me. Today it was “Good Morning my sweet daughter I love you.” Oh sure, I know it sounds nice what’s wrong with that. Well for one thing my father has never called me sweetie or sweet daughter as a child NEVER!! It’s right down creepy!!! This guy was “Indiana Jones”, the guy who beat me with a whip and a belt when he determined I’ve done something so horrible to warrant such a punishment. This is the man when at the dinner table demanding answers; slapped his hand so hard on the table making the table shake, the dishes and silverware rattle. Then he would point his finger at me or jab it into my chest to the point it felt like it was bruising while acting as if he was holding back so much rage and if he didn’t have self control he’d beat the hell out of me. This is the guy who’s texting me “sweetie”… Now I know a lot of you out there have sustained a great deal more abuse than I and this would be child’s play compared to how you were treated. He didn’t use his fist or put cigarettes out on my skin, or rape me, like a lot of you have. He always had a “reason” for my beatings, in fact because of that I always thought I deserved the beatings and didn’t realize it was abuse and stepped into a curtain of fog that he and my narc mom created. This isn’t how I raised my kids, to walk on eggshells around me. The could eat in the living room sit on whichever piece of furniture they wanted, if they spilled their drink during a meal or made a mess I just told them to clean it up, no yelling or nagging or making them feel like they were less than the mud on my boots. I didn’t flick them in the face, back of the head or ears…
That my friend is PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. No it don’t just happen to our men and women of the military who have seen action in conflicts and battles.
PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can result from narcissistic abuse especially abuse from a parent or spouse.
Some of you have mentioned in your messages that you have PTSD. Hearing your stories, some of you have more severe cases than most so please don’t feel like I’m minimizing your agony. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of us have a bit of this disorder. Abuse has scarred us in ways we may not have even realized. I realized I have a bit of it myself and so does my husband. Now I’m NOT putting this out there so we can put labels on ourselves or feel damaged or that we have a “disorder”. I’m putting this out there to make us aware of the symptoms so we can recognize what our narc abusers have done to us and knowing what’s going on is half the battle. I don’t have all the answers but lets work through this together. So we all can find mental, emotional and spiritual healing.
After going through a trauma in our case abuse from our narcissist, could be abuse as a child that continues into adulthood. Survivors often say that their first feeling is relief to be alive. But this may be followed by stress, fear, and anger. These trauma survivors may also find they are unable to stop thinking about what happened. Many survivors will have disturbing recurring flashbacks, avoidance or numbing of memories of the event, and Hyper-vigilance which is a high level of alert, which causes them to react strongly to sounds and sights around them. This is what I call agitated, edgy, jumpy.
Most people have some kind of stress reaction after a trauma. Having such a reaction has nothing to do with personal weakness. Stress reactions may last for several days or even a few weeks. For most people, if symptoms occur, they will slowly decrease over time.
Re-experiencing the traumatic event
Intrusive, upsetting memories of the event
Flashbacks (acting or feeling like the event is happening again)
Nightmares (either of the event or of other frightening things)
Feelings of intense distress when reminded of the trauma
Intense physical reactions to reminders of the event (e.g. pounding heart, rapid breathing, nausea, muscle tension, sweating)
Avoidance and numbing
Avoiding activities, places, thoughts, or feelings that remind you of the trauma
Inability to remember important aspects of the trauma
Loss of interest in activities and life in general
Feeling detached from others and emotionally numb
Sense of a limited future (you don’t expect to live a normal life span, get married, have a career)
Increased anxiety and emotional arousal
Difficulty falling or staying asleep
Irritability or outbursts of anger
Difficulty concentrating
Hypervigilance (on constant “red alert”)
Feeling jumpy and easily startled
Here are a few examples of what I go through, I’m sure some of you have experienced much worse symptoms and you know all too well about this.
My ex contacted me by phone which triggered this episode. He was an alcoholic, he didn’t physically beat me but when he drank whisky he would become violent and even worse, to the point we were arguing about where he had been all day… when it was obvious he had been drinking all day. He walks into the bedroom and in the gun case pulls out his rifle puts two shells into it and points it at me. Fortunately God gave me such a calm and I didn’t give him the reaction he was looking for: the oh please don't shoot me… begging for my very life. I kind of have a mental block as to how but he put it away eventually. Another event where he again drunk on whisky and threw christmas gifts at me yelling at me and began beating the christmas tree with a bath towel until the tree came down. He would also in the middle of the night go to my car and remove a part from my car so I couldn’t just leave his sorry ass. Just a little background as to why I got so upset when he called me.
When I married mr smakintosh he adopted my two children and the ex signed over giving away all his legal rights to the children.
Years after the adoption, I received a call on mothers day from the ex wanting to speak to my children. The call was to our home phone number which was unlisted so someone in my immediate family had to give it to him. Not only did I feel violated by this call but someone in my immediate family had betrayed me in probably the worst way. They handed us over to my ex abuser. The didn’t ask permission to give him my number they just did it, knowing the past and how he was when he drank they had no regard for our safety. I was terrified to think they may have also given him our address. I was angry, I became extremely jumpy (hypervigilant), agitated, every time I heard a truck with a loud exhaust go up the street I was at the window checking looking feverishly making sure he wasn’t out there, I got little to no sleep… I had heart palpitations, weak, I felt like my insides had turned to sludge a sick feeling, my chest hurt I thought physically I was having a stroke or heart attack it took at least a month for me to get over this. My poor husband lived through this with me. He had his own symptoms a feeling of ultimate betrayal my very own family we think it was my parents gave abusive alcoholic ex my phone to contact our kids which he gave all legal rights away to.
This was all before we realized that nearly every member of my family is a narc.
now days when one of them sends me a text or even tries to call or leaves a message any form of contact… I’m hypervigilant for about a week, agitated.. and almost no sleep and family dreams not necessarily nightmares but they are haunting my sleep. Like the dirty house dreams, I gotta get my house clean and quick my mom’s going to see it and in my dream my house is a total disaster and the more I clean the more filth I find and I just can never get it done…
My mother was a neat freak anyway and every spring break we spent spring cleaning. Most of our classmates got to go to the mall or hang out with friends… no we had to clean clean clean… Every saturday clean clean clean… and the whole time we cleaned with her we had to hear how we did a crappy job the rest of the week when we got home from school. Her nagging went on and on until it was clean to her satisfaction.
2 corinthians 1:3-4
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
Psalms 61:2-3
From the ends of the earth I call to you,
I call as my heart grows faint;
lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
For you have been my refuge,
a strong tower against the foe.
Psalms 35:12
KJV
12 They rewarded me evil for good to the spoiling of my soul.
AMP
12 They reward me evil for good to my personal bereavement.
Hebrew Psalms book
12 They repay me evil for good; bereavement is come to my soul.
Strongs for spoiling as used in this verse: bereavement, loss of children
*bereavement: the condition of a person left by all; abandonment
root word: shakol
to be bereaved, make childless, miscarry
1. to cause barrenness, show barrenness or abortion
Merriam Websters dictionary: spoil
spoil: plunder taken from an enemy in war or from a victim in robbery
syn: pillage, plunder, booty, loot, swag
your mind wanders you think of pirates when you hear booty and plunder; so think of your soul as the hidden treasure that was stolen
Speaking of the young men and women in military that come home with PTSD
They realize that they didn’t sign up for this… I was told it was good, defending America and so on and so on….
They have to carry out orders no matter if it goes against their conscience when they sign that dotted line and take the oath they gave all individual rights and thoughts up. I’m not insulting them or their intelligence but they have to carry out the orders they are given whether they agree with them or not. My husband was in a branch of the military at one time and he knows quite a bit more than me about this.
People who refused to going after being drafted to Vietnam to fight in that war; they were called “conscientious objectors”. For reasons of conscience, they refused to fight in the military.
We are not diminishing any of our military veterans so please don’t feel that we are putting you down for going to fight. We are here talking about the affects after the fight I’m sure that none of you have been scathed from some type of emotional distress after coming home whether it be due to the emotional anguish of the carnage of war to lost of friends comrades and injuries.
When a parent or someone in authority tells a child to do something that’s not right like in sexual abuse the child no matter how small they know it’s not right, they feel sick inside. They are powerless to fight back and so deeply afraid to say no. Even physical abuse, beating you telling you that you are deserve this beating all the while you know you don’t. After awhile they spoil your soul: sear your conscience and you start to believe their lies you start to believe sexual abuse is right, your fault it happened or you do deserve the beatings you get.. all the while your spirit is screaming on the inside that it’s oh so wrong. You have an internal conflict, even way after all the abuse. Your spirit is trying to help you get back on balance your moral compass is off kilter. You are tortured by nightmares, sleeplessness, flashbacks and many more issues… ultimately your spirit wants you to heal from this trauma. Your reality has been aborted forced out stolen….
