Feeling Cursed

I feel cursed because this has taken so much out of me.  Money. Time.  Energy.  
Money-because I have spent a lot trying to recover by going to therapy and never knowing what was wrong with me.
Also I am underemployed even though I have tried not to be, so I don't make very much.  My livelihood has suffered.

Time-lost time not knowing.  I was married for a while, no kids. The Ex was a narc if not sociopath.   I couldn't do the kid thing, which is probably good, at least with the ex. I think I was smeared publicly at my work place back then, but I can't prove it. I was definitely smeared in the personal family realm. The EX was the long suffering good spouse.

Energy- I have been stolen from energetically, which means a loss of creativity and energy just to get through the day sometimes.  I get through them thankfully, but it's often a big toll.

I have been targeted by stealthy bullies more than once.

I have bumped into the same ole crappy road blocks no matter what I do.

Any ideas on how to not feel/be cursed anymore?  Anyone else felt this?

Thanks!

I feel for you. It's hard. And it takes time. I've been using the Spartan Life Coach courses. They do help. Plus reading the book by Pete Walker. Those things have given me, if nothing else, a feeling of being able to do something. I'm learning. Learning to me is a restorative thing. It doesn't necessarily fix anything, but it makes me feel less helpless.

You might want to check out those things. Hang in there. I know your world is feeling so empty and messed up. It can get better. It's just a slow process...and often extremely painful to get there. Well worth it tho'. Hang in there.

Hi Undermilkweed,
Don't know if you'll ever visit this site and see this reply but here goes anyway.

Read, read, read, read, read, read.. and read. Research is your friend. If you don't fancy books then watch YouTube videos, but you must learn as much as you can about what is going on with you, what was going on in your childhood, what was going on with the people who influenced you. And over time your brain will expand and the idea that it was not your fault will begin to seep in. There was nothing that could have gone or should have gone differently.

See, if you never find out that people you had to deal with are actually sick and could not have acted any differently you will continue to internalize that there is something wrong with you to have deserved that treatment. Simply sitting in a room going over your life story while it can be helpful in your understanding to what happened can get a bit self flagellating - my childhood sucked, then my marriage sucked, now I'm alone, it sucks... It is good to do therapy but it is only ONE thing in the process. You also have to understand that it had nothing to do with you, and sitting in a room talking about your feelings and the events of your life is never going to get you to that particular understanding.

And DO. You must do things. The answer to boredom is DO. The answer to underachieving or underearning is not to be found in sitting on the sofa eating chips and lamenting underearning. And I say this from exactly that experience! I'm not on a high horse, at best a little pony trodding along learning myself. But what I do know is that sometimes your brain is not your friend. It will F you up. So as an example, I get myself all worked up typically about cleaning house. It overwhelms me. Why? Because I ignore it for weeks - I don't DO anything about it. Then I look at it and suddenly realize it's messy. And instead of my brain being a reasonable pal and saying "Oh well, Otter, you can't possibly do the whole thing before you pick up the kids" it says "OMG! It's so messy! I am a horrible person! A horrible parent! What kind of example am I setting! No one can ever ever ever come to my house it is too embarrassing. I am embarrassing! My children hate me..." you see what I'm getting at. And those voices don't even have to be loud! And I'm not even including the voice of my mother while I helpfully do for her since she lives hundreds of miles away and can't see my house. But I will do it for her, inside my own brain "(eye roll) Well Otter, you've NEVER been clean. You've ALWAYS been messy. You just CAN'T accomplish clean. If you'd only have done what I said...." See? Those voices are mean and debilitating and while they are chirping about it my head I can't focus, I can't breathe, I can't get started. So then the house gets even messier because I have managed now to avoid it even longer.

But if I hear those voices and say Shut up, and go get the cleanser and clean the bathroom counter, then they do dissipate. And voila one part of the house is clean. DO. That is all. Because listening to the voices inside our heads - even though we may not have put them there in the first place - is what we call wallowing in self pity, a very unproductive state. So the thing that you least want to do, that seems the most insurmountable, that is the thing to start to do. Remembering of course that you can do only one thing at a time. Don't get me started on the perfect and end result voices!

Otter, wow! What a GREAT post! I really needed to hear that! So thank you! (even though it wasn't meant for me, I appreciate it.)

I recognize the bit about the voices. I think that listening to them is what exhausts us the most, and that exhaustion prevents us from doing anything. That's why it's important to learn to recognize those voices. What works for me is paying attention to my emotions. I'm not always aware of what goes on in my head, but always of what goes on in my heart.

So when my boyfriend is driving me home and asks me if we could stay in the car and chat for a little bit before I go in, I can immediately tell that I'm feeling frantic. Why do I feel frantic? What thoughts are causing me to feel this way? And that's when I hear the voice. "He wants to break up. He wants to chat about the relationship. You're going too fast. You're smothering him and he needs some more time and space for himself. Something is wrong and it's your fault and now you're slowly losing him. This is just the first sign." As soon as I'm aware of what's going on in my head, I can freeze the train of thought and say to myself: "It really isn't of any use to worry about him leaving me. There is absolutely no reason why I should think he wants to leave me. And even if he wants to leave me, I'm not going to stop him anyway, so it's no use worrying about that. For now, let's just assume that he wants to enjoy my company for a little longer." And gone is that frantic feeling.

I'm still learning to wipe out those negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones, or at least useful ones, but with enough practice, it will become second nature, and in time, hopefully, those useless negative thoughts won't even come up anymore.

Bottom line: I guess, in the interaction with all those sick and abusive people, sick voices have been placed in our brains. We need to create a healthy voice and train it to become strong enough to tell the sick voices to shut up, and to then say things that soothe our emotions. Watching selfhelp youtube video's has really helped me. It's like having someone else tell you what is right and what is good, which will create that healthy voice, the same way that the sick people in your life created the sick voices.

Best of luck y'all!