Well, that level is so basic that I feel dumb for not thinking of it myself but just playing sad music while thinking about it was enough to let me cry about small and insignificant things, like how he used to cook for everyone in the house but me, have them sit down and eat in front of me and make me feel like I was delusional and entitled for being sad about it or even asking if there was food for me as well. "I don't owe you my cooking, you can cook for yourself. You're an adult, aren't you?"

I think I have a long way to go before I can touch the actually bad things and even longer before I can find anger rather than just sadness and tears and maybe fear. But it's a start. Thank you!

Thank you! I'll do so.

That sounds like it would have a lot of overlap with things with other names, such as escapism, freeze and learned helplessness?

I guess maybe I just have a hard time telling what is what in my own life, so exactly what I call it varies depending on what I've learned about more recently... For example, when I was 10, I started defending myself and instead of my mother just hitting me, we had physical fights. Nasty ones. Children fight ugly.

Then one day when I was 12, I hit her in the head with a hairbrush and she started bleeding. And as I saw her sitting on the floor in a corner, crying and bleeding, I decided that nothing she could do to me was worse than knowing I had done that to her. And after that day, I never defended myself again. (Well, a few times much later with my abusive husband but not with her, as a child.)

I used to call that learned helplessness for a while, because it came back in how I handled problems as an adult - just sitting passive and waiting for them to disappear. That doesn't work well with problems like, say, being unemployed.

Then I started calling it freeze because everyone knows what freeze is and that kind of fits, too. Like the first time my ex hit me, he did it to try to force me to go home after dragging me out from where I went and hid when he took my keys, threw me out and locked the door. But no matter how much he yelled at me and kicked me there on the floor, I just couldn't move.

And then... Maybe it fits as dissociation too? That as well as other things I've done, the gaming I called escapism because it let me hide from my problems in a world where things were going well for me, the day dreams about getting away to a better life when I was stuck with my ex, as well as the "tune out and wait for it to be over" when he used my body.

I find all these things and terms rather confusing, especially since I've been in denial about some of my problems for so long and only admitted a part of them.

As for your coping mechanisms, that sounds pretty damaging but also like something therapy might actually be able to target, hopefully? Like, a fairly easy thing to focus on and a goal to work towards? Or is it maybe not that simple, but rather you need to find the hard way to deal with the underlying issues before it can change?

Is that dissociation?

I thought dissociation was possibly what I did while waiting for the rapes to be over, possibly something more "extreme", harder to understand. But yeah... I guess that makes sense.

And yeah, I've also "felt like a psychopath" sometimes... Even did five different psychopath tests one night after my gaslighting ex went at me extra hard with the "well, one of us is a lying psychopath for sure, and it isn't me", only to find that I'm clearly really really not.

Thank you for sharing about those moments in therapy. It's very interesting to get those glimpses from others who are struggling with more or less the same issues, but are at a different place in the struggle.

The music seemed to work today so I'll try that again.

Do you not have appropriate feelings in the moment either, even simple ones like sadness, even for "normal" things? (Anger is more difficult I guess, because that might get punished out of us.)

If so, it does seem like you have a longer way to go than I do. But that you're working on it?

I am polyamorous and had my current relationship parallel with the relationship with my abusive ex for 5-6 years. During that time, as well as before that, I did not want to admit even to myself that my ex was abusive, because I had accepted long ago that I was stuck there anyway. So... I worried a lot about my other relationship and complained to people about little things that made me sad in that relationship. And I considered my traumas a thing of the past, from my childhood, only. I did not complain about the abusive relationship or think or feel much about that in-between the "bad times", and got over and forgot those as soon as they were over. So... Maybe that's where part of the feelings went during that time at least?

And during other times, I tended to collect more or less toxic friends to fret about and be hurt by. Hmm...

Thank you for your comment. :)

I definitely have feelings in the moment. Can easily cry because I read about a cat that suffers or a poem about losing your dog or whatever. But with those memories, it's the same as you describe it - I can calmly talk about what happened but there are no emotions attached.

I try to have realistic expectations on myself but I also kind of want to... Do my best to make the most of the support I get while I get it. Both for my own sake, and so that it won't be wasted. So no matter how far I've actually come when I see her next time, I want to be able to honestly tell her and myself that I've tried.

As in, sad music to get in the right mood for it, or something more advanced?