keep on keeping on

Sending moral support your way. I understand the feelings. I've been in similar situations. I also have beaten myself up over "it's my fault I did not word my needs / did not seek help" but then I try to remind myself that when I did seek help / word my needs, the abuses were worse. So it was no use back then.

It was not my fault.

It was not your fault.

Tragedies happen. We can only carry on and do our best to heal our wounds.

A friend pointed out that looking for fault is the wrong approach and I agree. All the 'not your fault' feedback we get just feels off. Like, this is not what we were talking about. this is not what matters to us in this. She said it makes more sense to look for responsibility. whose is it? and that is very much the question we are struggling with. it isn't about fault. We need to know how much responsibility we had or did not have.
We have long ago decided not to use blaming or shaming as tools because they only bring out the worst in us and others. We really really dislike thinking in terms of fault or even deserving something or not. I think it turns the conversation into a direction that isn't fruitful. that is a personal choice though. maybe others benefit.

It is an interesting point you are making. Maybe I need to think more about the difference between fault, responsibility, and so on.

I tend to experience guilt for a lot of things especially things outside of my range of action. I might be projecting this guilt on others in similar situations which might be why I did not give the appropriate feedback.

Thanks for pointing it out.

you know, I mentioned my thoughts on social media and almost everyone had that response. So I think it is very common and even classic. It just upset me to see a dozen people promise me that it isn't my fault when that was really not what I was struggling with... I think I will write our T to tell her about this to make sure she doesn't repeat the same thing.

Can you explain more about what you're saying is the difference between responsibility and fault? It seems to me that they are different sides of the same thing.

If something isn't someone's responsibility, then whatever happens or doesn't happen with that thing is not their fault. It's the fault of the person who had the responsibility and didn't do what they were supposed to (or did something they weren't supposed to).

By saying something wasn't your fault, people ARE saying that it was NOT your responsibility. Someone else had the responsibility, so it was their fault.

I understand what you mean about the word "fault" carrying an element of assigning blame, but if you determine that someone was supposed to be responsible for something happening, and they failed to carry out their responsibility, and that you didn't have any responsibility in that situation, I don't see how that's different from saying "it isn't your fault, it's their fault." That seems equal to saying, "it wasn't your responsibility, it was their responsibility."

But maybe I'm missing certain nuances in what you're talking about?

there is a nuance and I am not sure how to explain it.
When you think of yourself, you wouldn't say that your symptoms are your fault. But they are your responsibilty to manage. There is a difference there.
I regularly get hate messages when I say 'you are responsible for your symptoms' because people read it as 'it is your fault' when really it is not the same.
I can see that the case of my mother is a tricky one. she was responsible. but I avoid going into the fault thing because that gets confusing and doesn't seem to give me any helpful understanding right now. In many ways she is showing the same symptoms and behaviors we have. Are her symptoms her fault but mine aren't? It is a lot clearer when I look at responsibility because her role was clear and she still had responsibility to manage her symptoms and she did not. not sure if that makes any more sense than what I said before...

birdsong87 wrote:When you think of yourself, you wouldn't say that your symptoms are your fault. But they are your responsibilty to manage. There is a difference there.

Yes, of course. But failure to manage something that you're supposed to be responsible for--that would be your fault.

I think that when you say "you are responsible for your symptoms," you're running into a semantic difficulty, because the phrase "you are responsible for" is often taken to mean "you caused" rather than "this is your responsibility to take care of." I don't know if this is perhaps specific to English, but a common phrase an adult might say to a group of kids, upon discovering a mess, or some kind of damage, is "Who's responsible for this??" meaning--"whose fault is this?"

In the case of your mother, her symptoms aren't her fault any more than yours are, but yes, it was her responsibility to manage them in order to do her job of meeting the needs of her children. So, it can be said that her failure to do that was her fault.

But I think I see why the fault thing kind of obscures and oversimplifies. It's limiting and does reduce things to "who's to blame?" and I agree that looking at it in terms of responsibility is helpful. Thanks.

we continue to help D. with the body work exercise and it is working. the survival energy goes down. What is left is a feeling of disgust for the bullies. they probably deserve that. We have moved away from the big situation and went through single encounters. it is easier to gasp. It is real trauma work, even if we use body work techniques. this is hard.
figuring out responsiblities brought up another state support agency that failed us. probably because someone inexperienced was caught in our mothers nacissistic lure. only repeating what she told them to do. they had the chance to make an impact and they made it worse. it helps to redirect the anger and aggression, move our attention away from trying to find out what we have done wrong.
Since D. is a lot more present there are more of her issues showing. A lot of her aggression. and her OCD tendencies. They used to be helpful because she is restrictive in areas where there was lack. it is getting maladaptive now. The body is full of flight/fight energy at all times. by now we are connected enough that it has an impact on the Littles. hyperactive and grumpy. I hope our T can help us explore the trauma-related OC behavior. this is not an area of expertise for us.
We sent her a list of triggers we want to target next. we are truly heading into phase 2 now. we are kind of there already.

That sounds like a lot of good progress. We're feeling kind of stuck right now in therapy, so on the one hand, it's nice to see that it's possible to tackle these things and move forward. On the other hand, it makes us realize how stuck we are, and that we really don't know what the next step is.

Anyway, we're glad to hear about how things are going for you.

I am sorry you feel so stuck. I read what you write here and your therapy is going so radically different from ours. you seem to tackle the biggest problem first: trust issues. we are circling around all kinds o topics but we highly avoid the trust topic and only work on stuff as long as not too much trust is needed. It is sometimes painful to end up doing difficult work alone. What we were doing with Danielle should have been done with a T. doing it alone because we don't trust is confirming a trauma pattern. I just want to mention that because its not like we are doing a great job in all areas. we get some progress but in a way we are also driving the trust thing deeper into our understanding of the world. you are fighting on a whole different level, face on, the hardest part.