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flower:
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Thanks so much for your insight and support.
 It aided my healing. Too much of my heart
was in this post to let it remain here for posterity on the web.
The post served its purpose and now it is time to
edit it or gently take it down.
 
To every thing there is a season, and a time
to every purpose under the heaven:  Ecclesiates 3:1

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Anonymous:
Hi Flower,

How awful!  I think your post is the very definition of trauma.  As my T explained to me, our brains are now hard-wired by the trauma.  As we work through it and recognize how we are feeling and then the why, we will still have a fight-or-flight reaction, but it lessens or we process it a bit quicker.  So perhaps the solution is to feel the fear, acknowledge it, and then reassure ourselves that we are OK today.  

I guess we sort of become more familiar with the fear (like a friend  8) ) which has served us in the past, but doesn't keep us from doing from what we need to do or want to do now.  

Don't give yourself too hard a time--what if it was your dad?  :shock:  Then your response was appropriate.  The fact that it was your daughter, not someone you fear, doesn't mean you didn't initially respond appropriately, given your experience.  Hope this makes sense!  Peace, Seeker

Dawning:
Hi Flower and Guest,

Feeling the fear and acknowledging it are important for recovery and healing.  I agree.   Several years ago, after I had been in therapy for a year, I took an occassion to look my Nmother straight in the eye when she was on one of her tirades.  I recall never looking at her in the eye before.  I didn't see any warmth.  What I saw was the emptiness of her false self.  She didn't seem to like being looked at in the eye and this made her angrier.  I can still remember that look; that icy, icy look.  But it doesn't scare the adult me.  

It still scares the child me and this is something I am working on.  I protect her whenever I am around my mother and the rest of my family because if they see one inkling of her insecurity and fear, they truly love it.  They want me (or is it her or can they even tell the difference?) to break down and be crazy.  Then, I'll be at their mercy, they can scapegoat me to be the sick one in the family and they can lock me up, shake their heads and be all self-righteous about it.  *That* is what I fear - that intention that I feel they still have.  

Flower, if I may ask, in what way did the drive around the old town change your attitude?  It sounds as if it changed it for the better.   :D   :D

I did something similar about a year ago.  Afterwards, I felt that I had *re-written* a new ending to the memories  by going to the old homes, schools, etc of my childhood.  It was very empowering.  It helped me to feel less fragmented and more whole.  That experience gave me strength and helped a little further to distill the fear (at least the fear that was held within the memories.)

Anonymous:
Hi Flower! & Dawning!

Sounds like you had a great breakthrough with your daughter--that's so great!   :D

I went through the exact same thing--the fear of encountering the N I cut off.  Broke up with my NSIL (and also my enabling bro) and had the same aversion to bumping into her.  We live in the same town.  I went through about a year of anxiety of "what do people think" stuff and had to realize that I couldn't allow it to matter because of what she had done to me and my family, that I would be really stupid and irresponsible if I let her blackmail me into flying back into her web.  

Like you, I try to have phrases available in case I do run into her.  That helps.  That and knowing that being in public, the N will always behave with other eyes around.  Just recently (I posted elsewhere) I encountered her and we chatted for a minute and of course she invited me over.  I simply declined.  (This is one of her tricks: to invite invite invite so you reject reject reject and then, oh poor little N!)  

But now I don't care if I look mean to her.  If people rally around her I think to myself "thanks!  thanks for running interference!  Go ahead and find out what Sybil is really like!"  I am confident that her weirdness leaks out even sooner with age and with the stress of having two children she wants to show off without taking responsibility for them.  That's a tough act to pull off.

When I run into my brother (which hasn't happened in years--he's rather chicken and non-confrontational and angry) he will scowl & glare at me.  I think it's because he knows I know the TRUTH and won't play his game of Pretend anymore.  I simply say hello very calmly and he relaxes like, oh, she's not mad at me.  For me, there is no point in being mad or sad or happy or anything because I now know no real communication is possible with him about the things that have come between us.  I tried a few times and he tapdances really well, I discovered.  I do have to resist the temptation to roll my eyes.

Dawning, I think of fairy tales now when I realize I am growing less afraid of "giants" and "witches" and can deal with them sometimes--like staring them in the eyes!  I love that.  Kinda like holding a cross up to a vampire, huh?  I still need to work on that kind of courage with my father (my fear factor) but I'm getting there with my own generation.  

Keep on keepin' on!  Hugs, Seeker

Somebody:
Hi everyone.

I know this fear, Flower.  It is one thing, I call it- the residue, that is still very suddenly evoked in me by triggers.

It isn't just emotional or psychological but a real, physical reaction.  Even though both of my parents are dead, this can happen, if the phone rings in the middle of the night (a stalking method used on me and very effective at disrupting my sleep and upsetting me when I was under severe stress to begin with), or if I see a person who looks very much like one of my abusers (in public someplace), or if I am in a situation that closely resembles one from the past, one that I may have forgotton, or just put behind me, I have had this sudden, gripping, freezing, terroristic fear take ahold of me.

I'm better at dealing with it now that I have learned to say to myself:

"Don't panic".

Those two words seem able to reach my conscious mind and help me get a grip, so to speak.  Once I realize that the fear was just a bit of residue, I'm fine.  It is getting less and less over the years and it will continue to be less, as time goes by.

Best of luck to you.  Remember, you don't have to answer the door.

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