Little girl blue, the version of Janis Joplin. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yYHJ_A8qnXw

I just wanted to say that I think it is probably difficult to have a disorder that is stigmatised so much. It makes it harder to acknowledge it and work on it. You do that anyway, which shows strength. I agree that disorders do not make someone a bad person. How you act and what is the effect on others is what is important for that. We all make mistakes. What is important is to acknowledge them and learn from them and to prioritise the needs of people we might have hurt so that they can heal. I think that defines whether someone is a good person, whether they have NPD or not.

Dank je wel! :-)

Dank je wel voor het lieve bericht! Ik ga soms naar de kinderboerderij, dat is volgens mij een beetje hetzelfde. Meestal probeer ik mijn neefje ofzo mee te nemen, maar soms ga ik ook gewoon. Dat is eigenlijk een beetje hetzelfde. :-)

Thank you for the kind message. It is good to hear that it is possible to have it great even after a miscarriage. I have had two miscarriages and two biochemical pregnancies. I did not really have time tomprocess this yet, as I had to continue treatment as my fertility is further declining due to my age. I think that might be part of the emotions as well.

It is difficult for me to not wager my personal happiness on it. I have a small nephew and when I take care of him, it just makes me very happy. It makes me feel like I would be as happy or even happier with my own child. Also, I was abused as a child and I feel that I did not have parents that really loved me. It feel unfair that I am not able to experience the mother/child bond from the perspectives of a child as well as that of a motger.

I also tried to take care of my younger siblings when I was a child. I was able to provide them with some of the emotional support my parents failed to provide, but because I was too young myself I always felt like I was not able to give them what they need. I am an adult now and I feel like I am capable now of providing children with a safe and warm environment. And I feel like I have all this love to give, but there is no child to give it to. I do not know where to put it.

I don’t know. Having a child will not fix all of this and a child does not exist to fix this or to make me happy. However, it could have been an area of my life that could have been beautiful and where I might have been able to give something and be valuable. And instead, this also does not work out and is another thing that goes on the pile of things that have failed in my life.

I agree that staking my life’s success on it is not a good idea. But I am not sure what else I have left. I am trying to become a writer and I am writing down all my experiences from my youth and with my sister who passed away and my fertility treatments, and so on. Maybe it can help some people who experience the same things. I think that might be fulfilling maybe and a way to create something positive out of the things that feel negative now.

Sad and empty. I love kids. I had fertility treatments for years, but that did not work out. I will start IVF again in a couple of days. Hopefully it will work this time. It is one of my last chances.

I would like to adopt or have foster kids. However, I suffer from PTSD and in my country it is very difficult to adopt or foster if you have a background with mental illness. Even though my psychologist and the people in my environment all say that they think I would be able to do it and my partner does not have any mental illness, my chances are very low.

To be honest, looking any further than the next IVF makes me panic. I do not know how to live with not having kids and how to deal with that. I had a lot of bad stuff happen to me. Having children would be something I believe would have made me very happy. It feels like I failed at life. However, I just turned 40, so I know I need to give up at some point.

( ͡°❥ ͡°)

I did not find out that I was gifted until I was 36. I had a terrible childhood where I was emotionally neglected and psychologically abused, so it is difficult to say what issues that I had were strictly from the giftedness and what of them were due to being abused.

One thing I do know that is likely due to giftedness is that in middle school I spend all my time in class reading comics or other books instead of doing assignments and paying attention to what the teacher was teaching the class. As I got grades that were okayish (not that good, but good enough to pass), this was ignored. In high school I also did the bare minimum that was necessary to pass. I never did any assignments that were not graded if I could get away with it and I often slept during class. They always thought I just was very lazy and they told me this often.

Then I started studying psychology at university. For the first exam, I was very afraid that I would not pass. This was university, so I thought it would be difficult. However I got a 9.8 out of 10. From that point on, I was not able to concentrate and only got grades that helped me to just pass the courses, but not much better. I wanted to do better than that, but I just could not get myself motivated.

All this time I felt very bad about myself. I thought that I was just lazy too. I tried to get myself motivated and do the work, but I just couldn’t. I also felt that the time I was in class was completely useless and that the same was the case for making assignments. It just felt like I was jumping through hoops because, well, those were the rules. I still get angry about that. I wanted them to just tell me what I should be able to do and know in the end and just let me figure out myself how to get there, instead of just doing useless stuff. It was very frustrating.

I had a bit of a breakdown after studying psychology for two years due to my traumatic childhood. When I got better and wanted to start studying again, I went to the study advisor and simply told her I wanted to do something difficult. She told me to try Artificial Intelligence (which back then was something I never heard about). I went to the first lecture and I did not immediately understand what they were explaining. That created a bit of panic at first, as that was a bit of an unfamiliar feeling. All of a sudden, I really had to work for it.

And that is what I did and it was not difficult to get motivated at all anymore. I worked really hard and really did my best. I had an average mark of 8.6 out of 10 in the end for my master’s, which is considered very high. However, most importantly, I was having a lot of fun! I had a lot of energy all of a sudden, I had all these new ideas. It just was a really good time. Learning did not feel like a chore at all anymore. After that I got my PhD and now I am an assistant professor and I hope to become a full professor one day. Once I can do that, I am thinking about starting a whole new career path to keep myself challenged.

I am telling you all this to illustrate what it feels like to be gifted, but having to fully adapt to your environment instead of your environment adapting to you. The psychiatrist that told me I was gifted once said to me “if you have an IQ of 70, people will help you and adapt to you, if you have an IQ of 130, people expect you to figure it out by yourself and adapt to everyone else, even though it is the same deviation from the average.” That stayed with me a lot. Gifted people need help and they get exhausted by continuously being expected to adapt to their environment and having to jump through hoops that were not made for them.

With my experience in mind, I would think it would be best to get you daughter the help she needs, whether that is in a regular school or in a program. Also, it is very important to keep her challenged. If she is not doing well at school, she might not be lazy or not wanting to do better, she just might be very bored and unable to concentrate. If a program is needed to keep her challenged, that might be the best option. However, I think that lots of interaction with people outside of such programs remains important as it teaches you a lot about a variety of other people and how to work with them. I hated my childhood, but that’s something valuable that I did learn.

That is really cool! Thank you so much. I have been thinking about trying this stuff for a while and this is some really good advise to get started. Cannot wait to try it. Thanks!

Cool! I like both of them, but if I have to choose, I like the first one best. I really like flowers! :-)

Really nice! I like most of them, actually. I think the comic book ones are the best. Thank you and also thanks for the explanation. I have not that much experience with generating images yet. This definitely helps!

Does not look like me at all, but very realistic!

Yes, you are right! It is weird, because the interface looks exactly the same as of Stable Diffusion and it is the first result you get if you search it with DuckDuckGo. Fell for that one.

Why is mine so boring? :-(

I can understand that it feels that this is the maximum you can cope with. But as long as you keep breathing, you still exist and you can cope. I can promise you that if you go through it instead of around it, it will get better. I cannot promise you exactly when or how high the peaks will be, but I can promise you that as long as you keep breathing you can cope.

My little sister died from anorexia, I had a miscarriage, my parents emotionally neglected and emotionally abused me as a child and several other traumatising stuff happened. I know pain. I do not underestimate yours. But this is how I dealt with it and I think it will help you too.

I sincerely feel for you. But the pain has a function. You need it to process and you need to feel it to eventually be able to make a new and happy life for yourself. Just keep breathing and go through the waves. I know you can do it.

Don’t drink. Cry. It sounds stupid, bit crying out all the pain might help. Do not run from it. Go through it and cry again if you need to. If you can do so safely, drive and scream in the car. Or break some stuff that you do not need anymore (like plates or something).

I have been through some traumatising stuff and the only thing that helps is not to run, but to go through it. I promise you, there will be a peak in pain and then it will reduce and the next peak will be less severe. This will go on and the pain will become less and less. As long as you keep breathing, you can handle it.

Maybe you are distracting yourself from something?

I do not want my data to be monetised at all and I try to limit my use of services that do monetise my data as much as possible. This means that I try to not use Google products, for example.

In some cases, I feel forced to use it because the consequences of doing so are too high. For example, almost all my friends and family use WhatsApp. If I do not use it, I will be harder for hem to communicate with and I would miss out on a lot of stuff which happens in groups. I am not sure to what extent WhatsApp uses my data, but it is part of Meta and I do not trust Meta at all. However, in this case, access to my friends and family is more important to me. Although I am quite angry about it and I will get out immediately once there is a law that obligates messaging apps to be able to communicate with each other.

I would share my data for other uses, if it is in the interest of society. For example, I would share it for some scientific research.

That is okay, I can be quite long-winded as well! Thank you also for saying that I was helpful to talk to. I like talking to you too.

Understanding each others trauma is not enough for a friendship, I agree with that. You need more than that. Personalities that fit well together, same level of intelligence, same sense of humour.

I am not that sarcastic myself, but my sense of humour can be a little bit dark sometimes. Especially me and my sister could make some dark jokes together. I miss that. Some people might be offended a little bit by some jokes, but if they are not really hurt by it, just slightly offended, that is even funnier sometimes to be honest. I think humour is a very healthy way to cope, including sarcasm. It can be a way to still find joy or to reduce tension or put things in perspective. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe you need to have experienced dark stuff to get the sarcasm and dark humour?

I think accusing people of trauma dumping is a very unempathic way for people to create a distance between them and the things you are telling them. They are scared by it and this is their way to cope. My boyfriend had a fairly normal childhood and life. I used to be quite open with him about what happened to me and he would just almost shut down and not respond (some of the time, other times he was supportive). We had some issues with that, because I was really hurt by that. He used to say that it was just too much for him to deal with. And I actually would get a little bit angry about that. I had to deal with these things that happened to me. I had to and and I could, while at the same time even only hearing about it was too much for him. I just could not understand. However, after a lot of discussion, I now think that what you can cope with depends very much on what you have had to cope with. I can deal with the things that happened to me, because not dealing with them was not an option. They were happening and I had no control. My boyfriend, however, does not strictly need to hear about my trauma, so he has the room to be unable to deal with it. He also had not something worse than that happening to him, teaching him how to deal with this stuff. So, he just did not respond and tries to ignore it.

In short, your seamstress probably cannot or does not want to deal with it probably for similar reasons and is mean to create a distance. It could also be that it is a trigger for her and that is why she creates a distance. Traumatised people can also just be assholes.

I addition, I told you you were strong as well. It is very obvious from your story. However, I am not a therapist and a therapist should dig deeper than that. Things are not magically solved because you tell people something positive. You actually really need to get to know them and know what they need and try to provide that. These therapists seem to lack that basic skill. I am sorry to hear that the therapists are so bad where you live. A good one can really help a lot, but bad once only cost money or even do damage.

If your ex still could be a threat to you, then it is quite functional to be scared. It might help with protecting yourself. A restraining order might help with being and feeling more safe again.

I have not heard about thought tracking (but maybe that is because English is not my native language). What do you do exactly?

I also like to talk to you! Definitely let me know when you want to talk. :-)

I believe you. And that you have been able to process this already, shows again that you are strong.

I am familiar with the feeling of being disconnected. My trauma is different from yours, but also difficult to understand or imagine for a lot of people. However, I found that other traumatised people are sometimes at least a lot easier to talk to, even if they do not understand completely. They are just not that scared by it, without minimizing what happened. I do have a couple of good friends now, who are very kind and very willing to talk with me about these things. Even if they might not completely understand, they do accept me. That helps a lot. I hope you will find people in your life like that as well.

I agree that it is very alarming that the therapist was uncomfy with what you were telling them. That should not happen. They should have been trained to be able to deal with difficult stuff. That is very unprofessional of them. The same is the case of the therapist that told you to just be more assertive and even more so for the scam artist. It is incredibly mean to try and scam people who are traumatized. You need to be a deeply pathetic person to do that.

I am in the very fortunate situation that I live in a country that pays for the costs of any EMDR and therapy that I need and we have well educated therapists here. So, fortunately, for me it is very easy to get that treatment. I can understand that for you it might be much more difficult to arrange this. However, if you ever get the chance to do real EMDR, it might be good to try. I am not sure whether you have these intrusive images, or sounds or feelings etc from your trauma, but for me it worked especially well for that. Of course it does not work for everyone, but it might be worth the try.

I am no therapist, but if you need a listening ear sometimes, just send me a message. I have had different life from you, so I might not immediately understand or I might not always say the right thing. However, I am not easily shocked or uncomfortable.