About

Hello and welcome to my blog.

We all have a child within us and that child can occassionaly pop up with messages & memories of our childhood. If the memories and messages are positive then all is fine. Sometimes however, it can also make us aware of some not so good memories. For those of us who grew up in dysfunctional families, the child within needs healing as sometimes it had overly critical and neglectful parents.

 I have started this website to share my personal story of recovery, healing and hope. I want to offer tips on how to cope with a special needs sibling and how to heal from narcissistic parental abuse. I also want to offer insight into how complicated the grieving and healing can be when recovering from chilhood abuse and neglect in the family. Mental health is very important to myself and others and people have to understand that it matters just as much as physical health.

I hope to reduce the stigma of mental health.

A short summary of my background is written below and I hope that you will stop by and share your thoughts with me.

I am recently married and in my early 30’s and very grateful to have come across WordPress. I don’t consider myself a writer, but I have always kept a journal as a way of getting my thoughts & feelings out of my head and onto paper. In this case, I am obviously hoping that my thoughts and experience will be seen by others and can hopefully help them. Even if I can only reach out to 1 or 2 people, that is enough to make this blog worthwhile. .

I am bi-cultural and spent the first 18 years of my life in the suburbs of Athens. I have an older brother who has epilepsy and has the mental age of a 10 year old. He has many difficulties in learning, spatial & quantitative awareness and self-care. He lives in the UK and is looked after by carers. I am glad he has some support.

 Unfortunately, due to many reasons which I will list below, I have struggled throughout my life so far with low self esteem, generalised anxiety, complex post traumatic stress & depression. I am behind emotionally in a lot of areas in my life, especially in feeling safe with intimacy and trusting people and constantly feel worried about most things in my day to day life. This is a result of my dysfunctional upbringing. I am currently in the latter parts of my healing journey and have grieved extensively.

I knew something was not ‘quite’ right from the tender age of 7, when I asked my parents if I was adopted. Things didn’t feel right at home, so I wondered if there was another ‘loving’ family out there somewhere. I grew up with 2 narcissistic parents so my childhood wasn’t normal. I didn’t have other family around, so felt very alone growing up! Nobody understood how hard it was to be the sister of a special needs sibling, or to be the daughter of 2 ’emotionally handicapped’ parents. I use the term ’emotionally handicapped’ as that is truly how it feels when your parents can’t comfort you when you are sad,understand you or love you unconditionally. When your childhood has a lot of drama, arguing, threats, lies and abuse, you are a victim of abuse who then becomes a survivor.

Unfortunately I was unlucky enough to experience other traumatic events, such as a sexual assault, an armed robbery where someone got shot, a home burglary, earthquakes, a car accident, my sibling and father attempting suicide and constant abandonment in both my family and previous relationships. I also unfortunately had 2 relationships with narcissistic men, as they resembled my family and that is all I knew. For these above reasons my PTSD is complex.

I have been recovering for 7 years and still finding it hard completely letting go of my dysfunctional family.

My biggest success was to marry my lovely husband after 3 years of being together. He is incredibly gifted ( in the highest IQ range) and even though some of his sensitivities and dramatic reactions, resemble my family of origin, he is healthy, loyal, trustworthy and loves me unconditionally. It was extremely difficult for me at first to persevere every time I wanted to run or give up, as he didn’t feel familiar like my previous partners did. It took me a long time to believe I deserved to be loved and to trust that I wouldn’t be abandoned again. With the help of psychotherapy, I identified my triggers, fears and self destructive behaviours. I am still learning to take a step back and not react when triggered but this is a long process and still working on it. It has all been worth it and I am extremely grateful for all the support and self awareness I have managed to maintain.

  I hope you find my posts a little interesting or insightful and I would be very happy to hear from you with any questions about your own struggles. I am not a licenced psychotherapist, qualified coach or mental health professional. I have however worked in caring jobs for over 13 years, which include child care, special needs care and elderly care. I would like to eventually do a masters in Art Psychotherapy but until then I will continue to write, create art and learn as much as I can.I am hoping to gain some other training in life coaching and possibly trauma work. I have currently chosen anonymity to protect myself. I hope you feel comfortable enough despite this to say Hi and share your story or thoughts.