I love when someone says "It's all in the past" or "It's time to move on", as though there's a special time limit on trauma, PTSD/CPTSD, or pain.  This is a term my mother uses frequently whenever I bring up the past.  It's a dismissive way to say "Oh god, you're overreacting again" or "Why do you dwell on things that are no longer happening?"  Talking about the past makes people uncomfortable, especially if it's filled with pain.  Bringing up your pain makes other people fear accessing their own pain.  So they dismiss your pain as a way to dismiss their own.

Like when I told my mother I was raped at fourteen years old, I accessed her pain of being raped at that age, which I was unaware of at the time.  When I told my mother about my own rape, she ignored me and said nothing at all and just kept driving.  We just sat in silence.  I was confused. And very, very hurt.  But years later, after I went no contact with her this last time, she met with a psychologist who got her to talk about her own rape.  After that, it was all she could talk about but she still denied my pain and acted like what happened to me hadn't happened at all.  That's her narcissist side creeping out.  She was allowed to be raped.  I was not.  It's a very gross and disgusting way of saying "My pain counts.  Your pain doesn't exist."

But if I were to bring this up, she'd say "It's all the past, why don't you let it go?"  That was a phrase I heard a billion times after having to be forced back into my mother's life again after over a year hiatus.  She refused to acknowledge my abuse as a child and just repeated this phrase to me over and over again.  I remember wanting to snap and just scream at her, but once again, I was in the grips of her bullshit without a way out: we were stuck with nobody else after becoming homeless and losing everything we owned, even our car.  We did eventually get some of our stuff back, but not a car.  We were stuck using hers just so my husband could get a job and get to work.

Now everything is a little different, but we aren't completely 100% yet.  We still suffer in many ways and those that know us well, know this about us.  But then today a family member told me on a post from last year that came up in my feed and I talked about how awful last year was, "So just be glad that rough part is in the past and leave it there."  

It's just another way to say "Stop living in the past" or "Let it go".  When you suffer from PTSD, the "rough part" is not in the past.  The roughest part maybe, but you relieve it on a regular basis.  Now, this doesn't happen to me as much anymore, waking up and thinking I am still there.  This used to happen quite regularly.  So I don't quite live in that space anymore.  But I do feel the pain of what we lost almost on a daily basis.  She then added, "Smile, because you came out on top!"  

This woman is notorious for plastering platitudes on everything she says to me.  She has no idea how to access her own pain.  Her own mother, who happens to be my family member too, is also a narcissist, is crazier than my own mother.  She had some deep pain she can't access, so she always throws on a smile and pretends everything is hunkydory, and makes excuses for why people treat her badly.  I care about her, but she's also a woman that forgot my 40th birthday (the next year she sent me a card, only after letting her know how much her forgetting my birthday hurt me, where she copied another card's sentiments instead of writing anything personal).  Forgetting my 40th is kind of a jacked up thing since were pretty close back then, but I can't dwell on people's mistakes (well, I can, but I shouldn't).  But anyway, my point is she has no idea how to say I'm sorry, or to really ask how other people are doing.  She can't access real feelings in those ways.  So I get it when she said these things to me today.  I get that she doesn't get what dealing with trauma (esp. that of having you and your family abducted by some crazy person in Missouri) looks like.  It probably makes her very uncomfortable.  

But still, I can't get over the whole "leave it in the past" line, which is triggering for me.  Maybe it's me.  It probably is.  But at the same time, I feel dismissed.  I feel my feelings have been dismissed.  "Smile, everything's better now!"  No, it isn't.  I still feel it every single day.  I still remember it.  I don't have the visceral flashbacks anymore.  I can't smell her apartment anymore.  I can't close my eyes and for a moment freak the hell out because I forget I am not being abused by her anymore.  But I'm still there at times.  I still remember and it still lives with me almost daily.  

I get that people don't get that part.  People who can't access their pain will never have those issues.  They can't feel things, so they shut them out and pretend everything is okay.  But dismissing another's feelings, even if not meant that way, isn't okay.  The last time I was going through a hard time and I was posting negative things on my FB page she decided to lecture me.  Told me I was "spiraling out of control", which was an overreaction as I was just talking about my pain.  But to her, that was spiraling.  But she didn't grow up with my parents.  She has no idea what "spiraling out of control" really looks like.  She didn't have a father drink himself into his grave all the while abusing his wife and child.  That's spiraling.  

Growing up with a narcissist mother taught me how to access my feelings because I was a spiteful child who wanted to never give in to her bullshit.  I wanted to talk about what I was going through whereas my mother wanted to pretend it never happened.  After my father died my mother "spiraled out of control" trying to drink herself into an early grave and then started physically abusing me as an adult (she learned fast and quick that I am not a person she could victimize in such a way).  Me bringing these things up on FB (and mind you, I only have my immediate family and very few trusted others on my page, not hundreds of friends) was not "spiraling" anything.  I was angry, yes, but I was dealing with my crazy mother who was abusing me at the time.  

So my family member lecturing me was just a way for her to get me to shut up.  So when she posted this today, I can't tell if she's being sincere (although misguided) or just shushing me and feeling I am "spiraling" again by dwelling on our trauma.  But it was only a year ago.  In actuality, it's practically the anniversary of the day we left.   Around year ago today we traveled down to southern Missouri, 500 miles from home and became homeless.  My cousin tricked us and told us she had a place for us to live.  And to find out, it was a shack in the middle of the woods that had been destroyed.  It was all a ploy for her narcissistic games to get us to her house so she could use and abuse us.  And that she did.  And then our car broke down and she got us got kicked out of her apartment and we became even more homeless than before.  It was horrible.  We had four cats, and four dogs and four humans and I feared we were going to lose everyone and everything.  We did end up losing two of our cats, and we had to leave everything behind in a storage unit, and came back to our town with nothing, except us, our dogs and two of our cats.  No furniture, beds, and hardly any clothes.  And my mother, who's apartment we live above, used that time after we moved in to abuse us some more.  So it seemed a never-ending nightmare.  My mother's abuse only recently stopped.  Though she still abuses us, it's the more "regular" style rather than the hardcore abuse she doled out last year (she literally tried to starve us last year, I am not even exaggerating).  

So yeah.  The past isn't that far behind us.  And my family member knows this.  And she ignores me when I talk about it.  I could make excuses for her...like I have been this entire blog.  Saying she can't access her pain.  Which she can't.  I know this.  But that doesn't mean it's okay to say these things to another person.  To tell them "It's in the past!  Move on!"  It's demeaning when people treat us like that, like our feelings do no matter.  And I think, even though I do like her and get along with her, I don't need her to be exposed to my personal posts.  Telling her she's being annoying probably won't' change her behavior, as it doesn't change my mother's behavior.  We all know this.  I've told her this before.

This kind of story happens to most of us who are vocal about our abuse.  So my advice?  Do what I did: put that family member/friend/etc. on restricted access (if it's on Facebook).  Don't give them the chance to dismiss you anymore.  I know I'm not.  

Some people are about surface relationships.  So that's as far as you should take it with them.  Don't let give them the chance to be a part of your healing, because they obviously don't want to be.  


It's not all in the past.  Nothing traumatic ever is.  Whether it's a specific trauma or just all the years of your abuse from your mother, it's all with you, all the time.  It heals, yes.  But it's okay to explore when you need to.  Don't let others act like you're "spiraling" or whatever they label you as.  You have every right to talk about your pain when needed.  Just make sure it's to people who you trust to comfort you and help you heal 💓