Preface

I spent twenty-two years learning to be visible, only to discover that becoming real is not the same as staying real.

As a very young child, I hid behind a telephone pole when my mother told me to go play with the other kids. Not because I was playing hide-and-seek, but because without a secure base at home, I didn't know how to reach out to the world. I climbed trees and disappeared into the woods—not to escape the neighborhood, but to escape my parents. From the sudden punch or kick that could come out of nowhere. From parents who built a pool and took us to Disney but never once asked if I was happy, never seemed to notice or care who I actually was. 

Even as a child, I could see the disconnect—the performance of family for the outside world, the indifference behind closed doors. By fourteen, I was asking questions I had no language for yet: Why are you doing these things for us when you don't actually care? The only time I remember being held was around age three or four, in swimming lessons, my arms wrapped around the young instructor's neck, and even then I felt certain I didn't deserve it.

By high school, I had perfected invisibility. I sat silent in classrooms, never called upon, a ghost among my peers. I went away to college and immediately started counseling—not because I believed I could change, but because I couldn't keep living this way. I set goals: speak in class, ask someone out. 

For most of my undergraduate years, I remained the third person with every couple—best friend to both the boyfriend and girlfriend, even best man at a wedding, but never part of a couple myself. I finally got two dates my senior year—one date each with two different people. I never spoke in class. I'd come so far, but something fundamental was still missing.

Then, in 1990, after graduating from Georgia Tech, I was seen through the eyes of love. For the first time in my life, I had proof that I was special, that I mattered, that I was real. It was the missing piece—the experiential knowledge that no amount of therapy alone could provide. She died at the end of that same year, and for a time I wondered: what good is it to find this love and have it taken away so suddenly? But something had awakened in me that couldn't be undone.

In April of 1992, I took a microphone and read poetry, choosing to be the center of attention for the first time in my life. Three months later, I met Lynn. What followed over the next eight years—from 1992 through 2000—were years of success and joy beyond my wildest dreams. Graduate school in 1993, becoming a therapist in 1996, full licensure in 1998. Leading therapy groups and counseling couples despite having gotten only two dates in all of college. Building a life with Lynn—enduring love and earned secure attachment, learning in adulthood what I should have known as an infant. 

I want you to understand what's possible. I could have become like so many others who can only connect with narcissists like their parents because it's familiar. I want to show you that it doesn't have to be that way. That even from a childhood like mine, you can find real connection, meaningful work, genuine love. The kind of success that looked, for all the world, like I'd been cured of my past.

By July of 2000, everything seemed perfect. By September, I'd lost it all.

And that's when I learned what I'm still learning now: psychological wounds don't heal like broken bones or diseases cured by vaccines. You can grow, transform, build a beautiful life—and then lose it and discover that all your old patterns are still there, waiting. Letting my parents back into my life recreated the trauma of childhood. By my mid-fifties, I finally did what I should have done decades earlier: I cut off all contact with my family. This is the story of learning to be real, forgetting I was real, and finding my way back—not to where I was, but to something I'm still discovering. This time, with tools I'm learning to use.

My Invitation

Have you ever felt invisible? Not just shy or like a wallflower, but truly unseen—not noticed, not known for who you really are? Noticed social anxiety in yourself? This book is for you.

You might also recognize yourself here if you grew up in a home where you had many things, but your feelings were never validated or didn't seem to matter. Where everything looked normal from the outside - maybe you even say things were good, you weren't abused—but somehow you became responsible for a parent's happiness or emotional needs. That's called covert narcissism, and it's more common than you might think. And narcissistic patterns don't only show up with parents, they can appear in partners and other relationships throughout our lives.

This isn't about blaming parents. It's about understanding what happened and finding your way forward. As the title states, this book covers Complex-PTSD and/or Developmental Trauma—regardless of where those wounds originated.

You may not relate to everything in these pages—everyone's experiences manifest in different ways. Because we have much to cover, take it slowly. I hope you'll relate and know you are not alone.