Tag Archives: talking about abuse

D.A.M – An Entry About Memories

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Anger, Depression, Memories, Music, Psychotherapy with A, Sexual Abuse, Video and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I feel sick. Stupidly wolfed down a pizza on my own in less than fifteen minutes. Somewhat unlike me to binge in that way, I’m too much of a control freak to do that, usually – but lately I’ve been continuously hungry, and I can’t seem to stop eating.

Listening to my D.A.M playlist as I’m writing this. D.A.M is short for Depressed Angry Music. Has everything from Rammstein to Nitin Sawhney on it. Quite a wide range, in terms of genres – but all tracks are on the theme of depression, anger, frustration, gimme-a-plate-and-I’ll-smash-it..

“..I just wanna be destructive
trash everything in sight
beat the d’vil at his game
abuse myself all night

I wanna bitch the world out
one loud aching scream
don’t want anybody
wanting anything from me

I just wanna be destructive..”

You get the idea.

I’m just feeling very very frustrated at the moment. Had a few really rough sessions last week in therapy. The one I crowned ‘roughest one yet’ the other week was, it turns out, tip of the iceberg material. In last session things tumbled out of me that I hadn’t remember until in that moment, and that’s a pretty scary thing to cope with; the not knowing what might come next. It wasn’t in the form of flashbacks, which I am grateful for, since flashbacks – in contrast to normal memories – you have no way of shielding yourself from. But even without the re-living through flashbacks, sickening memories are still.. well.. sickening.

Had to pause a few times in the session, covering my head with my hands and arms, and repeating out loud that “I really don’t want to remember this, I really don’t want to remember this”.. Almost as if by covering my head, by closing my eyes, I might be able to stop the memories from emerging.

And yet, as hard as this whole remembering things is.. maybe it’s a good thing? Maybe it’s a sign that I’m better able to manage this now? Maybe I’m more ready to let my feelings come out? And the fact that I remembered things in session, maybe that is an indication that I actually feel safe enough with A. for that to happen?

Also, now that I’m at home, alone with my memories – rather than switching me into must-get-scalpels-out mode – well, it seems to come out in very sudden bursts of anger.

That’s right. You heard me. I used the A word.
About me.

Goes to show, doesn’t it? That anything is possible.

And that’s a good thing.

xx

PS. The lyrics above are from LeAnn Rimes’ “destructive”. Fantastic version of the song below – recorded at legendary Abbey Road Studios. (Also check out the Dann Huff produced album version.)

Lyrics from Destructive ©  LeAnn Rimes

Rough, Rougher, The Roughest

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Faith, Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy with A, Sexual Abuse and tagged with , , , , , , ,

Another week gone by. On the whole it’s been a good week. Training, work, therapy and.. well.. those other things I do. Seems like a winning concept to me.

Had a rough session on Friday, though. Possibly the roughest one yet. Especially in contrast to the one I had on Tuesday, which was essentially me faffing about completely random things. [A. pointed out that they weren’t necessarily irrelevant things, but, honestly – to some degree they were].

On to the Friday session. I could feel it the second I walked through the door. It hit me straight off. In fact I struggled to say anything at all at the beginning of session. It happens sometimes. My mind goes blank. But this time the silence wasn’t down to a mental blankness. I could feel something very heavily in my head, and an almost physical gag over my mouth, stopping me from speaking.

Eventually, I did manage to speak. At first about something trivial: I had forgot to put my ring on, the one my parents gave me years and years ago, and which I go through periods of wearing. So, not wearing it, I felt naked. Felt like something was missing. Like there was nothing to hide behind. I often fiddle with that ring in session. A nervous habit. But it works.

And then I launched into the Real Stuff. Which lead on to even more Real Stuff, and ended with me actually talking about The Abuse. Something I haven’t really ever done, apart from during the court hearing years and years ago, and that – as I pointed out to A. later in the session – is very different, because it’s essentially presenting facts, it’s not really talking about anything. [Which is probably why, at the time, I was able to do it – I was just completely emotionlessly describing situations of abuse, without even properly reflecting on what I was talking about, or even that it was me I was talking about.]

So, yes, this was different. It was rough. Seriously rough. But, amazingly, somehow I did manage to talk about some things. Not through the use of pictures [as I did in that session months ago, talking about flashbacks], but through actual words. There were times when I stumbled, and other times when I felt like I was going to be sick, but somehow I still did talk about some of the things that happened. The extent of it. Even managed to talk a little about the feelings attached to talking about it.

At the end of it I felt completely emotionally exhausted, and, glancing over at A. I could see that she seemed to be in a similar place, which, in a way, was strangely reassuring. Felt like a real connection. Some sort of meeting.

Left feeling a combination of lightheadedness and nausea. Headed straight for the nearest shop to get chocolate. After-therapy comfort-eating. [Not that I actually ate it – I still have it here now].

Since FriSat is Special Day for me, I put all of the worries about the consequences of this session out of my head for the time being. But now that Special Day is over, well, those worries are re-emerging. I’ve got this fear lurking once again; Will A. be able to cope with this? What if I pushed too hard? What if I’ve broken her?

Please, hold your “It’s her job, she’ll find a way”s [and any variations on that theme]. The point here is not really how reasonable or not this reaction to sharing difficult stuff is. I can see as well as the next person that this is a reaction based on experience of how other people in my life have felt unable to cope with hearing my story. I know this. And I also know that A. is not them. But that doesn’t stop me from feeling this way. That doesn’t stop the What ifs. What if it turns out that this actually is too much? What if she really can’t cope?

Reality-based or not, this is how I feel. And so it is valid.

Hm. I really need to work on this whole I-know-how-people-will-respond-and-judge-thing. Yeah, yeah, I know.

But that’s a whole nother session.
Or ten.

Be well.

xx

Here Comes Trouble – An Entry About Accepting The Inevitable

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Acceptance, Depression, Family, Family Dynamics, Flashbacks, Friends, Home, Sexual Abuse and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m going home for Christmas. Not home home – as in staying in the house I grew up – because, well, I really don’t think that would be a particularly good idea. I’ve been virtually out of touch with my whole family since April, and the reason I’m going home is not to cause a stir or to confront anyone.

I just want to have a nice Christmas break. That’s all I want. Snuggling up on the sofa watching the Disney special. Going for walks in the snow. Mulled wine. That’s it. I don’t want any drama, don’t want conflict, don’t want to avoid conflict. I just want to be me. At home. At Christmas.

Only, I’m from a very small town and it’s not quite as simple as that.. Going home inevitably means running the risk of bumping into people in town who know people who know people. You know how it goes..

My solution to this was to ask G., my sisters’ mother, to tell my mother (and thereby, I assume, also the rest of the family) that I’ll be home, and that I’ll be staying at her house.

I figure it’s only fair that they, my mother and close family, know that I’ll be around, and that they have been told about it before I’m actually there. I really don’t want a scenario where my mother gets to hear it from one of her ex-workmates or anything like that, because, as far as I’m concerned that would probably be the cruellest option, and – as I said – my aim is not to cause upset. I would hate it if she spoke to one of her acquaintances and they said “Oh, by the way, I met S in town – I didn’t know she was back home?”

I am fairly confident that my family hasn’t really told anyone that I’m not in touch with them. And that is their choice, their prerogative. If they’ve decided to keep the situation under wraps, as it were, then that’s not my responsibility – and by rights I shouldn’t really need to worry about it.

But I do. Of course I do.
Because, as complicated as everything is I still do love them, and I don’t want to intentionally hurt them. I mean, I know that I am, by cutting them off, and thereby causing all manner of problems for them in terms of being able to act as if everything is ok. As long as I was being compliant, playing along with their version of what they like to call normality, it was pretty simple; family dinners, laughter and joy for the outside world to see and everything else could easily be choked to silence. And then, the second I decided not to play along anymore, all that was turned upside down, and I’m not naïve enough to believe that that hasn’t made everything a whole lot more difficult. It’s not as easy to act as if everything is fine when a key player is completely missing from the board.

So, yes, I do accept that I am making things difficult. But, the way I see it, I always have. Since that morning in December almost fifteen years ago I have been the stumbling block of my family. I know that the general opinion is that I should have got over It by now (God forbid using actual words and call abuse abuse..!) and that I am creating a major fuss over nothing. I’m not sure exactly where that stems from, but were I to venture a guess I’d say it is because my family have always only heard my oldest brother’s version of what happened, and that that version is more than just a little diluted, and fairly well removed from the truth.

I don’t think that my family are bad people; in fact I know that they aren’t – but they do have a very obvious inability to accept and cope with the reality of things. Particularly when it comes to the abuse that my brother subjected me to. And so, rather than asking me (or themselves, for that matter) Why are you reacting so strongly to what we have been told was pretty minimal? they find it easier to just put my behaviour down to ‘wanting to be difficult’ or possibly even ‘being a bit of an attention seeker’.

Sometimes I feel that my family have completely lost sight of the fact that this situation is incredibly hard and painful for me, too, and in their minds I end up being the trouble-maker. For all the If she just let go of the past it would make things so much easier for everyone‘s they seem to forget that I am the person who actually has to live away from my family, who has to spend hours caught in vivid flash-backs, has had to struggle with depression because of the scars inflicted by my brother.

And that’s not fair. It really isn’t. Because – and as far as I am concerned there are no two ways about it – it isn’t my fault that we’re in the situation we’re in. We ended up here SOLELY because of what my brother did to me, and no matter which way you look at it the facts are pretty simple: I was 4. I did not choose for him to do the things he did, I didn’t ask for it to happen. The abuse carried on for a full twelve years not because I was born unable to say no, but because he took that ability away from me. Regardless of which way you chose to turn it, it will always come back to that; had he not done what he did, we would not be in this situation now.

So, I’m going home for Christmas. And I won’t be hiding.
I won’t be seeking anyone out, either. But I refuse to be made invisible because of something that simply was not my fault.

It won’t be easy, of course it won’t. But I’ll still do it.

Because it needs to be done.

xx

Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back – An Entry About Slow But Steady Progress

Posted by What It Takes To Be Me in Depression, Self-Harm, Self-Image, Sexual Abuse, Suicidal Ideation and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

As you’ve probably noticed reading my blog, I have been increasingly struggling with some very dark thoughts of self-harm and suicide. I’ve been doing my very best to be able to contain myself, to keep myself safe and to not act on my impulses. I’ve been calling various helplines at all hours of the day and night and using tens of different distraction techniques. Basically, I’ve given it my all to make it through, to hold it together, until D. comes back and I’ll once again have the space and the guidance I so desperately need.

But sometimes, as hard as you try, it’s just not enough. Lately I have felt myself seriously slipping and losing my focus, forgetting altogether what it is that I want to achieve.

So, I decided to do something for me drastically different. I decided that rather than tell people I need help by acting on my impulses, drinking anti-freeze and suchlike, I would simply reach out and ask for it. I spoke to a very close friend of mine who called up the Drayton Park Women’s Crisis Centre to start a referral. There were a few ifs and buts, but the sum total is that I am back at the centre now for one week, to give me the chance to re-discover what the real me is like. I remember reading Freud’s metaphor for regression where he likened the phenomenon to that of an army retreating to the last safe stronghold. Much in the same way have I now retreated to the last place I felt I could get the help and support I need. This is not in any way criticism towards any of the many wonderful people I have in my life, who have all been worried and tried to help to the best of their ability – but merely stating a fact; The last time I felt really safe and able to express my fears was at Drayton Park – at my sessions with D. and also during my residence there earlier in the year.

I have been allocated two key workers – both of whom I have not worked much with in the past, but I have also had one-to-ones with one of my main workers from my last stay, and I think the combination of new input and ideas and talking to someone who knows me reasonably well is very helpful for me.

I have changed a lot since my last stay there, and also my stay this time around will, as I mentioned before, be decidedly shorter; one week compared to the five weeks of my previous stay. So, it’s different. It’s different also because there are different women staying there at the moment. However, there are two people there from my last stay, and that’s really nice – it means I don’t get as shy as I normally get around people I don’t know very well, and it helps me challenge myself to interact with the people I don’t yet know.

Another change, and one of the really major changes within is how I really feel about myself. I suppose that it goes hand in hand with starting to allow myself to feel things about the actual abuse; it alters the way I feel about myself. And although some may argue that I’ve always had a somewhat weak self-image this somehow feels different now. Whereas I may previously have disliked aspects of myself I now genuinely loathe everything that I am, and I feel absolutely disgusted by myself.

I am aware that this is an enormously common way for abuse survivors to feel; in fact I talked about this this very morning with my previous key worker. That in order to overcome and heal I need to acknowledge, in the true sense of the word, the fact that what happened really was abuse, and much like how people mourning go through a series of comparatively predictive phases, so do people who have experienced abuse, often starting with questioning their own role in it, feeling as if they haven’t done what they could have to make it stop and so on and so on – ending up where I am now: sheer self-hatred.

But as much as I can intellectualise and analyse this, it doesn’t help one bit when it comes to dealing with the actual feeling. And that is where the asking for help comes in. I need someone to put things into perspective, to in a sense hold my hand. Help me chop things up to bite-size portions, rather than biting off so much that I end up choking on it.

So, to sum up; although it doesn’t change how I feel about myself or where I’m at right now, I’m glad that I did decide to ask for help before I got to the stage where I forget that I can.

Anyway, dear friends and random readers; I’m going to leave you now – I’m only home for a bit and I want to go cuddle Dev. Thank you all for your lovely and encouraging text messages. They mean a lot to me.

All the world has to offer and more,

xx