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Poll How Much Has Your Ability To Share Your Difficulties Aided Or Hindered Your Healing?

How much has your ability to share your difficulties aided or hindered your healing?

  • My INability to ask for support and share my difficulties has not greatly hindered my healing.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    60
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Abstract

MyPTSD Pro
How much has your ability to share your difficulties aided or hindered your healing and hindered or helped you get support? Ideally choose one answer from the first 5 and one from the second 4.

Personally am realising more and more the cost of not being able to ask for help or share. Limits my access to professional help. I can do so much on my own and have but there is a limit. Limits my help to peer support. Results in others misunderstanding my motives when it comes to professional situations, friends, family etc. Results in less understanding of the relevant factors with drs and medical issues. Limits my access to certain improvements in resiliency. I no longer believe being how I was and still mostly am is a form of resilience. Mostly it is down to just really big trust issues. I can't trust others to have this much info about me. On a visceral instinctive level rather than a cognitive decided one. :-/
 
This is a good question. I don't know that I actually know the answer. I said to my T once that I couldn't see much point in talking about the past, because it wouldn't change anything. He said he could see the logic in thinking that, especially if you have no actual experience of it helping, but that it actually does help change things. And, of course, he wishes I was better at it. Working on that, I guess. But, my past experience with 'talking about stuff", much less "asking for help" suggests they are really bad ideas.
 
For some reason I've found it pretty easy to share my feelings and what's happened to me in therapy. It certainly hasn't always felt good to process in therapy, but I'm grateful that I can talk about it all.

I really try to limit how much I say to my husband and closest friends, only because I don't want to be a burden on them. Thank God for this forum and my diary!

@Abstract, I really feel for you. I always thought I was resilient, too. I thought I'd escaped all the bad stuff because I was successful professionally, found a great husband, etc., then it all came crashing down. My new trauma therapist said that everyone has a breaking point. That really made sense to me. I hope it helps you, too. And I hope it helps you in trying therapy. :hug:
 
@scout86, maybe you didn't have a therapist you felt comfortable enough with? Actually, my new therapist, who specializes in trauma, thinks that our traumas have made physical imprints on our brains (which is backed up by much research) and that doing talk therapy may just retraumatize us. So she favors thought-field therapy, which involves tapping on accupressure points on the face and body to try to help heal the brain. I've been working on it. She says it can takes months before I'd see any results with it, but I'm going for it, cause I've tried pretty much everything else at this point. Hope this helps. :hug:
 
I never talked about it because for years because I was told it was my fault or I was imagining things and I believed it. I convinced myself it was normal. Then after EMDR I experienced some healing but when the therapist pushed me to talk about bad things without using EMDR I would have accidents on the way home so I quit therapy.

Then I noticed I started talking about my past in more detail to people who have similar problems in the present, like marrying abusive husbands. It was very matter of fact and I wasn't rejected for saying it. When I knew they believed me I realized how horrible it was and I could let go of it, knowing it was true and not my imagination.

They felt open to share their similar experiences. I see how prolific it is even in people I would never imagine were treated so bad.

If I tell my husband anything about my past that was bad, he turns off instantly which is disappointing since I wish I could share my life with him. He handled his childhood abuse by becoming a narcissist and thinks very highly of himself and thinks nothing of hurting me or others.

When he lies to me and I trust him, sometimes it causes me to hurt myself. Then I become enraged at him for lying, not caring, and blame him that I hurt myself again because I already hurt myself too much already. I think I am punishing him by treating him with disdain for doing that to me and to keep him away, and I wish he'd get the message but he can't admit he's done anything wrong.

I've read on this forum not to tell what happened to people who haven't experienced similar abuse because it makes you worse, and it's true. They try to fix me and end up making me feel like I'm at fault for not getting over it, or I'm looking at it the wrong way. I end up feeling crazy.
 
I'm so sorry to read this, Knak. Just want to say if you've experienced multiple traumatic things, EMDR is not a good idea. Maybe finding a trauma specialist would help? It really sounds like you need professional support. We can offer peer-to-peer support here and I support you, but we're not professionals. Please take care and don't hurt yourself.
 
I'd say not sharing with others has helped to develop certain qualities and skills eg. strength, resilience. These qualities are useful for accompanying the healing process. I feel the re-connection that can happen through sharing is what I have found most beneficial to healing. When I have not been sharing (which does not mean full disclosure) who I am and where I am at I become quite activated, alienated and dissociated. None helpful for healing.

I'm having a day when I don't feel like I make sense so please excuse if the comment didn't make any either!
 
I'm so sorry to read this, Knak. Just want to say if you've experienced multiple traumatic things, EMDR is...
I'm responding a little late because sometimes I need to get away from concentrating on my mental problem, but I wondered why you said EMDR may not be good. It is the only therapy that ever made a difference so that I could advance in my thinking more objectively.

It got to where the therapist kept wanting me to talk without EMDR and I never resolved anything I talked about so when I left the sessions I would become dangerous to myself and others because I couldn't pay attention to traffic and wanted to get home so desperately (because I am afraid of people when I'm vulnerable), I would drive up to 90 mps and weave in and out of traffic.

I had to quit going because after telling her so many times I do not like talk therapy, she kept encouraging it. She never wanted to focus on any one subject I brought up so I got the impression she was either preoccupied or didn't know what to do. I went to her for 7 years.

I don't know why she wouldn't do the EMDR anymore like I always asked. Maybe she thought I should have been well by then. She seemed to be having marital problems too but I didn't want to ask her the specifics.

What other therapy would be better? I am totally undisciplined so wouldn't stick to a writing regiment or anything that calls for constant accountability to myself. I feel better when I can avoid thinking and tend to do projects to forget. Then I get overwhelmed by responsibility to others, which is the down side.

I can be responsible to others because I don't want them to avoid me due to being irresponsible, but I don't care about myself enough to be willing to invest in myself. I never got over the belief I am not worth being alive. I feel I have to justify it through accomplishment for others' benefit. I feel I stay married for financial support despite the abuse and just pray to be aware when I am being manipulated.

Besides that I don't feel anything if I do something for myself. However, I will fight to keep people away if they use or hurt me without regard for my humanity.

I had to part from my sisters because I was the scapegoat and couldn't figure out what I did or said that made them disdain me. I will never have a "friend" to trust without worrying they will get sick of my negative outlook or constant problems.

I have been looking forward to dying since age ten and I don't believe I will overcome this problem in this life, at age 67.
 
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