When I started this post, I was planning to keep it short, but provide enough information so that someone reading it, could answer my qestions. It grew, and grew...but now I have written so much that I can't just throw it out!
If a site moderator can move this so that it is the next entry in my trauma diary on here, please do so! It belongs there, I think, and will keep me from having to write more there. I need a break from writing there because I think it was having a negative effect on me. The title of my diary is "Please Schedule My Complimentary Outpatient Amygdala-ectomy". :) Thank you.
I had experienced a lot of abuse as a child, definitely physical and verbal/emotional, and I have memories that only imply sexual abuse by my father at a very young age. I was with my sister when a runaway car nearly hit us, I saw a man having a heart attack, lose control of his car and go over a hillside, and was frightened out of my mind by a strange man staring at me in the shower in college.
I saw a man fall, sustaining a fatal head injury, and found and resuscitated my mother after a very serious suicide attempt.
I completed a master's degree and became a nurse practitioner, got married, had 2 children, developed problems with my spleen and had to have a splenectomy. My husband and I divorced, and I worked part time and took care of my children.
My ex husband got drunk one night, called me, and pretended to shoot himself while I was on the phone with him. The following year, I was hospitalized with viral meningitis.
I became involved with a new boyfriend, who I had not known well enough, and who turned out to be a very bad guy. On breaking up with him after 2 years, he tried to kill me, using imprisonment, choking, breaking a chair over my head, chasing me and dragging me through the mud by the hood of my coat.
For the next 5 years I lived in a lovely little house and worked full time and the kids were with me about 2/3 of the time. We were involved in lots of activities with friends, the church and in the community. I had a really nice boyfriend, but we did not live together.
I went through a custody trial that resulted in my punitive ex-husband being given just enough control that to be able to ruin everything I was doing with my kids. Then my mother died a terrible death from metastatic breast cancer, during which time I had to protect her from my father who told her repeatedly that he could just smother her with a pillow.
Then my daughter hit puberty and didn't want to see me for 7 years. That was my "final straw". My ex took advantage of it and encouraged it. I was worried sick about her all the time because I knew she was struggling and vulnerable. My ex would not bring her to the phone or tell me how she was doing, and began to leave me out of any decisions affecting her, and then soon, my son, who started to stay at his father's more and more. I was miserable, and lost all faith in God. Before long, my boyfriend, as well as other friends, began to drift away, out of my life.
I began to lose job after job and could not think and therapy and medications didn't help, so I started to take percocet on my own and became addicted. I went to detox and rehab 4 times, the 4th time, I was doing outpatient rehab and one evening, accidentally returned to the afternoon classroom and sat down. When I looked up, I saw that I had walked in on an educational meeting being held for the members of a professional group I belonged to. One of my better friends, a coworker with whom I had gone to school, was in the meeting. After that, she refused any phone calls from me and I never saw her again.
I stayed sober/clean but continued to lose jobs. Next, I had thyroid cancer and a thyroidectomy. I lost my apartment and furniture, and moved in with a former coworker I had only just started to date. He was in the Army reserves, and had just come back from Iraq. He became very irritable, and I believe he had PTSD. I had to get another job quickly and get my own place again.
I began a job with a physician in private practice, and the director of nursing at a facility we would visit, told my boss I had a drug problem. He didn't fire me but wouldn't accept my offee to test for drugs, and changed my contract to no longer include health insurance or any other benefits, and paid me less than minimum wage.
I had severe hip pain and without insurance, could not have it evaluated. I prescribed myself a narcotic cough syrup for the severe pain, signing the name of the physician because I had only just applied for a DEA license. I was caught, but could not afford my own attorny, and eventually was convicted of a felony. I had absolutely no criminal record prior to that. I voluntarily went to a rehab although I was not physically addicted, because I knew it would be required of me. My urine testing was clean.
While at the rehab, I was not cared for properly. They completely stopped the benzodiazepine I had been prescribed for 13 years and was not abusing, and went into terrible benzo withdrawal. I got very weak and my hip collapsed. When I fell, I broke my right ankle and lower leg, had surgery with plates/pins and went back home. After 3 months, I was hospitalized for depression, my nurse practitioner license was suspended, I lost my apartment (again) and furniture, and stayed in a halfway house for 4 months.
Then I got social security disability, and later, Medicare and had 3 operations on my hip (2 of them replacements). After the first replacement, I had uncontrollable post op pain, and the surgeon said I was looking for drugs (I had confided in him my addiction of years prior) and threw me out of the hospital, telling me to grow up. The last time I had been to that particular hospital had been four years before, when I volunteered my time through the University, to teach student nurse practitioners how to do pelvic exams and Pap smears.
I did not progress in PT and went to new surgeon, who found that only one screw was used and had broken off in surgery, and left that way. My hip was then replaced again just this past fall, October 2012. In between hip operations, I needed to have my gallbladder removed.
Now, I am doing better in many ways. I have been living in my own apartment, which is absolutely beautiful, and I had bought all new furniture and everything I could possibly need here. My daughter and I started to see one another again about 2 years ago, and are doing so much better together. On my Mother's Day card, she wrote, "To an amazingly strong and talented mother, a happy Mother's Day is well deserved". It made me cry!
On the other hand, things have not gone well with my son. Since his senior year of high school (he graduated valedictorian of his class) he has been mostly disrespectful and sometimes downright mean to me. He is mostly away at college now.
Almost a year ago, I learned on my own how to make jewelry, and found that the things I make turn out pretty well. I have started to sell it, and gave my new little business a name and had business cards made. If I could succeed at this enough to supplement my disability income so that I can afford to buy and maintain a new car, and have things not be quite as tight as they are, I would. I really do not want to go back to being a nurse practitioner.
That's my story in a nutshell as much as I can condense it...anyways, I have been in therapy since age 29, after my mother's suicide attempt. I am 52 now. I had a very nice, good psychiatrist for 8 years, who used CBT, but had to retire.
The next psychiatrist also used CBT. I saw him for? 10 years, and in the latter years it was sometimes only sporadically. I hated going to him, but he was supposed to be so good, I stuck with him! He essentially just watched me go down the drain. He was beyond retirement age (he is 78 now and still practicing). Looking back, I can see that he was abusive in some ways; when I gained a lot of weight, it was as though he didn't like me any more. Other things, too, but at any rate, I have been seeing a female psychologist for the past 2 years, and I just love her. I feel better, but I just want to stay at home all the time! I'm very isolated, and I don't like going out much. My reaction to any type of conflict has been getting worse and worse, despite feeling better. I get upset very easily and embarrass myself by crying uncontrollably, sometimes for hours, and sometimes getting confused and very anxious.
I know that I have a great deal of anger about things, especially how I was allowed to fall through the cracks of society, after having spent my life making sure nobody else did. My s**t list is pretty long.
After having said all of this...my questions have to do with the fact that nobody has ever recommended EMDR or anything else other than CBT, which is what I am getting now. Is there anything in what I have told about here that would make EMDR a bad choice for me?
There has to be enough people around here trained in it. I live practically "down the street" from where David Servan-Schreiber (sp?) taught and practiced for many years.
To the site moderators: Could you somehow move this post to my trauma diary? It's title is "Please schedule my complimentary outpatient amygdala-ectomy".
I started by trying to describe my history briefly so that someone could guess as to why perhaps EMDR has not been suggested for me, but it grew. And grew! :rolleyes:
Thank you!
