a new memory (maybe)

[sidptitala]

I didn´t sleep last night, so I didn't go to the event I wanted to go to today.

I'm avoiding my thoughts and feelings, feel very alert and overtired.

I'm scared of the upcoming week. Am I really going to address problems with the therapist I'm scared of, see my mom either before or after that and give her the letter, see two clients that trigger me because their problems are so similar to my own, and start all of that by meeting up and talking with the colleague that outed me to someone else?? All of that feels so overwhelming. But not doing it is even more overwhelming.

Hard day at work. First thing a colleague tried to recruit me to be a public face of abuse survivors (and therefore outed me to someone else). I felt so overwhelmed and lacking in support. I'm so so so so not ready to do that. I feel so pushed by this colleague in so many ways, she works in a way that is burning her out and I can't work that way.

Progress that I texted her after to say that. She understood.

I first met her (and found out about this job from her) because I found a flyer she left for a support group she runs. But I don't think she knows what a support group is or how to run one or why people would want one- she´s more like a freelance aunt that tells you her story and what to do about yours, as an individual. I think she thinks a support group is a group of people she practically assists, who never meet each other? She's also very easily distracted and kind of a dominant personality. And she doesn't understand confidentiality AT ALL. I respect and love her on a deep level, and I also find her overwhelming.

I'm so glad I texted her to say, I can't put my face to anything about abuse rather than wait all week until tomorrow. Having conversations about it at work in particular was so hard for me.

It's hard because the priest I reported for harassment is from the same church that employs us (in a different country but the same org).
Hard because our boss has the same name as my dad and looks like him (he´s not like him though, and having my overwhelming colleague there too makes me feel safer)
Hard because my dad is still so close and present and I have to see him sometimes. He could make my life hell again if he wanted to, if I was speaking and he found out
Hard because clients tell me stories like my own all day and I have no training about that. All I am relying on to know what they need is my own experience and I feel triggered constantly and out of my depth
And my own experience is dogged determination, and being absolutely alone. About having brief respite from trauma and struggling to recover because I'm struggling to make anything that feels like safety

I'm not insane, I'm unsafe.

This feels important to me? Repeating it makes me feel like I can breathe

The therapist asked me to tell him this coming week what I need from him. I need to feel like I am safe there and I can trust him, and that I will actually get the help I need. This means asking him questions.

The first one, can I come every week? Is there a different day of the week where I can come every week?

I also feel off the deep end when I go. It's not helping. It adds to the sense of being about to burst because it feels like it's a crumb and my need for it is so great and then it takes ages to come around again.

Because I think I feel like this ^ at least in part because (a) emdr therapist abruptly ended right after I started getting worse again and I fell into a pit of despair and destitution. It took months to find work and therapy again. (b) This therapy has never started being weekly, so I feel like I am starting again every 3 weeks. For me, it´s been hard to figure out whether I can trust him because of this, so I default to not trusting.

There are things he has said to me that made me pause with suspicion. I was trying to read his mind maybe, but that is because it feels too dangerous to straight up ask.

Once he said was there really no prospect of reconciling with my dad? Because he has seen people's relationships recover from really awful things. Am I sure there is no way back? In this I felt that he really believes in forgiveness and that I should focus on that (and I hate that idea)

Once he responded to me saying I thought my mom didn't care about me with maybe she was just putting the welfare of the family unit first. It made me worry he was defending her behaviour.

Once I said to him that no one can ever tell you you are safe, it is up to you to figure it out in every moment. And he said, if you firmly believe that. Which made me think he is calling me irrational to deny that reality in a way?

When I told him I got locked in the stairs he asked why I would go down that way and said I must have been agitated. How would I know it was a self locking stairs with no way out? There was no sign to say that.

He told me I could benefit from his expertise and knowledge of human relationships, and that felt weird to me.

I have told him that the thing I am trying to address with my mom is her lack of support after my dad assaulted me and blocked me from leaving the house too (he hit me and threw things at me from the door so I couldn't leave). We talked about it a while ago but in a detailed enough way. And then he blocked the door on the way out as a joke so I couldn't go down the self locking stairs again. Why would that EVER seem like a good idea but especially in this case?

I said I get disoriented in time and feel like I am a child. He then said something like 'When you are the child' and I HATED that, lol. I suppose that is on me for phrasing it that way- I don't feel like any random child. I feel like I am specifically myself reliving things that happened to me.

I suppose I need to listen to whether I actually feel safe going forward.

He said that when I dissociated was a 'rupture in the therapeutic alliance'. I need to do a bit of reading on what that means? If he is assuming we already have a bond of trust (why would we- time? the therapy has been quite inconsistent so hard to develop that) will be defensive if I share that I don't feel like we have started? Will he feel like I am saying he's doing a bad job?

 

[sidptitala]

I barely slept last night. Haven't been able to move really for days. I need to meet my friend from work today. I think I have to write my words down because I never remember them.

I'm going to ask her not to talk with me about being abuse survivors at work. Tell her I'm.scared of the church and why.

I'm going to tell her I'm scared of responsibility because last time they died and I couldn't protect them. Aside from not being ready to come out, that's a huge issue for me. I didn't forsee this being such a huge issue for me at work but it is one.

 

[Midnightmoon]

I'm going to ask her not to talk with me about being abuse survivors at work. Tell her I'm.scared of the church and why.

I'm going to tell her I'm scared of responsibility because last time they died and I couldn't protect them. Aside from not being ready to come out, that's a huge issue for me. I didn't forsee this being such a huge issue for me at work but it is one.

Remember not to lax your boundaries to the point the conversation feels unsafe/ too vulnerable/ too much for you. There is so much going on in your head already. It's ok to say, I can't speak about it, a friend will respect that

As for T, I think working out the basics of the safety of the 'frame' of therapy is probably the top priority. Know what the offer is (time/ frequency etc) and then go from there if you think what's on offer is something that you'll feel safe with. At the minute, it's all over the shop which is setting you up for a challenge before you even begin...

 

[sidptitala]

I cancelled on my friend. I feel bad about it but I don't think she minds. I can meet her again (outside work is important to me because I can't talk about work).

I think writing some stuff down for her is going to make life easier for both her and me.

She needs someone, too. She has had to be way too strong.

I'm grateful for her help with so many things. She's great at practical help.

She's not great at listening. She has trouble sitting with her own emotions, never mind anyone else's. There's clearly a need in her she's trying to get met with this group. I would like to help her get it met, I just can't in the specific way she wants.

Funny how a client saying that to me last week made it crystal clear for me. She was explaining she was scared of responsibility and she hinted that at her job someone died. And it struck me like lightening, me too, me too, me too. I'm scared of responsibilities at work because when I was working before ****** killed my clients. And is still trying to.

Cried today about that massacre. Glad I can even do that (before emdr I could barely remember it).

Now I can feel reasonably sure that my clients aren't going to get killed in front of me.
Intellectually I know that. Convincing myself on a more animal level is a whole different thing.

Am I adjusting? I'm more sad about what happened in my last work the more I see how much safer people here are.
It reminds me, it was that bad. It was so bad it's hard to adjust to the fact I have survived it (without almost everyone).

 

[One step at a time]

killed my clients

it was that bad

Just want to validate: yes, that is definitely bad. I’m glad that the threat is less, but it sounds like it’s not gone, and that‘s a tough place to be.

 

[sidptitala]

Things seem better. I've learned a lot the past few weeks

 

[Midnightmoon]

Things seem better. I've learned a lot the past few weeks

That's really nice to read

 

[sidptitala]

Things seem better. I've learned a lot the past few weeks

After I had the last session with the therapist who scares me, I felt so relieved. I was so so scared of him.

I´m scared of everything and thats what I'm realising since I started work. All the things I'm scared of.

I'm also scared of doing yoga, scared of my own body and bodily sensations. I think that it would probably help me. But those things threaten to teach me what I don´t want to know. My body, and how it felt in some yoga poses is where my first intense flashbacks came from. I think around now is the 2 year anniversary of that.

I can't believe I have learned how to deal with what I thought I would never be able to deal with. I have kind of learned, but also I have barely done yoga the last two years and am intensely scared to.

I'm scared of what my body knows happened to me. The stuff that feels familiar, the memories I don't remember yet.

I don't remember if rape rape happened. (I think I saw pictures of this in emdr but I can't remember now). But I think my body knows and is going to tell me if it did.

(ugh writing this, I understand that it most likely did and I'm just trying not to think about it, ugh)

Need to do stuff even though I'm scared. I know that. I'm just so scared.

 

[sidptitala]

I've been so so so so sad the last few days. My head and body hurt and I can´t get them not to.

Avoiding important letters and important conversations. This is so hard.

I saw my mom and it was sad. I didn't say anything about anything but it was so hard not to. It was hard not to speak and hard to speak as well.

 

[sidptitala]

I read some of my paper diary from the last year (it's intense as hell).

It's weird that I live now in this mode where I am agnostic about whether he really did abuse me sexually. I have no external proof that he did (there was no one else there). I've had flashback type experiences of him doing it and I saw that in emdr too. But the decision of if he really did these things is one I have been agnostic about, because I would have to rely on my own sense of truth. No one else can give me that. My mom would have seen things like me being sad and floppy, hating him, spaced out. But I can't count on her to still remember them if it implicates her. I know she will strategically forget.

A part of me eventually does want to talk about this and I'm wondering at what point I have the right to? At some point will I have to start saying, 'I'm very sure this happened because y?' Identifying specific times seems to help a bit with this. When the memory of my neighbours 2nd birthday popped up in emdr, it felt so much more real because it was at a real time and place. One I don't have other memories of, but is deeply familiar despite this. I knew my neighbour had a 2nd birthday party and that I was there my whole life. I don't remember it. What I saw in emdr is the only thing I remember of it.

I deeply hate this stage of healing. Knowing something happened but needing to 'come out' about it and see who supports you, if anyone does. I hate it so much.

I have already been through so much in life, I don't think I can survive anymore.

 

[sidptitala]

Overwhelming colleague has so much going on in her life. I'm not happy she's going through so much but a bit relieved that I don't have to write this stuff down yet. I think I'll offer her practical help for her personally. Tell her how I can see she is burning herself out. Giving too much to others to make up for what she is not getting.

(Which.. haha. Is the same problem as me. Except I'm offering the listening I wish I was getting. And she's offering the 'someone to fight for you' that she wished she had when she needed it)

I'm conflicted about telling her much because she doesn't understand confidentiality at all. But I think she doesn't know how to read me at all because I'm trying to hard to hold it together at work (and apparently I am quite good at it, lol, because from the feedback I've gotten I don't think my workmates have any idea). And I think that makes her anxious, which I don't want to do.

 

[sidptitala]

My sleep sucks so bad this week. Have felt so alert and jumpy.

Work has been very quiet because I finished my work early. I think ill try not to do that again, try to spread it out more. Because the increased thinking time and boredom has been tough for me. I read part of a novel today, to try and distract myself. Can't believe I got paid to do that (its good, also)

I feel mostly better about stopping with that therapist. Part of me feels like I've failed. Part of me feels that here is a second man who won't let me have my reality and won't try to understand me, and I wish I was worth that. That part of me feels like both men chose not challenging their own relationship with gendered power over growing past it enough to help me.

It feel to me like most of what I said in therapy was challenged, and that was hard. I don't know if that's true or of I am hyperaware of my own subject position and so feel any time I am challenged by a straight man on anything about these subjects -'how the hell would you know?' It angers me.

I don't really want to work on my feelings about my dad in therapy and I don't think I could have avoided it with a man because of the transference. I'm still trying to establish distance from my dad to try to start feeling safe. This therapist was hellbent on hearing what he did to me and how I felt about it. And I was very suspicious of that.

I feel ashamed of this, but I experienced maternal transference before. With the female trainee that has helped me the most of anyone. And it felt very healing somehow. She treated me like I was very fragile ( I was, and it helped me trust her that she could see that). I could tell she liked me as a person. She led with a good heart. And because of this I told her what happened. And she listened and cared, and responded that I should do whatever I want to do about contact with my dad and not judge myself for that.

The last thing is what I desperately feel like I needed from my mom growing up. Ive really lacked it from elsewhere too.

I think that's what I need to focus on. I keep seeking it and struggle to find it. So many parts of life have taught me I am not safe and not equal.

The new female therapist will contact me in the next few weeks. I'm not sure how many weeks. December is usually hard for me, its really hard. Hoping I'll be OK this time.