EnHomagetolife
New Here
Hello. I have been eager to "get better" for all of my adult life. I am still on my path. I have spent years in therapy. I have talked with loved ones. I focus on doing my best and I let myself try good experiences. The problem is that for a very long time I wasn't really getter by any relief from my private suffering. My symptoms were always all over the place. Disordered eating but no recognition of or diagnosis of an eating disorder. At 18 years old, 5 feet 4.5 inches and weighing 120lbs.... I was obsessed with plastic surgery and had plans to save my money for liposuction. I had OCD features with ritualistic grooming, tapping and beliefs that mostly just got me yelled at by my father with no recognition that I may have needed help. I really did the best I could with myself for as long as I could and was very excited when I finally had access to psychological counseling at age 19 in college. But, it took me earning a degree in psychology to recently help a therapist finally give me an appropriate diagnosis and to begin the true healing process with me. So many people and professionals missed my PTSD for so long.
When I was 7 years old, right after my parents divorced, my mother began to use drugs and became very physically abusive. She would leave for days at a time and there were days that I did not eat. The physical abuse was very intense, involving choking and her pulling knives. My father and other family members knew about this abuse+neglect but privacy and family's secrets were all the rage back then. I suffered. I got into trouble for resisting or trying to get help myself. A whooping for talking to family or leaving the bedroom (no exception for food). I would try to save money for my fantasy "get away" to a better life but my mother would tear our home apart looking for money if she suspected I had it. All our things were pawned and I missed a year of school. Then she left me with a random woman...who was also very physically abusive and was very verbal about not wanting me there unless I was being a complete servant. She would also force me and her own children to fight until one of them finally beat me. I got very good at fighting...so it never happened. I became different child. I was a high test score, high achieving little girl before my parents divorced. My primary activity was reading and learning about outer space. I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up. I was quiet and sensitive. After a year of this new life I was essentially wild. I was excellent at stealing and adults would ask me to steal for them. The neglect. The abuse. The abandonment. ...and then one day a blessed social worker came to get me and delivered me into the care of my father. The thing that my mother used to get me to stay silent about the abuse, a social worker taking me, actually saved my life. By this time I was 9 and I resumed a normal life. I went back to school. I was no longer isolated and able to be with family. I ate every day. But....I had no mother. I missed her and was worried about her constantly. The world must have smelled my vulnerability because I was bullied every day. I also had Fs on my report card due to being unable to do things due to inattentiveness or having missed a year of school. It was supposedly all better... but it it was still bad. I was also constantly being a target of sexual play with other children. I didn't know how to say no, I was overly compliant thanks to my mothers tyranny and abuse (plus my natural born shy nature when not in fight or flight mode). There was a lot happening.
Despite all this I was able to set my sights on my future with a lot of help from educators. I was eventually an award earning, high performing jewel. But...nobody acknowledged my symptoms. The inattentiveness, "zoning out", social isolation, suddenly crying and panicking because I thought I was dying, poor bodily hygiene in early adolescence. I skipped showers often and tried to avoid touching myself at the height of the peer molestation. I couldn't swallow for about one year. I had a very hard time eating and sometimes flatly could not do it. Sadly. I was mostly scolded for these symptoms and the adults tried to shame me into acting "normal". It was my fault that there was something wrong with me.
There is a lot more. I had both a beautiful and a completely awful early adulthood because of all this untreated trauma. Managing and enjoying many many successes while being vulnerable to abuse and contemplating suicide in private. I even once joined a church only to be honed in on and spiritually manipulated very severely by a minister. While also doing heroic acts of service and maintaining a beautiful outer image.
I shared all this because, firstly, this time I believe I am among people who will understand and who are also sharing their stories.
Also I am sharing because I have lived a variety of highly traumatic events that STILL therapists were essentially telling me to forget about so I could enjoy my external success. I would tell the details of my childhood experiences just to have them pushed away. These would be the first times I ever had a chance to "tell on" and ask for help for what was being done to me (my past was still in my present)....and every therapist side stepped the content. One therapist even terminated therapy with me because I had a "trauma history". But isn't that the point of therapy?
I suffered for an unnecessarily long time and I am still struggling to find the best mental and emotional health care for myself. Even the therapist who finally diagnosed me correctly (nightly nightmares, zoning out, avoiding etc.) basically wants to hand me off to someone else. She's absolutely correct in wanting me to be treated by a trauma specialist....but she can't be bothered to spend ten seconds helping me find providers who accept my insurance.
I believe that I have really been healing myself....but with assistance. Each "safer" (nobody is completely safe) person who has come into my life has given me a little step on my ladder out of the nightmare of my childhood and it's damage to my little person (me). I think that getting true help from a true professional sooner would have prevented my adulthood suffering (mostly in attempts to feel better or fix people/things...hitting my face and soul on brick walls for years and years). But at least I'm still here agter 30 and still expecting to fulfill the little blueprint of a complete and flourishing human being that I was born with me. My dreams. My hopes. The "good things" in life. Healthy relationships. A truly loving family.
This may be a parentified child talking here, but I know the child I was before my life was turned upside down. I maintain healthy and success filled expectations for myself. I hope that I can get additional steps toward healing from being a part of this group.
Thank you for reading.
When I was 7 years old, right after my parents divorced, my mother began to use drugs and became very physically abusive. She would leave for days at a time and there were days that I did not eat. The physical abuse was very intense, involving choking and her pulling knives. My father and other family members knew about this abuse+neglect but privacy and family's secrets were all the rage back then. I suffered. I got into trouble for resisting or trying to get help myself. A whooping for talking to family or leaving the bedroom (no exception for food). I would try to save money for my fantasy "get away" to a better life but my mother would tear our home apart looking for money if she suspected I had it. All our things were pawned and I missed a year of school. Then she left me with a random woman...who was also very physically abusive and was very verbal about not wanting me there unless I was being a complete servant. She would also force me and her own children to fight until one of them finally beat me. I got very good at fighting...so it never happened. I became different child. I was a high test score, high achieving little girl before my parents divorced. My primary activity was reading and learning about outer space. I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up. I was quiet and sensitive. After a year of this new life I was essentially wild. I was excellent at stealing and adults would ask me to steal for them. The neglect. The abuse. The abandonment. ...and then one day a blessed social worker came to get me and delivered me into the care of my father. The thing that my mother used to get me to stay silent about the abuse, a social worker taking me, actually saved my life. By this time I was 9 and I resumed a normal life. I went back to school. I was no longer isolated and able to be with family. I ate every day. But....I had no mother. I missed her and was worried about her constantly. The world must have smelled my vulnerability because I was bullied every day. I also had Fs on my report card due to being unable to do things due to inattentiveness or having missed a year of school. It was supposedly all better... but it it was still bad. I was also constantly being a target of sexual play with other children. I didn't know how to say no, I was overly compliant thanks to my mothers tyranny and abuse (plus my natural born shy nature when not in fight or flight mode). There was a lot happening.
Despite all this I was able to set my sights on my future with a lot of help from educators. I was eventually an award earning, high performing jewel. But...nobody acknowledged my symptoms. The inattentiveness, "zoning out", social isolation, suddenly crying and panicking because I thought I was dying, poor bodily hygiene in early adolescence. I skipped showers often and tried to avoid touching myself at the height of the peer molestation. I couldn't swallow for about one year. I had a very hard time eating and sometimes flatly could not do it. Sadly. I was mostly scolded for these symptoms and the adults tried to shame me into acting "normal". It was my fault that there was something wrong with me.
There is a lot more. I had both a beautiful and a completely awful early adulthood because of all this untreated trauma. Managing and enjoying many many successes while being vulnerable to abuse and contemplating suicide in private. I even once joined a church only to be honed in on and spiritually manipulated very severely by a minister. While also doing heroic acts of service and maintaining a beautiful outer image.
I shared all this because, firstly, this time I believe I am among people who will understand and who are also sharing their stories.
Also I am sharing because I have lived a variety of highly traumatic events that STILL therapists were essentially telling me to forget about so I could enjoy my external success. I would tell the details of my childhood experiences just to have them pushed away. These would be the first times I ever had a chance to "tell on" and ask for help for what was being done to me (my past was still in my present)....and every therapist side stepped the content. One therapist even terminated therapy with me because I had a "trauma history". But isn't that the point of therapy?
I suffered for an unnecessarily long time and I am still struggling to find the best mental and emotional health care for myself. Even the therapist who finally diagnosed me correctly (nightly nightmares, zoning out, avoiding etc.) basically wants to hand me off to someone else. She's absolutely correct in wanting me to be treated by a trauma specialist....but she can't be bothered to spend ten seconds helping me find providers who accept my insurance.
I believe that I have really been healing myself....but with assistance. Each "safer" (nobody is completely safe) person who has come into my life has given me a little step on my ladder out of the nightmare of my childhood and it's damage to my little person (me). I think that getting true help from a true professional sooner would have prevented my adulthood suffering (mostly in attempts to feel better or fix people/things...hitting my face and soul on brick walls for years and years). But at least I'm still here agter 30 and still expecting to fulfill the little blueprint of a complete and flourishing human being that I was born with me. My dreams. My hopes. The "good things" in life. Healthy relationships. A truly loving family.
This may be a parentified child talking here, but I know the child I was before my life was turned upside down. I maintain healthy and success filled expectations for myself. I hope that I can get additional steps toward healing from being a part of this group.
Thank you for reading.
