Healing From Torture

[Elizabeth-Ann]

It is so good to read your comments, I need it badly. Having a bad fallout today.

Can not stop thinking that he must be so disgusted after what I have told in therapy. Would like to tell him next time: I am just a good actress, I invented everything...

Feel so sad and depressed. Is such a reaction normal?

 

[LawPhotos]

Well I certainly can't speak to whether something is "normal" or not since most of the time I feel as though I've gone completely 'round the bend.

But, I do know that several times when i've disclosed some of the hard stuff to my T in the days following I have considered, among other things:

-never going back!
-acting like it was all a practical joke I played on her
- telling her that I was confused during the session but now I recognize that it was just a bad dream
-writing an email saying I'd made up the whole thing or really embellished it and that we need to focus on my desire to get attention by lying!
-acting like I had total amnesia for our last session, like I was dissociated at the time and don't remember it
Etc

Regardless of my repertoire of avoidance tactics, the basic point is that even when I do let a tiny bit of the bad stuff eek out in session, I regret it very much soon after and wish I could take it back. I never seem to get past this feeling. I think that, in large part, these feelings keep me from divulging any of the REALLY bad stuff that I have never told anyone and most likely never will.

 

[Elizabeth-Ann]

-never going back!
-acting like it was all a practical joke I played on her
- telling her that I was confused during the session but now I recognize that it was just a bad dream
-writing an email saying I'd made up the whole thing or really embellished it and that we need to focus on my desire to get attention by lying!
-acting like I had total amnesia for our last session, like I was dissociated at the time and don't remember it

This is exactly what I am feeling at the moment... --- Oh, keep breathing my dear soul :confused: !

 

[Hashi]

Well I certainly can't speak to whether something is "normal" or not since most of the time I feel as though I've gone completely 'round the bend.

...

Regardless of my repertoire of avoidance tactics, the basic point is that even when I do let a tiny bit of the bad stuff eek out in session, I regret it very much soon after and wish I could take it back.

LawPhotos, I relate very much to what you wrote, including your repertoire of tactics. I use the same tactics on myself too, especially telling myself it's all a story I made up. My wanting to undo what I said in T and make it untrue extends to feeling immense guilt that my T trusted and believed me when I was really lying, wasting her time and stealing her compassion. It's so frustrating.

Elizabeth-Ann, it sounds like you're doing some very difficult but really good work in therapy. As for the feelings afterwards, I second everything LawPhotos has said. One thing I did with my previous T, and am about to do with my new one, is to discuss the fact that I need reassurance from her before I leave. I need her to actually tell me that she doesn't judge me or despise me because of what I've said during the session. My last T said she hadn't realised how important that was and had been assuming that I knew she didn't. It made a big difference once she actually starting saying it to me.

 

[Hashi]

It was really difficult for me to verbalise anything about what was in my head... What I did in the end was to right dot points down and hand them to my T.

PS, thank you for sharing this. I've been thinking about it ever since you wrote it a while ago. Not sure if I would do it for T but for myself and the work I do on this outside T.

Since going into denial (thinking it didn't really happen) in my last T session, I've been working much more on safety and also on letting it be real. I realise that I need to do much more of the things that help with that -visualisation, grounding, containment.

So far, containment has included keeping all the different things separate. I've worked on what happened as fragments - now on this, then on that. I've never put it all together in one place. I think I'm getting to the point, though, of needing to bring it all into one whole.

Which is going to be tough.

But your idea of dot points is something that appeals to me. Just writing down the bones, as it were, as a start. I can build on it later but for now it would be enough. And there's some containment in having a structure, with the dot points. I'll probably also have to draw a box around it, and maybe put some imaginery guard dogs there too and a whole ton of other things, but it's feeling possible.

Something I'm finding more and more, doing visualisation and working symbolically, is how much defiance I feel. It's very hard for me to feel pure anger towards my attackers, because at the time and even now the fear has always been too great to really allow me to be angry. But I feel very defiant. Hmmm... defiant dot points. I like it.

 

[Elizabeth-Ann]

... it helps to feel a little les alone, and right now, anything that helps me to feel that way is a good thing.
Maddog

I can relate very much to what you experience, especially about not being able to talk because it is still "unprocessed", and all the terrible feelings you describe. I am so sorry for what you have been going through - then and yet!

As torture survivors we are dealing with the pure horror, it is true. But we are NOT alone (((hug))).

Sending you a warm and kindly light!

 

[Elizabeth-Ann]

... discuss the fact that I need reassurance from her before I leave. I need her to actually tell me that she doesn't judge me or despise me because of what I've said during the session. My last T said she hadn't realised how important that was and had been assuming that I knew she didn't. It made a big difference once she actually starting saying it to me.

Thank you Hashi!

My Psy does that, but it is like I could not "take it in" yet. I believe it in the very moment, but then I get home and everything starts to turn around in my head. I guess it is just during the first weeks of "starting to talk" such a massive problem, because confidence has still much to grow?

I felt very fragile all this week after disclosing for the first time some details to my Psy, feelings of shame and that he must be disgusted, alternating with denial, as some of you described already.

The only thing that helps me at the moment is to give myself some exterior boundaries and to stick to them with determination, trying not to let these "bad" thoughts dominate my actions - or to take precautions that they will not be able to...

I feel like a little flower in a much to strong wind, crying and hoping for protection and shelter.

 

[angel2write]

I wanted to read to the end of this, but got stuck half-way down the first page. I think I'm going to have to take it bit by bit.

What's hitting me right now is the description of the "feeling of horror."

I think that, more than any specific memory, is what fuels my nightmares. I have nightmare after nightmare of knowing the pain is coming, knowing it's going to be horrible, be unbearable, knowing it's going to break me, and knowing I can't avoid it. Can't stop it.

"Horror" is what I call this feeling. It's a mix of terror and the anticipation of the pain. And helplessness. Also, um, there's the awareness that the person who's about to hurt me is really enjoying me feeling this way.

I hope that wasn't too much detail. Sorry. I'm freaking out now. But thanks, Hashi, for starting this.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

Angel you described exactly how it felt for me. I could not put it into words. But that is exactly how I rememberd it. I think that is what got me the most, that he enjoyed it. What a sadistic father I had. He loved to inflict pain. Then he minimized it by calling it his temper problem.

The way you described it brought it all back. I am so glad that is not happening to me anymore, and will not be happening ever again.

 

[Hashi]

I feel like a little flower in a much to strong wind, crying and hoping for protection and shelter.

In the UK recently we've had extreme weather - gale force winds, torrential rain, hailstones, you name it. I've been surprised by all the unsheltered little flowers in my garden that are still there, surviving.

 

[Elizabeth-Ann]

Hashi, your post made me cry... Yes, let's have hope!

 

[angel2write]

I'm finding it surreal spending the day working and chatting with my colleagues, then leaving for therapy for this, then being back at work the next day as if nothing has happened.

I think the surreality of it (thank you for the word) is what makes me feel so inhuman sometimes.

I went through long stretches as a child where I didn't feel like a human being at all. As an adult, I often feel/felt like I was falsifying my life. I feel like I'm operating my body like a puppet.

I'm wondering if some of this is because I detached from my body? Being put in situations of ongoing, inescapable pain, I know I often tried to break the bonds between my mind and body. I didn't feel like I succeeded at the time, but maybe I did to a certain extent.

I'm sorry- I know this makes no sense. Trying to talk about this seems to fry all my mental circuits. I feel incoherent right now. I think I started this nonsensical comment just to say that yes, I feel weird, too. I try to talk to people, normal people, and I feel like an alien. Like there is this hulking huge part of me (a giant, distorted ogre-like thing) that I can't let into the conversation. And trying to keep the conversation shallow and pleasant and "normal" can be exhausting. I wonder all the time if my mask has slipped.

I'm not being very helpful, am I? But I appreciated your dragon description idea. I think I'll try that.