I Worry That My T Thinks I’m Making It All Up.

[BloomInWinter]

I well remember agonizing over my worry about being validated.

Here's what I decided.

If it happened, I need and deserve help.

If it didn't happen, but I believe it did, I need and deserve help.

If it didn't happen, and I was making it up, I need and deserve help.

We have a right to our experience of things, as we are the ones who have to live with the memories. Other people can experience things completely differently than those standing right next to them at the time. Hence, "truth" is subjective.

I have found that what is truly important is whether or not something is "true for me."

 

[shimmerz]

If it happened, I need and deserve help.
If it didn't happen, but I believe it did, I need and deserve help.
If it didn't happen, and I was making it up, I need and deserve help.

BRILLIANT!

 

[Justmehere]

My question is…..Does anyone else intensely fear not being believed? Does anyone else get so extreme sometimes that they even doubt the abuse ever happened?

Yes and Yes. I fear not being believed trauma that happened as an adult that the abuser confessed to and went to prison for. I have told my therapist, while tearfully holding the police report and I still expected her to tell me she did not believe me. She told me she knows it is real and that I am not lying, and yet my fear endures. I have even told my therapist that I'm scared she won't believe me and I am scared that she will! If she does believe me, it means I have to face the reality that it was real, it did happen, and now I have to deal with it.

She also says it doesn't really matter if she believes me or not, it's still real to me, and it's still something I need to face and heal from. This was rather bittersweet but helpful for me to hear. I'm still wrestling through this myself...

 

[shimmerz]

while tearfully holding the police report and I still expected her to tell me she did not believe me. She told me she knows it is real and that I am not lying, and yet my fear endures. I have even told my therapist that I'm scared she won't believe me and I am scared that she will!

Fascinating @Justmehere and I so hope that you and your T can work through this. You describe succinctly a feeling that is pervasive in me at all times it seems. I am working mainly with old trauma although it is documented to a degree, but never thought of this the way you put it. I am really interested in how this all works. So my immediate thoughts....

Is it the fear in general that is in question and the conflict that goes with that fear (trapped or damned if you do and damned if you don't)? In other words, is it just our general state of being (in the fearful place that PTSD instills in us) that makes everything so scary? Are we speaking in circles here of the fear of whether someone believes us (even ourselves) because it is an anxiety that overlays everything we speak, act upon and commit ourselves to?

I know I used to make decisions that were huge before I was hit with this rekindling of PTSD without a second thought. Now I can't decide a thing for myself for fear that I will do the wrong thing. I am not sure that anyone will 'get' this posting but this is what came to me when I read your above noted quote.

 

[Justmehere]

Thanks for the encouragement andinsightful thoughts!

Fascinating @JustmehereNow I can't decide a thing for myself for fear that I will do the wrong thing.

I have been deeply struggling with fear of making the wrong decision too - to the point of panic and levels of fear appropriate for life-and-death situations when all I'm trying to do is pick which class to take or what jacket to buy.

I can't quite find the words or connect the pieces, but somehow, behind my own fear in not belong believed (or the fear that it is all true) I think there is this thought that I'm bad, not what happened to me, I deserved it, it was justified and ok... which doesn't quite make sense how it all fits for me. Sure has me thinking!

 

[NovemberStar]

Definitely not alone with this! It would be pretty normal to not feel believed, given an abuser's classic tool is to deny what happened to us as being in any way bad. When we are abused, we feel in our souls, it is not ok, we FEEL awful, it affects us hugely - yet the abuser is often denying our feelings or perceptions on it. It either 'wan't bad at all'; or it 'never happened'. We are conditioned to believing what we FEEL is not REAL.

I often wonder how I appeared in any way 'normal' growing up and how come no one at school (teachers etc) noticed I was not ok. But the thing is, at school I was 'ok'. Like others have shared, we block that abuse / homelike off and it enables us to function in other area's of our lives - like nothing was wrong at home.

I still do this and it's not a negative thing in all cases. Even in the midst of my PTSD, most of the time I still manage to work. I am on call (work in obstetrics), and my work is a job with a huge amount of responsibility. I can wake up feeling suicidal, have panic attacks, flashbacks, feel like my life is falling apart, only to have my pager go off and I'm up, out of the hour and in full 'work mode' where for all intent and purpose I am a 'health professional' fully capable of sorting out crises and emergency situations. :confused:. I've never had any major PTSD symptoms when working either. I don't dissociate when with clients, even in terrible situations. Yet at home, when I'm not working, even the sunshine / weather can trigger strong dissociation and flashbacks. Talk about a massive contradiction in my 'selves'! If I shared with some of my clients what my personal life is like (I never ever would, this is purely hypothetical) and my struggles with PTSD, no one would probably believe me.

EDITED TO ADD: at work, I appear as a very outgoing, bubbly, confident person. I really would be the last person anyone would suspect was struggling with suicidal depression. I am far from a wall-flower; I am very energetic, with plenty to say, and I enjoy my job, even when I hate life itself

(And that I have serious mummy issues, who would rather be told I have a terminal illness than be told I am pregnant, as well as having spent half my life with a death wish, it's very ironic I am working in a job where I help hundreds of other women become mummies, and its all about life and new beginnings and hope, at the center of it - birth! LOL!)

That your FEAR your T not believing you - I hope you can talk to her / him about that. It's a transference issue, in that likely all your previous experience is no one did believe you, or you were forced to act in ways that hid the pain, hurt and abuse, so no one 'would know'. You're not abnormal and you're doing an awesome job, connecting how it is you feel, think, and what some of your fears are.

 

[ghotiff]

That your FEAR your T not believing you - I hope you can talk to her / him about that

I have spoken to my T about this and she gave the fairly typical response that I have seen above from others descriptions eg BloominWinter "If it happened, I need and deserve help. If it didn't happen, but I believe it did, I need and deserve help. If it didn't happen, and I was making it up, I need and deserve help"

I'm glad this approach brought peace to others, but it doesn't to me (at least not yet). My reasoning is that if it "did not happen" in their opinion then the approach to helping me has to be different than if it "did happen". I think this is where I keep getting stuck. If they don't think it happened, the model of help that will be applied will not help me, because it "did" happen.

I have told my therapist, while tearfully holding the police report and I still expected her to tell me she did not believe me

That line tugged at my heart strings. I actually rang the police recently to obtain a copy of the police report (no-one gives you copies when you're 7).

I am really interested in how this all works.

So am I @shimmerz....so am I. I know we are not meant to "think" our way out of our trauma....but for me (at least for some aspects) understanding the logic makes a huge difference.

I have been deeply struggling with fear of making the wrong decision too - to the point of panic and levels of fear appropriate for life-and-death situations when all I'm trying to do is pick which class to take or what jacket to buy

I read a book on childhood abuse which mentioned this and made a lot of sense to me. The theory was that during childhood abuse (and I expect adult abuse too), the child in reality has no control over what is happening, but, the child is desperate for some control. So...the child 'creates' control by trying to control the things they can eg by thinking that 'if' they do everything 'right' they can avoid or minimise the abuse. This can lead to perfectionism or OCD (and I'm sure other things that I don't know of).

This is my take on how small trivial decisions (for 'normals') can feel like huge, significant decisions for us. We grow up desperately trying to control all the little things, because the big things are outside of our control, but maybe, just maybe if all the small things are perfect this time will be different.

Example: if I wear the red jumper will this impact the abuse, maybe the blue jumper is safer because its a calmer colour so he won't be so angry, but my abuser doesn't like blue so maybe green would be better...and so on and so on.

 

[Skylynx]

BloominWinter...terrific post! I'm going to put that on my dresser mirror!!:woot:

 

[Hashi]

"If it happened, I need and deserve help. If it didn't happen, but I believe it did, I need and deserve help. If it didn't happen, and I was making it up, I need and deserve help"

I'm glad this approach brought peace to others, but it doesn't to me (at least not yet). My reasoning is that if it "did not happen" in their opinion then the approach to helping me has to be different than if it "did happen". I think this is where I keep getting stuck. If they don't think it happened, the model of help that will be applied will not help me, because it "did" happen.

I understand that the approach can help some people but it didn't help me at all. I left a therapist when she said it didn't matter to her whether or not it was true, what mattered was that I believed it was true.

I needed a therapist to help me with my struggle to accept it was true, not to feed my denial and make a Plan B for it being all in my head. I agree that the approaches have to be different depending on whether it's actually true or not. More than that, to me it's simply invalidation.

 

[ghotiff]

I so agree with you @Hashi

Also, I need my T to help me accept not just what happened but everyone around me denying, minimizing, and avoiding the truth of what happened. If my T doesn't believe it happened how will she help me learn to respond appropriately to people who still today minimize and invalidate what happened.

 

[joeylittle]

My T asked me one question once - just one - and it turned into me becoming convinced he didn't believe me. It took all the guts I had to bring it up in the next session, but I was glad I did. His reason for asking the question was not at all what I assumed it was.

I still get scared about it, and when I need to I bring it up in session.

Please don't lose faith in yourself, @ghotiff. Although the most awkward topic ever (in my mind) is talking with your therapist about the therapy, you really should consider telling her what your reaction to her diary comment was.

 

[ghotiff]

It took all the guts I had to bring it up in the next session, but I was glad I did. His reason for asking the question was not at all what I assumed it was

I really like my new T (number 3 in my list) so if she does this, I will bring it up. Thanks for the encouragement.

So for instance I had to talk about a memory of my birth mother smothering me with a pillow and walking out of the room. I could see her and I didn't understand how. It was unbelievable to ME! How could anyone else understand it. It MUST have been a lie. But I don't lie. That makes me feel crazy

I didn't respond to this comment when you first posted as it was too confronting to acknowledge at the time.
My memories of my first abuser are all like photographs from an observer. This worried me that I was making it all up, and even more worried me that someone else would think I was making it all up. I am getting close to accepting these memories and reading "The Body Remembers" helped as I have always had a very strong (and horrible) physical reaction to those memories. While I'm getting closer to accepting them, I don't understand why I would remember in this way. It doesn't make sense to me. Does anyone else have this? How have you made sense of it? Is it because they were so young (for me these were pre 7yrs old)?