Dear forum. I have been a member for some years but this is my first post. I have been too scared ot a PTSD episode to read and write here, as I often get triggered very easily. My (short version) story is:
When I was 34 I discovered that I was a victim of child sexual abuse, perpetrated by my brother and my grandfather. Only at 34 had I learned enough about sexual violence to finally realize these "weird" and horrifying things that had happened to me were assaults/incest and that the suicidal depression and anxiety that had been deveoping from 11 year old was partly caused by it.
I made this discovery 5 years ago and it came along with my first PTSD episode. The last five years I have had so many episodes that it's impossible to count, alternating between one or two happy days, and then a long bout of depression. The PTSD episodes involve a lot of physical pain, in the areas of the body where the abuse happened, and as I have worked on it with therapists and counselors and in all kinds of ways, the pain has changed and is now focused mainly in the limbs. I have very few people who I can talk about the PTSD symptoms with. My councelors, therapists and doctors don't seem to be able to explain it to me except in quite mystical ways (if at all). Pain is only one of the many symptoms of my ptsd, hypersensitivity is another, crying, ... anger... (neither of which I define as a symptom actually). I feel like I'm still mourning my innocense and my childhood, and still furious at the perpetrators. One of them is gone now (grandpa) and the other I have a complicated relationship with.
I stopped working, having already had a very non linear and sporadic work experience. I got 2 years on disability benefits - after going through lots of trouble. After I got a bit better and slowed down the intensive therapy, I started working. I still had periods of intense PTSD but they were fewer and farther between. Also depression, it's always getting better and better. Last year in january I felt happyness starting to return (again - or for the first time?) and as I had said it outloud a new shadow came over my life. I learned that my father is an abuser too. (His father abused me9: Actually, I knew this already as I had heart stories about him abusing grown women. But this was a child. He has abused his girlfriend's 8 year old child (15 years ago).
I haven't talked to him in more than a year now. Since I yelled at him over the phone.
The pain was so much that after weeks and months of it I started to visualise my death over and over, or his. And his.
I have been to therapy again - and am starting to go to Al-anon meetings again (he is also a sober alcoholic and drug addict). It helps a little bit but I am so angry and so sad and so deeply unhappy. And during this year I am very easily triggered again, by everything and anything, I've had to stay home from work sometimes - luckily not too much - , and finally I started on anti-depressants. They don't solve anything, but they muted the psychological pain quite a bit. For a while. It's starting to come back now, which is not all bad because the alternative is being numb.
I want to tell his sister, I want to tell my neice, I want everybody to know. But I don't want him to suffer and maybe hurt himself because I can't live with myself then. I want to scream. I really don't understand how people get over these kinds of things.
Thank you for being here. I wish there was a group for children of abusers.
How can I live with being a survivor and daughter of a man who abused a child?
agusta.
When I was 34 I discovered that I was a victim of child sexual abuse, perpetrated by my brother and my grandfather. Only at 34 had I learned enough about sexual violence to finally realize these "weird" and horrifying things that had happened to me were assaults/incest and that the suicidal depression and anxiety that had been deveoping from 11 year old was partly caused by it.
I made this discovery 5 years ago and it came along with my first PTSD episode. The last five years I have had so many episodes that it's impossible to count, alternating between one or two happy days, and then a long bout of depression. The PTSD episodes involve a lot of physical pain, in the areas of the body where the abuse happened, and as I have worked on it with therapists and counselors and in all kinds of ways, the pain has changed and is now focused mainly in the limbs. I have very few people who I can talk about the PTSD symptoms with. My councelors, therapists and doctors don't seem to be able to explain it to me except in quite mystical ways (if at all). Pain is only one of the many symptoms of my ptsd, hypersensitivity is another, crying, ... anger... (neither of which I define as a symptom actually). I feel like I'm still mourning my innocense and my childhood, and still furious at the perpetrators. One of them is gone now (grandpa) and the other I have a complicated relationship with.
I stopped working, having already had a very non linear and sporadic work experience. I got 2 years on disability benefits - after going through lots of trouble. After I got a bit better and slowed down the intensive therapy, I started working. I still had periods of intense PTSD but they were fewer and farther between. Also depression, it's always getting better and better. Last year in january I felt happyness starting to return (again - or for the first time?) and as I had said it outloud a new shadow came over my life. I learned that my father is an abuser too. (His father abused me9: Actually, I knew this already as I had heart stories about him abusing grown women. But this was a child. He has abused his girlfriend's 8 year old child (15 years ago).
I haven't talked to him in more than a year now. Since I yelled at him over the phone.
The pain was so much that after weeks and months of it I started to visualise my death over and over, or his. And his.
I have been to therapy again - and am starting to go to Al-anon meetings again (he is also a sober alcoholic and drug addict). It helps a little bit but I am so angry and so sad and so deeply unhappy. And during this year I am very easily triggered again, by everything and anything, I've had to stay home from work sometimes - luckily not too much - , and finally I started on anti-depressants. They don't solve anything, but they muted the psychological pain quite a bit. For a while. It's starting to come back now, which is not all bad because the alternative is being numb.
I want to tell his sister, I want to tell my neice, I want everybody to know. But I don't want him to suffer and maybe hurt himself because I can't live with myself then. I want to scream. I really don't understand how people get over these kinds of things.
Thank you for being here. I wish there was a group for children of abusers.
How can I live with being a survivor and daughter of a man who abused a child?
agusta.
