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It is as if I have 2 separate brains, I know it is not my fault...........but

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David1959

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As I work my way down the road of recovery I am at the point where my T is telling me as well as all here "Your abuse at 10 is not your fault". My logical adult brain understands this but it is as if I have two brains because that second one is 100% sure it is my fault for never saying anything. All the damage it has caused in my life for the past 50 years is on me!

Why can I not let that go? I suspect that somehow assigning blame to others is letting me off the hook for my own actions and culpability. I know, it is twisted but honestly I don't know how to cross the bridge. The more I learn and logically understand that it is not the fault of the victim, the deeper my belief that it is my fault. In my mind so many actions throughout my life created negative consequences which ultimately, I am responsible for.

I wish I could get a brain wipe to remove those thoughts but they are really buried deep, deep, deep. I hate the weakness I have shown in my life at various times and am honestly confused, which are my fault and which are driven by the abuse, I can't separate them. Not helping is the fact that my adult memories of various times in my life always focus on the mistakes and negative times. When remembering what in every way should be great times my mind focuses on the 1 thing that was bad and I have flashback memories with the the sick physical feelings that go with them putting me in the room with all the negative feelings.

I puttered through life disassociating from negative feelings and any emotions and while I am now learning more and more about the various traumatic events in my childhood part of me wishes I was not learning about it however my mind has not given me that choice anymore.
 
During therapy things can get pretty rough sometimes because your directly focussed on the traumas and emotions related to them. It's part of the process. But that's why you do it with a professional therapist so that they can help you resolve issues and ground you. It gets easier though because you learn about acceptance and how to filter those emotions. What happened to you was terrible but you can't keep beating yourself up about it. Self blame in your case is a cognitive distortion. What can you do to redirect your focus when you feel like that? Reading, a hobby, sport, something on a computer, anything to stop the self blame because it's not helping you.
 
What happened to you was terrible but you can't keep beating yourself up about it.
I understand but I think I am beating myself up as much or more about my actions as an adult still being controlled by what happened to me as a kid. Decisions I made or more appropriately did not make.

Of course the more I think about it and all the permutations the less clear the image, sort of in a fog with no clear way out.
 
Ok. Sometimes I feel the same and it causes me depression, but there's nothing I can do about the past.(apart from thinking if that happens again, I won't do that, I'll do that instead). I can only influence the present or the future because that's where I have power. Worrying about what I've lost in the past is just a waste of energy. It just goes round and round with no positive outcome.
 
It is so so so so so hard.
So hard.
But I think how freeing it must be to let go of the self blame, the self doubt, the fight in my mind when half of me thinks one thing and another half thinks the opposite.

I try and remind myself that when it is so hard in therapy, it can be the sign of a breakthrough coming?
Hang on in there. It's got to get better?
 
But I think how freeing it must be to let go of the self blame, the self doubt,
Wow can only imagine. For 45 years when I buried the abuse and never told a sole without knowing it I was destroying my life with self blame but because I was disassociating I rarely had self doubt. Now that I have unpacked my abuse and recognized it starting 5 years ago I now suffer from intense self blame and have constant self doubt because now I wonder with every decision, is this me or is it the little boy suffering.
 
I hear you and I went through this. Getting help with this is really hard because even asking exposes the vulnerability you were talking about. I did everything I could to avoid coming to terms with all this and I just want to say that for me it got easier. The other thing is I’ve found I was only able to get the kind of help I needed from women. There was no other way to approach the intimacy implicit in this kind of exploration. Writing has helped me and even that was almost impossible at first.

I think the therapist is the key though, for me it has been but that might be peculiar to my particular CSA history? I’ll probably never know that. The therapist is a specialist though. I had to keep telling her over and over. I’m probably still doing that. She kept telling me it wasn’t my fault. I think I was actually angry with her for awhile because she had the audacity to say that.
 
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