New And Barely Coping

[disconnect]

I think it's disgusting the way your T acting towards you. She was in a position of trust and abused that trust. I think it's amazing that you're able to talk about that. Super props to you. Whenever you're ready and feel comfortable, we'll be here.

 

[Frog]

Brea - lost, and damaged, sums up exactly where my raw emotions and the rest of me, my psyche etc are at right now. I feel it every day and frequently lose perspective because of it. I am either completely numb or in emotional overload, and the change from disassociation to full immersion is very much the roller coaster ride I can't get off and have been on for some time now.
Sometimes it gets worse when I try to face it as much as it does when I suffer the hideous migraines when I try to run away from it.
Thank you for your reply and sharing your thoughts and feelings on what I wrote.

Crying without knowing immediately what upset me is a frequent occurrence for me. I am sorry you are going through that. I am just in shock at the moment to be honest that I am even typing this having read your post. Gone all horrified at how I feel, tearful and slowly numbing after a day of emotional paralysis and seering headaches. Although all this is usual for me, it is also all very slightly different on my emotional barometer - as I try to process what yourself and others are replying and how I feel about this new bewildering experience, albeit hiding behind an internet ID + keyboard, nevertheless the feeling of total exposure and I wanna run, then maybe fist some pillows is there nonetheless..!
Thank you again.

 

[Frog]

Hi Anni,

You didn't jump in to my thread at all darling. Thank you for responding.

I agree with you about the using the acting to my advantage, rather than it just being in control of me - I do see windows of that and have learned to accept there is an element of that in our professional lives that is called keeping a professional distance/not being overfamiliar/too friendly etc that is inevitable in order not to get walked over. Funny you should mention about some people you know you just have to do that with - its a shame because it can be so exhausting having to chop and change and if I am amongst more than a couple of people and each needs me to either act or drop the act, it can feel a bit mechanical - switching it off and back on again - but I know I am a genuine person and I think we might agree that - by the way you describe it - this is more about having an emotional shield so that as you say: - in my case too - I am not left bleeding all over the floor because of emotional - there is a word from Bridget Jones's Diary I would love to use on here but it's not appropriate language, perhaps you can guess from the acronym: EF Wit - these people (and I have had many in my life) vindictively try to mess with my mind and emotions `for a laugh' - its a game, yeah an `experiment' - like press this button and watch to see what happens. On an interesting note, and its the first time I've ever had this happen to me in my life) a girl walked out of her job at a takeaway because her boss pulled her up about her jealousy antics with me a regular customer (had been going there years).
I am allergic to shellfish and basically she lied to me saying there was no shellfish in it (I later found out from the boss she knew very well it had shellfish in it) when I checked if a certain dish was safe for me to order and eat and pulled a face of derision and that she was amused to see what would happen to me, that I didn't twig until I got home and remembered that as I looked up I saw this expression and her face went straight. I could have ended up in hospital but she did it for pure entertainment.

Having grown up with this sort of behaviour constantly around me, it takes me much longer than the `average' person to recognise when someone is abusing me - the disassociation is obviously a massive part of that because I am too emotionally disconnected to see the glaringly obvious thing happening right in front of my eyes. I had years of this sort of behaviour and disconnecting was obviously a survival mechanism to not directly experience the pain which was too much - e.g. my mother trying to drown me as a child - a more extreme example of the sort of behaviour above as far as the abuse litmus scale goes - so my disassociation is very strong and can wipe out my emotions for not only hours but days or weeks at a time, so my fog is a blur of events and surviving through activities.

I hope I do find some help but this has been a reluctant journey because I have a long-term illness which UK GPs are all too ready to dismiss as psychological in basis, even though empirical evidence is emerging about the true cause of my illness (I don't wish to talk about my illness, sorry) - which we've known all along - bears absolutely no relation to my mental health.

Thank you for what you said about counsellors (/therapists).. I am still VERY disturbed by this counsellor's behaviour. I kept getting this weird gut feeling that something wasn't right and that she was amused by things I said when my face was very straight and deadly serious & I was suspicious when I expressly said I wanted to learn more and understand my PTSD condition and she kept going off at tangents away from learning self-empowering information and terms to help process and make sense of the effect of the condition on my mind and behaviour.

Sadly there aren't many counselling options where I live that can be done by GP referral which means resorting to private counselling therapy which is unaffordable for me.
I pray an answer will come soon.

Thanks for `intruding' :-)

 

[Frog]

Thanks disconnect. I haven't been able to process this recent occurence fully. I am still in shock - varying between disturbed shocked, numb shocked and distressed tearful shocked.

Thanks for your compliments. I never let myself think of it this way because I feel I failed to report her.. I just couldn't hack it, but last night I seriously considered sending an anonymous complaint letter in.. I just cant find the words yet that don't belittle the horror of that experience to somebody reading it for the first time. I am also very nervous. I am not out to seek revenge but I am scared of what she might do to another client extremely vulnerable like me.

 

[Childhood's_End]

While my therapists/counselors never tried to take advantage of me sexually, the manipulation from one of my counselors led to an extreme distrust of counselors, such that I briefly became very anti-psychiatry/psychology, and when I went to therapy about two years after the trauma, while I never thought consciously that she'd hurt me, I omitted many aspects of the trauma and made up a lot of things about what I felt and experienced - I felt like a sociopath or some kind of sick person who has no empathy for people who really suffer delusions and hallucinations, pretending to have psychotic experiences just to mask my real inner life. Part of the reason I even agreed to go to a therapist is because I wanted to get past the fear of psychologists. I'm going to try to go to a new therapist in the near future (whenever the disability insurance kicks in; just got my first check today, load off my shoulder), this time completely forthcoming. The lack of this quality in that crooked counselor is part of why I'm still in this, so I do my utmost to uphold it in myself.

 

[anni]

Heavens the ridiciulous sham therapists really come crawling out of the woodwork, don't they? You reallyyyy have to wonder if there's an element of the same vindictive control which attracts the terrible ones. I'll bet the GOOD ones, who do finally get to help clean up all the messes they make have some stories they could tell.If you scratch the surface in a thread that includes this sort of thing, the theme tends to be the same. Either the idiotic T is there for a paycheck and uses bandaids for cures or they DO seem to gain some sort of control-freak/twisted satisfaction over firther torment. The fact that there are SO many awful stories is really unsettling!! We all seem to have them! Everyone here, however, DESPITE being incredibly fragile and variously battered found some inner resource and resolve to NOT be a further victim to these charletons. I find that very satisfying, if not somewhat empowering!I'd have to bet there are good, sound, knock-down, drag-out professionals who once in awhile browse these forums and grind their teeth reading these threads!

That was nice of you, Frog, not to mind the interruption. One never knows, here, if folks would much rather be left alone with their chats-and understandably so. Sometimes things sound very familiar so you wish to say so. :) The exhaustin-acting 'thing'-whoa! Yes, VERY familiar. It takes an awful lot, doesn't it? There are several elements which make up the whole isolation manifestation, and at least for me sometimes just not wanting to DO that one more dam day is enough to not make it out of the door, quite honestly. I personally have to fight isolating quite a bit, since I actually LIKE it, isn't that terrible? Just having to make engage all those coping mechanisms, even the ones which are so automatic they're unconscious now, is exhausting. Plus- 'THEY' are out there- whoever they might be, the reasons one carries pepper spray instead of coffee in the car's cup holder. :) Awful again! :) Yes- here I am also speaking of me-sorry!

Unspeakable the Shellfish Perp.!! Good God- what a creepingly evil little slime ball! There really is just no way to properly 'arm' oneself for those kinds of assaults, either, and can't imagine the PTSD backslide THAT would perpetrate on the nervous system. Mine was opposite yours, in that I was VERY fortunate in having had an incredibly safe childhood where noone ever, ever lied to me and nothing and noone was unsafe. It just never occured to me that someone did not wish me well, much less wish me dead!Torgues one's psyche around a tad. :) At any rate, having to field that sort of curve ball-well, I just don't know where one would 'find' one's safe place in the chaos out here. You seem to seriously be able to do that, though, however exhausting.

I hate to get on an annoying hobby-horse, but had this conversation with another member recently. We kind of came up with the fact that after all the pathologies, neurologies and psychologies ( and no disrespect to any of these academic fields ) some people are just plain evil. Leaving all organized religion out of it, I think one lets people 'off the hook' explaining their appaling behaviour and dangerous behaviour via a textbook. I can be sorry they, too, suffered in their lives somewhere but once they cross THAT LINE into harming others deliberately, any 'reason', much less excuses become meaningless as far as I'm concerned. That's where the whole 'evil' concept seems to come in, because how on earth does one explain someone who deliberately tries to set off a shellfish allergy in someone whose anaphalactic shock would no doubt be severe?

I do hope Childhood and you do manage to be able to find a T at some point- and believe me, I know that is not as easy as writing this sentence for a ton of reasons. Finances are usually one of the first ones, with insurances, referances, etc. I'm absolutely not blowing smoke when I say I'm quite, quite impressed with the resiliance shown by you lot in resolving to go BACK and find someone good. Mine retired, I had huge faith in him and have been quite frankly a big, fat coward about making a jump to a new one. You-all make me look like an idiot! :) That's a GOOD thing! Might help nudge me over the coward's edge.

Thanks for the reply, and for Childhood being brave enough to talk about her awful T- can NOT have been easy!

Anni

 

[Frog]

Vindictive People Repeat Trauma And My Isolation

Hi Anni,
Im going to have to reply twice here, I think - so please bear with me:-

I think many professions like this do exactly what you said: they attract malicious, vindictive control freaks who see an opportunity to seize on where they have `power' over fragile, vulnerable people - who in a lot of cases, like mine - can't always see the wood for the trees, thereby its easy to pull the wool over their eyes but by the time I, they, anybody, has realised - they are already inflicting some sort of control damage on the client.. they mess with your head. I had a very instinctive feelings - the whole trust my feelings things was completely new territory to me, and unfortunately I discussed this with the last therapist ie let my guard down so they could actually `get inside my head' and that's where she saw her opportunity to wreak havoc, get in control and cause damage - because this was the crux of my weakness and vulnerability. As a woeful analogy but still relevant: a chess game springs to mind when as a vulnerable victim you have to remained armed even when seeking support and help in order to not get destroyed in the process of trying to rebuild faith and trust where it is seldom found'.. sad I know.

The other thing I am so glad you responded with and talked about in courageous detail was the almost nature vs nurture debate and what I call `maltruistic' people who we question are their intentions separate from who they are ie do we excuse the bad behaviour as you say because of a. b. or c. experiences in their lives or do we say: no excuses justify this behaviour because actually we all have choice about whether or not we cross that line and is `mental illness ' really a valid reason for atrocious acts of barbarism, cruelty and abuse against others or is it that when the person made the choice to cross that line they just kept going and now the clever text book writers can call it: a mental health illness and therefore abrogate them of all responsibility with their actions because, sadly, they are mental ill thats why they do/did it etc? This is probably a very controversial thing to say but I do think some people MIGHT be inherently evil, though I lean more towards the level of personal responsibility they do or do not decide to accept, when they cross the line and keep going so that they have the excuse: `well everybody labels me mentally ill so I am just that, not evil', when in fact they are smiling behind the facade of mental illness relishing in a sick manner the power they now have over not only their victims but those who have been blinded in to believing they are just ill.. Easy place to hide, something all these films like Silence of the Lambs, Predator and 88 Minutes explore. I think we're looking a lot at how people orchestrate life to suit their own thirst for power & use conventional cloacks of deception to hide behind albeit their professional status e.g. my next door neighbour is known as the really nice helpful man who does nice things, ie can't fault him, by the neighbours yet, he does them without asking, takes over then manipulates you in to not being able to say no with emotional blackmail - `you will talk to me even though I can see you find me creepy, I like to and persist in blatantly staring at your chest with a greedy eyes while speaking to you and making lude sexual references to things that make you squirm and start walking backwards away from me' or I will make all the neighbours suspicoius of you, even hate you with malicious gossip (he did this to another neighbour who warned me about him, told them lies and ostracised her from the community) and another example is: my father is very distinguished academically and professionally, is a doctor with additional degrees in surgery & was `the pillar of the community', yet he was an extremely abusive father behind closed doors, a total jekyl & hyde but if you were me trying to tell anybody when I was a child, they would never EVER have believed you). One Italian lady we lived next door to had some inkling, though no proof.

I have grown accustomed to isolation & don't totally prefer it, but I need it very much - ironically - to manage the PTSD otherwise I crumble then melt on to the floor in to an inconsolable mess.. I can't get my head straight, it aches and I am in an awful mentor stupor without it - once I get clear again, I feel able to barely function, then when my disability allows I will venture out, but I, while trying to prioritise, think through very carefully where I am going to go, at what time - because I know which people I want to stay clear of and which I can manage to handle for a few minutes if I have to and even which entrance e..g. to a building I want to take because I know their are some predatory type personalities I need to shield my emotional health from because I know I cannot afford for them to sink their teeth in to my psyche at a given time, because they just enjoy taking a swipe at me for the hell and fun of it.

Thank you for the well-wishes regarding finding a therapist.. I can't bring myself to see anybody else right now, but I would like to try and go to the clinic where I was diagnosed with my long-term illness because they have a resident psychiatrist who might refer me, rather than going back through my GP which is what I dreaded and have avoided.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about a topic that I have not dared broach to do with debates adn concepts around whether or not people are actually `evil' because I have been thinking it for three years now, but not had the chance to discuss it with someone so open.

 

[anni]

Oh my Frog, it's the same here altough I finally pretty much stopped caring about how controversail it may be to stick that evil label on one of 'those' awhile ago. :) That's only because it's been quite awhile that I've been 'out here' being able to observe that particular mammal. :) Thank YOu for the back and forth and this, since one is able to clarify one's own thoughts by having to sort them into sentences and paragraghs.

That was a lovely, thought provoking reply and I'll reply properly later today. It was one of THOSE adrenaline filled nights last night and GOSH I'm foggy this morning. You'd have nothing but fragments from a dithering idiot if I tried at the moment. :) Must go have coffee and try again in a bit.

 

[anni]

Hi Frog,

Before the fog sets in again, thought I'd take advantage of the caffine and see if I can form words, if not spell better than last attempt! Good heavens how abysmal, sorry!

Yes, it is with quite some guilt at first that it dawned on me that I just had zero 'forgiveness' by way of allowing excuses for the abuser, which of course makes one wonder if one is just justifying one's personal vindictivness. Certainly that's a terribly valid point and we'd be horribly remiss as (hopefully) moral humans with a responsibilty to others just by virtue of being here on the planet. Still- in my own personal analysis, there does seem to be a point where THEY just plain loose me. The End. :) By behaving in a way which strips others quite literally of their right to live by crossing that clear line, they just loose any reason to deserve whatever 'justification' there may be for their actions. It's a choice, no matter the pathology. Reason and excuse are 2 different things, you know? I do not like to sound 'preachy', or at all like I 'know' what I'm talking about academically because I'm an artist, for heaven's sake and hardly qualified for psychiatric or psychological analysis-much less religious. There are some colleges which grant credits for life experience, or work already done in a field. That is valid since there are many people who begin training in with an already-sound knowledge base. Well- no credits here beyond the knowledge base of the abuse and way too much experience by way of close observation and CONTACT like so many here. We know, that's all. It's terribly interesting you've been turning these same concepts over in your mind without expressing them. We can't be singular and it does lead me to believe others possibly have come also to the same conclusions also via the same routes.

The problem with 'evil' is of course that it infringes on the whole Judeo/Christian realm, hence leads one into the murky waters on organized religion. Even bringing it up turns people OFF as any kind of serious discussion since of course there's not a scientific scrap anywhere to be seen, besides the wildly divergent takes on the subject by various religions. There's just no PROOF, but heck, the world was flat for a really, really long time, too. :) Our takes on this, and what we feel as to not having that 'Well, he might have tried to kill me, but he's an alcoholic whose father was, too' ability to reasoning is ours to own. His therapist-whoever-is welcome to have sympathy for the *sswipe. I do not.

I lost my train of thought, except to say that please don't feel you have to keep replying unless you do have things to say. I know sometimes when feeling like you do at the moment that can be somewhat of a burden. I can but I'm fortunate to be in a 'good' space, at the moment, communication-wise but of course that's not always how this stupid thing leaves one. In point of fact, I still become anxious, every, single time before logging in here. Exposure therapy works-it just does-and eventually I won't any more, I know.

It's very nice hearing your thoughts, and genuinely am impressed with how far you've managed to get despite the awfullness. There's a few threads at the moment that amaze me and yours is one. Another thing I've noticed here in the forum is the resiliance of so many, and I don't think they even see themselves as that. I hope you can.

 

[Frog]

I don't think you should put yourself down - I've known lots of people with degrees (who incidentally scoff at other people without them or even at those with them but not in a subject they deem good enough to deem them smart (ooh, theres another complex debate area - `defining intelligence - ) yet, they don't exercise an ounce of common sense, lack the socio-emotional intelligence (ooh another controversial hot topic!) + unspeakably inhumane acts against other human beings.. yet we are meant to respect and aspire to their schools of thinking? I think not.. What I'm trying to say but rambling on about is: your view is valid - whether the higher echelons of academic `brilliance' agree or not. Not being qualified or experienced in psychology or other such scientific subject does not mean your thinking and reasoning are any less sound, by definition, like me you might just a little less vocabulary at your disposal from the world of scientific academia! Nobody can negate what you are suggesting. Your view is valid. Full stop.

I spent years excusing the behaviour of certain perpetrators/abusers in my life.. but eventually, one day I realised I was in denial because I was letting them off the hook by excusing out of compassion and what I was failing to do was face reality in order to be compassionate towards myself and admit the truth. They were sadistic, cruel, destructive, uncaring and ultimately, to umbrella all of these traits, selfish. I was denying myself the emotional outpouring that was key to growing as a person and reclaiming my identity, my real identity, not the one handed to me by them so that they could perpetuate their fantasy in order to justify being selfish. It was selfish, plain and simple and they had hundreds of opportunities to stop.. no exaggeration.. hundreds (-apologies about the spelling).

Each time I log on here, my anxiety goes through the roof. I had two severe panic attacks in one night logging on. I can't say that the forum as a form of exposure therapy works for me, but sharing thoughts and feelings helps me crystalise what I know I already feel and know and helps me work out new ways of compartmentalising my brain, so I can live less chaotically, take more control and claim back eroded psychoemotional and personal space where my boundaries have been inappropriately crossed, so I have the independence and control that others have and do want to deprive me of to their own ends. I have learned over the last year that this entails less of the `taking' control, but more of the `not allowing it to be taken away' from me control. This is less stressful - it just means staying awake to see when a moment has arrived to make a choice, rather than get washed up in someone else's tide and drowned and denied view of the shore.

Not sure what's amazing about my thread, but thank you.

, but not, in my opinion only of course, wasn't to explain her behaviour

 

[anni]

Oh, just the ability to be able to translate the dynamics of realizations and growths is amazing to me when people can do it. There seems to me to be a fine line between being able to do that and letting oneself drift into being way too self-absorbed. Here you mostly see what you're able to 'do'- translate the occurances. Then as a reader one gets that 'OH, yes, that's exactly how it is!' feeling, you know? The articles on the home page mostly read like that, also, which is refreshing for an aging art major. :) Not to put too fine a point on it but you may have notice I have a problem staying foused on the main point all the way through, get wordy and then veer off on a tangent. OH do my children have some fun with THAT! :)

 

[Aggie]

Hi Frog,

I understand the mistrust. Through school bullying and knowing the administrators and teachers knew about it I have a huge mistrust of supervisors at work. About kills me sometimes. I've quite jobs just to avoid the sinking stomach feeling. About counseling. I've had 3. One was a zero and 2 have been pretty good....helped me to understand trauma and then begin to deal with what I am feeling...recognizing it before getting to the point of doing something negative.