New Flashback. Therapy Making Things Worse?

[Polly_pocket]

I don't know if this is the right thing to do, but I googled and found this site so I thought I might give this a go. Sorry if I'm doing it wrong.

I don't know how to start. It's complicated. I was bullied at school and abused at home and both of them kinda interlink. I am gay but part of me thinks that when I get over my traumas I will be straight. I feel like I'm only gay because I'm scared of men. I have a lot of self-loathing because of my queerness. My therapist says I was born this way and I will not grow out of it. She says I hate my queerness because I was bullied for it, she's trying to get me to accept it. We're doing visualisations.

Last session my therapist and I talked through and did a visualisation of one incident from when I was at school. A girl hurled homophobic abuse at me and then touched me to see if I 'liked' it. I was in the middle of the classroom and everyone was there and nobody did anything. I was aware of this as a thing that happened but I never really thought about it until recently.

My therapist said this was sexual assault and if I had reported it she would have been arrested. I think that is an overreaction. It's not that bad a thing. But I got really anxious in the session talking about it. I have never told anyone before.

Today I went to a class and I had a flashback. I've never had a flashback for this thing before. The current classroom overlapped with the classroom then and I could feel the girl's hands on me. I was so scared. I've been pretty disassociated since then. And my self loathing has been through the roof. I can't stop thinking about harming myself and I'm so tempted to go back to my eating disorder behaviours.

I don't understand how this happened. It wasn't a problem and now it is. I keep almost crying and shaking. I don't want this to be another flashback I have to deal with on top of all of the childhood stuff. It wasn't even an issue before. Now I think my therapy must be making everything worse.

I feel so guilty and bad that I am having all of this stress over one little incident when other people are properly abused. I feel so angry at myself for getting so worked up. But my anger at myself is making everything worse.

 

[Deleted member 28403]

First thing, it gets worse before it gets better is a thing often said here on forums.

I am similar to you, had years of serious bullying and complete social isolation, abuse at home and so on...

Regarding the sexual assault thing... I don't know about how it is in UK, but here in Croatia, my case was just dragging around all those departments and offices without anything being done. From what I hear in UK it's even worse...

I also have disordered eating, either starving or completely overeating :( also struggling with self harn a lot... Covered in wounds...

Many sufferers blame themselves or think their trauma is nothing much, but it is.

Welcome to forums, and hugs to you. You need them.

You seem like an interesting person to know :)

 

[NewDayTomorrow]

First, it strikes me that your sexuality confuses you because I had a similar concern about my orientation. First I wondered if I was gay because I was afraid of men. I decided I was straight and still afraid of men. Then, I remembered a sexual abuse incident BY A WOMAN so once I found that out I decided there was no rhyme or reason to this and stopped trying to force it to make sense. You might be gay or straight or not sure, but please do not expect that to be connected to your trauma in a logical way (yes it will be connected, just not as logically as you might like to think). Remember that your sexual orientation depends on who you are ATTRACTED to, which may or may not be the same gender that you are afraid of.

Second, it sounds like your therapist went too quick with you. From what I have read here and elsewhere, a therapist should build up trust and coping skills for just basic stability, before asking a client to re-live a traumatic event. Clearly she sent you reeling. "Re-traumatization" can happen if you go too deep too quick.

I feel so guilty and bad that I am having all of this stress over one little incident when other people are properly abused. I feel so angry at myself for getting so worked up. But my anger at myself is making everything worse.

Don't worry about whether you have been "properly abused" it all hurts, no matter what it was! Some people might get outright raped and never have PTSD, and some people get accidentally traumatized by benign things like medical procedures as young children. Everyone is different. I often feel similarly that other people are worse off than me, but hearing another person put it so bluntly illustrates the fallacy of that idea.

Maybe, you could tell your therapist how this visualization activity affected you, and ask her to take things more gently and slowly. When I first started therapy, my therapist would ask "how was your week" to gauge if we were going at a comfortable pace. Try not to lecture yourself. I hope it subsides on its own, but maybe you can use your visualization skills to picture a pleasant memory? Or a person or place that makes you feel safe?

Your eating behaviors are a little concerning, but it might be good to know, that low blood sugar can make anxiety worse. Its like a caveman stress signal that you need to be alert to find food. Snacks before bed and in the morning when you first wake up can help tide you through the night, if you eat something high in sugar and protein (fruit and yogurt works for me, at the suggestion of my therapist).

You'll find plenty of help here. I hope you feel better soon.

 

[MissKB]

I agree with JBS about therapy going too fast. And don't down play your abuse. Like JBS stated everyone here has a story and they are all at different levels. You need to go on your feelings that you were violated and boundaries were crossed and that hurt you. You have a right to feel that way. Now on your sexual preference, I don't know if it is the cause of the abuse. I was sexually abused by both men and women and I am a heterosexual female, so go figure.

I wish you luck in therapy, it will get better in therapy.

 

[Friday]

I'm bi, which is nice, because I can date the person instead of their appendages. Although I generally prefer men's minds & hearts. I'm also celibate at the moment :wtf: Gak! Yuck. Groooooooss. Have been for the past few years.

PTSD is cyclic, so having already made every mistake in the book during my first tailspin years and years ago... When I started losing control a few years back? I closed the muffin shop. No dating, no sex, until I got my head on straight. :banghead: Stupid head. It's been longer than I expected, but the reasoning behind it is still sound: When I'm a mess, I make bad decisions. Better to be a bit frustrated (omg... Sometimes I really, really hate this part) than to repeat mistakes I've already made in spades.

Not saying your sexual identity doesn't matter... But it matters less when you are working on bettering your life, rather than trying to blend your life & someone else's together. Add people to your life, for sure, but be wary of adding lovers. Friendship is hard enough. It also nixes the stress of how you "should" feel about someone, or who you "should" seek out, and that whole mental tangle.

Yes. Therapy often/usually means things are going to get worse before they get better.

Consider a marathon. You can't just wake up one morning, decide to run 26mi/42km, go do it... And feel fantastic. Nope. Instead there is a lot of training. Working up to it. And a lot of that training sucks. It hurts. You feel awful. And will... For a long time. Because you're increasing your endurance. Building muscles, repairing injuries, finding your stride... And then pushing more. Feeling awful. Building more endurance, and stronger muscles, repairing injuries, finding your stride... Only to push again. And again. And again. It takes a long time. And it hurts. And is hard work. And there are times when it doesn't make sense when you can go x miles fine last week, x miles kills you this week... And then is fine next week. Again. But the belief that you can do it, if not in yourself, in others who have? Can get you through.

 

[Ladyghosthunter]

Therapy, to me, is a double edge sword whose blade will dull after a while and I become skeptical, bordering on cynical. Therapy is SUPPOSED to help you confront your past and help you to deal with the reality of what happened to you. Although I found an unconventional therapist who has hit my issues spot on, there are too many that do not deal with the underlying issues but what's "on top", or on the surface of your mind. These people don't really delve into the nooks and crannies of the meaning, the horror or the visuality of the situation(s) you went through.
In other words, they cannot be you and they get paid $300 an hour for listening to you talk.
Before I found my current therapist, I went to a doctor of faith that dealt with PTSD (military and non-military) specifically and I wish my insurance could cover him.

As The Steve Miller Band put it ever so lightly in the song, Jet Airliner..."....You gotta go through Hell before you...Get to Heaven...."
Just hold on to us here and let us all know how you're doing. You have the right to pick and choose which one will help you but if it's getting worse and NOT helping you, change doctors.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

There is a thread somewhere around here about how abuse has muddied the waters of sexuality. I think it was started by @Ayesha but I'm not positive. (Correct me if I'm wrong) I don't remember what the thread was called.

I think that coming to terms with your sexuality is something that you will do on your own terms and in your own time, so I don't necessarily agree with your therapist doing visualizations in order to get you to accept your sexuality. It took me FOREVER to get to the point where I was able to say "I'm straight!" Odd you might think, but I am a female who was sexually abused by a female, and since my first sexual experience was against the orientation I was born with, voila! a recipe for massive confusion.

I think that perhaps she's doing things out of order. Its not a matter of forcing you to accept your orientation. Rather, as you go through healing and become more confident of who you are, you will be able to confidently say "I am gay/straight/bi/whatever" and the cloud of trauma will lift so you will be able to see things as they truly are.

 

[jaccat]

I tried to explain the relativity thing to a friend once- who always found it hard to talk about her problems around me.

Look at it this way, if the worst pain you ever experienced was a broken arm, then any other pain you feel will be in comparison to that. You wouldn't ignore your pain because you think compared to the guy down the road who's lost a limb in the army, it's nothing. And the guy down the road wouldn't think you should either. it's the same with trauma.

 

[Polly_pocket]

Thank you for the replies. I have read them carefully. Sorry my response time is slow/ if I don't respond right I am at my eating disorder day program today and anxiety is pretty high. It is my last week here.

I do think my therapist is trying her best I don't think either of us thought it would affect me this badly. We have done visualisations before for childhood abuse and I was ok. I am pretty numb about that abuse or else maybe I have dealt with it in my own way so I am shocked to have all of these feelings about this incident. I never even thought this incident was a problem until a month ago. I was totally shut down.

I think part of the problem is that I am bad at expressing my emotions to my therapist in sessions so I deal with a lot of it alone, I wonder if she's realises how bad I am. A few weeks ago she pushed me into talking about my feelings of guilt and I couldn't and walked out of the session. I ended up having to go to a&e because my SH urges were too strong. She has been gentler since.

I did used to think that my sexuality stuff would sort itself as other things improved and so did my therapist but I have been so bad with the self loathing that it has to be sorted now. I only have 6months left of weekly therapy and that will be it. I get scared that my queerness will infect other people or that people will be disgusted and it affects my eating and my ability to leave the house. Often I get so worked up I wash my hands over and over to get the filth of being queer out of me. A lot of this is because of the homophobic abuse so it needs to be dealt with. Even though I don't like it myself.

So you see I only have 24 more sessions and if I don't work on it now it will never be worked on. And she's not just my trauma therapist she's supposed to be doing everything else. There isn't really an option to go slow.

 

[NewDayTomorrow]

So you see I only have 24 more sessions and if I don't work on it now it will never be worked on. And she's not just my trauma therapist she's supposed to be doing everything else. There isn't really an option to go slow.

I am no expert, but I really believe that you should not let a limited number of sessions rush you. Whatever you get done in 24 sessions at a comfortable pace, might continue to pay off after you stop. Could you possibly stretch to once every other week to give yourself more time? Maybe you can talk to her and prioritize what you most want to focus on in your remaining time with her, and what might be ok to have "left over." That is a tough one. I wonder if you could use her for the really deep stuff and maybe afterwards, if you still need help, you could find free help from a priest or something? I know those people might not be trauma experts but maybe you could at least get help with more surface level stuff later on? I worry that the feeling of being rushed and pressured would make change harder for you, so that is why I am trying to think of ways to extend it or prioritize so you get the most out of those remaining sessions.

 

[Nam]

@Polly_pocket Please be gentle with yourself. I'm getting this gut feeling that this flashback is just a layer on an onion. Be kind.

 

[Polly_pocket]

Maybe you can talk to her and prioritize what you most want to focus on in your remaining time with her, and what might be ok to have "left over

This is a good idea actually. I have struggled with therapy in trying to cram everything in but I'm going to look at what I can manage myself.

@Polly_pocket Please be gentle with yourself. I'm getting this gut feeling that this flashback is just a layer on an onion. Be kind.

Thank you Nam. I think you are right which scares me. I have never had any emotions about my childhood abuse, so maybe now is when I become less numb.