Sufferer New Here, Sexual Abuse Over Many Years With Mult. Perps

[DizJointed]

I would also like to add an hello and suggest a trauma specialist. My PsyD is a trauma specialist and she is one of the few people I trust.

 

[BeeLee]

Thank you DizJointed. I'm not sure what my insurance will cover and am looking into it. EAP is paying for the therapist at this point. I'm hoping that insurance will cover a psychiatrist. I have another session this next Wednesday and we will talk about the psychiatrist at that time, and who she recommends.

 

[DizJointed]

IMHO, a good therapist be it - PsyD (clinical psychologist), LMFT, LCSW or whatever plus a good Psych Nurse is like the best combo if you are interested in combining meds with therapy. I haven't met a psychiatrist that was better than good Psych Nurse and the latter tend to be better at listening.

 

[BeeLee]

I'm still leaning towards the medications being the last resort for me. I want to give myself a chance to deal with these issues head on, without medications at this point. Thank you for your advice.

 

[Brad1980]

My childhood was difficult and my young adulthood was kind of crazy but I things straightened out and functioned very well for years. Then experience a new trauma that unspun my life. The new information that you recieved about your mother must have hurt tremendously. I can only empathize with you about that. I have found the EMDR has been the most successful therapy for me. If your therapist was getting goosebumps by your initial session not a good thing. Try and find a trauma therapist. The new information may have caused an old trauma response and you may be shutting don systematically like you did when you were a child to survive the pain that you are feeling.

There are no meds that treat PTSD. I recently had a long discussion with my shrink about why I can't seem to get stable any more, it was like my meds stopped working half the time. He told me it wasn't a medication issue. It was a PTSD issue and that it may take sometime in therapy to get it worked out. I really wanted a pill to cure this.

Check with your insurance they should have a list of EMDR providers. Be gentle with yourself, you are in a delicate position. I found my self in a tough place in April. I found out some information about my mother that upset me. She deliberately and knowingly decided not to have treated for the trauma I experienced. She choose to leave me untreated, it was the beginning of mental illness issues. I couldn't sleep all I could do was think. I felt so betrayed. I hopped on the forum because I wasn't going to sleep and wrote about all of it. It took a couple of nights but it got better. So don't stay silent. I read your first post and can relate far more that you can imagine.

I would also suggest a decompensation checklist. Rate your symptoms on a scale of 1-10 so you can be aware of your trauma responses. Pay close attention to the hyper vigilance it is the lead indicators. Good luck
Peace

 

[BeeLee]

Thank you Brad, very much for sharing and for the suggestions. I'm sorry that you had to deal with a difficult childhood and that your mother had the chance to get you treated, but chose not to. It's amazing how much we deal with at the hands of those that are supposed to love us, and then we are the ones that are left to clean up the mess they made because they can't be bothered or because they are just too far gone and have done too much damage to be responsible for that mess. We have to be strong enough to take those first steps in cleaning up the mess and sometimes it's just difficult to know where to start, because the mess they left behind is so HUGE. But how courageous and how strong we are that we undertake that task. Brad, you should be proud of yourself. While your mom wouldn't get you the treatment you needed, you've been able to do that yourself, to take on that huge task and start healing.

 

[BeeLee]

I saw the therapist again yesterday and there was no more suggestions about a psychiatrist or medication. She told me that she had to admit that I "got to her" and that very few people ever do that. She said that I came very close to where she was and that it had unsettled her and she had to review this past week whether this was something she could do, and has decided that she can. She said that she also had to admit that what I had been through was so much more intense and traumatic than what she had experienced, and that she knew how traumatic her past had been, and therefore felt that anyone that had been through something much more traumatic would need psychiatry and / or medication just to function. So, her suggestion was basically a knee-jerk reaction to her own traumatic past.

We did discuss my "toolbox" of coping mechanisms that I had used as a child, silence, isolation, hypervigilance, not sleeping, etc., and so forth, and that I am resorting to those old tools in an attempt to deal with this new information, but that those tools won't work for this problem. She wants me to face my inner child, to get her to trust me to keep her safe. She commented about how no one in my life had ever been trustworthy, and therefore, I don't trust. And she is right about that. I go back in two weeks, as she will be out next week. I think I'll stick with her for now.

 

[ms spock]

She was honest with you BeeLee, which is a good sign.

You were brave to check this out.

Good luck with it all. I hope that she gives you the assistance and guidance that you need.

 

[BeeLee]

Thank you Ms. Spock. I did appreciate her honesty, tremendously. I suppose in a strange way, because of her reaction, it in some way validated the feelings I have been having regarding all of this new information. That maybe, my reaction isn't so far from the norm after all. That maybe, I'm not completely nuts for feeling this way. It's sad that we need validation for what we feel, as though we can't trust what we feel to be real, or that it is even truly what we feel. I know that it's because we were often told when we were young that we were mistaken, or we were being told we were "enjoying" something that we very well knew we weren't enjoying. But they were the adult, they were infallible, so our perception has to be the perception that is wrong. And you know, that idea gets reinforced in our adulthood as well, because our perceptions were knocked so out of whack when we were children that we misinterpret things as an adult and when someone corrects our misperceptions, it invalidates what we feel (or think we feel) and once again, it confuses the emotions and our beliefs about those emotions.

Life was so much easier when I would just block my emotions, dissociate from them. When I didn't have to feel anything, there was never anything to misinterpret, there was never any need for validation of my feelings, because there were no feelings to validate. But, I also wasn't living. I was going through the motions and hoping for the best, but expecting the worst, and shutting down emotionally so that when the worst happened, I wouldn't hurt because of it.

There are times when I feel something and I can't identify the feeling. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it is a positive feeling, a negative feeling, a neutral feeling, because I can't put it into words to explain to someone else, I can't describe it, because I don't know what it is. One of the ways I coped as a child was by dissociating from my emotions. It was the only way I could get through everything. If I didn't feel, I didn't hurt, and I wasn't over-whelmed by it. And when I would feel, I was often told that what I was feeling was wrong, that it might have been a negative emotion, but because they said it was wrong, that I now wonder if maybe it was positive. How is a child supposed to traverse this world in conditions that we were raised in, when the way in which we were raised belied everything that was true? How can we trust anything?

I suppose it would be accurate to say that I always waited on someone else to tell me what I was feeling. "You look sad today", thinking to myself, "Oh, I must be feeling sad." Or "You really look angry right now," thinking to myself, "Wow, so that is what this energy is, what I'm feeling. I'm angry." When honestly, I might be feeling nothing at all, nothing I could identify with, but my mannerisms, my affect, would state that some inner feeling was bubbling to the surface and it must be what they were describing. But, if our perceptions were wrong? Then how can we know their perceptions are right? Maybe they are just as wrong? And if they are just as wrong, then am I feeling sad? Am I feeling angry? If they are wrong, and I'm wrong, maybe I'm ecstatic and in love? How would I ever know?

Sorry, I know I've kind of gone off on another track here, but I guess I'm trying to discover what it is I'm feeling and I have no freaking idea.

 

[KP the nut]

Welcome to the forum.

 

[shoulderblades]

Jeez, you've gone through so much. The things that have been done to you are atrocious and so cruel. :( You're in a safe place here; keep talking about things, get the poison out. We're all here to listen and to support you. Welcome to the forum. :)