Still On The Fence About Disclosing Details Of My Abuse

[KwanYingirl]

My experience has been a fierce fear of my abusers who used extrodinary measures to keep me silent. The result was tragic of course but I complain about this anticipatory anxiety I struggle to overcome. Then someone posted that it may not be the story I fear disclosing, but rather that the punishment I was promised would be dealt. That was an A HA moment for me. It was right on. My therapist asked me this week why I chose to disclose a very distressing memory. I had no answer and because he has me check in daily when I have a meltdown, I safely lived through the terror and eventually the point he made this week. The guy was a f"#*ing liar. I see him sitting in the other chair in my therapists office. He has offered to turn it around but I want to get free. That means getting rid of my anxiety and feelings of impending doom. I feel empowered now that I shared with him. Now I want to take it light for a bit. He is very skilled and he makes me laugh.
There certainly were years that my heels were dug in and no way in hell would I tell anyone the story. I simply didn't have the ideal circle of healers in my life and now I do.
The members of this forum have been tremendous role models. People who are quite far along in their healing and self care. You don't get there without shedding the debris. Not silence bottled up inside your soul eating your life force.

 

[scout86]

@KwanYingirl Great post! I wish, once again, that there was a superlative like button! (And a high 5 emoticon! :))

 

[Gucci]

Morbid fear of disclosure - that's some wicked, wicked stuff!! Please be uber-compassionate with yourself; based on how terrified you seemed to feel after disclosing this incident to your therapist, I can't imagine how excruciatingly bad the incident must have been.
I don't have the same intensity of fear around disclosure, but I do know that I had an extreme aversion to revealing feelings. I recently made the connection between rarely discussing my feelings and the fact that I was typically punished by my parents for expressing myself in any way.
I learned to never complain, never object, to suffer in terrible silence, to believe that no one would be able to help me, and that disclosure of my emotions would be met with contempt and criticism. There was no way for me to associate openness with 'reward' since the consequences of my expressing myself were almost exclusively negative. This is a deeply engrained sense of 'reality' for me and it's important to respect its power and be very gentle with yourself.
I took your therapist's comments to be reasonable and supportive. Traumatised people have huge issues with trust, and it can take a long time for someone to feel safe even when they've been reassured by T that it's a safe space, that confidentiality will not be breached, and that you can indeed experience vulnerability and exposure without obliterating yourself. It's really important to do things that ground you physically - walking the dog, yoga, breathing, being aware of your surroundings, feeling the earth beneath your feet, touching yourself to become aware of yourself as a physical entity.
Extreme hypervigilance for any perceived 'danger' (and the attendant sense of scalding vulnerability when you 'let down your guard') was what you HAD to develop in order to survive. You did an extraordinary and amazing job coping with your childhood! Kudos to you for asking for feedback - you're changing the pattern of staying silent and trapped in your anguish. There's an excellent book by Pete Walker called "Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving" that explains in wonderfully sympathetic detail the emotional price paid by abused individuals, and how they can start to rebuild trust and a sense of connection to others. Best on your arduous journey!

 

[Rumors]

Hmmmm interesting perspective @shimmerz i am in feeling like I'm going to be puni...

Good lord I couldn't have said it better... I always think I have done something wrong by disclosing. Nauseated, headache, achy feeling like something horrible is going to happen and on lookout for impending danger.... Disloyal, dirty, unworthy of helping, bad, evil, self loathing.
Sorry, didn't mean to hijack your thread. It just speaks to me right now. I hope you are ok.

 

[KwanYingirl]

Wow. The original post was last Jan. I have improved in so many ways. In no short of account of the support I have gotten from people on this forum. "see one, try one, be one". I'm going to have to cut back on therapy due to health insurance constraints. I asked my therapist if he thought I could go a month without a session and he said yes, but more importantly to me, he assured me that I can see him if needed on a sliding scale. He explained the progress I've made in the past year since my first disclosure.

I no longer refer to my child self as "not me" or refer to her in the third person. An ongoing project here on the forum about self compassion has made it possible for me to finally write a letter to my child self in a compassionate, loving perspective. That blew my therapists mind.

There's nothing that a group of like minded people can't manage. I still feel very immature emotionally, my therapist agrees. That anticipatory anxiety is all but gone. I haven't cut since at least 2 years, I don't overuse my Xanax. My sleep has improved dramatically. It was definitely interesting to revisit this thread!!!