Survivor Guilt

[singingyamada]

Hello,
I don't know if this is the right place to put this but my brain is running out of puff.

I got PTSD from working in mental health. I had a client who went out and murdered his best friends father and the deceased was known to us personally. It literally blew apart my brain. That was 6 years ago. I have been medically retired. I did have counselling but at the time it was useless. For me PTSD comes from the job and the overwhelming guilt and shame and responsibility I feel for the whole thing. I have managed much in my life but I never thought that this would end my career and a job I was good at.
is there anyone out there who has been in a similiar situation and how do you deal with the guilt and responsibility. At the moment I am going through court as my workplace were more toxic about the incident and I dont want to speak to a counsellor as it could be used against me.

I have answered logically all the things I accuse myself of but it wont go. The retrospective families dont blame me. i keep thinking if I apologized it may make it better , but then I think it was all beyond my control. It is such a self defeating way of thinking.

Any way if this is under the wrong topic could you please place it in the right spot. Oh I have depression as well and I take a bucket load of medications.

 

[Abrasky]

Sorry you went through that. Good question.

When I was studying at uni and working, it meant leaving leaving the 3 younger brothers and sisters I had helped to raise. I came back and my sister who had liked me a lot and sent me lots of letters procaliming how much she loved her sister and had suddenly changed and had acquired a manipulative nasty, trying to cause pain side, and my brothers self esteem had dropped as he was being attacked. My dad had taken the opportunity for me to be away and my mum working to attack my sister life threatneningly (that is how she got weaker I assume) I suddenly realised they had possiblty also been abused A little mouse told me that because I worked /studied it gave my the father the chance to ruin my siblings lives. (One had started harming himself/ another has lost her personality because she is now just dead inside and likes to cause pain to others). My mother also started poisoning her mind with emotional blackmail stuff, sister doesnt' belong here anymore kind of lies.

I don't know what to do. I just blame myself, it goes around. I like to think of the good things that I did (going to uni to study 300km away inspired them out of the welfare cycle my family was in and they all worked) You can't be in two places at the one time I suppose. You couldnt' follow around your client and also be their client.

If someone wants to be destructive, you can't reign it in. You can only try, and I tried very very hard, I worked my butt off those years I was at uni, I couldn't have tried harder, and destruction still happened. So the amount of working doesnt' really matter to the amount of destruction that comes out in the end if someone is hell bent on ruining people's lives. At some point you have to let the person that caused the destruction take on the responsiblitiy for their own destruction.

It is very hard hard. I don't have an answer to your question, but I hope other's do. I haven't been able to work since.

I like to imagine my parents being tied to a buffalo with a beehive attached to it. That's about all.

 

[singingyamada]

Well since I have posted this I keep telling myself " What was the reality at the time?" And it is helping. I also ask "Had he not murdered the man would you have changed anything" and the answer is no. I as well am addressing how I thought I could control everything and the answer is I cant. So I am challenging these thoughts. I hate the feeling of total helplessness and that is a cracker as well.

 

[Abrasky]

My psychologist said something to me about how to deal with anger and guilt and pain of what happened. She said therapy is for all of the pain to come out, and then you can start using the pain in a lifelong positive way. There comes a point where you want the pain to have mean something, so you put it into building something. My psychologist builds a rockery garden. Every now and then she add's another plant.
I haven't reached that point where I can put the pain into a lifelong pursuit, and do something with the pain. But it can give a sense of control and purpose an meaning to waht happened does bring me out of myt PTSD sometimes.

 

[Abrasky]

I like that my psychologist said that having a survivor mission is a way to do something with the pain. However the first time I got acute stress disorder when I was 9, after I had stopped sexual abuse in my family( my dad abused me), my baby sister was born. She became my survivor mission. And my dad destroyed my survivor mission and I stopped having somewhere positive turn the pain around.
I won't be making that mistake again. I choose healthy as my next survior mission. Healthy life, healthy work, putting positiveness back into the world.

 

[singingyamada]

See the hardest thing to accept is that no matter how hard I tried and could have tried it was all beyond my control. although I had a work place that made me over responsible, overworked and under resourced. They made me think I had to be in control and I wasnt.