sun seeker
Diamond Member
So like many of you I have had a really rough time finding a therapist who has the skills to help me. There are some in the area funded through community service associations, but none of them have the specialized training to work with trauma and attachment issues. There are plenty with SE training and craniosacral, both of which appeal to me but typically cost over $50 a session and I expect I would need many sessions. Then I had some hope when someone told me it might be possible to work with a therapist in the mental health system who does SE. I'd have to go through an intake process and be willing to say I have mental health issues (which wouldn't be a stretch, but feels kind of demeaning... but I could do it if there were a good reason to). But it turns out they are way overbooked and since this person is not in my town, they want to refer me to the worker here, who doesn't have the SE training. Round and round banging my head against the wall.
Then today I talked with the therapist I want to work with, the one who can't take me, and she told me about a different option. There is funding for therapy through crime victims for people who were sexually abused as children. She told me who to talk to if I might want to do that.
Yikes. The thing is my memories of sexual abuse are so foggy I'm not always sure if they were real. Of course not having talked to this woman about it I'm not sure how much detail I would have to give, but even when she asked what part of the country it happened in I went blank. I was five years old! And not even really sure about that. She said I would have to get one person to corroborate that what I say happened really did happen, and how am I going to do that? The nature of sexual abuse is it happens in private and most children never tell anyone. I do have friends who have known me a long time and seen symptoms of abuse in me all that time, and one who has enough similar memories to raise red flags.... but even asking them to put that in writing feels like a lot to ask. The things I half-remember are so fantastic, I don't think about them a whole lot but more about the neglect that I've always been aware of. I'm still trying to reconcile with my family and my mother is struggling to believe that the abuse could have happened. It just feels like if I fill out the form it would be a point of no return. How much do these people know about the nature of recovered memory? I can swear to some pretty blatant symptoms over a period of decades and to a whole lot of circumstantial evidence, but not to dates, names or details. When I think about signing my name to it I feel like I would be destroying my family, like again it's all my fault, like I would drown in shame. And what if I am wrong?
I don't know what I am looking for here, no one can tell me if it was real or what to do. I just wanted to talk to someone and the two friends I want to talk to are out... and I'm sitting around the house with a pulled groin muscle and can't even go out for a walk to clear my head.
Then today I talked with the therapist I want to work with, the one who can't take me, and she told me about a different option. There is funding for therapy through crime victims for people who were sexually abused as children. She told me who to talk to if I might want to do that.
Yikes. The thing is my memories of sexual abuse are so foggy I'm not always sure if they were real. Of course not having talked to this woman about it I'm not sure how much detail I would have to give, but even when she asked what part of the country it happened in I went blank. I was five years old! And not even really sure about that. She said I would have to get one person to corroborate that what I say happened really did happen, and how am I going to do that? The nature of sexual abuse is it happens in private and most children never tell anyone. I do have friends who have known me a long time and seen symptoms of abuse in me all that time, and one who has enough similar memories to raise red flags.... but even asking them to put that in writing feels like a lot to ask. The things I half-remember are so fantastic, I don't think about them a whole lot but more about the neglect that I've always been aware of. I'm still trying to reconcile with my family and my mother is struggling to believe that the abuse could have happened. It just feels like if I fill out the form it would be a point of no return. How much do these people know about the nature of recovered memory? I can swear to some pretty blatant symptoms over a period of decades and to a whole lot of circumstantial evidence, but not to dates, names or details. When I think about signing my name to it I feel like I would be destroying my family, like again it's all my fault, like I would drown in shame. And what if I am wrong?
I don't know what I am looking for here, no one can tell me if it was real or what to do. I just wanted to talk to someone and the two friends I want to talk to are out... and I'm sitting around the house with a pulled groin muscle and can't even go out for a walk to clear my head.
