Poll What Support Do You Have?

[Abstract]

I tend to portray myself as much stronger than I actually am. Vulnerability is unsafe.

Snap 71. It backfired badly in T for me in the past. I am trying hard to change but it is difficult.

 

[Abstract]

I have meds, my seven year old and online support. .

Dear Estacia,
I hope you don't mind me asking or saying but I hope your 7 year old is not a support to you. Children need to be children and not parents or friends or anything else. Much caring.

 

[Abstract]

But waiting for therapy
I think I'm starting to worry about opening up in therapy changing things, because the control I have at the moment is so strict. I need to stop myself getting attached to it.

Hi Meadowsweet,

I hope a T comes up soon. It is difficult in the UK in certain ways.

I do relate a lot to what you said and I think it is hard to get past and is a process rather than something that is fixed once off. What I try to tell myself is that slowly giving up some of the controls I have had in place is part of letting in a full healthy life. I am avoiding therapy at the moment but know I need to stop and reach out. Avoiding just keeps us stuck but doing what is often very difficult is what helps us move forward. I am all talk! :rolleyes::notworthy:

I hope your support system fills out soon.

 

[Abstract]

At times I realise how torn I am about this. I desperately want support and am desperately afraid of it. I trust no one and least of all myself.

I live in self delusion as a way of coping and find it difficult to get myself out of it.

I voted that I have zero support at present and other than online support that is true. My family is certainly not an option; my husband is not. Friends are not a viable option either. Not least because I have put up a front of being extremely together (in relation to the truth) and that the people that I surround myself with are very unlikely to understand. I even struggle to really discuss anything on line.

I take some responsibility in all this. I think I have sought out people who are not the type that one would discuss problems with.

I have been out of therapy for over a year and in that time have been trying to get back in. The fear is so great that I dissociate whenever I try to take a step forward to get a therapist and am left physically unable to do so. Somehow I need to get past that.

A lot of the time there is a part of me raging that don't need any of it as "I am fine". :rolleyes: The truth is that not having support is far from ideal. We can be our worst enemies and nothing changes until we do things to allow it to change. Abstract are you listening?! :grumpy:

 

[Meadowsweet]

Since writing the original post here, I did start therapy.

The therapist felt that she wasn't experienced enough with the dissociation and splitting that I desplay signs of. She felt that the risk of destabilisation was too high for a tier 1 setting.

So my choices were, tier 2 mental health care, but their waiting list is over 12 months and I was told they might still only offer limited number of treatment sessions. Or, a charity that offers therapy to people who deal with rape and sexual abuse.

I have been on the charities waiting list since September. But to be honest, sometimes I feel like I'm doing better by myself, and putting into practise things I hear about here.

The therapists lack of confidence in me and constant reinforcement that 'I've been through a lot of trauma', increased my fear of being able to cope with it. I also have a fear of more labels been put on me because of dissociation.

Part of me is thinking I might be better off not taking the therapy from the charity (if I ever reach the top of the waiting list). But my little miss independent side, is thinking that I can have therapy, but will feel more in control this time.

For now, I have the support of this site and I have a bhuddist healer that I talk to for a different perspective.

 

[Abstract]

Meadowsweet, may I ask if she was a "normal" NHS therapist and what her approach was?

I have been to one of those charities and the experience was like night and day. I feel that other therapists actually damaged me in certain ways as they did not have the knowledge I needed. You need not tell me if you don't want but are you in London and can you afford private therapy? Did you mean splitting in terms of yourself or others? Only answer if you wish to.

I just checked and it appears that Tier one does not even involve a proper counsellor or psychologist. :( Please do not judge therapy from what you have had so far.

 

[Meadowsweet]

She was trained in psychology, counselling, CBT and trauma focussed CBT. She wasn't a fully qualified psychotherapist. Psychotherapists only work at tier 2 and they are based at the hospital.

To be fair, at least she was honest and said she couldn't work with me.

Was your experience of charities any good? I tyhink her feeling with the charity, is that they will understand the problems related to specific traumas. I guess, dissociation is common in childhood sexual abuse. So they should understand it, shouldn't they?

I don't live in London, and can't afford private therapy sadly.

 

[Abstract]

Hi,
I agree that it was very professional that she realised that it was beyond her. I wish I could say therapists would have done that for me but really I did not know what to tell them so that made it difficult for them to realise.

As a result of bad experiences I found myself terrified to go back to therapy and this was at a time when the PTSD really hit me and I started waking up to the truth. A fellow sufferer that I met online in a support forum and who happened to be a trauma therapist herself (with dissociative identity disorder) advised me to try the charities (as did my Dr after the event).

I found the one I went to very professional and knowledgeable and the first therapist that I have ever had that knew how to deal with the dissociation and what to do with me (not talking splitting here but have no doubt they would with that too). The problem is that they are time limited and that wasn't great. But really I think it is still worth it. If I was able to articulate then what I can now they probably would have given me more sessions too. I only waited about two months or so.

If I was you I would put myself down on the NHS waiting list and then approach a charity. Part of healing from interpersonal trauma is about relationships and contact and online is very helpful for that but we still have lots of distance this way. That feels much safer but I think in those terms it is also limited. Hence why I can be on here and yet am being physically blocked by dissociation from getting back into face to face therapy.

PS. If you do put yourself on the NHS list I would lay out every issue you have if you can bear it. I have a habit of trying to look as together as possible and that backfires in this context.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I realized today that I do not have the support I need. I am calm and relaxed. But I need more support. I hope to get some support from my husbands doctor. I have to beging to think about getting home health care. My husband will throw a fit.

But I need to get out of here. I need to go where there are other people and meet people. I am too isolated. The last part of my life was full of dysfunctional people and I had to move away from them all. I am not making friends like I thought I would be. The people I live around are keep to themselves. I have to find a way to get out more. I need to go to my meetings again. He does ok sitting by the phone. I keep him hooked up to the cell phone. And I call him when I arrive someplace and I call him when I leave. He just sits and watches tv and snoozes.

As for help and support with the ptsd, I have my husband. He knows what is going on. I am not as bad as when I was first diagnosed. I am feeling good today.

 

[who am i kim]

Thearpist is the best as she understands better than my husband, he does his best and so does my daughter. So I am lucky in a way to have these people in my life. Husband had stuck by me for 30 years and only in the last 10 years did we find out what was really wrong with me, he is my rock but boy has he had a hard time over the years with me.

 

[mamachick]

Good therapist. Grown daughter but I try not to share too much to burden her. Friend-nah, the couple of good friends that I have tried to explain it to just dont get it. Then I have this forum:happy:

 

[obsidian]

My son says I am good for nothing, his current wife does not want me around, I am only allowed to visit him and his family when invited and...I am never invited...ever, not for thanksgiving dinner, not for Christmas and not to see my grandkids when he has them twice a month. His ex- wife (and my favorite daughter-in-law always) told me all I would be is a bad influence on my grandkids, teaching them only how to do drugs and kill people. Yet she lets us see our grandkids more than our own son! My Brother's wife seems to enjoy bullying me, my wife likes to fight and scream at me sometimes for days, in person, on the phone or in texts. She seems to disbelieve the whole Psychiatric diagnoses and meds altogether. She thinks and says I am lying. When I worked I have never been able to make a job last for long before being fired for anger issues or laid off due to being last hired first laid off. I am now on disability both VA and SSI. I have no friends, my family doesn't claim me and my wife says it's all my fault because, I am good for nothing.
I have my dogs, my horses and my bicycle. I have the support of a Mental Health facility that saved my life long ago from all my sins, I have had several therapist and counselors, I have a good one now but with no support group at home All she can do is offer an anchor.
The wife doesn't seem to understand the fighting which she enjoys raises the stress levels in me to saturation points, where I just don't care.
I am functional, I pay the bills, the wife was always a dead beat a day late and a dollar short, and overdrawn.
I pay the utilities and entertainment bills for satellite TV, internet, the phones and electricity the car tag the auto and house insurance, which my wife shows no gratitude for.
Beside the grandkids her main focus is on her two youngest sisters now in their 40's and 50's but still incompetent and needing her rescue constantly, both in vehicle access and financial.
I have a constant rash and a constant sinus infection, I am bi lateral hearing impaired and wear hearing aids provided by the VA.
No, the wife doesn't get with the program of speaking to me so I can hear her, after all she's not deaf is she?
I would leave this whole family situation since it actually is not a family at all is it?
But, to do so would mean at 61 years old, and no car (She has a car my credit is nonexistent due to her financial errors in my name when we first got married she insisted on getting the money and paying bills, which she did not) so at 61 I would have to walk out of my home of 32 years with nothing but the clothes on my back, starting all over with nothing, not even a way to move my stuff.
So my options are to stay and suffer or leave and become just another homeless mental patient veteran.
I would lose the ability to see my grandchildren, lose my dogs, horses and bicycles too.
Right now it's just not fair or bad enough to lose it all just for peace.
But, The woman won't stop or support my hearing impairment, my PDoc diagnoses nor even help pay bills.
I'd say one day I will simply walk out maybe when the dogs are all gone and the horses have passed away.
Right now though, it's damned lonely here.
I was less lonely when I wasn't married and we got married while I was still in service some 40 years ago.
Today I fought off loneliness enlarging my dogs kennel, tomorrow I'll ride the bike.
One day at a time.
P/S
Sorry I wrote ya'll a book.