Thanks PL...

I'm recovering...a little. I'm still feeling pretty damn dumb. But it could be the drugs.
I curled up with my blankie for a little while, but sleep is eluding me. I don't know how long that will last...could be a day or two, the way that I am...but I doubt it. I may be crashing...and may need to re-think the Anti-D thing.
You know the old joke about falling? "It's not the fall that hurts...it's the sudden stop at the end." I may have to endure that...*sigh* again. But not to worry...I have another T for support and I'll probably see her while my primary T is away. I'm not sure...since I really need to make a decision in that matter and I know I need to do it soon. Another pressure that I can't deal with right now.

I appreciate your words of encouragement. Thank you so much.

SD

SD,

You're very welcome, although I sure hope I didn't trigger a wave of awfulness for you. I just have a real visceral response to stories of child abuse like that; the image of a big person shaking a little young person....that stuff enrages me. I just think people who abuse children deserve "special" attention for their acts.

As for the crying, I cried twice in probably 15 or 20 years before starting therapy 10 months ago. Now I cry all the time. It doesn't always make me feel better, and sometimes it makes me feel worse, but at least I feel something. So I think it might be a good sign that you are starting to cry.

quote:

...have convinced myself that I am just not smart enough to sort myself out.

Oh man, I got through this all the time. Because I still feel like hell most days, I feel like I'm too "dumb" for therapy and that I'm not "getting it." I'm sure this is a VERY common pattern for people in therapy. It's like your sitting there, waiting for something to sink in, to click, to change...some "AH HA!" moment where the whole thing finally takes a turn for the better.

Maybe it works that way for some people, but for a lot of people (like us) insight comes in drips and drabs. I'd prefer a shattering and dramatic bolt-of-lightning kind of thing - and it'd be super nice if this happened in exactly 1 minute from now - but I don't think it's gonna happen like that.

I am also not taking ADs. I've tried 4 of them, and they just make me feel 10 times worse. If there was one out there that actually made me feel, you know, better, I'd take it tomorrow. But alas, I just take my low dose benzo as needed.

Anyway, I hope you're feeling better today...and I sure hope I didn't trigger you into a worse place. That's the last thing I want to do to anyone.

Russ

(((((SD)))))
I just wanted to say I'm sorry for your hurt and wish I had something magical I could say to make it all better. I just hope you feel cared for and less alone when you're with us. I hate the image of you as a child being struck and shaken and hurt like that. My father wasn't usually physically abusive as "I recall." There were a couple times he grabbed me by the hair and screamed at me , he did knock me out of a chair once, and a time he pinned me up against the refrigerator and threatened to do more harm. I live with mostly the meanest and dirtiest looks imaginable that told me he hated and despised me and verbal abuse and name calling. I was hitting on this stuff in session yesterday but it feels like it is still so suppressed. I wish we could start a hurt little boys and girls club for our child selves to go and to know they were not the only ones enduring the bad behavior of adults in their lives and to learn that it was not ok for that to happen to them.

And you probably have no idea how helpful you are to me in acknowledging and accepting my own discoveries and encouraging me to trust what I am feeling. You are very intelligent. You're just very hurt. The only thing F'd up is the way you were treated by those who were supposed to love you, care for you, and protect you. I'm so sorry.

JM

quote:

Originally posted by Wynne:
So many of you are working on recovering from Very Bad Stuff that happened - everyone has bad stuff, to be honest, and I know everybody responds to it differently.

I'm working on Telling. I'm in group T (Tfella) with my old T and individual therapy with my new T (CalmT). I've been in the group for about 7 months now - it's a group filled with all different sorts of folks, with all different sorts of issues - depression, anxiety, eating disorders, lotsa stuff. Sometimes I feel like it's "Quick! Find a bunch of folks with Issues and put them in a fishbowl with 2 Ts, stat!"

I've talked about the stuff with my dad - wee bit psychotically manic sometimes, threatened to kill me, the usual. But there's been something I haven't managed to tell them, that happened to me for a while when I was younger, middle school like. We talked for a while on Wednesday about how to create a safe space where I felt like I could talk about it, and I actually brought it up with much coaxing. They were all pretty great about it.

I haven't managed to bring it up to CalmT yet, though, though I told him that there's something I'm not ready to talk about yet.

I go back and forth on it. It wasn't really what I think it was, it wasn't that bad, I'm making a big deal out of nothing, it happens to everybody and everybody deals with it without being all flipped-out sensitive...

At the time I told my 'rents what was happened, and they didn't believe me. They asked to see some physical evidence or bruises or something (there weren't any). And now I have a really hard time telling.

I am so sorry!! it is really hard to tell...

I talk to my mom about my sexual abuse as a kid. And she told me that it couldn't of been that bad....

=( Take your time.. you will talk when you are ready

quote:

Originally posted by Transferencegrl85:

I talk to my mom about my sexual abuse as a kid. And she told me that it couldn't of been that bad....

Transferencegrl85,

I sure hope you discuss this with your therapist, because that's kind of like telling someone who's been run over by a train then dragged 100 miles down the tracks that it couldn't have been that bad.

Russ

quote:

Originally posted by Russ:

quote:

Originally posted by Transferencegrl85:

I talk to my mom about my sexual abuse as a kid. And she told me that it couldn't of been that bad....

Transferencegrl85,

I sure hope you discuss this with your therapist, because that's kind of like telling someone who's been run over by a train then dragged 100 miles down the tracks that it couldn't have been that bad.

Russ

GREAT analogy Russ....^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ummmm....what he said....TGL ^^^^^^^^^^^^

SD