Hi Sheychen,

creds to you for being so honest and genuin about this. And i`m sorry you`re facing the trauma memories. Yet- equally glad your recieve so much good attention. You DESERVE IT! and the good feelings you`ve got from all this attetion and caring are just great "medicin" and i understand that it confuzes you to also feel glad - even enjoy this attetion that you recieve- because its perhaps feels "wrong"?!

I do relate to those feeligs, so i cant really offer any "you feel like this because.."-stuff, but just wanted to say i relate and i dont think its ubnormal at all to have such feelings.

Be well and tace care (or- let those around you tace care of you

Sheychen,

I am sorry you are suffering the reminder of such heinous crimes committed against you and that this anniversary is particularly difficult. You have worked very hard to get this place. In fact, I am absulutely amazed that you are able to gather your wits about you and share this with us. Even more amazed at how in touch you are with the deeper motives of your unconscious. It sounds like you are asking yourself whether your need for support is real or fabricated. This is a good question and one that I do not feel qualified to answer. I wish I had more understanding about why we do what we do. It would help me have more insight into myself and maybe help me get better faster. Your analysis, however, does raise questions about needs with which I struggle and what it is I should do with them. I've been told that we would not have strong emotional reactions for no reason. You are having a crisis and you do need the attention of your therapist and those around you who love you. I think your need for support during this time is crucial and valid! If you know that you are screaming for attention does that make it wrong? I don't know. I don't think so. You have needs that were not met and beyond the layers of physical trauma are emotional wounds that need to heal.

I do not have a degree in psychology so take this with a grain of salt. I am going to follow the feelings I think I would have based on something I am struggling with in my own life. IDK if this will resonate with you or not. Maybe the trigger for you that made this year worse was in the anticipation of receiving a call from your therapist the next morning. She will call and check on you but she can't be there to prevent the flashback of the event or be with you through it. The person you feel you need the most cannot protect you from the evil that is about to happen. You will have to endure it all on your own. On your own, all alone, once again. The help that comes, arrives too late. What your unconscious needs to know is that the horrible event is over and you survived it! I wish the replay would make it make it not have happened. I wish you had someone who really understood the depth of pain and terror you felt was with you to comfort you so that you would have something more positive to connect with at this time of the year. IMO, I think the mental health community is too afraid the will help our pain become dependent upon other people if they give too much. This is the part of psychology I resent because it makes me so afraid of doing anything that will be construed as self-serving manipulation. In all honesty, I know it is naive and arrogant of me to think that I am above doing that very thing. My wounded child will scream for help and support if she thinks she has to face the painfully traumatic events alone!

I hope that you are feeling better today and continue to work through your pain with the help of your therapist. I hope you get all the love and support you need to get through this. As you get stronger and can anticipate these events, as you did this year, maybe you will find a way to get through the anniversary by doing something really special and self-soothing for yourself. Yuu deserve it!

deeplyrooted

Thank you deeply rooted, Blanket Girl and Frog
I slept okay last night but my family asked me to go into the city with them and i watched what happened. At first I was just tagging along but by about 2 hours in I was feeling so fragile amongst all these rushing people and then started mewling a bit, esp when my husband ran off to see if a bus stop was someewhere else and I was in the middle of a crowd of people and i just sat at the foot of a pillar and holed up really. It was interesing to note that my body is full of pounding anxiety but that for the last 15 months I have said " I just don't feel good, can we go home now."
So now I can be labelled anxiety prone, or even agoraphobic, as well as PTSD , attachment difficulties and potential to self harm (which I am not really doing) and I am now beginning to feel a REAL basket case. Worse, my littlest self, who was very traumatised aged 6 months old. (scalded by boiling water, on my own, for nearly an hour), is coming out and my T actually told me yesterday that be cause she cares for me so much, she may have to help me find a specialist T who is trained in PTSD and she, my current T, stop working with me.
So I was right, if my littlest one comes out, (who is very dependent and very distressed and does not really cope with gaps and is a part of me that I have hidden unconsciously for so long because I too fear that part of me holds too much pain and clinging), is that part of me emerges, my T will back off. And bingo - my prophecy is coming true.

I am not a thing to be passed on. I am a hurting human being not a list of psychological difficulties to be handed on. I am real and I have a heart and it hurts deeply to have my T say that.

It is so hard at the moment. I look at myself, someone who has raised kids and worked hard and long in therapy and had a deeply fulfilling job working with people and now it seems all I am is someone who successfully covered up their brokeness all their lifetime and so people are very careful of handling me, or working with me. ME! A person who has given so much happiness and friendship and help to so many hundreds of other people in my life, and now I am labelled and assessed and found so broken and lacking.

It hurts

I feel fractured and fragmented.

I also know I can not fight back if it is decided that I need to moved to another T in a few months when they find one. It makes me feel so powerless as they say they know better than me what I want. I want to stay with THIS T but they say it is because I am ATTACHED to her. ('They' being my doctor and the psychologist and my T)

this is like being in a hell realm.

Surely I am not just what they say I am?? I am more than all this. And where is true love from one human being to another who is in distress, in all this?

Oh Sheychen I am so sorry to hear this. It must really really make you feel totally rejected and unheard and dismissed to have your T, whom you love, start talking about passing you on to someone else. And I so get how it makes you feel as if the moment you reveal your true pain, it sends the other running. Old lessons coming back to the fore - that you're so needy, so hurt, so broken that it sends people fleeing. Can I send you some cyber hugs - just to let you know I can feel your pain.

I suppose I ought to point out too though, that your T is probably acting in your best interests, by recognizing that she doesn't have the experience or skills to really help you how you need to be helped, and that if she tried it could end up damaging you badly (there are a number of threads on the forum about exactly this sort of set up, and how people have been badly let down and hurt by Ts who couldn't deal with the depth and complexity of trauma.) Small comfort I know. Sorry

(((( Sheychen )))))

LL

If I remember very clearly what she said - to my husband on the phone yesterday,
"I want to do what is best for S and it may be that she comes through the worst bit just now and we can just keep going or it may be that it gets more difficult, I don't know and I may have to help her to move to work with someone else, but I will not just leave her, I will only do what is best for her, because I care about her deeply and I do feel I do not have specialist training in Trauma. but we do not know what the days or weeks ahead may bring, she may not need specialist trauma treatment, she may come through this bit and we just continue working together."
and if you read the first post here, I was actually making my really bad patch, a 'crisis' because the littlest part of me, the traumatised child in me, wanted her ATTENTION so I have emailed her admitting to that and see if we can find ways to meet that part of me so that she/me isn't driven to such extreme measures to get her time and listening in between sessions. I thought it was amazingly courageous and brave of me to tell her, as it might mean that she feels I cried wolf and may not take me seriously if I am feeling bad another time.
god, this is such hard work.
i have also independently contacted an EMDR therapist who may have a free daytime session in December and I will have to pay for those, but hey, I have not paid anything for 2 hours a week for 15 months, so I think I should pay for something!!