Yes, I think I may know how you feel. I haven't even brushed the surface of the hard stuff with my T and I'm not looking forward to it.

I really understand sending an email about something I'm worried about, and then having it snowball in my mind worrying every minute why she's not responding. My new T doesn't do emails, and for now that's fine with me - at least it keeps me from getting on that particular roller coaster.

quote:

What happened to me wasn't even that bad,

Compared to what? My T tells me all the time not to minimize what happened to me, because to me, it was a big deal. Yes, some people had it worse but it doesn't make what happened to you any easier for you to deal with.

I can't talk about a lot of things in front of my T but I know I need to let her know, so I give her my journal every week. Maybe, if you feel like you need to get it out but can't face saying the words, you could try something like that.

I hope your T gets back to you soon.

OW

incognito,
I definitely get how you feel, I've been on this ride for a while. I've lost track of the number of times I've decided and/or threatened to quit therapy. It really can be a rollercoaster and the ups and downs can give you whiplash. And nothing's worse than "I've contacted my T and I'm waiting to hear back" anxiety.

But I think this struggle is a big part of what its all about. For me, a lot of my attachment work has been learning to regulate my emotions, and even to recognize that emotions can be handled, they're not necessarily an indicator of reality and they'll pass. I think part of the ups and downs are that I feel my ups and downs so severely. That part of learning stability is learning to handle these ups and downs without such wide swings.

So no matter how scary it feels its important to take it all into the room with us, our wanting to quit, being scared to talk, being scared of being labeled resistant, being angry because we have to do this, being worried about what they think of us. We run the gamut of emotions and we need to learn to handle all of them.

But trust me, I get how uncomfortable it is, how exhausting and how endlessly frustrating it can be. But it does start getting clearer and more stable, it just takes time. So for what its worth, you sound pretty normal to me!

AG

Incognito,
EVERY THING you said sounds so familiar to the patterns I tend to over and over and over, and over and over and over. Feeling good and secure with where I am in therapy and with my T, then suddenly insecure and ready to quit (usually just before something big is coming up) Just two weeks ago I wrote my T a long email expressing my disatisfaction that she did not warn me about how painful this whole *blinkin* process was going to be and that she should have known from our intake interview that this was going to stir up too much painful emotions that would be too hard for me to deal with. Then she reminded me that I could quit anytime....

Each time we move closer to the safety of our T we gain the mental, emotional, and physical ability to process the bigger stuff. I think of how many times my T has verbalized and demonstrated that she will never leave me and I always ask at least one more time, "Never?" Last time it included "not even though I googled her and drove past her house." FINALLY, I get it, I believe it like I've never believed it before and now we've been enlightened just why this fear of abandonment is so deeply engrained in me. I believe we do finally reach that point of never questioning it again, but it takes a lot of testing the waters until it finally resonates deeply enough to click.

I don't think that your T is going to assume that you just quit therapy through email and he wont assume anything until he talks to you in person. He understands that you are only expressing frustration. I've told my T I want to quit several times and she is always there waiting for our next appointment.

I also understand how difficult it is to move into something painful after experiencing a little respite away from the pain. But each time we build up the strength to handle the bigger things, the deeper emotions. Your T sees that you are ready and of course you want to dig in your heels and scream. You know it will be painful and it feels dangerous, but what you will learn is that it is no longer dangerous and you are safe and secure with your T and he will continue to gently guide you through this as he has done before.

Has he earned your trust? Has he demonstrated his concern and best interest for you? In all the times you feared your T would be disgusted with you, was he? He is not going to be disgusted with you. That is your inner voice still howling at you.

Unless I am wrong and correct me if I am, isn't your T one of the T's who isn't real stable in the email thing anyway? So I wouldn't judge him on that. Call him if you need to. Email is ok for communication, but I wouldn't rely too heavily on it, especially in regard to such important feelings. He will not just assume that you cancelled or quit. But if I were you I would call him for a sanity check.

I hope this helps some, but I know the emotional roller coaster is a real p.i.t.a. I am sorry I can't take that away for you. But I can let you know that you are not alone. That is why we are all here riding it together.

Hands in the air everyone here comes a big hill!!!
JM

hI

What is CSA?

WS, CSA is child sexual abuse. sorry if it is confusing or triggering. It is harder for me even to write it out. the distancing provided by acronyms.

thank you to everyone for the rest of your comments. It is helpful to be understood. It is just so hard and painful right now. I feel like I'm trapped in my head. I'm going to try and stop focusing on my feelings and try not to think ahead. I just have to get through today.

(((Incognito)))
I am working through my CSA too. I know that it is very difficult and I hear you say that you feel like you are trapped in your head. I also know the desire to distance yourself from it. I practically begged my T to not let me go there. She said "You're already there. You're already experiencing the painful emotions and flashbacks. Processing them is not going to make it any worse." Sometimes we do have to push ourselves through the bind. For me remembering that we've already survived the trauma is helpful in putting it into perspective. And knowing that what we are dealing with now are the emotions that never got resolved with it because we didn't have the resources to do so before. But this has to be your gauge and your determination when you are ready. For me my brainwork tends to dictate what we are working on in session. In this case the flashbacks and body memories became so intrusive that I have to do this. Like my T said, "You're already there." And sometimes they might have to give us a gentle nudge like we do with our children from time to time.

So I hope you don't feel any more pressured and much less alone with your fears and pain. Remember the little girl inside of you is the one who is frightened. She needs you to take her by the hand and help her to know that no one is going to harm her anymore. No one has ever done that for her yet and you are the only one who can now.

I hope you feel all of us holding you close. I am going through this too and I am surviving. We are all right here whenever you need us.
JM

hi all,

My T responded to my email this morning reminding me I didn't have to talk about it. I get to choose whether to talk about it. He of course through in the therapists line "you have to live with it whether you are talking about it or not" and of course that is the problem. I am stuck in flashbacks, dreams, body memories, uncontrolled feelings etc now so it doesn't matter if we back off and don't talk about it I'm living it.

thanks for the support. I am trying to breathe and feel you holding me, JM.

I can't imagine having to deal with CSA. You guys all have my most sincere respect and wishes for the strength to go to that place and come out the other side OK.

Russ

incognito,
One of the worst aspects of CSA was having no control over what was happening to you so as you heal it's important that you be gentle with yourself and you control the pace. Its a good thing that you trust your internal sense of how much you can handle at any given time. My first T used to address this alot when I was working through the trauma and recovering memories. That's the definition of trauma, a distressing experience so severe that you lack the capacity to process your emotions. So an important and significant part of healing is that you process the emotions as you have capacity to. It's serious, difficult stuff and it makes sense that it takes time to heal.

But I'm sorry because I know it feels like being caught between a rock and a hard place. It's painful to not face it and it's painful to face it. That's part of what makes what was done to you so horrible.

AG

i'm a mess and posting about it seems to help so here I go. I called T and asked if we could do tomorrow's session by phone because I couldn't see talking about it face to face. He called back and said we could try it but he was concerned that it would make it hard to feel connected and asked me why I wanted to do it that way. Almost immediately I realized I didn't want to do a whole session over the phone, I just wanted to tell him the worst that way and soon. I was at work and not in a private place so I got off the phone and figured I would wait until tomorrow. That resolve lasted 20 mins. I found a private office and called him back and left another voicemail (a record for me).

Major trigger ahead. Don't read if it will bother you...



I'm having body feelings I never used to have when I think about the abuse (I think I was pretty cut off from my body before I started therapy). I'm shaking, feeling sick, and disgustingly excited. I told him I can't accept that feeling because it is so disgusting and wrong. Also I can't sit in his office talking about it and feeling without thinking it was related to him. I've known I've suffered from quite a bit of paternal transference but I haven't felt any erotic transference and this is just so gross and terrible I don't know what to do with it.

Of course, I didn't ask him to call me back and now 2 hours later I'm convinced he is as disgusted with me as I am. I feel a bit better because I've told him the worst part and I lived. I can deal with what happens next... maybe he refers me to somebody else... maybe I go in and we talk about it and I survive... maybe something else. It felt to ask him to call me when I was telling him something so awful. Like he should have time to prepare his response. I've had days thinking and worrying about what I was going to say. Of course now I the worrying will continue until tomorrow.

thanks for listening,

****Possible triggers and explicit content************

Incognito,
What you are feeling is normal and nothing to be ashamed of, although trust me, having had all those feelings I understand how horrible it feels. To be contemplating such horrible wrong events and feeling aroused at the same time makes me want to crawl out of my skin like nothing else does. I feel perverted and sick and like I somehow wanted the abuse to happen or enjoyed it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I've talked to my T about this (on more than one occasion) and he totally understood so I'm going to pass on what I learned in case it might help.

OK, first, the human body is physiologically structured so that certain kinds of touchs are going to be very pleasurable. You can't turn that off, its a reaction, not a decision. Part of what is so damaging about sexual abuse is that a healthy arousal response gets connected to really damaging circumstances and warps our reactions.

Second, one of the things I had to come to grips with is that sometimes the sex was a relief. I was struggling with very strong erotic attraction to my T and when I started trying to figure out what was going on, I realized that I wanted to have sex with him because at least for a few minutes I wouldn't be in pain. Which led me to the realization that the only time I was touched or cuddled or received "affection" from my father was when I was being abused and as a child I craved the affection. But that didn't mean I wanted sex, I wanted touch appropriate to my relationship with my father is he had been acting appropriately. But it went even further and this is really hard to say, but I think there were times when I did experience climax. And you have to say this about it, it's not like you're thinking about other things at the time. And I realized that it made the pain and fear go away for a few minutes. My T's response when I told him "It's perfectly understandable that you would want a few minutes of peace."

You were NOT responsible for what happened to you nor did you seek it out or desire it in any way. This physical response is NOT a sign of compliance or desire, its the hard wiring in your body. You have NOTHING to be ashamed of. Your T is going to totally understand (this is not at all uncommon among survivors of CSA) and will not send you away. And you need to hear this as many times as you need to until you understand you are not perverted or sick or twisted.

I just really want you to hear that I've had the same feelings, I really understand, and you are still a very wonderful person. OK?

AG

Incognito -

I have to second what AG said - it is a normal reaction to what you have gone through. You are not disgusting and I know what you're feeling feels awful, but you are not to blame.

I'm glad you feel a bit better after leaving the voicemail him and I hope it continues.

Keep posting if it makes you feel better. We're still here listening.

OW

AG, thank you for your honesty. Truthfully I can understand being aroused then when I was a child. I can't understand why I am aroused now thinking about it (and it is a new feeling for me, before I was just sad). I'm feeling exhausted from the emotional vortex I've been experiencing. My husband worked late tonight but I held it together, got my kids to sleep and when he got home I let him read this thread. He held me and told me he loved me, amazingly. My T did not contact me again today but I'm too tired to think about that. Tomorrow I will see him. Thank you everybody for all your support. I'm going to try and get some sleep because I'm sure tomorrow will be another roller coaster ride.

Incognito,
I hope this day finds you with a little more peace. I am so sorry about what happened to you and how it came over you like that yesterday. Your husband sounds like a wonderful man to hold you like that and to say that he loves you. You deserve to be loved like that.

AG already clearly mentioned the physiology of arousal so I won't persist with that, but I will say that I have had a problem with the exact same thing of feeling guilty and disgusted for feeling aroused when I am processing it. A couple weeks ago I wanted to end session because of it. My T asked me what was wrong and when I finally told her she reminded me of the physiology again. But it is a very difficult concept because like AG already brought out "our arousal response gets connected to such damaging circumstances and warps our reactions." This is not our fault. But working through this we will aleviate those horrible feelings and experience that part of our healthy relationship the way we are supposed to.
I feel for you and know how disruptive and painful all of this can be and none of this occurs at a convenient time I'm afraid.

My heart and thoughts are with you especially with your session today. I have my session this morning too. We WILL get through this!
JM

quote:

I can't understand why I am aroused now thinking about it (and it is a new feeling for me, before I was just sad).

Incognito, you're NOT getting aroused now, you're having a body memory which included the fact that you were aroused then. You're remembering what it felt like it, all of it unfortunately. Tune out on the next section if you want to, I've said it before so it may be repititive for you. Traumatic memories are not stored the same way as regular memories. Normally when something happens, we are able to process it, handle the associated emotions and make sense of whatever happened. Our hippocampus is key in doing so. Once all this processing and making sense of is complete, the memory is stored, so that later we can remember checking out the library book. But we no sense of being actually back at the library desk checking out the book.

Trauma, by definition is something that comes at you so fast and/or is so intense that you don't have the resources to process it. So, the hippocampus actually goes offline and the "memory" is stored in a different area of the brain, unprocessed and with no sense of context. Which is why when we are experiencing traumatic memories it can often feel like we are actually there, experiencing the memory rather than recalling it. As a matter of fact an important part of trauma work is allowing ourselves to experience the memory (and with the help of our T) feel it, process it and make some kind of narrative sense of it. In that case, our hippocampus is involved and we essentially convert it to a normal memory.

So the feelings and sensations you are having really are from the past but because of how they got stored, they feel as if they are a reaction in the here and now. They aren't.

Which don't get me wrong, doesn't mean they're easy to experience. I'm really glad that you're husband was so supportive and gave you the love and care that you so richly deserve.

I hope your appt with your T goes well today and you experience the same kind of acceptance and understanding there. Please let us know how it goes when you're up for it.

AG

In cognita,

I don't have time right now to write more but I wanted to thank you for telling me what CMA is. I too have that in my past. It is one of the most difficult things to deal with.

will come back later and write more

Oh wait one more thing

I skimmed this and I struggle with the same things. A book that really, really helped me was called "In session" by Debra Lott.

OMG I cried when I read it. YOu won't feel so alone.

thanks WS, I have read In Session quite close to when I started T but maybe I should reread it.

I'm calmer now. I slept pretty well. I think I was too exhausted to worry anymore. My T sent me an email this morning telling me that while he didn't want to minimize my feelings (that I described on his voicemail) but these feelings occur and he was neither distressed or surprised by them. I'm going in later tonight and I imagine it will be a difficult session to explore some of these feelings.

i'll let you know how it went later,

Incognito.. I think what your T was trying to convey is that he can contain whatever you have to tell him and he may not even be surprised because from other sessions he probably had a good idea of where you were going. He is trying to tell you that he is calm and in control and will help you contain your emotions so there is no need to be afraid or nervous. He is also showing you his acceptance of you and your feelings.

I know it's hard but it will all be okay. You will see. I think you trust your T and so allow him to help you. I'm thinking of you. Let us know how you are doing later.

TN

hi everyone,

my session is done and it was difficult. My T said I hope you noticed we could talk about it and we both survived. I'm exhausted but will write more tomorrow.

Incognito,
This is a very exhausting process to work through. So be kind to yourself and recognise that.

I love how your T made it a point to show you that you survived it. And you will survive this, because you already survived the worst part when you were but a child. Now you are an adult and you have a strong, caring, nurturing T who will help you deal with the left over emotional baggage and give you a key to unlock the door to a more positive future.

I like what HB said to, that even when we have felt like nothing more than a puddle on the floor, this is a glorious example of survival. (We morphed.)

Hi Incognito-
I'm glad that you survived through your session! I have to say that you seem to have made an amazing breakthrough with your T. I want to reiterate what everyone else has said just because it is true and worth saying a million times until you believe it: You were a child. It was in no way your choice or your fault. Your body reacted the way your body is made to react and there is no shame in that.
In addition, I wanted to take a sec to comment on the paternal transference aspect of things and how hard it must be to talk about the abuse at the hands of your father while sitting in front of a man (your T) you either wish was your father or wish your father was like. It must be a huge juxtoposition of what was vs. what is vs. what you wish things would have been. I respect your courage in facing this with your T! I would like to also point out (obvious, maybe, but very crucial) that your T has no desire to treat you like your father did. While you may think of him in a paternal sense, remeber that the reasons you are so fond of him are because he is so different than your father. He has proven himself safe and willing to walk with you through the pain. Hopefully, as you talk to him about this more, you will realize that he makes no judgements; the disgust you are afraid he is going to feel toward you is your own disgust at what happened projected on to him. There is great freedom ahead for you, and I hope that you move forward, at whatever pace suits you, and soak up the unconditional acceptance your T gives you. Congrats for moving forward even though it probably doesn't feel like it!