Tag: abuse

Furthest away from those closest

[Begun writing yesterday 30th December]

I’m really sad, angry, lonely and hurting. I feel excluded, blamed, not believed, not wanted, a disappointment, right when I am trying the hardest, giving the most I can, in the most pain and most need to find some understanding; not necessarily help but simply acknowledgement and belief of what I’m experience and some love nevertheless from those closest to me whom I might hope to trust.

I’m on the journey home now after staying 3 days with my dad and step mum and I am ashamed but I could not have coped with one day more. Again and again in my flashbacks I was back to being the child with my mother and my father and the constant terror and trepidation and dread. I live the same situations over and over. I’m terrified of the next time she’ll think I’ve done, said or thought something wrong and get angry. I am exhausted from any time with my step mother and her utter insistence on her right and my wrong. Even simply talking with her and Dad, it’s as if we’re back where whatever happened I was the problem, I was the one behaving oddly, I was the one causing damage – when actually my mother was the abusive one, she could get away with anything, when I was crying for help nobody heard, nobody helped me and my father appeared to agree with her entirely. Similarly now, he can’t believe my step mother and everything she does is anything but fantastic and wonderful. I know I’ve said before, in a family situation he is utterly loyal but to the exclusion of the point of view of anyone but her, just as he was with my mother. I think that’s at least in part how I went unheard for so long when I was clearly massively distressed and when I needed his help, and when I told him what she’d done.

It was a bad enough time through all this but it has also become very clear how little my step mother believes or understands about my physical health and disabilities, how much she blames me, holds me responsible as though being ill is a choice, how annoyed and disappointed she is I don’t live up to her requirements. I’ve known for a long time how she doesn’t understand but it came home this week. It isn’t only me that it’s directed at. She shows the same attitude to my step sister over her mental health and to one of her friends who has a lot of physical health problems. It is beyond me how anyone can show as little belief or understanding of what someone is going through, as little compassion and as much blame, but then I have been ill or physically disabled most of my life so admittedly that gives me a different starting point.

She is not open to hearing what day to day life is actually like for me or even seeing it when it’s right in front of her . I don’t make a big issue about my health. I try to make sure it affects anyone else as little as possible. But when she is lecturing me about why don’t I do this or that, things are only a problem because I imagine they are, and so on and I have to try to explain eventually why I may not be able to do something, she refuses to hear and insists on her solution and gets angry if I can’t do it. When I’m physically unable to do something when I’m right there with her, for her it’s something I’m doing deliberately, it’s a real problem for other people, I “just have to do it”, I am not making enough effort… it’s like when my mother accused me of pretending not to be able to do things if I didn’t succeed academically as she required, and the resultant rejection and punishment of me is similar too.

I wrote a lot about what my step mother said to me and did which I’ve deleted because listing a load of hurts and speaking badly of someone does no good. When I was leaving, she started up again about “New Year, new you”, how everyone needs it needs to be a healthy year, we don’t want any more of this, I’ve got to be completely different  and I’ve “simply got to” make sure of that, and it’s all about positive thinking, it simply has to be mind over matter, as if it’s a choice not a number of lifelong health conditions. She loves telling me what I’ve simply got to do, always things which I literally physically or mentally cannot, so she exerts a great amount of pressure and certainty that I’m a disappointment when I can’t meet her simply-got-tos that she heaps on me even when they’re medically not possible.

In the face of all this, my father blanks me, ignores what I’m experiencing, denies what has happened or ignores what I say if I express as much as the fact that some of what she says is hurtful, to the point of refusing to answer and acting as though he has not heard or changing the subject. He literally will not hear a single thing against her, or even not 100% agreeing with her. It’s just like how he withdrew and ceased responding and cut off and rejected me and to say the least did nothing whilst my mother continued all kinds of emotional physical and sexual abuse. Then he is able to say he doesn’t know what’s happening.

***

My step mother’s growing obsession with weight and Slimming World is hard for me too. The fridge looks like a diet advert, even though it’s Christmas, brimming with vegetables and low fat yoghurt and very little else. Food is such an issue and has to be done her way. She will not stop telling me how I’ve “simply got to get healthy… simply got to prepare proper meals”. I don’t want anything to do with her diet. She has no concept of eating disorders and how hard a combination of the voices, my physical disabilities making cooking and the resulting cleaning ever so painful, and my eating disorder make it to cook. Yet she can’t see past her own obsession with vegetables, fat free, going to the gym…

***

I’m at the point of ceasing to expect anything but rejection, judgment and accusations from my step mother and from my dad, withdrawal from me and utter support of her views. At best. The glimmers of understanding I thought I had from my dad just seem like a trick now that opened me to trusting, making the inevitable return to rejection and accusations all the more painful. I will not go to stay with them again any time soon.

It would be easier for me to cease all contact with them. My step mother does not often behave as if she likes me. I often think they might well prefer me to have only infrequent contact. After all, I’m seen mainly as a problem. Morally, I don’t feel I can cease contact. I have a duty to them. I want to forgive. I can’t expect total understanding. If I ask forgiveness from God when I’ve judged other people I need to forgive them. I try not to act angrily but the hurt is much harder to control. If I did not have a dependence or need for their understanding, it would not matter to me so much. Though my father’s withdrawal and denial of my experience hurts as much as what my step mother does.

It hurts so much in my head right now.

Ginny xxx

Exercise without returning to extremes

WARNING – this post discusses weight loss and eating disorders

I saw the nurse today as I had to have an ECG. I’ve had a lot of chest pain lately which is thought to be costocondritis but the GP wanted to check my ECG again. I’ve also been potentially diagnosed with another condition but that’s a story for another time.

Whilst I was there, the nurse took my weight and height and we decided I’m going to try the exercise referral scheme again (to a different gym this time), to have support to try very gentle swimming or at least exercises in the water.

It is time for me to do something about the fact that I am really upset at how much weight I have gained in the last 2 years, through poor diet and through my medications and being very sedentary as I often can’t walk more than a very little way unaided. The weight is increasing my hate of myself and my body. Not succeeding in losing it by my familiar means over the last few months has increased this hate even more. I know this isn’t a healthy thought pattern and I know many of my “familiar means” are eating disorder behaviors. At the same time, I am now slightly overweight according to BMI recommendations, so I need to lose weight for my physical health; also I need to care for my body’s needs by eating healthful meals rather than oscillating between starving and junk food, as has become my habit through lack of money and depression. I need to try to do some kind of exercise to improve my physical strength to manage the pain from my chronic conditions better.

So I have to figure out how can I manage my situation now and the changes I need to make without plunging deeper into eating disorder thoughts? How do I start an exercise programme without using it to punish my body? How can I keep track of my weight and control my diet without returning to my totally addicted state and the ever-present revulsion at my body tipping back over into self-harm and purging?

Does anyone have any thoughts about how to lose weight and change your eating to get back to a healthy weight range, when you have a history of binge-eating and bulimia? Are there any particular resources on this topic? I know that somehow I need to address the pervasive disgust I feel towards my body and ideally I’d do that first, but it has been present most of my life and I can’t allow my weight to grow to an even more unhealthy level. Most of my life since age 3 when my abuser started to use weighing me and controlling my food as one way of punishing and shaming me, I’ve been overweight, severely underweight or plummeting or ballooning between the two. I have lost all concept of normal food intake and normal appetite.

Ginny xxx

In the cold

I hate how sporadic I am posting and reading at the moment. Again I’m sorry though I’ve already said that so many times I know.

I’m having a really low time. I’ve too many horrible feelings about the abuse and about the PD service that’s meant to be helping me. I have never felt so far from my dad in what I experienced as a child being abused and what he did not know, that I thought he did know; what he thought was actually going on. It is not his fault, it wasn’t then and isn’t now, but I can’t stand the distance – which means more doubt and fear and was it all because of me and have I invented everything through my madness. I have never felt so trapped by repeating patterns with the service -that I thought would help me and thought I could trust – of being misled, let down, tricked, brought to the very edge then when I’m in crisis they reject me, do nothing to help, say it’s nothing to do with them, send me away so I cope the only way I can at that point of utter pain, which at the moment, means overdose or knock myself out with sleeping tablets. It’s too much like how my abuser made me believe I needed her and she’d protect me but I never received her care, which paradoxically I did need, only her total control and the terror of her threats and certainty of my evil, so I believed. Now the cycle repeats with those I should be able to trust and ends in the same desperate pain.

Even in therapy group today I felt so so far from everyone else. An intruder. Something wrong with me. Disconnected. Just watching. Deeply hurting for everyone else and guilty for causing them hurt and anger too, but at the same time totally out in the cold; so much needing to be heard, but everything and everyone showing how at odds my experience is with theirs and what it should be.

Ginny xxx

One massive punch

WARNING: contains a very brief mention of eating disorders and abuse in childhood

Well. It’s kind of ironic given my post yesterday about uncertainty in relationships. At least the uncertainty in the particular relationship I had in mind at the end of the post has been cleared up. Cleared up with one massive blow. I’ve rarely felt more hurt and betrayed and rejected though I’m not sure quite why the impact has been so consuming.

I have tried to talk with my friend about what has happened in our relationship over the past months / couple of years and some of how I’ve been feeling.

After a line of further rejections from her, her not hearing when I tried to be honest and explain some most painful things, her not believing as far as I can see, what I experience and what has happened to me in the past – today she told me I have no reason to feel upset or hurt or angry, that I have no right to feel as I do, that because I have a feeling does not mean it is right, that I am to come before God and see if I have any moral right to feel as I do because I don’t, I am to push it down and rise above it.

I was filled with a massive surge of anger and raw hurt. It has not stemmed any in the hours since.

Coupled with her rejection of me and her disbelief or at least dismissal and ignoring of severely traumatic things that have happened to me in my childhood and right now, it was an immensely hurtful judgement of me. And how strange she thinks that she has the power to decide what feelings I am morally allowed to experience and what is real and what is not.

The terrors associated with feelings I thought were sinful, feelings I was not allowed, feelings that were so dangerous, that I had to atone for and punish myself for, were together with my terror of my ultimate evil, the way that I got to life threatening anorexia and then bulimia, daily self harm, overdosing and attempting to end my life. These feelings kept me submissive and within my abuser’s control. The feelings my friend’s judgement of my experience, my feelings, their and my morality, where I stand with God, the truth and validity of what has happened to me, brought in me straight back there again. Straight away my impulse was to cut and make myself vomit. But something had happened to my legs and I was shaking too much to do anything and perhaps that was blessed protection. I just cried.

It hurts worse because this came from one of the very few people I trusted. Someone I shared things with. Someone who brought me to the church and whose child is my godson. Thank the dear Lord I did not share with her the very worst of the abuse I suffered. If I had I don’t think I’d cope in any way now. I already feel violated again. Tricked, ripped apart, judged, rejected, punished, blamed.

As well as the hurt that’s making me go to pieces, I wanted to scream – feelings are not a sin. I have many reasons to feel very hurt, angry, scared… Feelings are not moral or immoral. Who is she to judge what I have a moral right to feel? I have a massive amount of pain and hurt and yes sometimes anger about the abuse. That is normal. Yes, when I’m not believed, dismissed and rejected and abandoned when I’m most desperate, that cuts a little deeper every time and yes emotionally I end up right back where I was in the terror of the abuse. This is not a sin or something I have to crush. I am not a sugar plaster “saint” too “holy” to have any feeling but happiness and superficial love, floating on some supernatural plane disconnected from every real feeling. That’s what she wants. I am not that figure. I am bleeding.

She was the last person left, outside this blog and community and apart from my therapist, with whom I had the depth of trust I thought I did. Perhaps it’s as well it’s gone. I will be very very careful indeed in the future (even more than I already am) about what closeness I allow to develop.

But the hurt is consuming. I am falling into pieces. Shattering. I haven’t gone home yet as I was scared what I’d do and of being alone. But I’m exhausted now and I have to go home. I’ll stay safe somehow. If I can’t I’ll have to go to A&E. I tried to get to the safe place I’ve been to before but they are full tonight.

Ginny xxx

I can’t be loved

It hit me today. I can’t be loved. I am unable to receive love, most of all God’s love. I long for it in different ways. Crave not being alone or being understood. Crave protection. Crave being wanted. Being needed. Being any good (any good to anyone, and just simply any good). Not being rejected. But I’m totally unable to receive it, accept and believe.

A friend said to me a few months ago that I always put a barrier and was too angry to let God love me. I got very angry with this friend at the time and very afraid. I felt like he confirmed everything I always inescapably feared about being outside God’s grace, bad, too bad to save and it was my fault, that however much I thought I wanted good I was bad in the end. I spoke very angrily to my friend, accusing him of frightening and judging me. But really everything I attributed to him, was what I utterly feared because of what I’d learnt as a kid being abused. The only way to stop my abuser’s threats coming true, I believed, was to accept what she (my mother) was telling me about me. That meant admitting to my own pervasive, enduring, dangerous evil.

I’m only just now suddenly starting to see how strong her deception was and how it has made me unable to receive love, rather only to receive confirmation of her view of me (or at least the view she presented as an abuser). She talked a lot about love. I did not receive love in that relationship and as a kid that’s the relationship where love is most important. My father loved me but she so twisted things that my impression of him was that he believed the same about me as she did. The closest thing I experienced to safety and love was “admitting” under her violent coercion to how evil I was, accepting and desiring her total control over me and my total weakness.

Most of all I have been unable to accept the love of God. My abuser’s twisting of the meaning of what should be love has had a very direct impact that I wonder how I didn’t see til now.

More on this in coming posts. Right now I’m feeling like I just fell off a cliff or something.

Ginny xxxx

 

Getting stuck on a loop

I’m gradually coming to notice when I re-experience feelings associated to long past experiences of abuse. I’ve described this as emotional flashbacks. They can include re-experiencing physical sensations of events, but also and often more overwhelmingly, emotional experiences. This often leads to certain thoughts being triggered and impulsive, uncontrollable actions that aren’t necessarily helpful for me or others. (I say uncontrollable. I must still take responsibility for them though I do not yet manage successfully control them and the impact the feelings have on me.)

I’m also noticing that I re-experience feelings and thoughts associated to more recent events; events which are not nearly as damaging as the abuse and trauma I experienced as a child. Sometimes, I can identify that the event triggered a deeper memory, which to some extent explains my reaction. But frequently, I can’t identify this. It is like feeling stuck on a loop. It causes me a lot of guilt and anger at myself. I feel I am being childish and self-centred because I should just get over it. I feel guilty, especially when it leads me to think over and over a time when somebody upset or hurt me, because I ought to be forgiving them. If I am repeatedly thinking of the hurt and wrong caused to me, I am holding it against them, not truly forgiving and I am keeping a barrier between them and me. God forgives us fully and it is as though our offences are blotted out. When we receive his forgiveness, we are washed “whiter than snow” and He does not look any more on our transgressions. Who am I to think I’m so important that things that hurt me play over and over in my mind? I’m reminded of someone close to me telling me “nobody else is responsible for making you feel better” “I’m going to be completely straight with you and I don’t have to think about what you’re feeling”. Am I making other people responsible for my feelings by my inability to move on? Am I making everything about me? I really fear that.

An example of such an event and consequentially getting “stuck in a loop” occurred this weekend. It’s a fairly low intensity example. Yesterday, I was in the street when I was stopped by a charity fundraiser – there are many of these people in shopping streets in my city, stopping people and wanting to take their personal details and sign them up to make regular donations. This person both irritated and intimidated me immediately. I watched him approach a lady who was a little way in front of me and follow her up the street. He then came up to me, coming uncomfortably close and half-blocking my path. I think this kind of approach is particularly intimidating to me since I’m disabled, unsteady on my feet and walk with a stick (and in my mind it is insensitive and inappropriate to approach in this way someone who you do not know, especially someone who is clearly physically vulnerable). He started to ask me questions and I simply replied “no thank you,” and carried on walking as best I could. I am in no position to give money at the moment and do not want to be signed up to anything, and think the best approach is to firmly but politely refuse to engage with this kind of approach. He then continued to follow me up the street, very close, muttering behind me sarcastically “oh, well that’s just charming” and so on. I was at once frightened and suddenly angry. I turned round and by no means shouting, but firmly, told him “Would you please stop following me. I am not obliged to give you my details. I do not want you to follow me.” “Well that’s incredibly [*&$% expletive deleted] rude of you” he retorted. I told him this was highly inappropriate and asked for the details of the organisation he was working for as I would be making a complaint. Fortunately, I was able to get sight of the ID badge he was wearing as he told me “Good, I hope that you do, because you’re incredibly unpleasant!” and noted the details.

Now, this event should probably no longer be in my mind. I was not hurt. I was probably not in any danger despite his intimidating and verbally aggressive behaviour. Likely as not I will never see him again. I have never heard of the organisation he was working for and have no dealings with them. It was nasty but probably not personally directed at me. It is an unpleasant way for anyone to behave, and all the more inappropriate on the part of someone representing a charity. I felt strongly about that. But it isn’t really an important event. The damage caused to me wasn’t major or worth thinking about (beyond that tomorrow I may make a complaint to the charity as I don’t think he should carry on representing them so poorly or treating other passers-by in the way he treated me and the lady in front of me).

The intensity of the fear and anger I felt at the time was much more than it should have been. It flicked me to come very close to an outburst of upset and anger that wouldn’t have helped anyone. I was able to stop that by the grace of God. I went some way into dissociating, hurting, being out of it but thoughts spiralling in a way too much to catch, being on the edge of going into a nearby shop and impulsively spending, which is one of the responses I’m most at risk of when I’m suddenly angry or upset. Again, I was able to stop myself. Mixed into this was the thought, what if someone was watching me, what would they think of what I had done? Was it my fault and was I wrong? I went home. I felt very low and was starting to shut down and everything I’d planned to do that evening was too much. I’m ashamed to admit this.

I’m more worried right now though, that instead of this whole minor incident now being over, it has come back on this loop in my mind today, several times. My mind has compulsively played over the incident many times, very vividly, but until this has been going on for a period of time, I’ve been unable to acknowledge what’s happening, whilst also being detached from what’s occurring in the present (for instance, no longer hearing the TV that was on, no longer doing the task I was doing). The way my mind has been playing this experience over has been similar to the way obsessional OCD thoughts about bad things I’ve done or am going to do, take hold of my mind. All the emotions I experienced at the time of the incident have come back again. With each obsessional repetition in this loop, my doubt of myself and my own actions in the situation increases, so that I am more convinced that I did wrong, that it must have been my fault, that people were watching me and now know how nasty I am.

Why am I unable to move on from even such an unimportant event? Why are my feelings so extreme at the time and no lower some time after? Why am I so unable to limit the impact of the emotion and the memory of the emotion and event? Does it in some way I do not yet understand, send me back to memory of a more damaging experience? That would give some explanation at least. Or is my experience just totally out of proportion, making me self-centred, self-obsessed, childish?

This event wasn’t particularly emotive in comparison to events that take place with people I know and care about. When upsetting interactions with friends and family get stuck on a loop in this way, it can completely affect and impede my future interactions with them and feelings towards them. I feel this is all my fault through my faulty reactions, emotions and thinking. Ultimately I end up self-punishing and self-harming as the only possible escape and a desperate attempt to punish myself enough for my failure to be an adult and my failure to forgive.

Writing this, it occurs to me that this feeling of being stuck in a loop does not only apply to things done against me. It applies equally to hurt I have caused or fear I have caused others, and other mistakes I have made. Wrong things and stupid things I have done play over and over in my head. The intense feelings of guilt, shame, horror, pain, etc, play over in my head and diminish little in intensity over the years. I regularly have vivid memories of, for example, things said during an argument with my dad and step-mum 3 years ago, or something wrong I did in my work that I worried endangered a patient 5 years ago, a time I stepped out of line with something I said to my boss in a meeting 8 or more years ago… I re-experience all the feelings and they can really shake me. I become afraid of any situations similar to those in which these events occurred, maybe because I believe I’ll do the same wrong again.

Again I wonder if all the feelings I have, whether it be a situation of wrong done by me to others, or a situation of wrong done by others to me and consequential hurt, in some way are (a lesser intensity of) feelings that were overwhelming and terrifying during the years of my abuse.

I also know that in personality disorders, emotions usually reach a higher intensity more quickly, and stay at the higher intensity for longer, than in people without personality disorder. I guess that explains to some extent why the feeling hangs around for longer, though not the vivid mental replaying of inconsequential events.

I desperately want an answer and I think I’ll talk about this in my 1:1 therapy tomorrow.

***

I wonder have you had similar experiences? Have you felt stuck on a loop remembering experiences or having thoughts and emotions you want to let go, but can’t?

Ginny xxx

A closing drawbridge and a silent cry: when it’s less safe

A closing drawbridge and a silent cry

Eating disorders and personality disorder

When it’s less safe, but I am no longer my abuser’s child

WARNING: this post contains mention of childhood abuse, discussion of my experience of anorexia and disordered eating and the purpose it served for me in my eating disordered thought processes.

When I started drafting this post, I didn’t actually intend it to form part of this series on eating disorders and personality disorder. I didn’t realise that it would be so much about my eating disorders, but it turns out that it is. I started writing tonight in preparation for my therapy group tomorrow. Last week, we were talking about feeling safe. In the discussion, I said that at some points during therapy (around the past 14 months so far), I’ve actually been less safe than when I was not in therapy. In hindsight, perhaps I should say, felt less safe. It has felt less safe. Despite this, I still feel therapy is a process I need and want to go through. Someone asked me a question about that, to which I struggled to verbalise the answer. I’ve thought on her question during the week. I’m not going to write what she said because I don’t want to break her confidentiality, but I wanted to share the reflection she has led me to about becoming more or less safe during therapy.

As soon as I tried to explain, the familiar eating disorder thought came into my mind – when I was anorexic it was safe. I know how sick and dangerous that thought is and how illogical, the physical destruction of my body having been so clear. Yet, there was a point not very long ago in therapy where I so desperately wanted my anorexia back, because it would have been safe, and not so much too much. With anorexia, I wasn’t too much and nothing was too much. (Except food, of course!) I was encased in a safe, protected place, and I felt nothing but its power, voice and drive. My emotions and my body made no more demands.

With anorexia I could be certain in the knowledge I was starving, punishing, weakening, enough to atone for what my abuser told me I was, enough to avoid the damnation I thought I otherwise deserved, enough to ensure I was not a threat. Enough to satisfy my abuser.  And even years after I had got away from her, I thought perhaps anorexia could take me back to that one time where it had seemed she wanted me, seemed through a child’s eyes that perhaps she loved me, the one time I wasn’t bad, where I was so weakened she took total control. That would be totally safe.

I was never cared for by her. Total control stood in for care instead. The closest thing to care and safety for me was my total self-destruction, total physical weakness, allowing her to take total control of me. My BMI was about 13. I was in unbearable pain in my back and legs. I could just barely walk with crutches and had to spend a lot of time in bed. She took control literally of my movements, my food, my use of the bathroom and toilet, my washing, my dressing and undressing, my weighing (any action that could have and should have been private, she invaded) my contact with other people (even the doctors who wanted to help me, whom she prevented me seeing most of the time). Telling me what I was thinking, telling me what I was doing to the family, telling me what to say, total control – but this total control was the only time that the terrible powers and terrible intentions she told me I had, seemed to cease. My body and my mind ceased to make demands and I succumbed to her totally. This was the only safe place. The rest of the time I lived in fear of what I would do to her or the family and of her terrible threats coming true.

Paradoxically, at other times my anorexia gave me something that was nevertheless mine. It was my anorexia and my body. I think I’ve written before how when she had me strip in front of the mirror, a fierce voice in my head said, this is my body and you will never touch me again, and I resolved to lose as much more weight as I could.

That determination and angry strength was unusual. It was more about cutting off. Later, I stayed as numbed and weakened as I could. Long after I was out of the anorexic weight range, physically safe, I continued to punish myself. Starving. Vomiting. Cutting. Overdose. On the outside, I could do what was required and expected. I achieved. I was together, doing what they required in terms of education and work. Again, that was safe, because I was doing what was required, my dangerous emotions were numbed, my atonement continued. Until I imploded. Everything went to pieces.

As everything fragmented, numb was no longer sure and safe. I desired the end and wanted to end my life. At the same time, my child voice that I had suppressed so successfully for so long, was screaming and desperately needed to be cared for. This was explosively dangerous. My abuser’s threats about what I was would come true; they’d be proved to be true for all to see. The evil in me would explode out of control, if I could no longer punish and weaken myself. I would cause unlimited hurt to others without even seeing it myself, but everyone else knowing the evil I was. I would never be cared for (ie in someone’s total control).

Straight away, the rejections began. (Again. Just as I’d been rejected when I had needs and sought help as a child – terrified what my abuser’s reaction would be; my father not knowing what was going on, so not protecting me.) I was not under my abuser’s control any more, but there was no care for me, no one to protect me, and the few people I trusted were not there for me. The pressures – I don’t know if consciously or not – piled on me made it very clear I am a disappointment, not good enough, not what they need me to be, that they will only accept me as long as I am moving in the direction they think I should be at the pace they have dictated.

I cannot silence the needs any more. Anger boiled out of control, hurt screamed. Going through therapy, the feelings intensified. There was no way back to the protection my eating disorder had given me. Now, when I write about how it worked and why I wanted my eating disorder back, I am horrified. I am horrified at the power my abuser had over me and how I allowed her to have it and how that made me feel safe.

I will never receive now the care I did not receive when I was a child being abused. I will never receive again the closest thing I knew to care, the total submission to another person and control by them. Terrible as that was, I feel as though I will never be sure, as I could for a brief time be then when I was totally dependent on her, that I am not the bad, evil thing I had been taught that I am.

With the loss of all my coping mechanisms, including stopping self-harming and stopping overdosing, as I have somehow by the grace of God managed not to do in the past few weeks, it does feel more dangerous. I don’t know how to find any reassurance, internal or external. My feelings, my emotions, experiences, feel so out of control and dangerous. I am no longer my abuser’s child. I am no longer what my family requires. I will never have the care and security I did not have as a child, nor will I have the safety unconditional acceptance would give, because I do not have that now that I’m no longer what they require. I don’t yet know how to exist without these things.

Part of me grieves for the loss of the eating disorder and mechanisms that kept me safe, because stupid and twisted as it sounds, they did at least protect me; despite the harm they caused, they protected me from ending my life, and though it was fairly illusory, they gave me the closest thing I had experienced to being cared for.

****

I should say that I think that another important part of the safety issue in therapy is coping between sessions with the emotions that have come up in sessions. Also, the impact that this disorder and the recovery process has across your life. Until very recently having the help of my support worker, I struggled badly with the social isolation that followed the loss of many important relationships, and the “domino effect” of all the material stability in my life falling away because of the financial problems caused by losing job after job and my erratic spending when I was out of control. Struggling with this at the same time as my emotions were going out of control anyway, my desperation for help increasing but being unheard by everyone I tried to get help from and had been led to believe I could trust, brought me very much too close to the edge. My support worker has greatly contributed to my safety now.

Ginny xxx

Fear, tears, pain, joy, guilt, thankful, anger, strength, shaken…

The emotions are crashing over me now. They stayed temporarily a little distant in the activity of yesterday afternoon and today. Now the activity has stopped. The rush of mixed experiences of the past week is temporarily still. I am physically utterly exhausted, shaky and hurting and it’s all I can do to get across the room. Sitting I feel like I’m being crushed. I’m cold and my chest aches deeply. I’m curled up in my dressing gown and blanket, needing all the comfort and grounding I can get. I feel childish and guilty for saying that, because I have no right to – what have I been through that’s so bad? – but it is true.

There’s so much to take in right now.

Intense waves of scary emotions jolted me through the week, especially fear and anxiety I cannot attribute to a logical cause that was there at the time. On reflection perhaps it was an emotional flashback to earlier times and threats, both distant (childhood) and more recent.

The hallucinations strengthened – auditory, visual, sensory – and scared me more.

My escape imaginary world was closer than ever and its pull stronger than ever.

Anger is raging and rising uncontrollably in me against my stepmother. All at once I feel huge guilt, fear, hurt, rage, the need to express what I feel and the impossibility and danger of ever actually doing so.

It’s feeding anger against my dad again; then against both of them together.

More memories of specific painful derogatory, demeaning, restricting, humiliating things my abuser did have been coming to the fore, along with memories of how her abusive power was perpetuated, and then in turn, more thoughts of how it feels – and this is so scary to write – similar patterns still repeat in my family. I need to get away from that.

It was goodbye to a friend in my therapy group for whom I care very very much. I’m still crying for her.

Another member of my therapy group to whom I also feel a particular connection, has suffered an unimaginable avalanche of hurts, struggles and illnesses. Now, he has been diagnosed with cancer which is likely to be late stage. The end of his life could be close. I’m crying for him.

Today was a special day. I had a little coffee morning to fundraise for Macmillan Cancer Support (part of the “World’s Biggest Coffee Morning” Macmillan run nationally). It is the first time I have ever done an event like this at home (following on from the courage I gained from having had some close friends over for my birthday earlier in the year). My anxiety was huge. I put as much as I could into the preparations. Good things happened today. My guests’ care and kindness was wonderful. This fills me up with gratitude.

So here I am now, afterwards, with this whole mix of soaring emotions. All of them I need to face and there is a lot of work for me to do. My individual therapy is tomorrow and I’m so glad. When the emotions are too much, every so often, I’m going to try to return to the thankfulness for today and remember everyone’s enjoyment and generosity. Somehow, this just a little restorative.

Ginny xxx

Bob and me and why couldn’t I say “no”?

WARNING: this post contains a passing mention of self-harm thoughts and a very brief generalised mention of abusive relationships

I’m sorry for this ramble that isn’t necessarily of interest to anyone. I really have to get this out and there’s nobody I can talk to. Kinda wish I could call someone but I don’t want to be totally needy and a burden on people.

It’s Friday tomorrow, which means group therapy. I’m really nervous. It’s the first group therapy for about 3 weeks following the summer therapy break. After the last therapy break (over Christmas) I found it hard to engage with the group again, stay present to mentalise and keep safe between sessions. The main reason I’m nervous this time is something that has happened between me and someone else in the group. Let’s call him Bob. I know that what happened is going to be talked about in group (because I talked it over in my 1:1 session earlier this week and my therapist told me it also needs to be discussed in group).

There’s a rule that group members should not have contact outside the group. It’s accepted that chance meetings happen or that we may see each other when attending the same hospital or GP Surgery  or other places and we aren’t expected to ignore each other if this happens, but we are not supposed to arrange meetings. One reason for this is that we should not discuss what happens in group outside group where not all the members are present. In particular we should not talk about other group members and if group members felt they or their issues were being talked about, this could be very upsetting and damage trust between group members.

“Bob” and I sometimes bump into each other because we tend to head off in the same direction after group. We sometimes bump into each other in the supermarket or in town because sometimes we go to the same church. Small world and all that. At these times we’ve chatted and I never felt that was wrong. This has happened with other group members too; we’ve discussed it in group and everyone has felt that it’s okay when that happens. Some members live quite near to each other so it’s somewhat inevitable.

In early June, I talked a bit more to Bob whilst we were in the waiting room before group started, because he was going through some practical problems that I had also had experience of and I was glad to be able to suggest a couple of sources of support for him. Then Bob asked me to meet him for a drink. It was his birthday and I knew that he does not have any friends locally and had been through a rough time. Straight away I didn’t feel comfortable with this. It was breaking the group rule. It could be breaking other members’ trust. I felt this was different from all the previous times Bob and I had talked, because this wasn’t a question of bumping into each other or waiting in the same room together for appointments; it was going out of the way to arrange a meeting. I was straight away nervous about why he was asking me. Plus going for a drink with anyone is hard for me, especially someone I don’t really know very much. Crowded places and lots of unknowns are difficult for me, raising my anxiety. I didn’t want to say yes. But I was completely unable to say no. I knew he would feel hurt and rejected and upset. I would be being nasty and rude. There was just no way in my head I could say the “no” I wanted to.

[I’m scared…]

Instead, I agreed but gave the proviso that it definitely be a one-off, just for a drink because it was his birthday. I also said that I wanted to be very, very clear that this was as friends. I have a lot of issues of my own and I do not find relationships of any kind easy. I am not looking for anything more than friends and I would not be able to give to that kind of relationship what I would want to. I said I felt silly and awkward saying that but just to make sure there can’t be any confusion I wanted to say it outright. Bob said he totally understood that and he felt the same.

So we met for a drink one afternoon. Well, that was the agreement, I thought. Except that Bob made it dinner, one evening, at a restaurant. And he insisted on paying for me. And it wasn’t a one-off, because from there Bob contacted me more and more. He wanted to meet again and again. He told me more and more that he had been thinking about me and praying for me and that he thought I was a very special person. And every time, I didn’t want to. I wanted to say no. But I couldn’t. I didn’t. And we met again, then another time, then another.

[I’m so scared even writing this. I feel I can’t breathe. I’m twisted up inside. Why?]

I couldn’t say no but I hoped it would stop. I tried to say. I said I was worried for both of us – that we’d get worried about the other and not be able to tell anyone, that we’d share things that we really needed to talk about (in group or with our therapist) and we wouldn’t be able to, that I wanted to share our meeting with the group, that I didn’t think we needed to hide it, that I thought he was trusting me and thinking of me differently from everyone else in the group and that could be damaging, that he was sharing things with me and not with the group and that could be bad for him (and the group)… I said these things, I think. Yet I let them be quickly brushed aside. Bob wasn’t dismissive. He wasn’t typically pushy or crass. Somehow though, I let my concerns be put away by what he said in response and I didn’t follow them through.

It was evident he cared for me very much and thought well of me. A lot of it seemed to be true Christian care and prayer and friendship. However, I knew it went beyond that. If someone cares for me, it frightens me. Bob would say in group that he had been thinking about me and it scared me there too. I wasn’t the only person he’d say it about but he seemed to say it about me more than about others. I know I get scared about this kind of thing and it makes it hard to know (or hard to trust myself when I think I know) if the other person is caring about me in a normal way or if something is unusual.

Scared turned to terrified when he seemed to care for me obsessionally. It sounds wrong to say that. It sounds like he did something wrong. He didn’t hurt me. He didn’t force me. He did nothing wrong. That’s what makes this harder. He did nothing wrong and he is not a nasty person and he is a kind, caring, generous, Christian man. But his contact became more intense. Even how he looked at me. He’d watch me so intently. He’d comment on tiny things in my appearance and say he couldn’t get over them. He made a few comments that freaked me out, like that he couldn’t resist me if I had long hair, things about wanting cuddles, that I shouldn’t let my father know his age [Bob is substantially older than me but – what??!!]… I wanted to run. His texts got more frequent. Several times within an hour at the end. I knew I could not be what he thought I was and couldn’t give him what he needed.

In the end I was scared enough that he was obsessed with me that I stopped it. I checked out my feelings searching online to see if people can be obsessed with other people and if this happens in relationships, knowing the answer really but having to check out whether it is something bad and whether it can lead to worse – because I couldn’t trust myself. Partly because he really was being so “nice” and not doing anything wrong. As well, I was scared he was telling me things that he wasn’t telling the group. I was trying to encourage him to tell the therapists and tell the group. I knew too much about pressure he was under and danger he could be in and help he might need. I knew it wouldn’t be safe for either of us. I felt that whenever I ended it or whether I just let it carry on, I would end up letting him down and not being what he so much thought I was and he would get hurt and the longer it went on the worse it would be.

I couldn’t trust myself. I felt so strongly that there was a sexual or at least physical attraction undercurrent, that he was attracted to me, that he wanted more and wanted me to be something I never can be to him, that he was becoming what felt like obsessed with me. It is so obvious to me now and it scares me now and scared me then but for so long I couldn’t trust this instinct and end the relationship.

[I want so badly to cut. I won’t. I won’t. I am determined to sit with this and try to stay present to feel in group tomorrow and not numb everything down by self-harming.]

Though I was scared I don’t think he knew it. I don’t think he knew I was uncomfortable because I said nothing and pursued none of my objections. Actually, I was dishonest with him, in sharing time with him but actually wanting to get away whilst he thought we had a connection, or were sharing something important. I feel so guilty for that. But then, we did share something. We are both Christian and we spoke often of God and hope and mercy and that is something I cannot share so fully with many people. It’s something I don’t really talk about in group, not yet anyway, and it’s a different kind of conversation. Genuinely we did share that and it was good. It’s not black and white and I don’t blame him and he did not do anything bad or wrong.

I know a lot of my fear and my feelings came from triggers in our conversations and relationship which probably would not have been triggers to anyone else. To the next person perhaps it would have been easily passed off or nothing important. For me there were so many triggers to my emotions and behaviour that reminded me of when I was being abused. That sounds terrible to say. It makes it sound like he manipulated or took advantage of me. All he did was kind. Apart from me not wanting it and feeling we were deceiving people and feeling scared. He didn’t know. But it’s how I felt. I started behaving and thinking like I did in the abusive relationship. It’s why I couldn’t say no. It’s why my feelings totally disappeared for me in the sense that I dismissed them all and followed only what his feelings and his needs seemed to be. It’s why I couldn’t say no, couldn’t trust what I felt, wanted to run but it was utterly impossible to do anything about it. I fell into the same patterns of watching and silence and trying to get it right, perceive his needs and his emotions correctly, trying to save him and keep him from danger. His obsession with me and his need for me reminded me – in my emotions if not in facts – of the abuse too. When my abuser wasn’t threatening me she was attributing bizarre powers to me, largely perhaps stemming from her own delusions (or perhaps it was all part of the plan of the abuse), powers I did not have, powers that I was to have because I was born at a particular time because she had planned it for a reason; she’d watch me obsessionally and intently, she’d have me keep secrets… I ended up emotionally right back there when Bob talked about how good I am, how he thought about me, how important it was we shared these conversations separate from the group, how it should not be shared with anyone in group because that would get too complicated, when he so intensely contacted me and needed me.

When I did finally end it, I told the service because I was so afraid what Bob would do. I am not so arrogant that I think contact with me can matter that much to anyone, but I was sure that he’d interpret me ending our contact as total betrayal and breach of trust. I know those kind of feelings put him in danger, because of what he’s discussed with me both in group and outside. I didn’t want him to know I was scared, because of a particular thing he shared in group once. I thought for days about how to do it. I told the PD Service right away that I’d ended it and told them I thought he’d be in danger. If the service hadn’t been there and I hadn’t believed they could try to keep him safe, I would not have dared to end things.

I’m scared for group tomorrow. What’s going to happen. How it’s going to affect Bob when we have to talk about it. If I admit I wanted to stop the meetings, or that I had worries, it makes it sound like he forced me. He didn’t do anything to force me. So many times I could and should have said no. But I have to be honest. I’m scared how what’s happened will affect other people in the group and what they’ll feel. They may be hurt, they may feel betrayed, angry that rules have been broken and trust has been broken, they may think we were trying to do something in secret to exclude them. I think everyone will lose trust. I don’t know what Bob feels about it being discussed in group and I don’t really know what he feels about me having ended contact. I told him that I had told the service, but I don’t know what he feels really. I just feel so sure he feels totally betrayed. I’m scared he mightn’t come back to group. I’m mainly scared about him and about the rest of the group and how they’ll feel but I’m also scared how unable I was to act on my feelings and say no.

My head is imploding with all these feelings. Maybe I’ve really turned the proverbial molehill into a mountain but for some reason this whole situation is leading to really strong unbearable feelings for me. I’m fighting so so hard not to self-harm tonight. I’ve been trying self-soothing, trying to do creative things, trying to do practical things, hot drinks, texting a friend about something else, trying to take the focus away from the emotion and away from myself. Then I wrote this. In a minute I’m going to try a weird approach that just occurred to me – I’m feeling totally nervous and wound up so maybe if I watch a DVD that makes me just a little bit on edge and in suspense it’ll give another direction for the feelings and get some of them out. Not sure how that’ll go down and it’s just a thought that occurred to me, but here goes! A couple of episodes of Grimm should do nicely.

Ginny xxx

Really bad day

Well I probably shouldn’t say really bad. Nothing that bad has happened at all. It’s just how I’m feeling and it’s hard to stay with this.

I had my first 1:1 therapy yesterday for about a month because the PD Service took a 2 week break in therapy sessions for the summer and also I had missed one session shortly before the break. It’ll be the first group therapy since the break this Friday. It was a hard session. I was dealing with lots of strong uncomfortable feelings and a situation that’s very scary for me. I know we’re going to have to come back to it in group on Friday. I realised times when I experience the same thoughts and states as I did when I was being abused as a child and they come back at bizarre uncontrollable times.

Perhaps these feelings and what we went through yesterday have something to do with how today has been. Definitely… but I only just now made that link. Also yesterday afternoon I saw my support worker and we got through a lot  (finishing filing out a huge form for my assessment for a Benefit). Though this was great I was exhausted and in a weird state afterwards – cold and exhausted and sad and I don’t remember the rest of yesterday apart from that.

The pain has been awful too because I really overdid it physically over the weekend to travel to my friend’s and back, though I don’t regret for a minute going and the time with her and her family was precious. Today it took me until 11 to be able to stand more than a couple of minutes.

Then I went out for an appointment which was supposed to be for a referral scheme for physical therapy. About everything possible went wrong and I won’t bore you with it now but it was upsetting at discriminatory, turned out to be nothing like what I’d been led to expect and cost me a lot in terms of time, pain and anxiety for nothing.

I’m scared how I reacted and how I felt after. I hate feeling angry and trapped and out of control. I hate feeling used, dismissed, laughed at, tricked, punished… I hate these thoughts and feelings even occurring. Not because of what they feel like in themselves but what they mean about me and the flashbacks and reexperiencing that comes with it. I hate how all the feelings and actions that stayed inside and stayed locked away into my… I don’t know how to name them because I don’t talk about them. My others, my “imaginary” people that are anything but imaginary, my others, that’s all I can say… they stayed safely in the worlds I made for them – the worlds I could escape to – but now they don’t. Now they’re here all the time. In every day.

The rest of the day again I can’t remember apart from that I picked up milk and a couple of things on the way home. I didn’t really even remember that til I saw the shopping bag on the floor. I’m terrified about this dissociating… the time that just disappears after I get the overwhelming emotions…sometimes before too… Then I’ve just been lying down too drained and tired to do anything, trying to do little things to ground me but I can’t concentrate. Everything hurts. Inside my head hurts too.

If this is feeling without self-harm, without overdosing, without starving and purging, it’s scary. It’s a scary place. I’m scared of what I am. Scared of how I’m acting. How I’m feeling. What I’m remembering – my feelings, as much as what was done to me. What I’ll do to people now. That my actions now are based on the trauma and abuse and who this means I am.

I’m scared, crying for no reason. Feels like I’m exhausted and in shock but there’s no good reason now. Can you feel shock years after an event?

Ginny xxx