Tuesday, December 16, 2008

#5 What do I still struggle with?

It is now four years since the beginning of my 'breakthrough'.

I must admit that in the early stages of therapy I was grossly over-optimistic about how quickly I would deal with it all, thinking that I’d 'have this thing done and dusted in a couple of months'. Anna, my therapist, would regard me hesitantly as I made such flippant remarks. And, of course, as more and more skeletons fell out of the cupboard, reality began to sink in and my resolve was severely challenged.

I came up against a string of inescapably hard truths. My recovery was compromised by a number of exacerbating factors:

· The length of time I had been undiagnosed. Yes, it was 18 years since the traumatic birth, but that wasn’t the primary causal factor for my illness. The fact is I had been undiagnosed since I was a small child. It wasn’t a matter of getting back to ‘who I used to be before the trauma’. It was more a matter of deconstructing a lifetime’s worth of traumas, internal conflict, cognitive confusion, distorted development and maladaptive coping mechanisms, and rebuilding completely new ways of thinking and being almost from scratch – while still holding on to those things that were and are good about myself, that make me who I am.
· The number of abusers. My list includes 7 men and 1 negligent medical team.
· My relationship to the abusers. Five of them were family members (thankfully, my father was not amongst them). But the betrayal of a trusted family member increases the damage exponentially when compared to a stranger.
. The number of abusers involved in any particular incident.
. The severity of the abuse. It's difficult to know how much to elaborate on this, but one incident took me four months to physically recover from.
· The number of incidents. Abuse is not something one ever gets ‘used to’. You do not get ‘used to’ being hit by a bus. Each incident causes more and more damage, reinforcing the distortions that a child comes to believe about her/himself. And we figure I got hit by the abuse bus about 30 times.
· Other stressors. Part of my homework has been to put together a timeline of my life encompassing all the major upsets along the way, including things like the death of my father, the time my sister was almost killed in a road accident, etc. My timeline details over 40 significant disasters, in addition to the abuse. My ability to cope with these was greatly compromised because of the existing damage underpinning everything else. So I have had to go back and re-work my way through those as well.
· Lack of Support at the times of the traumas. My mother, through no fault of her own (we have since discovered that she has an unresolved history of her own) was ill equipped to provide the care and comfort and guidance that I needed as a child. In fact, as a result of her own mental state, the way that she responded to some of the evidences of abuse she saw on me only caused me further trauma, rejection, devastation and isolation. I don't know how many of the incidents she was aware of - it would have been impossible for her to be aware of them all - but there was never a single outward sign to me that it wasn't my fault, that I wasn't to blame, and that there wasn't something fundamentally wrong with me. I was too young then to comprehend the nature of what was happening to me, but I knew I had been badly hurt, and humiliated - and she was just angry. And that is why, I suppose, that as far as the teenage traumas were concerned - even though the earlier incidents were long lost to my memory, I just never spoke to a soul about any of it.
· Religious upbringing. I won’t go into the details of that at this point, but my mother’s sect-like religious views and practices created a chasm between me and the 'real world' that only served to mess things up more royally. Therapeutically, this little nugget has been as difficult to work through and untangle as any of the abuse.

So – getting back to today - the recovery from PTSD and the host of other disorders that usually accompany it in situations like mine is often likened to a game of Snakes and Ladders. You can be doing well one minute - then, just happen to land on the wrong square and it seems like you're right back to the bottom of the board again.
Another analogy - the Brake/Accelerator analogy – they say that as far as your nervous and mental systems are concerned, PTSD is like driving with one foot hard on the brake and one foot hard on the accelerator – it is exhausting, and almost impossible to ever feel ‘at peace’.
In the movie The Flying Scotsman, the minister in the story talks about how his wife, who had been abused as a child (and ultimately committed suicide a few years into their marriage) would describe her struggles with day-to-day living, and it really struck a chord with me. (I would love to get a precise quote, if anybody could help out with that) but essentially she described it as ‘trying to walk through thick mud’, and that ‘nobody else was even aware of her pain’. I used to tell Daggers (Dirk aka “Daggers” Harm, my physiotherapist) that I felt like I was trapped in a swamp. He didn’t think it was a very healthy analogy, and I get his point, but at the same time I still can’t think of a more apt description.

What was the question again? Ah, the symptoms and challenges I still struggle with…

· Dissociation
· Nightmares
· Lack of mental energy and efficiency
· Exhaustion
· Managing feelings of discouragement, loss, aloneness and numbness
. The inescapability of it all
· Persistent old false core beliefs
· Feeling overwhelmed – but this has greatly lessened compared to the early stages , as my skills have improved
· Changing self-torture into self-nurture
· Issues with my mother
· Trouble with my nervous system and intestinal system
· Social phobia
· Body issues
· Difficulty connecting to the future
· Learning to give myself space to ‘be’
· My comfort zone seems to be about 2” square at times - the amount of energy required to converse and interact ‘normally’ with other people, especially outside the family, is like having to part and hold back the Red Sea. I am limited as to how long I can maintain it, and need to pace myself carefully and take time out regularly to regroup and rest. (You'll note that I do have a weakness for visual imagery).
· Challenges interacting with my grandchildren as they reflect different ages that I was when I was abused
· Almost constant internal conflict (remember that conversation that Gollum had with himself in Lord of the Rings?) only with better hair and complexion.
. It really does affect every aspect of life, right down to breathing, eating, sleeping, relationships, finances, socializing - you name it.

That being said, I am worlds in front of where I was. I have had some deeply life-changing experiences and insights, and learned enough new skills to build some confidence now that as I keep hanging in there things will generally get easier. The everpresentness of peaks and troughs is just a part of the deal - as long as I can remember that when I'm at the bottom of a trough.

2 comments:

  1. I am SO glad you wrote this.. it is going to make it so much easier for people who read it to have more understanding for what you're going through.. maybe you should print out copies of it to keep in your handbag so you can pass it out to people who don't get it but you don't have to energy to tell... (half joking??) Have you thought about writing an article for the ensign? They have had lots of informative articles over the last year or so that are really just designed to enlighten people that don't understand and give hope to people that do.

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  2. Thanks Ev - just being able to condense my thoughts enough to put them into this kind of format has taken me - well, four years! And even this is a stretch, some days, I gotta tell ya - cos I keep pushing my own buttons all the time! I think in time I might be able to put something together for the Ensign - that would be an excellent goal!
    (And yes - re the handbag thing - yes, yes).

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