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Topics - integrity

#1
Sexual Abuse / Coming to terms with a survivor status
February 25, 2019, 11:10:54 AM
Hey all,
I'm doing my 12 steps in an adult children of alcoholics group and I just did step 5 over the weekend where you tell somebody your whole story.

I disclosed a few things that I said I wasn't sure whether they were sexual abuse or not and my sponsor said yes they definitely were sexual abuse; these events have to do with my dad who I always adored and put on a pedestal. I have come to realise as well that I actually had an emotionally incestuous relationship with him. I was responsible not just for his emotional needs but for my whole family's, actually.

I'm having a really hard time coming to terms with this. I feel so devastated that such a huge burden was put on my little shoulders; that I felt responsible for my dad for such a long time, even up until now. Somehow talking about it with someone in so much detail made it feel really real.

It's bringing up a lot of inner critic stuff. I know now that I have been codependent and still haven't got rid of these tendencies completely. I also wonder what this means for the future of my marriage - I mean, I think I only got married because:

  • he's like my dad
  • I had sex before marriage and as a christian felt so guilty that I felt like I had to marry him
  • my mum bullied me into it
  • I was so terrified of being alone

The marriage has been on the whole a safe place for me to grow - but at the start he really pushed on my sexual boundaries (he's better with this now), he's a game addict/workaholic and I always subjugated my needs to his - so now I'm not sure where my boundaries should be and whether my goals in life are actually even compatible with his... or what they even are some times!  :fallingbricks:

I'm so scared of what the future may hold, and I'm worried I can't cope, even though I've coped with stuff around my narcissistic mum. I thought the point of ACA was to make me feel more sane - but I feel less sane!
#2
Hello everyone :)
Sorry this is a bit waffly.
I haven't been around for a while. I recently started going to adult children of alcoholics meetings. I have been to one full one and one where only two of us rocked up and we had no key so we just chatted for ten minutes and left. But I think it's positive.
Anyhow, things seem to be coming up for me again recently and so I tried something today that was progress but not as much as I wanted. But still progress.

To explain, I have read a lot of times that what you can do to help trauma is imagine yourself back in the trauma but this time you respond to it in a way that is somehow empowering. I have even done something like it in therapy where somebody came and rescued me. But I have one really major trauma which I could never think of a way of being empowered in it. It was when my mum tried to commit suicide when I was a child, I and my siblings were all there. I ran away and then I don't remember anything else from that day. I go back there sometimes and it's easier than it used to be, but I've never really healed and I couldn't fathom the idea of little me doing anything in that situation that could have helped.
Anyway today I decided I needed to try again so I went back there. I tried to imagine myself walking back towards the car where she was doing it instead of running. I felt a lot of resistance towards this but I did it, and I imagined a good mother figure asking my mother what she was doing, telling me that my mother was going to go to the hospital to get some help from the psychologist and that I would be staying with her (the good mother figure) for a while. Then I imagined her holding me and telling me I was safe and that she wouldn't leave me.

I felt like this worked OK but my emotions definitely shut off a little bit when I did this, also my imagined scene went black when I went back to the car so I sort of just had to imagine it conceptually. Maybe I still can't quite face it, even in my imagination. I always have to run away.

But, at least today I tried and that is something.

Love to you all
:grouphug:
#3
Therapy / schema therapy
January 15, 2018, 10:11:00 AM
Has anybody here done schema therapy? I'm starting soon, a bit nervous. What is it like? I think I will have to be very vulnerable which is hard.
#4
So I think a trigger for me is putting myself forward, being assertive or taking initiative. Its ok unless I'm on high alert already and then it makes me feel very afraid. But then if I feel that i haven't been listened to or if someone pushes back on my assertiveness, it seems like that really pushes me over the edge and into a full on panic/EF. Is that possible? DH thinks its because my mother enmeshed with me, never listened anddidnt really allow self assertion. I see his point but it sounds so bizarre.
Also, its definitely a maladaptive mechanism now. I can see how it was helpful to fly under the radar as a kid. Now it just messes my life up but when I do assert myself I get super shaky and afraid or else aggressive.
#5
Friends / hard to get close to people
October 31, 2017, 10:22:07 PM
Hey everyone,
I have a struggle because I come across as a very open, gregarious person. And i am very extraverted. But I'm chronically lonely. Its because I cant open up to people very easily. Also, I don't know how to make a relationship go closer with a friend. If I hang out with someone and have fun, I sort of get scared of asking them again. I don't want to scare them away or be too pushy or too needy. Even though I'm pretty extroverted and everyone thinks I'm confident, I get a lot of anxiety and it makes me withdraw. Its like having a tug of war inside all the time!
#6
Recovery Journals / scared of whats in my journal
October 29, 2017, 09:42:50 AM
I've been having lots of EFs/panic attacks lately. Just had one and was writing in my journal. It freaked me out. It was incoherent and disjointed but the theme seemed to be that there was some little girl inside who didn't want anyone to know what was happening to her and was hiding. She didn't trust anyone and I don't trust anyone. I tried to reassure her and thought by the end she felt better even though she was hiding.
But I just feel totally crazy. I felt crazy writing it. I feel like I've lost all sense of who I am. I've just started trying to confront my childhood trauma through EMDR, and I don't know if its making it worse (I've also had traumatic family stuff happening this year as I became more aware and started setting boundarie my mother has retaliated).
I'm also a bit worried I'm just making all this hidden child stuff up. Sometimes I think because I cant remember so much there might be trauma memories, but then I think I'm just being over dramatic.
I don't know.
Anyway it was freaky and made me feel totally insane. Can anyone relate to this? Have you had weird journal experiences?