[servicedogsrawesome]

Dear Powpow,
I don't know what I could possibly say that would help you feel better, only that I understand you and hear you. The memories are so strong they are debilitating. I am recently starting into therapy for the umpteenth time and am on meds again, and am sinking into that pit of despair again. I have been deeply depressed with PTSD, borderline behaviors, bipolar behaviors so many times and then it's like as I start to process any of the memories, I get so emotionally sick and weak that I can't push forward anymore. Then I stuff the emotions and the memories, and make excuses for my parents, for why they acted the way the did. Eventually I take up the blame again myself, and go on again carrying this heavy load that I can never lay down because the memories are too bad, the feelings are too strong, I feel too helpless, and it takes the life out of me in the here and now. How are we supposed to survive the "healing" stuff? I don't know but I'm going to do it this time.

Just as logistical knowledge, my father abused me emotionally and physically from infancy, and sexually from the ages of 8-12. I am 37 now.

Sunday I had a memory come back of how my father used to make me sleep next to him. We would "nap" together while my brother got to watch cartoons in the other room. For several years now, I have remembered the "naps" but not exactly remembered what happened. I could feel his hands on my skin and feel the sick feeling in my stomach. I remembered he always wanted me in my strawberry shortcake nightgown which was silky soft and short when we took a "nap" together. So I could be more comfortable naturally. From when I was 8-12.

Sunday I was doing this exercise suggested in the manual about closing your eyes and visualizing walking back through that home. As I did this exercise, I felt so sick. I didn' want to imagine that one room, and when I did, it was all there in front of me. Me as a child lying in bed next to him with his hand down my panties massaging me. And I feel disgusted even now because I remember as a child enjoying it and yet feeling like this was so dirty like I shouldn't be letting him do this to me. Like I shouldn't be enjoying it. But I did, I loved my daddy and he loved me and I opened my legs for him and let him have me.

Sunday when I remembered this all I could feel was hatred and disgust for me... the little child. I didn't hate my father at all, only myself. And as i was flooded with violent emotions, I had all these filling fighting loud emotions in my head and yet I sat still, afraid to move, showing no expression of what was happening at all. I wanted to scream and hit and kick and there was no sound, no facial expressions, no movement at all. Because to let it out... it must never ever be let out....

And then monday I had a panic attack at work and ended up hiding in the bathroom floor for an hour. I'm dreaming every night and barely sleeping. It affects my work, it's all I can think about. Like I said, I don't have any great answers or solutions, only that you aren't alone and I hear you.

[powpow]

I am married with two children of my own now. I know how you feel. I always thought that if I hadn't been so ugly, so fat, so uninteresting, if I'd been more successful, smarter, maybe my family wouldn't have hated me so much. I look at my children, and I could never do anything to harm them nor let anyone else harm them. I tell my children how much I love them and how proud I am of them all the time. I pray I'm a good enough mother that they never question their worth. I would do anything to ensure their safety. I still question my own worth, and am full of shame about my past. I worry that I'm not a good enough mother, that I will fail the two people that mean the absolute most to me. When I think about that, I wonder how any parent can harm their child, how anyone can hurt a child. Yet, I can still see why my parents and siblings would want to hurt me. Have you found anything that helps at all?

[servicedogsrawesome]

Well since then I've been doing a lot of reading. I've learned about "body memories" and how your body remembers whAt your conscious mind will not let you remember. As I think about it when I am alone, I have been trying to feel the body sensations. I've most noticeably felt like my back and butt and thighs are deeply bruised. You know how a bad bruise feels when you just got it? Kinda like that. And I've been feelin like I am being penetrated or that something is inside of my vagina. It's hard to allow myself to feel those things and it is humiliating to admit that that is what my body feels like. It's kinda lime a phantom limb pain I guess. Lime when an amputee loses his arm but then years later his arm still hurts. Like his brain remembers what it feels like to have an arm, thinks it's still there and remembers it hurting.

I've also read thT some of healing is letting your body experience those feelings and sensations again and allowing them to reinfiltrate your mind and feel the emotions that you feel related to the sensations. It is very painful and difficult to feel the emotions and the physical sensations again. However, after a bit when it is starting to feel too intense to me. In my mind I turn it off like a switch and say it is all I can handle I'll work on it more later. And I get up and go on with my life and not immediately but later on, it feels like I've le a little of the pressure out somehow.

[princessophia]

I recently came to terms with memories of abusive situations, or a few of them. I have emotional problems anyways, and always have, but I did not know or realize that the problems I was having could stem from my home, family, and school life when I was younger. I never really thought there was anything wrong with what people were doing, it was "normal" for me, so why try to stop it or say anything about it? It wasn't until I was an adult that I starter crying about what happened to me in the first 4 years of my life. Then I started realizing that I am a person, and that certain things people were doing and the way they were treating me was making me feel like I was not. That somehow the emotions of other people and their experiences were more important than mine. I guess you could say that as an adult, I started to get self esteem, something I never really had before. I did well in school and activities, but that was because I was trying to forget what was going on. It was the best drug for my situation - and like a fool, I believed in the American dream that if I worked hard enough I would eventually get out of my situation, which I haven't been able to do yet. I had fed into the lie that what was happening to other people invalidated my feelings, that anything a person said about me was true - no matter how false and demeaning. I usually just want to sleep now. I have never really been treated like a person in my opinion, and if I have, I usually do not believe the people or am expecting them to soon start treating me like other people have in the past. It is a good first step to admit that you were in an abusive situation, and that no matter how people want to minimize, disregard your feelings, or intimidate you, the abuse occurred.

It is also hard to move past people now who want you to pay for the problems you have. I never really got therapy when I was younger, and even if I did I have repressed whatever coping mechanisms they have taught me. Neglect a child when they are younger, continue to allow the situation to worsen because the abuse you experienced as a child affects your ability to function as an adult. It is a horrible, unjust situation. It is how we get homeless people - and none of it is my fault. My mother even blames me for not telling her I needed therapy as a child. I was supposed to know that? She put my stepsister in therapy - I was neglected and I have to admit it now, as much as I love my mother.