Posted by Racer on October 6, 2004, at 21:22:37
In reply to Things I CANNOT speak of to my T (may trigger), posted by Skittles on October 6, 2004, at 17:36:07
I hope you don't take this the wrong way, because it's intended entirely as support for you, but I wonder if what you wrote in the last paragraph might not be the real key here?
"In my own mind, I think these could be strong indicators of csa. But I don't trust myself either. And I can't seem to tell my T about them. As a teenager, no one seemed to think the emotional abuse my father inflicted on me was significant and I never felt heard because of it. I just wanted someone to help me."
Is it possible that you *still* don't feel as if the emotional abuse was significant enough to have caused your pain all by itself? Emotional pain is just as real as sexual abuse. In fact, as someone who was sexually abused in childhood, I can tell you that it was not nearly as traumatic as the emotional torture that I experienced. The only reason the sexual abuse was a continuing problem for me once it stopped is that NO ONE took it seriously. "You're just overreacting." (He didn't ever deny it, he just said that I was overreacting and there was nothing wrong with what he had done.) It was that invalidation that caused the continuing harm, not what he did to me.
Also, I've been in a number of incest survivors' support groups, as a condition when I reported him to Child Protective Services, and *everyone* in those groups remembered. There was not one with any sort of repressed memory. I know it can happen, but I think it's very, very rare. What I have seen and experienced, though, is what I think you're experiencing right now: some part of you is still thinking that there must be something much worse that happened to you, in order to explain why you're still having trouble. The emotional abuse alone is enough to explain that. It might also explain the hypervigilance about sexual contact, too: if you're conditioned to suppress your emotions, and to avoid emotional intimacy, it may be that causing many of your symptoms. (Were you a virgin at your first pelvic? It could be related to that, or it could be that your first experiences weren't good.)
Those are just some ideas for you, things that came up strongly for me on reading your post. It is, of course, absolutely possible that you really are recovering memories of csa. These are another possible explanation.
Now that I've confused myself, I'd recommend discussing the surface part of this issue with your therapist. That you're having a very hard time telling her what's coming up for you right now, because you're not sure if you're remembering something that actually happened to you, or if you're remembering something that didn't happen, and you're afraid that talking with her about it will lead to your becoming embarrassed. That would be a very productive discussion, I'll bet, because you could explore what it would mean to you to be embarrassed.
I hope that helps. It's rotten to be in that sort of a space. (Been there -- you're not alone in experiencing it._
poster:Racer
thread:399733
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041002/msgs/399819.html