Posted by Racer on September 11, 2005, at 22:08:02
This all came up for me over reading some posts of mine from way back when I first started posting. (Did a search to see when that was for the Social board question...)
I have been having a very, very hard time with really understanding what happened to me last year. If anyone here remembers, I had a nightmare with an agency that was supposedly providing treatment for me after a suicide attempt, during a period when I was uninsured. During the course of treatment there, I went from being depressed and feeling pretty hopeless and worn out, to being depressed, agoraphobic, anxious, anorexic (no one there noticed, even when I asked for help), hopeless, etc. In other words, I got a whole lot sicker while receiving what they considered more than adequate treatment. In fact, their only response to my pleas for actual help were to tell me it was all my fault, that I had Borderline Personality Disorder, that I needed to stop being unwilling to do anything to help myself, that I needed to learn to get along with other people, and generally to blame me for not getting better with all their great help. (Mind you, my complaints included sexual harrassment by a case manager -- and they were utterly unwilling to assign me a new case manager. Seems that would have "sent the wrong message" to me...)
Anyway, a couple of times someone has pointed out that it isn't surprising that I was hurt and got worse with what happened to me there. And part of me knows just that. If it had happened to anyone else, I would have been outraged.
But since it happened to me, I have a huge turmoil of conflicted feelings about it -- mostly they boil down to "I shouldn't be hurt" and "it's my fault, since other bad things have happened to me." My therapist mentioned the other day, after I told her about what happened when someone sexually assaulted me on the street on the way to a therapy appointment when I was 13 and the therapist scolded me for being late and told me that the guy couldn't have assaulted me at all since I was too young for anyone to do that (you can bet I couldn't have brought up the molestation at home with her, right?), that I had been abused by a therapist before this latest go round. My reaction was total denial -- vehement denial.
Last night I finally realized what it was. Fourty-nevermind years of trying to figure out why I was like this about being hurt and I finally get it after reading posts on an Internet bulletin board. Huh...
I'm afraid that what I've been accused of before is true -- that I'm being a Professional Victim, that I'm actually bringing on all these bad things, and that what I'm doing is refusing to accept responsibility for what I've caused. I'm afraid that I "shouldn't" have been hurt by any of these things, that I'm only whining because it's teh easy way out and that's what I do instead of working a little harder to improve things in my life. I'm afraid that all the things that blasted agency accused me of are true, that they didn't do anything wrong and it really was all me.
Now, I know that I was taught to feel that way, that people in my life told me those things about myself over and over and over again, and I grew up believing all of them. (I remember crying so hard, hiding behind the loveseat, because my mother told me how selfish I was. If you have children, what do you think? I think six year olds are not yet able to be particularly thoughtful of others...) I grew up believing down to my core that I was a selfish, terrible person. Even now, I still have a big part who believes that I'm only pretending not to be the most horribly selfish, egocentric person on earth.
What I'm wondering, though, is if anyone knows what really sets admitting that one has been abused apart from being that Professional Victim? Is there anything I can hold onto to help me accept that I'm really not at fault for all this?
Thanks.
poster:Racer
thread:553954
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050901/msgs/553954.html