Posted by Tamar on October 5, 2005, at 17:29:11
In reply to getting over 'abuse', posted by B2chica on October 4, 2005, at 12:50:10
Hi B2Chica,
I don’t know if I have answers to all your questions. They’re still my questions too sometimes… but I’ll try…
> ever since these memories of abuse (i say that word without believing it applies to me) started to come back to me i feel like my whole day surrounds them. i eat drink and sleep them. i just dwell on it. sometimes i have so many questions, other times i'm confused, other times in disbelief, then of course times that i start the blame game and push myself further into depression.
The blame game is awful, isn’t it? It’s so hard to come to the point of believing that it wasn’t your fault. And when the memories won’t go away, it’s easy to blame yourself, no matter how often people tell you that it wasn’t your fault, that almost no one fights back, that people who do bad things are morally responsible for those bad things, and that you didn’t ask for it. (((((B2C)))))
> will it ever let up.
Eventually, but it takes hard work and it hurts. Eventually it will hurt less.
> what helps.
For me, one thing that helped was talking, talking, talking with my therapist. He was wonderful.
> how many times do i have to re-live this cr@p,
Sometimes you need to look it at from several different perspectives, and it takes time to get through them. But it will get easier. It really will.
> how many more memories will i have,
It’s impossible to know. But as long as you keep talking it will get easier to process the memories that emerge.
> do people get tired of hearing cr@p like this. i feel like i shouldn't be talking at all about this at all. sometimes i feel like my T would get tired of hearing this crap session after session. (he's never shown me that, it's just me thinking that).
That one I *can* answer. The answer is: No. People don’t get tired of hearing about it. Your therapist doesn’t get tired of hearing about it. And people at Babble don’t get tired of hearing about it. You can keep talking about it as much as you need to. You can ask your therapist straight out if you don’t believe me. Just ask him whether he gets tired of hearing about it. I’m certain he’ll say he doesn’t get tired of it. (I’d bet my house on it.)
> i just can't seem to think about anything else.
It can be overwhelming. I used to have to write everything down. Putting it on paper got it out of my head, so that I wasn’t spiralling through the same stuff over and over again. And I used the stuff I’d written as a springboard for discussion with my therapist.
It can be intrusive, though… it’s easy to find yourself thinking about it when you want to be doing other things. If you’re finding it hard to put it aside when you really need to (like when you’re at work), maybe you could talk to your therapist about that.
I think you’ve been making amazing progress over the last few months. I know it can be hard to feel that way when you’re still in the middle of it. But from over here it seems that you’re making great use of your internal resources.
Tamar
poster:Tamar
thread:562739
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051001/msgs/563328.html