Posted by Tamar on October 23, 2005, at 20:02:14
In reply to Such a fake **Trigger** csa, posted by antigua on October 23, 2005, at 18:46:46
> I'm getting really good at faking my life, pretending that everything is fine when inside I feel worse than mabye ever before. Maybe not that bad, but pretty bad.
I’m so sorry. It sounds awful.
> I have a new pdoc who I saw on Friday. I'm certain much of these low, low feelings are about medication. The pdoc switched me off Effexor to Cymbalta, but I feel like i'm on nothing. It's all there, and I can't get away from it. He says we need to give the new drug more time; sometimes I worry there isn't time. Three days this week I stayed in bed literally all day, but, of course, jumped out of bed when the kids came home from school.
Can you get help with the kids? Maybe until the new meds kick in?
> Therapy is so hard right now. Part of me thinks it's good to be hit w/these intense feelings while I'm unmedicated because I really think the medication keeps me from feeling. Feelings are always blocked; they aren't now. I still don't cry, though, that's the hardest thing to do. A good long cry would help, I'm sure.
Yeah… but you have to be ready to cry…
> Same old story: I just want to be held and told that it's all going to be o.k. I want to be touched, too, to satisfy the desire, and that's humiliating to face. Tricky thing is it has to be by a man and it's not my husband. I'd like to just get the damn hug so I'd discover it isn't what I long for, and then I could move forward.I think I know exactly what you mean. I wish therapists would realise this. But yeah: it has to be a man (in my case he has to be older that me) and it can’t be my husband, because he’s my husband.
I hope this isn’t too triggering… I’ve read in a number of places that women with a history of abuse often have sexual problems in long term relationships but have a tendency to get sexually involved with men outside their relationships and have much more satisfying sex. I think it’s probably the same kind of thing with the hugging. I think there’s something we look for that becomes somehow compromised in long term relationships. Maybe being with someone who loves us (or someone we know well) is somehow too dangerous…
And I think you’re right: I think the hug with another man won’t bring you what you long for. Even the best kind of sexual touch won’t do it. I’ve come to think that, for me, it’s a quest for magical healing. A kind of once-for-all touch that makes me all better. That’s what I want. And I find it so frustrating to have to face up to the idea that it doesn’t exist.
> I can't stop thinking about my father and how much I loved him. I have this real dilemma, which I'm working on. If, as my wonderful T says, he is totally responsible for the abuse (I accept this intellectually), that means I was less than nothing to him. It was him taking advantage of whatever body was available. So to take that tact leaves me with even worse feelings for myself. And yes, I did want the love and attention the good father gave me, and I know that I was just a child and that every child craves the attention, but to think I was nothing, that I asked for it, is so much harder to take.Well… there are so many ways of thinking of it. I’ve read that abusers rationalise the abuse and can come to believe that they really are offering love. Of course, abuse isn’t loving. But perhaps abusers think of it as loving, even if they’re completely misguided (and even if they conveniently ‘forget’ the coercion and the suffering involved). So it’s possible that your father loved you very much and split off that love from the knowledge that he was harming you.
I don’t know. I haven’t been through what you’ve been through. But I’m sure that the guys who raped me thought they were offering me an erotic experience that I would enjoy (sex with two men: a common fantasy), and didn’t want to think about the coercive aspects of the situation. They were still responsible for the coercion, though.
I think ultimately it’s an extraordinarily difficult question: if your father loved you, how could he have hurt you so badly? And none of the explanations are satisfactory. I think everyone who has been hurt in that way tries to find ways to reconcile love and abuse: maybe he didn’t understand he was hurting you. Maybe he thought he was helping you. Maybe he had been hurt himself. All these ideas cross people minds. And they’re ultimately unsatisfying because they can never get to the root of your suffering. Nothing can adequately explain why someone would do something like this and why it should hurt so much. And so you end up split as well: he loved you, but he hurt you. Maybe there is no answer and no explanation. Maybe only thing you can do is try to make sense of where you are now. For some people (and I don't know if it would work for you) that means reconciling the image of abusive father with the image of the loving father.
I wish I could say something that would actually help.
I’m so very sorry you’re hurting so much. I do hope those meds kick in soon.
Tamar
poster:Tamar
thread:571116
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051018/msgs/571144.html