Dissociating Doesn't Have to be Forever. Hope is Real.

I have some goals I'd like to meet, and counseling is helping me move towards those goals.  One fairly simple sounding one is to be able to read the Bible without being triggered, having flashbacks or dissociating.  That's not an easy thing for me.  I can't just turn all that off.  The ways I have to turn it off are to shut emotions down again and go into robot mode, or to not read the Bible.   I can listen to it being read in church, and it's now only occasionally a problem.  When I read it or someone reads it to me personally then it becomes some sort of a weapon aimed at me.  (And it's not the sword of the spirit bringing much needed conviction to my life.) 

My pastor read Matthew 15:10-20 to me in our last counseling session.  He thought it would be a comfort to me; instead it was a major trigger and I zoned in and out and had flashbacks too.  It was really weird to have so much going on in my mind and yet a kind of nothingness going on at the same time.  I was able to listen and hear what he was saying pretty well, considering.  I learned something surprising, the flashbacks and all the other involuntary things are not "my" evil coming out of me or a lack of applying Philippians 4:8 properly(think on those things that are lovely etc).  It is a result of evil done TO me.  Along with this idea that I think has finally sunk in, came the statement.  "You can't separate your body from the rest of yourself."  That surprised me.  For the last two years I have been reconnecting and it has been a rough transition.  I have kept separated for most of my life, but I know it's not a good long term solution.

From the time I was young I would go into a dark little room in the corner of my mind until it was safe to come out.  Most of the time the room was dark and my "inside me" would just curl up there for a while.  Other times it was a whole nother beautiful world where I was the hero and I was surrounded by friends who were family to me.  I didn't dare go there too often because I think it made me smile or something that made things worse for the "outside me", and when that happened I would be jolted back to the outside.

As a child, Spock was my favorite Star Trek character.  I studied him nightly with every episode.  I practiced in the mirror complete facial control of emotions and ultimately successfully suppressed involuntary emotional responses.  It took practice, but I was motivated.  This complete emotion control was necessary to shorten the beatings and lectures at home.  A lecture doesn't sound bad, but it is when you have to stand perfectly still, but not too still, and have the correct facial expression at all times for 45 minutes or more.  If my stance shifted or my expression wasn't correct; then I would get another spanking for the "offence" I was being lectured for.  If I was lucky I would only get three sets of "spankings".  You would think I would be quite good at standing still by the end of 6th grade, since that was one of his favorite tortures.  Making me stand facing the wall for the 45 minute recess while he told me what I had to do to get off the wall.  Talk about controlling my facial expressions and just leaving my body.  I was good at it.

As a teen I added in Data from The Next Generation to my studies.  I didn't do so well with modeling Data.  He wasn't inconsistent enough, but it was still helpful.  For most of my life I've done this thing called dissociation, but didn't know the name for it until this past year.  Dissociating is what allowed me to stay sane and function.  This separation is my default and that's why I dissociate so easily, it removes me from what causes me pain.  It separates "me" from my body and mind.  At this point it is no longer a help.  It has become a hindrance and gets in the way of comprehending truth, dealing with current events in life, or being able to read the Bible.  Increasingly I am gaining hope that I can relearn everything, and be whole again.  Someday the old tapes will be completely destroyed and new ones in place.  Right now the old ones are being overwritten, but they still leak through pretty strongly.  What's awesome is that I recognize when garbage leaks through, or someone else recognizes it; and I am in a place where God is busy writing over the old tapes through friends, sacraments at church, Psalm singing and my pastors.  

Psalm 121:1

I lift up my eyes to the hills. 

From where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

The Lord has sent help and a whole lot of it.  I may not be able to look at v7 right now without problems, but someday maybe I can.

Where are you in regards to _____ on a scale of 1 to 10 with one being ______and 10 being ______?

The scale question comes in many forms, but it always confuses me.  Am I being asked based on my personal scale of pain for example?  Right now I have spasms in my back that hurt quite a bit.  So when I do make it in to the chiropractor and massage therapist I'm sure I will be asked the scale question.  Do I compare pain in general or this type of muscle pain?  Because if its just pain, then I've felt a lot worse.  I'm walking crooked, but I can still walk.  It's less pain than burns I've had.  More pain than having my knee out of socket, a whole lot less than having wisdom teeth removed, but then again childbirth hurt less than that.

The idea of putting triggers, flashbacks, dissociation, depression, anxiety or how I relate to God on a scale of 1 to 10 totally befuddles me.  What do I compare everything to? What is the baseline?  Lets say 1 is the bad end and 10 is the completely awesome end.  If 1 is the point just before a suicide attempt and 10 is a joyful and peaceful life where you deal with all problems in a perfect manner; then the jumps between numbers is too great.  A different scale is needed.

I'm not volunteering to come up with one.  I don't think mine would be much better, but at least it would work for me, even if for no one else ;)

Overall, I'd vote for no scale.  My scale would be warped my way, like so.  Just pick a common pain or experience that people have and say whether it is greater or lesser than that pain or experience.  Here are some common pains or experiences that could be used.  Childbirth(medicated or natural), oven burn, hammering your finger, suicide of a friend, death of a close family member, sunburn up to sun poisoning, stubbed toe, cuts requiring stitches or crutches...See what I mean about my scale being weird for most people?  Surely there's some grant money floating around out there and someone can come up with a decent scale for this oft asked question?  Keep in mind, numbers just don't cut it.

How God is Becoming More Real to Me

How is God real to me?  It sounds like an odd question to ask, maybe *gasp* like something a seeker friendly church would have a little pamphlet on.  I can't help any similarities there may be.  I must remind myself that God cares and look for those ways He shows himself to be real, not just a far off God who doesn't hear.  I can't reconcile my pleading prayers when I was being abused and His apparent deafness, to the teaching that God is present and hears our prayers and loves us.  When I try to think through both things I get trapped in a loop of flashbacks.  It's not a good place to be.

What I can do is to look for God's hands in my life today and then in the more recent past.  If I go back too much farther; I run into problems, big ones like: does God love me, did he love me back then, what about protection, is God really good, how sovereign is he anyway, and God was present but did nothing.  The way I can skip over those type of questions is for me to look at all the evil in the world being done to people of all ages and then remind myself that I'm nothing special to rate some divine protection.  There are Christians being murdered and abused for their faith.  I had it pretty easy in comparison. Somehow I'm not sure this is the way to handle it.  It ends up with me viewing God as a distant and uncaring God who is big into consequences.  So then I'm back to completely ignoring my own past, beyond the last few years, and disregarding today's present persecution of Christians unless I put it into a "suffering for Christ" category.

Today I look for God's caring in my life.  I see it in the meals brought to us by families in our church; in the freshly mowed grass because all of our mowers are broken and my husband now works out of town; in the concern being shown to us as one of our children is suffering from head trauma; texts, phone calls, getting together to just talk; in so many kindnesses big and small; and the fact that I can't disappear from church or blend into the background because I have become a part of this body. All this and so much more are evidences to me that God cares.  I see it through the tangible touch and actions of Christians who are God's arms around me in difficult times, in times of change and in the mundane of everyday life.

Another aspect of God that I see is that of Him working in me to change in a myriad of ways. Something is said repeatedly over a long period of time in many different ways and places until one day I hear it again but now it is accompanied by that uneasy feeling of guilt.  It's a different sort of guilt than the one that goes along with being abused.  It's one that causes you to realize this is talking about me and this is my sin.  To avoid dealing with this sin guilt is not a good thing.  Slowly my eyes and ears are being opened.  I'm sure this is God at work showing me what needs to be confessed and repented of.  Easier said than done, though.

God is becoming more real to me through His church, specifically and mainly the church I'm a member of.  I'm thankful for mp3 players, blogs, facebook posts, email, texting, and twitter.  All this tech provides more ways for me to hear again what God is trying to tell me.  It doesn't sink in the first time around I hear it in a worship service or in counseling.  God is patient with me and I've seen His gentleness towards me in the last two years.  I can be in church now and rarely dissociate anymore, and the triggers are seldom a problem.  A lot has changed in the last six months from what my church experiences were two years ago or one year ago.  May God continue His work.

Can I Tell My Story, Uncensored? Should I?

What is the importance of telling your story?  I mean really telling it, from beginning to end.  The last time I attempted to do that was in the last couple of years and it was only the highlights, if you will, of a life time of smaller hurts and also of ongoing effects of childhood sexual abuse which still affect me today.  The statement that counselor made to me was that any one of these events would be enough to cause PTSD in someone.  For two or three, one hour sessions I briefly ran down the list without too much detail.  From the confident woman I first met, this counselor changed before my eyes into someone who seemed to be afraid to hear the next thing that would come from my mouth.  My trauma was causing her pain in some way.  I didn't understand how she could feel my pain.  All I knew was that she was having serious problems with hearing my bare bones story.  I felt bad to be hurting her, so I didn't go back.  My story remained untold.

Lately I've been googling, trying to find out if telling it in story form is a good thing, necessary or just a nice sounding way of wallowing in the past.  When I think of NOT telling my story as a whole, instead of in disconnected pieces; then a whole host of statements made to me by my abuser start playing in a continuous loop, joined by all the other not-helpful things people("friends", counselors, pastors, police officers and lawyers and toss in one ignorant doctor) have said to me over the years.  I often feel as disconnected as the way in which I've told my story to my pastor/counselor.  In the beginning he told me I didn't have to tell him everything about the actual abuse, so I didn't.  Along the way I disclosed small snapshots of what happened when I was abused.  I tested him at every turn, waiting for the words, "I can't help you. You need to find another counselor."  Instead he keeps on telling me that he's in it for the long haul.  I believe him now.

In spite of a non linear telling of events and staying focused, more on the effects of the abuse in my life today than a upfront factual retelling of the abuse, my pastor/counselor has the basic gist of what happened.  There is a bit of a problem with adequately addressing guilt and shame, since I've only barely brushed on those immensely shaming aspects of the abuse, in all the many hours of counseling over the last 18 months.  I don't know how to go there, or if I should go there.  It's pretty explicit because that's part of the story, and to sanitize what happened so its a little more palatable seems like its minimizing what really happened.  I lived through it.  No one sanitized it for me.  No one dimmed the horror by skipping what I couldn't handle.  Not one person has heard it all.  In order to cushion the blows my words have become to my hearer, I always skip around as I speak of the sexual abuse in counseling.  Past counselors have either been deeply affected to the point that they can't help me or have done other odd things that moved the focus from my abuser like: attempting to convince me it was a different person who abused me; or that my "real" problem was something besides the sexual abuse.  To a point, it has been a necessary cushioning of it for me too, yet I'm also acutely aware of my edits and deliberate minimizing of the abuse in order to talk about it and not harm or scare off another counselor.  There are times I don't say things because I'm sitting there contemplating whether or not bringing up certain aspects of events would be too explicit; and therefore would bring down some sort of rebuke for a gratuitous recounting of things about the abuse or its long term effects that didn't need to be said.

This fear of rejection runs in me so strongly that I can't think reasonably about the chances of such a rebuke occurring.  Technically, rejection of me as a person, and not listening to the details of my story are not the same thing.  In my mind I know this, but the part of me which fear controls can't make that distinction.  Crawling under a rock and face hiding shame dominates my thinking and instinctive self protective behaviour.  I would contaminate another person by going into the shame filled details.  Why wouldn't anyone not look at me with disgust if they knew everything?  It's not like I want to put out all the details, or even any of them, to everyone who knows me.  I just want one person on earth to know everything and not turn away from me.  That hasn't happened yet.  No one yet knows everything.  I don't blame them for not being able to handle hearing it, but still, I had to live it.  Isn't there anyone who can listen to me say everything; from the sound of the stairs, the creaking open of the door, the smell of concrete, the taste of fear and helplessness, to the things I did to provoke him so he would just get it over with?  Or is it just too much to put on someone else?  When it's all put together it is horrendous and explicit in all the details of what he did to me and what I did, felt, saw, and thought at the time.  Is is wrong for me to tell my story, uncensored?

Writing In Order To Do Battle

I can't find the answer to this, but I've been wondering about it for the last several days.  Wondering to the point of almost panicly worrying.  Does PTSD come and go?  For me that has been my experience, but I can't find anyone else saying the same thing.  I've wondered about this for years now, ever since a doctor gave me a word for what was happening to me.  I'm a bit funny with the way I describe things not realizing its something "real" and enough other people have had the same thing going on that they gave it a name.  Just this past year I discovered the word dissociate and what it was, and lo and behold it's what I've been calling "zoning", "being gone somewhere" or "losing time".  I have a great fear of re-entering the battle and once again ending up in those dark places where I lose my way.  I stopped writing when I got to a comfortable place.  God is held at arms length, but I can catch glimpses of Him in church on Sunday and through the overwhelming kindness of my church family.  It's a safe place in my journey, but I'm being nudged along to go farther.

I haven't been writing, anywhere, and that concerns me a bit, in the sense that it should concern me, but it doesn't--not really.  I write when I'm actively dealing with things and I haven't written in months.  I've been asked to make a list of fears and concerns to work through in counselling.
I would say "challenged", but that just sounds too baptist to me.  Of course to me it's not just a list, it's the contents of the boxes I've been dragging around all these years.  In some ways its the monsters in my closets that have come so close to destroying me in the past.  I use the word past in a way that includes not only my personal ancient past, but my recent past too.  Just yesterday I read two bloggers who posted on the topic of writing either directly or indirectly.  One of them sounds like he is fairly close to where I am in my own journey while the other one is in a place that often seems unattainable to me.  Both of them are writers that speak to me in the deep places of my soul.  http://redemptionpictures.com/2014/09/12/when-writing-is-an-act-of-hope/
http://messytheology.wordpress.com/2014/09/10/when-there-are-no-words/

Writing for me has always been cathartic.  I started my first little diary in third grade.  I still had it, up until almost four years ago when our house burned down.  As an adult, reading that first diary I ever kept, brought back memories, good and bad.  Almost all the good things in there involved going to my grandma's house, the food she made, the stories she told and helping her hang out laundry, pick apples and watch her work in her garden.  When I was old enough to not pull plants instead of weeds, I was actually allowed to go in the garden.  Other events I wrote about I remember writing carefully in case my diary was ever stolen and read.  My careful writing at age 9 wasn't careful enough and I got in trouble for what I wrote.  I didn't keep a diary again until 5th grade.  I learned my lesson and wrote carefully and left out the most ugly parts.  Yet years later reading my diary from elementary I again saw those events I so carefully edited in my writing, and the memories invoked were not edited.
The power of the written word is incredible.  And those were just my own childish writings, yet they held the key to my memory, to my own story.

By 7th grade I was writing furiously and unedited, except for the terrible secret I carried that I couldn't write about even in my own journal.  The raw anger flowed from my pen and filled spiral notebooks.  Anger, hurt, and betrayal, along with the pettiness of junior high drama, were my themes. I wrote for me and only me.  I wrote to keep my sanity and a place to siphon off the anger and rage that threatened to tear me apart.  My anger grew as my understanding of what had happened to me grew.  I never gave it a word until 2003.  I couldn't name it.  I was too afraid.  The anger was too powerful and I barely kept it in check through my writing.  By 9th grade I was learning to control the anger through other means and harness it.  I made good use of it and the abuse at home finally stopped, for me.  Still I wrote.  My survival depended upon it.

I wrote all through high school and into college at Bob Jones University, where I again looked for help and thought I found it.  I would have been better off to have kept writing and skipped the counselling.  The times I stopped writing were the times I was being successful at locking down all my boxes and shutting off emotions.  But of course anger was a main component of all the boxes and anger can only be contained for so long.  Thus the cycle of writing while depressed, angry and trying to close back the boxes that another counseling attempt had opened began.  I haven't written anywhere for a few months.  It's been different this time though.  At least one of my monsters has been destroyed and not all emotion has been cut off.  I think I've been experiencing life the way that other people do, to a point.  Real emotions have still been in play.  I've cried and didn't shut it off with anger.  I can't remember doing that before.  It's been incredible to smile and cry and not have to do my usual routine in order to "be normal".  I like it.  The problem is that this is only a plateau and there is a long journey still ahead.  I've been content here for long enough.  It was a nice break from the battle, but it's time to re-engage.  Once again, I write.

Forgiveness Without Coercion: What does it look like?

If anyone would have told me 6 months ago that I would be in contact with a former counselor and forgiveness would be brought up, and the end result would be a good one; I never would have believed it.  For the first time in my life someone asked for my forgiveness and didn't try to avoid responsibility or turn it back on me and make it out to be my fault in any way.  I am still in shock.  I've never experienced anything like this in my life. (There has been one other person, but that happened outside of the IFB/BJU world and the whole process was much simpler.)

Forgive  It's one of those major trigger words that can easily lead to full blown flashbacks.  Except this time it didn't.  I'm not say it wasn't triggering and that I didn't have flashbacks, but because of the other persons response to me the flashbacks didn't become debilitating.  I did lose some time( the name I've used to describe dissociation for 20 years, before I knew there was a name for it) but overall it was just a beautiful demonstration of what the process of forgiveness and reconciliation can look like.  This may not sound like a positive experience, but it was and is.   It was hard work and took the better part of three days.  At the beginning of this renewed contact  I had no inkling where it would go.  At first I received a somewhat generic request for my forgiveness without the other person really comprehending what it was they were asking my forgiveness for.  Back and forth we went until I was concise and specific enough that the only option left would be to dodge it, turn it back on me, or accept responsibility.  Amazingly, the responsibility was accepted and forgiveness still asked for and then granted.  By the end, I actually wanted to forgive and I wasn't guilted into it.

Wow!  If this were to happen for everyone; what a different world we would be in.  Granted, this is only one person and not even my original abuser, but the effect this persons counsel had on me was far reaching and life threatening.  For this person to acknowledge the harm, is such a huge deal for me.  I never thought it possible.  Maybe, just maybe, others will follow suit for me and for others.  And maybe the hurt, and the fear, and the never ending guilt can begin to be assuaged, for all of us.  As to the teacher that abused me in elementary school, I doubt he would know genuine repentance if it ran over him, but that is a topic for another post.

Maybe someday I will be at a point where I can read the Bible without being severely triggered and spiraling into either dissociation or flashbacks.  For now I'm ok with enjoying the good things in life and being thankful to God for the beauty I see.  The GRACE investigation set off a chain of events in my life that is truly life changing.  I have to face the past or be crushed by it. It's a slow road to healing and agonizing at times, but I think I have hope that it is possible.

Mondays Irritating Question

Sundays question is, "How are you doing?" For most people I give some version of normal like: "Fine", "Doing all right.",  "Been busy" or list some activity we did or might think about doing.  Then along comes Monday and the question changes to, "So, how was your weekend?"  Really?  What is with the small talk?  I hate small talk.  I don't even like the phrase "small talk".  Why does the fact that I am trapped in a chiropractors office mean that I have any desire to have the same conversation starter that I don't want to start, started over and over.  This chiropractor has several therapies going on in series so I endured this question more than normal in a short span of time.  By the time I was at the massage therapists station I was so done dancing around the question of my weekend.

We somehow ended up having a real conversation.  I steered it by commenting on why my neck and shoulders were so tense and knotted up.  I simply said I've been really stressed for the last couple of weeks.  In turn she asked about why or what has been the stress.  We ended up with a genuine conversation about Bob Jones University and the GRACE investigation and also another Christian college she was much more familiar with.  I think she was a bit more free than she planned on being and seemed worried that I would be offended; and stressed that I did ask and it was only her opinion.  Hopefully I put her at ease on that point, but I doubt it.  I did enjoy a real conversation not based on polite small talk.  I didn't say much; it only took a decent comment on my part and she was off and running.  After the massage station I only had to endure one more person asking me about my weekend. :D

In case you were wondering, but certainly wouldn't dare to ask me now; my weekend was a mixed bag.  Friday was a major trigger type day.  I thought I could read a Psalm without ill effects.  NOPE, crash and burn.  Friday night was a big church get together at somebodies house.  That was good, but still triggering and I stayed more on the outer edges of things.  I love a good party and the wine was great and quite helpful.  Saturday we had a picnic and walked around downtown and enjoyed the day.  We hit all the little shops that we never stop in, and I found two Louis L'Amour books I haven't read yet.  Sunday at church was mildly difficult on my scale.  I was able to stay here even when triggered, and only had a few flashbacks.  In the afternoon I went out for dessert with a friend for my birthday, and I enjoyed it.  So that was my weekend.

Writing it out doesn't sound so bad, but when I was asked about my weekend  the only things I could remember were the intense triggers on Friday because I read a Psalm and the triggers and flashbacks on Sunday that stayed in the manageable range.  I only needed to use a handful of methods to keep me here and didn't have to use them the whole time.  I wish my first thoughts were of the nice picnic and the shops and going out with my friend.  I didn't think of any of those things the whole time I was at the chiropractors office being asked constantly about my weekend.  I don't know why

Bob Jones University Can't Rewrite History

Yesterday was such an emotionally charged day with the news that BJU had re-hired GRACE that

 

I had a hard time processing it enough to write. I already had a counseling meeting scheduled with

 

my pastor, and of course that was one of the topics we discussed.

 

 

 

As soon as I found out I felt a huge weight lift and a lot of tension in my body released. Rejoicing and

 

skepticism fought for dominance in my thinking and emotions all day. I'm still not sure where the

 

pendulum is going to settle. I do know, in a practical sort of way, that Bob Jones University is only

 

going to do what they are forced to, and if they had been able to find any other way around this

 

backpedaling and re-hiring of GRACE without any changes to the original contract, they certainly

 

would have done so. This is good news, yet it should never have even been an issue. BJU should

 

never have terminated GRACE. They didn't suspend them or the investigation no matter how they

 

try to lie about it and change the wording now, after the fact. I won't forget. We won't forget. They

 

can't rewrite this bit of history. Survivors have been silenced and told what the “truth” is no matter

 

what is remembered for many years. There are now too many writing the truth for a successful BJU

 

history re-write to occur. I know in my own life it's all been rewritten and how things were, is ignored

 

or forgotten. I'm not a child anymore and I am far enough removed in time that I can stand my

 

ground on what is true regarding my past. Therefore there is no way that BJU can wield that

 

institutional amnesia over me and other survivors, and have us succumb to their version of the events

 

by trying to alter the facts of their wording. No, they really did say

 

 

And here is the link for the termination letter

 

Bob Jones University's Termination Letter to G.R.A.C.E. 

 

If the link ever goes bad or gets deleted for some reason, I have a copy of the letter as a PDF on my

 

computer that I will put here in place of the link.

 

Last night a former high school classmate and fellow BJU grad asked me to briefly explain what the

 

BJU and GRACE thing was all about that she has been seeing and hearing about everywhere. I was

 

more than happy to fill her in, knowing that my explanation of recent events and the GRACE

 

investigation in general will spread farther. I can't fix what is wrong, but I can help carry the load; I

 

can give that hug and weep with those that weep and even rejoice with those who rejoice. I hope for

 

justice someday, but for now I can only do the things I am able in order to make my sphere of

 

influence a little brighter and a better reflection of how things will look when the world is set right

 

once again.

Bob Jones University's Termination Letter to G.R.A.C.E.

How Bob Jones University's Firing of GRACE Has Affected Me as a Survivor and Interviewee

Up until now I have never mentioned where I went to college or anything about that time in my life.  That's an impossible task to cover adequately in one post, but I do want to in a brief way discuss my infamous alma mater, Bob Jones University.  I grew up in a "Bob Jones" church, although in the early days it was more a Gothard church and I remember loading up in buses at church and riding downtown to the Basic Youth Conflicts meeting.  Brother Roloff was a regular preacher at our church, but I digress.  My college choices were Bob Jones University or Your on Your Own- Good Luck U.  The whole concept of scholarships and the evil government student loans was abhorred.  So off I went to Greenville, South Carolina and the Mecca of the Fundamentalist world, Bob Jones University.  I wasn't unhappy about it.  I had visited there a few times and knew how to dress like the college girls and not look like a high schooler.  I was quite pleased when my clothing was looked over by a girl that used to be in my youth group, but was now that most envied of positions, a GA(graduate assistant).  I thought I was hot stuff, with connections in the right places and coming from a well known and respected church and Christian school.  MY pastor was asked to speak at Bob Jones and so on.  I was such a self righteous, proud little brat, but I was never a Boje(that's BJ slang for tattletale).  My freshman year was an odd mix.  My APC(assistant prayer captain) was a 5th year senior who only had one semester left.  She introduced me to the wild crowd and told them I was cool and wouldn't get a conscience.  It's funny how she had me pegged.  I was very good at keeping quiet and self preservation.  I never did turn anyone in for anything my whole time at Bob Jones University, even when undergoing grilling by the Dean of Women (I always get Baker and Barker mixed up) or the Dean of Students, Mr. Berg.

One of my teachers my freshman year was similar in mannerisms and size as my teacher in elementary that molested and raped me during that whole school year.  I didn't have the right words for what was happening to me.  I genuinely liked Mr. Berg and went to him for help.  I described what was happening and one of the things I was told, was to think on those things that are lovely and to meditate on Philipians 4:8.  I tried so hard but things just got worse.  I have words now for what was happening:  triggers, flashbacks, PTSD and eventually dissociation.  I was severely depressed and became suicidal.  I thought I was going crazy.  I went to the wrong classes for an extended period of time until the teacher pointed out that I wasn't actually IN that class.  I would wander around and be vaguely aware that I was supposed to be somewhere.  After sessions with Mr. Berg I would walk out of the administration building and "come to" in some out of the way back campus location.

I'm barely touching on my experience with counseling while at Bob Jones, but it was a part of every year of my time there.  I interviewed with G.R.A.C.E. last year and have been paying a heavy toll for it.  I finally got to a point of relative peace in the last few months.  The flashbacks to the original abuse in elementary had become infrequent,  I could sing in church again and talking with a Baptist didn't throw me into panic.  I still couldn't read the Bible without being triggered, but I could listen to someone else read it, as long as it wasn't the King James version.  It was nice to wake up without that instant feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach.  I made it past a major depression and time of being suicidal.  PTSD symptoms were basically gone for a while.  I was still in counseling with my pastor, but it had lost the edge of desperation that began our counseling relationship soon after I filled out the original GRACE questionnaire and then went into full blown longlasting flashbacks.  Believe me, that was an interesting call!

But now, BJU has fired GRACE and it's not looking like the report will ever see the light of day, if BJU can get away with it.  I've seen various blogs and comments mention how this decision to fire GRACE re-traumatizes victims, but I haven't seen anyone specifically saying how it does.  I'm going to tell you how it affects me, and I hope that others will tell in the comments, or elsewhere, how BJU's actions in firing GRACE is affecting them.

 1. My hands are sweating like a faucet, and it makes the keyboard slippery to type on.
 2. Betrayed
 3. Headaches and eye twitches have returned
 4. Nightmares are starting back up
 5. I am being more easily triggered again
 6. Flashbacks are returning
 7. Anxiety (and DON'T tell me to be anxious for nothing!)
 8. General nervousness
 9. Difficulty staying in the present while singing in church (fighting to not dissociate too badly)
10. Nausea
11. Difficulty sleeping(I haven't slept well for a couple of weeks now and I was up the whole night this past Saturday.)
12. Loss of appetite (I could stand to lose a bunch of weight, so that's almost ok with me)
13. I know I'm depressed, although I can't say to what degree, but not currently suicidal.
14. I am physically tense all over to the point of pain
15. You really don't want to know about the connection all this has with my bowels ;)
16. Church is again full of triggers for me and has been increasing each week since GRACE was fired
17. I have been irritable and hard to live with(I'm working on it!)
18. Loss of hope(but then I got really ticked and that helps because I am doing what I can)
19. Crying and not able to control emotions well, so I use anger to keep the tears in check
20. Really and truly beginning to grasp the depth and beauty of the imprecatory Psalms and praying in a very specific way towards Bob Jones University---Lord, hear my prayer.

S is for Suicidal in September

Between October and now almost to the end of February I have had no postings.  Well in September I had a several days run of extreme depression.  I couldn't sleep for well over 60 hours.  I was, to put it quite bluntly, extremely suicidal.  I went as far as making a plan and taking steps to ensure I would be able to carry it out.  Once everything was in place I was so happy and lighthearted, and just felt such relief as though a great burden had been lifted.  I hadn't felt so good and free since high school, which was also the last time I actually tried to kill myself.  I drove around town for a little while reveling in how relaxed and happy I felt.  I wondered if this was how normal people felt sometimes.  I didn't want to wait for a better time.  NOW was feeling so wonderful, I was ready to be done with hurting; with curling up trying to hang on and riding the next wave of depression so deep that it hurt to just, be.  I drove around thinking about things and feeling good and truly alive.
Eventually I thought about my children and especially what my little guy had just recently started saying to me when I came home, "I missed you, Mommy."  He was so little, how could he voice that?  I heard his little voice in my mind and I couldn't die, but I wanted to so badly.  The pain was so intense for so long I couldn't bear to give up this relief and joy I felt.  I found myself driving to someone I trusted and giving them a note and a bottle of sleeping pills for them to keep.  I couldn't throw them out the window or drop them in the trash and once at their house I resisted their efforts to dispose of the pills.  I think I needed to feel I still had an out.  I'm not sure, it's strange to think it out loud like this.  For me depression is like the ebb and flow of the tides.  It always returns.  Sometimes I get hit with a tsunami, same waves, but totally out of control.