Easter Sunday... It's supposed to be a day of hope remembering Christ's resurrection. In some ways I am participating in Easter, but I feel more like an outside observer this time. Not belonging, but this time of my own choosing. I made sure everything ran smoothly this morning and the whole family made it to the sunrise service on time and even a little early and then on to the breakfast at church and then the worship service. Dinner is in the oven the potatoes are cooking and the gravy is standing by ready to be made at the last minute. The boys are all down and actually sleeping for naptime. It's been a perfect day thus far. After naps then everyone will get their Easter baskets and then we will have our Easter dinner.
Sounds great and it is except... I dissociated through most of the service which made me rather fuzzy headed afterwards. Someone asked me if I was sick because it seemed I was walking like I didn't feel well and seemed off. I thought I was hiding it well. Evidently not. I am out of practice in hiding how I feel. People are used to seeing me fully engaged and not in shut down mode. She also kept asking and guessing what was wrong until I told her the short version of the story, which was the PTSD is back and I thought I was over it because everything was so different this time. I also told her about the two local counselors who couldn't handle my "multiple traumas" and one of them has been counseling for 30 years and has PTSD with trauma as a specialty. Somewhere in the conversation I said a few times, "I'm done." She asked what I was done with. I couldn't give her a good answer. I didn't want to. Church? was one of her guesses. I wasn't sure how to answer that question since that is something I've been thinking about. She and another lady who came back into the conversation a bit later both hugged me and said they would pray for me and some other comforting type statements.
Another conversation in the parking lot with someone else, more hugs and encouragement to not blame myself or carry guilt for considering or deciding to not adopt the boys. The only people who know at this point in my face to face life are the pastors and elders at church, and at least one of their wives.
So, it's a perfect Easter Sunday. We have the pictures to prove it. I wish I didn't have a different narrative running underneath it all. The one that says, "This is the one and only Easter you'll have with these boys. The last holiday. They will leave with their Easter outfit, but maybe will never want to wear it again because of the association of the last happy holiday with us. Everyone sees how well they are doing and the improvement in behavior. No one will understand why I can't do the mom thing, why I can't pull it together, why I have an inability to parent them all, why all of a sudden I can't handle the improved version of these boys or what my problem really is. God is sovereign but why so much pain? Am I supposed to tough it out and somehow stop leaning on my older children for help? The more times a day goes well and I survive it, the more I doubt myself."
Then again, with the almost constant dissociation during church, dizziness, blurry vision and the lingering headache and evidently odd way of walking around afterwards, can that be called a successful day? I am surviving it, but that's it. And this day is going so well compared to others! I just want to sleep it off, but if I dare go to sleep I will easily be out for the next 4-5 hours which would ruin the day for everyone else. So I inflict upon a few people another rambling blog post chronicling my journey through life.
Showing posts with label secondary trauma on counselor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label secondary trauma on counselor. Show all posts
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
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?
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?
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