Jilllian

Thank you for reminding me that I'm going in the right direction. I so wish for happier tomorrows, and (selfishly) wish those tomorrows were above my baseline happiness level.

And thank you for the kind words.

Not sure where I would be right now without SR.

Jilllian

Thanks you, Ann.
It's hard to see the end of the tunnel sometimes.
People here believe in me, and that support is priceless.

Jilllian

On a whim today, I just picked up an application for part-time work to fill up some of my evenings. I don't believe in coincidences as they relate to life's struggles, so thank you for posting that.


Thank you.

laurie6781

(((((Jillian)))))

At this time, you probably have no idea how many folks you have 'helped' by 'sharing'
your story.

Part of my 'self medicating' with alcohol and drugs, for YEARS was to keep myself numb
from the memory of the 'abuse' as a child and a 'rape' in college.

It wasn't until I found recovery (with a step step program and a wonderful sponsor)
that I was able to start addressing this part of my past. It was my sponsor that
'suggested' that I start seeing a 'counselor' that specialized in 'rape and abuse' victims,
and that the best place to find one of that particular 'specialty' was at the local
rape crisis center.

It was several years with her, before she suggested that I might 'try' attending a
meeting or two of the women that were also suffering the PTSD from being raped.
I forced myself, and yes I do mean 'forced' myself to attend that first meeting,
and I am so grateful I did. I found gals that had endured worse than I had and gals
who had learned how to work through the trauma and 'move forward' with their
lives and were 'enjoying life' again. This gave me HOPE.

Slowly I worked through the PTSD and today not only still volunteer at the local
rape crisis center here, but also at the Domestic Violence Center.

Now through all this therapy and once I was on a good path to working through
the abuse and the rape, I also was diagnosed by my shrink as being Bi Polar and it
in all likelihood was my original reason for starting to 'self medicate' at 12 years old.
I got sober and clean at 36 years old. I will celebrate 31 years of sobriety on June
7th.

I am not 'outspoken' about my past and only share it until right now, with those I
sponsor or those at the DV center or the RC center. You with your PTSD and your
sharing of it in cyber space, somehow gave me the courage to do the same.

Hopefully, more will open up here and be able to show those still suffering that it is
something we can get past eventually and help others.

I have to agree Mike (((((Desert Song))))), you can and will get better, and as he
said you have already started:

And you have shared here.

J M H O but maybe it is time, after talking with your therapist, to check out the local
rape crisis center.

Sending healing thoughts and prayers.

Love and hugs,

Jilllian

Thank you.
This was truly inspirational to me. I related on so many levels. The numbing (for me anyway) was a trick my mind played, designed to discourage actually working on the real issues that effect my life.
You should be so, so proud of volunteering at the rape crisis center and domestic violence center. You're obviously very resilient and strong.

LoftyIdeals

Jillian...my heart is wrenched to tears for you. And for DesertEyes. I can't begin to imagine the pain either of you endured, and you have my prayers for your healing.

I want you to know that you have helped me today. I came as close to pitching my sobriety last night as I ever have. In fact, I had decided to do so, and then chickened out on the drinking part, thankfully. I can offer many reasons, but the truth is that I haven't been working on my recovery, and lost sight of its value.

Your post reminded me of the importance of being there and doing what I've committed to for my family, mostly for my kids.

Although my recovery and sobriety is important to me, it pales in comparison to the burden you must work through. There's been a lot of great advice on this thread, and compassionate support. I'd like to offer one more view.

In sobriety, I am given opportunities for my experience to benefit others. But, I have to submit to my recovery, my plan, and most of all, God, for Him to lead me to that path of helping others. When that happens, my greatest strengths emerge from my greatest pains and weaknesses. I have to allow His guidance, power and grace to lead me to places I've never been before, and are not comfortable, and I have to submit to His plan, without knowing what it is. I have to trust Him, and trust is very hard for all of us, but I can imagine it's so much harder for you. He has, and He will continue to lead me to still waters, and teach my heart to once again know peace. The more I trust His leading, the greater and faster my relief. And the greatest high in this world is the peace that surpasses all understanding, that brings joy, once again, to your heart. I pray this for you.

My prayer is that you will be able to allow God to lead you to turn your most horrible and suffocating experience into a gift for others that will heal your pain in greater proportion than you can imagine. You have already begun with your post, which has helped me.

Peace. Love conquers all.

laurie6781

(((((Jillian)))))

Not sure about 'resilient and strong' more like DESPERATE to get my
life back!! It was just like my addiction to alcohol and drugs, I HIT MY
BOTTOM. As to volunteering at the DV center and RC center, I believe
it helps me as much if not more so than it might help others.

You can do this also Jillian. One tiny step at a time, you too can get
your life back. All it takes is that first step, go to that first meeting,
just sit and listen if need be, and even though you have anxiety, I can
pretty much promise you that the 'anxiety will calm down. There is
nothing like sitting in a face to face meeting, that is soothing to our
inner core.

Please give it a try.

Love and hugs,

DesertEyes

Thank you for that, what a lovely compliment.

One of the most important lessons I have learned in recovery is that _physical_ injuries repair on their own. The injuries that just sit there and ferment are the emotional injuries. Comparing my childhood to other people's childhoods does not heal me because we all had different experiences.

What does heal me is the realization that the _pain_ is the same. It is the pain of isolation, of degradation, of feeling abandoned by all that is good and righteous. When I understood that the pain is the same I was able to participate in recovery with others because we all heal in the same manner.

The short answer is that _I_ did not need forgiveness. That child I was many years ago is the one that needed forgiveness.

I am going to do a short lecture here, for the benefit of the large number of lurkers we have on this thread. I realize you are a therapist so pardon my lecturing, I am writing for a large audience.

There are several principles of psych that get tangled up in "trauma survival". The first is "Magical Thinking". Peeps in a life-threatening situation experience huge amounts of chemicals in their mind, the "Fight or flight" syndrome you mentioned. It doesn't take long for the chemicals to be exhausted, leaving the person in a mild state of shock. At this point the human psyche engages another form of self-defense called "magical thinking", which means that they imagine various escapes from the horror they are experiencing. None of the escapes are realistic, they are meant to keep the mind from going insane from fear.

Given enough fear, for a long enough time, people will go insane.

The extreme case of magical thinking is the Stockholm Syndrome. The victim fantasizes that if they behave in certain ways they just might survive.

Next is the old concept of Random Positive Reward, explored by Skinner many decades ago. If a person tries some behavior in order to get a reward of some kind, and that reward is obtained occasionally, in a random manner, the person will do the same behavior again, and again, even if it does not work most of the time.

When a victim is held hostage by some lunatic they will try various behaviors to survive. Lunatics behave in random ways, so the victim has their behavior rewarded intermitently. It doesn't take long for the victim to get obsessed with the behavior becuase it works _sometimes_, and they are in fear of dying.

Now, bring together magical thinking and random positive reward and you get behaviors that are usually labeled as "neurosis". Freud gets credit for the concept, I won't go into all the things he got _wrong_, I'm just laying the groundwork here.

Take a behavior caused by intense trauma, built by magical thinking tangled with random positive reward, but let's not call it "neurosis" because that term is over-used. In the modern age we call it "PTSD".

Now to the healing part. In order to heal from PTSD you have to _separate_ the two underlying components and treat each one separately. Magical thinking is healed with a combination of the "empty chair" and "predicting the past", and random positive reward is healed with "succesive aproximation".

Ok, I went a little technical there. How about an example.

I was overwhelmed with guilt over leaving my brother in a horrid situation when I ran away from home. That particular thought just bounced around in my mind _constantly_. A classic neurosis. My therapist asked me to imagine there was another person in the session with us, imagine they were sitting in that "empty chair" over there.

Now, imagine that person has exactly that same guilt as I do. Let's imagine we have a time travel machine and this other person goes back in time and does _not_ run away from home at the age of 12. Let's predict what this person's past would have been if they did not run away.

Well, that person would have died.

Ok, so who would have protected the little brother if that person had died?

And, prior to leaving at age 12, was I able to protect _anybody_?

As a child I had developed a form of magical thinking where I believed that I could somehow protect my little brother. I tried many things, and occasionally my brother was not hurt. However, the reason he was not hurt had nothing to do with _me_, it was caused by the random insanity of crazy adults. He would have been hurt _exactly_ the same whether I had been born or not, but because of the magical thinking I desperately needed to believe that _something_ could be done to protect him.

Once I was able to understand those concepts I realized that there was no reason for that 12 year old who ran away from home to feel guilty. He just got lucky.

Of course, the guilt didn't just go away. Having an intellectual understanding does not result in emotional healing. Next I had to do the "succesive approximation".

What if I did _not_ feel guilty? What if I did _not_ have PTSD and all that pile of emotions that go with it? What would I do with my life _today_?

Well, I might help people.

So I went and volunteered for that Incest Survivors Anonymous group. I went and _listened_ to those folks. Gave no advice, no suggestions, no solutions. I just listened, and understood. Every time I did that they would cry, because no one had ever understood them before. I cried too, for the first time I had found somebody who understood me. What all this did was allow me to build my self esteem by doing esteemable acts; listening to people in pain.

Little by little I started doing the things I would do if I did not have PTSD, and little by little the PTSD went away.

Oh yes, it definetly feels that way. Especially at first. But it gets easier. It's a lot like tipping a long row of dominos. It takes a while to get the first one to tip, but once you do that all the rest of them fall over faster and faster.

That is exactly what pills do. They turn off reality, they are intended to get people over the immediate shock of a living nightmare so that their internal chemical defenses can rebuild, and then heal.

All of the above

It doesn't work that way. Nobody "gets better". It's like watching your children grow, how long does it take for a child to grow up?

They grow up a little bit every day, every minute.

We get better every day, every minute, one little bit at a time.

Pardom me if I am too forward here, but that sounds like magical thinking

What worked for me was to love _one_ small thing about life, for just one short hour. I started by loving the sunlight that streamed in thru the window of my tiny apartment. Just for one hour.

I repeated that every day. Later on I went out and bought a plastic plant at a yard sale, a very small one, and I loved that I had a bit of color on the kitchen counter. After that it was a small picture, and then a book, and then a lamp.

Today I am an artist and a photographer, I have dozens of huge works of art all over my place. Many I made myself. Some have received accolades from the most knowledgeable critics in the field. I enjoy being around people and have more friends that I can keep track of. I helped raise a daughter, who told me, when she was in her mid 20's and lonely for a partner, that all she needed was a man who treated her the way I treated her mother.

That is not what you expect from a 12 year old runaway, who grew up in the alleys and basements on the bad side of town. That is not what you expect from that runaway who ended up living in a trash dumpster, crawling thru the garbage looking for beer cans that might hold a few drops of beer.

My healing grew the same way children grow. Little by little, one day at a time.

If you look at all the people who have responded to this thread, you will see that many of them have felt understood by you. Many of them have been able to release a horrible burden in their own lives because you had the courage to share your own. It seems to me that you have already begun your healing simply by starting this thread. I think you are already quite a bit "weller" than just a couple days ago, and you have allowed others to heal along with you.

Perhaps, instead of loving all of life right now, perhaps you can love the healing that you have brought to SR today, and just grow from there little by little.

Whad to do you think?

Mike
Moderator, SR

Anna

Jillian, you are also resilient and strong. Maybe you don't quite see it yet, but you are. When I feel like I haven't done as much as should, this simple quotation from Maya Angelou always helps - “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”

Books always help to save me. One of my favorite authors, Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones) wrote a memoir about her rape in college. She was a virgin, away at school in northern New York, brutally attacked, raped, and left for dead. She was knocked off track at school and in her life goals and very nearly gave up on everything. But, thankfully she didn't because she gifted the world with The Lovely Bones and her memoir of her brutal attack is called Lucky.

Jilllian

I had no idea. I'm in tears right now typing this. I had read everyone's responses here over and over and it took a while to process. I don't know what else to say except that it (the "helping") is reciprocal. I've felt alone for so long. Alone in a world of "normal" and "happy" people, like an alien displaced and going through the motions that are learned from watching how the "normal" people live, if that makes sense... [/QUOTE]


As I've mentioned before, I don't believe in coincidences, and do very much believe in a higher power. Perhaps you and and I and everyone else who has posted suffered together. And were meant to heal together, too.


I don't even know you, but I can't tell you how proud of you I am.

Maybe some day I'll be able to share my story with others. I'm very grateful for the responses here. They give me hope. I know I need to learn how to somehow let go of the burden of self-blame for that young woman who in my mind was raped because of my own inaction and fear. Logically I know how silly that sounds, but internally, I'm not sure how to change that dialogue. Thank you so much for sharing your story. :ghug3

Jilllian

I am so glad in this case that you were a big chicken! I push through for my kids yet know I should do so for myself too. I may learn how to do that. If it weren't for them, I'm not sure I would be here today.

Hard to type through these tears but here's the real, raw deal. I DO believe in God. I pray and pray and pray, mostly for others, but often for my own emotional burden to be lifted. I beg of him. I keep thinking that somewhere along the way, many times, God has answered my prayers without me being aware of it. I feel many negative feelings: bitterness, hate, guilt, shame, envy, you-name-it. I oftentimes hate everything about this world. I dread tomorrow, and my level of "happy" is "just-barely-tolerating-life-from-one-minute-to-the-next." I've attempted to take my own life recently and hated God for allowing me to wake up. I hate having hate in my heart! I don't believe that God wants me to have hate in my heart, and yet there it is, day after day, and I do nothing about it. Like I said, perhaps there are signs I'm missing. I feel like I'm doing this all wrong...

Thank you.

Jilllian

Your post reminded me of something....

My therapist has been wanting to do EMDR therapy with me for years. It involves remembering specific memories from the attack and verbally and emotionally working through each of them separately so that when they're visualized, they're not as bothersome. "I can't" is what I say to her. I've said it to her for years now. We've had the discussion many times, the most recent time being last week. My appointment with her (to start EMDR) is Thursday morning.

And ever since my last session with her I've been stressing out about this. I've lost sleep over it. Telling myself that "I'm not ready," "I can't do it," etc. I've thought every day of cancelling, but haven't yet. I don't want to do it. I'm terrified.

When I left her office last week, she looked at me and said "I know. I know." She said this as if she really knew, on a personal level. Perhaps I have trouble trusting even her, someone who maybe knows my inner demons better than I can understand them.

Jilllian

Very wise words.

In college? Same here. Northern NY? Same here. Virgin? In ways I was violated, same here. I'm going to see if I can print out an excerpt from this book, since I'm at work and my home computer died.

Thank you so much for sharing this. I'm feeling excited to read this, and I haven't felt even close to excited in I-don't-know-how-long...

Jilllian

Thank you Mike. I need to keep re-reading this post and process what you've said. It is so helpful at this time in my life. I want to respond now, but have to leave work and my home computer is on the fritz. For now, I just wanted to let you know that you've really helped me, as have so many other people here.

I am overwhelmed with support. It is a feeling I've not experienced in a very long time, if ever.

Purplecatlover

Jillian, I was abused & raped. What got me through that was praying for them.
It sounds crazy but.......
Forgiveness sets the prisoner free & realize the prisoner was you.

You did not ask for or deserve any of the trauma you endured. A sick person did this to you. You did not cause the other girl to be raped. He did it.
You were not responsible for any of it. This sick individual was.
I hated my abusers, but slowly over time, I prayed & prayed. I started to feel peace, saw that they were hurt people themselves acting out what they themselves had probably endured.
I'm not condoning their behavior, but God helped me see them as wounded children, abused, etc. And it made it easier to forgive them.
And when I did, I was finally free.
I forgave myself, healed & moved on.
Now, it's just a part of my history.
I'm not punishing myself anymore.
I pray you can be healed, freed, released & find that peace. Find real happiness.
You deserve to be happy. To be free.
Stop punishing yourself Jillian. You had no control over that situation but you survived.
Thanks for sharing your story.
I think most addicts have abusive pasts, traumas of some sort & sharing helps us all know we are not alone.
Strength in numbers

Jilllian

Today I re-read all of these posts. I needed to. I stepped away for a while to process all of this. I did not know that so many of us experienced such similar trauma. It made me feel not-alone anymore, and for that I am so grateful. God led me to this place. This I know without a doubt. I re-read these posts that brought tears to my eyes, and yet at the same time made me feel like I'm in damn good company.

I needed to be reminded of many things, not the least of which is "it wasn't your fault." I still don't *completely* believe this in my own case, but partly I do, and that's progress. Had I known any of you who experienced trauma, I would tell you that it wasn't your fault, you didn't ask for it, didn't deserve it, and I wish to God it didn't happen. And I would hold you close. Funny how sometimes we hold ourselves to higher standards. Like, we beat ourselves up for something, and yet if the exact same thing happened to a loved one, we would have a different, more logical perspective.

I saw my therapist this week, and talked more about the rape, and that triggered some memories that were locked away somewhere. I tend not to go into detail with her even though I trust in her completely. I don't always agree with her, but I do trust her. I realized that trusting her means I need to let go of power in the therapy session. I told her this and she said she lets me take control on purpose, for obvious reasons. To me though, I feel as though I just go in and complain. Whine about this n' that. Talk about the things that have gone on in life since the last time I saw her. I now want her to take charge of the sessions. I need her to at this point. We are talking about starting EMDR therapy. Not much to say about this other than, "it sounds scary."

Two nights ago I had a dream that made me wet the bed. Yep, I peed myself. I did this more than once the night I was raped. It took me a couple of days to connect these dots. The dream involved a young girl, maybe 2 or 3. Short wispy light brown hair, big blue eyes and the most brightest and warm smile you could imagine. She was standing alone on a sidewalk, and there were no houses or trees around, just grass. There were no other people around, either. She raised up her arm to me, and I bent down to talk to her. We interacted for a few minutes and it was nice. I then stood up to leave. I immediately noticed my purse was gone, and left the child to go look for it. Her safety didn't cross my mind. I found it a block or so away, and checked my wallet first thing. My cash was gone, and in its place was a pair of my panties, folded neatly like an envelope, and placed where the cash would be. I decided not to call the police thinking "this happens all the time; they won't be bothered" and kept walking as if nothing happened. I left that young child alone in a dangerous place.

That child not only represented innocence, but she also represented the young woman who was raped a few years after me by the same man. I didn't press charges, and feel as though had I done so, she would not have been raped.

My therapist has been telling me for years that her rape was not my fault, nor was my own. But in my mind I would tell myself "Yeah, but if I just.... then it wouldn't have happened..."

As I cried myself to sleep last night (not necessarily a bad thing, since I've been having trouble sleeping), I realized that there is probably nothing I can do for this girl (now a woman) at this point. But I sure wish there was. I wish I could hold her tight and say "I'm so sorry." To me, it feels like having driven by someone who was hit by a car and very badly injured and just leaving her there to die.

Even though this happened a long time ago, it still oftentimes feels like a fresh and raw wound, as though it happened last night.

EXM6

I am SO sorry to hear what happened to you... I can't even imagine to begin what you're going through.

One thing I've noticed is you keep talking about how resilient and strong other people are. I know you don't feel like it right now but you ARE those things as well. A quote I keep seeing on this website is talking about how we compare our insides to other people's outsides. We as human beings have our moments, things change -- you aren't following people around to see how their entire lives end up. I know this because I came from a very trauma filled up bringing, including abuse - physical, sexual, and emotional, a shooting, and all the things I saw in foster care. I have been one of those people, others consider resilient and like you I didn't see it because I knew how I was doing on the inside. Now I come to this site and hear YOUR story... and from my perspective, regardless of the not getting out of bed, regardless of your want for the opiates... I am able to see the POSITIVES in your story.

You're certainly successful... You have had children and love them... You are self-aware which is something a lot of people don't have... You are intelligent... You lived through this amazingly TRAUMATIC experience and you're still here. You may feel like you're not strong because you feel like you're not acting on 100% of what you know you're capable of -- but give yourself a break!! Your story is truly inspirational, whether you think it is or not. Thank you SO much for sharing.

DesertEyes

Hello there Jillian

Good for you

Yes it is, and good progress at that.

That is what recovery is all about; connecting those "dots". Like you said, it takes some time, some outside help (therapist, SR, etc ) to help with the connections. As you connect the dots you heal, as you are already doing.

hmmmm.... I dunno. That sounds to easy. The "rule of thumb" is that if the image comes up in a dream it's because it is too painful to be dealt with directly. So my first reaction is that the young child in your dream represents a variety of different issues all tangled up in one image.

See, that is what I mean. The situation you describe in real life happened across several years. You were attacked, you made the decision not to press charges and some years later the man attacked somebody else.

You describe the feeling of driving by somebody that was hit by a car, but the sequence does not match. The other person is hit by the car _first_, and then _after_ the person is hit you drive by and decide not to take action.

The order in which events happen is entirely different in the way your emotions are opressing you as compare to the way it happend in real life. Am I making sense with that? Perhaps something to discuss with your therapist

In any case, thank you for stopping by and letting us know how you are doing. I'm glad to see that you are making progress. It may seem small to you, but that is how healing begins, one small step at a time.

Mike
Moderator, SR

Jilllian

Thank you so much, Desert Eyes...Your post prompted me to snatch up some good self-help books, that I had been thinking about getting. Just needed that gentle nudge. And thanks for your words of wisdom. Other people's logic seems so much more logical than my own, if that makes sense. Thank you again. Can't tell you how much the support here means to me. Not sure I could do this on my own, and as it turns out, with SR, I don't have to.

NatalieN

"the problem i had with practicing mindfulness (like just accepting the feelings and not judging them one way or the other, and just riding them like a wave) is not practicing it enough. it's so much easier to just give in and not do the work, and i'm 100% guilty of this."

Me too. I am guilty of not giving this wonderful technique the place it deserves in my life. When I do, my reality changes. Thoughts arise, peak, and dissipate leaving no painful trace. They fail to evoke painful emotions. Like becomes a neutral field where I excel at everything. Mindfulness is the most powerful and transformative tool in my recovery toolbox, after not drinking/using no matter what of course. It baffles me that I only use it sporadically.

Jillian I am sorry you had to endure so much. Please do look at possible ways to turn this tragedy into a sort of 'blessing' to others. I am sure you know this, but the only way out is through.

Best wishes on your journey,

Natalie