New and Feeling Discouraged

New and Feeling Discouraged
J

jimrh

Registrant
Hello all,

I'm fairly new to this group, having chatted off and on for few weeks, and after reading many posts, I thought I'd take a chance.

I don't really know where to start. It seems that everything around me is getting worse and the more I deal with my physical, emotional and sexual abuse, the worse I seem to get. I only recently began taking anti depressants/anxiety meds. I really think had it not been for that I'd even be in worse shape. Nothing is in control any more and now that I know my reality, I finally realize how shitty it is and my options are limited with none being a win situation.

I'm married, have three kids, yet I feel so alone. It's all fine and dandy that you tell me it's great to have a loving wife and loving kids and of course it is. But it doesn't change how I feel about me. Maybe in the end, it doesn't matter anyway and this is all a waste of time and especially money for the therapists and psychiatrists and marriage counselors. In the end, my marriage will be over and then what, I'll have nothing but my fantasies which are the only thing I can control and allow me to be who I want to be, something I can never really be.

I feel very sad about Woz yet sometimes I think I understand.

I hear one thing from fellow survivors here on the way things work, then in therapy or in books, it's something else.

I know I can never have a father who loved me. Plain and simple, it's too late for that. I know I can never regain the lost years of childhood and any therapist who talks that talk is walking down a hokie path. I hate the child I was, and just wish I could wake up and be someone else. :confused:
 
JIm let me the first to welcome you to the family (the safe and loving one we never had). You are here among friends and one thing you must keep in mind that what works for one survivor may not work for you. If you are looking for some advice please join us in the chatroom or look into getting a T. Take care my brother.


Nathan
 
Jimrh
Glad that you have found our group and can begin to see that you are not alone in your pain.
Maybe in the end, it doesn't matter anyway and this is all a waste of time and especially money for the therapists and psychiatrists and marriage counselors. In the end, my marriage will be over and then what,
Click to expand...
Don't go on with a negative vibes because there is hope for us all. this all takes time and it will get better. Keep the positive on your side. Muldoon
 
Thanks for the kind words, Nathan and Muldoon.

Nathan, the problem with the inner child is that it doesn't exist, which is just one of the issues I have with certain therapy tactics (namely from Mike Lew, "Victims No Longer"). You cannot find something that never existed, plain and simple. therefore, you can never regain something you never had.

As for staying in the positive, well I guess I can hold on to the fact that I don't have a debilitating disease and that I have a great job. At this point now I'm sorry I posted this original message. Sorry to have bothered you all, no worries. It's not a big deal. Take care.
 
Jim,

T'was nice meeting you in chat last night.

Can I say I know what you're going through because I've been there and still have immense struggles with my recovery?

Sometimes even though we have good things, people and loves in our lives... our minds plunge us into the deepest inner hell that no one else can possibly understand, not even another survivor. It's a curve, waves on an ocean that doesn't stop me for me... the deepest waves aren't so deep for me anymore (after years and years), I'm popping back to ride the surf faster now... my pain is becoming more bearable, it's even becoming less instense.

Why does this happen at some particular point in time? Maybe because our brains/mind are at a place where it needs to dump or deal with or whatever you want to call recovery from abuse. Maybe because our spirit wants to heal.

When we have personal crisis' like this I believe seeking outside help crucial, meds and therapy CAN make a difference.

We really do have the inner strength to survive emotional/psycological crisis', and with "a little help from my friends", I do.

"ohhhhh, I'll get by with a little help from my friends". You will too Jim!!!!

jer
 
Jim
Nothing is in control any more and now that I know my reality, I finally realize how shitty it is and my options are limited with none being a win situation.

I'll have nothing but my fantasies which are the only thing I can control and allow me to be who I want to be, something I can never really be.
Click to expand...
There's a lot we can control, and you already do, you have a wife and kids - a job - you have made a decision to get therapy and come here. You already excercise more control over yourself than you give yourself credit for.

One of the very first things my therapist told me, about 5 years ago when I started was "I's not going to be easy." and he was right, it's damned hard is the truth. And hard things take time and effort.
But with time we learn new options and how to turn them to our advantage and make them a win situation.

I know only too well about the fantasies having control, mine led me to acting out with strangers and all kinds of shit. I spent days dissasociating, off in a world of my own where sex was the answer to every question. It was my retreat from a shitty world.
But there's a way out, it's going to be different for you but the way out is there somewhere. And you're the guy to find it. We can support you, along with your family and therapist, to find that exit.

Never give up looking for it Jim because it IS there.

Dave
 
Jim
"that which cannot be changed" is history, something we can learn from. ;)

Dave
 
MichaelB I think you said it best, yes history sucks.

The point of my comment "There is no hope when you cannot accept that which cannot be changed." was not that I wanted to change history, naturally that cannot happen.

If you cannot accept something about yourself in the present which also cannot be changed, then there is no hope. Retreating into a fantasy world is EXACTLY how I cope.
 
jimrh,

I know I can never have a father who loved me.

That thought has haunted me for years. He took my trust, my innocense, and my self-worth. I am 29 and married with a 5 year old son; I struggle daily to find joy even though my life is full of joy. I know that my down fall is myself; I just dont know how to 'fix' me. Ive been in group therapy for 8 months now and I dont know if I am 'better'. I am a wonderful person but I dont feel like it and believe me, its taken all 8 months of therapy for me to say that. I struggle with the evil things that were said to me and the physical beatings as well as the sexual part of it. There are days when I doubt my own ability to be a human being.
I realize that you struggle and it seems hopeless but you have to continue to struggle to make some sort of peace with it.
AptRick
 
Jim
I might have been a bit flippant there, but I also stand by what I say.

What happened is a fact to all of us, that ain't going to change.
And it's a horrible thing that we live with, and we need a survival technique, such as fantasy.

I hung onto my secret for over 30 years by using fantasy as my main line of defense, my survival technique. And it did the job, it kept me alive, married, in work and outwardly normal. I could not have survived without it.

BUT, and for me this was a huge 'but', to move forward and become the survivor I am now I have had to develop new survival techniques that can't include my old fantasies.
To move forward I have had to gradually leave that behind and work with the facts that are the real world.

It's as scary as hell, 30 years of coping by the same methods is hard to let go. It's like a kid with a comfort blanket who hangs onto it forever.
My fantasies took me away from everything that bothered me from a break in my daily routine to the disfunctional sex drive I had. Every little thing that I looked upon as a problem could be made better by retreating into my fantasies.
And they were all kinds of fantasy from winning the lottery to giving BJ's to strangers, they all took me out of reality.

Now I relish reality, and with my mind free ( for most of the time anyway ) I can actually deal with the the things that bothered me before. And I now realise that what bothered me was just the stuff of normal everyday living to most people. At 49 yo I have just for the first time in my life gone into a bank to pay some money in ! This is the kind of thing I avoided with a list of excuses so my wife did it, and I would retreat with a fantasy to avoid feeling guilty.

I do understand your view that change is not possible, believe me I've felt that way.
But I, and many others here, have proved that wrong. Change IS possible, and we have to start somewhere. I believe that 'somewhere' is our history, we have to go back and have a long hard look at what happened and why.
Not to wallow in the guilt and shame, but to be ultra critical about our role and the abusers role. We have to seperate them before we can see that it was NOT our fault, THEY were to blame.

It was Henry Ford who famously said "History is bunk" I had a Ford car once for 3 weeks, THAT was bunk ! ;)

Dave
 
Hello Jim,

I haven't been on in a while, but just wanted to post if that's okay. Hmmm...let me see...from what I can understand here, you're 43 yo, married, have a good job, have good kids, but were abused as a child. Now, you find that the more you try to deal with the abuse and some of the related issues, you find yourself more lost and lost. Does that sound right? Well, me...I'm a 24 yo, not married but in committed relationship, on my way to a decent job (currently a med student), and was abused as a child. Like you, I too found that the more I try to deal with the abuse issues, I get lost and despair. Still, that was the beginning...after it, I got back up and was way up. Then, recently I hit a lull again as I started to grapple with the issues again. Now what is my point?

Well, what I want to say is that first off, the ups and downs of this are typical. Second, you are NOT alone. For every person out there who is crippled and becomes some drug addict or whatever after they were abused, there are others who are handling things relatively okay but very much struggling with the abuse. Many times, however, they do not talk about it so much. So even when you look all around you in your cushy job or whatever, know that your fellow officemates may also harbor their own secrets--not just abuse, but deaths and other extreme pain.

The key, I think (and maybe it's just 'cuz I still have the idealism), is to keep going and hang on to what you do know to be right and true. Try not to get overwhelmed by all the psychology and inner child and whatever social science suggests. Each person is different, I've realized...and what I/we as abused persons need to focus on is what we believe, and as ironic as it sounds, what we WANT.

This will help give you direction...and keep you from getting overwhelmed. As a human being with so many concerns in this world, and especially as an abused person who had been "overpowered" so to speak during the abuse, I think that I/we need to really balance that acceptance of uncertainty (through faith), and really grabbing life by the horns and controlling it. I dunno...but I think that if we focus on what it is we want, we may be able to get out of the rut.

If what you want is the impossible (to recapture the past), well two things: 1) accept that it cannot be changed and 2) grab it by the horns by NOT letting it hamper you and possibly even grabbing as much good as you can from it. I, for instance, look at how the abuse has taught me a certain perseverance and determination. Just as important, it taught me how to be more empathic of other people--to really care about others. I don't know...I'm not saying that the abuse was a positive, but you really can bring a good out of it--make blessings in disguises from all the pain.

Yeah, I know that sounds trite, but really think about what it means: "blessing in disguise." A good friend of mine tells me, things happen for a reason. It's not to say that we should not resist wrong/evil, but simply to say that when it does happen, you have two ways of looking at it: 1) it's a curse or 2) it just happened. So which are you going to do...if you believe it's the latter, then try to make good out of it. Like anything else in life, it's really how you react to things that sometimes matter more than the actual thing that happened itself.

Anyway, hope that made sense, and for what it's worth, thanks for sharing your story--I don't know how to explain it, but I think it just helped me somehow :)
 
Hi jimrh,

Your strong pain and despair are eminently clear in your posts. Whatever happening to you was so awful that your spirit seems to have been murdered. It is a good thing that our spirits are not material, like our bodies, that die and decay. A spirit is always there, always able to be enlivened.

You did have a childhood, as did we all. We were all at one time, one day old, then a week olde, then a month a year and s forth. These are our childhood years. Perhaps something attrocious event happened to you as a child. Perhaps those years of childhood were marked by torture and wretched abuse. But you were a child when all of that happened.

jimrh, I agree with you in part. I can't stand people who tell me to paint my face like a clown and run freely in a park, or fly a kite, or do childlike things. I am not a child--though at times I fear I am moving into my second childhood.

It is futile for me to try to reconstruct something that was marked with pain and shame, betrayl and lonliness. I don't want to be a child again.

But some of us, myself included have certainly found that as an adult we can go back in our minds, grab that little child that we were and hold him and love him and promise we will protect him when no one else did. Somehow, I have found that to be astonishingly healing.

You are right--you can't become one month old again. We we can all accept the fact that we are the victims, that we do not share a thing in the blame for what happened to us, NOR for the effects of the SA that have followed us. We have today, and we can refuse to let our abuse paralyze us. Therapy sure helps, and understanding friends sure help. There are 1100+ understanding men here.

Peace to you!

Bob
 
Jim -

None of us had happy childhoods, but we certainly have the power to create a happy adulthood. Going from victim to survivor is definitely not an easy task, though. Leaving the "comfort zone" is difficult. But in order to make room for the new, you have to say goodbye to the old. Whether it's certain behaviors, certain fantasies, or certain people. It's a long process, but we've paid our dues for the happiness we deserve.
 
God, you guys are good. And, I gotta go outta town. I've never experienced a greater desire for a lap top. And, it's all because of you guys. My wife's gunna flip when I tell her what she can get me for my birthday!!
I've just gone back over the posts in this category and I gotta say it again, You Guys Are
Good. Can you imagine it, I could have gone my whole life and never met you guys. Makes me want to cry. You've responded to Jimrh with such sympathy, love even. I'm glad I'm here. Sorry I have to leave--without a lap top, I might add. Sayyyyyyyyyyy, I just got an idea. Now, if you guys want to pool your resources, and, well, you know, take up a little collection,
my wife wouldn't feel so much pressure to
respond about the birthday wish.
All kidding aside, everyone of you has responded like the big brother I wish that I had. You were reminding us all, really, what it is that we're here for. To tell our story, to be received with dignity and to try to make sense out of some really bad years that all of us have survived. We some how got off of the battle field, wounded, hurting and confused. Now we're here, on this side, with each other trying to make sense of it. Like a war, we had no say in it. We were there on the battle field, taking all kinds of hits, some direct physical wounds, some insideous mind bending coeersions that made us puppets dangling on strings, naked and alone.
And then we come here, and there are brothers like we never had, ready to hold us and tell us that now we're ok and that they'll stand beside us and listen to us and comfort us and love us. It's almost too much to take. We're not use to that. Me? Us? Important? Likeable? Loveable?
By other GUYS? That's really too much to believe. Sounds like if I stay here and listen and talk and start to care I might feel some of those other things that I use to care about, too. Won't that be painful? More pain? What I missed. What I didn't have. How can I get it? How can I recapture it? How can I go on if it means more pain? Will it get better? Will it ease off? Can I have my turn? Will I be happy? Can I make someone else happy? Can I love someone else? Will someone else love me? Listen to these guys, they are my new brothers, they do have some answers; they're survivors.
Thank you for being here for me.
I'm gunna miss you this week.

Now if you want to take up that little collection..............
David
 
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