Last Edited on 31-Mar-2008 1:03 PM

I can certainly understand why you feel at the end of hope, after trying everything you've tried. I don't know why none of that worked, but there may be a reason besides your being incurable. One thought that occurs to me is that EMDR and/or other trauma work might help. You have experienced multiple traumas in being molested and probably many incidents around your parents using drugs--and you may have experienced even more traumas. Official symptoms of post traumatic stress are:

1) The traumatic event is persistently reexperienced in one or more of the following ways:

*Recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, or perceptions.
*Recurrent distressing dreams of the event.
*Acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes, including those that occur on awakening or when intoxicated).
*Intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event
*Physiological reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.

2) The individual also has persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by 3 or more of the following:

*Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
*Efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma
*Inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
*Significantly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
*Feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
*Restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to have loving feelings)
*Sense of a foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span.

3) Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not present before the trauma), as indicated by 2 or more of the following:

*Difficulty falling or staying asleep
*Irritability or outbursts of anger
*Difficulty concentrating
*Hypervigilance
*Exaggerated startle response

4) The disturbance, which has lasted for at least a month, causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

In my opinion, this official version is geared more toward war veterans, than survivors of child abuse, but you probably see yourself in at least some of these symptoms. People with post-traumatic stress very commonly experience depression, anxiety and insomnia.

Symptoms get acute when something triggers memories of the trauma. Triggers can be anything that reminds a person of the trauma. Memories that get triggered sometimes come like pictures or movies of specific occurances of trauma, which is what most people understand memories to be. But memories also come in forms that don't involve pictures at all. For example, often a woman who was molested as a child has an unpleasant response to being touched as an adult, even when she is with a trusted partner. These feelings or sensation may occur only when she is touched in certain parts of her body or in certain ways or under certain circumstances. When the triggering touch occurs, she may feel disgust or panic or anger or sadness or guilt or shame without any picture memories to explain the feelings. People often don't realize these are even memories, because we think of memories as being pictures or movies in our head. Memories can come in the form of emotions, body sensations, dreams, relationship re-enactments, etc--all of which may not seem like memories.

In your case, it's possible that parenting your own children triggers traumatic memories in one or more of these ways. For example, if your child cries when you leave her, you might feel irritable toward her because you are having a non-picture, emotional memory of being abandoned as a child yourself. Please understand I am making up this example to illustrate my point--none of it may reflect your actual experience. Other aspects of your life may be triggering trauma for you too.

If you can find some good trauma therapy, you would be giving yourself another chance at life. If you can't afford consistent therapy, see if you can find someone who will work with you on a sliding scale, or someone being trained at a school for therapists or at an internship. You could try offering a therapist a monthly fee you would pay every month regardless of the number of sessions you have--even when you or the therapist are sick or on vacation. This works for me with some people. The montly fee can be well below what it would be for four sessions at the regular price, but paying the same every month allows you to budget for the consistent amount and allows your therapist to recoup some of her losses from charging you much less than she normally does by providing payment more consistently than someone who doesn't pay when sessions don't happen from time to time.

Be sure you find someone who is well-trained in trauma work, preferably someone who is trained and experienced in EMDR. Therapy for repeated childhood trauma takes time and consistent work. Do everything you can to find a therapist you can see at least weekly for as long as you need and want to. I know this can be hard--this is why we need universal health care, but there often are other ways to work this out.

Does any of this sound do-able for you?

Warmly,

Cynthia

Last Edited on 31-Mar-2008 10:35 PM