Donna checked in how I was and straight away gently challenged me about how I am feeling and where the roots of that feeling and my behaviour that went with it came from. I explained that I have been poorly and felt very alone and isolated. No one had checked in on me or been there for me and it felt a tough place to be. I felt like I didn't deserve any help and that I couldn't rely on anyone to be there for me. We looked at where this belief came from and identified that throughout my life I really had had no one to support me but was that the same now or am I just reverting back to learnt behaviour? I realised that I do have friends and my children but I never reach out and ask for help. I fear that my house is not clean and that I look a mess and I don't want to be judged. My Mum always judged me and gave me a hard time when I was a single Mum, working full time and trying to hold everything together. She would criticise but never help me. Donna encouraged me to reach out to one person this week and see if they would come and see he or even meet for a drink.
When I got home I rang my friend Kate and we spoke for a while - she was shocked that I had been so poorly and she didn't know. She asked if she could do anything to help and is going to come and see me. That felt so much better and then also gave me the courage to speak to my children and three other friends. By the end of the day I was not feeling as low and isolated and was also able to relate to where I got that behaviour of isolating myself and not being able to trust from and simple things I can do to move forward with that.
We had an initial go at doing a timeline of my life from my birth onwards. That was pretty difficult and looking back now I realise that I missed some pretty important events and I thought it would have been better to have spent some time last week writing some things down to take with me. Donna thought it would be good to get some paper next week and to do a visual time line just to highlight all that I have survived in my life.
She asked some quite detailed questions around certain events and I began to feel very sick and began to use my coping mechanism of looking for something in the room to fixate on, to keep me in the present. Weirdly there was a barcode sticker on a plug socket and I found myself counting the lines on the bars!
My life was hard right from the beginning. I was a premature poorly baby and had to have two blood transfusions on the day I was born. Going from my knowledge of attachment I realised that as a poorly baby left in hospital I missed those crucial early bonding experiences and time with my family. No wonder Mum was so distant and I definitely had symptoms of attachment disorder. Not a good start in life! I laughed because throughout my childhood I was so good. I did well at school, never got into trouble, behaved myself, was sporty and popular and looking back I wish that I had been really naughty and had given my parent's hell but I didn't.
My parents adopted a little boy when I was 6 and they treated him so badly. They threatened to send him back to the children's home every day and often hurt him. A few years ago he told me that he doesnt have mental health problems because he had me and I loved him and looked after him. It shouldn't have been like that and our lives were so messed up but no one really cared back then and abuse just wasn't talked about.
Going over the years when I was married and what happened when my husband left. I had forgotten what a turbulent time that final year of my marriage was. My daughter had an accident with a brain injury, I had a head on car crash and broke my shoulder in three places, I lost a baby girl at 22 weeks and then my husband abandoned me and left me on my own with three young children. He would often empty our bank account and leave me with nothing to feed the children with and I had no one to help me. He came back briefly and kidnapped our youngest child taking her back to Thailand and I had to go and fetch her back. Then he came home at Christmas and on the last night raped me and left he in a physical and mental mess. He has never hurt me physically before. His last words to me were .No one will want you now'
I guess I'm still reeling from getting everything out in the open with another person but I'm also thinking that it's no wonder I struggle as I have been through so much in my life. I.m brginning to make links between what I've been through and how I think and act and I hope that Donna can keep helping me to make sense of it all and to challenge my ways of thinking and behaving.
She talked about some inner child work and also some work to look at how I deal with triggers and emotions. I'm beginning to realise that I often feel angry but I don't know what to do with that anger.
My flashbacks were vivid last night and I found myself in the kitchen in the middle of the night but I hadn't hurt myself. Richard from the crisis team helped to calm me down and keep me safe. I guess I'm going to be a bit unsettled for the next few days but I really do think that the therapy is going to be worth it.
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