OK, like it says in the title, I don’t know what’s real anymore. It all
started four years ago when I was living alone and picking up the pieces
after yet another failed relationship. I am in my mid forties and have
no children. I had friends and a g...
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OK, like it says in the title, I don’t know what’s real anymore. It all
started four years ago when I was living alone and picking up the pieces
after yet another failed relationship. I am in my mid forties and have
no children. I had friends and a good job but my life still felt empty.
Guilty, unlovable, alone in the world. I had started seeing a new
therapist and during the second session, out of the blue when I was
talking about my problems, she randomly asked me: Elizabeth, do you
think you might have been sexually abused by your father? It was like I
had been hit by lightning. I felt sick. I felt lightheaded, I couldn’t
breath. Was this the reason I’d been in and out of psyches offices for
the past 20 years, trying to fix endless mood swings, depression,
anxiety, suicidal thoughts, anger, rages? My new therapist thought we
were onto something because I responded like this. She started pushing
me to remember as much as I could and so I did, later at home that
evening. It flooded my mind, a vivid and horrible scene and one that I
don’t really want to go into detail with here for reasons I will go into
later. So I rang my therapist the next day and told her all about it.
She suggested I write letters to both my parents to vent the rage and
pain I felt about what I had remembered, and to say I didn’t want to see
either of them ever again. She was the expert, and I was in shock, so I
did what she told me. How did they respond? Well my mother was shocked,
frighted. I never heard anything from my dad. She sent me an angry
letter saying I shouldn’t blame my problems on her. My therapist said
that attitude was more proof that my father had abused me and that she
knew all about it. So that was the start of four years of being totally
alone and cut off from my family. I believed my parents were toxic, and
my memories of sexual abuse gave me good reason to cut them out of my
life. I kept up going to therapy. Weekly, sometimes twice a week, but
nothing seemed to make a difference. I was still depressed, still
suicidal. I started to think I was wasting time and just wanted to get
on with my life so I decided to stop going to the therapist. This was
about two months ago. This is where it starts to get scary for me. I
started to have my doubts towards the end of the therapy, but it has
only started to get worse since stopping. I am now almost convinced that
I made up these memories of abuse and that it actually never happened.
My life at the time I saw that original therapist was a mess. I had a
shocking temper, relationships with men were a disaster, I would fly off
the handle at any criticism, and no self esteem. I had problems at work
getting on with people too. When I think back, that simple question ‘do
you think you might have been sexually abused’ seemed like the answer to
all my problems. For the last four years I was able to blame everything
wrong with my life on being a victim and being abused and the sympathy
would flow. But have I got better? No. This is an awful realisation to
come to and I don’t want to upset anyone who has really gone through
such terrible abuse but this doesn’t make sense to me. How is it
possible for me to forget something so awful for so many decades and
then just have it pop up like that? I just don’t know if it’s true
anymore, and if it isn’t what have I done to my family? Can I ever fix
up this mess?
How do I talk to my doctor?
