New Beginnings/Direction

[Viamoonlight]

For many years I wouldn't accept help, always knew that I needed help but couldn't accept it as I had thought myself unworthy of help. For many years and even still I think of myself the way my parents did, useless waste of space and good for nothing.

Over the years doctors and acute teams have given many theories on what was wrong with me. I was never all that open with them out of fear of being looked down on and locked up in a clinic never to leave it again. However last year, I had done the most stupid thing and tried harming myself as I thought the world would be better off without me. Now of course I know better, I have three beautiful children that are not better off without me I needed to remove the bad influences from our lives not myself.

I have finally opened up with my doctors this year, the first time I told them that my life is one dream after another and that I don't always know which is real or not I was so scared of what was going to happen from there but in the end, nothing bad happened... They wanted to hear more about it. I told them how I often have dreams where I am someone else, usually a child/teenager and in those dreams life is amazingly beautiful, they have issues pop up in those dreams but they are solved and moved on from very easily, plus many more different types.

Since then I have been getting help and labelled to have disassociation/derealisation with avoidance issues, anxiety and depression. The depression part I can't understand and often say to my doctors that I can't be depressed I feel nothing at all neither sad or happy, slight variations but neither in any great difference. The doctor says that it stems from depression so its there I just don't notice it because I've blocked out all the pain.

There is a lot of my life I just have no memory of at all, I do not know what makes my body mimic panic attacks for going to the shopping centre or things like answering the phone... To me it feels like I'm afraid of everything for no reason at all. My psychologist is trying to prompt repressed memories at the moment so that I can find my safety zone and make it surround me instead of surround the walls of my house and locks on my doors.

They have discovered that I have been 'hiding' (lack of a better word) since before I started school. Where even as a very young child I would hide in my cupboard to play. I've never had any friends, I've had lots of people that love to be around me and want me around in recent years but nobody I could call a friend and often I find that people are not around for very long and I can never remember why they left.

My body and my mind to me are on different plains... I can have a wonderful week without any problems within my life or my children and yet my mind can be in a totally different place. I will do things without remembering doing them, I find myself suddenly in a different area of my house or when driving the car I won't remember having driven all the way home just suddenly in the driveway.

My doctors say it is going to take a long time and not to expect too much from myself, which is hard sometimes since I don't remember what causes the fear it doesn't make sense why I have fear but its ok understanding will come with therapy.

With therapy, I have finally at the age of 40 told my father that I will not accept his abuse anymore. Of course his response was that I'm out of the will, to which I said, people are more important than items only you care about that so I was uninvited from his funeral -shrugs- but I've stood strong and still I'm telling him that I have a right to say no to abuse. Although standing up and saying that has brought on several nightmares about him, I am still proud of myself. Not just for myself, but by doing so I have also shown my children they have the right to say no too and my 16 year old daughter told him no more as well 🙂

However, I figure that since there are labels for it there must be others out there that know what its like or support groups or something somewhere

This might be only the start of a very long road... but by not hiding from my doctors any more we are headed towards new beginnings and although I'm concerned about having to face those fears and feeling something I don't want to experience I know the benefit is going to extend through to my children.

So to new beginnings and directions... One day my body won't be a puppet on strings and I will reach the goal my kids have set for me and that is to take them on a train ride 🙂

[geoff]

dear Viamoonlight, it seems as though your self esteem is at a low point in your life, which makes it difficult to move forward.

Your comment ' needed to remove the bad influences from our lives not myself', well I am just wondering whether they affect each other, or does one affect the other, so really they are both combined.

I can't interpret what dreams actually mean, because I have the most unusal ones that don't seem to be of any reality, they might have some truth to them in a certain way, but generally our own mind thinks up all sorts of complexities .

You may differ in your own opinion, and so might other people, and that's their own decision.

Your childhood and now adulthood have been restricted and abused by your father which is hideous, cruel, and being a control freak that wouldn't enable you to grow up experiencing all the good points as well as all the pitfalls that face us.

It doesn't let you express your own personality, and with this it makes you timid in not being able to move forward, to grow up like 'little Johnnie' next door, and that's why you have trouble relating back to any psych., always scared of any criticism and any harrassment that would belittle yourself.

Even your daughter has stuck up for you against her grand dad, so they are definitely supporting you, and realise that you do need professional help, which may take a little while for you to relax with, but with the right psych. someone who understands what you are frightful of, will then be able to pin-point therapy for you.

A social group which is supposed to be good is The Man Shed, where a bunch of men hook up together to do many things, so you could google it, and see whether this would suit your needs. Geoff.

[S_A_D_]

You're doing all the right things so far. Well done. I'm very impressed. I also have a father like yours, but I can't bring myself to say no to him like you did. You're like a hero to me, doing what I can't.

What do you spend your free time doing? have you thought about studying? Anything that helps you to improve your vocabulary will help you express yourself when talking with the psychologist about things your having trouble describing. Pace yourself, take it slow. Don't bother trying to read the dictionary cover to cover, it doesn't work like that.

You sound like a warm and loving father for your daughter. The more you nurture her the more she will nurture you. Encouragement, incentive, empowerment, autonomy, and support are rare and valuable commodities in many family, and should be valued more than all the gold in Fort Knox.