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Struggling with anxiety and grief * trigger warning for CSA*

4 replies

Dontbeme · 12/08/2024 11:54

Don't know where to start really but as the thread title says I am struggling with grief and anxiety. In the past four years I have had seven bereavements in my family, some were older and struggling with poor health so while not unexpected still sad, those bereavements included two of my sisters. Two months ago my other sister was taken into hospital, she has cancer, it is aggressive, she was told today there are no more options for her, just pain management. It is expected she won't have many weeks left. I feel crushed, I just don't have the emotional energy to do this again, to be at a bedside saying goodbye to another family member, to hold it together for a funeral, to try to support her adult kids in whatever they need.

I have been in trauma therapy for the past two years due to childhood sexual abuse by a family member, extended family knew what this man was doing to kids and never intervened to report or stop him, my sister was an adult when this was going on and made sure he never had access to her kids, but didn't do anything to help protect me (I am adopted and there is a large age gap, my adoptive parents died when I was still in primary school, I am close in age to sisters children) I feel torn in half, part of me devastated that she is dying, part of me devastated that she never helped me as a kid, all of me broken as I am still dealing with what this man did to me thirty years on, he started abusing me at age 4, I never had any type of childhood and just feel broken. Inside I am still that 4 year old hoping someone will help it stop and I am just frozen in place, unable to move. How do I do this again, where do I get the strength to survive the next few weeks?

OP posts:
BCBird · 12/08/2024 11:59

You just 'be'. You do not have to hold it together for the funeral. If u have noisy tears or none then.so be it. You do not have to be the support for your sister's children. Do u have someone who can support you? Keep up the therapy. Put u first .

Eyesopenwideawake · 12/08/2024 13:09

I think it would be useful to try and separate the two issues; how your sister acted - or rather didn't act - when you were young and the the heartache of the current situation. Did you and her ever talk about the abuse over the years? How do you feel about talking to her about it now, before it's too late? Only you (and her) will know if that's a terrible idea or whether it would give you some answers and maybe a degree of closure.

Dontbeme · 12/08/2024 13:21

Thank you both for your replies, there would be no point speaking to her about the abuse as her attitude is I should just get over it and be grateful I was adopted as an unwanted child. I think I need to just detach a bit emotionally, that doing that doesn't make me a bad person, that caring for myself first is okay, my own oxygen mask on first and all that. I need to push back a bit on what is being expected of me. I need to understand more that family can push all those buttons as they installed them. I understand all this logically, but emotionally I am struggling.

OP posts:
Eyesopenwideawake · 12/08/2024 13:27

You are 100% right - your own wellbeing HAS to come first. I've posted this before about I work with trauma but on the off-chance you haven't read it (!) it's worth repeating;

When something bad happens to us, a part of our mind gets the job of working out why it happened so we can work out how to avoid a similar event in the future.

However, when we suffer a traumatic event (or a series of events, as in your case) in our lives - especially early trauma - there isn’t always an answer to that question. Trauma can be so unexpected and undeserved that in truth we didn’t do anything wrong to cause it, and certainly couldn’t have avoided it.

The need to make some sort of sense of the experience can often lock us into that traumatic time of our life. A part of our subconscious becomes unable to move on until we can fully understand it and put it to rest in our minds hence the flashbacks, intrusive thoughts and anxiety. However if there's no possibility of finding out the truth then the subconscious needs to know that, because it won't continue the search for answers once it's aware that none are available.

That's why you feel this way inside I am still that 4 year old hoping someone will help it stop and I am just frozen in place, unable to move. You CAN recover from this. Sending hugs Flowers

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