how to cope with the trauma of severe abuse?

[superstarheartbreaker]

Even though my abusive relationship ended 15 years ago, I havnt dealt with it properly and it resurfaces all the time. He was as Lundy Bancroft statesa mixture of mr right and the drill seargeant with a bit of the new ahe man throw in!
The result was that I was brain washed inti his belief system which ws vegan. I list huge amountsof wieght and almost died. I also had to drop outof university

I also meant to add that I have struggled with relationship s since. I really felt that the 5 years of abuse destroyed me and ruined my life. Life is better now but not as stable and happy as it should be. I sm having cbt. I am dating again and its fun but I know thatuntil I deal with tge abuse I wont find the one.
Thing is, is cbt enough? I ferl like I need special abuse councelling/ psychotherapy. I hate what happened to me and cant believe I allowed it to happen.

?

Hi superstar. I'm so sorry to hear about what you went through. That sounds seriously traumatic. I have been in a violent and emotionally abusive relationship myself and it certainly does take years to come to terms with what happened to you. It's not at all surprising that you feel you are struggling with relationships.

I see a psychotherapist weekly and have done for the last 3 years. It's slow progress and the most painful thing I have ever done but also by far the most rewarding. I honestly don't know very much about CBT but my understanding of it is that you don't dig as deeply into your feelings as you do with psychotherapy - the emphasis is on changing how you currently feel and helping you adopt a most positive and healthy approach to life, but without going into detail about what is the cause of your painful feelings in the first place.

I cannot recommend psychotherapy enough. There are no quick fixes and it's intensely painful at times. But I am so much happier and so much more stable for it. It's the best money I have ever spent by far.

In the short term, please give yourself permission to feel however you are feeling. My advice would be to ditch the dating for a while and focus on you. You do need to put yourself first here.

Please keep posting - there are lots of people on here who have similar experiences to yours. Be kind to yourself

I'm sorry you're still bearing the scars from that relationship. They run deep. My relationship didn't become abusive until the end, and didn't actually spill into violence until the exact point I ended it. Even so, it took me a few years to process it and reach a point where I was better than I was even before the relationship. For someone who has been severely abused, it is completely unsurprising that it would take longer.

CBT is great and will never be wasted, but I'd agree with Lotta that psychotherapy is the way to go with this. In every abuse victim is a little gremlin that tells us there must have been something lacking in us to have put up with it for so long. It can take a lot of self-awareness and skill to get to the root of that and vanquish it for good, and it can be painful. But when you do, everything else has a tendency to click into place.

Good luck.

Hi all. Thanks for the kind words of support. I am starting cbt soon and will push for psychotherapy. My mum was abusive too so there are clear patterns.

Sorry for typos btw; was using touch phone.

This stuff won't go away until you deal with it love.

None of us'd get better either, it's not just you.

There is no shortcut. Only therapy, the freedom programme and finding out why you were made vulnerable to be targeted by an abuser will help you heal and grow again.

I know women 'fix' themselves after over 20 years of being out of an abusive relationship.

You can do this, and really should, it's so worth it!

Good luck love, we're all here for you!

Thank you so much for the encouragement. i have signed up for the online Freedom Programme online but have yet to hera from them.

I know this sounds selfish and victimmy but I can't help thinking; why me? I just want someone who loves me for me like all the other mums.

Reasons why I may have been targeted:

Being bullied at school, particularly bullying centred on my unattractiveness and inabilty to get a man (aged 14 fgs) which made me latch onto the first man who showed interest.

My bullying mum (dead now). I miss her but she didn't always stand by me. Told me she hated being mum etc.

I had just finished with someone who was too intense. I did dump my abuser after 2 weeks as I found him physically repulsive but he stalked me and wormed his way in. WHY didn't anyone help me?

My love, when you've taken the steps you need to start healing yourself from this, you will know that the only person there to help you is within you.

That tiny little being has been neglected, squashed and ignored for só long. But she's there! In time, given space to express herself, she will grow and learn.

Then you'll know what love is! :)

You were bullied at school because of bad self esteem.

You felt that being alone was a bad thing and fell into a bad relationship after come out of another less than ideal one.

Self esteem.

The fact that you ended it is good, but sadly your abuser knew he only had a small window, and upped his game.

You caved, because of the lack of feeling that you deserved any better.

The one thing that all this has in common, is the person I have not spoken about yet. Your mother.

She taught you, that little girl, that you didn't matter, were unlovable, and worthless.

The bullies, the abusers/weirdos all just hang off that.

Your mother is dead. I know you say you miss her, but really you miss the mother she never was. You need to really look at this relationship, and see where all that worthlessness came from.

I'm sorry, it's a hellish thing to have to look at when the person's already gone. There will be anger, hatred even, but they are only feelings. They need to be expressed. You have an absolute right to express them, you can't heal any of this until you do.

Have you looked at Daughters of the Narcissistic? Could she have fallen into this category?

Try also the stately Homes threads here and open up about your upbringing.

There are many of us that have almost carbon copy lives, and by taking the time to get to know the little girl within us, and nurture her to being a fully fledged adult, we recover and heal.

I left my hideously abusive relationship (every abuse except being hit) when the hostages came out of beirut. I was jealous that they had intensive therapy at brize norton for a few weeks after they came out. Not jealous that they didn't deserve it, because they certainly did, but jealous that I needed it too! I don't think you can underestimate the appalling toll of these relationships. I read a book called 'No Visible Wounds' by Mary Susan Miller - the author was researching trauma and likened the trauma of eg vietnam vets to the trauma of victims of domestic abuse. I knew this was true (not that I've ever been a vietnam vet, but I knew I was deeply traumatised).

Heartened to hear that you know your history of abuse goes back - imo there is form somewhere along the line ie we have been abused before. I remember when I finally left my abuser and I had a moment of clarity re 'this has happened before!' But I had no idea at that time how or where it had happened before. Then I went into therapy and uncovered years of abuse stretching right back - it was no wonder I ended up in an abusive relationship, it was all I knew.

As pp's are saying, imo it takes long-haul therapy to explore the abuse - all the abuse, past and present. It's certainly painful sometimes but oh so worth it. cbt is, I suppose, a good framework to work with in a general way but imo you need more in-depth therapy to address the trauma of an abusive relationship. (One element that was difficult to grasp was that it had happened to me in a domestic setting - in an ordinary city/street/house - not a foreign battlefield iyswim.)

Also, read up all you can, go to courses, groups etc that address domestic abuse.

'Then I went into therapy and uncovered years of abuse stretching right back - it was no wonder I ended up in an abusive relationship, it was all I knew.'

Same here. I originally went to psychotherapy about 18 months after I got out of an abusive relationship with a man because I felt I hadn't even begun to deal with it. I also had a niggling feeling that there was more to it. I've long since moved on from my abusive relationship with that man, and have come to terms with it, but the healing from my abusive childhood (which I only started realising was abusive about 3 years ago) is very much ongoing. As springy says, this is seriously traumatising stuff and I think it's way too much to expect anyone to come to terms with it without professional guidance. The legacies of abuse include not being able to trust yourself and that deep seated feeling of being 'worthless' or at least 'not good enough' - IME, these make it impossible to untangle your own experiences and find your way to happiness and peace.

Good luck OP - you're doing a very brave and important thing by taking this step

Thanks all. I guess the thing that worries m is that I go through this stuff repeatedly in my head but really I want to forget it. Will therapy just bring it to the surface or will I get some release?

It will bring it to the surface and that's the only way to process it and ultimately feel better. The therapist will move at your pace though and won't push you to discuss things if you're not ready. It's a painful process superstar, it really is, but the rewards are so worth it.

It will bring it to the surface, but you'll find that what you're afraid of is not AS big and scary as you think!

It's the thought of it that's what frightening to us.

That fear is childhood fear, not adult fear. That's why it feels so intense, so visceral.

You can handle it, you really can.

In therapy you don't always go the way you thought. You can end up going in a different direction to what you would expect. You think you're going to go in there with a list and slowly tick it off, like working through a syllabus. But it doesn't necessary go like that at all!

If you are thinking about the abuse constantly then that is the trauma talking. yy you really do need to start opening it up in a safe, professional environment. It will be like lancing a boil.... though you won't necessary see what you are doing in therapy until later iyswim. eg some things that plagued you will no longer be there, though you're not quite sure how they went iyswim. I'm saying a lot of 'iyswim' because it's quite hard to explain how it goes. I suppose it's like any relationship: if, say, you make a new friend, you don't have a checklist eg planning that on your 6th meeting you will talk about such-and-such, or secure a commitment to this or that. it doesn't go like that! Therapy, as with any relationship, just does evolve. The therapist knows what they are doing, you don't have to. iyswim!

Do your research with a therapist btw; check out what they specialise and are experienced in. You have to click with your therapist, as you would with any relationship - just because they have letters after their name, doesn't mean they're right for you (though they'll be right for somebody else). For therapy to go well you have to trust your therapist, and that takes time. I do suggest you see a therapist for the long-haul ie not for a finite time. It's as long as a piece of string, you can't possibly know when you're going to be 'done' - or, at least, feel you would like to finish - and when that time comes, it should be entirely up to you.

You will find that it is an immense relief to talk about the things that have been plaguing you. It is wonderful to talk to someone who understands what you are talking about (I'm sure you have found it is just so exhausting trying to explain to your average person what you mean, or try to explain what you have experienced - the majority don't get it at all ). I find it is such a relief, and release, to not have to police what I am saying/thinking/feeling but to just let it out, trusting that my therapist will catch it. Iyswim lol.