If therapists won't help, is there a way to overcome childhood demons?

[OneBreathAfterAnother]

I've been reading a lot about how childhood experiences shape our relationships, and I think mine probably have quite a profound affect on me as an adult. Unfortunately, though, I've tried 5 therapists (3 private, 2 NHS - one was a traumatic counsellor and one a psychiatrist) but they won't help.

Is it possible to identify for yourself what different experiences are likely to have done?

In short, my childhood was chaotic. I was one of five sisters, my parents were together but my mum had frequent affairs (whilst we were home, and very aware of what was going on) and my mum would accuse my dad of having affairs often. My mum had bipolar and was sectioned frequently throughout my childhood, we used to visit her once a week during her inpatient stays. She tried to abort me during late pregnancy and that lead to a lot of disabilities for me, and I don't think I've ever managed to get over her telling me once, aged about ten, that she wished every day that she'd succeeded. My dad was very emotionally distant. I have never heard him say that he loves me, I've probably had three or four hugs from him in my entire life.

My elder and one younger sister had chaotic personalities too and would have violent knife fights with my mum. My dad would disappear when things got too much. I'd end up on hold with the duty social worker, and trying to break up the fights. Two of my little sisters were eventually taken into care, leaving me, my eldest sister and the baby. My older sister was kicked out at 18 after a fight, and housed by social services. She broke up the marriage of a much, much older man and eventually they married. They are still together, as far as I know. She has never worked either. We stayed in touch through everything until she lied about having breast cancer and then kidney cancer - she told me she was dying and kept it up for months, until my own kidney issues meant doctors and SS looked into my family history.

I was left to deal with my mum, because they feared for her mental health if she lost all her children. She loved babies, but doesn't like children. She never worked, and blew all her money on the day she got it. I'd have to beg for food from the village shop, and eventually worked shifts there underage for bread and toilet paper.

At 17, I met my ex-DP. He is lovely, but very middle-class, so a different world to me. We were out one evening and my mum called him shouting abuse, saying she'd report him and he was too good for me, I'd learn my lesson, etc.

Three months later, she kicked me out in the middle of the night. I had nowhere to go and she wouldn't let me take anything, I was just in the short PJs that I'd been asleep in. DP picked me up and I haven't seen any of my family since.

I found out last week that my baby sister now lives with her boyfriends parents too, she's almost the mirror image of me. She feels loved there, although it's the other side of the country to me, and it looks like she left school without any GCSEs. My parents are, apparently, divorced - my dad is currently missing, having walked out on his fiancé a few weeks ago, and my mum is dating a much younger man.

I hoard badly, which I'm guessing is because of not having much. I have a lot of anxiety - A fear of abandonment, I can't handle rejection. I feel like a failure when money is very tight and I use money to show my affection for people. I'm a bit of a workaholic. I'm emotional and I cry easily. If we're running low on toilet roll, for example, I get upset. I am a bit of an attention seeker.

Because of the extent of the violence and abuse, it's been decided that revisiting this and turfing it all up isn't going to help and therefore all of my therapy attempts have ended. I don't think I can fix things without knowing what is wrong and why, though...

Does anyone have any thoughts/ideas?

It sounds awful. I'm sure that therapy would help you. But it has to be the right therapist and in my experience that can take a long time to find. I have seen many many counsellors and the like over the years but only this year found the one that seemed to work for me. And it's been amazing! I really feel for the first time that I am healing, and that I understand exactly how and why I was affected by what happened to me as a child. So my advice would be to persevere. There is only so much you can do with self help books and the like, whereas if you are ready to look into stuff and you have a good therapist I believe the process can transform your life. Good luck!

Therapy in most cases does work, with the right therapist and right type of therapy, it's not about you "not being able to do it" or anything like that. There are a ton of different therapy modalities out there, CBT, CAT, EMDR, DBT and so on and so forth. It's also about having the right fit. My DH had a hell of a childhood, it took him until therapist number 7 (a psychotherapist) until he started to make some progress and get better, he's for the most part absolutely fine now.

I would give it another go if I were you, you have been to hell and back, I'm so sorry you've had to go through all of that, it's disgusting that people treated you like that. Big hug and from me. I hope you start to feel better soon.

I think what the therapists may mean is that reliving the trauma is not always helpful.

It is instead possible to only talk about the experiences in terms of how they have made you feel and therefore behave.

e.g. I was never loved turns into a belief that you are unloveable, which in turn leads you to enter into relationships that are not loving (the behaviour)

And so the bit to work on is your belief about being unloveable. Just because your parents weren't loving towards you, does that make you unloveable? (the answer is no, just in case)

So, the people I have experienced overcoming these sorts of childhoods have had to examine every single belief they have about themselves and start rewriting these more accurately.

It is possible to do. You are not broken.

Hi OP, it certainly sounds as if you had an incredibly rough childhood - sorry for the understatement. The fact that you have articulated all the above so well and are obviously very self aware does you huge credit. I don't know how you have managed to cope so well, but you're clearly a survivor and from some of the aspects you describe, very resourceful as well.

I'm not especially versed with therapists but I do know that NHS funding is extremely low and I am not surprised that you have taken the private route for some of your therapy. You say that they won't help and that it's been decided that revisiting your childhood won't help - did they all tell you this and did they give any reasons?

For what it's worth, my angle would be to write down the specific issues that you feel you want to address, in the first instance, as a starting point for a therapist with whom you feel completely comfortable and as though you can say anything to and they will listen. Then go backwards (to your childhood) in the course of conversation if and only if that is relevant and helps with the unravelling. In many ways I think that we have the answers within ourselves and just need someone skilled enough to help us access them.

Wishing you all the very best of luck.

I think if just talking and reliving hasnt helped now you need real STRATEGIES to overcome you anxiety and move on. A different type of therapy called CBT, Cognitive Behavoural Therapy would possibly help more (IME it helped, as i had v dysfunctional childhood too). It gives you strategies and ways to cope with and change anxiety and negative thoughts. I was very dismissive at first, but actually when i bought a book on it off Amazon, it made a heck of a lot of sense and I do some of the things a lot that work for me: writing down and challenging my anxious/negative thoughts etc etc. I still see a counsellor but we focus on struggles day to day and how i can learn from then and change my focus to lookingforward and coping, not looking back and dwelling. Hope this helps. The book i got was CBT for Dummies.

I finally moved on from abuse after I felt like my side had been heard, and I said my piece. Then with CBT I just moved on. It sounds glib, but it was thirty years on and I felt I'd wasted enough of my life and was ready. Xxxxxxxxxx

Nothing helpful to say but OP

Sorry you went through such a horrible start to life. And that you are still feeling the after effects.

Some people do find talking about things re-traumatises them. So talk based therapies don't work for everyone. So for those of us who find that route unhelpful (myself included) there are ways to try to work past your experiences that don't involve talking about it again and again. So the following is based just on my own experiences of what has helped. I mention these things in the hope that they help you, or point you down some neighbouring roads that might prove fruitful.

(Like you, I was experiencing a lot of anxiety. There were flashbacks/nightmares/times when I was so much in "fight or flight" mode and so scared by other people's actions, I really was in danger of being of harm to myself or others.)

I have found this guy's work [http://pete-walker.com/] very helpful. Both his online work and his has written a couple of books. His basic point is that abusive/neglectful childhoods can cause complex ptsd, so it needs similar treatment.

EMDR (eye movement desensitising and reprocessing) is a successful treatment for some people with PTSD.

You mentioned a trauma therapist- was that someone who worked talk based or who worked on releasing trauma via physical exercises? Because some people respond better to physically based therapies. Peter Levine is good author on this subject, and TRE (trauma releasing exercises) devised by David Bercelli can be worked through on your own without having to discuss anything with a therapist, if the discussion would be traumatic. There are also people who specialise in practising TRE, and other who specialise in dance or art based therapies for trauma.

Movement and art based therapies can be particularly effective in engaging with the par of you that was traumatised at young age, if it is down in such a way as to treat you as if you are still the same age as when the trauma happened. "The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook - What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us about Loss, Love and Healing" by Bruce Perry is really good at outlining what the actually understanding and explaining what traumatised children need, and so understanding what the adults they grow into still need if the trauma wasn't addressed when they were young.

If you have any symptoms that are dissociative (blackouts, times you feel detached from your own body/thoughts/actions) then "Coping with trauma related dissociation; skills training for patients and therapists" is a comprehensive work outlining steps that can be taken to stabilise everyday life and relating to everyday life. So things like learning to prioritise proper self care can make a huge difference

On a deeper level, The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundatons of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation by Stephen Porges is pretty technical, but a cutting edge take on the way in which our body and minds interact with one another. It helped me understand how my body and mind processed trauma and what was going on in different systems in my body when I re-experienced it later.

On a practical note, a regular, very gentle massage from a mobile therapist in my own home has made a huge difference to my anxiety levels.

"Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Eliminating Symptoms at Their Roots Using Memory Reconsolidation" by Robert A Neimeyer was an absolute revelation to me. Applying what I learned from it has made a huge difference to me over the last couple of years. My flashbacks/nightmares have gone from being daily or weekly to something that happens in a much milder form, every 3 or 4 months. Things which would have manifested themselves are either wake- up-screaming type nightmares or full-on panic attacks (or sometimes as rages), are now vivid dreams that I wake up from with a sense of having further processed those experiences and a sense of relief/moving on.

So I hope some of these things help. There is a way to make progress outside therapy. You just need to find your own path and pick your way through it slowly and carefully.

I would also add that a scene from the comdey "Whitney" really resonated with me. Whitney's therapist meets her fiance. The therapist basically says that she helped Whitney cope with her past, but that "The reason Whitney got better is you. She started getting better when you came into her life, /she can rely on you". So making sure that the only people you let be close to you are trustworthy, care for you, have your back, makes a huge difference. Let how they are with you over write your early experiences.

Take care and good luck.