Assessment for counselling on Tuesday

[ValerieCupcake]

As it says. I have a telephone assessment this week. I have been looking over my past - upbringing, leading to boundaries or lack of, behaviour in relationships. Choosing the wrong people time after time. Leading to a knock on effect with the next one. I've learned a lot, recently, but I need to explore the past in some way.

I was bullied at school. I've been on one of those Facebook memories pages this weekend. Looking for old photographs really but I got distracted when I saw pictures and comments. The bullies are all on there. Three of them are male and it seems they have lots of comments and people seem to like them. They were truly vile individuals. I had a seizure in class at age 14 and one of them brought it up for years and years and had a particular name for me. Fitting Fiona. Another one kicked me under the desk repeatedly whilst wearing Dr Martens because he wanted my pink comb with a metal tail on it. God knows what for. I was terrified to report him. I also felt ashamed. Another accused me of incest with a male relative at the bus stop. Not doing it at the bus stop, we were all at the bus stop when he said it. It was completely untrue, but I felt terrible. I felt so ashamed of myself.

My dad is also on the page. Well not him, he is dead, but pictures of him. People commenting "anyone know these people" and my dad is one of them. "Great guy" "top geezer" in the comments. No he wasn't. He was a twat to me who called me vile names. He stole my piggy bank money for the pub. We had no holidays No food on the table sometimes. Sent me borrowing money from my grandma. Who went on and on about what a loser my dad was. As if it was my fault.

The page has stirred up a lot for me. A lot of these people hated and rejected me. As soon as I could I moved away from the area. I still live in the same city but well away from the area I grew up in. I wanted to escape, get away. Not mix with any of them. I never had a boyfriend from the area by choice. I just rejected it. Now this memories page is painting it as Utopia. It was not, it was hell for me.

So I sort of escaped but I took it all with me. The legacy of it was I stuffed up my life for years. Relationships were all damaged because I was damaged and I picked awful awful men.

I hope that I can make sense of that for starters on Tuesday.

This went well. The woman I spoke to said she understood I have been operating in survival mode all my life. That my father had his own issues he was unable to handle or process so he took it out on people who couldn't answer back. Me as a child, to be precise.

Hopefully this will be a good thing.

You poor thing. I'm so glad it went well for you.

That's great that you have taken steps to get counselling as although it can't change what has happened hopefully it will enable you to learn how your behaviour patterns have stemmed from your youth and the best ways for you to personally overcome them.
I think the biggie is having a counsellor that you feel a good rapport with and comfortable really opening up about your best and worst character traits and the same with your memories of your life.
I have had a few counsellors before but have always felt scared to fully open up, only giving snippets.
Part of that was me maybe not being ready to face what I had been hiding, but also that I didn't feel that trust in the counsellor.

This woman was great to talk to I really connected with her. Appointments are thank god face to face or on zoom. I find phone calls can be disconnecting.

I didn't realise how much bullying affected me. I felt so ashamed of myself and pointless. The kids two doors away were rather rough as was their family. There were three daughters. The youngest one was my age then a younger brother. This girl, lets call her Julie, didn't bully me but she stood back whilst her older sisters did. They blew hot and cold, tricked me into going round so they could slap me across the face and the mother and father were just as bad. The mother was like a fishwife. She got married at 16 and had her first child and her husband was 19 so they didn’t have much of a clue. They once challenged me to a fight outside in the circle, it was like Gladiator, kids watching like a football match, it was horrible and they were much bigger than me. They would push me down the steps and so on. I don’t really remember any of it being challenged.

Julie wanted to be friends years later but I said hello but kept a distance. Once she invited me to go to the cinema with her and her parents one Saturday night. I was about 16. It turned out to be a blue film. It was surreal watching her parents munch popcorn and hot dogs watching blue movies. I kept well away after that.

I should add that the fit was a one off. It never happened before nor since. I was so embarrassed I never told my mother about it. It happened in a biology lesson at school. I was the talk of the school for a week that it happened because I was scared of the skeleton. But these two lousy boys picked up on it and made it nasty. I also plucked my eyebrows and they picked up on that too. They called me a witch. When I began work, a girl I had never met before was going out with a boy who was a friend of these school bullies. She brought it up in the workplace. I quickly left to find another job I was so mortified. The next job was a failure I was sacked from it.

I should be laughing at this as a stupid childhood memory but I'm not. I made sure that when I was old enough I didn't socialise where I lived.