My life - Part 3 - Potentially triggering

Potentially triggering content. Please do not read if you might be triggered. Thank you.

I have to say here and now that I am lucky. I have very supportive friends and family to some extent. Without them, I honestly would have died a long time ago. Even typing this feels so shameful. I worry what people will think when they read these words. What are they now thinking of me. I imagine the thoughts can not be very good or kind towards me. I am afraid people will say this is a cry for attention, that I am stupid, that I am lazy, that I am worthless, that I should just die and stop whining. I imagine so many horrible things, partially because I have been told each of these things at one point in my life or another.

The people were typically someone I loved, though I also heard it from doctors, and "friends". Even my husband told me he could not be with someone with my mental illness and physical disabilities. He believed I would ruin his career. He honestly could not deal with or handle me. It broke me when he told me these things and other things. I was so broken I have still not recovered from it. I realize now that some of what he said was simply because he was lashing out, he was hurting, and he wanted to hurt me. It is painful for the other person if you are in a relationship. The pains and mental anguish those that love us suffer is probably unbearable. I understand because there are times I would not want to live with me. I can understand why others would want to avoid me. Knowing that still does not take away the pain I feel.

I try to do good things and be a good person, but always on the inside I feel it is never enough. I feel like I am a bad person. I feel I am being punished in some way for something I don't even know. It is hard to understand why I must feel so much pain when others seem to just roll with life's blows. It shames me that I can not be like other people. I feel guilty that others even have to tolerate my presence at times. I try to just keep the body going and pray that the mind and spirit will eventually catch up. I have been merely surviving for years. I feel like somewhere along the way I just stopped living. I don't know how to start again. 

Part 5: Do You Suffer from Past Trauma (Childhood Abuse, PTSD, Domestic Violence, etc..)?

Please be aware though I will not be going into specifics this could be a trigger for some of you. Read with caution! 

Please remember any abuses that you have suffered were not your fault. You are a survivor! If you were able to survive the abuse, you can survive the emotions that have been left behind. You are not alone. There is someone out there who can help or listen. *hugs*

So far I have talked about Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Yoga, Meditation, Self Hypnosis, Massage Therapy, Setting Boundaries, Getting to know yourself basically. Now I want to talk about the thing that I have found to be the most helpful to me. It was actually designed for a specific type of mental illness called Borderline Personality Disorder. I don't have that so I guess that would be one of the reasons it was not recommended to me for a long time. Luckily I had a great Dr in Lexington, KY. He told me about this program. He told me that even though it was designed for people with Borderline Personality Disorder that he had sent patients through it who suffered with Chronic PTSD with great success. The program is called DBT - Dialectical behavior therapy. 

I wanted to feel better and to stop being afraid. I figured I had nothing to lose really at this point. It still took me a while to call. I finally did and set up an appointment to find out about it. I met with the Dr who ran the DBT group. She explained to me how the program worked. Basically every week you have a group session and an individual session. In the group you learn skills to use. There is homework to help you practice the skills. At the next group you will go over the homework to see how you did along with learning new skills and getting new homework. The individual sessions help you adapt to life using the skills and also deal with things getting in the way. 

I have found this website DBT Self Help to be pretty helpful for looking up DBT stuff on my own. I do recommend find an actual DBT therapist and group though. My insurance covers it and so might yours. There are some pages that say they don't work but I have found you can work around them usually by clicking through to them from other places on the site. Also there are some great apps for DBT if you have an iPhone, not sure about other phones though. If you have any questions please ask and I will help you to the best of my abilities. 

There are 4 Modules in DBT that you learn. They are Mindfulness, Distress tolerance, Emotion Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness. The skills are taught in 6 months though most people take at least 2, 6month loops to really learn them. There are also 4 stages but I can not remember how they go right now. These skills though are far reaching and can help so many people because when you break them down they are basically life skills. 

These skills are just so useful that I felt I needed to talk about them or at least point some people in the right direction to find them. Help is out there. You don't have to suffer any longer. Life is worth living and you deserve to seek your joy.  Also for those who will not be able to really follow the program or seek out the therapy, I will be occasionally posting helpful hints and suggestions along the way to help encourage you. I think that is part of why we are here. We have to help out when we can right! *hugs*

Part 4: Do You Suffer from Past Trauma (Childhood Abuse, PTSD, Domestic Violence, etc..)?

Please be aware though I will not be going into specifics this could be a trigger for some of you. Read with caution! 


Please remember any abuses that you have suffered were not your fault. You are a survivor! If you were able to survive the abuse, you can survive the emotions that have been left behind. You are not alone. There is someone out there who can help or listen. *hugs*

How did I choose what I wanted and didn't want out of a relationship? Well we actually had to make a list for that in Massage school. It was actually pretty amazing to put down the things you know that you want, the things you know that you don't and then to see how the people in your life compare to it. I don't know if other schools teach the same skills as the one I attended but I am ever so grateful that I chose to go to school there.

Another thing that helped in school was the massage itself. We have a saying "The issues are in the tissues". The body fibers hold onto patterns from habit of use. Some people say they hold onto old emotion or energy. We are taught to just observe and be there for the client. Sometimes they may have an emotional outburst or release and you don't comfort them, you just continue to massage, maybe bring them tissues and the trash can unless they ask you to stop or something. I had such experiences myself.

The first time I had to get on the massage table at school I dreaded it. I didn't want to at all but I had to. It was required in our program. From the moment I got on the table and the person touched my back the tears started pouring from my eyes. The tears didn't stop for almost 3 hours even though the massage was only 3o min. My teacher actually asked was I sure that I would be able to continue with the program, or that I wanted to. I would and I did. Every time I was on the table I cried though it got better with time. Massage school helped me learn to be touched in a non sexual non threatening manner. I am now able to get a massage with out crying, though these days I do talk to the therapist because it helps me to stay calm so that I am able to get work done for my pain.

Now I am not saying that I think everyone should go to massage school. What I am saying is that its a good idea to decide what your boundaries are. It is also a good idea I think to work on touch therapy if you have the strong aversion to it like I did and it interferes with your day to day life. As a massage therapist I was able to work with a few people doing this type of therapy. For some I started working on them fully clothed in my massage chair because to lay on a massage table was too much for them. Gradually over time we were able to remove some layers of clothing, though always at the clients comfort level. Even though clothing is being removed while I was not working in an area I would drape the area with a sheet or towel to keep the person feeling safe and secure. On another person I worked on her hands and gradually worked my way up her arm to her shoulders. You just need to find someone you feel you can trust to work with you at your personal comfort level. If your therapist does not listen to you they are not the right person to go to.   to be continued....

Part 3: Do You Suffer from Past Trauma (Childhood Abuse, PTSD, Domestic Violence, etc..)?

Please be aware though I will not be going into specifics this could be a trigger for some of you. Read with caution! 

Please remember any abuses that you have suffered were not your fault. You are a survivor! If you were able to survive the abuse, you can survive the emotions that have been left behind. You are not alone. There is someone out there who can help or listen. *hugs*

I think learning to accept love is very hard if you have been abused. People who have been victims of abuse tend to be filled with guilt, shame, self hatred, self blame, low self esteem and they do not usually believe that they deserve to be loved. This is a hard one to understand, especially if that person has a partner that really loves them now. The person who suffered abuse may have doubts all the time, may get clingy, or may try to push the partner away. The abuse cycle hurts everyone involved.

Back to my story a bit and I should stop here to add this is not by any means a complete history. I am just telling the parts that helped me. We all had to go through a lot of messed up and bad times to get to the good ones and to get better. I leave all that out now for several reasons. 1) I don't like to dwell on it. 2) I don't really think its necessary to get my point across. 3) Knowing the bad things that have went down will not really help you out. Lets focus on the positive here.

With the encouragement of my friends that I lived with I decided to go to school for massage. In hindsight this was a very weird choice for me as I hated to be touched. My thoughts were I would be the one touching others and it would be a way to help people. I had a background in Home Health and Childcare so I wanted to do something I could make a difference in. I ended up loving Massage and loving Massage Therapy School. I had wonderful teachers. I learned amazing things. I came out of it with so much more than I thought I would.

You may be asking yourself what does Massage School have to do with any of this?? Well I learned things like boundaries and ethics. I learned that I deserved respect. I learned I didn't have to have sex with people just to get them to like me. Sex had never really had any value to me other than a physical way to connect to others. It was never a big deal to me if I had sex with someone. At one point a friend had even remarked "Is F*cking just how you say hello? Do you have to F*ck everyone you meet?" I had thought about it and told her that I found it to be a good ice breaker. Well learning everything I did about ethics and boundaries and how they applied to massage helped me to figure out a set of them for myself and my life. I had not really had them before. I didn't realize it was something I desperately needed for my self esteem and self worth.

Don't get me wrong though I am not saying this was an overnight change or that I completely stopped having sex. I didn't, I just became choosy and decided what I wanted and what I didn't want. Then I lived by those decisions.  to be continued....

Part 2: Do You Suffer from Past Trauma (Childhood Abuse, PTSD, Domestic Violence, etc..)?

Please be aware though I will not be going into specifics this could be a trigger for some of you. Read with caution! 

Please remember any abuses that you have suffered were not your fault. You are a survivor! If you were able to survive the abuse, you can survive the emotions that have been left behind. You are not alone. There is someone out there who can help or listen. *hugs*

I have tried many types of therapy through the years and to be really honest none of them helped until I was about 24 (I think but I could be off on the age by a year or so). At that time I got a therapist who used Cognitive Behavior Therapy. It was the first therapy I had ever found to be effective at all. For really the first time I was seeing an improvement in how I felt about myself that didn't depend on others.   I only stayed with it for a few months because I moved but I had bought the book "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by David Burns so I continued to use what I had learned. While I was feeling a bit better, it only went so far though.

I tried Self Hypnosis, Meditation and Yoga. These also helped a bit. It seemed like everything I tried would help just a little bit. I felt like I was taking the tiniest of baby steps forward and then something would happen to tumble me all the way back again causing me to have to start over. Around this time through odd circumstances, I ended up homeless in St Petersburg, FL. A friend found out and before even one night without having a home she and her husband took me in. They also encouraged me to go back to school. Living with them was so hard in some ways for me.

I mean here were these 2 people who had 5 kids between them and a 4 bedroom home. They didn't even think twice or blink an eye over me moving in and would have none of my arguments. They were just such warm and loving people and it just bubbled out of them and spread to everyone they knew. Their kids were the same way. I grew up not really hearing people tell me that they loved me or hugging me or just touching me all the time. To be honest I had (still have to a degree) a major aversion to being touched. Well you try explaining that to such a loving family. Yep its not gonna happen. They just hug you and tell you they love you and when you start crying they hold you and say its ok. They didn't see anything wrong with crying???? This was so weird to me. I was tough. I didn't cry. I grew up believing you never let people see you cry. It is a sign of weakness and it will be exploited. Not with this family though. They believed a good cry was healthy and healing, so were hugs.

Slowly so slowly I got used to walking in the door and getting 7 hugs on a regular basis. I got used to hearing I love you and knowing that it was meant. I got used to people cuddling up against me to watch a movie on the couch. I got used to a whole new side of people I never knew existed. That was I think when I really started to realize there are good people out there in this world.   to be continued....

Do You Suffer from Past Trauma (Childhood Abuse, PTSD, Domestic Violence, etc..)? Part 1

Please be aware though I will not be going into specifics this could be a trigger for some of you. Read with caution! 

Please remember any abuses that you have suffered were not your fault. You are a survivor! If you were able to survive the abuse, you can survive the emotions that have been left behind. You are not alone. There is someone out there who can help or listen. *hugs*

Do you suffer? Do you know someone who suffers? So many people today are suffering and they continue to suffer for a lot of reasons. I am one of those people. I am going to share some things with you today, not for sympathy or pity but in hopes that my experiences can help YOU or SOMEONE YOU KNOW!

You may or may not know this about me but I suffered pretty much every abuse imaginable from early childhood (I'm honestly not sure how young it all started) through early adulthood. These abuses included Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Sexual. When a person suffers these types of abuses as an early child and on it really effects the whole person. You are still growing in every since of the word. Your body is still forming, your mind, your emotions.

You develop coping skills to get you through it to survive. Sometimes you forget, ignore it, pretend it doesn't exist. Sometimes you develop self hurting behaviors such as cutting, anorexia, bulimia, drinking, drugs, promiscuity, etc.. Your body can develop incorrectly due to injuries sustained leading to problems not only while the abuse is occurring but later in life as well. You may also become angry, full of rage, though you will probably direct it towards someone other than your abuser (not always though). You may totally withdrawal from the world and hide, become very shy, not talk much to anyone. There are really so many ways abuse can express itself.

You have probably tried lots of ways to get help too. Maybe taking medicine prescribed by a psychiatrist. You may have seen a psychologist or other mental health professional for counseling. You may have tried intensive therapy programs. Maybe different things in life just have led to you getting better a bit at a time.  I am going to do a few blogs on this subject. In them I will explore the things that have helped me on my journey to get well. I will say this is a life journey and I do not believe there are any quick fixes.   to be continued....