Anniverseries

Hey guys,

I know that its been a while since I have been on here, but I have been back in hospital over my birthday and had several “anniversaries” since. These are not the good ones, not the ones where you get flowers cards and presents, but ones that take me back to a place that I do not want to got.

Everyone in the world, I imagine, has dates that they would rather forget. Ones that remind them of bad times, but for me they lead me to an all encompassing depression and I have no energy to fight them. It doesn't help that the different personalities within me react differently to them.

Tomorrow is Fathers' day in the UK, and this is a hugely bad day for me, it was one of his special days (Along with my birthday and his, plus Christmas) and at the moment I am really struggling to stay safe. The pain from the memories of both the SRA and the abuse from my dad is so strong, that it feels that death is my only option. But I don't want to hurt other people, and so I struggle on. Holding onto that need not to hurt other people and prove to everyone beyond reasonable doubt that I am Evil.

So what do we do? How do people get through these dates? Answers on a postcard please (or on the comments)

I am trying to keep busy, and put things in place. Every year after this time of year I say to myself that I will be more organised and have things in place, but it sees every year it creeps up on me. I do have things planned for today and tomorrow, and hope that it will get me through, as I hate letting people down, so we will see how successful this is.

I think the fact that I have started therapy has meant that a lot more has come out in my mind (and hopefully to my therapist at the right time) and that has made this year a lot harder than before. But as it is said, no pain no gain. I just have to trust in the therapy that I am doing (Which I do) and hope that by this time next year I will be in a lot better place in order to deal with individual dates that have such a huge meaning for me.

Life is shit but you have get up dust yourself down and get on with it!!!

sorry that this doesn't really have any answers, but I am at a lost at the moment.

Love

Lou xxx

Guilt and responsibility

hey guys,

I went to my support group last night, and we had a long talk about responsibility and guilt, and we all pretty much felt the same. First thing I have to say though is ITS NOT YOUR FAULT ANY OF IT, YOU CANNOT CONTROL SOMEONE ELSE, IF YOU DIDN'T TALK AND IT HAPPENED TO SOMEONE ELSE THAT'S THE ABUSERS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR ACTIONS!!!

This is where I am a complete hypocrite as I feel completely responsible for the risk of the abusers I had hurting others. I have got better with my dad as I did try and get justice and it was the CPS who decided not to take it further, but I still worry to the point it makes me ill that he'll hurt someone else. But my biggest guilt is around the ritualistic abuse and the fact my brain wont tell me enough to know who the abuser’s are, and I am completely convinced that I cannot of been the only one,

its a horrible feeling to have, the guilt that you think that you may have been able to stop someone else suffering but my friends tell me (as I just cant see it yet) that I was a child, programmed by my parents to keep things secret and its never a child’s responsibility (or anyone who is abused) to stop others hurting, they just have to do what they have to do to get through and survive. For me this was dissociation and “splitting (bad word for it but cant think of another one) into my different parts.

I have to remember that I have survived, I have survived seriously terrifying and horrifying things that should happen to no one, but I have done it. I struggle with it, and I still feel my parents have a lot of control over me through their grooming of me. I just hope that one day that I can truly break free from them, not just physically (Which is have) but also repair all the stuff they have ingrained into my head so that I can actually enjoy life. At the moment it just doesn’t seem possible, I still feel that it was all my fault because I am inherently evil and they were all just trying to make me good....what they told me.

Children look to adults, especially parents, for guidance and love and I didn’t get that, I got narcissistic mother who wants to throw everything under the carpet to make sure the world sees us as perfect family...in other words so people see her as a perfect mother (so far from the truth its ridiculous) and my dad sexually abused me or 20 + years, but yet its my fault....writing that makes it seem what I think is stupid. However i'm struggling to see it any other way, especially as this way gives me some kinda of control over something that was completely out of my control. Maybe this is why I struggle with using food as a way of control...but that’s for another post.

Hope you all stay safe, and this helps in some random way. Sorry

Lou

Its not my fault

Its not my fault – by Seren.

Why do those four words – its not my fault – send us into panic? Its not like if it was anyone else I know, I wouldn’t dream that what happened with the abuse to be their fault. But its ours!! what makes us so special? Even if we imagined the abuse we suffered was someone else, we still wouldn’t blame them. I wish that there was a simple solution into not blaming ourselves and internalising all the emotions that should be thrown at my parents. I hate to think of us as special, we hate being the centre of attention we just want to fit in (and never seem to). However we are the only abused child that its our fault....if only we could change how we perceive ourselves and I am sure that many other survivors feel the same.

I did some online research and found that adults who abuse, paedophiles, must except control and this is one of the ways that they do it. They don’t just hurt us physically and sexually but also emotionally. This emotional abuse is the centre to it, its not so much a sexual thrill they get (I think) but its the power balance and how they manage to transfer the blame to the child. They can do this in a variety of manners, through actually saying its the child’s fault, to giving them “presents” to keep them quiet. In our experience and those of people I know, it often means that we are the ones left wondering if we had done or been x y z then it wouldn’t happen. And so further believing it is our fault.

Having done some reading around I have realised that it was just the punishments that put me into the situation, but also the presents I used to get. This is a huge realisation for us, as we thought that was showing his “nice” side the side society sees, but from what I have read it was further bringing me into the damaging relationship. Having said that no person is all bad or all good. We all are a unique mixture of both. (I have mini dad (one of the alters) shouting in my ear that YOU ARE ALL EVIL NO GOOD CAN COME OF YOU) having DID does make things complicated!!!! anyway back on subject, my dad and mum do have good qualities just when it comes to me they turn bad. What Mini Dad was shouting is what I heard constantly for well over 20 years. And that is the part of the reason that my dad got away with it, I knew that it was my fault, and he was trying to help...after all 5 year old believe just about everything a parents say. Its not been programmed into my brain, and Mini Dad keeps reminding me of that very reason. And so the guilt continues. The guilt of turning them into the police and what happened from there I do see as my responsibility, although as some will tell me that they had brought it on themselves.

This is something that we struggle with a lot. People ask us why we are so different and special that if it is our fault why isn't it anyone else's. This question I cannot answer, maybe cause there is no answer, but we have been programmed for so long that it is our fault that in a way it lets feel that we have (non existent) control over our life for so long, its our fault therefore we deserved it. It also allows us to still see my parents as parents rather then them messing up our lives, which everyone else can see. I have to feel in control, we all do. I am guessing that it has a lot to do with our childhood and early years. Currently we are trying to do with with food :s if I am honest a lot of my life I was out of control, not with substance misuse, but because both my parents controlled me so much as I wasn’t the perfect vicars daughter that society believes I should have been. I wasn’t that happy go lucky child, I was suffering from the abuse my dad and his friends inflicted on my sexually and the emotional abuse from my mother. I wasn’t allowed emotions, and so I still internalise them as its safer, safer than getting rejected by the two people who are meant to be my care givers.

No child should be inflicted to what I was. However I was, and the reason for that is my evilness, I was born with it and they were just trying to get rid of it, and then using my to be for blame for everything because of it. This thinking is so wrong in a way, being a child includes innocence. Its all so conflicting.

Grooming, as they call it, meant that I didn’t talk for 20 years about what was going on, but I find it difficult to accept that it is his stuff that has made me feel like this. I feel responsible for so much including what happened to me. Will I ever feel differently? How will that affect how I see myself. I see myself with such detest, and distance myself from the body as its not ours, it belongs to them. In a way when I am hurting myself I’m not, I'm hurting them as it belongs to them always.

What gives the adults the right to transfer what they want to on a child? What gives them the right to use a child’s body as an adult plaything? Why when the adult may feel the guilt they transfer this to the child. I have no life really, I am only existing, as the past rules my life forever.

[EDIT: Seren had some help with this from some of the others, sorry its so difficult to understand.]

Triggers

Hey guys,

We are still out of hospital :)

This blog is around triggers, this is especially poignant for us at the moment, as one of ours is loud bangs, something you cannot get away from at this time of year...though hoping for a breather before new year!

Triggers affect many people in different ways, and everyone has them, whether it makes someone angry, sad or scared. For me, and I am guessing many people with PTSD certain triggers take them back to a time when they were not in control and a very scary time of their lives, the cause of their PTSD.

PTSD affects many people both from childhood trauma, being in front-line military to seeing something horrific, and I am sure that I have forgotten other causes.

The diagnostic criteria for PTSD (I have complex PTSD, which is slightly different)is as follows (paraphrased)

Criterion A: stressor 

The person was exposed to: death, threatened death, actual or threatened serious injury, or actual or threatened sexual violence

Criterion B: intrusion symptoms

including intrusive flashbacks, memories, nightmares etc.

Criterion C: avoidance

Criterion D: negative alterations in cognitions and mood

negative emotions related to event such as shame guilt anger to name a few

Criterion E: alterations in arousal and reactivity

Irritable or aggressive behaviour

Self-destructive or reckless behaviour

Hypervigilance

Exaggerated startle response

Problems in concentration

Sleep disturbance

the biggest thing that brings all these together is the reaction to triggers, it relates all criteria B-E and I think I can see all of these in me.

Triggers are such a difficult thing to deal with. Knowing when they are coming is one thing but knowing what to do about it is another....avoidance (i.e. criteria C) being the biggest one. However it is not always possible to avoid triggers, and sometimes you don’t even know they are coming.

I don't have the answers, my usual response is to dissociate, whether it be amnesia or within my system, and this for me is dangerous as this is when tend to do my “risky” behaviour.

I did cut over the weekend. Well when I said I cut Rachel did. (For those who don’t know about my DID see here) it was her way of keeping control. The pain inside is so immense, and the flashbacks so intense that as a teenager she knows no other way to cope than to make the pain real. The strange thing is it doesn’t hurt when we are actually doing it, only after. I am not suggesting that people use self harm as a way to cope as it is very damaging, but its my way at the moment. I think self harm will have to be my next blog post! The banging of the fireworks that were coming from everywhere even though the weather was awful just sent us into sensory overdrive and reminded us of certain things to do with our abuse. Things we hadn’t really realised before.

That’s another thing about triggers sometimes they come out of the blue, or you just don’t understand (yet) why you react the way you do.

Sometimes you choose to go somewhere that you know is going to trigger you, but for a different reason, I think we mentioned about Elodie in my previous post, she was a very good friend who recently died. Her funeral was a trigger nightmare for us, because of the religious nature of our abuse, and we were desperately trying to stay “present” for Elodie, but found it so hard especially with the incense, something that immediately takes us back to the satanic ritualistic abuse that we suffered. But we, just about, did it. And it made us feel so proud that we faced things such as entering a church for something we had to do (say goodbye to Elodie) even though every bone of my body didn't want to go anywhere near the church.

If anyone has any ideas how we can cope with my too many to mention triggers please let us know, because we cant cope with all the triggers this time of year.

if you need help please look at Eastbourne Survivors Support Page

Sorry this is so depressing.

Love

Luce xxx

Breaking Free

Hey guys,

Sorry that it has been so long since I last was on here. I have spent more time in hospital this year than out of it, which has made keeping up with the blog quite difficult. I am out again, and planning on trying to stay out as long as I can.

I am waiting for my DID assessment with the psychologists. This is very nerve raking, but hopefully it will be soon now.

I have had many ideas for this post, but I am going to stick with breaking free. This post has come about as I have finally getting my possessions back from my parents, the last tie I had with them and from Wednesday night I hope to be free.

Getting these things (stuff I cant replace such as photos) is been really important to me and my parents have known this. They play mind games, and one of them is trying to asset some control over me. They know I don’t want anything to do with them once I get this stuff, and they are not happy with it. I can kinda understand this, I am their daughter and I am rejecting them, but for good reason with all the stuff that I have been through. They just don’t seem to get this. Anyway on Wednesday I hope there are no hitches and I can finally be free of them.

Breaking free is never easy, especially if the abuser is a care giver as in my case, but often its needed in order to start to process what has happened. This is just my opinion from my own experience. Whilst my parents still had control over me, which they did fr 27 years, I was unable to even tell anyone what was going on. I was really lucky and got my long term placement at Lavender, where I learnt to trust the staff and able to begin to open up. I know that this way is not possible for a lot of survivors, but there are plenty of ways, especially as adults to make one of the biggest choices and break free. This is in the media a lot with domestic violence, but is just as true for survivors. I know that a lot of people that I know the sexual may (not always) stop but the grooming and the emotional abuse will never stop, its the abusers way of getting control and also they're protective factor.

For me breaking free from my family back in 2011, was the best choice I have ever made. My parents used my mental health as a way to justify the huge control that they had over me, and now I am free of that and can become the person I was meant to be, rather than the person (ill) that they wanted. I have grown up and changed so much in the past 3 years, much more than I managed for a very long time.

I know that the church preaches that you should forgive, or in practice forgive and forget, and yes this works for some people...its there way to protect themselves, and if that works for them that is OK. But I don’t think that the church should be pushing this forgiveness stuff on people- its personal choice. Especially not of organisations, both the catholic and church of England, that he sat on abuse and protected the abusers...just look at the diocese of Chichester recently!!!

if you do decide to break free, you will almost certainly go through a grieving process, people who were (although mostly bad) part of your life, are suddenly not there. I know that I still have attachments to my parents, particularly my dad. But I know that this is the best decision I have made. I do occasionally miss them. But I think I don’t miss them, I miss the healthy bond that was meant to be there, and that I do not have...hope that makes sense. I know that the road ahead is going to be hard, I was abused by my dad for 22 years from the age of 5, as well as being subjected to Satanic Ritualistic Abuse. However from Wednesday I will be free of the control freaks, and be myself!!!

It may It will be strange, and unknown, but you will be free of the abuse and be able to rebuild your life how YOU want it

I hope that this post isn’t too pushy. Whatever coping mechanisms work for you now are needed for a reason, such as me and my dissociation and cutting, but maybe in the future I will be able to use more healthy ways to cope with my past. Its my past and I am never going to be able to change it, and its made me me, but now I can shape my own future!

Luce xxx

EDIT: i have my stuff and am waiting for the official documentation for my change of name!!

Survivors group has helped me

Hi Guys,

Sorry for not begin around, but didn’t have my laptop long in hospital as started doing leave. Although I found it difficult I know that its not an easy ride, and I accept that. As of today I am back home full time :)

As I think I have said before I go to a survivors group in Eastbourne, and I wanted to use this post, especially as I went tonight, to write about how I appreciate the group and what it does for me.

I started going over 2 years ago now, at first it was really scary, but I was leaving Lavender and I wanted somewhere I could go where I felt accepted and could talk about the issues of being a survivor. I have been to groups before and didn't get on with them, but they have all been behavioural therapy groups. So I was absolutely terrified before I walked in. I had so many questions going though my head, what would other people be like? Would people expect me to talk? And so on and so on. I soon found that although I was very very anxious I felt welcomed from the minute I walked through the door, and that support groups are very different to behavioural therapy groups where they want you to just modify your behaviour.

My friends are fantastic, and they are my family, but I wanted somewhere I could go that I didn’t feel that I was “putting on” them, not that my friends make me feel like that, but I sometimes (OK a lot) worry about it. The group I go to is unique because its for both male and female survivors and for their partners. I was scared by males at first, but I have found by going that I am actually less scared by them in the general world than I was before, as people have made me realise that not all males are out to get me, like in my history.

I feel appreciated and that people get me, and my dissociation as well as the DID. I find that when I talk I get good feedback with ideas that I can try, something that in a way that only people who have been there, in similar situations, can do.

As people know from reading this, I haven’t had the best of years, and the group, as well as my friends have been there. And I have made friends through the group. I am so glad that I took that step and walked through that door back in 2012, and didn’t run away as every bone in my body wanted me to do, as it has helped me survive!

Lots of love

Luce xxx

if you want more info on the group in Eastbourne, please go to the website 

im on the ward again

Hey guys,

Well I am back in hospital :( I am not sure when I can put this up as have no internet at the moment. But oh well, at least I have my laptop and can type away!

My mood is so low and this is why I was admitted, everything is so chaotic in my head, they are having arguments between themselves about what we should do...many of us are quite suicidal at the moment. I also have a “mini dad” screaming in my head about how Evil I am (nothing unusual there and I already know that I don’t need reminding ever two seconds) the new thing with him is that evilness is now on a continuum and the fact I am trying to eat and drink is making me more evil. OK I know that none of this is making any sense to anyone else, but in my mind we are a complete mess.

I have just gone back on antidepressant as everyone agreed that something needed to be done, but its going to take a while to get back up to the dose that I was on 3 months ago when I came off it and then for it to work. I honestly don’t know how much I can take. Its going to be a slow recovery this time, or at least it feels like it. I usually bounce back quite quickly, but I frankly don’t feel any better than I did when I came in here. Being in an acute mental health unit, and especially this one, has no therapeutic value for me, its no ones fault just that the staff aren’t trained in what I need. The other thing that is happening that is hopefully going to get me out of this cycle of being in and out of hospital is that I have been referred to the complex trauma team within the trust and they have a specialist in abuse and DID, so hopefully this referral comes through quite quickly as I need this support in order to move on with my life.

The unit is so changeable and sometimes it feels like that you have to be acting out to get any support as everyone is so busy, but that is probably my own perception and lack of confidence in seeking out for support at times when I am acutely distressed. I have my own little system to get support when I am able to put it in place (kinda depends on staff etc.) where I hand in a note. I find writing, as I have said many times before, so much easier than just talking. This is particularly at the moment where there just aren’t the words to speak what’s in my head.

Life is so hard right now. Everyone can see a little light, and at my slightly better moments I can, especially with the referral. But most of the time my life is dark, quite literally as needing to hide so not only have my hood up I keep putting my hair over my face (especially my eyes for some reason). It feels so much safer, I think because no one can see how vulnerable I am right now. When that happens bad things happen.

I am desperately trying to write this as just me, Lou, as then it can be slightly more coherent (not totally though as both I never am and I am just so exhausted!!) but its hard with everyone trying to take control.

Luce xxx (sat 12^th July 2014)

UPDATE

well its now 18^th July, and I am still in hospital. Things have slightly improved after starting the trazadone (antidepressant), and I get bits of feeling kinda OK (not brill but OK) but these are only bits, and it feels like someone has given me a cake, I've taken one bite and then they have snatched it away. Makes the dark times seem even worse and on my own. Ffs I am in a hospital full of people yet I feel completely alone at the moment.

Today is one of the bad days, even though its so hot and clammy up on the ward I am wearing my hoodie, and hoping like mad that I wont pass out. I feel physically not too good either, which I think is just because I am tired. I am sleeping better but yet I feel even more exhausted than ever which I just don't understand.

I am so close to bursting into tears. I hate crying. I hate feeling out of control as that’s when I am at my most risky as just cant cope with it, I don’t know if I am completely weird for that. But being out of control for me just reminds me that when I was a child I was never in control of my body. He had that, and that’s why my body isn't mine. I lost that a long time ago, its been taken, hurt and abused to the point it doesn’t belong to me any more.

As you can probably tell I am not in a great space. But too scared to talk to the staff as they are busy, and I am meant to be OK in the morning.

Hope that the next post is slightly more positive!!!

Luce xxx

Just because you feel rejection doesn't make you a Borderline

Hey guys,

2nd post in 3 days whoop! Getting good at this blogging malarkey!

Today blog is about rejection as the title suggests...god that sounds like a teacher talking sorry. The reason for this particular post is that it was my brother's 30th Yesterday and this has brought up a lot of feelings of rejection and abandonment for me. (thank you Sharnie for putting up with the test and Charley for talking to me for hours on Skype and keeping me busy, I am truly grateful for all the support that I get! And YOU for reading this blog!)

I want to suggest and show you that it is possible to feel these things and not necessarily have a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder!

Many of you know that I am currently fighting my BPD/EUPD (Emotionally unstable personality disorder, the term used across the UK) as I feel that I have grown out of this diagnosis. I am glad that I have won a small battle and my primary diagnosis is now PTSD!

Anyway for some background....

Once my parents had become very much involved in my life again (Not a good thing in hindsight as this will show you) my BPD became very apparent as a lot of it was to do with the controlling nature of my mother (and later my father as well), and Rachel being extremely present (she's the very impulsive one, plus the Prozac when I was in hospital) I came very very impulsive and chaotic and displayed almost all the characteristics and diagnostic criteria, the only one not was anger. 

At this time I was overdosing a lot, and texting my brother as he was a doctor to ask what would happen to me. I was very unwell at the time and this is why I ended up being sectioned.

Then Lavender came, and I was able to feel safe enough to actually open up about the biggest trigger to my illness the abuse that my father inflicted on Lucy. This was the beginning of my healing process, and Lucy has made a lot of progress since then, with me now disputing that I even have the diagnosis as a whole (rather than the different parts of Lucy).

Sorry if I bored you with that, and sorry for the switchness, I will try and control this this post!

Anyway...

In the DSM V The first criteria for BPD is

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behaviour covered in Criterion 5. 

On the website Borderline world they interpret it as this, I think this is aimed at carers and other people that are involved with people with BPD

These traits can sometimes make it very difficult for a person to maintain a relationship with someone with BPD, as their behaviour and actions can be difficult to tolerate and hard to understand. It is important for those close to a BPD sufferer to educate themselves on the condition so that they can empathise with what the sufferer is going through and how they are feeling. 

Having had friends that have had BPD I can guess what they mean in terms of abandonment and rejection is that things like the fear of abandonment and rejection when they know that they are going nowhere is really difficult to understand unless you have been there!

(trying to be objective about this!!!)

Well now that I am fighting this diagnosis, it is possible that I will still feel these things, I might have borderline traits or maybe in this situation anyone would feel this way. I personally think that many people show the traits to borderline, as many react in a similar way.

Now via that detour back to my brother's 30th birthday. I felt sad that I couldn’t be a part of his celebrations (although he's in Spain according to facebook!) or be able to even send a card, as I don’t know where he lives, I am not friends with him on facebook, I don’t have his mobile number etc. etc. But also the feelings of abandonment and rejection by him came rearing its ugly head! 

I know that I had my part to play in the reasons that he has decided not to have me in his life, I was very unwell at the time and I wish I had the opportunity to show him how much I have changed. But I also know that my mother will have got to him after I came clean about the abuse that I suffered and the subsequent police investigation (and then the cutting of all ties to my parents), and that will have played a part in his decision too. Or at least this is what I can surmise from what I knew of him then. Or maybe he decided to take my lead in cutting from my family but I am pretty sure they are in some sort of contact. I cant read his mind and so I will never know why he has cut me from his life.

But the abandonment is real, the rejection is real, and I think a lot of people would feel the same if they were in my situation. 

I feel abandoned by him because he is the only real person (apart from my parents who I am sure are in complete denial about their role within our family) I feel that he is the only person who could not only verify my family situation as a kid, even if he had no idea of the abuse, we were a very dysfunctional family as a whole. And this of cause has had its part to play in my illness over the years. But mostly because I love him unconditionally and I thought he did to.

My rejection is also very very real. He one minute was talking to me, and coming to see me while he was at Brighton Pride (and this was after it all kicked off with my parents) the next a text saying he was only down for the day and couldn't meet up. And then nothing, not a thing, and nothing ever since. I wanted him for a short while to be my next of kin while I sorted it out, but no contact with either me or Lavender (Sharon, one of the nurses, bless her tried her hardest). Its such a big rejection when you are going through the hardest time of your life (a police investigation against your dad) to suddenly and a few weeks later be completely rejected by your brother hurts. It hurts big time. 

BUT you could say that these two thought patterns of mine are part and parcel of a BPD diagnosis but who wouldn’t feel like this when this has happened, who wouldn't feel hurt?

My example is a very current one as I explained, but smaller ones could be used. I do constantly check with my friends that I haven’t upset them (sorry guys) but that is actually against me having a BPD diagnosis as they just run with the idea that rejection and abandonment has taken place and either seek revenge or internalise it (I do realise that I am seriously generalising here) but they don't check it out! Also although I am very insecure about wondering if I upset people I don’t think for a minute they are going to run away as I don’t give them the reason to (or at least I hope that I don't) any more.

I have changed, and it is possible, BPD is not a life sentence!!!

Luce xxx

image sorced online and not my own

Fathers day

hi guys,

Well it's fathers' day in the UK, and I am desperately trying to keep busy as I find it incredibly difficult especially as its my brothers birthday tomorrow, a day of rejection but that’s for another post!

I'll start with what I wrote in my journal for my CPN, it kinda encapsulates how I am right now....

Well its fathers' day and I am struggling. Wanna cry but can't. I am so confused by everything. My dad did what he did to me and I completely and utterly hate him for that – sorry trying to keep control. But, it wasn’t all bad, like when he used to read to us until lights out, or more likely we were asleep first. But that memory is tinted with what happened after – there were others (good memories that is) I just cant remember any of them. Why can't I remember them? I just remember the bad stuff, all the hurt and pain, all the lies and manipulation and it still goes on, inside my head.

I'll stop there as Rachel takes over and that not a good thing!

I think for many whose abuser is a family member they might be able to relate to that, how there are good bits, good memories but they are taken over by the completely catastrophic bad stuff, whether the abuse physical, sexual or emotional. Or at least in my experience that’s what happens. 

However in some way this would make things easy, as you can just hate the abuser and not have to get confused by it all, but nothing is ever all bad or all good. Sometimes a good memory comes in, not when you want it though,  but for me it always seems tinged by everything else that has gone on. Like when my dad was so excited that I was home for my first Christmas after I started uni, he gave me a huge hug, but of cause he had more than one reason to be happy that I was home.

While I have been trying to write this – its been a lot harder than I thought it would be – I have been trying to think of good memories, birthdays or something, but nothing really forms...am I the only one? And the bits that do form always are tinged with his stuff (sorry just can't write that word right now, its far too close to home), plus with my mother being so emotionally abusive as well, good memories were always few and far between

Maybe if I could understand why, just why, then maybe I could deal with all the crap of my life and heal...but that is far too simple even I know that. I do know some of his history, 

For all of us fathers' day isn’t a good day, we are a whole in some ways, and our dislike of today is one of those, whoever I am, whatever age that they are there is always something that means that today isn’t a great one, its just full of how father's should be, and how far from that reality mine is. 

I mean who takes a 5 year old to a group of the occult? And explains it as getting the evil out of them? A FIVE year old? They are full of innocence and playfulness, why inflict that on LuLu? 

OMG I hate that name, that's what HE calls me.

See I keep flittering between people (another reason that this is hard) but one of (I don't think you have met char) sees everything in the 3rd person and so can see the real horror of it, but when we are any of the others it hurts like hell, and I, Lou, still believe that I am evil, and that he was only trying to make best out of a bad situation, I mean what other parent wouldn't want to fix a child? But for Rosie, she just is hurt, physically, emotionally and mentally by the whole situation, but it is her that it happened to.

Right I am going to go, as this isn’t working out as I’d hoped and is getting very confusing in my head as everyone wants to talk :(

Luce xxxx

Food, Control and me

TRIGGER – Quite Explicit with EATING DISORDERS, SELF-HARM, and ABUSE

Hey guys,

Well I'm out of hospital completely 2 weeks tomorrow :) it feels good to be free, but the fight doesn’t stop there it carries on...well that sounds so positive, not quite how I feel right now, I am struggling the last few days, but on the whole I am a million times better than I was before I went into hospital.

This post came about after a discussion at a survivors group I go to, around the need for control...so this is my take on it. I know that this is something that I have talked about on here, but things change, new ideas come about etc., and this is something that I will always have close to my heart (after all my undergraduate dissertation was around Anorexia!)

Food has been my control for a very long time, my body isn’t mine, so why should I care what I do to it? It belongs, as I have said before, to the people who took it from me time after time after time.

I feel completely out of control, because of the dissociation (that is still happening regularly), because of the flashbacks, because life is not something that you can really, honestly, control, they took that away from me. But I cant cope with being out of control so have to do something to stay in control in comes the eating disorder. This has more than one use, but for the moment I will keep on the control. Food, at least in the First World, is something people can control, whether it is controlling intake to the point of Anorexia, binging and purging, or comfort eating. I go from not eating very much to the binging and purging, and I honestly cannot remember a time that I did not do this. Unlike my self-harm this is a lot more hidden, there are no (at least external) scars that anyone can see.

When I am restricting I feel so much in control, seeing the numbers go down on the scale just reinforces that control for me. But I cant keep this up for ever, I can go weeks, even months doing the restricting, and then something happens and I have to start eating at least vaguely normally and this freaks me out so I purge, and this little cycle continues.  I am in control of my food intake, or at least I like to think that I am. I feel so much better knowing that there is something in this world that I can control.

I haven’t regularly partaker in taking laxatives for a few years, but every so often it rears its ugly head and that come part of the control. What I cant get out from making myself sick I get out the other way. But for many laxatives are a regular intake and I completely get it, it got to the point in Bangor where no place would sell them to me, even though I was “rotating” where I got them from, and I did begin to steal them...you think this would shock me into stopping -  tablets are the only thing I have ever stolen from a shop – but no, the only reason I stopped is I ended up in ITU after a fire and so stopped for 4 weeks and then lived at home for 6 months which made it difficult and so the regular daily diet of laxatives stopped. For me the number of laxatives I took was control too, I took the exact number I needed to for the result I wanted. It did involve increasing the number as you get used to senekot very quickly!

Men, if you can call them that, the paedophiles and rapists that took my control away did it systematically, whether it be over a few minutes (as in one rape) or over several years. They have the control in my head, telling me that I am Evil, that I am worthless, that I am there's even now, now that I have no contact with no single one of them. Every single minute in my head they are telling me this. And I still completely believe them. I think everyone gets frustrated with me because it must seem like I am getting nowhere with it, but as someone once told me I had 27 years of the 32 years of my life of this, a few years of people telling me that I am not, isn’t going to even dent the trauma from that. See they still have control over me. And that what they want, they want that every single second there control is over me. And I am so so scared it will never go away that I will never get “real” control back...whatever that is!

As I said eating disorders, such as my own, have another use, and so does my self harm. For each person it is different for me it is about getting the evil out of me. Black Magic when I was little didn’t help, so every time I purge, have diarrhoea because of laxative abuse, cut, I am ridding myself of that evil. But not just the evil that I was born with, the evil that they have put in me. As I do with my eating this is often (not always) a cycle for me, going from the eating to the self-harm and so forth.  I need to rid myself of my body. Its not that I want to die, cause its not my head that what I want to rid myself of, but of them.

I am sorry that this has been so blunt, and hope that the trigger warning at the beginning means that people are not too much affected (but going to do here is a link to b-eat the eating disorders charity in the UK, and National Self Harm Network as well as a link to Eastbourne Survivors Resources page). Looking back I sound angry, that is not what I meant to come across, I am just a scared little girl, namely Tracheal, who has no other way to cope. This leads me onto the last thing that I want to say, whatever maladaptive coping strategies that you use, whether like me its food and self-harm, or whether its drugs, alcohol or sex its what’s keeping you ALIVE! Don't beat yourself up about it :)


Luce xxx