Family Emergencies and Stress

Wow! I am surprised to see that it has been almost a month since I posted my last article. So much has gone on in my life and in my family since I was here last. 

On September 30, my husband's middle brother went to the ER unconscious and unresponsive to his mother trying to wake him up after he woke her up first coughing and then making a noise that caused her to get out out bed at 3:30 a.m. to see if he was okay. First he was taken by ambulance to their little hospital where they quickly decided that he needed more treatment than they could give him. They told his mother that he had a brain hemorrhage. He was flown by helicopter to a bigger medical center in Shreveport, Louisiana. There we were told that he had a brain aneurysm with a lot of bleeding. The doctors immediately started draining the blood off of his brain while they did other tests and finally at 6:00 that evening, surgery was done to access the amount of damage and to also put something in the blood vessel to stop the bleeding. We drove 4 hours to get to the hospital 3 hours before the surgery was done. After the surgery, we were told that my brother-in-law had a 30% chance of surviving that first night. The surgeon's body language said they would be surprised if he survived at all. Well everyone that I could ask for prayers were saying them. My brother-in-law has now survived for 1 month, as of today. I believe everyone's prayers are why my brother-in-law is still with us. He has a long period of recovering ahead of him. Some days he knows who he is and who we are and some days he does not. I appreciate everyone's prayers and I know he does too. Thank you all.

We have made 3 trips down to visit my brother-in-law and mother-in-law since that early morning brain aneurysm burst. We didn't go this weekend because of my husband having work here that couldn't wait. In addition to worrying about my brother-in-law, we have worried about my 92 year old mother-in-law worrying about her son and also having a high blood pressure episode that put her into the hospital for one of the weekends that we went down to Louisiana. Her blood pressure suddenly went extremely high so she is now on new medication to control that. She is by herself while her son is in the hospital. They have been taking care of each other for many years now. She now has a Life Alert button to wear in case she gets into trouble by herself. She has high blood pressure and a heart condition. 

Because of the stress of worrying about both of my in-laws and the 3 trips back and forth to Louisiana over the past month with 2 of those trips also being working trips with my husband with me helping him stripe parts of 9 parking lots spread out over 2 Sundays, last Saturday night, my forehead above my right eye started itching. By Monday morning, most of my forehead above my right eye was swollen and itching and had little blisters. On Tuesday morning I called and got a doctor's appointment because the area around my eye was beginning to swell too. My husband thought I had poison ivy. The doctor says it is another episode of shingles and gave me a steroid shot and pills to take 5 times a day to stop any nerve pain. I also have a steroid cream that I have been using for 2-3 times a day. With the shot and the cream, the itch and the blisters are much better today. 

As an incest survivor and a survivor of my dad's rages when I was a child, I lived in almost constant fear and stress. I wasn't aware of that stress or how it affected me until I got into my healing journey. I was 19, the first time I actually remember feeling and acknowledging that fear. With all of the healing that I have done over the years, I still don't know how to let go of stress. I carry it in my body until I get sick with pneumonia like 3 Thanksgivings ago or I get shingles like now. This is my 3rd episode in the past 2 years. This is something I need to look at and research so that I can stop this from being a pattern for me. I don't want to get sick in order to get my attention. Has anyone got any suggestions or ideas as to how I can deal with stress better?
Patricia

No Tears for my Father: a true story of incest Book Review

Viga Boland is an online friend that I met because we are both advocates for ourselves and for other survivors of incest. When I heard that Viga was writing her memoir, No Tears for my Father: a true story of incest, I told her I wanted to read it and would do a book review afterwards.

As Viga says on the back of her book " 'Victims' own voices are the best weapons against child sexual abuse.' " In some ways, Viga tells my story. In others, Viga's story is distinctly her own and no one else's, as is true for all survivor stories. No Tears for my Father comes with a Trigger Warning Advisory for the safety of those incest survivors who may experience flashbacks or emotional pain from reading the sometimes graphic scenes of Viga's memories.

Viga Boland was born in Australia in 1946. Like many children of the 1940's and 1950's, Viga was taught by her parents to do what the adults in her life told her to do. It didn't matter who the adult was, they were in control if you were a child. This one rule, above all others, made it easy for Viga to become a victim of childhood sexual abuse and incest.

Viga, throughout her book, compares her dad to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll was the smiling, loving father and friend to a lonely little girl who was taught that she was ugly and stupid by the angry, often violent, and unpredictable Mr. Hyde.  Mr. Hyde was physically and emotionally abusive to Viga and to her mother.

When Viga Boland was 11 years old, her family moved to Canada, where the physical and emotional abuse continued and at the age of 12, Viga's dad started to also sexually abuse her. The secrets, the lies, the shame and the blame of incest that make a survivors life a living hell began too.  Secrets such as "Let's not tell mama. It would hurt her." "If not for you, I would be having an affair with some other woman and your mother would be hurt." (These aren't exactly Viga's words. They were lies I was told too.) The coercion, the threats and the fear that are part of the daily life of an incest survivor, all of that worked to keep Viga a prisoner in her parents home until the age of 23. 

To find out more of Viga Boland's story of incest, you will have to read her book. I would recommend the book No Tears for my Father, written by Viga Boland to all who are interested in the truth of what it means to be  a victim of childhood abuse, domestic violence and incest. 

You can visit Viga Boland at these websites which are listed at the beginning of her book:

http://www.vigaboland.com

http://www.notearsformyfather.com

http://vigaland.blogspot.com 

http://www.youtube.com/vigaland 

http://vigaland.com 

Patricia

 

Helplines of the United States of America

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Depression Hotline: 1-630-482-9696

• Suicide Hotline: 1-800-784-8433

• Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386
 

• Sexuality Support: 1-800-246-7743
 

• Eating Disorders Hotline: 1-847-831-3438
 

• Rape and Sexual Assault: 1-800-656-4673
 

• Grief Support: 1-650-321-5272
 

• Runaway: 1-800-843-5200, 1-800-843-5678, 1-800-621-4000
 

• Exhale: After Abortion Hotline/Pro-Voice: 1-866-4394253
 

• Self Harm: 1-800-DONT CUT (1-800-366-8288)
 

•Pregnancy Hotline 1-800-4-OPTIONS (1-800-467-8466)
 

• Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Youth Support Line 800-850-8078
 

• National Association for Children of Alcoholics 1-888-55-4COAS (1-888-554-2627)
 

• National Child Abuse Hotline 1-800-422-4453
 

• National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-SAFE (1-800-799-7233)
 

• National Drug Abuse Hotline 1-800-662-HELP (1-800-662-4357)
 

• National Youth Crisis Hotline 1-800-448-4663
 

• Eating Disorders Awareness and Prevention 1-800-931-2237 (Hours:8am-noon daily, PT)
 

• Veterans: 1-877-VET2VET
 

• Adolescent Suicide Helpline: 1-800-621-4000
 

• Postpartum Depression: 1-800-PPD-MOMS

Thank you to my friend, Darleen Thompson from Facebook for sharing these helplines in the United States where most of my readers are. Please if you ever need help, don't hesitate to call the appropriate line listed above.

Patricia

Child Abuse, Incest, Domestic Violence - In The Silence Nothing Changes

Child abuse, incest, and domestic violence have always been around. People have just now started breaking their silence and talking about it so it seems that it is every where. It is and it always has been. That is why so many of us are so vocal about child abuse and domestic violence. In the silence, nothing changes. Awareness creates change.

This is why so many survivors like me are writing about and speaking about their childhood experiences. Women survivors have been speaking out for a few years now. Finally men have joined the movement forward to a time where every child will be safe from all forms of abuse. That is why I am now writing my memoir about my childhood and efforts to heal from incest. As survivors, we give each other hope and dreams of a world different than the one we grew up in. Join me in this march forward to a better world.
Patricia

Effects Of Incest - When Your Abuser Is Your Dad

Yesterday, I read an article about the Stockholm Syndrome written by CW Seymore Shards of Glass. Today, I was leaving a comment on her link on Facebook when I decided to make it an article for here. Here is the link to CW's article "The 'Stockholm Syndrome' and the Abused!":

http://shardsofglasscwseymore.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-stockholm-syndrome-and-abused.html

Here is what I wanted to share with you.

When the abuser is your dad, you have a love/hate relationship. You love the dad that says he loves you and makes you laugh and feel good but you hate the dad who abuses you, calls you names, and makes you feel worthless just because you were born a female.

I hated the man that used me for his own sexual pleasures before I was old enough to understand what he was doing. I hated that he took that first time that was supposed to be special away from my husband and me.

Instead of excitement and shyness, I was filled with dread and guilt. I felt shame because that wasn't my first time. I loved my husband but I had so many mixed up, messed up feelings about sex before of the incest.

When my dad forced me to have sex with him, I would close my eyes and go deep inside until it was over. I thank God that my dad was never interested in me enjoying the act. Because of that lack of caring on my dad's part and that of my other abusers, I can separate the sex that was had with them from the love making that occurs between my husband and me in our marriage bed.

Through the love and patience of my husband, I have been able to stay present and experience pleasure in the act of love making. I wasn't the best of partners in the bedroom because of the incest. I had to realize that my husband was not like my dad. My husband taught me how to enjoy my body and his. I have been very blessed and it took time for that to happen.

Spouses of incest survivors don't have an easy road either. They deal with lots of stuff that they don't understand because the incest survivor can't explain what she/he often doesn't understand either. Some of us tell our spouses about the abuse. Others don't. I can tell you that I was married for eight years before I told my husband because I was afraid he would leave if he knew the shame that I carried around inside of me. I wasn't afraid of how he would feel about my dad. I was afraid of what he might think/feel about me. He didn't turn away in disgust. He continued to love me and gave me the needed time and space to work through my major issues.

My dad wasn't my first abuser in my memories that I have but his attitude toward me, women, marriage and toward sex were what took away from my first time with my husband in case you are thinking, well, she told us that her dad wasn't my first. I don't know who my first sexual abuser was. The first one in my memories at age 11 was an uncle. The one who caused the most hurt and emotional damage was my dad who became my sexual abusers within a month of being abused by my uncle. My dad was the one who influenced the way I saw myself and my life.

Who was my first sexual abuser that caused me to think of myself as an adulteress at the age of three? I don't know. I don't have access to those memories, just the clue that I believed myself to be an adulteress at age three. That is a very strong memory that I do have and one of the clues that I was being sexually abused by someone at a much younger age than 11 when my memories of abuse do start.

Here is blog post written by another friend of mine, also on the topic of Stockholm Syndrome.

http://vigaland.blogspot.com/2012/07/now-i-get-it-i-have-ss-stockholm.html

I am going to end this post with something that I left in a comment after reading the above article:

I do understand the loving your father, hating the lover. When someone tells me that love and hate can't live in the same heart. I tell them they are not incest survivors.
Patricia

Is Your Trauma Therapist/Counselor Qualified?

If you are an incest survivor, a sibling abuse survivor or a survivor of any form of child abuse and you decide to seek professional help, please make sure that your therapist or counselor is qualified and properly trained to work with you. Ask to see their certificate or license whichever is required for their particular field of work. Also some therapists and counselors are not trained specifically for trauma victims or for PTSD. Be sure that the person that you are working with is someone who is trustworthy.

With availability of the internet, not everyone that you meet is who they say they are. Don't assume just because someone asks you to let them do EMDR or some other new form of therapy with them that they are fully trained. The internet makes it easy for all of us to reach out to each other and to receive support and compassion from other survivors. Sadly, there are some people out there too that will take advantage of our goodness and our woundedness. Don't assume that someone has received training just because they sound knowledgeable.  Don't let someone manipulate you and guide you in a direction that may harm you. Pay attention to what your gut/intuition tells you about a person. Ask someone else that you trust what they think about this person. Listen to what this person tells you about themselves. Don't minimize what your inner voice is telling you. Trust it.

Not all people who trick you are evil. Some are misguided themselves. Others are self-centered and don't care how their actions may hurt others. Some act out of their own woundedness. None of that really matters and I don't mean them as excuses for what they do. It saddens me that they act out of that place in themselves but I have learned from my own experiences and my own healing that I don't have to let another person fool me because of their woundedness. I can pay attention to my boundaries and enforce them when needed. I can remove myself from that person's presence, even online. I don't have to let another person use me just because I feel sad for them. Today, as a survivor/thriver, I can protect myself. I can also learn from my past mistakes and grow past them.

Sometimes because I look for the good in people, I will miss or choose to ignore my inner voice that says something isn't quite right with this scenario or with what this person is telling me. Each time that I have ignored that voice, I have later learned that I should have paid attention to it. People sometimes disappoint me. Sometimes, I get used even. I am still learning in this area. I won't let a few disappointments keep me from looking for and seeing the good in others. I will be more cautious. That is all I can do. I can also share what I have learned here with my friends.
Patricia

Quality of Relationship More Important Than Length Of Time

Happy 41st Anniversary, Daniel

I want to start out this post by sharing a quote from a friend of mine about relationships and marriage that I read on Saturday and liked so well that I requested the use of it in this post to my dear, sweet husband for our 41st wedding anniversary. Here is the quote:

"It is not how long you have been in your relationship or marriage that matters but how well. It is time to pause and think. How has this relationship affected your well being? Our well being is an important aspect of our lives that we must take serious. If our relationships affect our well being positively, we are bound to live life to the fullest..." Ebele Solu

Thank you Ebele for allowing me to use your words. As I get older, time seems to be going by so much faster. I sometimes struggle to keep up. Most times, I don't worry about it as I sit here in the safe home that Daniel and I created together and I love our life together. As I know I have said many times before on here as I have shared my healing journey, life hasn't always been easy on me or on our marriage. Our marriage has lasted thru all of the times of struggle, not only because we love each other, but also because we are friends. If we didn't like each other we probably would have given up when the struggles got near impossible. Daniel's love, strength and patience have gotten me through so many dark times. Living with an incest survivor is never easy, on so many levels, even one who is healing. Before and during the initial stages of healing, I was so angry, even rageful like my dad. I was in so much emotional pain that I didn't have an outlet for, that it came out as rage most often. I was so full of fears that I had to work at facing and cutting down to size. Daniel had to live with all of that pain while I healed it and learned to control, not him as I had done in earlier years, but my reactions to my fears. As you have read in my recent blog post after the fears that came up during our trip to and from Gettysburg, some of those fears are still with me and occasionally come up to be acknowledged and worked thru. 

You may look at what I just wrote and ask how can she call her marriage a good one? How has it survived all of that pain, anger and fears. My answer would be that we have survived as a couple partly because of God's Grace, I do believe that, partly because we are both very stubborn individuals who refuse to give up on our marriage or ourselves but mostly because we do love each other. My definition of true love is wanting what is best for the other person. Sometimes that love requires sacrifice and other times compromise. We have both done our share of those over the years. One very basic fact is that we trust each other. With that trust in place, there is no place for jealousy which I see doing so much harm in many relationships today. If you trust someone, there is no room or need for jealousy. Trust is a very big issue for me as an incest survivor. If I didn't trust Daniel I would not be married to him. It is that simple. He is a good man. I have seen that over and over throughout our years together. He cares about me, our marriage, our family and other people. He has a kindness that I have learned from. 

Kindness wasn't taught in my childhood home. Control, bullying, rage, fear were constants in my childhood. My parents were married for just over 30 years when they were divorced. Even though I had wanted my mom to leave my dad for most of my childhood, when the divorce was final, I cried. It meant the end of a dream that at some future date my parents would love each other and we would come together as a healthy, loving family. The divorce put an end to that fairy tale that my inner child held on to. Their marriage with 30 years had very little quality to it. Theirs was a marriage of domestic violence and the secret of incest. 

My grandparents had a long marriage that only ended with the death of my grandfather. My dad's alcoholism was passed down to him by his dad who got it from his dad most probably. The rage was also passed down from generation to generation. So was domestic violence within the marriages. These are my examples of length of time not being as important as quality in marriages and relationships. These examples of my childhood are why I am willing to continue to work on my marriage with the help of my husband Daniel.

I love you more today than I ever have, Daniel, simply because you are who you are and because you have stayed by my side and given me the space to do my healing. I hope that you agree with me when I say that our marriage is better than it has ever been. To get here today has been a mutual effort. I couldn't have gotten when I am today without your love and support. I would not have the full life that I do today without you in it. You have allowed me the space and time to grow into who I am today. You have loved me since before I could tell you the source of my pain. You have seen me thru the Hell of denial of the incest and the days of healing which in their own way were Hell too. Today I feel joy and peace. Laughter often rings through our home. You play a big part in all of that for me. 

I love you with all my heart, Daniel.

Happy Anniversary, Honey.

Pat