I'm not sure I posted about this at all. But I would like to tell you guys about what happened to me some time ago at the Intense Outpatient Program I was attending. If I did post about it, I apologize, everythings been so screwed up in my life lately, I don't know if I'm coming or going.

Back in October, I remember posting about realizing that I actually was bipolar as a child, which made most of my out of control behavior make sense. It also triggered memories of my mom beating me in an effort to discipline me and make me "behave". That was her way. She used excessive physical .....er, beatings to try to make me change my behavior. I was only doing the only thing I knew how to do. I didn't know how to be anyone else. I have vivid memories of those beatings and they occurred when my brothers and sister weren't around. They did a lot of emotional damage that lasted a lifetime and I grew up believing that I deserved what I got because I was a "bad child."

Where I'm at with it now is not so much the need to forgive (I've done that) or the need to process much of what happened, but the need to simply put it back into my memory in a place for safekeeping, but begin the process of re-defining who I was all my life. I wasn't a bad child. I was a bipolar child. The self-definition that was formed because of that trauma was bogus. I need to reform it. I've been suffering some startle response and anxiety from this and pdoc gave me some diazapam to have on hand.

OK. Now that I've set the scene, one day I had to meet with the pdoc at the Outpatient Program. Each participant meets with him once a week to check progress and verify that the program was still meeting the patient's needs. I get my medications elsewhere and I had to let him know about the med changes my pdoc made. I said we made some changes to my PTSD meds and he interrupted me and said, "What PTSD?" I said the PTSD from my mother beating me.

He started laughing. He started slapping the papers on his desk and laughing so hard saying every kid in his neighborhood got hit by their parent. I stared at him and went numb.

I asked him if his mother beat him. He didn't answer.

He kept laughing, talking about how the school teachers used to paddle the kids.

I asked him if he was ever on the floor with his arm up, trying to shielf himself from his mother's wooden spoon. He kept laughing.

After he was done, I said, well later, being alcoholics, they did neglect us and also do some emotional damage, too.

His face got sober and he said, "Well, yes, alcoholic parents do a lot of damage."

I stood up and left his office. I kept walking, left the building and never went back.

That night, I faxed the director a letter of resignation from that program. I don't need a jerkoid like that in my life.

I'm still struggling some but I'm not going to let this beat me down.