[geez]

My husband and I are in marriage counseling and today she/T asked my husband about his backgroud/childhood does he have any memories that come out at him good or bad etc..... She didn't have time to get to me but plans on asking me the same set of questions at our next appt.

I'm afraid to answer some of her questions as my answers will lead me to talking about abuse I experienced (not from my husband but from parents, neighbor etc..). All of these types of questions I answered with my own personal T (I'm not in therapy for myself anymore. I was able to talk my husband into couples counseling) and my husband will be hearing some of this for the first time . Which of course will lead to talking about our sex life etc.... Just thinking about it makes me uncomfortable. Ugh! Just when I thought I was 'done' with it.

Anyone out there deal with this before as in how past abuse plays into your current relationship/marriage etc...?

[Sannah]

Hi Geez, it is for the better to get this stuff out in the open. I'm so glad that you convinced your husband to go with you. Please continue to keep us posted.

[Open Eyes]

(((((geez,)))))))

You are married, vows state for better or worse. And part of a true working relationship is honesty, learning how to understand each other and work on it as a couple. I know that this is hard for you to let out. But your past truely is a part of you, and is something that your husband and partner needs to know and understand about you. I know what your thinking, it easier to pretend and hide than speak the truth and it also goes along with your deep feeling of shame and sense of lack of worth or that you are damaged somehow.

I AM OPEN EYES, I HAVE BEEN SEXUALLY ABUSED, IT HAS EFFECTED MY ABILITY TO HAVE A SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH MY HUSBAND, I HAVE NOT HAD SEX WITH HIM FOR A LONG TIME NOW. I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY PAST, I FEEL VIOLATED AND UNCOMFORTABLE HAVING SEX. Today I talked about this with my husband, it was very hard for me to do, he abused me too. I have PTSD and I am trying to overcome the debilitating aspect of it. My husband now knows why it is so hard for me. It was very hard for me to explain it, but it is done, I have let it all out. I think it is better than hiding it like I did so many years ago. And I am tired of hiding the truth, I want to learn how to finally heal.

You need to allow yourself to stop hiding the truth and let it out. That is the beginning of the true road to healing. I know that it is very hard, very embarrassing, I hear you to the depths of me. But it is now time for you to let it out and learn how to heal. Your husband has to know all of you, even that difficult part of you. Perhaps then, with couples therapy you can both learn how to have a deeper more honest relationship. But you cannot learn that until you reveal your personal struggle, it is time now. I am here, others are here and you will have a thrapist that can help the two of you overcome this. Your husband loves you, he doesn't want you to suffer, you do not deserve to suffer, you deserve to be set free to learn a better way to live your life.

I was always a good person. When I was young I was abused by both my older siblings. I became a victim of abuse when I was just a toddler. I somehow understood my brother had something wrong with him. And my sister has issues as well and my parents were always arguing about my brother and my mother did her best and was tired alot and she was and still is a good person. I learned from a very young age to be quiet, I felt that if I told it would make the family situation worse. I always wanted the family situation to get better. I was controlled by my siblings for a very long time. Then I was a victim when I was a teenager and kept my mouth shut then too, and I endured a very painful abortion and all the hormonal issues that resulted from that. Again I didn't tell the truth because it would cause a disturbance with my father and his big client as it was that rich clients son.

Then I thought I married a good man who turned out to be a binge alcoholic. I was accused of imagining and being mentally ill and it was my problem and not his. I even tried to get help and the therapist never talked about PTSD or alcoholism, it was something wrong with me. I finally found out my husband was an alcoholic and he got sober and went to meetings after my enduring his bad behavior for nine years. And then after he was sober for 6 years he had been mean to me and I was to find out he was hiding guilt for cheating on me with two other women, both sexually active, both I knew. So I had to learn how to forgive and I stayed and worked on my marriage so my daughter (whom I love more than anything in my life) would have a family with a mommy and daddy.

I spent all my life hiding my pain so that others could be happy both in the family I grew up in and the family I made. I was trained to be a true victim of abuse and hide my pain so everything appeared normal. I was very good at doing that and I thought I had coped, but all that time I was fueling PTSD.

Now there is no escape, I have PTSD very bad when my whole life was changed by someones negligence that destroyed the life I built in spite of all my pain. I didn't understand what PTSD was or why I crashed so hard. There have been times in the past couple of years where the thought of letting out all the truth and having my reality show that things were not so perfect has made consider ending me rather than disturbing the pretending that both my family and the one I had growing up was normal. I wanted my daughter to have NORMAL and HEALTHY. I had been train so well to be a victim of abuse and live a life of hiding that I actually felt, rather than telling the truth it would be better if I just didn't exist, that is how deep the despair goes, how deep the shame goes, how deeply I desired to try to provide a normal life for my daughter and others around me. That was what I did my whole life, I thought I was coping, I was not, I was actually harming myself.

For any victim of abuse, you cannot spend your life hiding in shame thinking that if you tell it will ruin that pretend thing you think is there, you think you need to protect by holding in all the pain. That is what you learned when you were abused and that is how you will live out your life in shame.

I understand that I cannot hide and prentend anymore. I have learned that I cannot hold in the abuse of others and pretend anymore, it only makes people misunderstand me. It also allows abusers if they are still present in your life to continue controlling you and you just keep making secrets and taking in the pain. I now have PTSD, I hate the PTSD and my brain has too much guilt and I fight that need to tell the truth and yet that fear of causing damage. But that was trained into me from a very early age. And I see how that has effected all my relationships. Even the situation with my attorney is hard because he has issues, just like others in my past, I am torn between saying the truth or being punished and not really knowing what to do. That is from my past, that is how I am trained, not to hurt others, take all the pain onto myself.

DO NOT LET YOURSELF BE A VICTIM OF ABUSE ALL YOUR LIFE. LET IT OUT. I am trying to do that, learn how to do that, and it is hard, but I cannot hold in any more abuse. You need to learn that too, I know the feeling of shame and guilt and even fearing that it will mean you don't deserve to have what you have or others will not understand. Yes those feelings are real, I know them well. But to get well, have a better life, you have to let it out and learn to be honest. Yes, I know, me too, I am afraid too, but that is how we learned to live our lives when we were abused.


Open Eyes

[geez]

((((Sannah , Open eyes)))) Thank you for your posts.
Sannah I was able to get my husband to go to therapy because I put it on the line: we see an attorney or a therapist. His choice. I was done feeling like a victim in my own marriage and putting up with being mistreated/not respected. I couldn't live another day being silent.

Open eyes I felt allot of what your wrote and I could identify with 'being silent' and never telling for fear of what would happen to my family.

My husband does know I experienced abuse from a neighbor (when I was 5) but he doesn't know any of the details. He doesn't know I've had a flashback when we've been intimate together. I talked allot about this with my previous T and it's going to be hard to talk about my feelings in front of my husband and in front of this T we just started seeing. I know that this will teach me something in how it plays into my marriage etc.. but it's still scary. I'm either going to be very emotional when I talk about things or I will be 'removed' emotionally. Just the thought of talking about it I find gut wrenching.

I'm fighting the urge to stay silent as hard as it may be. I can't play the victim and be silent.

Thanks for listening

[Sannah]

You can do it Geez!!

[geez]

An update to this thread....... I talked in generalities during the appt about my abuse. It was uncomfortable to say the least. The marriage T suggested that I possibly go to a sex therapist I'm not to thrilled with the idea as if it's the same sex therapist my previous T suggested he's well known/written books etc.. but the scary part for me is it's a man. Sooooo uncomfortable at the thought of even having a conversation with him. The thought totally creeps me out. UGH! I guess when I dragged my husband to marriage counseling I got a little bit more than I bargained for :-)

[Open Eyes]

geez,
Did your therapist explain to your husband what PTSD is? I can understand your struggle with your husband. And it is important that he be supportive to you as you try to deal with the PTSD that revolves around your past.

One of the problems that many victims of abuse have is letting the truth out. First because in some way they feel damaged and they are afraid that once the truth comes out the pretending cannot take place. Victims of abuse often, in their efforts to overcome like to pretend that what happened to them didn't happen. They also struggle on thier own trying to push whatever happened away to somehow thinking they can learn to ignore it and move on. But the truth is that once something has happened to us, it never goes away, it is in our minds forever. And the abuse has effected areas or our brain that we are conscious of and not conscious of. They are learning more and more about the brains of people who have PTSD and how the brain is actually effected, and they do see a change in the hypocampus, and the part of the brain that contains pictures and sounds and smells, and there is also a part of our brain that is not attached to words, but is attached to deep experiences that involve emotions, this area is not something that can be readily verbalized.

Part of the problem with revealing abuse is that we would be revealing when we experienced something where we were powerless and overwhelmed. So part of the difficulty with revealing that is the fear that by exposing it, we may show that we can be victims. And that is the confusion in the brain itself. We are actually programed to learn from bad experiences so that we know how to identify the bad and not let it happen again. So when we are abused and are frightened part of our brain is telling us to remember something bad happened and gives us a natural warning. So if we are in a situation where a sexual abuse happened, it is very hard to overcome that brains desire to say, oh isn't that something bad? So, whenever we make an attempt to have normal sex, we are confronted with that warning and it interrupts our ability to actually perceive normal sex as ok.

Geez, the way you have been dealing with sexual contact with your husband is not because you don't love him, it has to do with that warning light that is actually normal to all brains that experience something unpleasant or threatening. Even your being uncomfortable with having a meeting with a sex therapist that IS a male, also brings into play that warning signal again. It is not your fault really, you just have a normal brain that is doing it's job. But you are interpreting it constantly as something bad, uncomfortable and confusing. No one, including yourself can blame you for a normal brain function, it is just the way we are designed for survival.

What really has to take place for you Geez is that you have to know that your husband is not a danger person. And for that to happen you have to develope a true safety bond with him that over rides that danger signal. So for that to take place your husband has to truely present a safe person that you can totally trust completely. And that is going to take some therapy for him as well as yourself. And the reason you don't want to give your husband the details is because your afraid of interupting the safe part of him that you already enjoy. And your not sure you can turn off that safety alarm that takes place where you pretend safety in sex now, but its a lot of work because your fighting a real alarm system that is normal to any brain.

EVERY BRAIN THAT EXPERIENCES SOMETHING HARMFUL LEARNS TO IDENTIFY ALL THINGS LIKE THE EXPERIENCE THAT WAS HARMFUL, AS NOW HARMFUL.
This goes for any kind of abuse or bad experience any brain experiences in its life span. This includes, accidents, injuries, car crashes, loss of a loved one, verbal abuse, bullying, falling down the stairs, getting your finger shut in a door, falling off a horse and getting hurt and scared, dog bites, and even seeing bad events on television that profoundly effect our brains with a signal of something dangerous. This is how our brains are designed to protect us and help us survive.

So when something hurts us, we always remember, get a signal of danger and have to stop and make a decision of wether it is still dangerous or if it is safe to proceed. Every time we make a mistake we are supposed to remember it, that is how we learn. We do learn from bad things happening, it is a part of life. Every single person experiences bad things in life and each person has to then learn how to overcome or solve that bad thing, or how to avoid it. And when it comes at us suddenly the message of danger is more intense simply because it was sudden and unexpected.

Geez, you are dealing with a normal brain that experienced something that was unexpected and caused pain and discomfort. Some snakes are very poisenous, some snakes are harmless but they do startle us as we do know to stop and make sure it is not poisenous. If we do not know the poisenous snakes we learn to fear them all.

Open Eyes

[Sannah]

You don't have to go to a sex therapist if you don't want to. Go to this T for awhile and see what happens?

[geez]

Open Eyes and Sannah Thank you for your reply!

I don't have a ton of time to say everything I want right now in my response but open eyes I get allot of what your saying.

Sannah I love this new therapist and ironically she's across the hall from my old one and they are friends. This new T is a marriage therapist for my husband and I and she wants to send me off for myself to see the sex therapist (he's this expert person in the field etc..). I feel like I click with her and I don't think she's up for the task. I guess there's still a part of me that's a little bit stuck in the past for all of the reasons Open Eyes mentioned...

More later. Thank you so much Open for your well thought out and informative response!

Open I have one question for you: Why has sex not always been uncomfortable per se. There were times in my life were I didn't care and I could have sex but now not so much (besides the obvious of having kids and being tired etc..). Does this come and go with someone who has experienced abuse ever?

[Open Eyes]

Yes it can happen, I have had that problem too. Have an open mind with therapy, just look at it as a new learning experience. And do share, we love sharing any good ideas.

Open Eyes