[PinUpGal]

I always thought my problems with anxiety started when I was 10 or 11, which was when my mom first tried to get me help. Looking back I realized that it started way earlier. I was raped for about a year when I was four by a neighbor almost every day and after I moved with my mother to NYC and started acting around 6 I started feeling incredibly guilty. I would sit down and talk with her every day for hours on end about every little detail and if I remembered something that I forgot to tell her I would start at the beginning. This happened everyday for over 2 years, it got to the point where she set aside a 2 hour window in her day just for me to talk to her. Then after moving past the rape, everything I did that I thought would disappoint her or my father I would have to tell them. It sounds like a good thing but not very normal, this went on until my father passed away when I was 16. It wasn't until recently that I learned extreme guilt is a sign of anxiety problems. The funny thing is the abuse doesn't seem to bother me emotionally. I can talk about almost anything, my mother having cancer, finding my father dead, the sexual abuse, and it doesn't really stir any emotion anymore but is it possible that the sexual abuse was a trigger or even the cause for my anxiety problems that I still have today?

Originally Posted by PinUpGal

I would sit down and talk with her every day for hours on end about every little detail and if I remembered something that I forgot to tell her I would start at the beginning. This happened everyday for over 2 years, it got to the point where she set aside a 2 hour window in her day just for me to talk to her. Then after moving past the rape, everything I did that I thought would disappoint her or my father I would have to tell them. It sounds like a good thing but not very normal, this went on until my father passed away when I was 16. It wasn't until recently that I learned extreme guilt is a sign of anxiety problems.

Hi pin up,

You may still blame yourself on some level . Guilt is a way angziety shows it self.

Guilt and shame are interlinked. Not sure if your mother felt any guilt or expressed it.

She certainly was there for you listening like she did. Did you feel quilty for her needing to take the time?

Do you remember that i was a neighbor?

have you had proffesional help outside of your mother ? if not might you concider going over all the details again?

No one is guilty for the rape except for the rapist.

Im sorry. it happened to you.

looks like your blaming yourself for having an angziety thats a mental illness apart from the trauma you have experinced . death of father and all .

I find it doesn't go away very easily. when I sit next to a man or mostly anybody I have periods of hiding my hands or parts of me. I feel a bit uncomfortable.

and I have been working on this for many years.



Patricia

[PinUpGal]

I have seen therapists but because I kind of breeze by the subject when broached, I haven't really talked about it all that much since I was a child. I don't feel like any of the stuff from my past effects me today because I don't really like to blame past issues for things that trouble me now. My mother has told me that she felt guilty for what happened but mostly because she never really did anything about it as far as going to the police. The neighbor was much older than me but still a child so I think that has something to do with why she didn't. It's a lot more common now to go to the police when the abuser is a 10 or 12 year old then it was back then. I do remember her taking me to see a therapist right after I told her for about a month, the only thing I remember about that is that was the first time that I explained it wasn't molestation but actual intercourse and I had to use those silly dolls to show what he did. I felt guilty for a long time after my dad died as well, he had terminal cancer but was doing very well and we had gotten into a fight the night before he died. We made up by the end of it but he died of a heart attack and I remember feeling that if I had just been a better daughter maybe he wouldn't have been so stressed that night. The docs said the chemo and the fact that he was overweight was the cause of it but I couldn't shake the feeling for a long time that I played a role in his death. Even little things like the fact that I didn't go check on him until late that morning when I knew he usually got up early bugged me. I kept thinking that maybe if I had gone in his room at 6 or 7 instead of ten I could have saved him. I think it's pretty normal though because my mother, who didn't share a bed with my father, said she felt guilty because she heard him grumbling in the middle of the night and didn't think anything of it because it was so difficult for him to move around due to the chemo weakening him that he always made noises when trying to move a lot. It's just strange to think that something from the past that I don't feel bothers me could be the cause of the way I am. Especially since I am the first one to tell people that the past is the past and not to let it effect you if possible. If it is due to these things that happened I am not sure if anything would help because how can you get over something that you feel you are already over?

[Sannah]

Hi Gal, the past affects us today because it affected our proper development and we still carry the feelings with us (if we haven't worked through them yet). Have you ever talked about your feelings from the past and not just the logical facts of what happened?

[PinUpGal]

Originally Posted by Sannah

Hi Gal, the past affects us today because it affected our proper development and we still carry the feelings with us (if we haven't worked through them yet). Have you ever talked about your feelings from the past and not just the logical facts of what happened?

Not really because I don't feel like I have feelings about it one way or the other. I mean I feel like it was a crappy situation but I don't really feel angry or saddened by the events. Hmmm...That's probably not normal in and of itself. I can't even remember ever having feelings about it when I was younger, aside from the guilt and scared that I may have contracted HIV and was going to die. I don't remember feeling any sadness or pain associated with it though, just the guilt, which now that I am older I realize was not my fault even if I didn't stop it.

[Sannah]

Maybe your anxiety stems from your bottled up feelings then?????

[PinUpGal]

Originally Posted by Sannah

Maybe your anxiety stems from your bottled up feelings then?????

I guess that would be plausible, but how do you "unbottle" feelings that you didn't know you had? In other words if I do have feelings towards events that happened in my past but I don't know what they are or that they were even there, how do I get past them?

[Sannah]

Originally Posted by PinUpGal

how do you "unbottle" feelings that you didn't know you had? how do I get past them?

Interesting how you just want to get past them..........

[PinUpGal]

Originally Posted by Sannah

Interesting how you just want to get past them..........

Well, yeah. I mean if I have to deal with them to do that, it's fine but what good would they do me now? It's been years and I wouldn't want to dwell on them so really the only thing I would want to do is get past them so that I can move on with my life and stop being so anxious. My family is very into blaming the past for the bad things that have happened to them and while I think it's important to deal with issues I don't want to turn out like my aunt who still blames every failure in her life and every bad decision she makes on her mother and father. There has to be a point when a person accepts responsibility for their actions and it doesn't mean not having feelings it just means dealing with those feelings and moving on with your life. I'm in no way saying I am right in the way I think but it's what I grew up listening to from my mother and my aunt and I swore when I was young that I would never tell my kids that the reason I was a bad parent was because that's how I was raised. It would be within my power to change things if I chose to just as it would be my choice to allow myself to abandon my children as my mom did to my brother and then say that it was because of things that happened in my past or issues that I had with my signifigant other. Does that make any sense at all? lol, I feel like maybe it doesn't. Wouldn't the only point of dealing with any feelings from the past be to move on and get healthier? Honestly, I am not really good at dealing with feelings or emotions, I'm the person that always says "I'm fine" no matter what is going on. Even after my dad died I plastered a big smile on my face for our guests and pretended that I didn't have a care in the world because I didn't want them to see me as weak. This is all new territory for me so I'm not really sure how to go about dealing with it.

[Sannah]

It just sounded like you would rather do anything than look at your feelings.

[chaotic13]

PinUpGal,
I'm finding in my own journey that the tenicles of abuse are very tangled and linked in strange and complex ways. In my case, I'm starting to think it is the pursuit of trying to untangle and figure out the whys and how's of it all that might be feeding my anxiety.

[PinUpGal]

Originally Posted by chaotic13

PinUpGal,
I'm finding in my own journey that the tenicles of abuse are very tangled and linked in strange and complex ways. In my case, I'm starting to think it is the pursuit of trying to untangle and figure out the whys and how's of it all that might be feeding my anxiety.

That's a great way of looking at it. I never really thought that any of my past had to do with my anxiety because I am so apathetic towards it all. It wasn't until yesterday when I was talking to a friend about when I started to get so anxious that I realized it was right after my mother moved me out of that house where everything had been going on.

[Miri]

Originally Posted by Sannah

Maybe your anxiety stems from your bottled up feelings then?????

Ditto, I really believe this - there is only one way through it and that's throught it. But the promise of heraling is there, as well. I can tell you that i've been through years of therapy crying about what was done to me. I can talk about that part and not be emotional, yet the anger towards the perpetraitors (as I call them) remains very strong because I'm still suffering from depression. There is still more "stuff" to wade through. But you can get to a place where the memories themselves don't trigger a lot of pain. I'm not saying that therapy wouldn't be a good thing, but since you talked so much about the details of what happened, that piece of it might be done. But yes, it is a very tangled process and I think it likely that there are many more pieces to work through. This is a lot to think about ... take good care of yourself.

[chaotic13]

Here's a thought...maybe to see if you are REALLY OK or apathetic about what happened you could try using a different mode of communication. In my own therapy at first I could describe events of my childhood in a flat, emotionless, 3rd party way. But when we started digging deeper in therapy I totally shutdown. I still cannot speak/ verbally present my feelings very well. For me hearing and saying certain thinks is just...impossible. Clearly... I still have some unresolved issues.

However, when I expanded my self expression options to include visually communicating...bam...I tapped into things I had NO idea where inside and affecting my everyday view of the world.

Maybe verbal communciation has become automated for you..You've already formed answers to all of the typical questions Ts ask to stimulate the emotions associated with with your past. Maybe you need to switch to a mode of communication that uses a different area of the brain (the RIGHT side). This may lead to some new insights.

Just a thought

Good stuff being shared. I have such vauge memories around my traumatic experience ( s) . All I remember are the visuals and that my therapists voice changed to this angry menacing voice . so I had some auditory .

its just a big black out , just a snap shot .and bam! don't know what happened to me really after wards . no feeligs about it. I may have been knocked out.

how in the world do you work on feelings about that? its like a huge block of iron.

maybe acting as if and fake it till one makes it.

I guess I am in the same place with feeling the feelings as you are Pin up .

i just don't see that its possible . it woud be like walking into a dark room and sitting there waiting .
just crazey.

if you can't remember then how can you have angziety about it?
it doesn't compute.

i guess going back there would be hard to do for you as well.

Patricia

Originally Posted by chaotic13

PinUpGal,
I'm finding in my own journey that the tenicles of abuse are very tangled and linked in strange and complex ways. In my case, I'm starting to think it is the pursuit of trying to untangle and figure out the whys and how's of it all that might be feeding my anxiety.

Amen! with this anziety / anxious body feelings . Im curious as to how much is hyperativity that comes from ADHD . I must have a combo. The thought of adding more stress around figuring this stuff out will proably do me in.. :P I won't be able to focus at all.

Patricia

[PinUpGal]

It's strange because I remember every second of it down to what I was wearing on each day that it happened. I remember where it happened, who was around, if it was just the one guy or if his friends were there to "pass me around", I can picture it in my head, hear his voice, and still nothing. I was thinking of doing something drastic like trying to find him on myspace or facebook. Not contacting him but maybe seeing him again would bring something up.

[Sannah]

Maybe start by just being in touch with your feelings today? Check in frequently to see where you are at and how you are feeling through out the day?

[cinewest]

I agree - focus on today and go beyond the past. We tend to always look for reasons to justify why we feel bad about something. Instead, I would recommend simply focusing on the positive and moving forward from them. It sounds like you have accepted what happened to you in the past - that is great! But, you are still dwelling too much on it (excuse me if I am incorrect in this perspective but this medium does not allow for real time communication where my comment might be different). I beat depression - or at least it feels that way over 15 years ago and I could remember the beginning of my healing path: One day I wonder why I felt so jealous and weak. For what? I realized that those feelings were ugly and nasty and they where in connection with actions that I could not control. I realized that the only person that I could control was me and that the best thing I could do was just focus on myself and build from there. Life has not been greater since! I must say, however, it was not an overnight success. It took me about 4 years of constantly working at myself and pushing away negativity or persons that were negative away from me and only surrounded myself with those that loved, cared and wanted me.

[chaotic13]

PinUpGal,

What if your axiety is NOT directly related to your abuse? Maybe you've made this assumption. It is logical. Maybe past T's have working from this this perspective. Maybe the abuse leaves you less able to cope with it or has your anxiety threshold set a little lower that the "average" person. Can you put the abuse issue aside and look for other origins for your anxiety. It is likely not just one thing.