Posted by LG04 on March 6, 2005, at 13:01:30
In reply to Re: Therapist and Sexual discussions (Trigger +above) » LG04, posted by daisym on March 6, 2005, at 1:16:03
hi daisy,
my father passed away 10 years ago. my mom and i do have a relationship.
as soon as i started having flashbacks, i cut off my relationship with my father and he knew why though he denied everything. several years later he got cancer. then i heard from someone that he only had a few months left to live. i was still early in my healing process but i knew i had to confront him about the incest or i'd regret it. so i wrote him a long letter about it, about how his sexual abuse of me affected my life and the pain and everything else, and i asked him to please admit it before he died. i went to his house where much of the abuse took place and read it to him (my rabbi was with me, i would never have gone alone).
he denied everything. i expected it but obviously it still hurt. i saw him two more times after that (it was incredibly triggering for me so i couldn't see him very often). i also called him almost daily until he died. i don't know why. i guess i just knew it was my last chance to ever be speaking to him and you know, despite all the pain and horror of what he did, i still loved him and he was still my dad.
he cut me out of his will which hurt terribly. my only sibling, my sister (whom he also abused but she is in total and complete denial and idolizes my dad and has not spoken to me in 10 years) got everything. i went to the funeral and stood in the back with my friends while he received accolades of what a wonderful man he was. i sat in front at the gravesite service with the rest of my family (who were not speaking to me), but when the time came for each person present to put in a shovel full of dirt (a Jewish tradition), i refused. it was my way of showing that even though he was my father, i was not going to lie or pretend that i thought he was this wonderful man deserving of this kind of respect.
my mom and i did not speak for 5 years. she denied everything also and when my dad had cancer, she completely took care of him (they had been divorced already for 12 years!) while at the same time, i was in and out of hospitals for suicial ideations and cutting and so forth, and i couldn't work from such debilitating depression and constant flashbacks and didn't even have enough money to buy food so i had to go to a food pantry for a while (while my mom was married to a millionaire, i kid you not). she became very involved in the false memory association and blamed my incest memories on evil therapists. (even though my flashbacks almost always occurred outside the therapists' office)
she had basically given me an ultimatum: recant your accusations of incest or we will not be in your life. in black and white: choose your family or choose yourself. i chose myself.
it was a horribly painful time of my life. living without my family, even though they are f*cked up, was so painful. (i have cousins and an aunt with whom i'd always been close, and they also stopped speaking to me, also my grandma) but eventually i started to get back on my feet again. a few times i ran into my mom and we spoke a little bit and she would ask me to re-connect wih her and go to a false memory syndrome therapist. can you imagine? sometimes it ended up with me screaming at her. i couldn't handle her denial. i could not be in a relationship with her while she denied everything. it made me feel like i didn't exist.
eventually we tried therapy together (it was the only way i'd be in her presence) but the therapist SHE picked was neutral about the incest and wouldn't even say if he believed me or not. and whenever it came up, my mom would go nuts and say she can't handle this and it's not true, etc.
i don't even know how but eventually we made our way back into a relationship with each other and then with the rest of my family. (except my sister) It has taken a long time and i still feel the effects of the rupture in my relationship with them, but things for the most part are back to normal with everyone except my sister. i kept sending her birthday cards until last year. finally i realized that i had shown her over and over again that i am open to a relationship with her. i can't do it anymore. the rejection is too painful. i don't expect her to ever be in my life again. i represent to her the incest and she needs to stay as far away from it as possible.
I still have a hard time with my mom. Our relationship is very superficial. she helps me a lot with financial situations and we go to dinner and stuff together, but i don't ever feel really comfortable with her. i love her and i prefer having her in my life, but i still have to hide everything emotional from her. so most of me is hidden and she doesn't really know me. it's very hard. she can be supportive about non-threatening things though.
my biggest issue in therapy is letting go of the wish for an ideal mother, for the mother that i never had. i am so resistent to giving up that fantasy, even though the fantasy doesn't help me at all in my life and only causes pain. whenever i start to get close and begin to grieve, i end up backing away from it. i really want to deal with it, to let it go, i suppose i am in that process just by getting close and backing away. but i want it to happen NOW and be done with it.
anyway, that is the story with my parents. it's a common scenerio but it's not the only scenerio. i have an incest surviving friend whose dad (not the abuser) so much wants to be there for her and is so wonderful with her since she told him a little while ago.
i hope that helped for whatever information you were seeking. if you have any more questions, i'm happy to answer them.
hang in there. it really does get better. today i am fully functioning (most days anyway!) with a full-time job that i love. i have grown in so many ways in my ability to have intimate relationships. much of it has come from my current therapist, with whom I have had many "corrective emotional experiences." i still experience a lot of emotional pain though. i still have a lot to work thru. but my first years of therapy were just living thru flashbacks and trying to survive. so it has gotten better, that's for sure.
LG04
poster:LG04
thread:458245
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050305/msgs/467384.html