I've just got to know, is the rollercoaster of recovery as bad as, or worse than, the rollercoaster BEFORE recovery even begins?????? B/c if it's worse, oh, man.....

Please, please tell me it is hardest before the survivor can talk about his abuse, that it gets better once he understands along w/ his partner the effects and so on?

Still hanging onto the uncertainty of "will we ever get there (recovery)."

For me.....

The roller coaster after the shit hit the fan was much worse than the ignorance before, but........ Even during the worst of it I NEVER wanted to go back to the way it was before.

That has been my experience and may not match that of other guys.

Lots of love,

John

Brokenhearted, please check your PM's i fyou're still online.

V.

The question is, is life without any ups better than a life without any downs. The answer is it's no life at all.

I'll take the pain Broken, then at least I get the ups too.

Mike

Post deleted by ttoon

I look at mine like the Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point....0 to 120 MPH in less than 4 seconds....straight up in the air with a twist 90 degree angle....425 feet then 90 degress straight back down at 120 MPH....loop that...thats what recovery is at times.

But eventually the ride gets easier and eventually i think we can get off at some point.

[/img]http://www.rcdb.com/ig1896.htm?picture=41[/img]

Post deleted by ttoon

You guys make me laugh...but also thank you for the positive side of it "getting worse" after ignorance.

If you please, may I ask one more? Just what IS it that "hits the fan"? Is it the realization that half your life has been lived w/o feeling it or something like that? Or that a lot of self-loathing/self-shame could have been lessened if only you had understood sooner that the shame never even belonged to you?

For me, it was the inability to continue the charade that was my so called "life" - no longer pretending I was "normal", no longer being able to keep secrets buried inside, and generally just have a total meltdown. My wife was very concerned because she thought I was really losing my sanity and that I was going to need to "go away" (hospitalized) for a while to get better. It was a pretty hard smackdown.

The fact that I had wasted 40 years hiding and living a limited life when in reality the world was available at my fingertips and I didn't even know it. I didn't have a clue.

The fact that my life was lived believing I was not good enough, that I wasn't capable of great things.

The fact that I didn't have a dream. I didn't know how. My dream had been stolen from me and I didn't even know it.

And to top it all off, the fact that what I had experienced at the hands of older people who I had thought were my friends was actually SEXUAL ABUSE!

and

The fact that what I had experienced at the hands of my parents had actually been physical abuse as well as emotional neglect and abuse.

It all came crashing down on me.