I've been told I'll be ready for "serious work" on my healing when I "hit bottom". I swear, someone keeps moving the base - get so low I can't go lower, and I go lower. How can you hit bottom when it's a moving, every sinking target?? I keep thinking it can't get worse. I can't get more depressed. Yet I do.
Does this mean I'm stronger than I think - or life is just much worse than I ever figured??????

Mark,
I can totally relate. I think someone keeps moving the bottom on me. My T tells me it is like peeling the layers of an onion. When one removes a layer, there are new things to discover underneath. I don't like hearing this, but it seems to be true for me. I would like to hope that we are both stronger than we think. Hang in there!

I think I've peeled this onion to where it became a black hole and STILL has layers...

Hi Mark,

First, I'm finally beginning to believe that anybody that was abused is stronger than we give ourselves credit for. Look what we've been through already!!!

My doctor told me basically the same as AC. She said that your mind will not let you uncover something until your mind "clears it" with your brain. You may know there is something waiting to be "cleared" but until it is, you won't get access to it. That way, you can process what you know now without having to worry that your brain will be overwhelmed with the shit being already processed. I find that to be big time true.

MarkK - don't wait for the bottom! Start now! if there is more bad stuff to be uncovered, you won't have as far to fall. You'll already be in a place where you've established a base or support system, team or person to help you through. Waiting for the other shoe to drop is excruciating.

Like Sailor John said, you'll get more garbage to process when you can handle it. My experience was that some of the worst memories weren't of the physical and sexual abuse but of the emotional abuse of abandonment and collaboration through apathy and denial by my mom and others. Once the more tangible stuff was identified and accepted, the deeper more abstract issues also surfaced - not what i'd have expected.

And Yeah - like ACR said - you are stronger than you think. you made it this far by sheer grit, willpower, improvisation and any other tactic that worked for you. Good job! Now to grow into the next stage where the tools and tactics are more appropriate and effective... Wish i knew who said it first:"You survived abuse - you can survive recovery!"

Regards,
Lee

do you know how frustrating it is to hear "you'll recover more when you can handle it" ?? what is heard - - "you'll get better when you're better" say what?? since I'm not uncovering more, I am therefore NOT able to handle it. what else is new?? to tell someone with no self worth that he's just not good enough to get better ... well, all I can say is it don't work for me.

Yes, actually, I do know that feeling, MarkK.
Sorry i said the wrong thing.
Please let me explain a bit...

I personally jsut had to put aside the stuff I couldn't reach and work on the stuff I could. LAter on more came to light.

I see it like a book. I can't read all the pages at once. So i read the one that is open and then the next one and eventually I may make it through all of them. the story was not in chronological - or any other kind of logical order - more like one of those stream of consciousness ones where the time and events are all jumbled up , but later all the details begin to fit together and start to make sense. And it is hard work.

At the moment i don't even care if i never remember another "new" memory. i think i'd be kind of relieved not to.
obviously you're not at that place and i empathize. I remember how it made me crazy not knowing why i ws the way i was and knowing tha there must be reasons that i could not grasp.

I think one thing that might have helped some of my memories to surface was reading lots of other guys stories and posts as well as books on CSA. There were things i sort of recognized or that triggered me and before too long - up would pop a lost memory that i recognized as authentic - not jsut a fantasy prompted by someone else's issues. I knew they were real. Some were so vivid it ws jsut like experienceing them again - not like amemory at all - maybe more of a flashback - and not fun.

It ws hard subjecting myself to so many triggers and i spent a lot of time in tears or panic attack-type symptoms, but it did shake stuff loose. Take it easy tho - don't push yourself too hard. It can cause worse depression - voice of experience.

I hope that this will, if nothing more, show that i don't take your feelings of frustration lightly.

Please forgive me for offending you. I didn't mean to.
Lee

you haven't offended me. I'm just vocalizing what I'm feeling. I didn't mean to attack.

I feel exactly where you are coming from in your feelings. I am feeling the same way... Once I think, ok, it cant get worse and now I can finally focus myself, it seems to get worse, spiraling into depression and anxiety and, an ever present mentality of why? I have striven to make amends and changes but always seem to be knocked down at aome point later on. How do you move on and begin recovery when you are always bombarded halfway through a recovery and brought back down to square one...it is hard. A friend of mine auggested writing about where I want to be and be doing in six months, what would make me happy and content, regardless of how impossible it may seem now, but to keep reading that and taking myaelf there. I think sometimes when we just focus on all the megativity we cant focus o. Anything positive, it was good and it gives me a fallback on, I have even tried recalling happy positive moments of my childhood to replace the negative ones which was not easy at all...but it helps me stay balanced amd I have something to read or visualize when I do start to spiral... It isnt a solution but it does help me cope and focus when I meed to.

one of the "joys" of having no memories - can't recall "happy positive moments" any more than I can recall the abuse. Not in enough detail to say "yes - that happened". instead I get vague foggy thoughts and recollections.

maybe the point is accepting the unacceptable. my past is over and i can't do it over so why even worry about remembering it. and if it weren't for the fact that so much of my life is reacting to things i don't remember - maybe i could just move on.