Trying to Get Help

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I ran into several difficulties while trying to find help for myself.  I am writing this not to discourage you or to make you feel hopeless, but to let you know that you need to keep fighting and struggle on.  In reality, many of us have situations like mine where no one ever intervened or helped us out of the abusive situations.  What I want to say is that it is hard.   It is very hard, but you HAVE to do it.  You have to keep fighting and listening to what you know is right.  People will try to push you away or ignore you, but you are worth saving.  Be your own rescuer, it is the only sure way to save yourself and more than likely, your life.

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Never Give Up!

My Story

Telling My Parents

The first time I really reached out for help was when I was about 10 years old, which I mentioned in "My Story."  The big idea being preached in schools and after-school specials was to tell "your parents or a trusted adult if someone is touching you wrong."  I should have known from the response my parents had when I told them about the instance with the boy next door that this was a bad idea. When I told my mother about the boy next door, she was playing the keyboard (musical).  She had not done this much and was trying it out.  While I was telling her she started getting upset.  I felt very bad for upsetting her.  She never played the keyboard again, I am not sure if it was because of me or not, but I always believed it was and felt exorbitant amounts of guilt for it. I did not tell my father about the neighbor, but my mother did when he was home one weekend.  I only found out because he took me for a walk in the forest.  He said "oh, is this where you had your little thing with [the neighbor boy] and took off all your clothes?"  I was humiliated.  I told him that of course not, it was the boy who took HIS clothes off not me and my father said "oh good then."  So I was 8 years old and already lying to try not to seem like a slut. I told my parents about the abuse from my brother when I was about 11 years old.  We lived in a house that was unfinished.  My brother and I had shared a room, then they finished his room and right when I was about 11 they finished mine.  My brother and I lived in the basement and my parents lived up stairs.  I told my mother when we were standing on the stairs one time that my brother had been touching me wrong.  She got upset, as always.  I don't remember the chain of events, but they moved me upstairs in a room across from their room so that they could keep an eye on me and for my own protection.  I just wanted my own room.  I was banned from the basement and from my brothers room and was to stay confined (if not literally, to the room across from them.  As I said in "My Story" his room had all the neat stuff to a kid; he had a TV, video game machine, hamsters, a dart board, etc.  At just 11 years old I perceived that I was being punished.  So, I told my parents that I was exaggerating and that is wasn't as bad as I had implied, just playing around.  They believed me and granted my freedom and room back, but this meant that I had to keep my mouth shut about everything he did so I didn't get punished again.

Angry

Impacts

Happiness

The Fake Man

When I was 14 I told my mother that I had dated a man who was 24 and that he must have drugged me and had sex with me.  This was not true.  Because I told her this she sent me to Therapy to deal with it.  At first I was baffled as to why I had made this up.  I figured out that I was trying to get help for the larger issues and this was the only way I could figure how to do it.  However, as my mother was driving me to my first therapy session (and last with this therapist) she told me that she didn't believe me about this man and she thought I had made it up.  My first instinct was to defend myself and so I swore I had not made it up.  She would get very angry if she felt she was being "bull shitted" so once I picked that story, I had to stick with it.

Therapist #1

My first therapist was an older man in a stuffy office.  One thing I had learned over the years was how to manipulate any conversation and pretty much anyone into something that was safer for me.  This session was no exception.  Though I am sure his intention was to make me feel comfortable, he spent the entire time talking about where he had gone to University and what the dorms were like and what he did on the weekends and such.  In the last five minutes he said addressed this 24 year old man I was on about.  I told him it was no big deal and he said that was fine then.  I never went back.

Therapist #2

My second therapist was an older lady who we later found out was notoriously bad at her job.  With me she made me draw pictures.  I went to her to address my problems in school.  She seemed somehow convinced that my father had molested me.  That never happened.  My father didn't hug me much less anything else.  I told her repeatedly that he had not.  I finally told her about my brother (who was now a second year psychology student in University).  I told her I had not wanted to mention what he had done to me before because I didn't want him to get in trouble. She assured me that he would not.  According to her, because he was only about 4 years older than me, it fit into the category of experimentation and so it was not reportable.  She said that this sort of thing was so common, they didn't really look at it as a crime anymore.  I now look back at that and wonder where she was from and how could anyone be such a Fucking Idiot!  So, I stopped seeing her.  Actually she called and canceled my next appointment and then I never heard from her again.  It was very strange.

Mandated Reporting

One thing that was and still is difficult for me to get over is trying to protect the people who abused me.  It was beat into my head with such phrases as "you have to love your brother, he will be the one you have known the longest in your life," and "he just needs love and support from the family" and later/now "He is our son and we love him and you are not going to get in between that or change that."  Because of my brothers choice of careers and where he is working currently if I talk about him in therapy, the therapist must report him to child welfare and other agencies.  This meant that I was yet again taking care of, helping, and protecting my brother.  I would go into therapy and either have to tap dance around the topic, or in one case beg the therapist not to report him because of the harm that might come back to me.  This made it increasingly difficult and I grew more and more angry every time I had to stop talking to protect him.  I have changed my attitude a great deal in this area.  I now feel that while I don't have the strength yet to pursue something against him, I am going to talk openly about what has happened, and if it has to be reported he brought it on himself, I didn't do it to him.

Read this: The morals of why I am telling you all of this are:  Finding a therapist is not easy.  You will need to know what you are looking for.  Treat it like an interview.  Second: Reporting is not you doing something to the abusers, it is what they did.  The responsibility is solely theirs.  I know it is still difficult in our society to report because abuse survivors are not taken seriously, but don't protect abusers.  If you get nothing else from this page, get that.

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